Episode Transcript
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Chloe Condon (02:01):
Hello Hi Brandon, it's it's been a while it's been
a while. Back. How What did Imiss? Let's recap we had, who
did we have on the show? We hadChristopher PJ.
Brandon Minnick (02:23):
Last week, our guest was sessile Phillips and
our guest co host wasChristopher Harrison. So
awesome, awesome. Episode.
sessile has such an amazingstory. He was born and raised in
the island of Antigua and thencame to the US for college and
now became a professor atFlorida tech. And now he's a
(02:47):
senior engineer at at Microsoft.
So if you missed the episodelast week, you can find it at
eight bits.tv definitely gocheck it out. And yeah, that
Chloe Condon (03:00):
settles my teammate. I work on the same
team as him. That's right. Yeah.
And I didn't tune in because itwas on vacation. But B I was
like, I know this guy. I knowthis dude. I don't need to
watch. But now I'm thinking Ineed to learn more about this
origins. Yeah, it did not. I hadno
Brandon Minnick (03:14):
awareness of he used to be a competitive swimmer
for the national team. Okay, nowI'm definitely
Chloe Condon (03:21):
Oh, and if you're watching, if this is your first
time watching live with us, um,we also have a podcast version
of this. When you go on yourwalk later, or your run or your
jog or your folding laundry. Youcan go back and listen to those
episodes at a pit stop TV formore info.
Brandon Minnick (03:37):
That's right. I lost it. We have. Yeah, the week
before that. Our guests was BenBuchi. gag. It's spelled like
Budaj edge who, if anybodyremembers Mayor Pete from the
previous election cycle here inthe US, they're not related.
(03:57):
Ben's actually Welsh, so noteven from the same country. But
yeah, Ben has an amazing storyas well. We had our guest hosts
PJ Metz who is been on the showa couple times. So if you're a
fan of the show, you've probablymet PJ before but yeah, also
amazing story. Then actuallystarted coding working when he
(04:20):
was super young. Even beforecollege there was a major
telephony company. I forget thename off top my head, but just
happened to be this company wasdown the street from where he
grew up. And they gave him a jobwriting code when he was just a
little bit and now he's
Chloe Condon (04:47):
love We love to see
Brandon Minnick (04:50):
his big bed now. So he's just a clock over
by are over in London, you know,
Chloe Condon (04:56):
now that journey.
Brandon Minnick (04:58):
Yeah, I've been super into photography. drones.
And he takes amazing trips toplaces like Iceland, and he
posts all this amazing footageon his YouTube channel, along
with being a senior developer atMicrosoft. So lots of good
stories
Chloe Condon (05:12):
is I was gonna catch up on the plane ride back,
but I instead watch the new Inthe Heights movie, which I very
much enjoyed and would recommendto anyone. But these sounds like
some great apps, I'm gonna haveto go back into the archives
work, I think we just must havemissed our one year anniversary
of eight bits coming up here,Brandon. So what a special,
(05:36):
we'll have to do somethingspecial to celebrate it soon.
But for anybody who's maybe newtuning in this time, you can
watch all of the many previousguests and episodes and fun
times that we've had on the showat AICPA staff, TV, but Brandon,
what did I miss in the missanything in the Microsoft world?
What have you been doing? What'syour life, Ben?
Brandon Minnick (05:56):
Mm hmm. So a friend of the show know that I'm
a mobile developer, I used towork at Xamarin, and still do a
lot of stuff with Xamarin.
Internally, Microsoft, and I'vealso been working on something
called the Xamarin communitytoolkit. So if there's any
Xamarin developers out therelistening, you should check out
Xamarin community toolkit, it'sopen source on GitHub, you can
(06:18):
add this new gift package intoyour repo. And it's basically
the code that you've probablybeen copying and pasting from
Xamarin app, the Xamarin app,like, if you've been using
specific behaviors, or effects,or custom renderers, we tried to
bring all those common controlsinto the toolkit. But with
dotnet Maui coming out, I'mleading the initiative to have a
(06:41):
dotnet Maui toolkit. And so Ican't say I'm waiting on one
more approval before we can makethe official announcement.
You'll find it on the Xamarinblog once it's once it's public.
But yeah, working on support.
For dotnet Maui toolkit it'sgoing to happen. It's just how
(07:05):
we're going to do it is the onlything we're working on
internally. But yeah, staytuned, because there will be a
brand new toolkit for dotnetMaui, that will also encourage
folks from the community tocontribute to, and even the
existing toolkit will make sureit also works with dotnet Maui.
(07:26):
So even though it's all based onXamarin Forms, you'll be able to
look, we're calling it a Mauicompat. So it'll be Maui
compatible. So if you want tostay on the older toolkit, you
can no problem. But the newtoolkit will be very much dotnet
maue native, so it'll takeadvantage of all the new
performance improvements thatoccur with dotnet Maui, but I
(07:48):
can't wait to announce this. I'mitching to write a blog post
this week if I get the thumbsup. So stay tuned.
Chloe Condon (07:54):
So totally exciting stuff in the Xamarin.
World. We'll have to see it.
Let's see. Well, okay, first, Ihave a question for you.
Brandon. Have you ever heard ofa shirt bot? Do you know what a
shirt bot is? Have you are you?
Do you have any awareness? ashirt? Like a short shirt?
Brandon Minnick (08:16):
There's not talking about like,
Chloe Condon (08:19):
No, not me. But a short a shirt box. Does this
ring a bell to you at all?
Brandon Minnick (08:27):
No. Is it a bot that makes shirts?
Chloe Condon (08:29):
Well, do I have a video for you slash livestream
to watch? I am really excited tobe doing a new month long series
with reactors starting July 1.
called got bots you can check itout@aka.ms slash got bots to
sign up for the first one. Butthis is a series that I'm going
(08:51):
to be doing on Thursdays at 3pm.
Pacific time I believe. Let medouble check. Yes. And it is
gonna be all about the differentways that you can create bots.
So like at Microsoft, we haveq&a maker we have, oh my gosh,
we have so many different ones.
You can make a logic app bot.
(09:11):
We've talked about that on theshow many times with my Britney
Spears bot or my it's gonna bemay bot. We have an API for bots
here. But something that Idiscovered recently, Brandon,
when I put I posted a picturewearing a shirt similar to this
except it said it's a differentwords on it. And I someone
commented on my tweet and said,I want this on a shirt or where
(09:31):
do I buy this shirt? Now Ilearned very quickly that if
someone comments, I want that ona shirt I where do I get this
shirt? How do I get this on ashirt, that there are bots on
Twitter for these certain youknow t shirt sites out there
that are sort of takingadvantage of this and printing
unlicensed shirts taking awaycredit from artists and selling
(09:54):
them at a lower price. Now youknow me, I love artists I want
people to get paid especiallyfor the art they make So I found
this to be really terrible,right? I was like, Oh no,
there's these really maliciousbots out there but like so I
always discourage people fromcommenting on any posts I do
asking where the shirt is from.
So I've done a coupleexperiments on this recently,
where I'd say, Hey, I'm doing anexperiment, comment, I want this
(10:15):
on a shirt. And it's become sortof this fun game to play on the
bots. But I've learned a lot inthe process. And this series is
going to start with a talk allabout ethical bot creation,
because especially when we'reworking with AI, and we're
working with ml, we want to makesure that things that we're
building especially bots aren'tharassing people. They aren't
going to be hurting anyone inany way that could be
(10:38):
financially that could be youknow, taking away business. So
check that out. If you want tolearn more about bots, I make a
lot of really silly stupid bots.
You can check them out. I tweetI retweet them all the time.
Should I a bot that the lovelyPJ has made with me and many
others? So come learn about botswith me. aka.ms slash bot bots.
It'll be a party every Thursday.
And yeah, shirt bot shirt botsare bad. We don't like shirt
(11:02):
bots. Short box. Shirt bots that
Brandon Minnick (11:08):
it's funny got bots. In my head. I picture. It
must be the cotton mill slogan.
Yes. And so I'm just picturing abot with like a little milk
mustache. Like how the Got Milkcampaign used to do
Chloe Condon (11:22):
it? Well, I think you're gonna be spending some
time in Canada this afternoon.
Thank you for that.
Brandon Minnick (11:31):
It's funny. So for anybody that doesn't know
about the Got Milk campaign, itwas the thing to encourage
usually, children to drink moremilk. And yeah, they would get
celebrities and the celebritieswould take a sip of milk and
then they'd have this milkmustache look like a milk stain
on their on their upper lip andjust got milk.
Chloe Condon (11:54):
cafeteria library magazine that I had had these in
them I remember Kermit the Frogand Jim Henson even had little
milk mustache everyone everyonewas doing Got Milk.
Brandon Minnick (12:05):
But do they got bots?
Chloe Condon (12:07):
Do they got maybe the first thought that I built
is like a Got Milk? I don'tknow. We'll see. I don't want to
put a pin in that. But speakingof 90s and early 2000
histologia. We have a lovelyguest today who I'm sure has a
favorite. Okay, we're going togive them a couple seconds in
this intro that to answer thisquestion to get thinking about
(12:29):
it. What is their favorite GotMilk poster we would love to
know. So it gives out a thought.
But we have a special guesttoday Brandon who is also a
cloud advocate, works on a teamwith me over our next generation
experiences. is passionate abouteducation is passionate about
teaching is a freakin doctor.
(12:51):
One of the coolest people Iknow. Welcome to the show. Sarah
gosnells. Dr. g. Hello. Thankyou so much for having me. Okay,
if we ever got milk post? Oh,gosh, I don't know.
Sarah Guthals (13:05):
Search for them.
Honestly. Okay. It's probably atie between the Olsen twins,
because they were just icons.
