DevOps Institute

[EP33] Getting to Know Hope Lynch, Technology Strategy Director at CloudBees

Podcasts

On this episode of The Humans of DevOps Podcast, Hope Lynch, Technology Strategy Director at CloudBees joins Jason Baum. We get to know Hope as she shares the journey that led her to the IT industry including initially being pushed away and her time in the military.

Hope and Jason also chat about how the technology sector actually began as a women-dominated field, the culture of DevOps, her life experiences, and tips to the Humans of DevOps.

The episode wraps up with Hope and Jason bonding over good music-this is a do-not-miss episode!

The lightly edited transcript can be found below.

Narrator 00:03
You’re listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills, knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SKIL framework.

Jason Baum 00:18
Hey, everyone, it’s Jason Baum, Director of membership for DevOps Institute. And I’m your host of the Humans of DevOps podcast now. Sorry, Jayne. I’m your new host. I’m so excited today, not just to be hosting my second episode of humans of DevOps for me. But today, I get to be chatting with Hope Lynch, the technology strategy director at CloudBees. Hope. Thanks so much for joining us.

Hope Lynch 00:46
Thank you, Jason, for inviting me, this is going to be fun.

Jason Baum 00:49
It will be we had a great side chat prior to the podcast. So I can’t wait to see where this conversation leads us.

Hope Lynch 00:58
You don’t know where we’ll end up.

Jason Baum 01:01
But one of the things that I that we talked about is that, you know, on this podcast, and hopefully, for those of you listening, you listen to last week’s podcast with Evelyn hopefully, if you listened, you heard that we did get human, we’re getting pretty personal. We’re getting into the weeds a little bit of who are the people that make up this industry? Because that’s what’s fascinating to me as someone who’s been outside of this world up until January, and you’re new to CloudBees, but not new to the industry.

Hope Lynch 01:33
Right joined CloudBees in January, and I think what, wow, the first time I heard DevOps, that probably was around now I’m guessing 2011 2013 ish. So yes, meanwhile.

Jason Baum 01:54
So I’m curious, you know, let’s say so that’s today with CloudBees. Let’s go back. And I’m really curious. How did you land on this being your like, your, your career path? How did you choose to end up here? Or are better words? How did you end up here? Right,

Hope Lynch 02:14
so So here’s the thing when I was in high school, I wanted to take computer classes, but they told me I couldn’t and I will say not mention what high school I went to. They were pushing more boys into those classes. And here I am, you know, wanting to join and they were kind of like, nah, nah, nah, you don’t want to do this. You want to do something else, you know, so miss that opportunity. But then I joined the military. And when I joined the military, the furthest thing from my mind, but they signed me up for signal, which is the Army’s you know, the whole thing for you know, computer technology, right? Did that for a little while, switched over to journalism, photojournalism, I was in the Public Affairs Office in the military. But then after I got out, um, I started tinkering with computers. Everyone was like, Oh, you’re so good at this. And I was like, really? Am I so I thought, you know, maybe this is still a career path for me. Um, my first technology job, I worked helpdesk, I crawled under computers, I was crawling through server rooms,

Jason Baum 03:31
tell people to turn their computer on and off.

Hope Lynch 03:34
I punched cable I pulled wire you know, I did it. All right. So when one of the things when I’ve had conversations with people on teams in various positions, and they’re kind of like, you could never understand my pain. I’m like, do I wherever you are, I actually have been there, network administration, web development, all of it. But when DevOps started being talked about, right, that was a real shift. Because up to that point, in my career, and every team I worked with, it was sort of like, you know, the technology people, they were there, but they were the backroom folks and you know, you just, you know, shove things in their direction, you know, and they’ll get it done and whatever. But then DevOps came, and it was more about empowerment, and let’s really see how the teams are working. And I know when I was years ago, when I was at Red Hat, that was when it really took hold for me, because we had so many teams and so many agile teams, and it was how do we make these teams more effective? How do we figure out how to make the connections between them and all of that was pushing toward DevOps. So yeah, that’s when it really took hold for me

Jason Baum 05:03
did the early part of your story, you know, that stuck with me was that you were pushed away from doing? Doing? Yeah. And I ended up there anyway. Yeah. Which is I mean, thank goodness. All right. But, but that’s interesting, because, you know, when, obviously, when it’s hard in a male-dominated industry, being a woman in tech, that’s been something that’s come out

Hope Lynch 05:29
pretty loud and clear to me male-dominated industry.

