Episode Transcript

Chrystal Taylor:

Welcome to SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Chrystal Taylor, joined by my co-host, Sean Sebring. Today is TechPod’s 100th episode, so we are going to do a little something different today, and we’re going to not necessarily talk about technology, but rather, we’re going to talk about the history a little bit about SolarWinds TechPod and what it takes to put this thing together for you guys every month. Sean, let’s kick things off with talking about, do we want to start with what you call the curse, the host curse?

Sean Sebring:

Yes, we can start. There has been a hex put on since they brought me to TechPod several, several, several episodes ago. For those who have been listening for some time may remember, this started with me shortly joined after by Chris Bowie. Wonderful, super great to work with. But then, as the curse would show, working with me means you have to go. Shortly after that, someone we had had as a guest together, Ashley Adams, joined us. And again, so wonderful to work with. I loved the dynamic. And then, once again, you had to go. If this is ringing of any curse vibes, Chrystal survived the curse.

Chrystal Taylor:

So far.

Sean Sebring:

She’s got it. She’s got what it takes.

Chrystal Taylor:

So far.

Sean Sebring:

The pink hair of warding, one might say.

Chrystal Taylor:

The pink hair of warding. I like that. I’m going to keep that. It’s funny too, because literally last night, my son was attributing aspects to his clothes. He has a hat that he said has plus one to charisma, and he was doing the same thing last night.

Sean Sebring:

I totally have with some jewelry. The problem is, I don’t have a scroll of identification, so I’m just wearing this thing like, “God, I hope it’s got good stats. I’ve had it for so long.”

Chrystal Taylor:

Well, I would say the host curse is actually not your fault. And the reason for that is there have been a lot of hosts for TechPod over the years. There were, in the beginning, in the beginning, there was a host named Alex Navarro, who I never met, so I’m not really sure where they went or what they were up to. Original host, Alex Navarro, had some amazing guests on, did some amazing work, and then, were not part of it anymore. So then, we wound up with a lot of, I would say, temporary hosts of which I was one-

Sean Sebring:

Right. Yeah.

Chrystal Taylor:

… where people kind of cycled in and out and you would do an episode. It was quite fun to do, as we know, because I came back to do it for real all the time, so clearly, I enjoyed myself. But I think that there’s been a lot of people head geeks and evangelists and community people and all kinds of stuff coming in from time to time to do interviews for TechPod, and there wasn’t really a host. And then, you became permanent host and we ran into the curse, as you call it, your curse, your specific curse.

Sean Sebring:

It’s funny, yeah. It’s funny just to … I can’t remember. I think it was 2022 when I started hosting. It had been three years in and we’re at about three years now, so let’s just say halfway through approximately, so to speak. Maybe, I don’t know, I’m making stuff up. But yeah, halfway through and some of the guests are some former Solarians that I would love to bring back as guests.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes.

Sean Sebring:

They haven’t left the industry, so to speak. And yeah, they’re just so much fun to work with. And so, seeing it as from temp hosts, and some of our regular guests, who are still Solarians that still just come back. It’s honestly one of my favorite parts about being part of SolarWinds, is the ability to work with such fun people, and honestly, just goof off around tech. It’s fun for me. It’s fun.

Chrystal Taylor:

Well, and for anyone at home that thinks that we don’t get anything out of this, I’ll tell you that’s not true. Sean and I super enjoy doing this. I hope that it is equally as fun to listen to us talk to people and interview and learn as we’re doing these things as it is for us to do it, because sometimes there are specific episodes that come to mind where we really get super into it and we’re having a very good time.

The episode we did with Doug Bennett comes to mind of, where he was just blowing our minds while we were talking to him. I think that that is what makes it great fun for us to do, we’re getting to learn things or think about things from different perspectives. We share our insights as well, but I think that for me, it’s just as exciting getting to talk to someone and pick their brain about how they think something works.

Because if anything else, all of these various guests that we’ve had and all of the topics that we’ve covered, and we’ll get into that a little bit in a second, but all of the things that we’ve been able to do over the time just shows how everyone thinks about technology differently. The way that you use it is different. The way that it’s been explained to you might be different. The way that you understand how it works might be different. And so, that has always been super interesting to me to dig in and figure out how people are doing things and why they do things the way they do.

