Learn more at https://8bits.tv
Learn more at https://8bits.tv
Hello
Brandon Minnick:What an intro
Chloe Condon:shout out to Canva as always for our incredible amping up music How are you doing today, Brandon?
Brandon Minnick:I'm feeling good. It's a we're closing in on the the end of fiscal year here at Microsoft, which means it's review time and our yearly reviews are coming up. And so it's the time of year we all we all love to hate where we have to gather up all our metrics and write down what we did this year
Chloe Condon:can be kind of intimidating, right it's Connect season if you're not familiar, and you're you're not a Microsoft employee, it's kind of Quarterly Review season so everyone's filling out their connects talking about what they did what they want to be doing. And I tweeted a picture the other day of the Olsen twins holding up Barbie dolls themselves. And that's very much how I feel as I'm writing about my own accomplishments, it feels very awkward to be almost like writing my own bio in third person. People you know, it's that time of year.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, it's a it's I have a love hate relationship with it. Because it's a it's just a lot of work. You have to go back and remember everything you did and pull all the numbers and metrics. Microsoft's very data focused, data driven company. So you can't just say, hosted a show called eight bits. They want to see things like viewer count, and how many how many likes did we get? So hopefully, every out there's Washington likens. Subscribe, everyone better
Chloe Condon:be viewing. If you're listening to this, you better be also viewing it. No, I'm just kidding.
Brandon Minnick:That's right. Yeah, make sure Chloe and I get all the five star reviews so that we get a five star review for our performance at Microsoft as well. But yeah, that's, that's what's been on my mind this week. Have you been?
Chloe Condon:I've been good. I am wearing a hat. For those who are listening to the podcast it says I Well, first of all, let me describe the whole outfit. I think it's a very Microsoft themed episode, as we do work for Microsoft, but my shirt is a lovely shirt that I purchased from the Microsoft employees store. It's called a cold shoulder shirt for when you're kind of hot, but you're all kind of cold and you don't want fabric on your shoulders that says Microsoft on it. But also so very fashionable. Shout out to having very cool women's clothing for Microsoft. But I have this out I don't remember who gave me this hat and where it was from. But I believe this was a swag item. Someone got it at a conference and gave it to me and it's a white hat that just says I love meeting on it. Not plurals. meetings, just meeting
Brandon Minnick:one meeting.
Chloe Condon:And this is this is sarcasm Brandon because I've been in so many meetings lately. I don't know if it's planning for the next cycle. Or if there's just I've been reading a lot of articles about people having spikes in their amount of meetings during the pandemic, and especially during 2020. But I wanted, I was wearing this because I wanted to bring up this really cool thing that Satya tweeted out, again, very Microsoft heavy episode. And it's this this tweet that says, as we shift to hybrid work, small changes and work habits could make a big difference. Our latest research proves what may have felt back to back meetings challenge our well being and short breaks could be a remedy. And it's this really interesting brain research article that Microsoft put out about how it's important to make sure you have breaks between your meetings. And I know, this seems so simple and so basic, but I think I needed to hear this. Because when you have time to do work, when you're always in a meeting, and I just thought this was so cool that our CEO tweeted about this, and that there's features now, in teams that can make it such that you can add these buffers at the beginning or the end of your meeting to make sure you have time to hydrate. You've got time to play Animal Crossing, if you need a little break, you know, whatever it is bathroom break, anything that you may need, because we are human beings. Have you found yourself in a lot of meetings lately, Brandon?
Brandon Minnick:Yeah. And well, I just agree so much. Because, yeah, the meetings get stacked up back to back. And at least back in the days where we'd go into the office, there would be some, a little bit of buffer time, like you wouldn't necessarily schedule a meeting in this conference room. And then as soon as that ends schedule another one in the next conference room,
Chloe Condon:no, cuz you need a snack, you need some cold brew, you need to look cry, you need to chat with your, you need to pet your dog. breaks, right. So
Brandon Minnick:yeah, very, very much support that. And, you know, it's funny, I found most meetings, ever since we went fully remote during the pandemic. There's this kind of five minute buffer period where if you don't show up until 1204, for your 12 o'clock meeting, still totally fine. And so, yeah, I'm a proponent of why don't we bake that in at the end of the meeting? So every meeting ends five minutes, early, 10 minutes, early, 15 minutes early? Like, do we really need a full hour?
Chloe Condon:Right? Probably not. People can check out a link to that article@aka.ms slash meetings. Right? Can you tell? I it has a bunch of research in it and stuff. But like, I totally agree. And it's so funny that you say that Brandon because I thought I was a bad person because I was showing up like three to four minutes late to a meeting. But maybe that was just my brain in my body telling me that I needed a break, you know. So I I'm all for and I've also been very appreciative of co workers lately, who if we have an extra eight minutes left, we won't go the full hour if we don't need to, like shout out to people who understand that in fact, I don't love meeting. I need a break. So I've been very good this week about making sure that I say say yes to most of the meetings that I can but also giving myself the space to like marinate on things and like think about the meetings that I go hop to and from so shout out to Satya for tweeting that I thought that was really cool to like read coming from my own company. And also now I'm going to make all meetings like 20 minutes and when people are familiar anything I'm going to be like look Satya said we need breaks between meetings. Sorry. just following orders, okay. Any other exciting I saw that I pretty sure builds the date for Bill was announced I saw Jeff sandquist tweet that so super excited for build coming up.
Brandon Minnick:That's right. Do you know the date I'm trying to look it up?
Chloe Condon:Look it up I want to say it's me 26th and 27th
Brandon Minnick:Yes, yes it is.
Chloe Condon:My gosh, I was right. I'm very excited. I'm going to be doing some fun things and the students own maybe I don't know maybe there will be an eight bits presence at build you never know. We will be off for the show that week. But we promise to be giving you some cool content that will recap you on the following week. Um, any other things going on in your world Brandon.
