Vancouver Tech Podcast

Drew and James have a long show this week. First, they cover some ideas on leveling the playing field with remote and local employees. Drew went to a ton of meetups, so there is an excellent breakdown of each day. We have lots of links for this episode, so check the show notes! The interview this week is with Kiri Nichol - small yellow duck. The interview starts at 0:42:36. Kiri Nichol is a data science junky! When she is not organizing her Kaggle competitions, she is competing against others. She has a Ph.D. in Physics and has a real passion for problem solving. Links Remote 1 Year Retail Zipline Job Try Git on Github Try Git on Code School CensusMapper.ca Interview Links Wiki Art Kiris Kaggle Competition Meetups for the week of May 16th Women In IT Week Monday, May 16th EdTech (UBC Studios, 0110 - 2329 West Mall) 1:00 PM Git Help! & 0-Tech (Decentral, 436 West Pender) 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM Kids Code Jeunesse (Launch Academy, #300 - 128 West Hastings) 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Ideas Meeting (Creative Cow

Drew and James open with a brief chat about the week in review, a little bit about Microsoft naming, as well as some of the side projects they are working on. The guest this week is Matt Carolan from Softchoice, an experienced group of experts that offers deep expertise and design for the implementation of advanced IT and cloud solutions. If you are interested in cloud computing, Azure, AWS, and all things server related, then Matt is your man. He is also the founder and organizer of the Vancouver PUG (public cloud user group) meetup. Interview Links Softchoice Public Cloud User Group (PUG) Meetup Coffee Cloud Matt on Twitter Meetups for the week of May 9th Monday, May 9th Git Help! & 0-Tech (Decentral, 436 West Pender) 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM DREW ODDBALL: Life Drawing (#590-1199 West Pender) 5:00 PM Tuesday, May 10th Vancouver Pixel Crafters (Nelson the Seagull 315 Carrall Street) 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM Open Data Drinks (Shebeen Whiskey House 212 Carrall Street) 5:30 PM to 9:30 PM Vancouver Spark Meetup (Hy

Drew and James open the show with a quick chat about the bust week then jump straight into the meetups. This week is packed, so be sure to listen carefully. We also have Charles Iliya Krempeaux from Koho as our special guest. If you are interested in seeing the video with the 12-year-old girl talking about how horrible Canadian banks are, you can watch the video here. Charles grew up in Vancouver and spent the majority of his career here. He has an impressive resume and list of accomplishments. We talk about all of the meetups Charles organizes as well as some of the past companies he has worked with. Interview Links Koho Charles' Personal Site and Twitter Learn Data Science Meetup Data Science Meetup Machine Learning Meetup Monday, May 2nd Git Help! & 0-Tech (Decentral, 436 West Pender), 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PolyGlot Reading Group (369 Terminal Ave), 6:00 PM Ember Vancouver (CodeCore, 142 W Hastings),6:30 PM VanLUG Board Meeting (SFU Downtown, 515 West Hastings), 7:00 PM Tuesday, May 3rd Pixel Crafte

Drew and James open the show with a shout out to all the events that past the previous week. This week we have the lead instructor from Lighthouse Labs: Don Burks. Don Burks is the head instructor at Lighthouse Labs. He has been there since shortly after the school started in Vancouver and was the first full-time instructor there. He has been in BC area since the late 90s. Because of that, he has a rich history in a bunch of different cities and businesses. Interview Links Lighthouse Labs Lighthouse Labs FAQ Don Burks on Twitter or by email Upcoming Week (April 25th to May 1st) Monday April 25th Git Help! and 0-Tech (Decentral) 4:00 to 6:00 PM Innovation Labs (1110 Hamilton, Brainstation) 6:00 to 8:00 PM $10 HackerNest (Skio Music, 390 Cambie Street), 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM Tuesday, April 26th Open Coffee (315 Carrall), 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM Public Cloud Users Group (Steamworks) 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM TechVancouver Meetup (Rise HQ 12th Floor- 1055 West Hastings) 6:00 PM Clojure Hacknight (142 W Hastings) 6:00 PM

