Episodes

This week’s guest is David Franco, Director of Exceptional Academy, a post-secondary program that provides IT certification training with a focus in cybersecurity for Detroit-area adults with disabilities. David spoke with us first on episode 337 where he introduced the program. Now, he’s giving us an update on how the program is going, what the future plans are, and what their program needs from the community. Exceptional Academy is a program of the Living and Learning Enrichment Center (a sub...

This week, we had a chat with Jason Brown, currently the IT Security Manager at The Shyft Group, formerly the CISO at Merit. We immediately talked about the mindset you have to be in moving from a Service Provider model to the public and then to the private sector in terms of security and privacy. We also chatted on his definition of zero trust. We talked about a recent breach where hackers are getting smarter and finding playbooks and reading chat rooms before they strike. Lastly, we mocked ...

Episode 420—you know what that means? We are talking all things marijuana. Mary Jane. The devil’s lettuce. You get the point 🙂 And who better to talk about it than Tom Celani, the owner, president, and CEO of Luna Entertainment, the mother company of Metro Detroit based MotorCity Harley-Davidson, MotorCity Power Sports, Freedom Hills amphitheatre, TC Vineyards Inc., and the Celani Family Vineyards in Napa Valley. Celani is also an investor in a theater chain, a land developer in Arizona and Col...

For this episode, we were super-lucky to be able to chat with Lisa Plaggemier, Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance. NCSA advocates for safe and secure use of all technology. They give the average user plain-spoken info on cybersecurity issues. Lisa is super passionate about cyber security awareness and we immediately chatted about awareness for the older crowd. They have a great YouTube series called Mom, Don’t Click That. We then got into corporate security awareness trai...

This week, we talked to Jason Bourque of C3 Technology Advisors about all things cybersecurity and communication. Jason just visited the Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas, and he talked about not only emerging vendors in the space but emerging technologies as well. If you like drinking games, I highly recommend having a drink in hand for everytime Jason says an acronym. Jason is a great resource and a great conversationalist—definitely worth a listen.

This week, we were lucky enough to chat with long time radio veteran and podcast professional Bill McAllister. You might remember Bill from his days on 97.1 FM with Jay Towers and Stoney, you also might hear him on the radio now with 94.7 WCSX or subbing in for Frank Beckman on WJR. Bill is currently the President of Podcast Nation. We started off arguing about Gremlins, why it’s a horror movie and not a Christmas movie and how the Dad is a giant pile of trash. We discussed the growth and ev...

On Episode 415, we chatted with David Spiess from Rollbar. For those unaware of what Rollbar does, they are a continuous code improvement platform. Obviously, Bob had 100 questions: What happens to QA? What happens when bad code keeps coming from the same people (because this software can do that)? And much more. Dave is an old school IT pro and we also shared stories from how he got his start in IT to what took him from engineering to sales. Thanks for the listen!

We were lucky enough to chat this week with Mary Bobbitt from Slalom. If you work in or around software development, this is the show for you as Mary is a consultant/coach/guru/expert/you name it in agile. We talked in depth on how agile has changed during the pandemic with teams moving to a remote workforce as well as how we have adapted to different types of workers and styles but yet with a common goal. Lastly, Mary is a new professional wrestling fan and is completely wrapped up in the ar...

Brian “Schneebs” Schneble is the Director of Enterprise Sales at SentinelOne. He joined Bob and Randy to discuss the intersection of privacy and security. Before they got started, there was a quick discussion of the TV shows everyone is watching (Brian: Goliath, Bob: Ozark & Randy: Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol). We immediately got into the huge Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram outage which spurred huge online conversations considering the 60 Minutes whistleblower happened just a day prior. The...

This was a fun episode. Bob and Randy are both fans of Steve’s Mediterranean Chef, so they were happy to talk to the owner and CEO, Pierre Chammas. Pierre talked to the guys about how he got started in the food industry, how he became the owner of Steve’s, and how the the business has grown. He also talked about the challenges he’s faced running a business during the pandemic and how technology is keeping the business safe. Grab your favorite snack from Steve’s Mediterranean Chef and give this...

Maria Graham, Director of Sales at Nuspire joins Bob and Randy to discuss the latest in managed security services. Everything is a service these days! A company in Grand Rapids jokes about Pumpkin Spice as a Service (PSaaS). Nuspire is hiring! Also, check out their latest offering myNuspire.

This week’s guest is Erick Gutierrez, creator of the Max The Inebriated Rabbit comic and writer of the movie Bender. Erick talks about how he got his start writing, his comic, the movie, and what’s coming up in the next issues of Max. Find Erick on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Find Max The Inebriated Rabbit on Facebook and at Rocket Ink Studios. Find Bender on Amazon or MovieZyng.

