Hey there. This is another interview from Mark in our SpringOne Platform speaker series. It's a pretty good one. I hope you enjoy it. Why don't you check out the conference that this is pulled from, SpringOne Platform. It's over at springoneplatform.io. It's October 7th and 10th in my hometown of Austin, Texas. And if you want to get $200 off registration when you go to springoneplatform.io and register, use the code S1P200 underscore M Heckler. That's S1P200 underscore M H E C K L E R. You can also check the show notes at pivotal.io slash podcast to get that spelled out to you. So with that, enjoy the episode. Hi, this is Mark Heckler and welcome back to this episode of our Women of SpringOne Platform series. And today we're joined by Zoe Vance. Zoe, if you would, please tell our audience a bit about you. Sure. Thanks, Mark. I'm Zoe. I'm the product lead for messaging at Pivotal. So thinking about enabling developers at our customers to use and access the best tools they need across streaming event driven microservices and message oriented middleware. And how can we help those folks be productive and have a seamless experience? Outstanding. That's a hot topic nowadays. So that's really a good thing. Let's take things back just a little bit. How did you get into tech to begin with? It was a bit of a winding road. I've definitely been a bit all over the place. I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, but wanted to understand a little bit more of different industries and different types of businesses out there. So went to management consulting and worked at McKinsey for two years. And from there really wanted more operational experience. So I saw I joined a early stage startup as their first employee. And the premise of that startup was to build tools for developers to structure information on the web. And that was my kind of how I got into product at that company. And, you know, seeing developer focused tools and having developers as customers
2:04made me want to understand more of the technical side there. So I actually then went to get my master's in computer science, after which I joined Pivotal, which let me merge some of the technical background and the product piece. Oh, very cool. That actually is a really good, diverse background to bring to bear on a lot of the problems that we face on a daily basis. If I could ask, what do you love most about what you're doing or your current position, or maybe how you got here from your point of origin? I think I really enjoy, I really love the function of my current job in the day to day. I think what's interesting about tech is it's a really complex and rapidly changing environment, which leads to a lot of, you know, a lot of need for creative problem solving. And things are constantly shifting. So you always need to be looking ahead a little bit. And I like thinking about strategically, what does that mean for us? And what does that mean for our customers? And how can we help be a part of their journey there? Yeah, it's funny, you mentioned the constantly shifting, because sometimes it seems like our industry changes so much, you can either love it because of how dynamic it is, or it can be terribly frustrating because of the same reason. How do you filter out all of the various different inputs, all of the different things that could possibly be coming down the road at you, at us, in terms of what we need to know, what we need to be able to position for our customers? I think I try to pay attention to all the signals to just get a sense of making sure I'm talking to a diverse range of people, because it's really easy to get into your own echo chamber about a particular opinion on a certain technology, or just the market opinion on a certain technology without doing your own due diligence. So I'd say it's a lot of talking to different people and having a strong opinion. I often feel like I'll pose the opposing opinion just to make sure I understand what is the substance behind the argument, because a lot of times people will say things and not necessarily carry through
4:07the implications or the rationale for that. So it's really trying to dig in and make sure I understand the drivers behind the trends we're seeing. I'm looking back at your sessions from previous years, and it's obvious where your strengths and your interests lie, I guess, from looking at that, or it seems obvious to me, because last year, you presented about data-driven decision making. Sounds familiar, right? As well as decoding distributed systems. And I think both of those tie in really nicely with what you've been saying, which is having to make decisions. Filter may not be the right word, but how to accommodate, how to absorb all of these various different inputs and decide or determine what are the most critical things to act on or to incorporate. So with that in mind, the data-driven decision making, decoding distributed systems, which again, both really tie in really nicely, has your thinking on either of those, both of those changed over the last year? Has it evolved? I think especially with data-driven decision making, the talk was initially about adapting for environments where you might not have perfect data and how to leverage data to get to better, even if you can't get to perfect. I think as I have more and more experience in these complex landscapes where it's not entirely clear what right is, I'm more and more of the mind that, you know, do what works. So I definitely believe still in all the best practices that we talked about, with data-driven decision making. But there are also things that you just can't quantify and that sometimes you do have to really merge those best practices with, you know, common sense and what's going on. And, you know, if you want to be keeping up with what's going on in our ever-changing industry. So, so true. You know, and that practicality that you're bringing out, the idea that you have to kind of sift through the things that are shiny. And as you mentioned, our industry does tend to focus a lot on that. And I think part of that is because perhaps, trying to be an optimist here, but part of
