Embedded - 46: I'm Painting the Turtle

Episode Date: April 9, 2014

Jennelle Crothers (@jkc137) explained to Elecia what a technology evangelist does. Of course, it wasn't an embedded technology but it was still amusing. Plus, Elecia got to play with a Surface Pro. Check out Jennelle's blog Jennelle and Elecia met at She's Geeky in Mountain View, CA.

Welcome to Making Embedded Systems, the show for people who love gadgets. Today, I will be talking to Janelle Crothers about being a technical evangelist and about Microsoft. Before we get started, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who said hello at EE Live, the Embedded Systems Conference. It was really neat meeting listeners. So now back to my guest. Hi, Janelle. Glad you could make it.

Hi. I guess I should start right in with what is a tech evangelist? A technology evangelist is a customer-facing role in Microsoft that allows us to get out there and just talk about what our new technologies are and make sure that people are aware of them. I particularly interface with IT professionals, so systems administrators, people who are running data centers, people who are in charge of office networks and things like that, to make sure that they know about the latest Microsoft products that affect them. Right now, it's a system center, Azure, Hyper-V.

I don't know what any of those mean, but I'm going to ask a different question. So this sounds like an FAE position or a marketing position. Is it that or is it engineering? We're under the marketing umbrella. So it is more of a marketing role, but it's a really technical marketing role. So we're the ones who marketing role, but it's a really technical marketing role. So we're the ones who get to talk to people about some of the details, and it's not just marketing fluff. And what's also cool about it is we don't have a sales quota. Yeah, that would be the nice part.

So what is your background? I've been a systems administrator for the last 15, 16 years before I came to Microsoft. I'm new at Microsoft. I've only been there about eight months now, nine months now. So it's a completely new shift to instead of being the person who's getting that information from other technology evangelists, now I'm the person giving the information to people who are in the role I used to have. How do you find new people to talk to sometimes they come to us we have events uh we host events where people can come and learn about some of our products i just recently got off of things um about

hyper-v and azure and the things that i kind of mentioned before so sometimes they come to us by invitation other times i go to user group meetings and i go to conferences and things like that just kind of reach out to people okay so i guess i guess I do have to ask, Hyper-V is probably a hypervisor? Yes. Okay, so tell us what that is. So Hyper-V is a hypervisor based off of Server 2012. It's actually been around since Server 2008, and that allows you to run multiple operating systems on one machine. So kind of like a virtual machine? Yeah. Okay. And Azure, that was another one. That is the Microsoft's cloud solution. So similar to like AWS or what Rackspace offers and things like that. So it's allowing you to run compute and storage processes in the cloud. okay well cloud is kind of something i've been interested in lately because because of the internet of things and where that leads to right does is there a connection between

azure and the cloud and getting the embedded internet of things and connecting them yes because when you're looking at say you know you want to connect your refrigerator say to the internet it's always a popular It's always a popular one. It's always a popular one, yeah. So there's software that's going to run, your embedded software that's going to run on the device, on your refrigerator, and then that's going to need to connect up to something over the internet to store its data to tie into those other systems. You may not want to run that on-premise in a data center somewhere, inside your office somewhere. You may want to put that someplace where it can scale better.

And the cloud gives you that option. Okay, so if I have my refrigerator and I hooked it up to the internet, and then it would go to my company's, let's say I was a refrigerator manufacturer. Right. And Azure would be what my company would run. Azure would be where your company would potentially store the data or run the servers that would receive that information or control that application. What would the process be like to set all of that up? I just gave a talk about how the Internet of Things is not serving consumers well because the configuration is a pain in the neck and because the it's difficult for an embedded device manufacturer to understand all of the things that happen after you make a device there's so much other software right so you've got your device and the software and then

and you'd need to have some sort of place where that device sends its information so that you can collect it and use it however your embedded system is going to use or where it's going to pull information down to, you know, to serve the consumer for whatever that embedded system does. And for systems that use Electric Imp, that's Electric Imp servers. And for systems that are from like a big company, that's usually the big company servers. Right. I mean, Fitbit has their own servers. Right, of course. Now, where Fitbit puts those servers, that is the question.

Now, Fitbit could build a big room and put their own servers in there and have people that keep track of those servers and manage them and run them in-house, like many companies do inside their own in-house data centers. Or you can choose not to build your own data center and use Microsoft's data center and put your systems there. And you can do anything from just... Well, and Amazon's got a cloud service too. And so Microsoft's data center is a lot like Amazon's cloud, but of course better because you work for Microsoft.

