{"id":875,"date":"2014-12-19T06:54:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T11:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2015-01-06T22:53:23","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T03:53:23","slug":"learning-new-things-and-trying-to-be-flexible-dave-mccrory-episode-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/2014\/12\/learning-new-things-and-trying-to-be-flexible-dave-mccrory-episode-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning new things and trying to be flexible: Dave McCrory &#8211; Episode 70"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right;\">\n<figure id=\"attachment_877\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-877\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-877 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400-300x300.jpeg\" alt=\"LRtvLQqi_400x400\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400-300x300.jpeg 300w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400-150x150.jpeg 150w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400-50x50.jpeg 50w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/LRtvLQqi_400x400.jpeg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-877\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shaggy Dave McCrory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_876\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-876\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-876\" src=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o-300x238.jpg\" alt=\"Corporate Dave McCrory\" width=\"300\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o-300x238.jpg 300w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o-1024x815.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o-210x167.jpg 210w, http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/272583_2011432651490_4022923_o.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-876\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Corporate Dave McCrory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>This week we talk with serial entrepreneur and alpha geek Dave McCrory, CTO of Basho. We talk about his career, transparent management, being a leader, and keeping up with new things at any\u00a0age or level. Basho makes a distributed No SQL database, which we don&#8217;t talk about at all in this podcast. Disclaimer: Geek Whisperer Matt has now joined Basho, which happened after this podcast was recorded.<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6736\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-875-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Started out by hacking a computer game<\/li>\n<li>Dad made him go to Dale Carnegie courses<\/li>\n<li>Putting together computers gave him hands-on experience<\/li>\n<li>Computer consulting in college was an early business<\/li>\n<li>First run at business was too secretive with &#8220;the idea&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Next run was more inclusive and open and turned into an ASP<\/li>\n<li>First lesson: manage people as people, with empathy and trust<\/li>\n<li>Learning the difficult lessons of hiring and firing<\/li>\n<li>Pivoted the company after meeting with VMware, deciding that this virtualization thing was going to be big, and that VMware&#8217;s current plans were to manage everything with Perl scripts.<\/li>\n<li>That company later merged with another.<\/li>\n<li>Second lesson: don&#8217;t work with people when your gut tells you not to<\/li>\n<li>Wrote a book, Advanced Virtualization, with VMBlog&#8217;s Dave Marshall, but still wasn&#8217;t doing much on social media or in the community. But saw the value of blogging with David.<\/li>\n<li>Started a second company which became Hyper9<\/li>\n<li>At that point, Dave wasn&#8217;t a much of a coder, but he felt like he needed more insight into what his engineering team was (and wasn&#8217;t) accomplishing.<\/li>\n<li>Third lesson: If you push too hard in the wrong way, you can lose trust and all of your political capital with boss and your team. (John&#8217;s aside:<\/li>\n<li>Kathy Sierra<\/li>\n<li>Learned the value of social media from Andrew Kutz \u00a0&#8211; reach and connection<\/li>\n<li>Virtuous cycle between tweeting and blogging<\/li>\n<li>Introduced the concept of &#8220;Data Gravity&#8221; in a blog post, which resonated with many<\/li>\n<li>Started with Ruby, started following Ezra Z, who was working at VMware<\/li>\n<li>The GWs wonder if HR ever can&#8217;t figure out what to do with Dave &#8211; where does he fit in the org chart?<\/li>\n<li>Evidently not, because Dave mostly answers by talking about his hiring\u00a0philosophies<\/li>\n<li>Dave then leaves VMware to take on an executive leadership role in engineering at Time Warner Music<\/li>\n<li>The scene: Dave, sitting alone in an empty half floor of an office building, with an entire team to hire and process to create and product to build<\/li>\n<li>Part of this journey: learning new things, and trying to remain flexible &#8211; in what you do and how you do it.<\/li>\n<li>Usually, the younger people are willing to try the new things more than the older people, and that&#8217;s usually how the younger people break in to something that was usually done by the older generation.<\/li>\n<li>Using community to figure out new things: participate in conversations with alpha geeks or just watch them talk<\/li>\n<li>Blogging can lead to speaking engagements (or if not, you can be submitting abstracts to speak) &#8211; get on a plane and take advantages of these opportunities<\/li>\n<li>Last lesson: be transparent as a leader. Transparent about what&#8217;s going on.<\/li>\n<li>Dave also shares a lot of his work and personal life on social media &#8211; more personal on Facebook, but also on Twitter<\/li>\n<li>There are some things that just about anybody could share, and you could start a conversation, certainly movies or some shared interest like that.<\/li>\n<li>We end with a rumination on doing your own thing and not worrying about being in a box.<\/li>\n<li>You can find Dave at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mccrory\">@mccrory<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/mccrory.me\">http:\/\/mccrory.me<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6735\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-875-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Podcast: <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?powerpress_pinw=875-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week we talk with serial entrepreneur and alpha geek Dave McCrory, CTO of Basho. We talk about his career, transparent management, being a leader, and keeping up with new things at any\u00a0age or level. Basho makes a distributed No SQL database, which we don&#8217;t talk about at all in&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/2014\/12\/learning-new-things-and-trying-to-be-flexible-dave-mccrory-episode-70\/\">Read All Show Notes<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Learning new things and trying to be flexible: Dave McCrory &#8211; Episode 70<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6737\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-875-3\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3?_=3\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Podcast: <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?powerpress_pinw=875-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"Geek-Whisperers-Ep-70-Dave-McCrory.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}