Sean Sebring:

I feel like I have imposter syndrome a lot of the time, which works really well in this, because I get to, with pure ignorance, ask questions to some of these brilliant guests. And again, when you said the Doug Bennett episode, and for those who haven’t listened, we were interviewing Doug Bennett, who is part of Amazon and works with AI, and just the way he was able to explain some of the things to me. We used to host our episodes on Orange matter. My mind was blown. There was brain matter everywhere in the recording studio, I swear. I was just jaw-dropped. It was so much fun.

Chrystal Taylor:

It was.

Sean Sebring:

And the connections it made, the things I learned, because I’d never thought of it that way. The different perspectives you brought up, Chrystal, I think is one of my favorite parts about it as well. We just think differently.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. That’s humans for you. We think differently, and I think that’s one of the, it’s just super fun to try and understand. We’ve had some cool guests, even not outside of SolarWinds like Doug, who’s outside of SolarWinds, but even SolarWinds guests. I always enjoy listening to Tim Brown talk. I haven’t gotten to interview him myself, but every episode he’s been on I’ve listened to because he A, he’s such a nice guy, and B, he’s very … I think I said this before, that he has a professorly air to him. I just want to listen to what he’s talking about. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been in the industry for a long time. He’s worked in security for a really long time. He has such a nice way of explaining things to you where A, you don’t feel like you’ve missed something and you’re dumb, because you didn’t pick up on something. But B, it’s really just relatable in understanding, and every episode that he has been on, I have listened to, so I am also a fan of our show even whenever I’m not on it before I was hosting with you.

I think that that’s really fun to just dig in and hear what people have to talk about. We get to talk to so many people in different industries and different walks of life and what they’re doing and how they’re using technology. Thanks audience, for allowing us to do that, because without you, we wouldn’t be able to make the show. Thank you for allowing us to do that, because genuinely, it’s very fun for me.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah. You brought up Tim Brown, and so, I love watching the show evolve over the years, at least since I’ve been doing it as well. We don’t always and haven’t always done video, but when we did the Tim Brown episode in, I want to say, October of ’23, it was somewhere around there, we did it in studio. I think it was just myself and Tim for that episode, but it really kind of moved us towards the video episodes. We did TechPod podcasts, but we did them with video. We really started saying video almost every time if we can and what I think is a funny one for those avid listeners. Obviously, if you don’t listen as regularly, this won’t be as fun for you as, how many times has my background changed?

Chrystal Taylor:

Oh, many.

Sean Sebring:

Chrystal, you’ve had two, this room and your office, but I have had so many different, and just in this house that I’m in now, I’ve had three. It makes me think like, “Oh, it’s just fun to watch the scenery change literally,” but it’s fun to have the videos on too now. That was just another step in the evolution of us trying to do more with the podcast episodes, which also means, and this is a wonderful segue, the more effort that’s put in by our production team.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes. Before we talk about our current production team, who are amazing, I do want to do a nod back to the producer who made this whole thing start, which was René Lego. She is onto bigger and better things in other podcasts and producing other things out in the world, making great art in technology, and I think that that’s fabulous. She really pushed for TechPod to be great, as well as some of our other initiatives. She used to work on THWACKcamp and other things like that, and really pushing everyone to put their best foot forward, and she’s the reason why TechPod exists. She’s also the reason why we’ve had some of the great guests that we had in the early years especially, is her contacts and working and things and making sure the right people are in the room and making sure the interview questions are there and all of that.

And I feel like we’ve really learned from that, even if you never had any experience with it. I worked with her when she was producing the show still, and it was very different to how we do things now. For a little bit of background information, Sean and I are very loosey goosey. We have a good time, we’ll have interview questions ready, but we don’t particularly script anything too much. We don’t try to overprepare for it, because we feel that takes away from some of the magic of the conversation.

Sean Sebring:

Good content.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes, good content.

Sean Sebring:

Good content. Organic and good content.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes. Previously, everything was very rigorous and scripted. If you had been on the show before, it was very, very serious down to how many minutes we’re going to take for this segment, how many minutes we’re going to take for that segment, which is very hard for me, I’ll tell you. That’s a challenge.