Well, yes. We'll just take that as a given and not argue about it. Right, yeah. And so the Microsoft data center is Azure or is? Well, they have their data centers for lots of things, for lots of things. But Azure's the biggest component of that now. So they have all of their servers there and you can access portions of that server, pay as you go, buy just what you need based on what you choose to put up there. You can put up entire

virtual machines and run them and do whatever you want to do on those virtual machines. Or you can just use SQL backend from up there or just use compute power back from there to build your application. So I have a little widget that I sometimes talk about on the show. Actually, I guess the idea was talked about on the show and since then I've been kind of a slacker. It's a stuffed animal, and if you pat it, then it's proof of life for the day. Okay. And then if you fail to pat it,

the goal is that the server would text or email or tweet to your family and say, go ahead and call mom because she didn't check in with me today. Okay. So that's kind of a device that's beyond the refrigerator. Although we did talk about putting it on the refrigerator and you'd get proof of life if you open the refrigerator door. Right.

It's the maybe not dead application. Right. Yes. This is not marketing here. Okay. So that proof of life, that little information would need to go someplace. Through like an HTTP URL is kind of my vision. So where is the web server that's going to receive that?

Where does that live? Are you going to put it under your desk here? Probably not. Probably not. That would be a bad thing. Right. So if you want to make sure that you've got some high availability, you know... And that's where Azure comes in.

That's where Azure comes in. You could build a web server up there, or you could just use their platform as a service and just put the app up there using their SQL, their IIS, their sort of features for that, even Linux. And I would buy like a hundredth of a server because this is not really going to be a high throughput application. You would only pay for the storage and the data that you use. Okay.

And it's pretty easy for me to like start. It's really easy to start. Okay. And do you have tools for the not so IT savvy developers? There are. And I'm not a developer evangelist. We actually have like a whole group of them. So if you actually want to. Yes, but you're the one I know. I'm not a developer evangelist. We actually have a whole group of them. Yes, but you're the one I know.

I know you're the one. So they can tell you really how to get started from a developer standpoint for that. But I can tell you that there's free trials. You could actually play with Azure however you'd like for 30 days. They give you $200 worth of credit, which is more than most people need to kind of get started and things like that. And to just kind of see what components would work best for your situation. But it's really easy to get started. But you started out by saying you talk to systems analysts about Azure. I talk to systems administrators about Azure. I talk mostly about the infrastructure as a service part. So for people who want to run entire virtual machines themselves up there,

people who are developing apps usually just like, well, I need a SQL server backend, I need some HTTP. You can buy those little parts essentially a la carte without having to run an entire server. And really, somebody else could run their own set of servers and use this backend, and I could buy time on their servers. I don't know if anybody's doing that, but that's all theoretically possible. It's all, yeah. Okay. That is kind of what Azure does is it helps break apart the problems and create a cloud. Well, it takes

away people, the ability from them actually having to manage hardware. It makes compute power and storage more like a utility that you just buy how much you're using without you actually having to provide the utility yourself. It's the equivalent of you having a generator in your backyard versus just turning on the switch and getting power from the lines. So my producer tells me that many iPhone application developers are using Azure for their backends. That seems like an interesting pairing of two worlds that don't always collide. Well, the one thing that's interesting about Azure is if you want to run your own virtual machines, there's support for Linux, there's support for several

flavors of Linux, for Oracle and things like that. So you don't have to be, you know, totally nailed down to Microsoft in order to use Azure. Okay, that makes sense. This was totally not what I meant to ask you. Okay. As you probably noticed because we are nowhere near that outline. I see. Let's switch to a day in the life of Janelle.

Tech evangelism just seems like this weird job that you have to be very technical for, but then you end up spending your whole day talking to people or what do you do every day? What do I do? I spend a lot of time reading email. I think everybody does. Sometimes I declare email bankruptcy and just send out a blast that says, if you spoke to me in the last week and you needed something, resend because I'm just not looking at anything from yesterday. I should do that someday. But a day in the life, a lot of times we do presentations. So I go around and do

first party events where we talk about, you know, whatever's first party events, like when you go to some place that I guess we've already said Fitbit. So when you go to some place i guess we've already said fitbit so when you go someplace like fitbit no first party as in we do it at microsoft so it's our event and you've got an invitation to come spend the day uh i usually do a lecture with a hands-on lab things like that so do that i do a lot of blogging sometimes i do things like this i'm goofing off but she's working working. No, actually, this counts, yes. Things like this, user group meetings. So I try to get to a couple user group meetings a month if I can to just sometimes just chat up with people and see what they're thinking, not necessarily presenting there.

