I’m proud to share that the podcast just crossed 100,000 downloads so I’m taking this opportunity to thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate us wherever you get your podcasts to demonstrate your support for independent media and help more listeners discover our amazing guests.

It’s a week before the election and we’re all political scientists and data junkies for the next eight days. Dave is the original SaaS scientist. Listen as he puts on a master class about the metrics that matter plus offers coaching for entrepreneurs about how to tell stories with data.

If you don’t know your CAC from your LTV or how to calculate the true sales cycle, listen up. Metrics matter not just to pitch your company but to run your business, validate your hiring plan, groom your product backlog, and define your marketing strategy. The future of work may be AI but even the best AI won’t replace the kind of decision-making that only comes from really understanding how to analyze your customer’s journey.

Oh, and if you’re not already subscribed to Dave’s great Kellblog, you’re missing the best SaaS content. Subscribe now!

Listen and learn:

• How six months in Europe shaped Patty’s career.
• The advice Patty says served her best when leaving Bell Labs
• Why Patty says “being a CIO is the best role to have had in the past.”
• Tips for dealing with unconscious bias in the workplace.
• Patty’s advice to women convinced they can’t accomplish what men can in high-tech.

Here’s a link to the great episode with Mark Settle referenced in the show.

CredibleMind uses AI to improve access to mental health resources. What once was relegated to the shadows of healthcare is now mainstream. Anxiety and stress have spiked due to social isolation and the increased burden of elder and childcare.

Like all fields being disrupted by AI, the fear of biased training data is real. Who owns your mental health data? Who is responsible for monitoring the performance of AI algorithms?

Deryk introduces us to the future of holistic medicine.

Listen and learn…

• The current state of mental health. Did you know over half of the U.S. population has a diagnosable mental health condition over the course of a lifetime?
• How the pandemic has exacerbated the mental health problem.
• How to mitigate the impact of biased training data.
• How virtual healthcare providers like Woebot are giving new meaning to the term “the therapist can see you now”.

Here’s a link to the CDC article referenced in the show. Deryk can be reached at Deryk @ CredibleMind dot com or via the CredibleMind website.

Learn insights about the future of AI in IT Operations from the pros:

• “We couldn’t keep the environment available without AI technology.” -Liz from Dell
• “It’s time to switch paradigms. It’s not ok to have outages with the same root cause twice. We should have no outages.” -Luca from Credit Suisse
• “AI is like having a PhD on the team transferred from generation to generation… without having to earn the degree.” -Luca from Credit Suisse
• “We can’t keep up with the growth of our business without AI and automation. As a data management platform, the business expects us to continuously innovate.” -Justin from Snowflake

Plus…

• We coin a new IT acronym. You’ll soon replace “KTLO” with “KTTPOTS”.
• We discuss what you need to know to start a new DevOps or SRE team.
• We learn how Dell was able to migrate 140,000 global employees to home offices…over a weekend!

Thanks to our wonderful panelists for a fun conversation. Enjoy!

We get a unique look into the secrets that have made Cassie and Intuit successful and, more important, what Cassie’s doing to define the post-pandemic future of work for self-employed entrepreneurs.

Listen and learn…

• Why Scott Cook, Intuit founder, advised employees to “love the problem not the solution.”
• How Cassie has changed her leadership style to support remote teams.
• What “customer obsession” means at Intuit.
• Why Cassie says “there’s no prosperity without equality.”
• What Intuit is doing to narrow the pay gap.
• What Cassie learned from Clay Christensen.

Episodes mentioned:

• Charlene Li shares lessons for disruptors.
• Deborah Hanus shares how Sparrow is fixing company leave policies.

Listen and learn:

• Why Gareth thinks teaching developers to write secure code is a “socio-technical” problem
• Why the perceived “go fast vs. be secure” perceived tradeoff is wrong
• What Gareth has been doing to support the Open Policy Agent and accelerate adoption of infrastructure as code
• What’s ahead for Kubernetes and container management
• What advice Gareth “newsletter iron man” has for listeners… and the one mistake he made when launching DevOps Weekly

In this crossover episode, host Dan Turchin is interviewed by Service Desk Institute Chief Value and Innovation Officer David Wright. Hear how technology is changing customer service… and improving the lives of customer service agents while forcing them to upskill and re-skill.

Listen and learn:

• What skills won’t be replaced by AI
• How the service desk is being transformed by automation
• Why “augmented intelligence” is improving employee service
• What’s happening now to mitigate the impact of bias in training data

In this episode, Greg explains the past, present, and future of IT operations. He also shares techniques for surviving the quarantine as a geek and an artist.

Hear from the master…

• What is observability and why is it more important during the pandemic?
• What do great product teams do better than everyone else?
• Will we ever achieve NoOps? Is that even the right vision?
• Pets? Cattle? Discuss.
• Is monitoring dead?