Jason Baum 05:32
Tell me, tell me more. Tell me more. tell you more.

Hope Lynch 05:35
So back in the day, so there’s a conference, right? Um, and it’s in Texas, and it’s all about ADA, you know, no, Hopper, Grace Hopper, right. She was this, like, fantastically brilliant person in technology. Most of the women back in the day, in the technology sector, they were programmers, computers, back in the day, those are the descriptions that were applied to women, women were computers. But, um, as the field became more lucrative, there’s a little bit more money, there’s a little bit more status, you know, people looked over the fence and guys are like, maybe I’ll do that now. Because the profile was raised. And I think that happens in most situations. So instead of it being, you know, a lot of women with the punch cards and all those other things and figuring out, you know, trajectories and all this other stuff. Um, you know, it started to shift so now yet it is a lot of men, but I think personally, what I have seen anyway, and maybe my view is skewed, but I belong to I Tripoli, women in engineering. I’ve been to the tapir conference, the Grace Hopper conference, I, you know, have connections to a lot of women in technology. And I’ve seen a lot of younger women coming in more than when I was starting years ago. So I think I think it is shifting, I think it’s slowly shifting. Um, I think some of it may be just helping, you know, folks to understand once upon a time, this was a woman-dominated field. So you know,

Jason Baum 07:29
it’s interesting, I didn’t, I didn’t know that. And, you know, oddly enough, you know, my, my mother actually got her career started at data Gen. back, way back. So yeah, doing some. She was a trailblazer as I think back, yeah. I mean, then now she’s, she’s retired, but thinking back, you know, that’s, that’s pretty interesting. I didn’t really think about it. Yeah, so were there real speaking, Trailblazers or role models? Did you have some in the field when you were coming up? Or do you have, you know, some today?

Hope Lynch 07:59
Well, back then? Not so much, right? Because then it was really, I was more driven by curiosity. And this thing in my brain where I see something, and I am like, Huh, no one else could fix that. Maybe I could fix it. Can I get a chance? You know, are you gonna let me try it? And I think I can fix it. Um, today, I think I’m not necessarily a role model, but just inspiration, when I am talking to younger people who are coming into the field and hearing how different they sound, right? And the possibilities they are looking forward to, and the range of options they have. That is really inspiring to me because I think, you know, is there any way that I may have been limiting myself, that I can sort of widen my perspective, and what’s possible for me, so I think, you know, reaching out to them and having those conversations actually helps me a lot.

Jason Baum 09:11
That’s awesome. And it’s a little it’s like a summer giving back to write in the knowledge that you have, and you gave me some knowledge in our conversation prior to the podcast, which I’m very much appreciative I, I, I think I described myself as completely not knowledgeable, right, DevOps, you know, this is new to me. I said, like the, the way that I learned was reading the Phoenix Project and unicorn project, Virginia. And you shared with me a funny story about Jean Kim, but even prior to that, yeah, we had started talking about DevOps and what it means and I was saying, you know, I feel like there’s a lot of terminologies and it’s very confusing, and I’m not a technical person, but you summed it up really well. And I mean, if we could take it back to that free conversation and talk about that a little bit.

Hope Lynch 09:59
Yeah. But DevOps, um, yeah, they’re the technological pieces. But if you don’t have the culture, working properly, you’re missing a lot of the point of DevOps. So much of it is the empowerment of the people, and the team, and the culture. DevOps is a way of doing things, right. If you have all the other pieces in place, uh, you know, you’re working on technology, and you’re doing work, but that cultural aspect of it, I, I will be on the soapbox once again. And people can, you know, email me call me to do whatever. But we will debate this if you leave out the cultural aspect and don’t pay attention to that and you don’t get it right, you’re not really doing DevOps.

Jason Baum 10:47
And that’s what we’re all about with DOI DevOps Institute is, you know, we’re an association. Our job is to well, I’m actually we’re kind of tinkering around the right wording, right? We all do. I mean, DevOps, I’m sure was tinkered around with a long time before that landed. But you know, we’re really trying to do is advance the humans behind DevOps, or the humans of DevOps, I like to say behind because, again, at the end of the day, all your all the technical practices, and, what’s the right word? I guess, practices input, you have to implement them, right? You have to test these things in a real-world environment. And I think that’s where DevOps comes in. Right? It’s cultural, it’s the technological meeting, the cultural and where do you meet in between? Because you know, what’s written isn’t what’s going to end up being implemented, right? Because we’re human.