And then sometimes I also will spend a couple minutes talking about what's new and cool at Microsoft. So that's what you do for customers do you also have a role that feeds back into microsoft where you boil down what they say and say you know a lot of people are complaining about this or really want this feature yeah we do do do we do some of that and a lot of times we'll turn around and turn and they'll take that information and say oh well it seems like people don't know this so we'll start trying to maybe put together a blog series or tweak our presentations a little bit to make sure that we're giving a little bit more of that information because it looks like people, you know, don't know

what we're talking about, you know. So it's just like, oh, well, that's, you know, 200 level and people really want a 100 level on that. And we'll use that to adjust some of the projects that come out of marketing and some of the material that we're using. And are there other people who have the same technology focus that you do? We all kind of have our favorite thing. I'm still trying to figure out what my favorite thing is in this role since I'm new to Microsoft. But there's nine, soon to be 10 technology evangelists that do my role in the whole United States. And do you get talking points where you all talk about the same thing for a few months? Yeah. That's weird.

Yeah, it's a little weird. And then meanwhile, we also have to keep up on that technology. So if it just came out of Microsoft, then we also have to learn it. And I suspect you have to learn competitor technology so you can reliably compare what's good and what's bad and be able to say, yes, right now, Hypervisor doesn't do X and somebody else does, but we're working on it.

Right, and so that we at least know the terms. You're not shocked. Right, or when people ask about, say, vMotion versus what we call LiveMotion, it's like they're essentially the same. We're talking about the same thing, but the words are different. So you were a sysadmin for a long time. Yep.

And very hands-on, very inside what was going on. Right. And now you're marketing. Yeah, it's a little bit of a switch. The only reason that I like this role is because it's still highly technical. Like I'm still talking about how things work and how things go together. And I still have to be Microsoft certified. I still have to be able to pass the same tests that systems administrator are still passing. So I still need to know really a lot of the ins and outs of how the technology works. And how did you get into this role? I kind of, it kind of fell in my lap, actually. They had an opening.

If you know systems administrators, finding systems administrators who don't mind talking to people on a regular basis. Kind of few and far between, but I've also been a Microsoft MVP for about the last four years, which you can't have when you're an employee anymore. But it's a community-facing role. I already had the history of being a big part of a user group, leading a user group, already blogging and things like that.

So I was already out there as a community-facing person, somebody who was willing to talk to the community about technology. So it just... So now Microsoft pays you to do that, which is kind of neat. Now I get paid for the things I used to do for free. What is the best part of the job? It's really flexible. I can take time during the week if I need to,

to, you know, I've got kids. Take my kids to the doctor or, you doctor or stay home and do laundry one morning because I know that, well, on Saturday I've got something. So that counts. So it is really flexible. I do get to go to a lot of conferences, a lot of events, things that when I was a systems administrator I'd have to almost get permission for to leave. Now you have to get permission not to go.

Right, yeah. Now it's just kind of like, oh, like a cloud event in san francisco next week you know let me just you know see if i can go and just go and nobody cares that i've left the office that day and i'm seems pretty independent yeah it's very independent do you have to travel a lot i do have to travel i mean you just mentioned you had kids that's always good yeah it's a it's a bit of it's a bit of a challenge uh there is a lot of travel just for the events that we're doing and then also going to some conferences that are not here. Conveniently, we're in the Bay Area,

so there's a lot of stuff that happens here. So it's just, you know, the afternoon driving and stuff. But there is, right now I'm the only evangelist in the West region. So when I do events events they're all over kind of surprised you aren't at Maker Faire this weekend that's Maker Faire Las Vegas yeah no not this week and do you get hassled for being a Microsoft person?

sometimes Microsoft is the company sort of everybody loves to hate but the reality is that we're kind of in everything yeah i mean i run i have my apple computer here but i run boot camp to windows pretty much all the time because that's where my debuggers and development environments are and when people come to my IT camps to do hands-on lab, there's usually a couple apples in the room doing the same thing. And I do run Mac OS sometimes, but this is the first computer I haven't broken the keyboard on.