Um, and and they just pulled itoff like, I don't know. Anyways,
their charisma anyways. And thenthe Jim Hanson one because I
remember that one. Wasn't thatone, like black and white? Or
(13:26):
like really dusty lighting? I
Chloe Condon (13:27):
don't know. It was just art. It was definitely in
it in a dusty library for me. Sothat Yeah. Brandon, do you have
a fav.
Brandon Minnick (13:37):
The one that always comes to mind for me is
Michael Jordan. So you can'tthink of the 90s without
thinking of Michael Jordan ingeneral. But yeah, he did the
Got Milk campaign. And if youwanted to play basketball as
good as Michael Jordan, you hadto drink milk. No,
Sarah Guthals (13:54):
sorry, random tangent. weedy boxes. Were also
a thing where you know, on aWheaties box, there would be
like an athlete. And I didgymnastics when I was a kid. And
they did a photo shoot one day,and then they put me on a
Wheaties box. Wow. When I was akid, I thought that it was
soapy, like amazing. And then Ilook at it now and they
(14:16):
literally just like, cut mypicture out of a printed
picture. And like, pasted it onthe Wheaties box and then put
the box in like a plastic clearcontainer. Now for people
Chloe Condon (14:28):
who are maybe a little bit younger than us,
Photoshop was not superaccessible back in the day. So
it used to be literally a thingat theme parks like six flags,
you would go there and you wouldpay anywhere from 30 to $40 to
put your picture on like SportsIllustrated or, you know,
(14:49):
Nickelodeon magazine, like andit was just peep I have one
right oh famzoo Well,incredible, incredible right
here somewhere. Brandon Oh, So Ijust googled Got Milk and I
think my favorite is the BritneySpears one because it's her next
to her young whip. Yes. I stilldon't know how they did that.
Yeah, um, I Oh, someone said,Yep, did one in six flags, I
(15:13):
definitely have a image of mevery young photoshopped onto
like a bikini model or somethingjust like looking very cool. But
interesting segue from MichaelJordan into something we're
going to be talking about alittle bit later. There is an
reimagining of Space Jam comingon Brandon, called spaceship new
(15:34):
legacy. And Sara actually getsto work on all the awesome
partnerships with that stuff.
But before I get there before,though, we don't want to like,
oh, there's a teaser, watching.
But Sarah, tell us a little bit.
Well, first, tell us who youare, what you do at Microsoft.
And then we'd love to get intoyour Marvel origin story, so to
speak, of how you ended up hereat Microsoft so tall, we know
(15:54):
you, of course, you work withus, we love you. But tell us
about your job at Microsoft.
Sarah Guthals (16:01):
Yeah, um, who am I, I just can't, I just always
think about Zoo lander lookinginto a puddle. Who am I so
basically, I'm someone who isextremely passionate about
education, teaching and learningand all things related. That's
(16:22):
what my background is in. And Ibrought that or I bring that to
kind of any role that I'm in.
I've been at Microsoft for justover two years, actually, like
two and a half years now. And Igot the opportunity to be on
this cloud advocacy team where Iget to pair education with my
other passion, which istechnology and coding and
software engineering andcomputer science or whatever
(16:43):
word you want to use to describeit. And so I get to spend most
of my days writing contentmaking videos, things like that,
that demonstrate authenticdeveloper workflows, like what
professionals would be doingwith this code or you know,
whatever it is, but framing itinto more relevant or like
culturally relevant or just kindof imaginative narratives. So I
(17:08):
like to to have things have justkind of context and storylines
and things like that it helps melearn better. And rather than
just kind of a series of Doc's,I wanted to have a series of
stories where you build stuffthrough that, because that's
kind of how I got inspired to,to join this industry.
Chloe Condon (17:30):
I love that. And you have a young daughter as
well, which probably makes youvery passionate about education.
Sarah Guthals (17:38):
Yes, yeah, I treat education. I mean, it's
pretty much whether education isessentially effective
communication, in my opinion. Sowhether I'm parenting, I'm
speaking with my my partner, I'mcollaborating at work, or I'm
teaching adults or children,it's all essentially the same.
It's about respect. It's aboutlistening. And it's about
(17:59):
ensuring that there's kind ofgood communication between the
person with information and theperson that's seeking
information.
Chloe Condon (18:06):
I'm sure a very frequent guest PJ mattes would
agree with you on the teachingand educating his communication
could not agree more. And as acloud advocate, that's very much
what your job is. That is teachcommunicate. Exactly. Very cool.
So how did you find yourselfhere? How'd you get here?
Sarah Guthals (18:28):
Good question. So okay, I'll do my you know, my
whole life story, but veryquickly, when I was very, very
young, my mom had wristproblems. And one day, I rubbed
her wrist and she said, Thatfelt better. Thank you so much.
And I said, I'm going to be adoctor. I'm going to be a
(18:49):
doctor. I also have severeasthma I always have and I used
to participate in studies,totally legit for new
medications. So things likeClaritin and Zyrtec. I was
taking them decades ago beforethey were even available as
prescriptions. And I just foundthat whole world of scientific
(19:11):
research fascinating. So mywhole life I wanted to be a
doctor. That's what I plan todo. I was lucky enough to get
into the University ofCalifornia, San Diego and pre
med, took my first chemistry andmath class and failed them and
almost quit. And
Brandon Minnick (19:29):
a lot of people does, it does. My college. Those
were literally the weed outclasses. So intro to Chem intro
to physics and like calc one,they made them really hard on
purpose for some reason.
Sarah Guthals (19:42):
So then they're not even hard. They're just not
taught well, right on purposefor some reason. I could go on a
whole five hour rant about that.
So I almost I almost dropped outof the university to go to
community college. My momstarted community college when I
was two years old. And so I sawthe benefit of community college
(20:04):
when you weren't sure exactlywhat you wanted to do, you had
more support, you had moreopportunity to like experiment
around and it wasn't asexpensive. And I was paying for
college completely myself. Mymom convinced me to stay. And
I'm glad she did. She's going tospeak to say for one year, and
I'm glad she did, because Iended up taking a computer
(20:24):
science course from theincredible Dr. Beth Simon, who
happened to not only be a womanin tech, but also be
transitioning into doingresearch and education, which
blew my mind that you could bedoing education with computer
science. So she cared about howpeople were learning, she was
(20:44):
reimagining the curriculum. Ididn't know what the heck I was
doing, I would go down into thecomputer labs, nothing would
work to the point where the TAis would hold the solution code
next to my code, and nobodycould figure out why mine wasn't
working. But I loved it. Becausethe difference between chemistry
and computer science for me inthose early classes was
(21:06):
chemistry was memorization. andcomputer science was figuring
things out. And the math piece,what I realized in in undergrad
was there were rules. But butbut like they weren't, I don't
know, they just they actuallyweren't super firm. And you had
no feedback. Like if you got itwrong, you had no idea if you
got it wrong or right, because Icouldn't reverse the algorithm
(21:28):
because I would get that onewrong, too. Anyways, so I had no
feedback. Computer Science wasnot only problem solving, but I
had immediate feedback. So Iswitched my major into computer
science. And then I ended updoing a couple of internships
with Microsoft, a company calledviasat. In San Diego, I ended up
meeting my now husband, anundergrad, he was staying for a
(21:51):
PhD, I got lucky enough to beaccepted into the Ph. D. program
as well. So I stayed. And weboth did our PhDs in computer
science, him focusing on onbioinformatics and neon
education, and started a companywhile I was doing that, because
I can't do just one thing at atime. Did that for a little
(22:13):
while we were the company wasteaching kids how to code
through Minecraft modding whichwas so much fun. And then yeah,
I wrote some books aroundteaching kids how to code. I
started working for GitHub as acontractor to build like a
GitHub for kids under 13 made aprototype of that. They decided
(22:33):
not to continue working on thatwhile I was eight months
pregnant, they didn't know thatit wasn't related. So then I got
a full time job very quickly, atGitHub, as an engineering
manager, absolutely loved that.
We were building kind of theintegration of GitHub into
editors and IDs. And then abouttwo and a half years ago, I got
(22:56):
the opportunity to switch overto Microsoft has to go back to
more education work. So
Chloe Condon (23:01):
that's why I'm exhausted. How many like you're
just like, casually read sixbooks. Like, okay, girl. Good
question. Not well. Well, I havea question for you, Sarah. So
you mentioned that you grew upin a low income family. What was
(23:25):
your introduction to computers?
Like? Did you have computersaround you? Personally, I only
had them in computer lab for awhile. But what was your
relation to computers beforegoing to UC San Diego?
Sarah Guthals (23:37):
Yeah, I was not great at computers prior to
undergrad. Um, so remember, thiswas a little while ago. So no, I
wrote like, up until probablysixth grade, I was writing
literally on a typewriter foranything that needed to be typed
for school. Otherwise, it wasjust the computer lab at school
(23:57):
we did. Ours was paused typingtown was the software we use.
And then also, you know, theOregon Trail. So that was pretty
much my exposure to computers.
And then we did get a computerat home when my mom started at a
state university to get herteaching credential. And I
remember we had, there's thisphenols figure math, I remember
(24:22):
it now cuz I looked it up. Andit was my favorite game in the
whole world. And it was justthis PC game where you went
around this like spooky housetrying to make dinner and every
room there was like a differentmath problem. I don't know. It
was just absolutely wild. Itmade no sense at all, and I
absolutely loved it. But otherthan that I didn't really have
(24:42):
any exposure to it. In highschool was when my space was
popular. And back in the day,you could customize your MySpace
profile with HTML. I didn't knowhow to do any of that. I didn't
even understand that. That'swhat I was doing. All I did was
like search for MySpace profile.
And then copy and paste, whichis pretty much how I code today.