Brandon Minnick:Oh, now just tried to focus on this. My my yearly self review and get that out the door. Yeah, I can finish it this week because things get busy really soon.
Chloe Condon:Oh my goodness coming up. Absolutely. I think I'm gonna finish my connect this week. I should also mention, oh my gosh, Brandon. I am keynoting an animal crossing conference this week. I'm so excited. deserted island DevOps. If y'all have never heard of it, it is a wonderful this their second year doing it. They started it at the start of the Panini. It is a DevOps conference that is all done on an animal crossing Island. So I'm very excited for that. There's some really cool, awesome speakers. I'm very excited. I'm giving a talk called people of the world DevOps your life, I'm guessing those reference and it's all about how I've applied DevOps to my everyday life and embrace DevOps in my life as my way of organizing things. I don't know if you know this, Brandon, I've written a blog post about it, but I do retros retrospectives with my boyfriend every year. Fun fact, I've applied DevOps in very weird ways in my life. So check out that talk. If you you don't need to have Animal Crossing to join it's free conference. And there's some really cool and fun. I think maybe some previous guests are speaking on it off to check that though, but very excited for that.
Brandon Minnick:guests. Yeah.
Chloe Condon:You intro you intro this time?
Brandon Minnick:Oh, I am. I'm so glad she was able to join us on the show today. Because this guest and I we go way back, we both used to work at Xamarin before Microsoft acquired us. But it's been fascinating and getting to know her even better, as we've been chatting before the show and preparing because she's been in and out Microsoft way longer than any of us. So without further ado, squeaky Welcome to the show.
Chloe Condon:Hi,
Unknown:let's I like that we all unknowingly got the hat memo. And
Chloe Condon:yeah, you know, we love to rock a hat. If you noticed, if you've ever tuned in live to our show before we have this cue or I guess I guess on the podcast logo as well. We've got the hat on Brandon's representations, right of a raccoon here. So it's, it's become it's also when your hair is not fully brush. Yeah,
Sweeky Satpathy:yeah. I mean, my team knows if I'm wearing a hat. It goes, Yeah, it's not not a good hair day.
Chloe Condon:Sweetie, I have had the pleasure of meeting you and working with you. Almost every Friday for the last month or so on Hello, world. Um, you've been hosted co hosting with the lovely April on there. I only knew you from that until we had you on a guest for the show. So tell the lovely humans at home, who you are what you do Microsoft?
Unknown:Sure. So apart from my weekly hosting duties every Friday on hello world. I work at Microsoft. Like Brandon said, I came in through this admin acquisition. So I do work closely with this applet team. I work on a team called mobile customer advisory team. So we kind of just like help a bunch of you know, customers trying to like figure out their mobile story how they want to use Azure, how they want to use them red rocks, and then maybe having some future, you know, content, hopefully coming out about you know, dotnet Maui. So it's a very good team, I get to work with really awesome customers. I mentioned I'll name drop a few cool ones in a bit. But yeah, it's this really good team. And like you said, I've had a history with Microsoft. And I guess that's what you both want to hear about.
Chloe Condon:I mean, we got a little sneak peek the other day when we chatted with you pre show, but I think you have one of the most Microsoft the journeys of the show thus far. What do you think brand new?
Brandon Minnick:For sure. I mean, and we've also had Carmen on who was at Microsoft for 20 plus years, but he didn't start out the same way you did. speaky. So yeah, let's let's go way back. So we have folks in the tech and what their origin story is. So bring us bring us all the way back. How did you get started?
Unknown:Oh, man, well, first off, I have to say I will check my privilege at the door. I fortunately had very supportive parents are always like, go do what you want one play puzzles, you already go into tech shows. So I've always had support bias my so I guess like the starting point of my journey would be in. So I am from India. So I grew up in Mumbai. But my first like foray into tech was I went to Dubai, to study for my bachelor's in computer science while I was in school. So this is day, I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm dating myself. So this is I'm talking about 2011 2012 way back when. So Microsoft student partners, the program that you know about it now was in its very budding early stages. And I was fortunate enough to be selected to be a student partner for my university. So that was when my first story started. Although if you asked my parents, they would probably say Oh, she always wanted to join Microsoft. Ah, so But yeah, that was that was essentially when I started my journey. So as a student partner and that was amazing. Like the the program now is awesome. But even back then it was a pretty cool because I got so much exposure. I got to like, you know, hang out in the Microsoft campus in the Gulf. They used to give us training sessions. And back then it was the era of the windows one. So that's when my love story with the windows one began. So yeah, I will I've always like in like Microsoft as a company even back then the culture was like awesome people were always like so open and even though we were students they were happy to like hang out with us and you know teach us things and help us go back to you know our school and teach other folks are things that we learned so yeah, I guess I like I thought bias mouth sure it's all been all these years but it was it was like super super fun. And so like while we were there, I was also a finalist for Imagine Cup. Way back when so the UAE 2012 magic a finalist, my team was on it
Chloe Condon:timely I am in the process of mentoring the finalists right now and I gotta say, I'm sure I'm humbled bragged about these Imagine Cup contestants on the show before but these are some of the smartest kids like Hyundai is going to be my boss someday I am fully equipped everything. Smart masks to robotics to oh my goodness, like tags that track cattle. I am amazed by every single student in every project through I love it. Oh, yeah.
Unknown:Amazing. The Scout I project is best. I clearly mentioned it and I checked it out of 1000s. So good to
Chloe Condon:see him. protag the finals will be coming up soon. So everybody, check out
Unknown:check out. Yep, I started that. I know how much of hard work it is. So yeah, I mean, and let me let me actually share this with you. So it's really fun. So our Imagine Cup journey, right? So this is a I can play the video, I'll put the share the link so these guys can include in the notes. But this is essentially us talking about our project. So very young, squeaky very well, that's that's how dated it is. That's a Windows for it. My friend My teammates hand. And that's our little app over there. So we we our app was like a desktop app and Windows Phone companion apps, it was called Cloud scrubs. Has this sort of you know, keep cloud scrubs because it's medical records and medical history but in the cloud.