Sean Sebring:

Couldn’t do it without it being more loosey goosey, and that’s again why it’s so nice to work with Chrystal is also, so you guys know, if you couldn’t tell, we trade hosting episodes. Fun fact for you guys, whoever’s turn it is to do the hosting, we pick on that person, because it’s the hardest part of the entire record is the intro and the outro, the scripted bits.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes.

Sean Sebring:

This one, you may notice, it was Chrystal’s episode. Of course, before she got to the intro, what’s the new term for it? I rizzed her about it? I don’t know. I tried. I tried. But anyway, yeah, that’s just to show we try to script this as minimally as possible. Nothing is with an agenda to have a, well, I suppose a hidden agenda. We do have an agenda and it’s just to have a fun discussion about whatever said topic is.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, for sure. I think the idea that we have in our heads about it, and we’ve talked about this internally, is that if it’s interesting to us that hopefully it’s interesting to you. When we have these cool speakers on talking about education and talking about security and AI and all of the things that we talk about, community and helpdesk and career development, it’s because we are also interested in that, and we think that it’ll be interesting to everyone else, and I think that makes it easy. It makes our job easier. It makes it easier for us to be real people and not too scripted. Yeah, I’m saying I’m very robotic when I’m scripted, our production team could tell you. We’ve tried to record other things where it’s like, “Here’s a script, read it.” No, don’t do that to me.

Sean Sebring:

I actually tried to use a teleprompter in our studio one time, and it was a disaster, wasted a lot of time. I went through a lot of wipes to try and blot the oil off my scalp, because for some reason that made me more nervous than making stuff up. But yeah, I know it’s tricky there. I’d say, one of the other aspects that’s difficult but can be really fun is when we ideate about topics. That being said, because we do this show for the audience, for especially the SolarWinds customer base, we would love it if you shared ideas with us. Because if there’s a cool topic we haven’t thought of, we haven’t covered yet, that also gives us inspiration to bring on guests. We want to bring on guests that can help us dive into a specific topic. Some of our best episodes, some of my favorite episodes are where we just had a really noteworthy guest. Again, like Tim Brown, just bringing him in to discuss things like security or I could go on, bringing in professors to discuss video games, we’re definitely going to have to talk about that.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes.

Sean Sebring:

That was way too much fun.

Chrystal Taylor:

I was just going to bring that up, because actually, the reason was, we’re bringing it back around to what we were supposed to be talking about. Our producers, the reason we had that opportunity is because one of our producers, Christi Clifford, saw the study and thought it was interesting and reached out to them and they were interested in coming on the show to talk to us about it. And of course, we’re interested, because we’re freaking nerds and we want to talk about video games at work because we can.

Sean Sebring:

Christi naturally thought of us. She was like, “Oh, they would eat this up.”

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes, which was true. I think that they do a great job of, you’ve mentioned a few times your background changing and our sound and maybe moving to video and all of these things. They’re the reason that we get to do all of that stuff, and they’re the reason that we look half as good as we do.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, it’s not pretty behind the scenes. I’m kidding.

Chrystal Taylor:

And sound. The sound, why we sound as good as we do.

Sean Sebring:

I like that. The sound.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah.

Sean Sebring:

What’s funny is our production team, specifically Nick Butler and Christi Clifford at the moment, they remind me a lot of IT when I was in Ops. If everything’s going fine, sometimes you forget they’re there, you forget to thank them, you forget whatever. Of course, I like to think that I never do, but it’s just one of those things where there’s so much magic happening behind the scenes that they take care of that you really only need to call on them when there’s something wrong. Other than that, you just show up and do whatever it is. It’s just really cool to think about, like an episode just pops out when you and I are just talking back and forth.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, yeah, for sure, because we’re really just having a good time and they turn it into something that is usable and digestible by someone else.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, usable.

Chrystal Taylor:

I think too, they’re responsible for keeping us on task sometimes and also making sure we don’t go over time. If we fumbled the intro or outro because they’re scripted and we’re bad at that, then to make sure we do it again until it sounds alright, and just making sure that it gets out there to people. I don’t know that either of us would remember to publish our episodes if it weren’t for them.