I went through about five Dells in three years. Very heavy-handed. I'm not that heavy-handed. And this one I wrote a book on. It's three years old Heavy handed. I'm not that heavy handed. And this one I wrote a book on. It's three years old. And I don't know. I like the hardware. You did also bring me some hardware.

I did. We were talking about Microsoft Surface Touch, which is kind of how we got to chatting about the podcast. I heard someone say that it was the neatest thing since sliced bread from a touch perspective, and I wanted to compare with my iPad because I don't know what the difference is. Well, what I brought with me is my Surface Pro, which is the first generation Microsoft Surface, but it's the Pro version, so it runs a full version of Windows.

And I also brought an RT, which was the more, it's more in line with what the iPad is as a primarily a consumer device, where the Pro is more of a, you know, yes, you can consume, but you can also do your regular work on it. The Pro is more of a laptop replacement versus the RT is more in line with an iPad. Do you have a general idea what the prices are? Well, now this is, I think the current Surface 2 is about, I'm going to say $1,200. Okay, so laptop price. No, no, no, not even that high. I think it's actually closer to $9. I'm sure Chris is over there Googling the price.

Googling, he probably could Google the price. I do know that the pro version, the refurbished ones now, are pretty low, like $400. Okay, so it has a keyboard, and that's kind of part of its, not even part of its cover, it's part of its... It is the cover. Oh, it is the cover, okay. Yeah, it does become the cover.

On my iPad, I've got my little wireless keyboard but i don't really care if it's wireless or not this keyboard's actually pretty cool so here's my pro okay and it's it must be running windows eight it is actually running windows 8 1 8 1 um i know because it's got these tiles and the applications are all here. How do I get rid of this page and go to the page? What do you want? The desktop? The desktop. There's actually a desktop button right there. There's a button? Oh, look. See, it had the pretty icon. Yeah, I have my screen flipping in the background. The color, yeah. What is the cool thing here?

Is there a game I should look at? Well, actually, if you want to see some of the cooler things, some of the cooler things are actually not the desktop. Go back to the homepage. I've got tons of things that you could choose from. So I used Windows 8 for a client. And my goal was always to avoid these dialed pages because i couldn't i get lost in them and then and you saw they moved when they move i totally

like my brain like shuts off and can only monitor the animation so i hate some web pages that i really want to read the blogs okay i can't because of the advertisements. And this is, but this is not your fault. This is my brain does not work with flashing things. Okay. Okay. So what they, what they're trying to do with 8.1 is really, or with 8.1, any of this iteration is bring the information that you need to the first level. So I've got a calendar right here. It's telling me that I'm in podcast in San Jose so that I can look at the homepage and get a little bit of information, not necessarily having to drill down into every application to keep track of what I'm doing. This is the goal of ambient information is to have the information you want, when you want it, where you want it, and not have to type it into google exactly so you know there's there's apps for all sorts of things and i've got a kindle app here i've got a facebook app here i've got a twitter you know i've got my twitter app here oh let's tweet from her account yeah you can tweet from

my account um if i want if i want to go type since i don't have my keyboard connected it will give me here we go you have um i'm not actually gonna no don't have my keyboard connected, it will give me. Here you go. Go ahead. I'm not actually going to. No, don't actually send it. Okay. So this doesn't actually feel that different from my iPad. Okay. Cool.

Well, that was what I wanted to know most. You were worried that it was going to be, you know, it doesn't shock you when you touch it or anything. Well, you never know. And if it was, I had friends who worked on toys, children's toys, and they had never seen an iPad, and this was a year and a half ago. They'd never played with an iPad, and I kept telling them, what you were doing would work so well on an iPad, it would be fantastic. And they were just like, no, we're going to build our own hardware. I'm like, no, you should at least try it. So you know what the good and the

bad are. And if this isn't, you know, well, if you can build an app for iPad, you can build an app for this. Absolutely. And it looks actually like some of these people might have used some of those app generation tools. It was a Leap Motion Control Panel. Yeah, I don't have, you know, I have. She sees me looking around. I know, you're like, did you bring it? Yeah, it's just like, no, I, you know, I got one, the Leap, like early, I was like one of the early orders and it was, I got it right around the time I started for Microsoft and

I was so busy ramping up into my new role. I installed the software and I haven't touched it since. I'm sorry, you're going to have to carry the rest of the podcast on your own. I'm painting the turtle. Did you pick one of my daughter's toys? I remind my daughter's games on over there. Totally did. It's actually a good game to kind of get the hand, you know.