(25:03):
So but I had no no exposure atall. I could maybe make a graph
in Excel. I could answer email,I can make a PowerPoint that was
like my technical skills when Istarted.
Chloe Condon (25:18):
It's interesting because you mentioned that now
especially with, with thepartnerships that you work with,
you work on kind of tellingthese stories and teaching
people through stories. A lot ofthe games that we all grew up
with on computers, I feel like Ihave this one called museum
madness, where like you had togo through this museum did I
know way too much about theGettysburg Address y'all and the
(25:39):
Panama Canal, like, truly. Butit's so true that you but but I
remember those things. And I donot think that fourth grade
Chloe would care or know if shedidn't have to pass that level
five or six times with AbrahamLincoln to figure out from the
mummy. You know, Brandon, didyou have education software like
(26:00):
that?
Brandon Minnick (26:01):
Oh, yeah, I loved him, but I can't remember
any what any of them are called.
But yeah, no resume masters,
Chloe Condon (26:09):
Mario? Oh, yeah.
Brandon Minnick (26:12):
There was one where you were, you're playing
this character in a third partyview. And you basically went
around, like solving thesephysics puzzles. And you would
collect parts. And so what arethe things you would collect is
like, like, at the end, youwould have this bossfight. But
it was basically like, you wouldbuild something. So you would
build a plane, and you would flyyour plane against the boss. And
(26:36):
so you'd have to learn aboutlike, drag and how drag affects
your play and or, like, getpropellers versus jet engines
and how that affects your speed.
And yeah, they did all those.
And I wish I remember what itwas called, because I spent
hours days of my life. And Iloved it. And like, Yeah, when I
arrived at my first physicsclass in high school, I at least
(26:57):
knew a couple of these terms. SoI was totally, totally confused.
But yeah, let's see.
Chloe Condon (27:03):
I feel like I was doing that wrong. Because
whenever I played Carmen SanDiego, instead of actually
learning the facts, I just runinto the kitchen to my mom and
be like, who is known for makingempanadas. Like, I didn't have
the cultural significance ofwhat I was learning.
Sarah Guthals (27:17):
That's, that's an important point. Important
point, Chloe. Because I'm so inmy, in my PhD, my, my focus was
on, can we, so my dissertationwas called designing learning
experience setting culture eightnovices. Okay. And we culture
(27:38):
and culture it Yeah, it's notreally word, this word. It's a
word, because it's in the titleof my thesis. So there you go.
Brandon Minnick (27:45):
We are and I
Sarah Guthals (27:46):
think, right.
Yeah, yeah. And so essentially,what what, what my goal was, was
there was a difference betweenmath blasters and final figure
math. The difference was, andfinals figure math, she would go
into this room and need to, likefill a certain number of jugs of
milk from this cow. And youliterally had to figure out, you
(28:08):
know, how many squirts from thecow to fill up the jugs. And it
was it was the math problem wasrelated to the storyline. Math
plasters, on the other hand, iswhat we'd like to call chocolate
covered broccoli. Yes, that is Iwasn't good. Exactly. And
essentially, what what you weredoing was, you would play and
then you would stop and do somemath problems in a gamified way.
(28:31):
And then you would play somemore and stop. So like your
physics one, Brandon sounds morelike an inculturation of physics
with gameplay. So like, in my inmy doctorate, we built a video
game, where you played a wizard,and you were in this 3d world,
and you would walk around andthere were these gnomes who
(28:51):
needed help, they'd lost theirmagic. But they used to rely on
magic. And now they needed yourhelp. And you're like the last
word or wizard. So then youwould write spells in your spell
book that were actually Javamethods to help them solve their
problems. So the code that youwere writing was directly
related.
Chloe Condon (29:11):
You just answered a question for me that is that
is been in my brain for so long,which is, why did math blasters
give me intense anxiety? Andthat is because it was chocolate
covered broccoli. I today Ilearned. Yeah. But that's
interesting. Because games whereI didn't know it was math, where
it was like, hey, figure out thechange. Like when it's in this
(29:33):
scenario. I feel like my brainconnects to that more. Yeah,
Sarah Guthals (29:36):
this is really fascinating. And that's what I
bring to what I do at Microsofttoo, is like, um, to kind of
bridge over into that I'vegotten the opportunity. I'm
super lucky that I've gotten towork with NASA and Netflix and
Warner Brothers, and take someof their rich narratives or
(29:57):
experiences or or storylines andTo discover ways in which our
authentic developer workflowsmight match into that. So when
when we were approached fromNetflix with the over the moon
film, which came out last year,it's a gorgeous film about a
young Chinese girl who builds arocket to fly to the moon. And
(30:18):
there's this huge storylinearound it. And then I got the
opportunity to watch the film.
And while watching it, I hadthis huge notebook of like, all
the ways I could see tech showup, right and, and, and all the
ways that it would authenticallyshow up and, and I don't want to
give too many spoilers, but atthe, towards the beginning of
the film, she's flying and she'smaking it she's flying up to the
(30:38):
moon, and then all of a suddenher rocket starts to fall. And
the reason her rocket starts tofall is because her young
stepbrother snuck onto therocket, and she didn't account
for his weight. And that is avery real problem when making
rockets, like NASA has to thinkabout not only the weight going
up, and the amount of propulsionthat they have, and all of that,
but then are they going to land?
(31:00):
Are they going to collectsamples? Are they going to bring
that back? What's that weight?
Exactly? You know, how much foodare the astronauts gonna eat all
of that. So we tie all of thatnarrative around Fei Fei and her
journey to the moon, with whatNASA actually does, and how data
science and machine learning canactually fit into it. And like,
I don't know, it's just myfavorite thing to do.
Chloe Condon (31:19):
That is so cool.
Brandon Minnick (31:22):
It's fun.
absolutely incredible. And now,you shared some links with us
before the show. I'm going topull up one now this is aka.ms.
Slash learn in space? Yes. Isthis also corresponding the same
movie?
Sarah Guthals (31:36):
Yeah. So if you go to that link, there are three
learning modules at the top ofthat page that are related to
the over the moon film. And thenthere are three learning paths
that are inspired by NASA. And Igot the opportunity to interview
literal NASA scientists, and getinspiration from them. And so we
(31:58):
wrote some some modules aroundthat. And that first learning
path for NASA, which is anintroduction to Python, inspired
by NASA, that one actually youcan do completely in the browser
also, which is awesome.
Chloe Condon (32:11):
So cool.
Incredible. It's fun.
Brandon Minnick (32:18):
And this one has anything to do with space,
but we also have aka.ms slashlearn with basketball.
Sarah Guthals (32:25):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Michael Jordan,
basketball space, I do thinkthere might be some correlation.
Yeah. So it next month,actually, the new Space Jam, a
new legacy film is coming out.
This one is going to be areimagining of the original
film. And you might have seensome previews, or some trailers
(32:47):
come out recently. But LeBronJames is the star of this one,
along with his movie son, who'splayed by Cedric Joe. And we got
the opportunity to work withWarner Brothers in the Space
Jam, a new legacy film to makelearning modules, some of which
we launched in December, you canfind two of them that we
launched in December at thislink, aka.ms. Slash learn with
(33:09):
basketball. And we're launchingthree more this month. So I'm
really excited. The inspirationbehind these was, again, kind of
that tie between what do we careabout when it comes to
basketball. And Fun fact, playerefficiency rating is the
statistic that is often used inthe NBA for how you know, good a
(33:33):
player is the NBA player withthe highest player efficiency
rating, or P er is MichaelJordan, and the NBA player of
all time, and the NBA playerwith the highest player
efficiency rating that is stillcurrently playing with LeBron
James. So it's kind of cool. Sowe kind of centered the the, the
(33:54):
modules around kind of datascience and P er, and you build
some web apps, and then the onescoming out are going to be mixed
reality.
Chloe Condon (34:04):
See, this is math, I can get behind this. My brain
wants to solve because Exactly,
Sarah Guthals (34:10):
yeah, we we predict what the tune squads p
er would be based on some somedata. So
Chloe Condon (34:19):
I'm super excited.
I've been helping Sarah getready for some of these events.
And I got to say as someone whostill has their original purple
Space Jam basketball fromchildhood, I could not be more
excited to be helping bring Lolabunny into the Microsoft. Lola
Bunny is an icon. And sweetplayer efficiency rating is what
(34:43):
exactly it's how often they makea shot.
Sarah Guthals (34:49):
It's a huge formula that they take with a
ton of different stats. So it'snot just how many shots they've
made. It's it's like assists.
It's How many minutes they'veplayed, it's so many statistics
that get put into this huge,huge formula. And yes, you could
get all those statistics and putit through the formula. What we
(35:09):
do is say, What if you wanted toget some like quick changes or
something like that, and weactually use machine learning to
predict what that might be. Sowe built a model based off of
the P er scores of current NBANW NBA players. And then we use
that model to predict what thetwo squads p er would be in that
same kind of universe.
Chloe Condon (35:33):
Can't wait to figure out which member of toon
squad has the best PR,
Sarah Guthals (35:37):
if I remember, right, I'm pretty sure it was
Lola. But, um, yeah, yeah,you'll have to check it out.
Chloe Condon (35:45):
So exciting. And oh, my goodness, I, I'm just so
excited for a reimagining ofSpace Jam. Like, if anybody, we
talk a lot about tech nostalgiaon this show. And I have to say,
I'm very happy that so I don'tknow if y'all know this. Those
watching out there. I'm sure myguests know this. Space Jam kept
(36:08):
their original 1996 website upuntil recently, they still have
a legacy version of the websitethat you can check out on the
current Space Jam nulegacywebsite, and it is quite a time
capsule of nostalgia. I thinkthey have Comic Sans. Read on
bolded font on a star storybackground definitely worth
(36:31):
worth checking out. Oh, yeah,drop the link here in the chat.