Brandon Minnick:I get it.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, I mean, the two of my teammates are actually still in Microsoft right now like we still like we're still friends and we still talk so yeah, do not discredit the Imagine Cup. You guys like the finalists. They're cool. And they make it to places
Chloe Condon:for sure. Like me, there's a future like all of these students I mentoring. There's a future speaking there who's going to be at Microsoft, you know, how long have you been at Microsoft today?
Unknown:So I interned for a bit so as I was a student partner for the last year of university, I interned in Microsoft in in Dubai, so Microsoft cars, and then so it's been what Brandon? It's like you were just talking about it. It's It's been five years since our acquisition. So we've actually completed five years at Microsoft. That's insane. Wow.
Chloe Condon:My goodness, that means you get your crystal in the mail Clippy comes in hand you the big Publishers Clearing House check. I made that part up. I wish that was part of it.
Brandon Minnick:all worth it.
Chloe Condon:You soft in your veins for a while now.
Unknown:It's so much so so much so that I also like I love doing research for this podcast, but it just reminded me of my obsession with Microsoft. Let me pull up another really fun picture talking of Microsoft and windows for right. So this was a event where with Microsoft golf, and I think this is actually when I was interning for them. So this like it was it was the era of windows for let's admit it. Okay, so the contest was, can you come in and like tweet, and so the person on stage is doing it on a Windows Phone and I had an Android phone on me back then it was not staged. I was not, you know, planted person in the crowd to do this. But yeah, like we did it and they tweeted faster than my phone did. And that's when my phone was hooked. Windows Phone. And this is the Microsoft Gods page where they have this picture of me tagged me and there it is to show the session with
Brandon Minnick:Windows. Yeah. And for everybody listening to the podcast, it's a picture of squeaky holding a giant sign that says my phone just got smoked by Windows.
Sweeky Satpathy:I tell you guys I tell you it was
Brandon Minnick:smoked by Windows Phone
Chloe Condon:I'm tweeting a picture right now of all these windows for the pictures because I think we're just going to get viewership from Windows Phone fans like I will go to conferences and guys will come up to me and go Hey, I know you work at Microsoft and you work on Azure and like you know students stuff and everything but could you talk to them about getting the Windows Phone back like there is a passionate small but mighty group who loves Windows phones and I never got to play with one I'm I was only culturally aware of it once I joined Microsoft. So tell me about the windows but I need to understand
Unknown:Yeah I should I should I should send Chloe one of the gazillion devices that I just have lying around on the just like I feel like I look around and I just like so I have like I did grab my 1520 so this is original family okay it's the size of my face so and like to boot I have a picture like I put the exam lens monkey on the unicorn sticker on it if you were at the last evolve you probably saw me running around with this phone cuz that's what I had it I bought it like I took it with me everywhere it was like it was my claim to fame. But yeah, it's like so close basically imagine windows on your phone. So with tiles and like you know flippy tile animations and you know merged in Microsoft experience on a phone Nokia undestructible so this thing has gone through so many things it's it went through the universal ride with me the Jurassic Park was a god wet thrown around and it is solid if I if I charged this up is going to turn on. So you got the greatness of Nokia and indestructible with the operating system of windows so like what's the like? So I
Chloe Condon:feel like I had I was very cool in high school I had a blackberry that maybe had windows on it but the idea of a Windows Phone Oh, I was very cool. I wanted a blackberry I was alone about that full keyboard like cuz back then. Like we basically had razors and like you know, flip phones when I was like a little business woman in like 10th grade just like texting my friends. I needed a full keyboard. Okay.
Unknown:You just want to do you want to text someone on Excel? Isn't that it even just doing a Kelly Rowland and you're just like, is that it? Is that Yeah,
Chloe Condon:I really really wanted a sidekick a T Mobile sidekick? Do you remember those that had like the full keyboard. So I feel like having a blackberry as a young child was me living out my sidekick fantasy because I had Cingular wireless, I did not have T Mobile.
Brandon Minnick:Check this out in the comments window was saying he had a Windows Phone as well. And the 920 was pretty much dead. The battery would only hold charge for about 15 minutes. So they drove over with their car. It still works through it as hard as they could into the road still worked. Oh my gosh, split into three pieces. And took took a lot of effort to get the screen to crack.
Unknown:Yeah, you know all those jokes about Nokia, indestructible. It's like I've lived it, I believe.
Chloe Condon:And I have been on that jurassic park ride and I know how treacherous and when it gets on that ride. So that phone is basically like a cooler. Like, I don't know how it's
Unknown:huge. It's so big. It's the only tablet I've ever owned. Honestly, no other fabrics given me joy. So now I just like I'm just gonna wait. Maybe they come back to the middle. So who knows? But anyways, yeah, that was a nice little tangent, or, you know, byla for Windows for history lesson.
Chloe Condon:It was great. I got more.
Unknown:For sure. For sure. But yeah, just like essentially the all I essentially wanted to like highlight I'm very young in my career. If anyone asked me I still don't think I still think I'm pretty young compared to everyone else. But it's just just follow your lead. Just do what you like. Like I identified myself as like someone who likes Microsoft, but I just chased after my dream like a crazy person. But yeah, that's just do what you enjoy, and, and surround yourself with like fun people. Like Like I said, my teammates on the Imagine Cup project. They're in Microsoft right now. So I just feel like my success is like 75% contributed to just like everyone around me like my friends, my co workers, my colleagues, you know, managers, it's like, like just surround yourself with good people like find cool friends and schools will do you know, janky Imagine Cup and watch your Windows Phone get smoked, you know? And then you know, you might just end up end up where you want to end up but yeah, it's like a text great. I mean, I feel like that is like you know, I think it was was it euploid the other day who tweeted like you came with your authentic self you came like for your stand up?