Drew and James open the show with a quick chat about the past week of personal activities. James went to some TA training, where he found out about "learning bias". There is also a mention of the DevOpsDays, which can be watched online in 2 parts (part 1 and part 2). Between the 2 of them, they managed to get to 7 meetups last week, so be sure to listen to the reviews. This special show has 2 guests from SKIO Music, Neal Clark and Omri Amouyal. The interview starts at 0:29:16. SKIO Music provides tools for artists and record labels to increase commercial opportunities and enable strategic collaboration by removing the legal and administrative bottlenecks. SKIO Music helps musicians and record labels of all sizes. Whether you are a bedroom DJ, or a bigger label looking to commission something special from an artist. Do you have an event we should include? Do you have an opinion on something we discussed? We would love to hear your feedback or talk about your meetup. Interview Links SKIO Music SKIO

Drew and James open the show with a hello to the new listeners on BetaKit. If you ever wondered how to say BetaKit, or GIF, then keep listening. There is also a discussion on the events that occurred the last week in the YVRDev slack, and why there are more dev slacks now. The guest this week our guest is Tim Abdulla, co-founder of Rise (formerly PaySavvy). Tim Abdulla, co-founder of Rise (formerly PaySavvy), joins us on the show to talk about working with family, growing to 60 people, not hiring a-holes, and dealing with "not-so-micro-services". Do you have an event we should include? Do you have an opinion on something we discussed? We would love to hear your feedback or talk about your meetup. Interview Links Rise Rise Careers Tim on Twitter and email Community events contact Upcoming Week (April 11th to April 17th) Monday, April 11th, 2016 Exploring Git! Vancouver Technology Leaders (members only) 7:30 AM Tuesday, April 12th, 2016 Open Coffee (Nelson the Seagull 315 Carrall Street) 8:00 AM

The first show of April is a fun one. Drew and James chat a little about April Fools, then get right into the previous week. They talk about using statistics for measuring team output, as well as the relationship between interview and performance later on. Drew mentions going to the Full Indie meetup and meeting the creator of Bunker Punks. The guest this week is Ilya Brotzky. The interview starts at 0:28:45. Ilya Brotzky is the Co-Founder & CEO of VanHack as well as a Facilitator & Mentor at Spring Activator. He spent the beginning of his career working on startups in Brazil, as well as contributing to the collection of data for the government. VanHack empowers top international tech talent to break into the Canadian startup community, with a strong focus on Brazil. Spring has helped over 115 entrepreneurs from all over the world get the skills, knowledge and network they need to create a sustainable business they have a passion for. At Spring, Ilya mentors the cohort in the 4 week immersion program

Even though it is the Easter long-weekend, you still get a show! Drew and James cover the past week, as well as go on some tangents on devtools and hiring with interviews. They also reveal the new theme music by A Shell In The Pit called "Green Green Grass". Our guest this week is Zeeshan Hayat, Kudolife CEO and Prizm Media CEO. The interview starts at 0:36:38. Zeeshan Hayat founded Prizm Media over 10 years ago. Prizm Media develops economic marketing initiatives for healthcare and wellness companies looking to position themselves as a fast growth company within their niche. One of the primary goals of Prizm Media is to fight diabetes by making it easier for clients to match with businesses that can help them. This lead Zeeshan to the question: how can we directly help people with diabetes? The primary goal for Zeeshan was to help make people healthier, but also make that challenge much easier. Kudolife was the answer to that question. Kudolife is an app that helps users by helping them track thei

Drew and James head straight into events from last week and the upcoming week. This episode's special guest is Jonathon Narvey, a long-time freelancer and the west coast editor at BetaKit. The interview starts at 0:32:12. Jonathon Narvey has been a freelance writer for over 15 years. Recently, he has taken up the position of the new west coast editor of BetaKit, a news site offering Canadian startup coverage as well as tech innovation in the great white north. As we talk we Jonathon, we cover topics on Vancouver housing, SEO that doesn't suck, tips for new freelance writers, as well as some of the most general feedback on the Canadian tech industry. Interview Links BetaKit Jonathon On Betakit Jonathon's email @jnarvey on Twitter Upcoming Week (March 21st to March 25th) Monday, March 21, 2016 2016 Canadian Financing Forum Entrepreneur Bootcamp (SFU VentureLabs Harbour Centre 555 W Hastings St #1200) 1PM – 5PM Exploring Git (Moose’s Down Under: 830 W. Pender St), 5:30 PM Agile Vancouver: eLearning and Agile