It's It's lovely. It reminds mea lot of Brian Benz's, a lovely
Geocities page that we share iton a previous
Brandon Minnick (36:42):
question from yen's friend of the show former
guest on a bits, our ratiosbetween players correlated and
can be used to predict trendsfor upcoming players.
Sarah Guthals (36:54):
It's a great question. I did not do a huge
deep dive into all of the statsof basketball because we were
mainly trying to focus on againthat authentic technical
workflow, but generallyspeaking, yes. From the the
amount of research that we diddo, that is what we saw is that
(37:14):
that that the the data from allof the other statistics that
would predict p er, given thatdata and those trends, you could
potentially predict that andthat's that's kind of what we
wanted to do with all of thelearning modules I write they
are not the complete story. Theyare the, like springboard,
they're the starting point.
Because the goal is that, thatyou know, you hear about this,
(37:37):
or you try that learning moduleand you ask questions exactly
like this one. And then now youhave the skills to go answer
that question and contribute tothe broader kind of sense of
this knowledge. So generallyspeaking, yes. But I can't
answer that with like, 100%.
Confidence.
Brandon Minnick (37:55):
Yeah. Reminds me of the the movie Moneyball,
which, yeah, used similarstatistics kind of obscure at
the time statistics forbaseball, to kind of hack the
game. And yeah, it sounds likebasketball starting to pick up
pick up on that, too.
Sarah Guthals (38:10):
Yeah, yeah, we kind of we kind of do that in
the second module, we build a anapp for coaches, where what we
are doing is we're simulating ifyour your statistics get updated
based on gameplay. So you wouldchoose your first five players
for the first quarter. And thenbecause they've now played an
additional quarter, their PTRmight change, as you might want
(38:33):
to swap players out to make surethat if you have a really great
player, but they're gettingtired, so their PR, you know,
average is going down, you mightwant to give them a rest. So
then that way, they can comeback in the fourth quarter and
like help you win, right. Soagain, that is not actually how
a basketball coach would do itnecessarily. But it's giving an
insight into what data and whatexpertise a coach might have,
(38:57):
and how we can kind of simulatethat with with machine learning.
Unknown (39:00):
Now this gets tricky with tune squad, because we got
Tweety Bird who can fly likethere's a lot of
Sarah Guthals (39:05):
variables here.
But I know I tried to be honest,I tried really hard to get
information like that fromWarner Brothers. Unfortunately,
we were so early and they youknow, this was back in December.
So the film doesn't come outuntil now and they didn't want
to give too many details awayabout each of the two squads
like so you want to keep
Chloe Condon (39:24):
them in you're like Does someone have an
injury? I literally
Sarah Guthals (39:27):
was asking that but then I was like, you know,
what's someone like better atscoring like and I literally
said that Chloe, I was like 20can fly so does that mean 20 can
like totally, you know, get alot more, you know, like layups
or something. Tell me aboutthis, but um, they didn't want
to divulge too much information,which honestly, I'm just really
excited to watch the film now.
So yeah,
Brandon Minnick (39:49):
we have a nother question in the chat
about PDR. Could they be relatedto health condition so maybe
your body temperaturesincreasing or perspiration rates
are decreasing
Sarah Guthals (40:00):
I love this. This is exactly why I wrote this
module because this is all ofthe stuff I started to think
about too. So P er is based offof just kind of traditional
basketball stats. So like Isaid, like, how many minutes?
Have you played things likethat? But 100%, you could add
this type of data into maybe notplayer efficiency rating the
(40:20):
official one but like, you know,an augmented aper. Yeah, yeah. I
100% could imagine sensors,maybe in both of the shoes to
see like is all of a sudden, youknow, are they running with
maybe like, a little bit morepressure on one leg? Is that? Is
that knee already injured? Do wewant to take them out? Are they
(40:41):
not even realizing it? Becauseit's such a subtle difference?
Or maybe like you said, centersmaybe like in their jerseys? Are
they? Are they sweating more?
Are they getting more tired? Canthey feel like, you know,
they're chivay, hydrate heavier.
All of you could put sensors intheir water, like so many things
that you could neither just sendsurveys things. But you could
(41:01):
also have like information fromthe like medical staff on the on
the team to say like, Hey, weneed to watch for this 100% you
could totally add this stuff in.
And I think if we had morepeople who loved basketball or
loved sports, who alsounderstood and were interested
in tech, you don't evennecessarily have to be the one
to make the tech. You could betalking though, with the people
(41:23):
who do make the tech and and andyou could get more information
that keeps your playershealthier, and happier and keeps
your team winning more.
Chloe Condon (41:34):
I love the idea of the Internet of basketball is
Yeah,
Brandon Minnick (41:39):
I love it. I feel like it's all it's gonna
take is one NBA coach, onecollege basketball coach, high
school basketball coach to dothis. And then everybody else is
going to copy because this wouldgive such a huge competitive
advantage to a coach that knows,oh, this player based off the
(41:59):
sensor readings needs to take abreak. Like, I don't have to
guess anymore.
Sarah Guthals (42:04):
They do this in football to an extent I know
that they have helmets now thathave sensors to check for
concussions. So if a player getshit too hard, yeah, sorry,
American football. If a playergoes hard, they can know whether
or not they're at risk forconcussion, which is extremely
important in football andAmerican football, because that
happens so often. So yes, 100%I'm sure they use some things
(42:27):
but but the more we canintersect tech into as a tool.
And as just like a part ofgeneral knowledge, the more
people who go into any industrycan see how they can slightly
transform it. I wrote a papercalled computing as the fourth
R. Right? Everyone should haveit. You don't have to become a
(42:48):
developer. You don't have tobecome a computer scientist, you
don't have to go into a techcareer. But if everyone had at
least some knowledge of reading,writing, math and computing,
then we could be transformingindustries in ways that help
people and not just, you know,make money.
Chloe Condon (43:07):
Wow. I'm literally sitting here thinking like, this
is so inspiring, I thinkespecially the kids who are
going to be consuming this SpaceJam, do legacy type content and
thinking about it. I'm eventhinking like, if young Chloe
had known about this, I wouldhave been measuring the
telemetry of my slip inside tomake sure I was getting the
(43:27):
right amount of water and theangle. Like there's just so many
cool things that that when youput these things in practical
situations you start thinkingabout and I love to see it. You
love to see the tech. Oh, we'vegot a nice comment here. Let's
see Danish soccer player.
Christian Eriksen died brieflyin a game against Finland in the
European Championship thisSaturday. He's had he had the
(43:49):
sensors on it.
Brandon Minnick (43:56):
He's still alive in Yeah, yeah.
Chloe Condon (44:00):
We had a student who worked with us with big
project, who had never workedwith IoT before. I had never
worked with Azure before. And wedid the serverless boot camp.
And it was during the pandemic.
So we were in quarantine. And hewas away from his grandmother or
Yeah, his grandmother. And hebuilt a sensor that she could
wear that was integrated withAzure Functions and Twilio. And
(44:21):
he you know, he demoed it for usby doing jumping jacks on
himself. But essentially, hewanted to be able to get a
notification on what hisgrandmother's heart rate was if
it went below or above a certainlevel, and he would get a text
to his phone. So the fact that ahigh school student can build
that And literally, we justhanded him the resources of
Azure credits and the knowledgeof Azure like there's so many
(44:43):
amazing things that when you putthem in context, you can build
and I think his inspiration forthat project was my fake
boyfriend app. So you never knowwhere technical inspiration will
strike
Sarah Guthals (44:56):
well and your context of your fake boyfriend
app. Give Other people contextfor things that they care about,
or that are problems in theirown lives. Right. And that's why
I think it's not necessarilyabout writing curriculum or
giving examples with everycontext, but having some context
to to kind of ignite that thatinitial thought I think is so
(45:18):
critical.
Chloe Condon (45:19):
Sarah, you very, very quickly breezed over the
fact that you've written sevenbooks. What? When do you find
the time man? Good question.
Sarah Guthals (45:37):
Most of them I read wrote, pre daughter being
born one of them I did rightafter she was born. But
honestly, it's whenever I'm in arole where I'm not writing
curriculum. I just have thislike itch to write curriculum
Chloe Condon (45:52):
flows out of you.
Sarah Guthals (45:54):
Yeah, so I wrote a couple that were for kids. So
building a mobile app, forexample, or, or just like
learning basic spriteprogramming for kids. And then I
also wrote a what a GitHub fordummies book. That one was a ton
of fun, I got to write that withmy old manager from GitHub. And
(46:16):
then I also wrote a helping kidslearn how to code book with
another PhD in education intech. And her and I wrote this
kind of like, if you are anadult, whether you're a parent
or you know, or an educator, anykind of adult where you have
children in your life, and youwant to help them learn how to
code. We wrote that book foryou.
Chloe Condon (46:38):
Okay, so Sarah, I noticed in our pre show notes
that you dropped, you dropped avery interesting fact in here,
which is that when you weredoing your PhD in computer
science, you got to go toDisneyland, Paris. Please tell
us about that. And also, tell usyour favorite Disneyland, right.
It's been a while since we'vetalked about favorite theme park
(46:59):
rides on the show.
Sarah Guthals (47:00):
Alright, so favorite theme park ride is
definitely Oh, gosh, it's sohard. So it's either Thunder
Mountain or Space Mountain,those who are just my favorite.
These a roller coaster girl.
Okay. Yeah, the Thunder Mountainin Disneyland Paris is so
incredible, you actually gounderground. And so like you
start in this mountain overhere. And then you go
(47:22):
underground, and you end up inthis like little island for a
little bit and then go backover, it is so cool. But it is a
little bit more jarring. Like,it's it's definitely more of
like a roller coaster. Whereas Idon't know that the one in
Disneyland in California is alittle bit more smooth, I think.
Um, but yeah, my so for those ofyou who don't know, which I did
not know this, again, I comefrom a very, very, very low
(47:45):
income family. And I paid forcollege by working three to four
jobs throughout undergrad. Andwhen I was thinking about doing
my PhD, I was like, I can't,like I can't afford this. And I
had already also taken out loansand gotten grants and
scholarships and others. And Iwas like, I can't afford this.
(48:06):
But most PhD programs incomputer science, at least and
and most worldwide, but youknow, it definitely depends.
They actually pay you a stipend,and pay for your school. Now the
stipend is not big, it's, youknow, back then it was, it was
about $20,000 it was way morethan enough, right? It's not,
(48:29):
but I'm just saying it's notlike, you know, a, like a job
job. in tech. I mean, it's itbut it was way more than enough
to live on, especially if youdidn't have to pay for school.
And that was just incredible. Inever knew that that was a
thing. I felt so lucky. And theneat thing about it is that in
addition to that you're oftenput on you often write grants
(48:50):
with your faculty advisors. Andthose grants include funds to
travel to conferences whentravel is appropriate. And those
conferences tend to be worldwidebecause we are a worldwide, you
know, field. And so yeah, I gotthe opportunity to on kind of
the university's dollar fly toFrance for a conference that I
(49:13):
had. And then since it was thesame price in terms of flights,
I just made my flight like alittle bit later, a few days a
few I think it was about a weekafter the conference and ended
the university did not pay forthe time I was in France when I
wasn't at the conference to beclear, they did not pay for my
housing, nothing like that. Butthe flight was paid for. And
(49:35):
that was just huge. So I got theopportunity to stay a little bit
longer and go to DisneylandParis and check out a couple of
the castles and we got to dothat in New Zealand. We got to
do that in London, Scotland. Andthen you know, around the United
States some some places inCanada I think those are the
ones that I've been to It wasincredible. It's the only time
(49:57):
I've ever been out of thecountry has been on on research
trips.
Chloe Condon (50:04):
And I feel like Disney has done such a great job
at educating throughentertainment content. And I
know Sarah and I have a sharedlove for 90s nostalgia, of
course. What are some of like,when you think back on your
time, you know, learning aboutcomputers and things like that?
(50:25):
What kind of Was there anythingthat kind of like stood out as
far as education wise, that wasreally an important, like, for
me, I think back on learningabout a lot of things from the
dinosaurs about like, theprehistoric ages and things like
that. Are there? Is therecontent like that, that really
speaks to you from yourchildhood that inspires you now
to create the content you donow?
Sarah Guthals (50:48):
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to give away too much
about a secret project thatwe're working on. But honestly,
literally, everything from the90s had to do with like,
detectives and spies, likeeverything had to do with like,
figuring things out. And that'swhat I realized. When I got
(51:12):
older, when I switched from premed to computer science, and I
realized what I love is problemsolving. What I love is that
there's a mystery, whether thatmystery is, you know, like fibl
got lost and can't find hisfamily. And he needs to, like,
you know, explore the world andtry to find them. Or that
(51:32):
mystery is that this error andthe error message makes
absolutely no sense. It's stilla hunt for clues. It's still a
well, let me I have ahypothesis. Let me try this. Let
me see what the result of thatis. And then let me adjust my
hypothesis, you know, as aresult, and that kind of like
detective spy, you know, problemsolving hunt for clues. That's
(51:55):
what I loved. There was thisincredible from highlights
magazine, which was a kid'smagazine back in the days, I
think. Yes, yeah, they, yeah,they had this, they had this
adventure spy series where theywould send you like a book about
(52:15):
a country and then some likeplayer cards for like, who the
characters were, and you had tolike discover something. And
there was like a workbook. Andthen you had like, read about
the country. And it was just allof that like that. All of that
is is is what I realized nowinspired me,
Chloe Condon (52:31):
you're now making me realize that American Girl,
although it'd be an adult that Ivery, very much wanted and
begged for also came with booksthat taught me about historical
time period. So I got the GreatDepression through American girl
and I knew about all thesedifferent areas, Brandon, I
don't know if you've seen butthere's a new American Girl
(52:52):
doll. That's an 80s AmericanGirl doll. And she loves to play
video games. And she programsthem, which is so amazing and
cool to see. I wish I had thatone.
Sarah Guthals (53:01):
amantha Barbie does vlogs and they're amazing.
She's an icon Just saying.
Brandon Minnick (53:11):
Barbie makes videos.
Sarah Guthals (53:13):
Yeah. She does.
vlogs I mean, they have like ananimated Barbie. But she talks
about racism. She talks aboutlike being insecure. She talks
about trying new things. Shetalks about like everything, and
it's gorgeous.
Chloe Condon (53:29):
It's very cool.
I'm one of those, I would sayweirdos. But it's one of my
hobbies. I go to Target. And Ispend most of my time walking up
and down the toy aisle becauseI'm very fascinated with like,
what kind of games and toys likechildren are interested in
getting educated by and I alwaysget so so excited when I see
just like you said that, that Iguess what do you call the
(53:51):
opposite of anti chocolatebroccoli, like delicious cake?
is learning experiences. It'snot like yeah, I can climb but
it's it's technically stembecause you're learning about
all the ingredients that makeslime or even just seeing.
There's a game that I play onNintendo Switch called human
(54:14):
resource machine, which isactually just doing little
algorithms and figuring themout. So I get so excited when I
see the type of stuff thatyou're working on Sarah that
makes it just they don't knowthat they're learning and it's
just a fun experience and youlearn something along the
journey.
Sarah Guthals (54:31):
And even something again, even if it's
not teaching something actively.
My daughter loves to playMinecraft. I do too. So that's
where she learned it from. Andlately, she's been playing the
how to drink How to Train YourDragon World in Minecraft. It's
not intentionally teachinganything. It's not an
educational thing. You know,technically, but she loves the
film. She loves that world. Soshe'll be playing the film, and
(54:54):
then playing in the Minecraftworld and she tells She's like,
Mom, can you please play Thefilm also be or she says movie?
But like, can you also play themovie? Because I want to see
what I need to do in the game?
And like, I'm like, Yes. I mean,it's not directly correlated.
She doesn't that doesn't matter,though, right? The point is that
she's gathering information fromthe film that has all these
(55:17):
details, and then she'sexperiencing it in the 3d
immersive game, and likeapplying that knowledge back and
forth, and I just, I think thatthat's just so important. Yeah.
Brandon Minnick (55:29):
Yeah, it's we only have five minutes left,
this has flown by. Amazing,thank you. But there was there's
one more link, I actually forgotabout this one that you shared
with us. It's pronounced Yankeefan. ky.com.
Sarah Guthals (55:47):
Speaking of kids, and kind of tying things all
together, bannock is thisincredible organization. They
have a sister organizationcalled Beyond the ball dotnet.
And both of these organizations,they're all around tying
together eSports like gaming ata professional level,
technology, sports andentertainment. And banchi in
(56:12):
particular, has students, highschool and undergraduate
students who make content foryounger students or their peers
in partnership with educators,but that are relevant to what
those their peers and thisgeneration cares about. And so
we're partnering with banchi onJune 26. Two to just have this
(56:33):
incredible all day event, wherewe're going to have folks if
you're into eSports, and gamingfrom the FaZe clan. skeptic, I
think I'm pronouncing his nameright.
Chloe Condon (56:43):
We're always successful. It's good. Yeah. My
name is Izzy. I don't remembergonna be in a different event.
JJ.
Sarah Guthals (56:52):
No, yeah, you're you're gonna be joining us but
Xbox producer Gabby Ponce isgoing to be joining us. We're
going to have it's Cassie AprilSpeight and Sana. Honey, they're
all going to be joining us. Andthen we also have Ian Brock. And
if you haven't heard of him,Brock, I suggest you look, look
him up. He's absolutelyincredible. hosting the whole
(57:13):
event. It's going to be amazing.
We're gonna have technicalcontent, we're gonna have
eSports content, we're gonnahave sports content,
entertainment content, andchances to win Xbox controllers,
x, potentially some x boxes andsurface books. So check it out.
It's free. It's public onTwitch. Just go to Vanek comm
(57:33):
slash find your seat. It's gonnabe such a good time. Yes, yeah.
And
Brandon Minnick (57:41):
that's spelled b a neky.com. Slash find your
seat. Yeah. Amazing. Do 26 Yes.
See that?
Chloe Condon (57:51):
I will be there.
I'll be speaking. I'm veryexcited. It's gonna be really
cool. And I think also, youknow, just like we've been
saying this whole episode, it'sa great blend of like, gaming
sports. Kids. Yep. Adultsteaching kids. It's bunnies
teaching kids. So great. Verynice. And Sarah, where can
(58:12):
people find you on the internetand follow all the awesome
things that you do?
Sarah Guthals (58:18):
Yeah, I am Dr.
bethells on everything, prettymuch. Which was annoying when I
had to switch my GitHub over butit's fine. It makes it easier.
So yeah, I've doctor got thoseon Twitter is where I'm most
active. But you can find me ontik tok, Instagram, LinkedIn,
GitHub, all of them are atdoctor grapples.
Chloe Condon (58:38):
me saying and also, we will be having this
video live afterwards. So youcan check it out at eight
bits.tv on YouTube. We also havea podcast you also check out the
podcast add us on your favoritepodcasting app. We have lots of
awesome, amazing episodes withlots of folks that we mentioned
on the show today, actually.
Very cool. Well, y'all, this hasbeen another episode of eight
(59:03):
bits. And we're coming up on ourone year anniversary here. So
check out some really awesomeposts we're going to be doing on
our social. Check us out ateight bits pod. We're going to
be posting a lot of fun stuff onthere. And until next time,
we'll see you next Wednesday.
