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The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.
Drew Ogrzyk hears how a chicken coop runs on cron; you might recognize your own workaround.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Charlene Tessier turns a forced move online into a practical case for virtual events and wider networks.
Charlene Tessier's move from Vancouver to Germany forced a crypto accounting and bookkeeping business built on local meetups, events, and in-person work to operate fully online.
A founder's route from survival and live magic to coding makes perseverance the real origin story.
Khalil Ashanti's path into tech starts in survival and gradually becomes a story about agency. After joining the U.S. Air Force to get away from a violently abusive childhood, he learned just before basic training that the man he had believed was his father was not his…
John Thompson treats analytics leadership as an enterprise design problem, where team fit matters as much as technical talent.
John Thompson uses the Vancouver Tech Podcast to ask a grounded enterprise question: what makes an analytics team actually work? Building Analytics Teams sits behind the discussion, with attention on how teams feel, how well they cohere, and how leaders handle the people side of…
Annie Ngo connects ProtoHack's code-free hackathons with Startup League, Q-Up, and the practical role-stretching behind early-stage work.
Annie Ngo returns to the Vancouver Tech Podcast after about three and a half years, using ProtoHack's code-free hackathons as the bridge into Startup League and Q-Up. The episode works best when it looks past startup titles and into the jobs those titles actually require.
A grounded fintech discussion about identity, payment risk, and keeping technical work engaging.
Angela Griffin's conversation about Glance Technologies stays close to the practical side of fintech: payment processing, identity verification, and the people building the company's tools.
Apple's keynotes, straight from Apple Park, specs and all.
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
["Vancouver Tech Podcast episode 107 features Charlene Tessier, founder of Strength in Numbers, talking about her October virtual summit for online entrepreneurs.", "Tessier says she moved from Vancouver to Germany, shifted her crypto accounting and bookkeeping business fully online, and then used COVID-era virtual events to rebuild her network.", "She says she launched her first virtual summit in April in two weeks, followed by a June event and an October series starting Friday, October 2, built around five Fridays and three Wednesday workshops.", "The conversation covers Zoom breakout rooms, open-ended networking questions, and speakers including Mitchell Levy, Mike Moyer, Alex Owen-Hill, and Chin."]
Khalil Ashanti says WeShowUp grew from audience comments like 'I would have paid more,' and a summer 2018 test at the Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive in Vancouver made him 82% more money than Broadway.
John Thompson says he abandoned an AI-and-ethics manuscript after talks in Chicago and other U.S.
["Annie Ngo traces Startup League and Q-Up back to ProtoHack, a code-free hackathon program she says ran in New York, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, and San Francisco.", "She argues that too many teams build products before defining the problem, pointing to the App Store example of apps downloaded fewer than 10 times and to Stanford's D School model of empathy, synthesis, ideation, prototyping, and testing.", "Startup League is her answer: an educational e-sports league for high school students 13 and up, with Q-Up as a daily less-than-three-minute game that awards cash prizes from $5 to $5,000.", "The conversation also covers East Vancouver fundraising, teacher verification, COPA data privacy, and a therapist-driven shift from chasing success to valuing significance."]
Vancouver Tech Podcast episode 103 moves from Vancouver Public Library's Inspiration Lab announcements into an interview with Angela Griffin, CTO of Glance Technologies.
Mike Volker describes his path from building a University of Waterloo computer-terminal spinoff to mentoring startups through New Ventures BC.
Jeffrey Walsh of Vanbex explains blockchain, cryptocurrency, ICOs, mining, and Ethereum smart contracts to Vancouver Tech Podcast host Drew O'Grizzick.
Joni Brennan, president of the Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada, explains why digital identity should focus on verified claims such as age or residency rather than exposing a complete identity profile.
Ahmed Nasri, principal architect at Telus Digital and founder of the 4,100-member Techmasters group, describes Toronto’s shift from small developer meetups to a broader technology and innovation ecosystem.
Vancouver Tech Podcast host Drew Ogrzyk interviews Nikki Koonsman, an internal recruiter at InVision, about evaluating engineers for technical ability, team fit, and contribution.
Marie Eager and Manny Eager explain blockchain, cryptocurrency, and ICOs through Vancouver's Blockchain Association of Canada, the first Bitcoin ATM, and Ethereum's Canadian origins.
Drew Ogrzyk interviews Dan Garfield, Codefresh’s VP of Marketing and a full stack developer, about automating container and Kubernetes workflows.
Drew Ogrzyk interviews Dieter Shirley of Axiom Zen about blockchain, cryptocurrency, initial coin offerings, and smart contracts.
Boris Mann of Frontier Foundry explains blockchain, cryptocurrencies, tokens, and ICOs to Vancouver Tech Podcast host Drew Ogrzyk.