6:07that is perhaps that we do wrestle with problems that we always seem to solve imperfectly, right? I mean, we're kind of trying to improve every time and we're almost there, but we never feel like it's the ideal fit. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. I think there are perennial problems that we all have that we keep hoping will go away. But there are many things, there are many problems in that are just hard, that are hard to solve that continue to plague us even as we move from new tech to new tech. Yeah. And this year, I'm so excited about this because this kind of ties in, in my mind, really nicely with what you're going to be speaking about this year, which are, you have a couple of talks, actually. One is titled RabbitMQ and Kafka. These are both near and dear to my heart because I think that streaming is very important. I talk a lot about Spring Cloud Stream with our customers and with the community as well. And RabbitMQ and Kafka both are kind of best of breed solutions in that space, as well as you've got a talk on building reliable services on Kubernetes. And Kubernetes seems to be at least mildly popular in the industry, right? Yes, that would seem to be the trend. Right. So could you tell us a bit about both of those talks? And again, I'm particularly keyed up about the one, but obviously both of them are absolutely critical at this point in our industry and the technology stack in general. Sure. So maybe I'm taking the lazy way out. I'm kind of doing talks on the FAQ that I get day in and day out. The RabbitMQ and Kafka talk is definitely the question that I talk about the most with customers when they're making choices about the tools that meet the requirements for their application workloads. And in this talk, it's quite a nuanced conversation, but there are clear areas where each tool is a really good fit. And so I'm excited to step through the architectures that they both have and talk about some of the pros and cons of each for different use cases because they are both really strong tools. And the building reliable services on Kubernetes
8:10comes from my team's experience building Rabbit for Kubernetes. And what we've learned there is we start thinking about the criteria that enterprises really need, especially as we try to navigate, you know, this nascent space in terms of, you know, delivering data services on Kubernetes. That makes a ton of sense. And I love the, it's not the lazy way out at all. I find it's so frustrating at times that sometimes people want to answer the questions that no one is asking. And when the community keeps asking the same questions over and over, it means it's absolutely critical that it gets an answer because for whatever reason, it's not being answered. So I love that you're covering the ground that is the most essential to cover, which is the stuff that everyone really wants and needs to know the most. So I personally find that exciting. So, well, I mean, we're talking a lot about SpringOne Platform because SpringOne Platform is coming up soon. So if I could ask, what is your favorite thing about SpringOne Platform, Zoe? I would say this is, I think this is my third SpringOne Platform. I have done it a little differently each year. I think I really enjoy, if you look through the agenda, there's always a series of interesting talks that are on topics that I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about. So it's a great opportunity to learn. I went to some really amazing talks last year from the Air Force. And the, I mean, I think the favorite of anyone's conference is just seeing, getting to meet people in person and talk more casually about the challenges and things we're all working on and seeing in the industry. Now, what would you say to someone who's just considering coming to SpringOne Platform? I know this is kind of late in the game. I know that a lot of people booked as soon as the site went up for the first time. But if you were talking to someone who was just now getting around to looking at the tickets, who are just now getting around to making their reservations, what would you say to someone who's giving it some thought, who's planning to come, maybe considering coming? I would say that SpringOne Platform is a really nice opportunity to lift your head out a little bit
10:12of whatever, you know, tunnel you're in, whatever you're doing day in, day out, and see what else is going on and what are the other things that people are talking about. It's a really great opportunity to learn. And I think the things that you don't know, you don't know can often be the most productive thing to have exposure to. So I definitely encourage people to take the opportunity to learn about new spaces and new things and new trends. Well, that's great. But you omitted one of the absolutely essential reasons to come to SpringOne Platform this year, and that's to meet Zoe Vance. So if you haven't already gotten your ticket, now is the time to go get that ticket to go sign up, because Zoe's going to be talking about RabbitMQ and Kafka, about building reliable services on Kubernetes. And this is your chance to come meet Zoe in person. Zoe, in between then and now, how would people get in touch with you? How would they keep up with what you're doing? And maybe arrange a time where they could just stop by and shake your hand and say hi. Yes, I would love to hear from anyone who's listening and meet up at SpringOne. You can reach me at zvance, Z-V-A-N-C-E, at pivotal.io. And I will see you in Austin. Sounds great. Looking forward to it. Hope to see you all there. And Zoe, thank you so much for your time today. And we'll let you get back to your work. Thank you, Mark. Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview. I sure did. Hey, and as a bonus for listening this far, if you want to register for SpringOne Platform, the wonderful conference we have coming up October 7th to 10th in my hometown, Austin, Texas, when you go to springoneplatform.io to register, you can use the code S1P200 underscore M Heckler. That's M-H-E-C-K-L-E-R. That's Mark's last name. You can find the discount code if you go to pivotal.io slash podcast as well. And that'll get you $200 off the registration fee, price, winning admission, however you want to think about it. Well, we've got several of these coming out. So if you enjoyed this one, you
12:13should check out the other ones. And otherwise, tune into the regular Pivotal Conversations each week or so. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.