Drew and James open the show with some discussion on the podcast itself, then jump into events from last week. Last week was short, so we jump to the upcoming events very quickly. This episode's special guest is Parveen Kaler, a long time game and mobile developer. The interview starts at 0:32:39. Parveen has been a part of the Vancouver development scene for over a decade. He initially started in the game development space. He worked on titles for PS3, XBOX, and PSP. When the iPhone came out, he jumped at the chance to develop for this new ecosystem. Parveen now has his a consulting firm called Smartful Studios, which he has been running for the past 8 years. He is also one of the organizers of the VanSwift meetup. Interview Links Parveen's Website Smartful Studios Swift News Mailing List VanSwift @kaler on Twitter Upcoming Week (March 13th to March 19th) Monday, March 14, 2016 Exploring Git (Moose’s Down Under: 830 W. Pender St), 5:30 PM Tuesday, March 15, 2016 Open Coffee (Nelson the Seagul: 315 Carr

After a short mention of the terrible weather, Drew and James talk about Vancouver's tech events from the previous week, and which ones are coming up next. This episode's special guest is Rob Gulewich from Human API. The interview starts at 0:23:42. Originally from Saskatchewan, Rob has been in Vancouver for a long time, and when approached by a friend to join a new startup, he jumped at the chance. Human API now has a dozen high-profile clients, investment from a bunch of notable investment firms, and they are hiring even more! We chat about the Human API stack, as well as the state of health data in general. ##Interview Links Human API ##Meetups in the week of March 7, 2016 ###Monday, March 7 Exploring Git! 5:00 PM Moose's Down Under, 830 W. Pender St. Ember.YVR Projects and Mentoring Night 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM CodeCore, 142 W Hastings St PyLadies Talk Night 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM Salesforce, Suite 710 - 375 Water St. Ideas Meetings - Vancouver Chapter 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM Studio at Creative Coworkers,

First Drew and James talk about Vancouver's tech events from the previous week, and which ones are coming up next. This episode's special guest is Sylvain Marcotte, CEO of 14 oranges. The interview starts at 0:34:18. ##Interview Links 14 oranges ##Meetups in the week of Feb 20, 2016 ###Monday, Feb 29 Spark Summit East Rewind 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Simba Technologies 938 West 8th Ave HackerNest Tech Social 8pm, Rise 1200, 1055 W Hastings Stt Intro to User Experience Design Workshop 6 - 8pm, BrainStation YVR, 1110 Hamilton St, 4th Floor Price: CAD15.00 /per person VanMUG (Vancouver MongoDB User Group) Meetup 6:30pm, Lighthouse Labs, #300 - 128 W Hastings Tuesday, March 1 Open Coffee 8 - 9:30am, Nelson the Seagull, 315 Carrall Street Type Brigade №30: Project Pairs 6:30pm, Unbounce, Suite #400 - 401 W. Georgia St. Polyglot Social 6pm, St Regis, 608 Dunsmuir St Vancouver Clojure 6pm, CodeCore, 142 W Hastings St Wednesday, March 2 Learn Data Science (reading group) 6 - 8pm, Grow (Headquarters),