Chloe Condon:Yeah, I sported my Britney Spears t shirt a great find in the target men section the other day. Oh, yeah.
Unknown:Bodies XL t shirt By the way, and I had to roll up the sleeves. So yeah. Section boys session is very sad. Yeah, it's a I feel like anyone everyone's journey into tech is like unique right? I I did the only reason I probably hung out in the in in our tech area for so long is just that we just say you can you can come to Microsoft as your authentic self and not not feel, you know, like embarrassed or like because I my team knows how quirky and weird I am and they accept me more for it. I feel like and we're all equally quirky and weird that way. So I think that's how it is like we all just say the same.
Chloe Condon:Sometimes you just gotta find people who have The same weird as you and just be weird altogether.
Unknown:Sick. Yeah, but yeah, so anyway, so we were at work so let's see. Let's go back to sweetie in Dubai now interning at Microsoft feeling very cool about herself. Yeah, like Microsoft's like awesome that way they were very supportive. They let me intern, you know, and I learned a ton made cool friends. I think about Xbox 360 out of my interning gig if I remember right as an intern gift that you do internships in Microsoft are the best they give you so much free swag. It's awesome. You want to get into the internship program for sure. The
Brandon Minnick:Xbox?
Sweeky Satpathy:Yeah,
Chloe Condon:yeah, let's do like a What is it? 21 Jump Street are they like go back to high school and they pretend they're high school students? I think you and I, we do. We just kind of like put some cool hats on we hold some skateboards. And we participate in the magic cup. We get an internship so we can do all this cool stuff as your mentor.
Unknown:Yeah. Okay, there's a set plan set plan. So yeah. For Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, so that was the vibe. And then I after that, though, to get to where I am today, though. I there was a break. I took I was in Boston doing my Masters for a few years. And then that then, of course, came Xamarin. And now we're at Microsoft. So and now I feel like I completed my full circle. So
Chloe Condon:yeah. Wow. And then now, okay, important question. Have you met Clippy in person yet? But
Unknown:I have not met Clippy but but I wanted to ask Brandon Brandon Do you remember acquisition party where we got to meet Scott Guthrie.
Brandon Minnick:I've ever seen him I never
Sweeky Satpathy:got that was my moment. That was
Chloe Condon:my first hand out ready to shake
Unknown:his shirt. I was so happy. I was initially I was like and know the line. There's no way he's in the bear day he was in the building. He was 10 feet away from me. I just like that's it. This is my moment. I walk up to her give him my spiel. And he he met a curly haired crazy person that they among all the 1000s of diamond employees that he had to meet that day. But I was like, I was very excited to meet him.
Sweeky Satpathy:Your books? I've read your talks. Oh my god. So yeah, you're
Brandon Minnick:you're way ahead of me, because I mean, I don't feel this way anymore. But to be honest, when Xamarin announced the acquisition from Microsoft, I was kind of bummed. I was like, ah, I really love working at Xamarin. And I haven't really used a Windows PC in 510 years. And I don't know how I feel about this, but I love it. Now. It's an amazing company to work at. Obviously, we've been here five years. But yeah, I can be I can honestly say I didn't know who Scott Guthrie was when he came.
Unknown:Have you have to manifest that moment for yourself again, man. I mean, that was that was it. That was my moment. Does I Oh, so great. So
Chloe Condon:I snuck off on my first day at Microsoft I did this is pre Panini, of course a little over two years ago. And my first day at Microsoft. I snuck out to get lunch with my manager and with Ashley who McNamara on our team. And I think that was the moment where someone in a Clippy costume showed up. So I missed my opportunity. And But yeah, I know it'll happen. I know on my journey at Microsoft. It just wasn't meant to be on that day. Like we needed to meet under different circumstances, I think in a Word doc probably
Unknown:manifest that for you to do in my daily thoughts now,
Chloe Condon:I love that for me. But what you were talking about how you bring your full authentic self to Microsoft's wiki and I have been loving your tweets. I started following you during HelloWorld and you tweeted like the best thing the other day it said that I always have three things going on in my life and I think it was something like I electronics Legos and food. Yeah,
Unknown:technically it's a bread baking book. That's my thing now so pre it I feel like it got a lot more crazy during Panini but pre Panini I was at all I was like getting into the hole I will make my own bread that sounds cool. So I was just like into the hole you know bread baking zone and then that's when it went overboard. But yeah, so now basically my brain is just like, what's the next bread? I want to bake? Oh, electronics.
Sweeky Satpathy:Oh, Legos. So that's it?
Chloe Condon:Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, we're going over to sweeties house when we can go back there again, because it sounds like a delicious fun time.
Unknown:It's great. It's baking bread is the best. No one realizes it. But your whole house basically smells like a bakery. There's no loss. It's like your house smells great. You have nice stuff to eat at the end of it. It's like perfect. Love it.
Chloe Condon:So is that what you usually do? Outside of work, like whatever, I know you were hacking on some really cool like a Gameboy project at least Yeah,
Unknown:Yeah, I do. As I do like a bunch of stuff, I feel like I there's been like, things all around that keeps inspiring me every single day to do different things. Electronics definitely is this because we do so much software every day. And I just study a bit of electronics in school. So it's like this unknown area that I want to understand more. So I'm constantly looking for, like, you know, ways to put my hands into it. So this is what I did hack on this weekend. So this is a DIY Gameboy, so you can actually see like the little motherboard and stuff inside of it. So it's a it's a modular Gameboy. So you can actually plug in its regular Arduino microcontroller Board inside of it comes with a cool LCD screen with all your keypad controls, open source hardware, open source operating system that runs on it. So essentially, you can flash emulators to run you know, you know, your Pokemon game or play Tetris on this on Play Sonic on this, or you can just build your own games. And it's been pretty awesome. Because again, like, you can see, I love gaming. So this is just like another way to sort of just explore things I like, and still just inside of enough technology, I can feel confident that I'm not doing stupid things, but you know, also be able to like, you know, course correct if I go crazy, but yeah, I mean, I do enjoy that. And I recommend anyone who really likes you know, gameboys into segments like just try get their hands dirty, because it's a lot more satisfying than just going to a store and buying a Gameboy because you didn't buy like these, you know, pre set pre made kits, you can flash stuff on it. But this is so much more satisfying. You can spend a couple of hours putting it together and then you say, Oh my god, I built it with my own hands. And
Chloe Condon:shout out to Jill, previous guests on the on the show in the pod. She says sweet, he's an icon. I'm so happy I logged on today. I know for a fact right now, if she's still watching, she is looking up this custom game waving right now because she's the reason I bought the Nintendo Lego set. So lots of Nintendo fan awesome.