Sean Sebring:

I’m so terrible at that. I think you and I were in a chat just this week when someone asked me a question about authoring something and I said, “I need an adult. Please, someone help me.” I don’t publish, I just show up. Lazy of me maybe, but I like to pretend that I have agents and I show up and I just do stuff. It’s kind of true because I am that lazy I suppose or just distracted. It’s mostly that I just love the team that we have. I don’t have to worry about it 80%, 90% of the time, and they just ask a question here and there about what do I think. Yeah, they really take care of it. They make it work, so it’s just huge thank you to those folks.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes. Without them, this show would not be what it is. We probably wouldn’t be edited in any way, and you would hear me and Sean ramble more often than we should or go off on a silly tangent when we’re poking fun at each other or something, those parts get edited out.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to put it in, but there’s some of the behind the scenes. I’ll leave an episode and my cheeks hurt. We’re just laughing and having the most fun. It really is an opportunity just to have a good time, talk about tech and share it with you all. I suppose another thing, and maybe this is again towards the nod to what Lego did to start this is, I like that we have another opportunity for thought leadership and community-driven conversations. While SolarWinds is obviously a software sales company, it’s great to have an offer for people out there in the community that says, “We’re all just tech people.” We’re all just tech people learning tech things, having tech problems, curious about tech. It’s great to just have this opportunity to rant, chat, learn about different things without any pressure of, is there a product involved?

Chrystal Taylor:

You brought up community there and I think it’s important. You brought up earlier if they have episode ideas that they think would be interesting to us. I do want to point out that we do, TechPod has a space on the SolarWinds community platform, Thwack.com, and I think it would be really great. If you guys have episode ideas, feel free to throw them in to the comments over there. We will check them and pull them in. If they’re interesting and we can get an interesting guest and have anything interesting to say, because if we don’t, we probably won’t talk about it, but if we have something interesting to say.

I think that the community is also great. We’ve had some great guests from the community as well. Our MVPs have made several appearances, where we got to hear about all of their origin stories, which just goes to show how different we’ve talked about. Every episode we have, our guests introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their story, and some of them get more in the weeds and tell us more deeply about it. Like our recent episode with a certain rock star or things like that, where they get a little bit more into their path, because we ask them to. Sometimes they’re a little bit higher gloss, because we want to get into the meat of the episode.

I think that it’s really fun to know that we all have different ways of getting into technology, and because it’s always changing and it’s always different and you always have to learn something new, for me, it makes working in tech more approachable and more like, “Oh, okay, we talk about your ADHD and stuff like that.” Our attention spans are so bad. Something new and interesting comes that’s shiny comes along and we want to go do something else.

Sean Sebring:

What?

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. And I think that those episodes, where we dig into people’s backgrounds and learn how they got to where they are and why they’re doing the things that they’re doing, just also go to show that A, you’re definitely not alone in that. And B, working in the technology field is so conducive to that type of personality of like, “Oh, well, I saw something else that looked interesting,” so you can just go do that. Having those conversations here on TechPod has been really interesting for proving that whatever your path is, you might succeed, you might get to where you’re trying to go, you might find a new path that was more interesting along the way. Something new might happen, some person might influence you along the way that you were like, “I never thought about getting into this field or this area,” and then, all of a sudden you’re knee deep in security and you never expected to be there.

Sean Sebring:

I agree, and it makes me think about the different types of episodes we’ve had, because while tech is the center of it, tech could mean your journey into tech. It could mean education surrounding tech, tech education opportunities, so the background is especially fun. Chris Greer, our rock star, had one of the coolest journeys into tech, then more specifically into security. It’s really fun to explore the different things that bring us around tech. Of course, that’s what we’re all about here on the TechPod. But again, I’d be curious, especially we’re posting this episode on THWACK as well, right?

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes.

Sean Sebring:

Great opportunity if you’re not on THWACK. If you are, obviously, you may have found this one on THWACK. But if you’re not, check out THWACK, find this episode and comment. I’d love to hear about what your favorite kinds of episodes we’ve done, if we haven’t done one yet. Again, the kind of technology you’d like for us to just discuss and learn more about and dive into, and maybe even your favorite episode. It’s fun to engage with the community and we really do this, I would say, for you guys, but then, I just realized I love doing it, so I do it for me too. But we do love you guys.

Chrystal Taylor:

It’s not truly altruistic.

Sean Sebring:

We need you. We need you. It’s not a hundred percent altruistic, okay? It’s fair. That’s fair. I do it for the likes.