Drew is away this week, so we have a guest co-host, Selina Davis! James and Selina talk about Vancouver's tech events coming up next week. This episode's special guest is Matt Parson from Red Academy. The interview starts at 0:12:11. Special Co-Host Selina Davis about.me Portfolio zerocarbs.ca ##Interview Links Red Academy ##Meetups in the week of Feb 22, 2016 ###Monday, Feb 22 From Open Source to Open Access: The Next Great Leap 7pm, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street ###Tuesday, Feb 23 TechVancouver Meetup 6pm, Unbounce, #400 - 401 W Georgia St Price: CAD 10 ###Wednesday, Feb 24 Architecting Software for Reuse 6:45pm - 9:30pm, UBC Robson Square, C550 800 Robson Street ###Thursday, Feb 25 PHP Meetup: 2016 Gritty Reboot 6pm - 7:30pm, CodeCore, 142 W Hastings St Startup Drinks Vancouver 6pm, 131 Water Kitchen & Bar, 131 Water St The Future Of AI - DLS Talk By Rich Sutton, University Of Alberta 3:30pm - 5pm, UBC, Hugh Dempster Building, Room 110, 6245 Agronomy Rd. How to Build a

First Drew and James talk about Vancouver's tech events from the previous week, and which ones are coming up next. This episode's special guest is Kyle Treleaven from Brainstation. The interview starts at 0:17:13. ##Interview Links Brainstation Vancouver Events at Brainstation 5x5 Art Show Reach out to Kyle: ktreleaven@brainstation.io ##Meetups in the week of Feb 15 ###Tuesday, Feb 16 Open Coffee 8 - 9:30am, Nelson the Seagull, 315 Carrall Street, 1110 Hamilton St, 4th Floor February Full Indie 6pm, The Pint Public House, 455 Abbott Street ###Wednesday, Feb 17 Lighthouse Labs Employer Speed Interviewing 5:30 - 7:30pm, Lighthouse Labs, 350 - 128 W Hastings ###Thursday, Feb 18 Code & Coffee 6:30 - 8:30pm, Mobify HQ, #300 - 948 Homer St Techstarters Mentor Night 6 - 8pm, Lighthouse Labs, #300 - 128 W Hastings ###Friday, Feb 19 - Sunday, Feb 21 Bil Conference The Fox Cabaret, 2321 Main Street Call for volunteers. List of speakers ###Saturday, Feb 20 Product Camp Vancouver 8am - 4:30pm, UBC

First Drew and James talk about Vancouver's tech events from the previous week, and which ones are coming up next. This episode's special guest is Mike Anderson from Echosec. Interview starts at 0:19:00. ##Interview Links Echosec Apache Storm ##Meetups in the week of Feb 8 ###Tuesday, Feb 9 Intro to Web Development Workshop 6 - 8pm, BrainStation YVR, 1110 Hamilton St, 4th Floor Clojure Hacknight 6pm, CodeCore, 142 W Hastings St. Intro to Bitcoin: Money 2.0 7pm, 436 W Pender (black door to the left of hair salon) ###Wednesday, Feb 10 Visual Analytics Breakfast ($25) 9 - 10am, SFU Harbour Centre, Rm# 1425, 515 W Hastings St. Functional Programming in Scala Reading Group 5:30 - 6:30pm, Hootsuite Headquarters, 5 East 8th Avenue TypeScript Fundamentals 5:30 - 6:30pm, PNI Digital Media Offices, 100 - 425 Carrall Street, 1st Floor Android Hack Night 6 - 9pm, Mobify HQ 3rd Floor, 948 Homer Street Developer Hack Night 6pm, Mogo 2100, 401 West Georgia How to Break into the Vancouver Startup

Drew and James cover some of the previous events of the week, as well as what is coming for the week of February 1st. The second part of the show, is an interview with Ryan St. Germaine from BCJobs.ca. Interview starts at 0:16:10. Ryan St. Germaine is the co-founder and CEO of BCJobs.ca as well as the CEO of Jobcast. He also started BC Tech Jobs as well as the tech meetup in Burnaby. We talk about what it is like running a 15 year old tech company, as well as starting new ones. Ryan talks about the changing job market now, and how things may change in the future. ##Interview Links BCJobs.ca BC Tech Jobs Jobcast ##Meetups in the week of Feb 1 ###Monday, Feb 1 VanLUG Board Meeting 7pm, SFU Downtown, 515 West Hastings Street, Xerox Conference Rm. 1500 Exploring Git! 5pm, Moose's Down Under, 830 W. Pender St., Vancouver, BC ###Tuesday, Feb 2 Lunch & Learn | WiderFunnel 12 - 1pm, BrainStation, 1110 Hamilton St, 4th Floor, Vancouver, BC Open Coffee 8 - 9:30am, Nelson the Seagull, 315 Carrall Street