Unknown:Yeah. If you're watching listening, the company's called clockwork pie. You can just look them up. So this is the clockwork pie game shell. Yeah, so they do some cool stuff. And there's a bunch of other companies I do this to say find what you like, honestly, but yeah, always keep learning. Here's my another lesson. I feel and I'm like Diego, yeah. Why don't you keep learning, you should keep learning I feel like it's, it's, it's, it's something you need to keep doing it keep like, can always be I do this for work. Don't let work define yourself. So find stuff to do outside of it.
Chloe Condon:I've been taking apart some furbies and making some Beanie Baby taxidermy during the pandemic, getting my creative on. What about you, Brandon, what have you been doing as like your outside of work fun?
Brandon Minnick:Well, ironically, by what I do for work is also what I do for my hobby, which is really, really fortunate,
Chloe Condon:not the official App of the pod, I just made a jingle for
Unknown:your chance to band and invited me to be the early tester for good trends. And I felt so loved.
Brandon Minnick:Yeah, back in the day, yeah, I released that app to the App Store. Like just shortly either, just before just after the pandemic hit. And what was funny, it was that was going to be Yeah, I was like, everybody needs a pandemic project. Right. And so I'll do this thinking this is back in the day, when the pandemic was only supposed to be a couple weeks, right? We're just gonna lock down, this is gonna blow over, everything's gonna be fine. And yeah, well, would I meet up with friends afterwards? And they'll be like, would you do it'd be like I released an app to the App Store. And then what are we 14 months later and the paper is still going and I'm still pushing out updates. So yeah, no, it's it's been a really, really fun hobby kind of great distraction, kind of lose myself in some code and and selfishly make something that I really wanted. And so hopefully, other people enjoy it
Unknown:too. I find me if I may add to that, that add the brand isn't working on first of all, it's a great app, anybody wants to check it out? It's a great like, if you're here to uh, that's what Xamarin does. That's how cool Xamarin is number one and number two, he's done so many cool contributions to the Xamarin community toolkit and on behalf of the community Thank you Brandon because you know we're all benefiting society
Chloe Condon:put an act just put in your clip Oh,
Unknown:yeah. Definitely add that you can Oh, I mean, I know you guys are talking about connects oh my god connects are also not my same like brand and it's like, love hate. I like doing the feedback for other people. But yeah, that's such an awesome person. You know? I'm like right about myself. Oh, that's why I like this part. I got to like explore past me and stuff I'd forgotten about. So yeah,
Chloe Condon:and we cannot go without mentioning squeaky you're wearing a Disneyland shirt which, if you've ever watched the show before, it's pretty rare. We'll get we'll get lost in the conversation sometimes but we always touch on theme parks on the show. We got to ask you, it looks like you're passionate about the Disney franchise. Tell us about your
Unknown:Here we go. On behalf on behalf of the set buddy system that's me and I we have harangued our parents to take us to every single Disney Land in the world at this point, including when I was once I was like, I graduated like from Boston so we I finished bu literally two days later, we flew out to Disney worlds. We had a five day vacation and Disney World we stayed in there like we went to a park every It was amazing. And unfortunately, the pandemic ruin my sister's version of her graduation, you know gift so we will get to that soon. But yes, I will love theme parks universal Disney just just name a theme park. I love it. Yeah, I'm like, I think Disney obsessed I have to say now that I think about it. I am fairly Disney obsessed. I do. I don't like Mickey Mouse. I'm not the biggest Mickey Mouse fan. I'm more of a Donald Duck fan. I don't know why. Yeah, say I love Disney love the man love everything they do. But it's Donald Duck for me. I don't know. It's just say something about Donald's kind of character.
Chloe Condon:So what's your like priorities at a theme park? Are you like planning out your whole time? Are you being spontaneous? Are you getting like certain snacks? What's the day in the park
Unknown:for you? Joey? No, no, no, no, no, it has to it's a grid anal about this. We grab the paper map, we optimize our route. Make sure we have the fast passes time for where we're going to go. Because then it says unless you do this then it's like, like I said, Our parents are dragged through this process with us. Right? So unless we optimize this and give them like, no, we're going to make sure this is going to be worth your while because we have to get approval from them. Are you coming in this ride with us? I don't go eat at this point. Okay, then we'll swap it out this way. So it's a completely plan like this. We start the day with like one map, which is like in the back of my pocket by the end of the day. It's all crumpled and crinkled because you know it's been like oh, no, we have to go here. We have to go here. It's all planned. It's a completely to the minute optimized tiring to get every single you know,
Chloe Condon:I love this. This is my literal. I have a weekly reoccurring dream where I'm just really stressed out making sure I hit all the things in the theme park I need to hit I'm very much the same way. How about you Brandon? Are you like more spontaneous?
Brandon Minnick:Are you like us? Oh, gosh, so it's been a while but I used to go to parks all the time, both specifically in Orlando. So growing up in Orlando, my dad worked at Disney. He had a family pass that any of us could go for free anytime we wanted. And so I'm very, very spoiled. But I also haven't been I haven't really done Disney since I moved away from Florida. So it's been a while but yeah, when we would go It was more just kind of like just hanging out at Disney. Like, hey, let's go to Epcot and grab some dinner. I heard there's a new show playing over here. And so it was much more of the relaxed vibe instead of you know when you're when you're paying a fee for admission that's probably made Disney's expensive right it's got to be near $200 for a day now. Yeah, you got to squeeze it all in. Yeah, but yeah, there was there was something nice about just kind of casually strolling around Disney and you do see everybody else so the other families stressing out reading and my kids
Chloe Condon:crying really great like tattoos to look out in line and people watching and you know, I really miss just the experience I'm more of a I love animatronics so I love any like slow paced ride, but I also just missed the parades the live shows I lets the entertainment y'all
Unknown:for sure. For sure. I don't miss that too. They do the every time they do the fairy tale story stuff and then I mean my sister in law is good judges. That's a good beauty not bad. It's a good band. That's a good be star that wasn't a good start.
Chloe Condon:I think what I've also come to appreciate so much now that I work in STEM because previously I always viewed Disney as an actress like I audition for Disney Cruise Line a bunch I wanted to be a character Disneyland, but now that I know like how different technologies work especially robotics. I am so much more interested in fascinated in all of the different animatronics and pirates and like how they differ the ones in Orlando differ from the ones in LA like all of that like all of the dude. What is the avatar right I've never been to hadn't been world and I'm just so fascinated by how they make it like breathe underneath you and how they type in Smells and like all of the science of it of Imagineering is so much more interesting to
Brandon Minnick:do pipe in smells. And I'm not sure if they're still doing it. But I know back in the day on Main Street that there is a bakery, and they would literally pipe in the smell of fresh baked cookies on to the street. So if you were walking past the bakery, all of a sudden you're smelling delicious, freshly baked cookies, and immediately turned writing. Go to the store and check them out.
Chloe Condon:I can go for a butter. Yes, I would love to just be hanging out in Diagon Alley drinking a butter beer right now. Oh,
Unknown:yeah, that's a perfect, perfect universal weather right now too. So good.
Chloe Condon:Do you have a favorite ride?
Unknown:Sweet? Please. It's like picking your favorite. I don't know. game or your favorite book? I cannot. I cannot. I do not. I cannot. I just can't do I will pick my favorite theme park. It's so hard for me. It's like there's some things you just cannot pick a favorite book. Favorite movie. Favorite theme park?
Chloe Condon:Read?
Unknown:Yeah, it's it's so hard. Like, why would you do that? Why diminish the greatness of something else? You know? Everyone's on. Awesome. Right.
Chloe Condon:I'm a theme park. Shout out to theme parks. We miss you. We love to go back. Exactly.
Brandon Minnick:When California was able to open up again.
Unknown:Yeah, but it's California residents only. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, we I guess we're all California.
Chloe Condon:Road Trip. So we got to we build Disneyland tangent. Very important content. But what do you do now? Sweetie, what team do you work on? I know you work with probably a lot of folks we've had on the show before and clearly on Xamarin things. But what is a day in the life of you? That's a day
Unknown:in the life of me. Hmm. Okay. Well, like I said, we work as part of the customer advisory team, right? So that's helping customers. So Microsoft customers trying to use mobile technologies or use Azure in those mobile technology. So it's a lot, it's very cool. We got to do really cool things get to solve problems for customers. So it's like, I was describing this to Dora the other day. So it's like 50% of the time. It's a lot of people just say yelling at us. And but then 50% of the time, it's about people telling us we love your product. You guys are great. So yeah, it doesn't say it's pretty good. But yeah, so let's see, let me let me let me find some stuff I can like share to talk about, just give you a better idea of what our team does. What do we have here? All right, so, uh, pretty sure Alex is on the show. So yep, so the GitHub that's vancamp. github, that's where kind of like, if you want to see stuff, that team is working on some sample codes, just you know, some side projects, they just PLC or something, that's usually where we hang out for our code and stuff. This is the Xamarin customer showcase. A lot of the customers you see here are customers that our team has worked with, you know, had them achieve all the cool stuff they talk about in you know, each of these, you know, sort of customer stories, success stories. Oh, that's what I was looking for.
Chloe Condon:That's you itself? Oh, my goodness.
Unknown:Yes. So this is my favorite customer, because the other one I had to read. So this is the we have the Academy Awards. And they have, it's this is a really quick video, if you get on to stage two, definitely watch. So the academy essentially is trying to create a story to sort of, you know, make it more accessible for you know, their members to access Academy News Watch, you know, nominated movies and things like that. So first off the main, the main thing that we had them it was an Azure, some migrations from on prem to move out of on prem into the cloud. Once they got into the cloud, that's when all of the opportunities blew up for them. So then they were able to create a TBS app, they have a mobile app. Now they have their website. So the mobile app runs on Xamarin, soda TV, USF. And that's what I had the pleasure to help them with. So if you'd like you can scroll through the customer success story. There's a lot of cool content, they talk about it. There's a Xamarin podcast episode we did with the engineers who worked on the app, and they talk about their experience using Xamarin. And using Azure. It's a great episode. It's an awesome team. So that's kind of like what our team does. So you know, we help out cool customers like this. You can hear a couple of other customers that we've worked with. We have more Xamarin podcast episodes decided to like try and get you all more inside scoop, you know, on like, successful customers doing cool things with Xamarin. Yeah, so that's kinda like so Well, to be honest, to be very honest, a regular day to day though, in my team's life, if you want to know we'll probably start with something. Obviously we have a standard right every day and I mentioned like you're a bunch of like goofballs. Let me explain to you how So, example we will have a stand up and then let me share this picture with you. All of a sudden, randomly one day someone will just accept Do you realize, hey, you had an interesting past man, let's talk about this. So the rest of us stand up just making fun of each other talking about cool stuff. So like this, for example, what you're seeing right now on screen is my band from college because I played in a band in Dubai, we were called whiskey Delta. We're very proud of that name. And as you can see, we were a rebellious band, you can see me in fluorescent green slippers. It true to my Indian roots wearing a kurta but still being very cool and rock and roll guys being very cool and rock and roll. So our day to day is basically that so all of us is like ripping on each other. But then obviously coming serious talk about work, then we go off, you know, do cool stuff, help our customers and then out of it comes like I shared a customer story. We do podcast interviews share what we've learned with the customers, we put out blogs, my colleague, Ben, he just put out an awesome little Xamarin show video on how to do font embedding with Xamarin. I am going to be hopefully soon finishing up with my sample and how to use Chromecast with you know, Xamarin Forms what we have the Oscars with. Yep, so Oh, god product samples, we're going to put out a blog post on it. Alexis has done a bunch of cool blog posts, he did one on doing a customized collection view, gesture based, you know, thing he likes, like drop, drag and drop inside of a collection view in Xamarin. So yeah, that's kind of what our team does. So we try and make Xamarin and you know, Microsoft tooling and Visual Studio does cooler and better for everyone. And yeah, so just kind of, I guess it all ties in to my Microsoft story in a way like, you know, they nurtured me as in during my intern days, and my, you know, Student Ambassador days, helping me be you know, get skills and be a better version of myself. And now I get to pay back to the community and our customers. So
Chloe Condon:I love it. And I love that you were in this band, because I think it's so much shows even in your hosting on hello world. And as a guest today, like, I'm sure your experience in whisky Delta probably helped you with like, presentation skills, and you're probably not really afraid of anything at this point.
