Custom Made

This is episode #51 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with technologist, musician and public speaker - Christopher O’Donnell, Senior Vice President of Product at Hubspot. HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software - plus the methodology, resources, and support - to help businesses grow better. Christopher has built dozens of web and mobile products ranging from language learning for the US military to the most popular free CRM product in the world, recorded dozens of albums across a variety of musical genres, and spoken to audiences of over 10,000 people. His role as SVP of Product at Hubspot, a public tech company, makes him a staple in the product management community and frequent lecturer at MIT Sloan and major corporations. Outside of his day job, Christopher spends his time as songwriter and guitarist for the band The Providers who release music on a regular music basis - be sure to check them out a www.theproviders.com. During this weeks episode, Christopher and I are discussing the challenges that come with scaling a company from a startup to a large enterprise organization - from managing multiple product offerings, to integrating acquisitions, to cultural shifts that need to be planned for. We go into detail on how Hubspot grew from $50MM in revenue to 10X that amount, and how it has continued to incubate new product offerings and successfully integrate them back into the core business services. Another key aspect of Hubspot growth has been the following and loyalty it has built around its brand. A big catalyst for this is the annual Inbound conference that is hosted in Boston. We explore the importance of this, and the impact it has on product development, and product communication. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #50 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with Jonah Staw, President of Ultimate Ears, a disruptive new business group at Logitech. Ultimate Ears is an organization that pushes the boundaries of what premium, custom-fit earphones can do. Jonah has had an amazing career from consulting to start-up entrepreneur to board member to intraprenuer. A globally recognized executive, innovator and entrepreneur, here are just a few of his career highlights. In addition to his role at Logitech, which we talk about in more detail in today’s episode, Jonah serves on the Board of Directors of Lands' End and is the Chairman of S.E.E., an advisory group focused on disruptive strategies, product innovation, brand development, marketing, business launch, and multi-channel retailing. Prior to Logitech, Jonah was acting as a Business Unit President at Sears Holdings, where he led and started a variety of businesses inside the company. He launched brands with notable talent including Adam Levine and Nicki Minaj, as well as ran the footwear business for the corporation. In 2003, Jonah decided to convince the world that the unthinkable was possible and built a tween-focused apparel brand based on the notion that socks don’t have to match. Jonah co-founded LittleMissMatched and directed the company as Chairman and CEO for seven years of extraordinary growth. And before all of this, Jonah was a Director & Strategist at frog design, developing disruptive strategies for Fortune 500 companies including Disney, Yahoo, Nextel, Target and Chrysler. Jonah has been profiled in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, USA Today, Fortune Small Business, CNN, and numerous other media outlets. In 2009 he was named to Crain’s New York Business’ 40 under Forty. During this weeks episode, we dig deeper into Jonah’s entrepreneurial beginnings and how he became the ultimate insider, disrupting industries from the inside by bringing both an entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial mindset. We discuss the challenges/opportunities that come with product innovation from within large organizations, how to build successful teams, and what leaders need to do within large organizations who are wanting to foster product innovation and to bring these products to market. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa

This is episode #49 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Rachit Gupta, vice president at integrated power company Vistra Energy. Based in Irving, Texas, Vistra Energy combines an innovative, customer-centric approach to retail with a focus on safe, reliable, and efficient power generation. Through its retail and generation businesses which include TXU Energy, Homefield Energy, Dynegy, and Luminant, Vistra operates in 12 states and six of the seven competitive markets in the U.S. Vistra’s retail brands serve approximately 2.9 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers across five top retail states, and its generation fleet totals approximately 41,000 megawatts of highly efficient generation capacity, with a diverse portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, coal, and solar facilities. At Vistra Energy, Rachit Gupta is a transformative people leader building high performance teams that leverage technology to increase employee productivity, and enterprise revenue and profitability with a focus on cost optimization. I In prior roles, Rachit was a Senior Director of corporate & enterprise applications at Energy Future Holdings Corporation and before that he served as a Director of architecture strategy & transformation at EFH. During this weeks episode, Rachit is digging deep into the trends that are affecting the energy and utility space including the changing US power generation mix across fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables such as solar and wind. As well as storage technology, microgrids and the prosumer energy market. In addition to the changes to the energy industry we also discuss the technology trends (such as IoT, ML/AI, 5G and Blockchain technology) that are transforming and disrupting this space, and how this technology integration is creating the “Utility of the Future”. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #48 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Dr Lyndsey Harper, Founder and CEO of Rosy, the latest company to come out of Dialexa Labs. Dialexa Labs is the internal innovation and development engine here at Dialexa. Whilst the vast majority of our day-to-day work is focused on providing technology and product development services for our clients, Dialexa Labs provides a channel for creativity and ideas from within our organization. For those ideas that we see have high potential, we use our own resources, team, and The Dialexa Method we apply to our clients' business challenges, to create unique product offerings and spin out new companies. Other the past few years Dialexa Labs has produced a number of successful companies. This includes connected car platform and the first Dialexa Labs company - Vinli - who just recently closed a $13.5 million Series B round of funding. You can hear all about Vinli and their amazing journey to date in one of my earlier episodes of Custom Made with founder and CEO Mark Haidar. Also, for those that are interested in another of our Dialexa Labs company, Robin Autopilot, you can listen to founder and CEO Justin Crandall discuss the opportunities robots bring to disrupting the lawn care industry. I’ve included links to both of these in the show notes at Dialexa.com. And now to our latest company - Rosy. Rosy is empowering women across the US with resources for their sexual wellness. Currently 38% of women in the US are suffering from low sexual desire. Today Rosy provides these 31 million women with hope, community, and real solutions. Rosy has created the first of its kind mobile application with physicians and psychologists that connects women who have low sexual desire with evidence-based resources for improvement. You can find more information about Rosy at meetrosy.com. During this weeks episode, Rosy founder and CEO, Dr Lyndsey Harper, shares her journey to becoming the founder of a technology company and launching a new product that addresses the massive deficit of resources and solutions for woman who were suffering with low libido and sexual dysfunction. Dr Harper talks about how she continues to dedicated her career to bringing awareness, education, and resources to both physicians and patients about these very common but rarely discussed issues that can often leave women feeling isolated and ashamed.