Oh, it's fine motor control. That's what you have to teach kids. Teach kids, but I mean, for playing with this. But what's also nice about this is Oh, it's fine motor control. That's what you have to teach kids. Teach kids, but I mean, for playing with this. But what's also nice about this is if you've got that going on and you decide that you want to also check Facebook. You want to be an adult. I know. Let's not even be an adult, but we can put them side by side.

Oh, okay, so split screen. That would be very useful for the times that I want to write emails and check data sheets. Right, but you can have your Twitter stream or whatever. Yeah, I could also color during meetings and still have my IMs up. But you can also do that side by side with the desktop, too. You know, I think it tried to do this when i was in when i was using windows for work and i just got kind of freaked out because i couldn't get it to to do this magical thing and it kept blinking windows there we go see so i could

have my you know full version of oh and then you turn that green by accident that's awesome oh now the seaweed's the seaweed's green i touched then you turn that green by accident that's awesome. Oh now the seaweed's green. The seaweed's green and I touched the seaweed I started painting by accident. It's a turtle. It's a yeah sorry it's okay. I'm sure this is why people listen to my podcast. Because we just laugh and they don't know what we're looking at but there it is. So having this side by side is one of the things that Microsoft was really trying to say that the Surface does that the iPad doesn't. You don't get the little bit of ability to multitask just a little. Yeah, that would be kind of cool. I can see that.

So back to, oh, look, that cost $900 apparently. So that's the Surface Pro. The 2? Yeah. The 2. Yeah. The 2 is kind of neat because they changed this uh like you get like uh two positions on the tilt and uh you get more space and does this have um does it have usb yep there's a usb port and could i really run my embedded tools from here i mean i could see doing meetings and stuff and the stuff I use my iPad for now, but compilers? Yeah, this is the Pro runs a full version of Windows.

So whatever you can run on Windows, whatever you're running in your boot camp installation there that you're running on Windows, you can run on a Pro. You can't do it on the RT. They only do the native apps, but on the Pro, it runs the Windows full version plus the native apps. And look, you have Word. I heard a rumor that they took away the ribbon in 2013. No. The ribbon's here to stay, as far as I've heard.

Oh, I see. They took it away from default showing, and now, sorry, I opened words. I hope you don't mind. Now it pulls down the ribbon when it wants to. Well, good, I'm glad you didn't take away the ribbon. I finally bonded with it. Finally bonded, yeah.

And if they were taking away the ribbon, that information is way, way above my pay grade. Is there any likelihood that I will have drivers that don't run on the surface? I mean, the JTAG drivers are sometimes a little fussy. This is just a computer. This is just a computer. That's kind of cool. It's a small little computer.

It's a small little computer, but I can put, you know. And it's USB, so I guess JTAG is probably just USB underneath now. When I'm at my office, I plug in a USB hub, and I plug in a full-size keyboard, you know, USB keyboard with a USB mouse. And a bigger monitor? I don't have a bigger monitor, but I'm fine with that one. But you could do a bigger monitor, anything. I've seen people do blog posts where they've put, you know,

six, eight monitors running off of their Surface. It's got, I mean, it's got the normal host of connections and whatnot. It's got a dongle for, I've got attachments for connecting it to the, you know, video monitors and stuff like that to do presentations, audio out. Wow. For a $900 computer that can do all this is kind of cool i didn't really mean to make this new commercial i'm sorry i said no it's okay and then the keyboard you can you know choose what keyboard you want and they actually have new keyboards now some that come it's a little thicker but it's got pattern power in it like an extra battery and then they also

have one that backlights so there's a couple different varieties in the keyboard too well and i'm sure this would do Bluetooth keyboards as well. Yeah, there's Bluetooth switches. I have a Bluetooth mouse. So Microsoft was not at the Embedded Systems Conference this year. I know you're not embedded. Yeah. But have you heard anything about...

The only thing new, which is actually, was actually recently announced that's kind of new for Embedded, is that the Embedded Compact 2013 has now been updated to support Visual Studio 2013. So I don't know if that's helpful at all, but I know that that's kind of the most recent thing that's kind of come out of the Embedded that I know of. It was a little odd not to have a booth. I was totally planning on going by there to get questions for you. That I'd be like, I don't know how to answer them. I'm not a developer. So what is the neatest part about working at Microsoft?

