The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast team was forced by events to deviate from their usual lean approach to business-to-business technology in the first few months of the year. They discussed the war in Ukraine with the help of Computer Weekly security editor Alex Scroxton on a few podcasts, one of which is highlighted in this list. The cyber warfare aspect of the conflict was prominent in these episodes, along with the general boycott of Russia’s computer industry.
Otherwise, women in UK tech, alongside diversity, was, again, a huge topic for the team, discussed throughout the year and culminating in Clare’s presentation of the 2022 list of UK’s most influential women in tech announcedand his associated eventDiversity in Tech, which Computer Weekly runs in collaboration with Nash Squared.
Caroline’s two main topics on the podcast were the ongoing saga of the IR35 reforms and the energy crisis, regarding the data center market (as well as green IT more generally, including the launch of the Computer Weekly Green IT think tank which she directs and pilots).
And Brian was back in the air in 2022, attending Dreamforce in San Francisco, Oracle Cloud World in Las Vegasand an SAP press trip to the Bay Area coinciding with SAP’s TechEd.
This year, Cliff Saran, Computer Weekly’s technology editor, directed a series of episodes as part of the podcast. These featured one-on-one interviews with leading IT industry thinkers and leaders on topics ranging from quantum computing to the metaverse to developer wellbeing.
One presented, as a case study, the deployment by the National Archives of a semantic data platformprovided by MarkLogic, to support the UK government’s drive to improve transparency in the justice system.
Cliff closed his podcast of the year with a conversation with Stewart Buchanan, Vice President of Research on the CIO team at Gartner, on how CIOs can manage the current economic crisis, with IT budgets effectively reduced due to inflation. This conversation contains specific advice for IT managers.
Meanwhile, the Eternal Podcast power trio have added light to shade throughout the podcasting year, including chatter around Halloween and the advent of christmas; and the Adventures of Caroline’s Rescue Dog, Bruno.
Here are Computer Weekly’s 10 Best Downtime Download Podcasts of 2022.
1. Ukraine: cyber warfare and boycott of Russia’s IT industry
In this episode, Computer Weekly Security Editor Alex Scroxton joins Caroline Donnelly, Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna to discuss the cyberwar dimension of the war in Ukraine, and the computer industry’s response to the Russian invasion, including a boycott of Russia and humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people. Because this is the most serious subject, this episode of the podcast is devoted solely to this subject.
2. Impact of the energy crisis on the data center market
Caroline Donnelly, Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna reflect on the current energy crisis through the collapse of Sungard AS UK, and the role of software and data analysis in the wind industry. They also talk about the results of Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT’s annual salary survey, which reveals that IT professionals have more control over their working lives than before the pandemic, and are returning to pre-pandemic salary levels. health crisis.
3. The Metaverse and Women in Software
Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna were joined, in the temporary absence of Caroline Donnelly, by Cliff Saran to discuss the Metaverse, the Makers Women in Software Power List, and how CIOs should relate to enterprise technology details.
4. Does quantum matter?
In this special edition of the Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast, Quantinuum CEO Ilyas Khan discusses the quantum computing revolution.
He believes the UK is leading the way, just as it did at the start of the first industrial revolution. The CEO of quantumthe organization resulting from the merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum Computingthe Khan company founded in 2014, claims that the UK is one of the leading countries, if not the world leader, in quantum computing.
5. Koch’s networking
Right here, Matt Hoag, CTO of Koch Business Solutions, talks about Networking as a Service.
The idea of ”lift and move” makes no sense in the cloud. Matt Hoag, chief technology officer (CTO) of Koch Business Solutions, points out that while increasing and moving workloads can work as a short-term measure, as organizations save time to develop cloud-native softwareenterprise networks simply cannot be moved to the cloud.
6. Developer well-being
A major special with Capital One Bank CTO, Brad Miller.
Brad Miller lives in New Jersey and, due to the pandemic, has the flexibility to work both from home and from the New York office of Capital One bank. Miller has been CTO of Capital One for two years, where he is responsible for the technology organization of the bank’s enterprise products and platforms.
7. Top 50 Women in British Tech, IR35 Truss fiasco
Caroline Donnelly, Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna reflect on the 2022 list of UK’s most influential women in tech announcedand his associated eventDiversity in Tech, which Computer Weekly does in conjunction with Nash Squared.
They also discuss an aspect of Liz Truss’ brief premiership that has been undercovered in other media: the case and then the cancellation of the case of the IR35 reforms.
8. Coding at Bet365
In this podcast, Alan Reed, Head of Sports Development at Bet365, discusses the technical and business challenges of scalability.
Computer Weekly last spoke to Alan Reed a few years before the pandemic. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Bet365’s head of sports development said the online betting company had to adapt to the shutdown of live sports and the shift to working from home.
9. Judicial transparency
The National Archives deployed a semantic data platformpowered by MarkLogic, to support the UK government’s drive to improve transparency in the justice system.
John Sheridan, Digital Director at the National Archives, defines semantic data as a formal conceptual model for describing data. At the National Archives, a the semantic data platform, powered by MarkLogic, is used for the Find Case Law service. “We preserve court judgments in digital archives for the future,” he said.
ten. AWS Mutes Unnecessary Conversations at Re:Invent
Caroline Donnelly, Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna think about the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Re:Invent Partner and Customer Conference in Las Vegas, an initiative to attract more young women into the cybersecurity profession, and recent SAP events and SAP user groups – in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Birmingham.