What’s on Tampa Bay’s sci/tech podcasts (July 2021 edition)

Once again, it’s time to list Tampa Bay podcasts that you, the Global Nerdy reader, might find informative, interesting, and illuminating!

In the last list, I listed the podcasts from longest-running to newest. As is the tradition with this list, I’m listing them from newest to longest-running this time. They are:

1. Space and Things
2. Friends That Code
3. The Mike Dominick Show
4. The 6 Figure Developer
5. Thunder Nerds

And now, the podcasts…

Space and Things is the newest podcast on this list, and it’s about…well, you get three guesses. Just read its name.

Space and Things features two hosts:

• Emily Carney: A veteran of the United States Navy, Carney became a freelance writer back in 2008 and started a blog called This Space Available, which is hosted by the National Space Society.In 2011, Carney founded a facebook group Space Hipsters, of which I am a member. Originally intended to be a place to share news and insights amongst friends, this community has now grown to close to 20,000 members including astronauts, engineers, scientists, historians and space flight enthusiasts from around the globe.
• Dave Giles: Giles is a singer/songwriter from London, England who has always had a passion for space flight. Since his early years he’s been looking skyward and though he ended up wielding a guitar for a living, space exploration is alway on his mind and one of his most popular songs is about astronaut Gene Cernan, ‘The Last Man On The Moon’.In 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Giles visited all of the crewed space vehicles flown by NASA from Freedom 7 to the Space Shuttle Orbiters.

Here are Space and Things’ podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

• STP 43 — We’re joined by author Elizabeth Howell to discuss her new book ‘Leadership Moments from NASA – Achieving The Impossible’ which is co-written with former Canadian Astronaut Dr. Dave Williams who is also a former director of Space and Life Sciences at NASA. The book is set for release on July 6th.
• STP 42 — This week we’re joined again by Christina Korp, this time to talk all about her organisation ‘Space For A Better World’ and the the zero gravity flight that is coming up with Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke. We hear all about her recent flight with Charlie and Nicole Stott, and their tour of the Artemis rocket and space craft at Kennedy Space Center.
• STP 41 — This year’s Spacefest will take place from July 15th- 18th at the JW Marrito Starr Pass Resort & Spa in Tucson, Arizona. We asked one of the organisers Kelsey Poor to come and talk to us about what it is, how it started and why you want to be there. Spacefest is organised by Novaspace, an online store for space art, astronaut autographs and memorabilia. Definitely worth checking out.
• STP 40 — This week we talk about Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Space Coast. We discuss a few of our favourite parts and what not to miss, plus some tips for what to see and do around the area.
• STP 39 — This week we’re joined by not one, but two astronauts! Mike Massimino and Garrett Reisman have just started their own podcast ‘2 Funny Astronauts’ – so we asked them if they’d like to come and talk to us all about it and to speak more about life as an astronaut and some of the other wonderful things they’ve been able to do. Not only were they funny, but it’s also pretty damn inspirational.
• STP 38 — This week we were joined by legendary NASA flight director Gerry Griffin to discuss the 50th anniversary of Apollo 14 and Apollo 15. We obviously had some other questions for him too, but we really want to hear about those missions, and boy did he deliver. At 86 years old, he remembered things in such incredible detail and was an absolute pleasure to talk to. This was very kind set up by Max Kaiserman of Luna Replicas (check out episode 15 of our podcast), so he also joined us for this wonderful discussion. We really hope that Max can join us for more chats in the future, a true friend of the podcast.
• STP 37 — There have been some things happen in the space industry this week that we’re not happy about, so we speak about that but also offer a positive story as well as we talk to Czarina Salido, founder of Taking Up Space, a charity which sends Native American girls to Space Camp.
• STP 36 — It’s finally happened. We’ve got a whole show dedicated to Skylab. That’s right, this week Emily talks us through 5 random facts about Skylab which maybe you knew, or maybe you didn’t, but either way, it’s something she’s incredibly passionate about and thus very entertaining and educational at the same time.

Friends That Code

Friends That Code is hosted by Mike Traverso, whom locals may know from the Tampa Bay Google Developers Group meetup and other Google-y events. In this podcast, he showcases…

…some amazing people I know that just happen to write code for a living. Whether they started off intending to code or just happened into it, we get to hear about the types of people you’ll meet, things you’ll get to do, jobs you’ll have along the way, and advice from some awesome coders along the way!

Here are the most the three most recent Friends That Code podcasts:

• 30 – Creating VR games by learning from step 1 with Noble Ackerson
• 29 – Empower your team with shared design language with Sarrah Vesselov
• 28 – How to be an awesome game developer, author, editor, speaker, etc. with Tammy Coron

The Mike Dominick Show

The Mike Dominick Show is hosted by Mike Dominick, the CEO and founder of The Mad Botter INC, and has an open source focus.

Here are the most the three most recent Mike Dominick Show podcasts:

• Episode 40: Monica Ayhens-Madon
• Episode 39: Martin Wimpress of Canonical
• Episode 38: Jochen Breuer of SUSE Manager

The 6 Figure Developer

At the time I’m writing this, The 6 Figure Developer — hosted by John Callaway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash — has posted 201 episodes. It’s…

…a show dedicated to helping developers to grow their career. Topics include Test Driven Development, Clean Code, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, as well as the latest and greatest programming languages and concepts.