Hope Lynch 11:39
Yeah. And technology is going to change more than people do. Right? So if you get the people, right, you get the culture, right, you have those teams that understand how to work together well, and they’re getting the right information at the right time. You have something really special, you probably have a really high-performing team of people versus getting the technology, right, and then leaving out the cultural piece, you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get.

Jason Baum 12:11
Yeah, that seems like the hardest piece is that, is that accurate? When I say that,

Hope Lynch 12:16
I think it is, um, in experience teams I’ve worked with whether I was managing a technology team, or I was working on a transformation or I was, you know, on the periphery somewhere. I think the, the lens has shifted a bit, but sometimes it is perceived that culture, you know, is a soft thing. And it will just happen organically. And you know, people will figure it out. But it’s really dangerous to leave culture to chance because you don’t know what culture will end up, you know, being developed, right? But getting the culture, right, is a multiplier, it apps

Jason Baum 13:06
an example of that like, like walking back to like, an example of culture not being maybe what you expected? Go? Yes.

Hope Lynch 13:15
So one of the things and this ties right into DevOps is, in a lot of companies, a lot of organizations still struggle with this now. Something catches on fire, something blows up, who is the hero? The person who put the fire out? Right? But what about the people who are being very preventative? And are ensuring those fires never start? Right? So what are you getting? You’re getting what you’re reinforcing? You’re saying, hey, you know what, we’re gonna recognize this person, maybe they got extra bonus, maybe they you know, who knows what they got? They got to write up where I mentioned that a company meeting because they wrote in and they save today? Well, were they the person who also set the fire? Right? Who has that conversation button. But if you change your culture, I’m in such a way that you you can, you know, there’s a great story, this guy from Google told me a story. About a year and a half, two years ago. He was brand new, just got there. And he was responsible. I think he said for Google ads, right? He’s working. He’s so excited. Oh my gosh, I’m working at Google. And he made something go wrong. And ads stopped working globally. Like no revenue, nothing wrong revenue. That’s not a problem. Yeah. And it was his fault. And he was really nervous because he thought, I’ve been here for two weeks, and now I’ll be fired. But what happened next The team swarmed and said, Okay, let’s just figure out what happened, no blame, let’s put things in place to prevent it happening again, let’s have a conversation. And he said, the next thing that they told him after everything was, you know, settled was, hey, you know, now you’re, you’re really part of the team. You know, but that is such a different way. And it wasn’t that we are going to glorify anybody fixing it, who gets credit for it? The whole team, right? That is way better than singling out an individual, especially in a situation like that. Um, but yeah, but you get what you reinforce you get what you reward the same thing with culture. Um, and but yeah, yeah, yeah, building a culture is really important. That’s,

Jason Baum 15:48
that’s a great example. And you, you have this way of being able to explain to, at least to me, yeah, you know, some of these concepts that have been that are pretty hard, I feel like to really grasp without the real-world examples. Yeah. And even just talking about DevOps are the terms that are involved. You know, they can just add to me they overlook overcomplicate maybe something that could be pretty simplified, you know, could be simple to explain, maybe not in actual practice. And please, you know, elaborate on these concepts you did when we were talking prior to the podcast, we were talking about some of those terminologies. And I’ll give an example actually, of the association world, everything’s an acronym. Yes. How do you explain that to someone, you even say, I triple E, or, you know, everything is everything.