Chrystal Taylor:

And I’ll say, even if your favorite episode is one that neither Sean nor I were in, we also still want to hear about it.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Chrystal Taylor:

I think it would be really great. We’ve had some great topics covered over the years with guests in those various areas. Some of the education concepts that we’ve talked about over the years have been really interesting. This was one when I was a temporary host. I did one for supporting women in tech, and I had a whole conversation with these wonderful ladies that they work for a technology education institute, and that’s what they were doing. One of them had been through the program and became a programmer afterwards, and the other one was a program, not an instructor, a coordinator, somebody who develops the program and made sure that they’re kept up-to-date, so really both sides of the educational process.

I have said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t think a formalized college degree should be necessary, but there are many ways to get into different things, and that is a different type of education. It’s not necessarily a college degree, but it’s a technical program that you can go through. There is boot camps and there’s all these other things. I think that every time I learn about a different way that someone’s learning how to do something, I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t know you could do that.” I think that it is spreading the word, and there are many areas of technology where there is a dearth of experience where those types of things could be helpful and there’s a lot of options for people. I like that we get to spread the word, I would like to say that. I like that we get to spread the word here on TechPod, it’s very fun.

Sean Sebring:

Oh my dearth, I don’t think you’ve said that on any episode before, but dearth, good one. Just to give you guys some insights, I told you we don’t do scripts or anything, but we do have notes. We throw bullets down just so we can understand. I just brought up topics. She was just kind of riffing on topics as well in the notes, which this was Chrystal’s episode, so she gave notes for it.

Just to give you an idea of her favorite, because this is like 80% accurate in my mind. Top-down, topics, education, 100% agree. That is her probably favorite topic. She already went on this one, number two, career development. She just went all over this. And if you couldn’t tell by a lot of our recent episodes, security. Maybe could move around from number three, but she loves diving into it. She’s admittedly said, because it’s part ignorance, part fascination, right?

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah.

Sean Sebring:

So it goes in with her lust for learning more. And then AI, I don’t think we can stop talking about it because it’s so weird and the potential is so out there. Everyone’s still kind of freaked out and curious and excited and terrified. That’s definitely not going anywhere.

Chrystal Taylor:

Well, it’s still changing so much.

Sean Sebring:

Digital transformation, which rings really big for me, because that was one of my favorite episodes that we did, was talking about digital transformation and cloud versus on-prem. That was a really fun episode. I also think that was just the two of us, so that was a really fun time for us to just go back and forth. And community, which I think this is where I was saying 80% accurate because I think might go up in the list somewhere.

Chrystal Taylor:

I will say, it was not ordered in any kind of-

Sean Sebring:

It wasn’t but when you went to jot it down, top of mind stuff was top of mind. This is where I’m saying, it’s just fun to observe when we throw out notes like this, and these are great topics. What do you guys want to hear more about? Or is it shut up about AI already? You don’t know enough, which we don’t. I don’t know who does, but that’s why we get people like Doug Bennett to come talk to us.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, a ton of fun. I think one of the things you also noted, and you kind of mentioned that one of your favorite guests to listen to, maybe your favorite episode or one of was Tim Brown.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah.

Sean Sebring:

I have to say, I think one of my favorite conversations we had was, again, was the two of us, was the Grass is Greener episode. That was where we talked about the, or maybe it was called, we went through a few names. Was it The Underdog? It was moving from-

Chrystal Taylor:

Underdog versus Top Dog, I think, is the one that it wound up being.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, it was comparing a startup versus an established enterprise organization. Maybe the same role in both, or the fact that in a startup, the same role means you have a hundred different hats, and in an enterprise, you have your very specific lane you stay in, and it varies org to org. That was such a really fun episode because it’s very relatable. It’s talking about what it’s like to be in the environment and what it’s like to experience the differences in organizations. Again, being in tech, there’s just so much we can talk about. That was one of my favorite episodes, and it fits in a little bit of a couple of the topics, so it doesn’t have to be narrowed into those, but I just thought that was funny. There goes another tangential riff, so yeah, have fun. Enjoy Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring. Tune in.

You brought up the episode about where we spoke to Dr. Melika and Mostafa about MMO skillsets, video game MMO skillsets and how they translate into career. Before the episode, you should have seen Chrystal and I geeking out before we talked to them, because we didn’t have an opportunity, I don’t think, to do a dry run, which a dry run is just getting them on the camera, seeing what it’s going to sound like and kind of giving them the feel for how the episode should go. Again, no scripts or anything like that. We didn’t have one of those with them, I don’t think. And so instead, as Chrystal and I prepare, we read the paper that they had put out, we read the study. And then, Chrystal and I both have to acknowledge we’re going to have to shut up.