Welcome to our second year of Custom Made. If this is your first time listening, make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to get our latest episodes as they are released every Sunday. And be sure to check out our episodes from last year once you are finished with this one. This is episode #47 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Charlene Schwindt, Global Product Owner Manager at Hilti. Charlene is a product management professional with strong marketing emphasis. Her career has allowed her to have direct experience across industries such as healthcare, financial services, higher education, and technology. And Hilti is a global leader in providing technology-leading products, systems and services to the worldwide construction industry. In her role at Hilti, Charlene has built up a team of software product owners to manage global digital, SaaS, desktop, and mobile applications - twenty-three at last count. Charlene has worked across these teams to implement product owner best practices and scrum team reporting standards. This also includes leading agile transformation, coaching global product managers on software product management best practices, and getting scrum teams to predictable velocity. During this weeks episode, Charlene is discussing the challenges that come with building successful product teams within enterprise organizations, and bringing in new methods such Agile and Design Thinking to an IT organization and product business. To achieve this, Charlene breaks down the Product Management and Product Ownership roles, and how these roles and responsibilities are typically handled in both smaller and larger organizations. We also discuss the different types of tasks that are handled by Product Manager vs. Product Owner, the advantages and disadvantages of splitting these roles, and the challenges in hiring the right candidates for these different roles. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are into our second year of Custom Made, and a big THANK YOU to all of our regular listeners. This is episode #46. For our first episode of 2019, I’m sitting down with Alex Jacoby, Head of Operations at imbrex. Alex is an accomplished business operations driver, with an unusually broad base of experience developing and improving business processes. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, Alex is immersed in the world cryptoeconomics and democratizing data. At imbrex, Alex and the team are syndicating real estate data into a new kind of a globally accessible network, where data is locally sourced, validated and secured via the Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and cryptoeconomics. During this week’s episode we are discussing how organizations can go about unlocking the opportunities that blockchain technology presents, and how this technology is very much in the “Is there/doing that” stage, rather than “been there/done that”. We will be answering questions such as: - What is it really like to move your company to adopt blockchain technology? - How can an organization be comfortable with not knowing what is going to happen next? - How do you define who is going to build “what” to make blockchain scalable? Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #45 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Justin Marshall, Sr. Product Designer at Pandora. Throughout his career Justin has driven effective product design at various tech companies; including Shutterstock, Thomson Reuters, and most recently Pandora. At Pandora Justin has helped to create high performing, cross-functional product teams that are highly collaborative, empathetic, and agile. Justin is a pragmatic designer, employing various user-centric and data-driven methodologies to help his teams solve tough problems and deliver value to users. During our conversation Justin is sharing how as a Sr Product Designer at Pandora, he is constantly designing with data in mind. The most important thing in designing with data is both understanding your user/customer needs and the problems they need you to solve, and understanding the data that you have available in order to design the right display of that data for your users. This requires both designers and data engineers developing capabilities in each others field to be able to better understand the opportunities and limitations each team has within your organization. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #44 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Adam Paulisick, Chief Product Officer at MAYA - A Boston Consulting Group company. Adam brings more than a decade of digital transformation, product design, and data-driven marketing and sales experience. His experience includes senior leadership positions at Nielsen Catalina Solutions, U.S. and European based roles at The Nielsen Company, and Commerce Signals where he worked with hundreds of global manufacturers, financial institutions, leading media agencies and publishers, in addition to data-enabling technology platforms. In his role as Chief Product Officer at MAYA, Adam helps to create the Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable (which is what the name MAYA stands for) products and services in a user-centered world. Adam’s focus is on helping companies assess what platforms, people, and products they already have and using those building blocks with today's best technology and techniques to design and build working prototypes that more often than not integrate back into legacy systems. Working in an agile manner, the design-build-test approach continues to prove that human-centered organizations return better for shareholders and create cultures that deliver value instead of simply managing it. During this week’s episode of Custom Made, Adam is discussing these aspects of building successful products, what makes a great product and why delightful products don’t always make successful products, and how to manage existing infrastructure and systems when building new products and capabilities. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #43 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Dialexa founder and CEO, Scott Harper. Earlier this week we hosted a panel event at our Dialexa offices on the topic of Business Impact Innovation. Right after the event, I grabbed Scott and we recorded some of the key themes that were discussed by the panelists and the attendees. Real quick, when we talk about Business Impact Innovation we mean bringing innovative thinking to solve real business problems and needs, that is measurable and impactful to the current state of the organization. Not exploring emerging technologies with no direct link or impact on your business today or in the next couple of years. With the notable closures of innovation labs for organizations such as Nordstrom and The New York Times, you could argue that “innovation” can mean putting a target on your back. But, we saw the importance of having an event on this topic with innovation leaders who are putting in place the right process to solving problems, people to drive the change, and yes in some cases new technology to solve their organization needs. Two reports have also been recently published that reinforce the need for this to be a topic that should be discussed across enterprise organizations. The first is from Forrester on CIO Predictions for 2019. Their predictions for CIOs next year include the need to embrace tech-led innovation revenue and speed metrics. How will what you are doing impact the growth of the company and the speed in which you drive change and roll out new offerings. Also, that Forrester full expects a tech moonshot meltdown to happen that will cause many organizations to refocus their efforts on the business needs of today and near-term, not the future. IBM’s Watson seems to be firmly in the cross-hairs of that conversation. What was also interesting was that they expect 20% of top-performing firms will be looking for new CIOs in 2019, which if you are in that role today looking for partners like Dialexa to support in accelerating projects and initiatives seems more important than ever. The second report we discussed at our event was a State of Innovation report that has been recently released from CB Insights. A couple of the takeaways from this included: - Corporate innovation is slow: 60% of companies said it takes a year or longer to create new products. Corporate propensity for building over partnering or buying slows down innovation. - Companies lack confidence in their ability to innovate: The companies CB Insights spoke with found evidence that innovation becomes progressively more difficult as ideas move into development and then into commercialization. I’ll include links to both of these in the show notes for this episode at Dialexa.com. Be sure to tweet me @dougplatts with your thoughts on this episode and your thoughts on the business impact innovation. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #42 of Custom Made and this week is the second part of my conversation with Jordan Bergtraum, a Product Management Executive and Enterprise SaaS Expert. Jordan joined me last week where we discussed the role of Product Manager. For many organizations, the Product Manager role is being defined and redefined as companies and their products mature. With that in mind, Jordan and I wanted to bring clarity to this role, and have a very honest discussion about what parts of Product Management should get more attention. And just as important, what functions require less attention. The end game is to help PMs deliver better products. For part one of our conversation we broke down the current state of product management, and detailed five things to spend less time on (or completely stop), to make room for higher value activities. During the rest of our conversation, Jordan is detailing the five things product managers should start doing (or do more of) to continue their evolution toward product hero. Be sure to tweet me @dougplatts with your thoughts on these episodes and your thoughts on the responsibilities of a product manager. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #41 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Jordan Bergtraum, a Product Management Executive and Enterprise SaaS Expert. For over a decade Jordan has been growing B2B Enterprise SaaS product revenue while mastering retention via needle moving roadmaps, value-based product messaging, and high functioning PM teams. He has expertise in two-sided marketplaces, wildly complex business logic & configuration, and business intelligence products. As the head of product management for a range B2B SaaS companies, Jordan has grown flagship products from $75M to $130M+ over 3 years and $10M to $30M in just 2.5 years. Jordan brings experience from the pharmaceutical, legal, higher education and facilities management verticals. This week is the start of a two-part conversation with Jordan on the role of Product Manager. For many organizations, the Product Manager role is being defined and redefined as companies and their products mature. With that in mind, Jordan and I wanted to bring clarity to this role, and have a very honest discussion about what parts of Product Management should get more attention. And just as important, what functions require less attention. The end game is to help PMs deliver better products. For part one of our conversation we are breaking down the current state of product management, and detailing five things to spend less time on (or completely stop), to make room for higher value activities. Be sure to check out next week's episode where we will detail five things product managers should start doing (or do more of) to continue their evolution toward product hero. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #40 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Chris Curran, Chief Technologist and CTO New Ventures, PwC. At PwC Chris is responsible for technology strategy and innovation. In his role at PwC Chris works closely with senior client management on their most complex and strategic technology issues, helping to evaluate emerging technologies, define the business and technology transformation agenda, and organize the work to get it done. Chris also serves as the CTO for the firm's New Ventures group focused on identifying and growing new digital products. Chris has global experience in designing and leading the implementation of high-value technology organizations and initiatives that create tangible value for his clients, most recently in the consumer products, internet banking, property and casualty insurance and health insurance industries. This week I am talking with Chris Curran on why PwC saw the business opportunity for creating the New Ventures group, and how they are taking an enterprise view on productizing ideas. During our conversation, we discuss how as an organization moves from being a service driven business to a product company there is a need to taking a longer view to potential products. Just because an idea or application worked for a particular project or client need, that does not mean it will be a successful product when scaled to a larger audience. It is a data point, but the idea should be validated further by gaining the potential customer’s perspective rather than solely relying on internal opinions. Also, during this episode we discuss how an organization talks about digital is important to how it transforms, is it top-down or bottom-up, is it the whole organization or a small "Special Forces" team that is driving the technology change. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #39 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by Swamy Vasudevan, Vice President of Strategy at Ericsson and Russell Villemez, Sr Partner and Head of Technology Strategy here at Dialexa. For our regular listeners, you will remember that Swamy joined me previously on episode #35 of Custom Made where he did a deep dive into the telecom, discussing the perfect storm that is hitting that industry. And Russell who has a background in telecommunications, is a former CTO at HP, and currently a Feld Group affiliate and sr. partner here at Dialexa, has spoken here on topics including enterprise data architecture, and digital transformation. I couldn’t think of two better guests to discuss today’s topic. This week I wanted to bring together both Swamy and Russell to discuss a new technology that is going to impact everyone and every business - 5G Do a search on 5G and you will see news on a daily basis about this new technology and partnerships being put in place. Ericsson is at the forefront of a lot of these conversations and partnerships, and so who better to join Russell and I than Ericsson’s VP Strategy, Swamy. During this episode we discuss the 5G landscape, what Ericsson is doing in this space, we get technical about this new technology and explore the impact that it will have on our lives and our companies. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #38 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by James Utley, Senior Manager and Product Designer here at Dialexa. James is an experienced designer skilled in Information Design, Logo Design, User Experience, Branding & Identity, and Typography with a history of working in the information technology and services industry. James has joined me on previous episodes of Custom Made where he was discussing how to scale design across hundreds of products with Design Systems, how to navigate the politics of user research, and how to use lead design research to get to the “why” of your product. Be sure to check out those episodes once you have finished this one. Last week on Custom Made, I had Rowdy Howell on the show sharing some of the major themes that were being discussed at Strata Data Conference which he recently attended in New York. This week James had just returned from Barcelona where he attended the Service Design Days conference, and I managed to grab some time with him to hear some of the main topics being discussed there. During this weeks episode, we explore a range of topics such as: - How service design brings humanity back into the products and services we create - Design that ignores the ecosystem is doomed to fail - Service designers need to have the ability to both zoom in and out of the experience, and how sometimes you need to go slow to move fast - And how our work should shape the tools we utilize, rather than letting the tools shape the work Be sure to check out the show notes at dialexa.com for this episode where I will include links to details on the Service Design Days conference. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Hey, everybody, this is Doug Platts and welcome to Custom Made. If you this is your first time listening be sure to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, and everywhere else you listen to Custom Made to get our latest episodes every Sunday. This is episode #37 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by Rowdy Howell, Senior Data Engineer here at Dialexa. Rowdy has joined me previously on Custom Made where he was discussing the various challenges enterprise organizations have when it comes to data. When you have finished with this episode, be sure to check out episode #34 to hear more about draining your organization’s data swamp. As a Senior Data Engineer here at Dialexa, Rowdy has helped solve complicated problems using machine learning models, designed and deployed data streaming architectures, and pushed the capabilities of the data team here. This week Rowdy and myself are discussing some of the major trends being discussed at the Strata Data Conference which Rowdy recently attended in New York. Presented by O’Reilly and Cloudera, the Strata Data Conference brings together big data, cutting-edge data science, and new business fundamentals into a three-day conference that offers a deep dive into emerging techniques and technologies. During this weeks episode, we are exploring five major themes that were being discussed during this conference: 1) Decision makers playing an increasingly important role in data 2) Your data science team is fundamentally different than your agile solutions team 3) Many businesses scenarios can’t accept black box models - interpretability on the rise 4) More and more companies looking towards fast data as technology integration improves 5) AI ethics becoming a hot topic now to prevent murky waters when the tech arrives Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode where I will include links to details on the Strata Data Conference and some of the keynotes we discuss on today’s episode. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup