Rikin Shah, is the CEO of Slower, a major disruptor in the monolithic consulting services industry. Slower drives value for its customers and partners by investing in new and future stack technology companies well ahead of the curve to help create competitive differentiation through technology. In addition to being a broad-scale technology systems integrator with over 6000 employees and 225 customers, Slower uses its reach and impact to accelerate its customers digital transformation through repeatable and highly scalable services offerings.

Just 6 months ago, who would have known that words like "NFT", "metaverse", and "web 3.0" would be high interest topics of discussion amongst friends, text threads and corporate brand strategies. At an estimated $23B market size, NFT's could change the world as we know it this year...YES, in 2022. Heather Parady and Rich Cardona, are joining this LIVE "The Data Binge Podcast" discussion to talk to us about NFT's. Heather and Rich are Hosts of "NFT's for Newbies", a podcast ALL ABOUT NFT's, focused on their combined journeys of navigating the world of the NFT from a beginners perspective. "NFT's for Newbies" surpassed 200,000 downloads as of December of 2021, in less than 4 months from the start of the podcast. With the light and educational approach that Heather and Rich take in their discovery of this fascinating new world, there are take-aways for anyone willing to have fun and learn all about NFT's.

As the technology industry continues to hasten its evolution through continually changing global macro events, accelerating technical advances, and changes in the social constructs of how and why we work, building successful partnerships has never been so important. Vince Menzione has spent the last 25 years of his career thinking about how to create successful partnerships and joins this LIVE episode of The Data Binge Podcast to highlight a winning framework for how to get partnerships right. As a former Microsoft General Manager of Partner Strategy, host of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering podcast, and founder of the tech consulting firm Ultimate Partnerships, Vince brings an aptitude and energy for partnerships that can drive change in any tech organization. This discussion will include the following topics: 1. The 8 principles of partnership success: understanding the very idea of what partnership between organizations means and why it’s increasing in importance 2. Evolutions in the partner landscape, and the impact of hyper evolving global trends on partner strategy across the tech domain 3. The power of thought leadership: the learnings from creating a 5-year passion project, “The Ultimate Guide to Partnering”, and lessons of culture, leadership, and the obligation to lead with diverse and inclusive values that reach beyond our typical fields of impact

How can gaming, benefit our communities? Albert Dankwa III, content developer on the Microsoft Xbox team, joins this LIVE episode of The Data Binge Podcast to talk about how gaming, and the tangible benefits of immersive and creative worlds, will change the social constructs of communities impacted by limited access to internet and technology. Additional re-frames on gaming that we will discuss: Albert's experience growing up in South Bronx, and how gaming impacted his life: from gaming, to fashion and photography, to technology. How gaming can create exposure to rich dialogues and experiences, that can change the perception of the world, while helping audiences develop hard skills from story-telling, to coding. Why gaming WILL close the digital divide, and how it will impact people on levels that we cannot imagine.

ANGEL AID is a non-profit that provides mental health and wellness services for mothers of children with rare diseases. A rare disease is defined as one that affects fewer than 200,000 people. Even amongst accelerating scientific advancement, over 7000 rare diseases are still without cure, and only 5% have treatments. There are 350M people globally with rare diseases - around half are children. Mothers of children with rare diseases, or Rare Mothers, are the primary caregiver 82% of the time. Today's conversation is a Simply Tech LIVE interview recorded Wednesday, October 27th, featuring my co-host Ali Mazaheri, and our special guests Cristol Barrett O'Loughlin and Smriti Bhattacharya. October is ANGEL AID’s month of giving, Wellfest 21, an opportunity to help create visibility and energy around the bold vision of providing relief and inspiration to these communities, by connecting 3.5 million rare mothers by 2025. Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin, Founder and CEO of ANGEL AID, discusses the organizations mission, the experience of care takers in the rare disease community, and the role of technology and digitization in creating community and impact for non-profits. Smriti Bhattacharya, a senior software engineer at Microsoft and a Rare Mother, also graces this conversation with her presence so that we can hear her story, gain a little more proximity to ANGEL AID’s mission, and learn more about how we can support these incredible caretakers around the world.