Hope Lynch 16:45
But the thing, you know, but the thing with that, like we, you know, like we talked about every culture, every organization has a language. And that is, you know, it’s not that people sit down and think, oh, we have to create a language, but language is way, it part of the way that groups form, right. And people know that you are, you know, you’re a part of this group, and you’re friendly, let’s say, right, but one of the other challenges can be, if the language is too obscure, it can be very exclusionary. So having a way to bridge that, like, we talked about, you know, transformation, right, people say digital transformation. And now everything is a digital transformation, when it probably really is not, um, but finding a way to explain it to someone to say, hey, here’s what it is. And I’ll use the example I used before. And again, you know, not plugging myself, but I can’t avoid like myself by getting this example. But I was on scale of days, you know, for value stream management, right? And when I was thinking about, what should I present, and I thought, you know, most of the other presenters are probably going to come in and say, what is value stream management? Let me explain it to you and have charts and graphs and other things, which is, you know, which is very valid, but then I thought, well, what if someone attends who, you know, this is their first time here, I want something relatable. So I pulled in an example from a transformation I worked on in the past. And I walked through, I basically did a retrospective, right? Here’s what the problem was, here’s what people were saying. Sometimes you can present something in a very structured, and somewhat academic way, and people will tune in, but if it’s something they can feel, or something they have lived, that they can identify with. They may take away more information. So along the way, it was, you know, have you been in this situation? If you are in this situation in the future, here’s something you can do. Have you ever felt like, you know, everyone was saying the problems in the organization, we’re on your team, right, which I think everyone has at some point or another. But that relatability is a way to bridge that. So when we talk about these things, and then I sort of intersperse some of those, you know, some of those terms that are unique in that area, someone can say, you know, I already knew what that was, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. Right? So So now you’ve made that connection. And now they are a little more in, let’s say to that group, but it is a challenge. It’s an ongoing challenge.

Jason Baum 19:54
You humanized it. Yes, yes, you’re Yeah, look it down. Yeah, I think we all need something times in life. We sometimes overcomplicate something to, I don’t know, maybe sound like we know what we’re talking about, or we, you know, there’s a lot of that. i And maybe that’s not what it is because some of these processes are incredibly complicated. But they can be explained, at least to me, you know, I’m definitely new to this. When someone like you can break it down and simplify it. Mm-hmm. I didn’t know what that means. I just didn’t understand Oh, this is the cultural implementation of Yeah. Of processes. Okay, that makes sense. To me. That totally makes sense to me. But I

Hope Lynch 20:36
think one of the things for me too, and I even say this in in conversations I have with people now is, if you had to have the conversation, a Baptist, even if it’s a product that you’re trying to sell, and you want to have the conversation with someone who doesn’t know anything about that area, do you have a way that you can explain it to them and make it make sense? If you don’t, that really is a problem? Because every buyer for that product is not an expert in that area? Right. But they still need to be able to understand it.

Jason Baum 21:14
So let’s go back now and get personal again. Okay. Is that okay? Yeah, let’s go. Let’s go. I love when, when we’ll never know, I love when I have a willing subject. So what’s a day in the life of Hope Lynch, what is What’s your average day like,

Hope Lynch 21:33
day in the life of Hope Lynch Day in the Life, right now. It’s pretty busy. And here’s why. So at CloudBees, I, my day to day is working a lot on market intelligence, competitive intelligence, business value assessments, and data and insights that are related to those two areas. So with that, I am having conversations across the whole company, I am on customer calls, I’m trying to understand, you know, what their goals are, and some of them are in the midst of transformations. So for me, fortunately, love CloudBees for this, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna say it. We’re virtual. And it’s not because of COVID. Right? There are some people at CloudBees who are going into the office more frequently, but then there are some who are 100% remote because I am fully remote. I, you know, I could set my own schedule. So you know, my day, except this week, I changed a bit, my day would normally start around 1010 o’clock in the morning, I’ve had a chance to get up, go for a walk, check mail, make breakfast, whatever. Um, and then, you know, I start looking, you know, what emails have come in overnight, what other things are going on? But my goals are, how do I help the people within the organization, align around the right information, so that we understand where we sit in the landscape for DevOps tooling? Where do we sit? If we look at feature management, all of those things, and there is so much data, where you’re doing market and competitive intelligence to pull in, that you have to make choices, you know, what do I talk about? What do I not? And then usually, there’s a conversation with someone in sales, who may want me to do a ride-along to a customer to help put together that statement of business value that takes a little bit of homework, but it’s always interesting, because when you go to talk to the customer, even though they have DevOps teams, and we’re talking, you know, about culture, and we’re talking about pipelines, we’re talking about all these things, hearing their motivation, right is always interesting. And I love it when some of them have said things like, you know, we want to change the way we work. Not just we are interested in, you know, upgrading our technology or changing our technology. We want to change the way we work. So I take that homework back, have some internal meetings, and usually I try to reserve a block of time where I can focus because context switching is the death of progress. Being busier does not necessarily mean you’re making more progress. And in that focus time, you know, I am I’m trying to plan because there’s a lot of ground to cover, and I still have a long way to go. I only got here, you know, again in January, but um, but usually it’s a pretty good day. It’s There are a lot of meetings and it’s really busy. But the great thing is, I have a lot of autonomy, I have the ability to make, you know, decisions on you know what I’m going to work on when for the most part, and I have a fantastic team. So we’ve been doing really great things I’m in, I’m in the smaller team, solution marketing, that’s part of Product Marketing. And, you know, we’re killing it. I’m just gonna say that other than, you know, but we’re, that’s

Jason Baum 25:29
awesome. Great. I, please, that’s, that’s awesome. You should be able to say that about your team. Right? I work with a wonderful team. i Yeah, fantastic team, you know, speaking women in tech, you know, I have the opportunity to speak to work with Evan Allen, or like, and with Helen Beale. And you know, and Jane Grohl, you know, all very powerful women in tech. And so yeah, I guess that’s why I didn’t really think of it myself. As you know, it was told to me that this is a very male-dominated industry. And I and I guess, in many ways, it is but I have had the luxury, I guess, very early in my experience with field to know a lot of very powerful women in the field. And I’m going to add you to that list of my friends in the industry. You know, what are those things you were saying? Like, kind of disconnecting and almost, you know, taking that beat, it’s very difficult working from home, I’ve been working, I work from home prior to the, to the pandemic myself. My office was in Chicago, I’m in New York. The best part is I’m not flying anywhere right now. But, but sometimes it can be difficult to, to make that to have that disconnected time in the day, right? Because you’re always kind of at work when you’re home. Yeah. So for me, I like to listen to music, what were some of that? What do you do to kind of have that disconnected time that think time?

Hope Lynch 26:50
Yeah, and I will say, This is my third opportunity to work in a role where I was remote. So I’ve had practice, which helps. During non-COVID times, my schedule was more like get up early in the morning, go to the gym, knock it out, come back home, make breakfast, check, email, do meetings, then at lunchtime, get out, whether I just go for a walk, I go to the park, I you know, do something outside that’s away from the technology, come back, run through the meetings and in the evenings. And I am really good about this. Once I’m done, I’m done. I have not connected slack email, anything to any of my devices that are non-work devices. So my team and other people know, if you need to contact me, you have to send a text or you have to call me because otherwise, I’m not going to see it until I get back on. Um, and one of the things I do have a luxury of and I will say it is a luxury. Um, I have a separate office space, right? It’s a bonus room, but I’ve made it into an office. So when I leave this room and shut the door, I have to intentionally come here in order to do any work, right. So that physical separation is important. And I know, years ago, when I didn’t have that opportunity for that physical separation, I would actually take they’re gonna find out about this now, but it’s too late, that I would take my time. And I would actually like put it under the sofa. Right. So I would have to get on the floor and drag it back out. And especially on the weekend, it would go like way, way, way, way under there. Because then it’s like, I can’t just go and flip it open. I have to think about it like, man, I’ve got to get on the floor.

Jason Baum 28:49
Hmm. I’m not worth it. You know? No.

Hope Lynch 28:53
But yeah, but you have to make it. You have to make it a challenge, right? Yeah, make a challenge, erect some barriers.

Jason Baum 29:00
I’m connected to slack on my phone, I’m connected to HubSpot to jail to this to that, you know that I did get better. I have my own dedicated office space I am in my office when I’m in my office, I’m at work. Luckily, I have a young child. So you know, when I’m not here makes it certainly easier to forget about, you know, being connected. But I’m still connected. Even on my Apple watch. I get my emails, you know, it’s like, it’s like non stop Yes,

Hope Lynch 29:24
though. But the thing is, and you and this is one of the challenges, and part of it is you know, COVID times, you know, in the poor times it wasn’t, you know, the same. But if you do, like an inspection or triage, right, and you just make notes throughout the day. And this is advice I’ve given to a few people make notes throughout the day, some of those messages, right. How urgent were they really? And what were you doing when you saw the message? Were you out for a walk? Were you doing something that you enjoy and then suddenly it was broken. And one of the best things is being able to do things. And I know, this may be trite, but you know, that state of flow that people talk about is you get in, it’s not just for work, you can be doing that when you’re exercising when you’re cooking when you are, you know, playing, doing whatever, but then that message pops up. Now you’re out. Right, it’s not be able to go back.