We talked a little bit about that you do get hassled because of course you do. I've always sort of liked having, as somebody who's always worked with Microsoft products, I've been a systems administrator since the NT 4.0 days. Like that's where I cut my systems administrator teeth on. So I've always been really happy working with their products yeah just like anything else sometimes they're frustrating sometimes they're not I mean it doesn't really matter who you're using as your vendor you're going to run into those scenarios so now working for them it's like I think my neighbor said it

best he's like when I got the job from Microsoft he's like oh so it's like, I think my neighbor said it best. He's like, when I got the job from Microsoft, he's like, Oh, so it's like you're going home. Okay. You know, it's sort of just neat to say that, you know, I've worked with this company for so long that now I work for them. And it's, it's pretty cool. So a large part of your job is meeting people and connecting with them and getting on their good side so that they will come and ask you questions and whatnot right do you ever use your powers for other purposes what do you mean like well i mean i do the show and and we never talk about women in tech but it's certainly something that i care about and And so do you have a secret agenda?

Will you share it with us here right now? I don't really have a secret agenda. I mean, women in technology is obviously something, you know, that... Because we met at She's Geeky, which is a women in tech. It is really important. And I'm always on the lookout for other women. And speaking of She's Geeky, you might have even heard me say that, you know, I've never gone to She's Geeky to find other systems administrators

because they're usually not there. No, it's not an embedded software. We did a soldering session one time and people were pretty excited, but it was amazing. Nobody got hurt. I think I went to that soldering session one time and people were pretty excited, but it was amazing. Nobody got hurt. I think I went to that soldering session. You know, I mean, She's Geeky has definitely got like more of a developer bent to it, which is great. But I think, you know, any woman, you know, who's doing anything in technology, you know, has something to bring to the table.

I'd love to see more women's systems administrators, but the is is they're just not there yet i don't know why i don't know if you know windows operating systems aren't cool enough for women i don't know um but i am like i said there was nine it evangelists in the entire u.s i'm the only woman well that's i mean that's pretty standard. And it's pretty standard. But, you know, so I've gotten comfortable with that. But it's like, I love events like She's Geeky, where you put like all these smart women in a room because it's really pretty cool.

Well, and She's Geeky, which is usually held in like January in Mountain View, although they're now, they have gone all over the country, but it's shizukiki.org if you want to look at it. And it's an unconference, which means they don't actually plan anything ahead of time. They just invite people and then have people give spontaneous presentations. And if you actually plan ahead, like get soldering irons, everybody's kind of impressed. I know, I have to admit, when I first signed up to go the first time, I was really afraid that it was going to be like super. Everybody staring at each other's shoes going, wow, shoes. Or just really.

Playing with their own phones. Right. Just really sort of lame. It does sound really lame. Sorry, Kalia. I hope you don't want to listen to me. But it's really so neat. And I was bummed that I could only go for one day this year.

I actually had to fly for another conference that Saturday. Because I don't know how people don't sign up for all three days. Because you don't know what's going to happen. I'm afraid I'm going to miss something. And by not being there all three days. Because people bring in things like wine tasting and beekeeping and all of these things that they're geeky about. But it's just really sort of empowering being in a room where, you know, it's safe to have all sorts of conversations. Systems administrators or developers, like women in technology, have all the

same, a lot of the same challenges. Yeah, it is a lot of the same challenges yeah it is a lot of the same challenges whether it's what do i say when somebody says something completely tactless or is this skirt too short to wear it's nice to have somebody who it's okay to ask those questions too and that it's safe to ask those questions too and that it's safe to ask those questions to. And that's why we build a women in tech community is so that you kind of have somebody to go to. Again, this was not what I meant to talk about. I know a lot of people who, well, personally, I code in my free time, but that's only when my free time is balanced by a job that is more writing or

more manager or more interfacing with customers. I don't code at home if I'm coding at work. Okay. Now that you are not as technical at work, you still are clearly very technical. Do you find yourself missing that and end up doing some of that at home? Or do you have better hobbies? I like to think I have different hobbies. Different hobbies. I don't miss worrying about looking at my email in the morning and rushing to work because the server's down. You know, that level of having to worry about things being up and being responsible for making sure the ceo is getting email every morning or can log on to his computer um you know

i don't really miss that you know i don't wake up and be like oh i wish i had some error message on my phone um well there's a feeling of being needed but that gets really hold pretty quickly um you know it's definitely you know i can build sort of whatever i want to play with you know in my on my lab laptop and stuff like that um sometimes i don't sometimes i can't think of what i want to build because i don't have a like a real life project so it makes it a little hard to kind of make stuff up some days i have to you know sometimes i'll think back and be like so for my old job i'd kind of do it this way so let me build that just so that i have something you know some sort of clear end goal so sometimes it's a little hard to kind of come up with good demos or come up with good scenarios of things

that you want to build out and test because they're not going to go anywhere so that's so that's a little hard so i don't actually do a whole lot of that at home. My kids are three and younger, so usually when I walk in the door, I've got a hobby right there. And then I also volunteer for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Oh, neat. I'm a leader of a puppy raising group. Would you like my beagle? You can take her.

