Switched On: A Bowdark Podcast

Highlights

• Hau’s been doing it 20 years!
• Fell into analytics accidentally — got into the working world via an on-campus interview with PwC. Wound up getting business consulting training, without really expecting it. First project was in US Navy, doing purchase order stuff with pre-printed forms.
• Being onsite is a consulting holdover that’s really shifted in COVID times
• Hau is seeing more analysts with a technical background, seeing more developers with business acumen
• Analytics project team size is starting to get smaller, each person can do more
• With SAP analytics cloud, SAP’s approach is that the customer retains ownership and control of the data
• Analytics Cloud is the easy part: you still have to tackle your data
• Infrastructure connection pain points remain part of the challenge of any project. Overcome that hurdle quickly and you’ll be rolling

Money Quotes

Hau

Today, I am solving the same problems from 20 years ago — but I get to solve faster, and with cooler tools.

The struggle has always been: “How do i know what i have?”

You don’t even need to have my coding/engineering background!

[on SAP Analytics Cloud performance] It’s just as fast — or just as slow [as your source system].

How do I get this business person to see this insight really quickly?

Paul

You can’t have a bad source system and have an analytics tool make up for that.

It’s still boring, but it’s boring in the cloud! So it’s better!

James

We’re trending in a direction where it’s becoming more democratized. The tooling is making it more accessible.

We’ve seen a shift: let’s not even do traditional BI because of all the headaches.

James and I spoke with Carmen Bourlon, a virtuoso developer that just so happens to work with us at Bowdark. Carmen created margiemap.com, which visually illustrates the relationship between income levels and library access. She also wrote Let’s Take This Offline, a book introducing developers to the concepts of service workers and progressive web apps. Buy it!

Highlights

• Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are less of a technology and more of an idea. A web app should be fast, work offline, and be native-like...and now browsers include technologies that enable that. Foremost among these technologies are the service worker and, to a lesser extent, the manifest file which gives the web app a native-like experience on devices.
• Android is especially good in this play. iOS doesn’t have all the same features as Android at this moment, but the important ones are there. You can have a home screen icon, and have service workers (since 2018-ish).
• This has great applicability to utilities companies. They are out in random spots all the time — so often without network, even without a cellular data connection. How do I get the information back to HQ? Traditional web app would demand your full connectivity before doing ANYTHING.
• The beauty of this middleware is that there’s no cost. It’s just a JavaScript file.
• There are tons of cases out there where an existing app can be converted without a full rewrite.
• Carmen would love to see the world move closer to peer-to-peer mesh networks for connectivity purposes.

Money Quotes

Carmen

PWA is less of a technology and more of an idea.

It should be mobile-friendly, and it should look as much like a native app as possible.

When you think about it, as a user you just want to press the button and move on with your day.

If you can write Fiori, you can write this.

Paul

Your web page or Fiori app doesn’t even have to know it’s offline.

James Wood

• Super-nerd in SAP and Microsoft technologies for 20+ years!
• Computer science undergrad, Master’s degree in software engineering
• Started Bowdark in 2006
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Paul Modderman

• SAP, cloud, ML, and other various nerdings!
• Monkeyed around in college and took 6 years to graduate
• Started career in PC fix-it work, moved into application development after a few years
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

James and I are both authors of multiple books, check out the company media page to find out more.

What The Heck Do We Want To Do?

• Level up ourselves and our listeners with our natural curiosity and amazing guests
• Be true to our authentic nerd selves, but don’t just publish zeroes and ones
• Get our creative energy out into the universe, and connect with fascinating people

Paul says:

I want to do the things that help our guests, and us, and our listeners learn at a different level.

James says:

I want this to be an environment where we can be naturally curious, and have meaningful conversations.

Podcast Episode! Season 5 Intro: The Future of Work

James and I sat down to ruminate and prepare for our upcoming next season: The Future of Work. It’s obvious that GPT (and especially ChatGPT) has completely saturated everyone’s brains. It seems like we’re finally seeing the veil between front-office and back-office start to tear. But most of all, we are PUMPED about this season — as both a way to learn from great guests, and as a time capsule of a unique moment in tech history.

Money Quotes

James

You’re seeing a shift from systems being systems of record to decision support.

The proliferation of low-code tools are making it much more accessible to interconnect front-office and back-office systems.

This is coming very soon: enterprise-grade GPT services that train on your data.

Intranets are usually where information goes to die.

Paul

The future of work is about the new ubiquity of really good tech. There’s a shift going on in how much businesses believe they can actually do with technology.

I see the lights turn on with more non-techie people now, when the conversation turns to what you can do with it in your business.

The fact that the world is changing so fast means that there is such a thing as “The Future of Work”.

ChatGPT made the magic of tech real to people who don’t give a crap about tech. We as techies live in a world where we have always believed [that tech could make a real difference], but now it’s clear to non-techies.