Jason Baum 30:23
Yeah, yes, the disruption that you were talking about earlier, right. It’s, it’s those in the changing the disruption causes the change inactivity, you know, your loss. And that could be, you know, that could add to the stress. And oh, yeah, no, I mean, I like that you’ve kind of essentially adopted your, your practice of, you know, what you do for cultural transformation and digital transfer to your life, which is like that. I mean, you’ve essentially streamlined things for your life to be more perfect. I mean, I could use you as a coach, are you available? Well, hey,

Hope Lynch 30:54
I, I do mentorship. So you know, just call me anytime. But really, though, the thing is, um, you have, and it’s a little self-serving in a way because the thing is, if you, um, it’s that discipline of being able to say no, right? And you can say no, in multiple ways, but one of the other ways you can say no, Jason is getting slack off your phone.

Jason Baum 31:24
Yeah, I got it. I have to start, like opening up a book and reading again. You know, I’m very good with music. You know, I listen to music constantly. That’s my escape. I

Hope Lynch 31:34
mean, well, I think my neighbors probably hear my music during the day when

Jason Baum 31:41
Okay, so who are you listening to right now? Who’s your Oh, my

Hope Lynch 31:44
goodness, right now? Oh, my gosh. So here’s the challenge with that. I want to see what are the last things I was

Jason Baum 31:53
just gonna say, if you open it up and tell me who was the last artists are listening, this could be an error saying, Yeah, you know, for me, if I opened it up, and my daughter was listening, I think it was because I

Hope Lynch 32:03
go through, I go through moods, man, you know, just I wake up one day and I’m like, what is it today? So So yesterday, it was Daft Punk. Okay, because you know what happened? You know, they’re like, we’re not doing anything else. So I was like, Okay, I’m going crazy with Daft Punk. Um, a few days before that. I remember because I was talking to someone and we were talking about music. And they said, What are you listening to? And I said, I found this playlist and it was a mix between reggae chon and Dancehall. So it was like, going, you know, I was going and then another day, I was listening to Lo-Fi house. So it changes day to day, there’s not a consistent you know,

Jason Baum 32:49
I think that’s really healthy. I love all different types of music myself like I just was just for curiosity. I wanted to see like, Okay, where are the last things? Elton John Elliott Smith, Eric Clapton, Bob Marley and David Bowie. Okay, that’s pretty eclectic. Pretty cool.

Hope Lynch 33:04
And I have seen Elton John, and I mean, not Elton John, but um, Eric Clapton, in concert. And, dude, let me tell you what loved music. But when we got there, I don’t know if he was he wasn’t feeling well. But he was sitting on the stage. And he would play the song. And he leaned forward and say, Thank you. And he just sit back and he’d go right into the next song. And that was the whole concert. Yeah,

Jason Baum 33:32
he’s, he’s great. I saw my wife and I went to a 75th-anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden. And he brought up all these mean, he brought John Mayer are these, like some amazing guitars, Buddy Guy was there. I mean, all these people have seen it guy. Oh, he’s fantastic. It’s an experience, right? And you just listen and half of his concert was they were just jamming. They didn’t even play songs. They didn’t play his songs. Like they were just jamming much

Hope Lynch 33:57
energy. And I was like, I want to be Buddy Guy when I grow up. You know, he doesn’t seem like he is man. He moves.

Jason Baum 34:05
Funny story about Elton John, because he just said Elton John. Yeah. So I was supposed to see Elton John, in April 2020. So that obviously didn’t happen. Because he’s doing his farewell tour. Goodbye yellow brick road or farewell yellow brick road tour. Right? This is his last time ever gonna be in New York? Yeah, so so we got tickets. It’s now going to be in February of 2022. So good to go. I’m like Elton better stay healthy. Like yeah,

Hope Lynch 34:37
I saw I saw BB King on his last round. And, you know, that was it was good. But you know, you could tell, the years, caught up and but especially though, you know, because you know, you know you’ve had an opportunity to see them. I saw Tom Petty I think on one of his last rounds. Yeah.

Jason Baum 35:00
So, saw BB King at BB kings in New York.

Hope Lynch 35:03
Oh, man. So you’re eating the food and

Jason Baum 35:07
the food and yeah, so they have a great Beatles breakfast there too if you ever

Hope Lynch 35:12
I remember the first time I went there and I ate and I was like, oh, where is this been all my life? Right?

