Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

The Future of Data-Driven Healthcare at Tempus, with Luke Shepard & Alissa Ampezzan. Luke leads the Insights Engineering team and Alissa is Senior Director, Head of Product Design and Customer Experience. Tempus is a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. With one of the world’s largest libraries of clinical and molecular data, and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful, Tempus enables physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions to deliver personalized patient care and in parallel facilitates discovery, development and delivery of optimal therapeutics. The goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as the company gathers more data. Showtimes 0:50 - What exactly is Tempus and where it fits into the health-tech space 2:22 - Luke and Alissa's role at Tempus and career history 10:02 - Staying focused on the end goal & looking to the next phase of growth 10:45 - What's changed in the 5 years since Tempus began? 15:30 - The recent exponential technical changes in product development 21:00 - supporting doctors by better understanding patients 31:02 - The processes involved in Tempus HRD and Tempus TO 44:30 - Bringing on inspirational leaders into the business and bringing speed and agility to healthcare 49:15 - The move to personalised healthcare & individualised medicine

Clifton Jadoo manages technical and product recruitment at Foursquare. After graduating from Brooklyn College summa cum laude with a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Sociology and from NYU School of Engineering with a M.S. in Management with a double concentration in Project Management and Technology Management, Clifton found his way into recruitment and later refining his career into Tech Recruitment. Foursquare is a technology platform that powers leading business solutions and consumer products through a deep understanding of location. Clifton gives us some amazing inside knowledge about the industry along with actionable advice, and the main things to think about whether you're starting out as a recruiter, or looking to take the next step and level-up in your career. Show Times 0:45 - Clifton's role at Foursquare 2:20 - What Foursquare is as a business as an intelligence leader 3:20 - Clifton's career history and falling into recruitment as a young graduate 6:00 - The vastly different areas of recruitment 8:30 - Taking the time to learn about the role you're recruiting for 11:13 - The desire to learn and actively looking for resources to understand the landscape 14:30 - Being a Chameleon when managing a team 17:46 - Being transparent with your team and communicate clearly 20:30 - How to motivate your team 25:50 - Being informed and well researched in your industry 33:40 - The biggest challenge Clifton has faced in the industry 37:06 - How to be successful in recruitment in 3 words

Andy Norton worked in software development at organisations both big and small, with a keen focus on people, delivery and pragmatic solutions based around agile, lean and DevOps practices. After graduating from The University of Salford with a degree in Computer Science and computing, he has worked in the field as a Software Developer, Senior Developer, Software Architect, and now finds himself as a Software Development Manager at FOOTASYLUM, which is a streetwear fashion retailer with 65 stores across the UK and an online store. Andy also mentors engineers, helping them to level up in their own career. He has spoken at various events and meet-ups across the U.K. on a wide range of technologies including Azure, Augmented Reality, DevOps and Serverless architecture. And is also a co-organiser of Lancashire Tech Talks meet-up. We spoke about finding simple solutions to complex problems, “what problem are we trying to solve?” or “what’s the outcome we’re looking for?” in the often complex world of DevOps and Engineering. Show Times 0:50 - The service FOOTASYLUM provides. 1:21 - Andy's 15 years in the industry and his role now at FOOTASYLUM. 2:26 - Optimising for flow across a process, removing waste from a process to provide effective delivery of an end goal. 4:40 - Think of development as a production line. 5:30 - Creating short feedback loops. 8:40 - Strong product management, how to get a team to deliver as a unit. 10:50 - The horror stories of Code Reviews. 15:30 - Online code schools and boot camps. 22:00 - How Andy has adapted to hiring remotely. 27:00 - Andy's approach to finding the right people. 33:21 - Taking a less hands-on approach to solving problems. 41:00 - The best new piece of tech in the last 10 years.

Chris Samiullah is Technical Lead at Babylon Health, an online course author, conference speaker and writer. Chris has been writing code for 8 years, and for the past three years has focused on scaling machine learning applications. He has done this at fintech and health-tech companies in London, where he has worked on and grown production machine learning applications used by hundreds of thousands of people. And currently works on systems for predicting health risks for patients around the world at Babylon Health. Babylon Health is a health service provider that provides remote consultations with doctors and health care professionals via text and video messaging through its mobile application. In this podcast episode, Chris explains the importance of self-promotion and personal branding to get ahead in the tech industry. In today's modern age, a good CV isn't enough to rely on to make your next big career move. Chris explains the different ways you can contribute to the tech industry in your own time, and by doing so, improving your personal brand and increasing the likelihood of taking the next big step in your tech career. "Think about your personal brand, it's something that you have to take on as your own project and really make sure that it's an area you give attention and time to." Showtimes 0:41 - The service Babylon Health provides 1:52 - Chris Samiullah's role at Babylon Health and background in the tech industry 2:58 - The fierce competition in the software engineering space 4:01 - How to get to the top: The combination of personal-branding and self-promotion 7:50 - The tactics of personal branding, where to begin 10:20 - What does Chris do for personal branding? 12:05 - Getting through the paper-sift when applying for a new role 15:00 - Doing personal branding the right way 16:50 - How does Chris find the time to contribute to so many different projects? 18:34 - How to develop positive habits 20:45 - The resources Chris relies on to stay ahead in tech 21:48 - Is there anything that people underestimate in the industry?