We’re going to have to not go too far. We’re going to have to keep it in and ask them questions and not just steamroll them, “Oh yeah, this is how I think, or I feel, or this is how I’ve done it.” Let them be guests, and they were fantastic guests. It was just how excited we were to interview them and just see what they found when they did the study. What a cool study it was too, by the way. It was such a neat one for us to get to go through.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. I hope we get to do more things like that, because that was A, it came out of nowhere. Christi brought it to our attention.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, hats off.

Chrystal Taylor:

Neither of us knew it had happened before that, and she was just like, “Hey, I saw this,” and then she reached out and made it all happen. I think that that is one of the coolest things that we’ve gotten to do because it’s not … I would say it’s not like the normal thing that we do, because it is a very specific, they wrote a scientific paper, like a technical study. It’s outside the realm of our normal technology guests and people that we talk to and topics that we talk to. It was an unusual thing that we got to do, but it was so cool. We do our best of being, or we try to do our best to be open-minded when we have guests on because A, they’re experts in the field that we have brought them on to talk about. And B, because we don’t know everything as much as we would love to. We don’t know everything, and that helps us to be open-minded and ask better questions because we’re also learning.

Sean Sebring:

Always.

Chrystal Taylor:

Always, yeah.

Sean Sebring:

I mentioned imposter syndrome earlier. I was just looking back at our guest list and to be on and interviewing someone with the title of Professor Dr. Sally Eaves. That was an intimidating episode for me. That was earlier on when I was starting off on TechPod. What an interesting opportunity to be able to interview someone with such credentials as someone who’s honestly so inspirational with such a powerful career. A very humble career, I would say at the same time, which is hard to do when you’ve got such cool creds, you can flex. Yeah, it’s so cool. It’s so cool the opportunity that this brings. I suppose, again, going back to if you have ideas, if you know a guest, you’re like, “Man, I’d love to hear from this person,” give us a shout.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, we’ll try.

Sean Sebring:

Jump in at THWACK, give us a shout. We’d love to reach out and see if we can make it happen. It’d be fun for us and it’d be cool for you to listen.

Chrystal Taylor:

We hope.

Sean Sebring:

We hope.

Chrystal Taylor:

That’s always the goal.

Sean Sebring:

Christi, make it happen. This is how production goes. They cast a spell, but not on my co-host role again, because I’m glad I have Chrystal here. Don’t go anywhere for a while.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, there have been some really actually super cool, interesting guests over the years. Even before either of us became permanent hosts, there’ve been some really cool guests that I remember at the time. Some of them, other people I know at the time, fellow head geeks that we’re going to get to interview, like the co-founder of Ethernet and talk about the history of the creation of ethernet and what it’s turned into these days, and it’s just like, that’s just so cool. It’s such a cool opportunity to get to learn about something like that. You get these people on here and they really are tech celebrities I guess in some ways. They’ve done some amazing really cool stuff. They’re really out in the world talking about advocating for things, and then, you get to talk to them and you feel, you mentioned imposter syndrome and I feel the same way, where it’s just like, “What have I done? I haven’t invented anything cool. I haven’t been out there advocating and speaking for anything,” besides SolarWinds, but that’s what I do.

It’s really interesting to get to talk to these people who are doing these cool things. We’ve had guests on that started some amazing youth programs and they come on there and talk about the cool community projects, like less tech community and more physical, like the community where they live in and helping the youth and helping other people and all of these things, and I’m just like, “What am I doing? I haven’t done anything. I don’t have any right to talk to them about these things.”

I think that those have been really cool too, is just learning about programs that exist in the world that maybe you didn’t ever know about. I didn’t know there were … We just recorded an episode yesterday, where I learned about security community groups for DEFCON, which DEFCON I knew was a conference, but I didn’t know that they had regular local community groups that people, anybody can go to and learn about security. I didn’t know that existed, learned about it yesterday. I live in a big enough city, we have one. I like that we can continue to learn about cool stuff that’s just out there and people should be taking advantage of if they want to learn.