Unknown:I have no idea. I swear to God, this is one performance we get on stage right? All of us were we've done a sound check. And we're like, yeah, we gotta kill it tonight. This is our night we get in first, our first drum, our lead guitarist G string snaps, and we're all just like, he literally doesn't have an instrument at this moment. The rest of us need to do something because our set has started. Like Okay, let's just we just start doing this random improvise jam session, while another friend of ours ran and grab his guitar to give to our he's uh, he's like, you know, getting set back up with another guitar and tuning that up. And then reciprocity is like, no key play.
Sweeky Satpathy:Gotta
Unknown:keep entertaining. So it does, it's, it's surprising. It's like the model like soft skills that have helped me which I unknowingly picked up because I don't think I'll ever mindful of these things until like, later on.
Chloe Condon:The show must go on. Like, truly.
Brandon Minnick:It's
Unknown:weird problem solving. Also, like, I don't know, it's like, it's weird if you think about it as like, a lot of like, odd connections. But yeah,
Brandon Minnick:yeah, just being able to think on your feet, be able to react to situations that are unplanned. That's a big reason why I recommend to folks just to take an improv class. Like, it's a it's it's a lot of fun. You know, it's gonna be terrifying at first, but then you kind of break through that wall and you have a good time. But yeah, teaches you just to embrace failures, don't don't shy away from them almost lean into them. And so yeah, if you're, if you're coding live, maybe you're on Twitch, or maybe you're speaking at a conference in the internet goes out. roll with it, go with it. Oh, yeah. A lot of folks are some folks will freeze up and go, Well, I don't know what to do next. Because the internet's gone. That make it make it a game, make it fun. Make fun of it. It's a fun show. It's great way to go.
Chloe Condon:It's those things where, you know, people ask me all the time, how do I get more experience? Like how do I become a better public speaker? How do I get more comfortable on stage, and there's something there's something just so inherent about like being on stage either be at a musical in a band and your adrenaline pumping so much and having to make split decisions that seem like five minutes in your brain but really are two seconds in reality, I think those situations have helped me more than anything as my job as a cloud advocate because I know that I have I've gone on stage with green makeup all over my hands and face in track on accident like the it could get worse like something on your slide, but you can always go back. There's always a way to recover it. I think I'm so when those things were happening to me, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing, it's the end of the world, but I'm so thankful that I have those experiences to almost like prepare my brain for my professional career, in a way.
Brandon Minnick:It also helps you understand, like, it doesn't really matter, like, you know, in our, in our minds, obviously, we're going to stew on it and be thinking about it. And it's going to be just occupying space in our brains for a couple of weeks about how we messed up but nobody else cares. Everybody else will just they'll leave the conference will leave the talk, they'll leave the show and they'll forget to even happen and they'll come up and tell you did an amazing job because you probably did. But yeah, for some reason, just as humans we obsess over that one little thing and try to just you know knock that out of your head is is difficult.
Chloe Condon:It's always have a backup like now I'm like, okay, you know, not not like an understudy, but like, I've have a video if I have a live demo, I have a video just in case like all of those like worst case scenario things that happened to you as a performer like I know that technology sometimes doesn't work so for my live demo where I have to push this button I'll have a backup plan just in case 100% or get
Unknown:carry extra cables I cannot tell you how important carrying like extra convert cables and like USB C is to as your HDMI carry extra as it is. You never know honestly you never know and it's like it just helps you feel better about it for sure. Yeah.
Chloe Condon:So you mentioned that you both of you congrats on your five years of Microsoft your crystals I'm sure will be in the mail soon. Now that you've at Microsoft five years what's next like what do you see you know future sleeping? I mean are you going to revive the Windows Phone
Unknown:man if I could if I if I want to like start hunting for now that I have some credit because I have like a five year old badge with me and I have some credit some street you know credit card I should probably never say that sentence every now that I have so I actually do I am very excited first of all for dotnet Maui and you know like you mentioned in the beginning so watch out for bail some excellent announcements coming up I'm sure we always have cool stuff announced and buried right definitely excited for dotnet Maui Our team is coming up some cool stuff definitely looking for it but yes like that you did mention it is my secret plan to revive the Windows Phone so I can now officially start you know doing my you know searches and emails and folks you know see where the secret project is happening get get stuff rolling. Let me see what else what else I am actually just say Honestly though, I just am I I like how evolving our our technology space is it's like it's you try as hard as you can you don't get bored like there's always something new to learn or there's always something new to learn and then complain about or there's something you know always there for you to checkout and really cool that's cool new and shiny I want to see what's going on so it's I do feel grateful and thankful of our area for basically there's it's a constant learning journey and that I've kind of been trying all of last year also just been taking an active effort to keep that you know learning and growth mindset. I know Satya keep saying it too but it is it sounds like buzz wordy and all that but honestly if you just think about it, it's kind of what you do on a like in unknowing you kind of do that and you're learning something new you're watching a new TV show you're listening to a new song you're you're like you're you're constantly learning things so definitely be like I would like totally like that's that's what I've like very recently started take away like I constantly want to keep learning so if that takes me to reviving the windows for now that's a happy accident is it not?