Have you ever thought about how many people are struggling with the same sleep issues as you? Many of us struggle with getting enough sleep. Even as the market continues to fill with everything from nose strips, to connected wearables and rings and even weighted blankets, yet we still somehow fail to find the right solutions for sleep. Why is that? Colin Lawlor is the CEO of SleepScore Labs, a sleep technology organization located in Carlsbad California, with the mission of helping people achieve more full-filling lives and better long term help through their best sleep. In this episode Colin talks about the data trends around sleep that impact our health and wellness at the personal level, the basic components of how technology and sleep come together, all the way through to the future of sleep and how we can better live more productive and full filling lives as platforms for sleep emerge. The Sleepscore app is available for free, in both the App Store for Apple Devices and on Google Play for Android users. Thank YOU for listening, and we hope you get good sleep tonight.

Sustainability is good for both business, and for the planet. Dawn James, Microsoft US Director of Sustainability and Environmental Sciences, and Alex Robart, Microsoft Worldwide Strategy Leader for Energy & Sustainability, connect with us to share learning and experiences in how organizations can strategically approach a differentiated way to reach sustainability goals, that create competitive advantages, while also being good for our environment. We are joined in this special episode by guest host Bob Familiar, Director of the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston. Bob is an experienced technical leader experiences in technologies that help organizations accelerate their vision to be more sustainable.

Edson Crevecoeur, Miami Heat's VP of Strategy & Data Analytics, and the Chief Data Officer for 601 Analytics, is joining this LIVE episode of the Data Binge Podcast, to talk through how he is helping to change the way that NBA teams use technology to make data driven decisions that increase revenue. 601 Analytics was born out of the Miami Heat organization, as a data platform that helps drive performance in the sports and entertainment industry, by offering a real-time analytics engine, that captures everything from venue attendance, to sale of tickets, to food and beverage items, giving a "real-time view" into business operations for greater customer delight and organizational direction - imagine using real time crowd prediction, to augment venue staff or merchandise selection and marketing. Edson brings with him an entire career in data and analytics, his voice comes with a wealth of wisdom on all things business, culture, innovation, and of course, DATA - and if you are interested in building new businesses or innovating with the power of data, this episode is for you.

We hear about innovation so much nowadays in the business world - we hear it in company earnings releases, we hear it internally in place of work, and we see it in peoples titles on LinkedIn, but what exactly is Innovation, what is Open Innovation, and how is it changing in our current technology landscape? Today's conversation is a Simply Tech LIVE interview recorded June 17th, of this year 2021, featuring my co-host Ali Mazaheri, and our special guests Jason Deskin, and Lisa Griego. Jason Deskin is the Chief Technology Officer for Digital Advisory in Microsoft's US West Region business, and in the US Retail & Consumer Goods Business. Lisa, is a Director in the Retail & Consumer Goods business supporting organizations in the West US, and both of these incredible voices are joining this discussion today to talk through the importance of innovation, and how critical it is for different organizations to bring together their strengths and weaknesses to meet unmet market needs. We're going to talk about different ways of approaching problems, and this idea of the "learn it all culture" vs the "know it all culture" - what this actually means and how to deploy curiosity at scale. We're going to talk about empathy and it’s role in innovation, and finally, were going to talk about overcoming the barriers to innovation and how to build programs that can jump start organizational change, differentiation, and maybe even some re-direction. Technology has never been more important in our world - and understanding how to bring different thinking, mindsets, people, ideas, and cultures together, to stimulate new ideas, WILL be the future of how we create novel innovations and solutions for a very quickly evolving world.

Today is a fun discussion for those of you interested in the business implications of the cloud, specifically Azure, and some experiences I have to share about my time at Microsoft working with some of the largest businesses in the world, empowering business value through novel technologies mostly centered around Machine Learning and AI. I am joined in this recorded LIVE discussion by today's host, Bret Cullivan, Azure Applications and Infrastructure, Global Partner Director, at Microsoft. As you will see, Bret and I really share a lot of ideas around business empowerment through technology, and we talk through a lot of key concepts, learnings, and trends, as Bret hosts the discussion, with the help of his peers moderating the session: Srinivasan Venkatarajan, and Shalini Chandrashekar - Azure Global Partner Directors at Microsoft. We were joined by a LIVE global audience of Microsoft partners, with a total of 175 registrants across (2) LIVE discussions, with folks dialing in from places far beyond the shores of the West Coast where Bret and I are dialing in from.