Thank you for having me.
Hello Hi Brandon, it's it's been a while it's been
a while. Back. How What did Imiss? Let's recap we had, who
did we have on the show? We hadChristopher PJ.
Brandon Minnick (02:23):
Last week, our guest was sessile Phillips and
our guest co host wasChristopher Harrison. So
awesome, awesome. Episode.
sessile has such an amazingstory. He was born and raised in
the island of Antigua and thencame to the US for college and
now became a professor atFlorida tech. And now he's a
(02:47):
senior engineer at at Microsoft.
So if you missed the episodelast week, you can find it at
eight bits.tv definitely gocheck it out. And yeah, that
Chloe Condon (03:00):
settles my teammate. I work on the same
team as him. That's right. Yeah.
And I didn't tune in because itwas on vacation. But B I was
like, I know this guy. I knowthis dude. I don't need to
watch. But now I'm thinking Ineed to learn more about this
origins. Yeah, it did not. I hadno
Brandon Minnick (03:14):
awareness of he used to be a competitive swimmer
for the national team. Okay, nowI'm definitely
Chloe Condon (03:21):
Oh, and if you're watching, if this is your first
time watching live with us, um,we also have a podcast version
of this. When you go on yourwalk later, or your run or your
jog or your folding laundry. Youcan go back and listen to those
episodes at a pit stop TV formore info.
Brandon Minnick (03:37):
That's right. I lost it. We have. Yeah, the week
before that. Our guests was BenBuchi. gag. It's spelled like
Budaj edge who, if anybodyremembers Mayor Pete from the
previous election cycle here inthe US, they're not related.
(03:57):
Ben's actually Welsh, so noteven from the same country. But
yeah, Ben has an amazing storyas well. We had our guest hosts
PJ Metz who is been on the showa couple times. So if you're a
fan of the show, you've probablymet PJ before but yeah, also
amazing story. Then actuallystarted coding working when he
(04:20):
was super young. Even beforecollege there was a major
telephony company. I forget thename off top my head, but just
happened to be this company wasdown the street from where he
grew up. And they gave him a jobwriting code when he was just a
little bit and now he's
Chloe Condon (04:47):
love We love to see
Brandon Minnick (04:50):
his big bed now. So he's just a clock over
by are over in London, you know,
Chloe Condon (04:56):
now that journey.
Brandon Minnick (04:58):
Yeah, I've been super into photography. drones.
And he takes amazing trips toplaces like Iceland, and he
posts all this amazing footageon his YouTube channel, along
with being a senior developer atMicrosoft. So lots of good
stories
Chloe Condon (05:12):
is I was gonna catch up on the plane ride back,
but I instead watch the new Inthe Heights movie, which I very
much enjoyed and would recommendto anyone. But these sounds like
some great apps, I'm gonna haveto go back into the archives
work, I think we just must havemissed our one year anniversary
of eight bits coming up here,Brandon. So what a special,
(05:36):
we'll have to do somethingspecial to celebrate it soon.
But for anybody who's maybe newtuning in this time, you can
watch all of the many previousguests and episodes and fun
times that we've had on the showat AICPA staff, TV, but Brandon,
what did I miss in the missanything in the Microsoft world?
What have you been doing? What'syour life, Ben?
Brandon Minnick (05:56):
Mm hmm. So a friend of the show know that I'm
a mobile developer, I used towork at Xamarin, and still do a
lot of stuff with Xamarin.
Internally, Microsoft, and I'vealso been working on something
called the Xamarin communitytoolkit. So if there's any
Xamarin developers out therelistening, you should check out
Xamarin community toolkit, it'sopen source on GitHub, you can
(06:18):
add this new gift package intoyour repo. And it's basically
the code that you've probablybeen copying and pasting from
Xamarin app, the Xamarin app,like, if you've been using
specific behaviors, or effects,or custom renderers, we tried to
bring all those common controlsinto the toolkit. But with
dotnet Maui coming out, I'mleading the initiative to have a
(06:41):
dotnet Maui toolkit. And so Ican't say I'm waiting on one
more approval before we can makethe official announcement.
You'll find it on the Xamarinblog once it's once it's public.
But yeah, working on support.
For dotnet Maui toolkit it'sgoing to happen. It's just how
(07:05):
we're going to do it is the onlything we're working on
internally. But yeah, staytuned, because there will be a
brand new toolkit for dotnetMaui, that will also encourage
folks from the community tocontribute to, and even the
existing toolkit will make sureit also works with dotnet Maui.
(07:26):
So even though it's all based onXamarin Forms, you'll be able to
look, we're calling it a Mauicompat. So it'll be Maui
compatible. So if you want tostay on the older toolkit, you
can no problem. But the newtoolkit will be very much dotnet
maue native, so it'll takeadvantage of all the new
performance improvements thatoccur with dotnet Maui, but I
(07:48):
can't wait to announce this. I'mitching to write a blog post
this week if I get the thumbsup. So stay tuned.
Chloe Condon (07:54):
So totally exciting stuff in the Xamarin.
World. We'll have to see it.
Let's see. Well, okay, first, Ihave a question for you.
Brandon. Have you ever heard ofa shirt bot? Do you know what a
shirt bot is? Have you are you?
Do you have any awareness? ashirt? Like a short shirt?
Brandon Minnick (08:16):
There's not talking about like,
Chloe Condon (08:19):
No, not me. But a short a shirt box. Does this
ring a bell to you at all?
Brandon Minnick (08:27):
No. Is it a bot that makes shirts?
Chloe Condon (08:29):
Well, do I have a video for you slash livestream
to watch? I am really excited tobe doing a new month long series
with reactors starting July 1.
called got bots you can check itout@aka.ms slash got bots to
sign up for the first one. Butthis is a series that I'm going
(08:51):
to be doing on Thursdays at 3pm.
Pacific time I believe. Let medouble check. Yes. And it is
gonna be all about the differentways that you can create bots.
So like at Microsoft, we haveq&a maker we have, oh my gosh,
we have so many different ones.
You can make a logic app bot.
(09:11):
We've talked about that on theshow many times with my Britney
Spears bot or my it's gonna bemay bot. We have an API for bots
here. But something that Idiscovered recently, Brandon,
when I put I posted a picturewearing a shirt similar to this
except it said it's a differentwords on it. And I someone
commented on my tweet and said,I want this on a shirt or where
(09:31):
do I buy this shirt? Now Ilearned very quickly that if
someone comments, I want that ona shirt I where do I get this
shirt? How do I get this on ashirt, that there are bots on
Twitter for these certain youknow t shirt sites out there
that are sort of takingadvantage of this and printing
unlicensed shirts taking awaycredit from artists and selling
(09:54):
them at a lower price. Now youknow me, I love artists I want
people to get paid especiallyfor the art they make So I found
this to be really terrible,right? I was like, Oh no,
there's these really maliciousbots out there but like so I
always discourage people fromcommenting on any posts I do
asking where the shirt is from.
So I've done a coupleexperiments on this recently,
where I'd say, Hey, I'm doing anexperiment, comment, I want this
(10:15):
on a shirt. And it's become sortof this fun game to play on the
bots. But I've learned a lot inthe process. And this series is
going to start with a talk allabout ethical bot creation,
because especially when we'reworking with AI, and we're
working with ml, we want to makesure that things that we're
building especially bots aren'tharassing people. They aren't
going to be hurting anyone inany way that could be
(10:38):
financially that could be youknow, taking away business. So
check that out. If you want tolearn more about bots, I make a
lot of really silly stupid bots.
You can check them out. I tweetI retweet them all the time.
Should I a bot that the lovelyPJ has made with me and many
others? So come learn about botswith me. aka.ms slash bot bots.
It'll be a party every Thursday.
And yeah, shirt bot shirt botsare bad. We don't like shirt
(11:02):
bots. Short box. Shirt bots that
Brandon Minnick (11:08):
it's funny got bots. In my head. I picture. It
must be the cotton mill slogan.
Yes. And so I'm just picturing abot with like a little milk
mustache. Like how the Got Milkcampaign used to do
Chloe Condon (11:22):
it? Well, I think you're gonna be spending some
time in Canada this afternoon.
Thank you for that.
Brandon Minnick (11:31):
It's funny. So for anybody that doesn't know
about the Got Milk campaign, itwas the thing to encourage
usually, children to drink moremilk. And yeah, they would get
celebrities and the celebritieswould take a sip of milk and
then they'd have this milkmustache look like a milk stain
on their on their upper lip andjust got milk.
Chloe Condon (11:54):
cafeteria library magazine that I had had these in
them I remember Kermit the Frogand Jim Henson even had little
milk mustache everyone everyonewas doing Got Milk.
Brandon Minnick (12:05):
But do they got bots?
Chloe Condon (12:07):
Do they got maybe the first thought that I built
is like a Got Milk? I don'tknow. We'll see. I don't want to
put a pin in that. But speakingof 90s and early 2000
histologia. We have a lovelyguest today who I'm sure has a
favorite. Okay, we're going togive them a couple seconds in
this intro that to answer thisquestion to get thinking about
(12:29):
it. What is their favorite GotMilk poster we would love to
know. So it gives out a thought.
But we have a special guesttoday Brandon who is also a
cloud advocate, works on a teamwith me over our next generation
experiences. is passionate abouteducation is passionate about
teaching is a freakin doctor.
(12:51):
One of the coolest people Iknow. Welcome to the show. Sarah
gosnells. Dr. g. Hello. Thankyou so much for having me. Okay,
if we ever got milk post? Oh,gosh, I don't know.
Sarah Guthals (13:05):
Search for them.
Honestly. Okay. It's probably atie between the Olsen twins,
because they were just icons.