Jason Baum 35:17
We totally just sidetracked on music and I love it, I could talk to you about music forever to what’s the last book you’ve read?

Hope Lynch 35:25
Oh, my God, the last book. Okay, this is really bad. So I circulate through books, I very rarely read one book and continue. You know, so I will have like five or six books at the same time. Um, but I will

Jason Baum 35:48
think like that, I don’t know how you can stay into follow each story?

Hope Lynch 35:52
Well, here’s the thing. So I have a lot. I have a lot of nonfiction that I’m going through. So that’s easier because you don’t need the continuity. Right. But, um, oh my gosh, so it was a trilogy, the last fiction I read, I, you know, I’m more of a sci-fi reader. Um, but the last fiction I read, I cannot find it. But it was a trilogy, and it was, you know, old term, but it was almost like this, the steampunk trilogy, and there was a guy who was having to climb this tower because he was looking for his wife who disappeared in this market. Right. And along the way, he becomes a pirate captain and all of these other things. And it was just a lot of Mad

Jason Baum 36:46
Max elements.

Hope Lynch 36:49
Claiming the sour, but other than that, you know, I you know, I read just anything, you know, that comes across that is of interest. So, but yeah, but as far as you know, you’ve got good sci fi recommendations. I’m here for it. But a lot of business books a lot, a lot of business books, transformation strategy. I peeked back into some IT service management stuff recently, because of some questions that come up. data strategy, you know, anything really,

Jason Baum 37:27
this will take it full circle. And this is kind of like my, you know, bring us back to the start as I was telling you about Jean Kim, and how my introduction to this industry was through the Phoenix Project and unicorn project. And then you told me a very funny story about Jim Kim, would you mind do you mind sharing? I

Hope Lynch 37:45
don’t like, okay. Oh, I did. And first of all, he is one of the most beautiful human beings ever. But I was at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. And I was sitting there with one of the other people who had come to the conference. And we were talking about something that was going on at the company I was working for at the time because the Phoenix Project come out at everyone. And it was reading, I was in it at the time. And we had a board set up, you know, in Confluence or something where we were post questions, and we were discussing it, we turn it into a 400 person book club for the Phoenix Project. So we’re sitting there at the conference, and she says, Ah, is that Jean Kim? And I looked, and I was like, Yes. And I said, Are you going to go speak to him? She was like, No, and I was like, oh, I’m gonna go talk to him. So I had to wait until we had a break-in that session, that as soon as we had the break, I made a beeline to him. And I was like hygiene. And we talked and I was like, You don’t know me? Let me tell you what’s going on. And I told him, he was like, what? Like, you have this whole discussion and everything. And I was like, you know, it’d be really cool. If you could answer some of the questions that people have asked. So we found this little huddle space, and we were so cold. We were freezing. But he sat there and he would read the question. And he’d be like, oh, and he just typed in the answer. So then some of the people at work started wondering, wow, she has suddenly become so knowledgeable about all of this stuck, what is going on? So I didn’t just tell them directly, but I took a picture of the two of us and I posted it. And he wrote underneath it hey, this is Gene cam. Ansley actually answered questions, right. So then it exploded, but also, so good of him. I asked if he could come visit us and he planned to come to visit us and talk to us in person, but he wasn’t feeling well. So he actually from his hotel room dialed in one day and just did a whole q&a with us for like an hour. So that yeah, this It was pretty, it was pretty cool.

Jason Baum 40:01
That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, that’s a great story. Thank you for sharing it. Oh, no worries. Yeah. Hope thank you so much for being on the podcast. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. But I don’t want to take too much of your time your Have you have it all figured out when it comes to your time, so I don’t want to, I don’t want to be.

Hope Lynch 40:18
You know, I left some flexibility for you. But I appreciate you having me on Jason. This has been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. Me too.

Jason Baum 40:26
It’s, it’s, it was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. And for those of you listening, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. Don’t forget to join our global community. We launched our membership a few weeks ago, you can go on to DevOps institute.com/membership. To learn more about that. See other great resources that we have. And until next time, remember, you’re part of something bigger than yourself. You belong, belong to us. And I don’t know I need a sign-off. So I’m just gonna say live long and prosper. We’ll go back to our sci-fi or sci-fi conversation. Thanks. Thanks again, everyone. Take care. Have a good week.

Narrator 41:12
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. Don’t forget to join our global community to get access to even more great resources like this. Until next time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself. You belong

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