Fireside with Voxgig

Richard Rodger: Voxgig CEO, founder and author
  • 5.0 (2)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Fireside with Voxgig

This DevRel focused podcast allows entrepreneur, author and coder Richard Rodger to introduce you to interesting leaders and experienced professionals in the tech community. Richard and his guests chat not just about their current work or latest trend, but also about their experiences, good and bad, throughout their career. DevRel requires so many different skills and you can come to it from so many routes, that this podcast has featured conference creators, entrepreneurs, open source maintainers, developer advocates and community managers. Join us to learn about just how varied DevRel can be and get ideas to expand your work, impact and community.

  1. Episode 224 Nick Schneeberger, Founder of Free Public APIs

    1 DAY AGO

    Episode 224 Nick Schneeberger, Founder of Free Public APIs

    Nick Schneeberger is the developer behind Freepublicapis.com, which is no small accomplishment given that he’s also teaching at a university and studying for a data science masters degree at the same time. We’re thrilled to have Nick on the podcast, to give us some insights into how programming is being both taught and learned in the current age. Nick teaches programming basics, and it was his own students that prompted him to found Freepublicapis.com. Every semester, Nick would have to go through the API list he provided to his students and individually check that those APIs were still up and running. Now he provides this service on a much wider scale, helping not just his students, but anyone looking to use an API, and be confident it actually works. We speak to Nick about what it’s like to teach coding to beginners. He tells us that it's not so much natural ability, as it is interest that can help people excel. A key skill to develop is being able to find the flaw in your code without losing your cool. It's a tricky thing to teach something that mostly comes with time and experience. Nick is very open to his students using LLMs to aid in their work. From his perspective, it’s more helpful to teach them how to use it in an effective way. Despite this, he still believes the old school ways are going to stick around too. Start with the whiteboard - then move on to the new technology. After all, why stick to one way of doing things when you can take something useful from everything? Reach out to Nick here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-schneeberger-814645154/ Check out Freepublicapis: https://www.freepublicapis.com/about Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    37 min
  2. Episode 223 James Higginbotham 2, Founder of LaunchAny and API Consultant

    6 DAYS AGO

    Episode 223 James Higginbotham 2, Founder of LaunchAny and API Consultant

    Back in February, James Higginbotham joined us for a chat about what it’s like to work with increasingly large developer teams. Now he’s back to catch us up on what he’s been doing at his company, LaunchAny. LaunchAny is an API strategy and design consultancy, and so James is the ideal person to ask this question: I’ve launched my API, now how do I run it professionally? James explains how he’s seen commercial forces create a shift, where APIs are now not only being taken more seriously, but an absence of them can create serious issues for otherwise stable organisations. A key example he gives is of a company that lost a bid for a big silicon valley client due to their inability to present a solid API integration plan. A few years later, they bid again, and won. What happened in the years since? James and his team had been working with them to help build up their API portfolio, and they were then in a position to offer all the client wanted and more. James also talks to us about lifecycles, and the deprecation of APIs. While so far he hasn’t had an influx of people looking to sunset their API in a professional way, he expects that in the next few years of API sprawl, this will become a lot more prevalent. Be sure to give this episode a listen for some technical insights into the API world! Reach out to James here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshigginbotham/ Check out LaunchAny: https://launchany.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    47 min
  3. Episode 222 Ed Stephinson, Founder of Sailhouse.dev

    12 NOV

    Episode 222 Ed Stephinson, Founder of Sailhouse.dev

    Today, we’re talking to Ed Stephinson who should serve as a shining beacon to those wishing to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Ed is the Founder of Sailhouse.dev, which he has been building into a thriving startup all while balancing a separate 9-5 job throughout! Hustle is the key word for this episode, as Ed makes sure we know that day-to-day, he loves nothing more than being a jack of all trades and jumping around between projects - but he does acknowledge that when you look at it on a macro scale, the amount he manages to get done in a day is a little bit crazy. Sailhouse focuses on streamlining event driven development, and a common theme from their origin seems to be the mantra “how hard can it be?” Ed describes the early days, and how he quickly learned that focusing his energy on his connections and building community would be far more effective than the scattergun approach of big companies that he had previously been trying to replicate. Ed is currently working as a product engineer for incident.io, and it’s clear just how much he has taken from his time there. Namely, incident’s approach to customers and maintaining those open channels of communication - encouraging them to be used, rather than closing them off and hiding them away. Ed cites this as something he’ll be carrying forward with him from now on, to Sailhouse and beyond! Reach out to Ed here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-stephinson/ Check out Sailhouse.dev here: https://sailhouse.dev/about/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    43 min
  4. Episode 221 Colm Doyle 2, Engineering Manager at Personio

    5 NOV

    Episode 221 Colm Doyle 2, Engineering Manager at Personio

    Today we’re speaking once again to the wonderful Colm Doyle, who you may remember from his appearance on Fireside early last year. It’s so wonderful to catch up with Colm, as he’s now the Engineering Manager at Personio, and as such has some fresh new perspectives to give us. For those who may not have caught Colm’s last episode, Personio is a HR enterprise platform, and we chat to him about what it’s like to make the transition from an outward facing DevRel role, to a role helping internal engineering teams deliver products smoothly and efficiently. In short, Colm’s job is to help every engineer at Personio be the best engineer they can. Something Colm stresses to us, is that when you don’t give your engineers time to breathe, you rob your customers of value. It’s as simple as that. He’s been fortunate to work for organisations that consistently value engineer time, which as he points out, is one of the most expensive resources a software company has in stock. So how does one become an engineering manager? Well Colm tells us that the key to moving into any role, is to draw attention to something that’s losing money, and show how you can put a stop to it. ‘It’s taking 6 months to integrate new engineers before they get up and running? I can get that down to 3 months.’ Sometimes, that might be all it takes. It was a delight to have Colm back on the podcast, and we know you’re going to love this episode as much as his first! Reach out to Colm here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colmdoyle/ Check out Personio: https://www.personio.com/about-personio/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    42 min
  5. Episode 220 David Cramer (repeat), Co-Founder and CTO of Sentry

    31 OCT

    Episode 220 David Cramer (repeat), Co-Founder and CTO of Sentry

    We’re fortunate on the Fireside podcast to be able to speak to so many people at the top of their game, and today we're revisiting our chat from earlier this year, with someone who's no different. David Cramer is the Co-Founder and CTO of Sentry, the app monitoring platform designed to quickly help developers get to the root of code problems. David has helped bring Sentry to the top of the pile in this category - to the extent where, in his words, they don’t have competitors, they have “ankle-biters”. But does “heavy is the head that wears the crown” have any bearing for a company at the top? We’re excited to find out. David has worn many hats at Sentry since its founding, but as a software engineer at heart, he’s currently taking up the position of CTO. He dives into how strategy helped set Sentry apart in the early days, and how they manufactured the way they wanted the business to run, as opposed to simply responding to hurdles as they came up. The Sentry team, ultimately, is made up of developers, and David explains how this fact has led to the creation of a platform that is highly developer focused, in both user experience and in sales. He tells us about how yearly price hikes are not something Sentry wants to engage in, and how valuing affordability has allowed them to skyrocket in popularity since their first launch. Community is at the forefront of David’s current plans for Sentry, and he talks us through this, and other aspects of what he hopes to achieve with the company the future. Reach out to David here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcramer/ Check out Sentry here: https://sentry.io/welcome/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    41 min
  6. Episode 219 Pierre Burgy Co-Founder and CEO of Strapi

    29 OCT

    Episode 219 Pierre Burgy Co-Founder and CEO of Strapi

    Today, we're delighted to be talking to Pierre Burgy, the founder and CEO of Strapi, a headless CMS. We're getting into how they're trying to eliminate having your CMS be your biggest headache as a developer. Pierre has a fresh perspective on open source business models, and open source itself that we’re excited to get into in this episode! It all came about when Pierre and his friends were building websites for themselves and clients, and dealing with the struggles of trying to efficiently build on websites from mobile devices. The APIs were slow, and overall it was a grinding process. This, of course, set them on a course if developing a content management system based on an API - it was a no-brainer. They knew Strapi needed to be a business. We also ask him the key question - how do you get from an early stage project to 60,000 stars on GitHub. According to Pierre, blog posts worked well in the early days, and encouraging friends to get on board in the even earlier stages. But at the end of the day it's about keeping your eye on the project, pursuing improvements and nurturing your community. Make sure to give this a listen! Reach out to Pierre here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierre-burgy-strapi-88671673/ Check out Strapi here: https://strapi.io/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    41 min
  7. Episode 218 Jono Bacon 2, Founder of Community Leadership Core

