Contributor

Latest Episodes:

Sanity with Magnus Hillestad and Even Westvang Jul 14, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) sits down with Magnus Hillestad (@MHillestad) and Even Westvang (@even), co-founders of the unified content platform Sanity. The team at Sanity helps businesses organize their structured content as data, allowing distribution from a single source of truth. Tune in today’s episode to learn how Sanity aims to change the way people think about content.

In this episode we discuss:

The open-source editing environment and CMS, Sanity Studio
From content as data, to coffee table books
How Sanity differs from a traditional CMS
Why the Sanity team turned down a contract with the United Nations
Building a team that can scale to a vision of ubiquity

Links:

People mentioned:

Simen Svale Skogsrud (@svale)
Øyvind Rostad (@rostad)

Teleport with Ev Kontsevoy Jun 30, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Ev Kontsevoy (@kontsevoy) talk about Teleport, the open-source tool for instant access to cloud resources. These include SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases and more. Teleport was inspired by the growing complexity of cloud environments, and aims to make engineers feel like all their cloud applications are in the same room together.

In this episode we discuss:

How Teleport grew from a side project to Gravity, the open-source toolkit for packaging and running applications autonomously
Unifying and consolidating modern access methods and industry best practices
Bringing identity to a protocol-level
An early community use case for Teleport in the cattle industry
Engaging with outside contributions while balancing security constraints

Links:

Rook with Travis Nielsen Jun 16, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Travis Nielsen (@STravisNielsen) talk about Rook, the open-source storage orchestrator for Kubernetes. Travis is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, and maintainer of Rook. Join us to dive deep into the story of Rook, from Microsoft, to Quantum, to Red Hat.

In this episode we discuss:

Ceph + Kubernetes = Rook
The difficulty and importance of a stable storage solution for stateless applications
How Rook leverages Kubernetes CRDs
Why the Rook team decided to work with the CNCF
Red Hat’s philosophy and approach to open-source

Links:

People mentioned:

Bassam Tabbara (@bassamtabbara)
Jared Watts (@jbw976)

Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Patrick McFadin (@PatrickMcFadin) delve into the history of Apache Cassandra, the open-source NoSQL database born and bred around cloud over a decade ago. Patrick is the VP of Developer Relations at DataStax, and a member of the Cassandra Project Management Committee. On today’s episode, Patrick shares his philosophy on developer advocacy and experience in open-source.

In this episode we discuss:

Behind the NoSQL explosion that made Cassandra the darling of the valley
Comparing different eras of commercializing open-source, then and now
How Patrick became a pioneer in evangelizing and community-building
The two kinds of people to recruit for developer relations
Why Patrick says open-source is going to “start eating clouds”

Links:

People mentioned:

Avinash Lakshman (@HedvigEng)
Prashant Malik (@pmalik)
Adrian Cawcroft (@adrianco)
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower)

Other episodes:

Chef with Adam Jacob

Dagster with Nick Schrock May 19, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) interviews Nick Schrock (@schrockn) about Dagster, the open-source data orchestrator for machine learning, analytics, and ETL. Nick is the founder and CEO of Elementl, and is well-known for creating the Project Infrastructure group at Facebook, which spawned GraphQL and React. On today’s episode of Contributor, Nick explains how he set out to fix an inefficiency he identified amongst the complexity of the data infrastructure domain.

In this episode we discuss:

Dagster’s place in the industry shift towards thinking of data as a software engineering discipline
Why Nick believes it’s time for the term “data cleaning” to be retired
The empowerment of Dagster’s instantaneous spin-up process and local development experience
How a partner integrated Dagster into workflow for ops workers on the warehouse floor
One user’s testimony that, “what dbt did for our SQL, Dagster did for our Python”

Links:

People mentioned:

Lee Byron (@leeb)
Dan Schafer (@dlschafer)
Abe Gong (@AbeGong)

Hasura with Tanmai Gopal May 05, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Tanmai Gopal (@tanmaigo) dive into the open-source Hasura GraphQL Engine and the wider Hasura community. Hasura provides real-time GraphQL APIs for databases, so developers can focus on building applications without worrying about infrastructure. Tune in to hear the full story about how Tanmai and his team are helping engineers unlock the dream of self-serve data access.