Listen and learn…

• Why the secret to great AI is having great humans first clean your data
• How to optimize your CMDB for AI
• Why service agents that accept recommendations from AI have the lowest MTTR
• Why Brent’s mantra is “leap to the future”
• How Brent has made it through the quarantine… including a preview of outrageous outfits he’s been designing for his debut on the runway post-COVID

Listen and learn…

• Why “artificial” is a better description of today’s AI technology than “intelligent”
• How AI is helping reduce training time for help desk agents
• Key metrics you should be using to make sure your AI project is successful
• The skills you need to lead your organization’s first AI project
• What gamification has in common with AI

Listen and learn:

• What inspired Deborah to start Sparrow
• Why leave policies are so complicated and how COVID-19 has made the situation worse
• How leave policies create gender bias and how Deborah recommends companies fix the problem
• Why leave is tightly connected to job satisfaction and quality of life
• The world Deborah hopes exists when Sparrow is wildly successful

Listen and learn…

• Why journalistic integrity matters even as fact-checking departments at organizations like Barron’s are being eliminated.
• How the pandemic has created opportunities to tell stories about scientific topics that weren’t previously exposed to mainstream audiences.
• Why it’s important for writers to not allow their social media brands to influence their presentation of facts.
• How leaders like former Cisco CEO John Chambers, Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson, and Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope are managing company culture as “serendipitous moments for collaboration” go away.

Follow Tiernan on Twitter.

Alex and Josh.ai are navigating the new world of work like all of us. But unlike most of us, they’re doing it while being scrutinized for collecting personal data, trying to maintain international supply chains, and competing with pandemic stalwarts Amazon and Google. Listen and learn why Josh.ai just had its best quarter ever and raised a new round of funding. Hear how Alex is creating a culture well-suited for growth in uncertain times.

Topics discussed…

• What is the future of the smart home?
• How is Josh.ai addressing the problem of data privacy? Why did his team develop a “Snapchat” feature?
• What is Alex’s leadership style and how has it changed as the company has grown?
• What would Alex do differently if he started over today?
• How was Alex able to close a round of funding in the middle of a pandemic?
• What is it like being David slinging stones at Goliaths Amazon and Google?

On this week’s episode, Ken shares his perspective on venture capital, AI, and what the best pitches have in common.

Listen and learn…

• How the best SaaS companies are evolving their operating plans in lean times.
• Why AI explainability matters.
• What is AI bias and what are innovative companies doing to address it.
• Why it’s ok that AI innovation is slowing down while AI accountability is catching up.
• The biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when managing in a crisis.
• How diversity in the VC community directly impacts innovation.
• The pitch that made Kenn say “wow!”
• What Kenn learned backpacking around the U.S. before starting his venture career.

This is a rare opportunity to learn secrets from one of the greats who helped launch the 8086 chip at Intel before planting the seeds that became today’s venture capital industry.

Bill on how today’s autonomous revolution relates to the previous agricultural and industrial revolutions: “If we could figure out a way to adjust in an era of scarcity we should be able to adjust in an era of abundance.”

Listen and learn…

• What Silicon Valley was like in the 80s and how it has changed.
• The future of labor and why we’re measuring productivity the wrong way.
• What Bill means when he says we’ve locked ourselves in algorithmic prisons.
• How Bill proposes we mitigate the impact of AI bias.
• What are the attributes of the best entrepreneurs Bill has coached.

This is a special one. Enjoy!

Shannon’s been adjusting to a new style of management during the quarantine. Let’s just say the pace hasn’t slowed down for her and her team but she’s adapted her leadership style to help everyone stay productive while also acknowledging how the pandemic has affected them personally.

Listen and learn…

• What makes Slack’s culture unique that might surprise you.
• Why a manager’s new role is helping team members work less hard… and how Shannon does that.
• How Shannon’s team gathers requirements in lieu of traditional whiteboard sessions with developers.
• Shannon’s favorite Slack features (that you’re probably not using).
• How Shannon has been hobbying her way through the quarantine to stay sane.

In this turnaround format, Leeza McKeown and Dan King interview Dan Turchin!

Hear…

• Dan’s backstory – starting PeopleReign.io to help augment the human experience.  (What are his goals?)
• The benefits of AI for a frontline call center agent.  (Timely…. 600% increase in need for employee IT support for home workers.)
• How to think about optimizing your “digital labor” resources.  (There is a class for business leaders who want to master this.)
• What is the first question Dan asks in each virtual meeting & who does he look up to as leaders in the time of COVID-19.
• Why “building back better” is a realistic goal, because we were built for this.

Charlene’s advice to leaders who have themselves been disrupted: “Now is the time to be a better leader. Take this opportunity to get to know the whole person – where they live, their families, their hobbies. These intimate work interactions allow us to be more empathetic.”

Listen and learn…

• How Charlene has made use of time spent not traveling and speaking at live events
• What’s the single most important skill for managers leading in periods of uncertainty
• The new definition of work. Hint: it’s no longer defined by physical space.

Allan helped develop, launch, and manage some of the most-loved technology products in history, including Cisco’s routing products, Zynga’s social gaming backend, ServiceNow’s platform, and of course Slack.

Listen and learn…

• What it’s like to develop the app that quite literally makes it possible to WFH.
• What teams that build iconic products do differently than others.
• What technology trend will define the next decade like cloud and AI have defined the past decade.
• How Allan defines his success as a leader.
• What leaders need to do now to keep employees productive and create cultures that are stronger on the other side of COVID-19.

Listen and learn…

• How Diane thinks about company culture and how she keeps her team motivated in the face of uncertainty.
• How AI is delivering a better consumer experience and how to use data to predict behavior without violating consumer privacy.
• How Breinify uses data signals to identify “moments that matter”.
• Diane’s superpower and her advice for the next generation of female founders.