Sean Sebring:

Well, I think one of the ones that came up with it, we were talking about frameworks and AI and community was one of the biggest parts. We had at least one episode before ChatGPT and GenAI really took off, because obviously, in the last few years, the world has changed drastically. But how an open AI community was really one of the biggest things, because there’s no foundational accreditations or guidelines on how to do this stuff. We’re making it up as we go along and we’re actually making it up at a pace that’s never been done before.

Communities are just so important to me, because I’m hoping, I haven’t heard from a while, I think maybe we could actually do for another AI episode and just talk about communities. How do you share your knowledge? What are your tools? Because with things like reels, scrolling and swiping and AI’s ability to make up information, to be honest, we see a lot of fake stuff and it can sound so convincing. I’ve actually mentioned this on an episode that’ll come out afterwards, but we recorded it before, my voice was translated into Arabic for a partner enablement recording I did, and it was so weird. It was me speaking Arabic and I can’t even put that on my resume, but it was so cool. I’d just love to know more about the communities that surround these kinds of technologies. You guys are part of our community, so share with us. If you haven’t got the vibe, I’m going to say that throughout the episode.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, share.

Sean Sebring:

I want to hear from you guys.

Chrystal Taylor:

We’d love to. We’d love to talk more about it. We’re always in the THWACK community hanging out. That’s the SolarWinds community, it’s totally free. You don’t have to be a SolarWinds customer even to do it. If you listen to TechPod and you’re not a SolarWinds customer, but you enjoy what we’re talking about, I’d love to know that too, because that would be really interesting. But also, it would help us know that our topics are useful to other people as well, so please, let us know. I think that it’s been a fun time doing this, and I hope that we get to continue doing it for, until we’re not here anymore, I guess.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah.

Chrystal Taylor:

Until we retire.

Sean Sebring:

These kind of episodes are fun to me too, because we’re talking about tech episodes, but we’re not talking about tech.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. It’s hard though. You know how much I’ve been sitting here like, “Oh, I wanted to say something about the tech that you just talked about and I’m not going to do it.”

Sean Sebring:

Oh, I know, I know. This is an example of where we can really be nerdy about random technology is, our episodes around the holiday season, where we just, to give you guys some examples, again, if you’re a new listener or an existing listener, some of the best episodes can be about made-up tech, tech that’s not out there yet, or weird tech that’s out there. We’ve talked about around holiday wishlist seasons and things like that. It can be anything and everything tech-related, but it could be a fun episode, theoretical episode. Honestly, it’s just fun. We really hope you guys enjoy this stuff, and if you’ve got ideas, share it with us. Such a pleasure and happy to celebrate a 100th episode with you, Chrystal Taylor.

Chrystal Taylor:

Thank you. Yes, it is great to celebrate a hundred episodes of TechPod.

Sean Sebring:

But yeah, it’s just reminiscent to go through this stuff, and we’ve got so much more to come. Believe it or not coming soon is security. Security and some more security in some episodes, along with some IT trends will be coming at the beginning of the new year approaching. We’ll have more silly episodes, most likely joined by Andy Garibay, to talk about some weird funky tech of some kind in some form or fashion. Yeah, we just have a lot of fun topics coming up, so we really hope you guys stick around with us and enjoy the content that’s coming.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, definitely. I mentioned a few times our space over on THWACK. There will be a post for you if you do have anything you wanted to share with us, ideas for episodes or potentially if you have someone that you would like to hear on TechPod, if we can get in contact with them we’ll try if we have an episode there. If you have suggestions, I’ll leave a suggestion post over in the TechPod space on THWACK. You can comment there or feel free to comment on our YouTube videos as well, those are also available for comment. Or any TechPod episode within the THWACK space also has comments turned on. We will see those. I do see those, so we’ll make sure we’re on the lookout for if anyone has any suggestions for us.

If you’ve been a guest on TechPod, I would like to say thank you once again for being a guest. We really genuinely enjoyed you sharing your expertise. Any future guests, I will say thank you in advance, because we like hearing from you. Thank you to our production team, and of course, thank you to our listeners. We hope that you continue to listen in and learn with us as we are constantly exploring new aspects of technology. Continue to join us here on TechPod every month and we will see you next time. Thanks for tuning in.

Sean Sebring:

Thanks for tuning in.