Um, and and they just pulled itoff like, I don't know. Anyways,
their charisma anyways. And thenthe Jim Hanson one because I
remember that one. Wasn't thatone, like black and white? Or
(13:26):
like really dusty lighting? I
Chloe Condon (13:27):
don't know. It was just art. It was definitely in
it in a dusty library for me. Sothat Yeah. Brandon, do you have
a fav.
Brandon Minnick (13:37):
The one that always comes to mind for me is
Michael Jordan. So you can'tthink of the 90s without
thinking of Michael Jordan ingeneral. But yeah, he did the
Got Milk campaign. And if youwanted to play basketball as
good as Michael Jordan, you hadto drink milk. No,
Sarah Guthals (13:54):
sorry, random tangent. weedy boxes. Were also
a thing where you know, on aWheaties box, there would be
like an athlete. And I didgymnastics when I was a kid. And
they did a photo shoot one day,and then they put me on a
Wheaties box. Wow. When I was akid, I thought that it was
soapy, like amazing. And then Ilook at it now and they
(14:16):
literally just like, cut mypicture out of a printed
picture. And like, pasted it onthe Wheaties box and then put
the box in like a plastic clearcontainer. Now for people
Chloe Condon (14:28):
who are maybe a little bit younger than us,
Photoshop was not superaccessible back in the day. So
it used to be literally a thingat theme parks like six flags,
you would go there and you wouldpay anywhere from 30 to $40 to
put your picture on like SportsIllustrated or, you know,
(14:49):
Nickelodeon magazine, like andit was just peep I have one
right oh famzoo Well,incredible, incredible right
here somewhere. Brandon Oh, So Ijust googled Got Milk and I
think my favorite is the BritneySpears one because it's her next
to her young whip. Yes. I stilldon't know how they did that.
Yeah, um, I Oh, someone said,Yep, did one in six flags, I
(15:13):
definitely have a image of mevery young photoshopped onto
like a bikini model or somethingjust like looking very cool. But
interesting segue from MichaelJordan into something we're
going to be talking about alittle bit later. There is an
reimagining of Space Jam comingon Brandon, called spaceship new
(15:34):
legacy. And Sara actually getsto work on all the awesome
partnerships with that stuff.
But before I get there before,though, we don't want to like,
oh, there's a teaser, watching.
But Sarah, tell us a little bit.
Well, first, tell us who youare, what you do at Microsoft.
And then we'd love to get intoyour Marvel origin story, so to
speak, of how you ended up hereat Microsoft so tall, we know
(15:54):
you, of course, you work withus, we love you. But tell us
about your job at Microsoft.
Sarah Guthals (16:01):
Yeah, um, who am I, I just can't, I just always
think about Zoo lander lookinginto a puddle. Who am I so
basically, I'm someone who isextremely passionate about
education, teaching and learningand all things related. That's
(16:22):
what my background is in. And Ibrought that or I bring that to
kind of any role that I'm in.
I've been at Microsoft for justover two years, actually, like
two and a half years now. And Igot the opportunity to be on
this cloud advocacy team where Iget to pair education with my
other passion, which istechnology and coding and
software engineering andcomputer science or whatever
(16:43):
word you want to use to describeit. And so I get to spend most
of my days writing contentmaking videos, things like that,
that demonstrate authenticdeveloper workflows, like what
professionals would be doingwith this code or you know,
whatever it is, but framing itinto more relevant or like
culturally relevant or just kindof imaginative narratives. So I
(17:08):
like to to have things have justkind of context and storylines
and things like that it helps melearn better. And rather than
just kind of a series of Doc's,I wanted to have a series of
stories where you build stuffthrough that, because that's
kind of how I got inspired to,to join this industry.
Chloe Condon (17:30):
I love that. And you have a young daughter as
well, which probably makes youvery passionate about education.
Sarah Guthals (17:38):
Yes, yeah, I treat education. I mean, it's
pretty much whether education isessentially effective
communication, in my opinion. Sowhether I'm parenting, I'm
speaking with my my partner, I'mcollaborating at work, or I'm
teaching adults or children,it's all essentially the same.
It's about respect. It's aboutlistening. And it's about
(17:59):
ensuring that there's kind ofgood communication between the
person with information and theperson that's seeking
information.
Chloe Condon (18:06):
I'm sure a very frequent guest PJ mattes would
agree with you on the teachingand educating his communication
could not agree more. And as acloud advocate, that's very much
what your job is. That is teachcommunicate. Exactly. Very cool.
So how did you find yourselfhere? How'd you get here?
Sarah Guthals (18:28):
Good question. So okay, I'll do my you know, my
whole life story, but veryquickly, when I was very, very
young, my mom had wristproblems. And one day, I rubbed
her wrist and she said, Thatfelt better. Thank you so much.
And I said, I'm going to be adoctor. I'm going to be a
(18:49):
doctor. I also have severeasthma I always have and I used
to participate in studies,totally legit for new
medications. So things likeClaritin and Zyrtec. I was
taking them decades ago beforethey were even available as
prescriptions. And I just foundthat whole world of scientific
(19:11):
research fascinating. So mywhole life I wanted to be a
doctor. That's what I plan todo. I was lucky enough to get
into the University ofCalifornia, San Diego and pre
med, took my first chemistry andmath class and failed them and
almost quit. And
Brandon Minnick (19:29):
a lot of people does, it does. My college. Those
were literally the weed outclasses. So intro to Chem intro
to physics and like calc one,they made them really hard on
purpose for some reason.
Sarah Guthals (19:42):
So then they're not even hard. They're just not
taught well, right on purposefor some reason. I could go on a
whole five hour rant about that.
So I almost I almost dropped outof the university to go to
community college. My momstarted community college when I
was two years old. And so I sawthe benefit of community college
(20:04):
when you weren't sure exactlywhat you wanted to do, you had
more support, you had moreopportunity to like experiment
around and it wasn't asexpensive. And I was paying for
college completely myself. Mymom convinced me to stay. And
I'm glad she did. She's going tospeak to say for one year, and
I'm glad she did, because Iended up taking a computer
(20:24):
science course from theincredible Dr. Beth Simon, who
happened to not only be a womanin tech, but also be
transitioning into doingresearch and education, which
blew my mind that you could bedoing education with computer
science. So she cared about howpeople were learning, she was
(20:44):
reimagining the curriculum. Ididn't know what the heck I was
doing, I would go down into thecomputer labs, nothing would
work to the point where the TAis would hold the solution code
next to my code, and nobodycould figure out why mine wasn't
working. But I loved it. Becausethe difference between chemistry
and computer science for me inthose early classes was
(21:06):
chemistry was memorization. andcomputer science was figuring
things out. And the math piece,what I realized in in undergrad
was there were rules. But butbut like they weren't, I don't
know, they just they actuallyweren't super firm. And you had
no feedback. Like if you got itwrong, you had no idea if you
got it wrong or right, because Icouldn't reverse the algorithm
(21:28):
because I would get that onewrong, too. Anyways, so I had no
feedback. Computer Science wasnot only problem solving, but I
had immediate feedback. So Iswitched my major into computer
science. And then I ended updoing a couple of internships
with Microsoft, a company calledviasat. In San Diego, I ended up
meeting my now husband, anundergrad, he was staying for a
(21:51):
PhD, I got lucky enough to beaccepted into the Ph. D. program
as well. So I stayed. And weboth did our PhDs in computer
science, him focusing on onbioinformatics and neon
education, and started a companywhile I was doing that, because
I can't do just one thing at atime. Did that for a little
(22:13):
while we were the company wasteaching kids how to code
through Minecraft modding whichwas so much fun. And then yeah,
I wrote some books aroundteaching kids how to code. I
started working for GitHub as acontractor to build like a
GitHub for kids under 13 made aprototype of that. They decided
(22:33):
not to continue working on thatwhile I was eight months
pregnant, they didn't know thatit wasn't related. So then I got
a full time job very quickly, atGitHub, as an engineering
manager, absolutely loved that.
We were building kind of theintegration of GitHub into
editors and IDs. And then abouttwo and a half years ago, I got
(22:56):
the opportunity to switch overto Microsoft has to go back to
more education work. So
Chloe Condon (23:01):
that's why I'm exhausted. How many like you're
just like, casually read sixbooks. Like, okay, girl. Good
question. Not well. Well, I havea question for you, Sarah. So
you mentioned that you grew upin a low income family. What was
(23:25):
your introduction to computers?
Like? Did you have computersaround you? Personally, I only
had them in computer lab for awhile. But what was your
relation to computers beforegoing to UC San Diego?
Sarah Guthals (23:37):
Yeah, I was not great at computers prior to
undergrad. Um, so remember, thiswas a little while ago. So no, I
wrote like, up until probablysixth grade, I was writing
literally on a typewriter foranything that needed to be typed
for school. Otherwise, it wasjust the computer lab at school
(23:57):
we did. Ours was paused typingtown was the software we use.
And then also, you know, theOregon Trail. So that was pretty
much my exposure to computers.
And then we did get a computerat home when my mom started at a
state university to get herteaching credential. And I
remember we had, there's thisphenols figure math, I remember
(24:22):
it now cuz I looked it up. Andit was my favorite game in the
whole world. And it was justthis PC game where you went
around this like spooky housetrying to make dinner and every
room there was like a differentmath problem. I don't know. It
was just absolutely wild. Itmade no sense at all, and I
absolutely loved it. But otherthan that I didn't really have
(24:42):
any exposure to it. In highschool was when my space was
popular. And back in the day,you could customize your MySpace
profile with HTML. I didn't knowhow to do any of that. I didn't
even understand that. That'swhat I was doing. All I did was
like search for MySpace profile.
And then copy and paste, whichis pretty much how I code today.