Vancouver Tech Podcast host Drew O'Grizzick interviews Lou Morical, CEO and founder of South African company ProsperaProp, about blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offerings.
Barinder Rasode explains how personal experiences with medical cannabis changed her position from opposing cannabis facilities as a Surrey councillor to leading Niche Canada, a nonprofit focused on education and coordination during legalization.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 91 features Alex Cruz of Splunk explaining machine-data search, machine-learning tooling, engineering leadership, and product experimentation.
Kelsey Hightower of Google explains Kubernetes as a declarative API for running containerized applications across servers with networking, storage, and service discovery.
Alejandro Lujan of ScalaQuest explains how Scala combines object-oriented and functional programming for scalable back-end systems used by Twitter, LinkedIn, and Netflix.
Brittany Whitmore describes communications work for innovative companies, including 3D printing, crowdfunding, and virtual reality, alongside community projects in Vancouver.
Shannon Salter, chair of British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal, explains how Canada's first online tribunal handles strata and small claims disputes.
Scott Belair argues that monoliths are not inherently bad, but uncontrolled coupling and entangled database design create productivity and business-continuity problems.
Ken McDonald, Chief Growth Officer at TeamSnap, explains how the sports-management app serves about 15 million people across B2C and B2B products.
Jerry Chi, a data scientist at Supercell, explains how Brawl Stars was soft-launched in Canada to measure player behavior before possible expansion into the U.S.
Nathan Ladd tells Drew Ogrzyk that teams should not adopt microservices merely to escape a messy monolith, because hidden user-interface and database dependencies can make extraction unsafe.
Kevin Rockwood tells Drew O'Grindick how moving from Cincinnati to Seoul led him to Skelter Labs through the Seoul Elixir meetup.
Ryan Lalonde tells Drew O'Grizzick how painting fences, decks, and schools after age 14 developed the sales skills behind his startup work.
Melanie Yuen describes leaving a 10-year federal government career, joining Elevator Ventures, and finding a community-focused role with Women in Tech World.
Zach Cohen, GM of Trulioo, explains how the Vancouver company verifies identities across borders for online services, commerce, and financial technology.
Vancouver Tech Podcast episode 77 brings together Drew O'Grizzick, Charles Crampo, Scott Bellware, Adam Dimitrick, and Nathan Ladd to examine monoliths, service-oriented architecture, and microservices.
Jonathan Natavio, founder of Porter, traces his path from accounting and email marketing at Clearly Contacts to launching a concierge platform for household and workplace tasks.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 75 features Scott Belleware and Nathan Ladd comparing satellite-radio systems engineering with Ruby on Rails development.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 74 features PressReader’s Nikolay Malyarov and Columbia Journalism Review writer David Uberti discussing journalism, technology, facts, and public trust.
Keith Ippel, CEO and founder of Spring Activator, explains how the Vancouver startup school helps entrepreneurs move from an idea on a napkin toward approximately $1 million in annual revenue.
Dorfam Mirgaravi explains how Equilibrium, a Vancouver design and development studio, combines business development with web and mobile work in fintech, retail, and payments.
Vancouver Tech Podcast episode 71 features Google Cloud developer advocate Mark Mandel discussing Kubernetes, gRPC, hybrid cloud, and developer advocacy.
Vancouver Tech Podcast host Drew Ogrzyk interviews Adam Dimitryk of Adaptech Solutions about domain-driven design, CQRS, event sourcing, and event storming.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 69 features John Richardson, founder and CEO of Othello, describing online tools for group decision-making in government, enterprises, and citizen organizations.
Graydon Benzler and Matt Visser describe Syllabi Learning Solutions, a digital student planner that combines course information from Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, email, and paper syllabi.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 66 features Alex and Lester of Advisor Websites discussing company growth from 7 developers to 17 and from roughly 6 employees to 46.
Vancouver Tech Podcast hosts Drew Okrzik and Alex Moxon interview Chad Lehman of the Neil Squire Society about technology that removes barriers for people with disabilities.
Nikolay Malyarov, PressReader’s editor-in-chief, explains how the company grew from delivering printed Vancouver Sun editions abroad into a digital service with nearly 6,300 publications in more than 60 languages.
Episode 63 of Vancouver Tech Podcast features Kim Hansen of Signal FM and Peter Watkins of the B.C.
Vancouver Tech Podcast Episode 62 features Nick Badminton discussing technology forecasting, including a bet that Apple will announce a completely clear iPhone by the end of the year.
Episode 61 of Vancouver Tech Podcast features Renee Hildebrand, a technical writer at ITGlue, describing how she moved from university policies and procedures into software documentation.
Vancouver Tech Podcast hosts Drew O’Grizzick and Alex Moxon interview Rob Vucci, CEO of STAT Search Analytics, about learning to code, building a company, and managing growth.