IT in the D

This week was something new for us. We chatted with  Sarah Leitz, VP of Marketing  for  SkySpecs . What started as a college project has blossomed into one of Michigan’s fastest growing companies with a global presence. SkySpecs has changed how wind turbines are managed and maintained. What took one person a day to complete, their drones can now do 25 turbines in a day. We couldn’t hav...

Long-time meetup attendee Jim Beiermeister , who works for RMC , joined us this week. RMC is an IT consulting and placement agency, and our conversation with Jim provides his prospective on recruiting in IT. He talks about what the job market is like and provides advice for prospective IT job seekers.

This week, we got to chat with  Jeff Ginn  and  Bryce Levin  with  Slalom Build . (Disclaimer: Bob works at Slalom, but in a completely different division.) We chatted about a day in the life as a developer, having empathy as a leader, building a team, and—most importantly—they are hiring. Check out the Detroit openings . Then got into some fun stuff: Jeff built...

Matt Turner joined us to talk about recruiting, job-seeking, what to put in a resume, how often to switch jobs, and the Great Resignation.

This week, we got to chat with long time offender,  Michelle Gilbert , the VP of PR from Comcast. We always like talking to her about the ways Comcast is giving back to the community. One is  Internet Essentials , which offers home broadband for $9.95 a month.  If you don’t qualify for that, the  Affordable Connectivity Program  might suit you, which offers $30 off your c...

This week, we were super lucky to get a chance to talk with serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, host of the Mentoring Millions podcast, and personal brand expert  Nick Cavuoto . We talked about creating personal brands, staying relevant in social media, what not to do in social media, retaining talent, and finding mavericks in your organization. The conversation with Nick could have gone on...

This week, we chatted with longtime friend Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Systems . We immediately dove into how he grew his Youtube channel to over 250,000 subscribers, how he navigates their algorithm, and what happens if he doesn’t post content consistently. Tom is well versed in open source tools most of us aren’t familiar with. He told us how he finds new technologies to make tutorials...

This week, we chatted with long time friend of the program, Jer Staes of Daily Detroit . Jer and his team have been recording a daily podcast for the past 3 years, and have close to 1,000 episodes. Jer is one of the most knowledgeable people I know regarding the City of Detroit, the food scene, neighborhoods, etc. Daily Detroit covers things you normally don’t see in mainstream media includi...

On this episode, we chatted with long time friend of the program Billy Strawter , owner and publisher of  BLAC Magazine . We talked about basically starting a print magazine in a digital world and how to balance all forms of media. We then got into expansion, as BLAC has now entered into 6 new markets. Lastly, we talked about Detroit, living in the city vs. 20 years ago, the vibe, and some ne...

Randy and I had a great conversation with Travis Waye and Bailey Terrell from Call Harbor . We started things off right by making fun of the acronym UCaaS but then really started getting into some interesting stuff. Most of us look at telecommunications as an afterthought in the tech stack, especially when it comes to security, but Travis was a wealth of knowledge and discussed ways to safeguard p...

Friend and former cohost Nuri Gocay has returned to the States after working two years in New Zealand. We catch up and Nuri tells us what life in New Zealand is like, what the biggest culture shocks were, and what he missed most from the US. This was a great, light-hearted end to 2021. It was great to have Nuri back on the show. We’ll be back in 2022!

This week’s guest is David Franco , Director of Exceptional Academy , a post-secondary program that provides IT certification training with a focus in cybersecurity for Detroit-area adults with disabilities. David spoke with us first on episode 337 where he introduced the program. Now, he’s giving us an update on how the program is going, what the future plans are, and what their progr...

This week, we had a chat with  Jason Brown , currently the IT Security Manager at  The Shyft Group , formerly the CISO at  Merit. We immediately talked about the mindset you have to be in moving from a Service Provider model to the public and then to the private sector in terms of security and privacy. We also chatted on his definition of zero trust. We talked about a  recent breach  where hackers...