In this episode we discuss:

How the early Hasura team created their own version of GraphQL in parallel
Developing community with ease of onboarding and radical transparency
Transitioning community events into the COVID world, and looking to a future beyond travel
Hasura’s secret sauce: the authorization framework

Links:

People mentioned:

Rajoshi Ghosh (@rajoshighosh)

MindsDB with Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by the co-founders of MindsDB, Jorge Torres (@JorgeTorresAI) and Adam Carrigan (@AdamMCarrigan). MindsDB is an open-source AI layer that integrates with existing databases, from MySQL to Clickhouse. Tune in to learn how these two former college roommates are working to bring machine learning into the mainstream.

In this episode we discuss:

Why it makes sense to run machine learning models in the database
Partnering with Kafka, Looker, and more
MindsDB’s initial adoption by students at Berkeley
Different applications for MindsDB and machine learning in ecommerce, finance, and more
The moment Jorge knew he had to get into business with Adam

Links:

Other episodes

ClickHouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov

Anaconda with Peter Wang Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) welcomes Peter Wang (@pwang) for a conversation about the Python ecosystem and the open-source communities that have built it. Peter is the creator of Anaconda, the near-essential Python distribution for scientific computing that makes managing packages a lot more manageable. In today’s episode, Peter offers a unique and powerful perspective on how to make the economics of open-source work for everyone.

In this episode we discuss:

The paradox of the PVM and Python’s packaging difficulties
How Guido van Rossum implied permission for Anaconda and the open-source Python movement
Python as the lingua franca of a new professional class
Looking to Roblox for inspiration for a scientific computing creator community
Giving back to open-source communities through the NumFOCUS Foundation

Links:

People mentioned:

Travis Oliphant (@teoliphant)
Fernando Pérez (@fperez_org)
Brian Granger (@ellisonbg)
Min Ragan-Kelley (@minrk)
Guido van Rossum (@gvanrossum)
James Currier (@JamesCurrier)

Other episodes:

Redpanda with Alexander Gallego Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Alexander Gallego (@emaxerrno) for an examination of Redpanda, the source available event streaming platform designed as a drop-in replacement for Kafka. Redpanda’s storage engine is attractive to developers for its performance and simplicity, removing the complexity of running Kafka to scale and deploying with a single binary. Listen to today’s episode to learn more about how Alexander and the team at Vectorized are looking to advance the conversation around streaming into the future.

In this episode we discuss:

What Alexander means when he says that hardware is the platform for data streaming
The 3 things that turn a data stream into a data product
Comparing Redpanda to Kafka and Pulsar
A difference in product philosophy between selling to data teams vs app developers
How Alexander approached the challenge of monetizing data infrastructure

Links:

Other episodes:

Storybook with Zoltan Olah Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Zoltan Olah (@zqzoltan) discuss Storybook, the open-source UI component development tool. Storybook supports all the most popular frontend frameworks and libraries such as React, Vue and Angular, but allows users to test and develop components in isolation. In today’s episode, learn more about the early days of the component-driven development methodology and how Storybook was saved by a passionate community of engineers.

In this episode we discuss:

Storybook as an integral part of UI design workflow
How Zoltan and his team inherited Storybook and saved it from being “left out to dry”
Solving a pain point for front-end engineers with Chromatic’s UI regression testing, built on top of Storybook
Why Zoltan compares components to APIs, and Storybook to a service mesh
What’s happening today in the world of open-source design systems

Links:

People mentioned:

Dominic Nguyen (@domyen)
Tom Coleman (@tmeasday)
Arunoda Susiripala (@arunoda)
Norbert de Langen (@NorbertdeLangen)
Michael Shilman (@mshilman)

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