Drew and James cover some of the previous events of the week, as well as what is coming for the week of January 25th. The second part of the show, is an interview with Gillian Vrooman, the President Of [Open Data BC](https://www.opendatabc.ca/ https://twitter.com/OpenDataBC). Gillian is the Director of Communications and Engagement at College of Pharmacists of BC, as well as the President of the Open Data Society of BC. We cover a lot of topics from health care communication, open data in government, hurdles for companies looking to open their data, as well as the status of open data in Vancouver, BC, and the rest of Canada. Links Gillian Vrooman Open Data BC @OpenDataBC BC Pharmacists @bcpharmacists Open Data Bc Meetup Pay For Pull Bc Dev Exchange Bc Dev Exchange Open511 Drive Bc Bc Dev Exchange Github data.gov.bc.ca Knomos Bc Laws Api Placespeak Vancouver Open Data Catalogue Surrey City Services Open Data Nanaimo Ca Open Data Day HackerNest Vancouver January Tech Social ReactJS Vancouver: React & Flux,

Drew and James discuss some resolutions and predictions for 2016, as well as the upcoming events for the week of January 11th. The second part of the show is an interview with [Angela Bortolussi][https://twitter.com/ABortolusssi], a recruiter for Recruiting Social. Angela talks about how she got started, and where she is now. We talk a lot about how recruiting works, what makes a good/bad recruiter, how they get paid, what you need to know when looking for a recruiter. We also touch on the state of California vs. Vancouver/BC in terms of jobs and opportunities. Links Angela Bortolussi (Twitter, LinkedIn) Recruiting Social Recruiting Social Notable Awards Angela Chad Christian Lunch & Learn | Angela Bortolussi, Recruiting Social Tuesday, January 19th @ 12:00 PM VanQ DevOps: Find Solutions, Not More Defects Vancouver Spark Meetup: New Functions and Workflow Examples with Spark DataFrames Open Coffee Vancouver Clojure Hacknight Functional Programmers Tech Career Network: Amazon AWS Hiring Event in Vancou

Drew and James discuss some resolutions and predictions for 2016, as well as the upcoming events for the week of January 11th. The second part of the show is an interview with Joe Lynch. Joe recently returned from a 1 year trip around Asia and Europe. He is currently looking for work, and talks about why he picked Vancouver as a place to live, as well as some of the challenges that have come up with having a 1 year gap in his resume. He also discusses some of the trouble with recruiters and some of the things he noticed on during his job search. Links Joe Lynch (Email) Hack/Study/Mentor Night PyLadies Hack Night “Ideation 101 - Finding the Perfect Idea” Vancouver Internet Startups Dive into HTML & CSS Tickets Intro to the UX Design Process Tickets VanRuby Developer Hack Night OpenLate @ OpenDNS "Docker container security" by Farshad Abasi Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business 12 Steps How to Create, Monetize, Market Own Mobile App to Rock Your Business YVR Dev Slack YVR De

Drew and James look back on 2015, as well as what is coming in 2016. They discuss the next 2 weeks of events. Due to the holidays, the next show will be in the middle of January. In the second part of the show is an interview with Tammam (Tam) Kbeili, the founder and lead instructor at CodeCore. Tammam (Tam) Kbeili if the founder and lead instructor at CodeCore. We discuss the state of bootcamps, success and failure rates, getting good students, running a boot camp business, and the landscape of developer talent and the need for more technical people in the local and global market. Links Tammam (Tam) Kbeili (Email, Twitter) CodeCore Open Coffee (Dec 22nd) Math and Coffee Vancouver Pluralsight Study Group Lean Agile Meetup Building and Securing a RESTful API for Multiple Clients in ASP.NET Startup Drinks Vancouver Brainstation Events Open Coffee (Jan 5th) Polyglot Social Vancouver Hack Space YVR Dev Slack YVR Dev Slack Invite Page Contact We welcome feedback for the show. We are still in the early stages of