Chloe Condon:If we have to make being Park we will okay
Unknown:100% we will 100% do that we will get that going we I mean just keep learning man that's what they that's kind of just like what I've been trying to just you know do it's been a rough year for everyone so you know everyone's coping in different ways for me it's been like I said food Legos And just like with the electronic stuff is this me learning so this is how this works. I will learn how that works. So
Brandon Minnick:yeah, it's time for friends in the comments have taught us anything today's everybody loved the Windows Phone. Yeah, already they're lining up to buy it again.
Unknown:Let's take a 32nd tangent right let's take a 32nd tangent. The air tag stuff that Windows like the apple people launched there was a similar tag concept with the Lumia switch of color coded with your phone's colored phones. Are you talking about the new colored IMAX um Hello Lumia has had the best color phones of that time. Way back way.
Chloe Condon:Explain the tags to me. I am a I'm an Android girl myself.
Unknown:What do tags Have you have you? Have you used to style Bluetooth tagging things that you notice? Like it's a, it's like a squared, the company is called tile they do something similar. Now Apple has etags. Yes, a similar concept is like pulled on, you put it on a key spot in your bag. And then you can, if you lose it, you can move into like, find my phone, but find my head tag. So that's the person but way back when if anybody wants to Google it, trust me, there was a Lumia version of that thing it Oh, dang it. Lumia version of it. It was like it was so good. I mean, and then, like for the animated, so it was like tiles, right? As the user interface of the phone and tides used to constantly animate and give you updates and stuff. That's kind of like the apple tile stuff that they've been launching with the last iOS update, which I don't know. Yeah, I don't know about y'all. But you know, we've been there done that with an indestructible phone as we've proved the hardware was solid. So you know, I just yeah, it's,
Chloe Condon:here's the thing, if we all just because all of these Lumia phones seem to have survived the apocalypse and like, are all working? What if we all just bought a bunch of old ones? Well, you don't have to see you have like five of them with you. They're using them. And if enough people start using the old software, they have to update it right. I mean, is this campaign that we stopped?
Sweeky Satpathy:Big talk? Yeah, we should talk.
Chloe Condon:in the chat going crazy for Windows.
Unknown:It was a really good Lumia phones. I love everyone's choices. so far. I right now just have I have the 950, which got updated to have the Microsoft logo on it. And I have my Lumia 1520 on me right now. so
Brandon Minnick:incredible. I actually I just saw I used to bring around a Windows Phone everywhere. I forget who but earlier in the comments, somebody else had mentioned that they'll bring their windows phone with them and use it as a backup and also kind of an E reader. And yeah, I just removed mine from my, my travel briefcase. I mean, now like I'm traveling right now during the pandemic, but yeah, it was sad. I didn't throw it out. I put it in a little box with a little lid on it. So yeah, we're bringing back the Windows Phone. I'm ready. I still have
Chloe Condon:this comment in the chat for fun for feedback, Windows Phone durability was God level. I think if we just show this to leadership, like, bring it back. Yeah, this this episode is just the use case for why we need to bring back windows. Bring back Windows.
Brandon Minnick:Windows Scott Guthrie really well.
Unknown:Well, well, it's your boy Kim. Do you remember this very hyperactive, small curly haired person who spoke to you for like 30 seconds, but in my head? It was like five hours? And also
Chloe Condon:Do you remember the Windows Phone?
Unknown:You know what I cannot? I really hope I didn't shove it in his face or something like I swear to God, I'm just hoping cuz I did have my windows for when I met and I'm really praying to God.
Sweeky Satpathy:You can move in.
Chloe Condon:We even have someone in the chat saying Can we open source the Windows Phone store? Great question.
Sweeky Satpathy:Excellent question.
Brandon Minnick:We'll make it happen.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. Your future at Microsoft is Yeah, my next five years. Yeah, that's it sort of put in my Connect top goal. Now bring back Windows Phone. There we go.
Chloe Condon:To bring back Clippy you bring back Windows Phone? It'll be great. Well, we'll just bring all the nostalgia back to Microsoft squeaky where can people find you on the interwebs? If they want to check you out? follow you and find all your stuff.
Unknown:So that's my Twitter handle on my name right here. So you can I promise, I think that's the best place to find me. The the GitHub for Xamarin for exam, cat GitHub. That's like a bunch of us. I mean, all of us are in there. So you can find our code and samples and find me on GitHub over there. I am going to be speaking next month, actually, as part of the Cape Town. Ms. Yeah, the Cape Town, Ms. Developer user group. So may 19. I'll be there presenting my Chromecast with Xamarin Forms, you know, sample, and hopefully a blog post will be out by then too. So yeah, so you can come check out my talk. Then we'll talk fun things about Xamarin talk fun things about how you can do cool stuff with
Chloe Condon:sapling and check out wiki on hello world Fridays at 10 3030
Sweeky Satpathy:PST yesterday.
Chloe Condon:Amazing. Thank you so much for coming today's wiki and we'll have to have you back once you bring revive this Windows Phone.
Sweeky Satpathy:For sure.
Chloe Condon:Bye. Y'all have a good Wednesday.