Friend of the podcast Ming Chen of A Shared Universe PodcaStudio (also “I Sell Comics”, “The Ming & Mike Show”, and “AMC’s Comic Book Men” ) was in town this past weekend for Astronomicon and the Magnum 8 fundraiser and he talked about his experiences about both, as well as what’s new to him in the Ann Arbor and Detroit area. Ming has a busy schedule so if you want to see what he’s up to follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

Tom Nardone is the founder and president of PriveCo, a specializes in selling items that people would prefer to buy privately. ShopInPrivate.com is the world’s most private store. Also check out Bachelorette.com and Vibrators.com for more private needs. Tom’s latest project is Dignity Lifts, toilet lifts for those with mobility concerns. Some of Tom’s other projects: Extreme Pumpkins where strange pumpkins designs for silly and outrageous jack-o-lanterns are showcased. Detroit Mower Gang has...

For Episode 407, we had a great conversation with friend of the program August Gitschlag. While he may be the Clerk for the City of Clawson and had a long running stint with the City of Hamtramck, we chatted with August more for his charity work. Magnum 8 Presented by Bacardí Magnum 8 presented by Bacardí at Whiskey in the Jar in Hamtramck. It’s time to rock Hawaiian shirts, the shortest of shorts, Tigers caps AND mustaches all in the name of charity. Big ticket and basket raffles will be had...

This show, we had a great chat with musician, producer, web developer, and overall great guy Tommy Onyx. Tommy chatted with us about being in the music industry and touring the world with Charm Farm and also producing a global hit and touring with Inner City. He is also a huge blockchain fan, talking about the rise and stall of the NFT industry, which we still don’t understand, but it was fascinating nonetheless. We lastly got into the web development scene, talking about his company Loudbaby...

This week, Bob and Randy were joined by Patrick Garrity, VP of Operations at Blumira. We could have talked for hours, but we jumped around talking fun stuff like his 750k follower TikTok account being cancelled, and his love for skateboarding. We finished up by talking shop: data privacy tips and best methods of being secure, or at least having the visibility when you are not. Also in this episode, the guys shared their opinions of Masters of the Universe: Revelation and discussed that the show...

In Episode 404 “Podcast Not Found”, we chatted with Scott Wiemels, CEO of Digital Transformation Agency 24G. First, we chatted about their amazing office, the old Thunderbird Lanes, where they actually kept 10 lanes and all of the rental shoes and bowling balls. We then dove into some amazing projects they’ve done including implementing AR at a Walmart shareholder celebration. We also talked about the switch to virtual events during quarantine. Scott is a wealth of knowledge and 24G is liter...

This week’s guest is Gregg Garrett, founder and CEO of CGS Advisors. Before the conversation with Gregg, Bob talked about his experience visiting The Relief & Resource Co., a speakeasy inside El Topo restaurant in Fenton, Michigan; and Randy talked about his experience back in the cinema seeing Black Widow. Don’t miss Bob’s life-changing popcorn butter hack. Gregg and Bob then dove in with the million dollar question, what actually is Digital Transformation? It was a great talk about how diff...

For Episode 402, we were lucky to be joined by AJ Kuftic, Digital Product Strategist at Expedient. We got right into the latest ongoings in movies and TV and AJ dropped the bomb that he hasn’t watched a single MCU movie, but we forgave him and moved on. We also talked about the worst movie ever made. No, not Leprechaun in Space, The Tomorrow War. The Kaseya breach took up the rest of the show and AJ talked about the difference between this breach and more common ransomware attacks. Hope you ...

Nick Britsky, Digital Director of Hour Detroit and Detroit area cocktail creator behind NickDrinks.com joins Bob and Randy to talk about local bars and booze. Other topics from this episode: Bob liked the movie Nobody (2021) and Randy hated Killerman (2019). Trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Disney Reportedly Replacing Kathleen Kennedy with Jon Favreau as Lucasfilm Head Microsoft announces Windows 11, with a new design, Start menu, and more Follow @mattswider to get update...

Neil Nosakowski, CEO of High Score eSports, joins us to talk about the new gaming lounge opening in The Hawk Farmington Hills Community Center. Also, Bob watched some bad movies—Hostel III (2011) and Wrong Turn (2021)—and we talked about these stories of the week: Kevin Smith’s fictional fast-food chain Mooby’s is coming to Detroit via vegan-friendly pop-up Google Hangouts Is Now Google Chat, and Good Luck Figuring Out Why RockYou2021: Largest Ever Password Compilation Leaked Southwest Airline...

In Episode 399 of The IT in the D Show, we talked to Jason Yeager, CEO of Tenacity. We talked to him about building a company from scratch, getting bought, and doing it all over again with a new start up, all during the pandemic. We also got into talking about philosophies around the cloud, what exactly the cloud is, and when is the best time to use it. We also had a little fun talking about Loki, the new He-Man trailer, and the stories of the week: Hackers breach EA, steal game source code ...

Jason Bressler, CTO of UWM, joined Bob and Randy to talk about what it’s like to work in IT, strategies for landing a tech job, building and leading a tech team, and staying organized. (Apologies for my bad audio. I swear I know how computers work. —Randy)