    17 OCT

    Episode 218 Jono Bacon 2, Founder of Community Leadership Core

    It’s time for another talk about community! And who better for us to speak to, than friend of the podcast Jono Bacon? Jono is the Founder of Community Leadership Core, and a community expert. He’s sitting down with us to give us a look behind the scenes of how he completely transforms communities. From those that have yet to get off the ground, to those that are experiencing a dip after their heyday, Jono and his team know the practical steps to get these communities thriving - or thriving again! Community Leadership Core isn’t quite a course and neither is it a consultancy, or a cohort. So Jono describes it as an accelerator, and like most companies, it’s gone through a few stages before ending up where it was always meant to be. Jono is selective in the best way when it comes to his clients, only working with those really willing to put the effort in. Those truly excited take on and apply solutions, rather than allowing fear to come into their decision making process. We find this hugely admirable, as so much of our focus in DevRel is on getting people in the door - but the reality is that not every client is right for you, and we should all be more comfortable with walking away from something that ultimately won’t work out! One thing that is clear from this discussion is that for Jono, the devil is in the details. He tells us about his quest to unlock “low friction value” for his clients. When building communities, it’s not always the biggest moves that will add the most. So many people struggle to get people into their community, and when Jono looks at their onboarding process it’s a tiresome, confusing mess. There lies the unlocked low friction value. Streamlining that process may seem like a small, simple task. But it’s those very small tasks that add up into a huge wave of new members. If you’re currently building, or want to build any kind of community, this one is a must-listen! Reach out to Jono here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonobacon/ Check out Community Leadership Core here: https://www.communityleadershipcore.com/core Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    37 min
  8. Episode 217 Simon & Ethan (repeat), CTO and DevRel at Vaunt

    15 OCT

    Episode 217 Simon & Ethan (repeat), CTO and DevRel at Vaunt

    Today we’re joined by Ethan Lewis and Simon Cheng, CTO and DevRel of Vaunt.dev for a discussion on how their work enables individuals and companies to nurture their open source communities. Vaunt is a SaaS tool that was built on a key ethos: saying thank you. It’s no secret that thanking people for their work creates a rewarding environment where they feel encouraged to continue making that work. Or is it? The treatment of developers can often communicate the opposite message. Instead of thanks, hard work is often rewarded with requests for measurement and insights into revenue growth in proportion to contributions. In other words - if you want a seat at the table, you have to earn your dinner. Simon and Ethan knew that if they could use Vaunt to foster a different attitude towards developers, then they would be able to make a real difference in the open source world. Ethan and Simon reveal that a huge part of their desire to build this service, and eventually product, was their own encounters with the problems faced by open source developers. One of those problems is that open source community building, as valuable as it is, is time consuming. And it often involves a great deal of trial and error; throwing things at the wall until they stick. Vaunt’s goal is to streamline these processes into a more efficient set of steps. They also speak on what they believe is missing from GitHub, and how having developers on your side is an asset that won’t be going out of style anytime soon. Reach out to Ethan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elewis787/ And Simon here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoncheng-kc/ Check out Vaunt.dev’s services here:‍ https://vaunt.dev/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

    37 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

This DevRel focused podcast allows entrepreneur, author and coder Richard Rodger to introduce you to interesting leaders and experienced professionals in the tech community. Richard and his guests chat not just about their current work or latest trend, but also about their experiences, good and bad, throughout their career. DevRel requires so many different skills and you can come to it from so many routes, that this podcast has featured conference creators, entrepreneurs, open source maintainers, developer advocates and community managers. Join us to learn about just how varied DevRel can be and get ideas to expand your work, impact and community.

Information

  • Creator
    Richard Rodger: Voxgig CEO, founder and author
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2024
  • Episodes
    220
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © voxgig 2024
  • Show Website
    Fireside with Voxgig

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