Key takeaways:

• Non-tech concepts translate to a tech world
• Change is change, and how you navigate it, whether it's in a tech world or in a non-tech world is the same
• The importance of acknowledging peoples' feelings about change and address their concerns.
• The importance of explaing why the change is happening in order for others to embrace change more easily
• The importance of protecting your time, to maintain mental health

About our guest:

Angela Blake is passionate about helping people create happy cultures and selves. She believes that we all have unique perspectives that are both valuable and useful. The most fulfilling work she's done is to draw out those perspectives, use them to improve ways of working together, and help people make positive, lasting change. In other words, she's a coach. :)

Find us on:

• All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
• All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

• Windows 95
• Windows 3.1
• Lotus 1-2-3
• Scrum
• Kanban

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Angela Blake. Welcome, Angela.

ANGELA:
Hi. Hi. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA:
Thank you for joining. I'm super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?

ANGELA:
I'm calling from a very humid Toronto, downtown Canada. I said that in such an odd order, but downtown Toronto and that. I'm on the waterfront down here. Very busy. Very warm. I'm loving it.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. And the waterfront is honestly, like, one of my favorite spots in Toronto in the summer. Same name. Beat that.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah, I live down here. I work down here. I'm a waterfront person.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so perfect. Yay! Hooray for sunny days. Cool. Well, we're going to get started with some, I will say, lightning round slash icebreaker questions.

ANGELA:
I'm ready.

ADRIANA:
Are you ready?

ANGELA:
I think I am, I think I am.

ADRIANA:
Okay, let's do this. First question. Are you a lefty or righty

ANGELA:
Oh, a righty. 100%. Always have been.

ADRIANA:
All right. Are you an iPhone or Android user?

ANGELA:
I have to say I'm an iPhone person. I have all of the, I would say Apple products, so to speak. I love the compatibility.

ADRIANA:
I'm with you on that. Yes, I too am a “All things Apple.”

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah I just I like that everything just connects with each other. I don't have to really do much as a consumer or a user. I know Android has, like some amazing abilities to, personalize and customize, etc., but I'm good with what I get from Apple.

ADRIANA:
I'm with you. It's funny because all people are like, you can't customize Apple. I'm like, yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm don’t want to spend my days doing that.

ANGELA:
Yeah, yeah, I can customize my background just enough for me. I'm. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Good enugh. Good enough. I'm down. I'm down. Okay. Similar question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

ANGELA:
Oh, I honestly might not go along with my last answer, but I like Windows. Okay. I think because I've professionally always used Windows. So I'm that's what I'm used to. Like, you know, the Office suite, the the just the the usability of it, I think is kind of what I grew up. You think, so to speak. So it's just the most natural version for me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I feel ya.

ANGELA:
I do. Yeah, I do. Sorry I cut you off a little bit there, but I do have a MacBook at home that my son uses because I'm just like, I’m not as proficient...

ADRIANA:
It takes some getting used to, I have to admit, because I, I grew up in Windows Land as well. Like, you know, when Windows95 came out, I'm like, “whoa”. It can’t get any better than this.

ANGELA:
You're taking me back in time.

ADRIANA:
I know, right? Yeah. I mean, I remember Windows 3.1, and I was like, you know, the first time I saw a mouse, my dad's like, do you want to see something cool as a kid? He's like, you want to see something cool? I can show you a mouse right here. And I'm like, oh, and then he shows it to me and it's like it's a pointer on a screen. I'm like, what the hell is this??

ANGELA:
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Letdown!

ANGELA:
I remember being able to customize my pointer like, functionality. Like to have it like, do the drag. The, the effects and whatnot. And that was like just that was the ultimate. Or the little fire. Like, people were actually putting effort into what the cursor did. They might still be. But I, you know, I've moved on, I guess.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I know what you mean. Like when this stuff was very novel. Like, I remember when I got my first, computer with sound, which I think it was like, I want to say it was like a laptop. My parents bought me to go to university, and this was like in 1997. It had sound and it was like, not, it was like a it had a sound card, but it was like, not the greatest sound.

ADRIANA:
And I'm like, I am going to make everything ding because I can.

ANGELA:
I can customize all these sounds. Yeah. Yeah. Once that one that came along. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And then you get tired of it.

ANGELA:
Yeah, now I’ve got my phone [...] everything. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Now my phone's constantly on silent. I can't even even stand, like, sounds coming from my phone. I'm like, no, this is so distracting.

ANGELA:
All notifications.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Exactly.

ANGELA:
Exactly. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
All right, next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

ANGELA:
Oh, golly. No, I am a non-tech person in a tech world. So the programing languages I will say are, literally a whole other language to me.

ADRIANA:
All right, fair enough, fair enough. And actually, I think that'll be a really cool topic to dig into in our conversation, because I think that's that's a really interesting, I think really interesting thing to talk about. Okay. Next question is, do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

ANGELA:
I you know what? It's a hard decision because I'm thinking video. It's coming across like, Reels. It's coming across YouTube. But text is so concise. I'm probably going to have to go with a video just for, like, the probably the amount of time I spend consuming video over, over text. Like, I do get emails, but like newsletters, etc. and I the ones that I do subscribe to, I enjoy. But yeah, I think video wins just for I don't know. Eyeball entertainment. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Now do you prefer the short form videos or for the long form videos. Like what? What kind of [...]?

ANGELA:
I probably go to the shorter, the shorter form. So the shorter it is with, with some sort of value. Yeah. Like I'm not talking about cat videos and things like that. That's a whole other topic of conversation. But like if I'm, if I want to learn something and somebody creative like a short video, I do enjoy, the feature in, YouTube where they show you like the most commonly viewed section of videos so that you can just jump to the, to the part that you've, I guess they're looking for. I like I like that, like I want to save my time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about that feature. Today I learned...

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. Oh. Very clever.

ANGELA:
Yeah. I don't know if it's a feature, but it's just like, you can see, like, at the [...]. I don't know if it's all videos. But yeah, you could see, like, it's like a bar and it shows you where the, most, I guess most common. Either it's either time stamps or it's the most common watching area.

ADRIANA:
Right. Right. Right.

ANGELA:
I said that so poorly, but you know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

ANGELA:
Oh. Oh. My superpower. I guess it depends who you ask. But you're asking me. I'm thinking. I have to say something, and you really make me. This is a tough one. I'm g