Here are The 6 Figure Developer’s podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

• Episode 202 – Stories about Software with Erik Dietrich: Erik is CEO at Hit Subscribe, a unique marketing business that helps companies reach software engineers with content.
• Episode 201 — Sustainable OSS with Rockford Lhotka: Rocky is an open source and distributed systems architect, author, and speaker. He’s currently CTO at Cognizant Softvision and calls Eden Prairie, Minnesota home.
• Episode 200 – Devil’s Advocate: For this episode the guys talk about topics from a different perspective.
• Episode 199 – Redis with Guy Royse: Guy works for Redis Labs as a Developer Advocate. Combining his decades of experience in writing software with a passion for sharing what he has learned, Guy goes out into developer communities and helps others build great software.
• Episode 198 – DAPR with Cecil Phillip: Cecil is a Cloud Advocate at @Microsoft, Podcaster, Teacher, Swimmer, & Music Lover. Born and Raised in Antigua, he now calls Fort Lauderdale, FL home.
• Episode 197 – .NET Data with Jeremy Likness: Jeremy is a Senior Program Manager for .NET Data at Microsoft. His personal mission is to empower developers to be their best. In this episode Jeremy shares all about .NET Data using EF Core, GraphQL, .NET for Spark, and much more. He also speaks about his recent diagnosis and starting a podcast to help others with Parkinson’s Disease.
• Episode 196 – .NET 6 Preview with Rich Lander: Richard Lander is a Principal Program Manager on the .NET Core team. He works on making .NET Core work great in memory-limited Docker containers, on ARM hardware like the Raspberry Pi, and enabling GPIO programming and IoT scenarios. He is part of the design team that defines new .NET runtime capabilities and features. He enjoys British rock and Doctor Who. He grew up in Canada and New Zealand.
• Episode 195 – Orleans with Reuben Bond: Reuben is a Principal Software Development Engineer at Microsoft working on the Orleans distributed systems framework. Orleans is a cross-platform framework for building robust, scalable distributed applications. Orleans builds on the developer productivity of .NET and brings it to the world of distributed applications, such as cloud services. Orleans scales from a single on-premises server to globally distributed, highly-available applications in the cloud.
• Episode 194 – Teams and Power Platform with Christina Wheeler: Christina is currently a Principal Solution Architect at Canviz Consulting and part-time Trainer for Critical Path Training. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Christina has knowledge in SharePoint Development, Administration, Branding, and Business Intelligence. She also specializes in search and leveraging ECM features in SharePoint. When teaching, Christina brings her real-world experience to the classroom. Currently residing in Middle Georgia, Christina is a highly respected Microsoft 365 consultant who is extremely active in the technology community. She was the tech editor of “SharePoint 2007 Developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog”, co-author of the “SharePoint 2010 Field Guide”, and co-author of “SharePoint 2013 Inside Out.” She enjoys contributing articles to technical websites and often speaks at tech community events and conferences. Christina has a strong passion for technology and when she’s not working on SharePoint, she is either cooking, enjoying photography, spending time with her recently graduated college daughter, and spending time with her lovable dogs.

Thunder Nerds

Of the podcasts in this roundup, Thunder Nerds — “A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good” — has been around the longest, with 283 episodes over five seasons to date. You’ve probably seen the hosts at local meetups and conferences; they’re Frederick Philip Von Weiss and Brian Hinton.

Thunder Nerds is sponsored by a company that’s near and dear to me, Auth0! That’s partly because they have a great authentication, authorization, and identity service, and partly because I work there in my role as a Senior R&D Content Engineer!

Here are Thunder Nerds’ podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

• 283 – 🔊 Voice Content And Usability with Preston So: In this episode, we get to talk with Preston So, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. We talk to Preston about his new book VOICE CONTENT AND USABILITY. We discuss the concepts of building conversational designs that are ethical, accessible, and usable.
• 282 – 🪴 How To Grow Your Own Digital Garden with Maggie Appleton: In this episode, we get to speak with Maggie Appleton, Art Director & UX Designer at egghead.io. We discuss the ethos of Digital Gardening and the value of cultivating ideas in public. We also dive into Maggie’s digital anthropology work and discuss how visual metaphors better shape our understanding of technology.
• 281 – 💻 Empowering Women in Tech with Arit Amana: In this episode, we get to speak with Arit Amana: Software Engineer, Founder, Writer, Mentor, and Conference Speaker. We discuss Arit’s day-to-day as a Software Engineer and her career journey. We also dive into Arit’s organization OurTimeForTech.org, a nonprofit online program that empowers early-career & career-changing Women in Tech!
• 280 – 🎹 R&D Content Engineering with Joey deVilla: In this episode, we get to speak with Joey deVilla: Tech Evangelist, Author, Senior R&D Content Engineer, and rock and roll accordionist. We discuss Joey’s new job at Auth0, what it takes to be an R&D Content Engineer, and an array of super cool technologies.