No, sorry. Good dog. You cannot hire me to fix other puppy problems. I have a Labrador. Very enthusiastic. Yes, she is very enthusiastic. I actually can't wait to raise another puppy sometime, but right now it's incompatible with small children because they throw food on the floor.

It makes sense. It's a bad habit. So you're happy being a tech evangelist? I am. Because it uses more of your social, natural outgoing-ness. Right. You know, I admit that sometimes I went to my old job and I sat down next to the DBA and the other systems administrator,

and sometimes we didn't talk to each other all day. You know? Yes. administrator and sometimes we didn't talk to each other all day you know yeah you know so it's kind of nice to you know be able to talk to somebody and now do you get home and you're like don't talk to me i'm tired of that uh some days on the days where i've been talking all day and you've only been doing this for about nine months nine months okay if you did it for say three or four years and this was what you what would be next are you grooming yourself for some other position world domination of some sort perhaps uh you know one of the things about microsoft which I still haven't really gotten used to yet, is you're always supposed to have the answer to what you want to do next, be it even in Microsoft.

Like there's always where do you go next. And I feel like I've spent the last nine months just figuring out how to do what I do now. Yeah. Well, this is where you were going next. You just didn't know it then. Right. Yeah. This is where I was going next. So I haven't gotten to the next spot yet.

But I certainly can't imagine not doing something in technology. I don't think I'll probably break away and then be like, I'm going to bake cookies for a living or anything. I'm probably always going to be doing technology from now on some way. I agree with that. Every once in a while, I think I want to shove it and just surf all day. But then I wonder

how that's going to pay me. Yeah, I could go back to, I could try to quilt more. And I would get really bored and then my surfboard would get light and then I'd electrocute all the sharks. Wouldn't end well. I'm hoping my second daughter will get her quilt eventually, but it just hasn't happened.

I should let you get back to your kids. We are doing this on a weekend. So I appreciate you coming to talk to me. Is there any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Oh, I think that the only thought that I kind of leave everybody with when I do IT camps and stuff like that is that everything's changing so rapidly right now that there's sort of no place for your vendor religion anymore. You really have to look at the offerings that come from all the vendors before you decide what's going to be the best solution for your project or your company or your vision. Is that because things are more commodities and each vendor has strengths and weaknesses, but on average, everything will do most of what you want?

Pretty much. Yeah. Well, on that note, my guest this week has been Janelle Carther's technology evangelist for Microsoft Windows 8 and a number of other things. Hyper-V, Azure, Server 2012 R2. All right. Server 2012 R2. You know that we're on 14 now, aren't you? Yeah, I know. All right. Okay. Just checking. You know that we're on 14 now, aren't you? Yeah, I know. All right, okay. Just checking. I don't name the stuff. I know it's a bit odd to have a Microsoft person on the show, but Janelle and I see each other at conferences,

and she's always fun to have lunch with. I figured it'd be nice to sit down, put the mics on, and chat about her job and figure out what it really is. I hope you have enjoyed the show. It's a little short, but I don't know. It's sunny. Get outside. Thank you for listening. If you have comments or questions for me or Janelle, hit the contact link on embedded.fm or email us show at embedded.fm. And thank you. Thank you so much for those lovely reviews. I really appreciate my stars in iTunes and other services.

Finally, thank you for Christopher White for producing the show. As for final thoughts, I had a bit of a week last week. EE Live was great, but let's just say there was a point where Chris said it was perfectly reasonable for me to be a bit grumpy. Since he's usually the level-headed one, you know things must have gotten a bit off the rails. Thus, you can search on the web for your own Microsoft jokes this week. In the meantime, if you have a spot of time, sit down with someone you don't always agree with, that you don't share all the background and opinions with.

Sit down and see if you can find something you can respect about that person. While it's not