Ashley Firth built and leads the Front-end department at Octopus Energy, crafting sites and internal tools, building new products and campaigns, and expanding into other countries. Their aim is to combat climate change, use technology to build a better standard of energy supplier, and make renewable energy more affordable for everyone. In May 2020, Octopus Energy became the 15th UK tech “unicorn” after achieving a valuation of over £1 billion. Ashley has also written a book: 'Practical Web Inclusion & Accessibility', a new book, designed as a practical guide to access needs, which is a huge passion for Ashley. Showtimes 0:30 - Ashley's unconventional route into Coding 3:40 - The finer details of coding and willingness to learn 5:00 - The skills Ashley and the team at Octopus look for when hiring 9:20 - Not losing sight of the brand's core values 11:28 - Where Octopus Energy fits into the world of energy & technology 16:30 - Preparing for such rapid and dramatic scale in success at Octopus 19:04 - The concept behind Ashley's book: 'Practical Web Inclusion & Accessibility' 26:20 - The tech involved in providing customers with a personal experience 32:10 - The developments since our previous podcast with Octopus Energy's CEO: Greg Jackson  35:00 - The future of Octopus Energy Ashley has also written a book: 'Practical Web Inclusion & Accessibility', a new book, designed as a practical guide to access needs, which is a huge passion for Ashley.

Megan Sun has an impressive career history from a data strategy consultant at BCG, to a Data Science Consultant at IBM, before moving to Berlin last year to start a new role as Senior Program Manager at OLX Group. The OLX marketplace is a platform for buying and selling services and goods such as electronics, fashion items, furniture, household goods, cars and bikes. In 2014, the platform reportedly had 11 billion page views, 200 million monthly active users, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month. OLX Group Berlin is an inspirational environment for top notch engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers looking to make a difference. It works to a horizontal structure, with 40+ nationalities collaborating on global projects, and using cutting edge tech stack to build the very best products. We spoke about Megan’s experience working in various different cultures around the globe. After being elected as “40 under 40 Girls in Tech” we also spoke about how to get more women involved in the technology industry. Podcast Showtimes 0:35 - Megan's role at OLX and the service OLX Group provides. 3:16 - Megan's career journey up to this point and how she navigated the technology & data landscape. 5:03 - How Megan has adapted to different cultures around the globe. 6:15 - The positive outcomes of remote working. 10:03 - The hiring process at OLX Group. 16:44 - The recruitment strategy at OLX Group and finding the right people for the role. 20:25 - How can we get more Women involved in Data Science and Technology? 23:22 - What inspired Megan to enter the Data Science industry. 25:30 - Making an impact with Data Science.

Natalia Baltazar is Head of Engineering at Lantum. Lantum is a health tech startup, working on solving the issues around scheduling and rotas within healthcare. Natalia has a very unconventional journey into tech, beginning her working life as a teenager running her own fashion design business in Canada, before moving to the UK and managing a boutique clothing shop in Shoreditch. The transition into tech came from learning how to code on her own and helping to create a coding Bootcamp - founders and coders, a free code camp based in London. We spoke about how to create an autonomous engineering culture, and why you'd want one. The difficulties of running a team remotely, managing communication, and remote collaboration. Showtimes 0:55 - The background of Lantum  2:28 - Natalias unconventional pathway into tech  4:35 - The correlation between making software and making clothing  6:04 - The motivation behind starting Lantum 10:15 - Managing a team remotely  14:25 - The remote hiring strategy at Lantum 22:00 - Ensuring the team are mindful of a work / life balance during remote working 22:30 - Why an autonomous engineering culture is a good thing 28:40 - Screening for curiosity when taking on new hires

David DeRemer is Founder and President of Very Good Ventures, a Flutter development consultancy with offices in New York, Chicago, and teammates around the world. Very Good Ventures is the World’s leading Flutter development team. They have been working with Flutter longer than anyone and on the biggest Flutter apps, including the first commercial app outside of Google in 2017 — the Hamilton app. Flutter is a UI toolkit created by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. In prior roles at Posse, Chobani, frog design, and Accenture, David has developed innovative products and solutions for companies such as: Chobani, The Rock Clock, Jet.com, Sixpoint Brewery, Shoptiques, Spring, Gatorade + Smart Design, Best Buy, Staples, GE, AT&T, Bloomberg, TouchTunes, Humana, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Mobility, CNN.com, Crocs, Estée Lauder Companies, ETS, GE Healthcare, GE Money, IMAX, KLA Tencor, Nokia, Philip Morris, WalMart, Accenture, Sony, and many more.

David Ives is VP Engineering at Pollen, an international marketplace scale-up, changing the game in live music, youth culture and travel. Following several successful acquisitions in the travel space, they are already the market leader across North America, which has allowed them to tap into an increasingly larger share of a $12 billion market. As a service that’s core is dependant on group activities and experiences, we hear how Pollen.co is managing to grow in an industry that's rapidly shrinking. The travel industry has been hit hard by COVID, but David and his team have managed to pivot quickly during lockdown to ensure the company develops, rather than diminishes.

Martin Rosinski is Founder & Chief of Tech at The World's Online Festival, with an impressive previous technical history having created Palringo, which was the first ever chat app to launch on the Apple App Store (2008), and then became the first mobile app to introduce chatbots – and the first to introduce sticker packs (2011). Building on its proven heritage of world-first innovation, and leveraging its state-of-the-art technology platform, Palringo has now introduced a breakthrough market offering – the World's Online Festival, which is an incredible user-created world filled with Group Chat, Live Audio Shows, Friendship and Entertainment. WOLF has over 35 million downloads and more than 350,000 user-created social groups. Gary Knight is CEO of WOLF, building a user-created world filled with group chat, live audio shows, friendship and entertainment. The app delivers the festival experience to your pocket – users can interact with the people on stage, create their own audio shows and experience the magic of real-world festivals on their phone. We spoke about the considerations when re-launching an app, and from a technical point of view, how to rebuild the foundations of an app.