Frontier Podcast by Gun.io

Kirk Gray relishes his role as VP at McGraw-Hill Education. In this episode, Ledge talks to Kirk about his fascinating perspective on technology and education. An EdTech veteran of 18 years, Gray has worked for a variety of startups before moving into engineering leadership. Having experienced the dawn of EdTech, Gray goes into detail about the early years and how the industry has evolved.We hear how the rise of empathy-based technology promotes teachers getting the best out of their students, working with educators instead of against them. Kirk also talks through some of the difficulties of working in EdTech, specifically the ethical barriers surrounding data collection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As CTO of ONIS Solutions, David Ramsey is at the forefront of the big data movement. With a passion for technology and nuanced view on the subject given his work in Africa, in this episode David shares how he expects data to change our lives in the future.Citing industry examples such as food and transportation, David’s optimistic vision of the future imagines how data collection creates jobs and enables high net creativity.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite the hype surrounding virtual assistants like Alexa or Google Home, a fully digital home isn’t a reality quite yet. But can we prepare our homes for the future, to avoid tearing down walls later? How can we invest in home technology without worrying it will be obsolete in two years?Ben Wiliams, Technical Director at SAV Digital Environments sat with Ledge to chat about the challenges of building future-resistant control systems and keeping them up and running under any circumstances.Ben also talks about the next big thing in the software side of custom integration and smart buildings, as well as lessons learned from managing hardware engineering teams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Software engineer or engineering leader? What’s the difference and where do you fit?Corey Nichols began his career in the tech industry as a software engineer.He anticipated working on “hands-on technical aspects of software engineering,” but instead, coordinated different teams and encouraged his developers to continue learning and improve the “quality of code” they wrote.Nichols transitioned from being a software engineer to a Director of Engineering at SonoSim, helping grow the company from 20 to 50 employees. Ledge sat down with Corey to find out what’s involved in a leadership of engineering role that differentiates it from the software engineering seat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Kent Dickson founded Yonomi just over five years ago, smart devices were still an obscure concept. But the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant helped change that, and now Yonomi is playing a major role in crafting cloud-based solutions for the smart homes of the future.Yonomi's vision was to help make life in the new smart home environment more convenient for everyday people, who are not necessarily tech-oriented. Under Dickson’s guidance, Yonomi is helping to marry together all smart devices in a home, creating a coherent infrastructure, rather than a confusing mess!This intriguing chat with Dickson sheds a lot of light on the challenges of the smart home niche, and provides real insight into what our homes may look like in the very near future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As data science becomes increasingly important for business, hybrid science and engineering teams are a necessity, but managing these distinct types of experts for maximum collaboration is a compelling challenge. How can mixed teams maximize performance? In this episode Ledge sits down with Wickus Martin, Director of Machine Learning Engine ering and Data Science at Dstillery, a custom audience solutions company that uses AI to find and target ideal customers. Wickus discusses how sometimes organization shy away from conflict -- but it’s really effective if we put the time into the productive contention. Wickus also shares his personal experience moving from in-office management to fully remote. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oliver Friedmann is the CTO and Co-founder of Ziggeo, an API for video recording and playback, that’s essentially like Stripe or Twilio for video. The service abstracts all of the work for developers to allow apps and websites to take advantage of video streaming and capture.Ledge and Oliver chat about the engineering challenges he and his team overcame, both client side (think old browsers) and server side (think millions of users recording concurrently), as they developed their solution.On the organizational, Oliver has made amazing use of a worldwide distributed team, largely sourced through online marketplaces. Oliver’s tips for remote, distributed team management provide excellent tactical guidance for work isolation and around-the-clock productivity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amir Rubin co-founded Paracosm in 2013 with a mission to “3Dify the world.”Since then he’s led the company through a total conversion from fun, visionary consumer product to critical B2B enterprise solution. What started as an idea to 3D map the world for experiential AR turned into a technology and approach that saves enterprise customers weeks of work every day.Ledge sits down with Amir to see what it was like emotionally to transition from a visionary 3D world mapper to getting measurements inside buildings for industrial purposes and how to grow in the CEO function when you come from an engineering background. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“We need to be able to talk to people. Talking to the computer is the easy part.” That’s Java developer advocate Trisha Gee at JetBrains. Trisha speaks worldwide about career development for programmers, including soft skills, communication skills, and what it means to really progress your career as a developer.In this inspiring episode, Ledge talks with Trisha about listening; asking questions; sharing information, and how those activities are what make us a senior developer, a VPE, or a CTO. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this July 4th bonus episode, we at Gun.io would like to celebrate the spirit of independence shared by our professional freelancers with this short audio essay from our host, Ledge. Enjoy, and happy Independence Day to you and your loved ones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.