Episode 420—you know what that means? We are talking all things marijuana. Mary Jane. The devil’s lettuce. You get the point 🙂 And who better to talk about it than Tom Celani,  the owner, president, and CEO of Luna Entertainment , the mother company of Metro Detroit based MotorCity Harley-Davidson, MotorCity Power Sports, Freedom Hills amphitheat...

For this episode, we were super-lucky to be able to chat with Lisa Plaggemier , Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance . NCSA advocates for safe and secure use of all technology. They give the average user plain-spoken info on cybersecurity issues. Lisa is super passionate about cyber security awareness and we immediately chatted about awareness for the older crowd. They have a...

This week, we talked to Jason Bourque of C3 Technology Advisors about all things cybersecurity and communication. Jason just visited the  Channel Partners Conference  in Las Vegas, and he talked about not only emerging vendors in the space but emerging technologies as well. If you like drinking games, I highly recommend having a drink in hand for everytime Jason says an acronym. Jas...

This week, we were lucky enough to chat with long time radio veteran and podcast professional  Bill McAllister . You might remember Bill from his days on 97.1 FM with Jay Towers and Stoney, you also might hear him on the radio now with 94.7 WCSX or subbing in for Frank Beckman on WJR. Bill is currently the President of  Podcast Nation .  We started off arguing about  Greml...

On Episode 415, we chatted with  David Spiess  from  Rollbar . For those unaware of what Rollbar does, they are a continuous code improvement platform. Obviously, Bob had 100 questions: What happens to QA? What happens when bad code keeps coming from the same people (because this software can do that)? And much more. Dave is an old school IT pro and we also shared stories from how h...

We were lucky enough to chat this week with  Mary Bobbitt  from  Slalom .  If you work in or around software development, this is the show for you as Mary is a consultant/coach/guru/expert/you name it in  agile . We talked in depth on how agile has changed during the pandemic with teams moving to a remote workforce as well as how we have adapted to different types of workers and styles but yet wit...

Brian “Schneebs” Schneble is the Director of Enterprise Sales at SentinelOne . He joined Bob and Randy to discuss the intersection of privacy and security. Before they got started, there was a quick discussion of the TV shows everyone is watching (Brian: Goliath , Bob: Ozark & Randy: Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol) . We immediately got into the huge Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram outage...

This was a fun episode. Bob and Randy are both fans of Steve’s Mediterranean Chef , so they were happy to talk to the owner and CEO, Pierre Chammas. Pierre talked to the guys about how he got started in the food industry, how he became the owner of Steve’s, and how the the business has grown. He also talked about the challenges he’s faced running a business during the pandemic an...

Maria Graham , Director of Sales at Nuspire joins Bob and Randy to discuss the latest in managed security services. Everything is a service these days! A company in Grand Rapids jokes about Pumpkin Spice as a Service (PSaaS) . Nuspire is hiring! Also, check out their latest offering myNuspire .

This week’s guest is Erick Gutierrez, creator of the Max The Inebriated Rabbit comic and writer of the movie Bender . Erick talks about how he got his start writing, his comic, the movie, and what’s coming up in the next issues of Max . Find Erick on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram . Find Max The Inebriated Rabbit on Facebook and at Rocket Ink Studios . Find Bender on Amazon or Movi...

Friend of the podcast Ming Chen of A Shared Universe PodcaStudio (also “I Sell Comics” , “The Ming & Mike Show” , and “AMC’s Comic Book Men” ) was in town this past weekend for Astronomicon and the Magnum 8 fundraiser and he talked about his experiences about both, as well as what’s new to him in the Ann Arbor and Detroit area. Ming has a busy sc...

Tom Nardone is the founder and president of PriveCo , a specializes in selling items that people would prefer to buy privately. ShopInPrivate.com is the world’s most private store. Also check out Bachelorette.com and Vibrators.com for more private needs. Tom’s latest project is Dignity Lifts , toilet lifts for those with mobility concerns. Some of Tom’s other projects: Extreme Pu...