(25:03):
So but I had no no exposure atall. I could maybe make a graph
in Excel. I could answer email,I can make a PowerPoint that was
like my technical skills when Istarted.
Chloe Condon (25:18):
It's interesting because you mentioned that now
especially with, with thepartnerships that you work with,
you work on kind of tellingthese stories and teaching
people through stories. A lot ofthe games that we all grew up
with on computers, I feel like Ihave this one called museum
madness, where like you had togo through this museum did I
know way too much about theGettysburg Address y'all and the
(25:39):
Panama Canal, like, truly. Butit's so true that you but but I
remember those things. And I donot think that fourth grade
Chloe would care or know if shedidn't have to pass that level
five or six times with AbrahamLincoln to figure out from the
mummy. You know, Brandon, didyou have education software like
(26:00):
that?
Brandon Minnick (26:01):
Oh, yeah, I loved him, but I can't remember
any what any of them are called.
But yeah, no resume masters,
Chloe Condon (26:09):
Mario? Oh, yeah.
Brandon Minnick (26:12):
There was one where you were, you're playing
this character in a third partyview. And you basically went
around, like solving thesephysics puzzles. And you would
collect parts. And so what arethe things you would collect is
like, like, at the end, youwould have this bossfight. But
it was basically like, you wouldbuild something. So you would
build a plane, and you would flyyour plane against the boss. And
(26:36):
so you'd have to learn aboutlike, drag and how drag affects
your play and or, like, getpropellers versus jet engines
and how that affects your speed.
And yeah, they did all those.
And I wish I remember what itwas called, because I spent
hours days of my life. And Iloved it. And like, Yeah, when I
arrived at my first physicsclass in high school, I at least
(26:57):
knew a couple of these terms. SoI was totally, totally confused.
But yeah, let's see.
Chloe Condon (27:03):
I feel like I was doing that wrong. Because
whenever I played Carmen SanDiego, instead of actually
learning the facts, I just runinto the kitchen to my mom and
be like, who is known for makingempanadas. Like, I didn't have
the cultural significance ofwhat I was learning.
Sarah Guthals (27:17):
That's, that's an important point. Important
point, Chloe. Because I'm so inmy, in my PhD, my, my focus was
on, can we, so my dissertationwas called designing learning
experience setting culture eightnovices. Okay. And we culture
(27:38):
and culture it Yeah, it's notreally word, this word. It's a
word, because it's in the titleof my thesis. So there you go.
Brandon Minnick (27:45):
We are and I
Sarah Guthals (27:46):
think, right.
Yeah, yeah. And so essentially,what what, what my goal was, was
there was a difference betweenmath blasters and final figure
math. The difference was, andfinals figure math, she would go
into this room and need to, likefill a certain number of jugs of
milk from this cow. And youliterally had to figure out, you
(28:08):
know, how many squirts from thecow to fill up the jugs. And it
was it was the math problem wasrelated to the storyline. Math
plasters, on the other hand, iswhat we'd like to call chocolate
covered broccoli. Yes, that is Iwasn't good. Exactly. And
essentially, what what you weredoing was, you would play and
then you would stop and do somemath problems in a gamified way.
(28:31):
And then you would play somemore and stop. So like your
physics one, Brandon sounds morelike an inculturation of physics
with gameplay. So like, in my inmy doctorate, we built a video
game, where you played a wizard,and you were in this 3d world,
and you would walk around andthere were these gnomes who
(28:51):
needed help, they'd lost theirmagic. But they used to rely on
magic. And now they needed yourhelp. And you're like the last
word or wizard. So then youwould write spells in your spell
book that were actually Javamethods to help them solve their
problems. So the code that youwere writing was directly
related.
Chloe Condon (29:11):
You just answered a question for me that is that
is been in my brain for so long,which is, why did math blasters
give me intense anxiety? Andthat is because it was chocolate
covered broccoli. I today Ilearned. Yeah. But that's
interesting. Because games whereI didn't know it was math, where
it was like, hey, figure out thechange. Like when it's in this
(29:33):
scenario. I feel like my brainconnects to that more. Yeah,
Sarah Guthals (29:36):
this is really fascinating. And that's what I
bring to what I do at Microsofttoo, is like, um, to kind of
bridge over into that I'vegotten the opportunity. I'm
super lucky that I've gotten towork with NASA and Netflix and
Warner Brothers, and take someof their rich narratives or
(29:57):
experiences or or storylines andTo discover ways in which our
authentic developer workflowsmight match into that. So when
when we were approached fromNetflix with the over the moon
film, which came out last year,it's a gorgeous film about a
young Chinese girl who builds arocket to fly to the moon. And
(30:18):
there's this huge storylinearound it. And then I got the
opportunity to watch the film.
And while watching it, I hadthis huge notebook of like, all
the ways I could see tech showup, right and, and, and all the
ways that it would authenticallyshow up and, and I don't want to
give too many spoilers, but atthe, towards the beginning of
the film, she's flying and she'smaking it she's flying up to the
(30:38):
moon, and then all of a suddenher rocket starts to fall. And
the reason her rocket starts tofall is because her young
stepbrother snuck onto therocket, and she didn't account
for his weight. And that is avery real problem when making
rockets, like NASA has to thinkabout not only the weight going
up, and the amount of propulsionthat they have, and all of that,
but then are they going to land?
(31:00):
Are they going to collectsamples? Are they going to bring
that back? What's that weight?
Exactly? You know, how much foodare the astronauts gonna eat all
of that. So we tie all of thatnarrative around Fei Fei and her
journey to the moon, with whatNASA actually does, and how data
science and machine learning canactually fit into it. And like,
I don't know, it's just myfavorite thing to do.
Chloe Condon (31:19):
That is so cool.
Brandon Minnick (31:22):
It's fun.
absolutely incredible. And now,you shared some links with us
before the show. I'm going topull up one now this is aka.ms.
Slash learn in space? Yes. Isthis also corresponding the same
movie?
Sarah Guthals (31:36):
Yeah. So if you go to that link, there are three
learning modules at the top ofthat page that are related to
the over the moon film. And thenthere are three learning paths
that are inspired by NASA. And Igot the opportunity to interview
literal NASA scientists, and getinspiration from them. And so we
(31:58):
wrote some some modules aroundthat. And that first learning
path for NASA, which is anintroduction to Python, inspired
by NASA, that one actually youcan do completely in the browser
also, which is awesome.
Chloe Condon (32:11):
So cool.
Incredible. It's fun.
Brandon Minnick (32:18):
And this one has anything to do with space,
but we also have aka.ms slashlearn with basketball.
Sarah Guthals (32:25):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Michael Jordan,
basketball space, I do thinkthere might be some correlation.
Yeah. So it next month,actually, the new Space Jam, a
new legacy film is coming out.
This one is going to be areimagining of the original
film. And you might have seensome previews, or some trailers
(32:47):
come out recently. But LeBronJames is the star of this one,
along with his movie son, who'splayed by Cedric Joe. And we got
the opportunity to work withWarner Brothers in the Space
Jam, a new legacy film to makelearning modules, some of which
we launched in December, you canfind two of them that we
launched in December at thislink, aka.ms. Slash learn with
(33:09):
basketball. And we're launchingthree more this month. So I'm
really excited. The inspirationbehind these was, again, kind of
that tie between what do we careabout when it comes to
basketball. And Fun fact, playerefficiency rating is the
statistic that is often used inthe NBA for how you know, good a
(33:33):
player is the NBA player withthe highest player efficiency
rating, or P er is MichaelJordan, and the NBA player of
all time, and the NBA playerwith the highest player
efficiency rating that is stillcurrently playing with LeBron
James. So it's kind of cool. Sowe kind of centered the the, the
(33:54):
modules around kind of datascience and P er, and you build
some web apps, and then the onescoming out are going to be mixed
reality.
Chloe Condon (34:04):
See, this is math, I can get behind this. My brain
wants to solve because Exactly,
Sarah Guthals (34:10):
yeah, we we predict what the tune squads p
er would be based on some somedata. So
Chloe Condon (34:19):
I'm super excited.
I've been helping Sarah getready for some of these events.
And I got to say as someone whostill has their original purple
Space Jam basketball fromchildhood, I could not be more
excited to be helping bring Lolabunny into the Microsoft. Lola
Bunny is an icon. And sweetplayer efficiency rating is what
(34:43):
exactly it's how often they makea shot.
Sarah Guthals (34:49):
It's a huge formula that they take with a
ton of different stats. So it'snot just how many shots they've
made. It's it's like assists.
It's How many minutes they'veplayed, it's so many statistics
that get put into this huge,huge formula. And yes, you could
get all those statistics and putit through the formula. What we
(35:09):
do is say, What if you wanted toget some like quick changes or
something like that, and weactually use machine learning to
predict what that might be. Sowe built a model based off of
the P er scores of current NBANW NBA players. And then we use
that model to predict what thetwo squads p er would be in that
same kind of universe.
Chloe Condon (35:33):
Can't wait to figure out which member of toon
squad has the best PR,
Sarah Guthals (35:37):
if I remember, right, I'm pretty sure it was
Lola. But, um, yeah, yeah,you'll have to check it out.
Chloe Condon (35:45):
So exciting. And oh, my goodness, I, I'm just so
excited for a reimagining ofSpace Jam. Like, if anybody, we
talk a lot about tech nostalgiaon this show. And I have to say,
I'm very happy that so I don'tknow if y'all know this. Those
watching out there. I'm sure myguests know this. Space Jam kept
(36:08):
their original 1996 website upuntil recently, they still have
a legacy version of the websitethat you can check out on the
current Space Jam nulegacywebsite, and it is quite a time
capsule of nostalgia. I thinkthey have Comic Sans. Read on
bolded font on a star storybackground definitely worth
(36:31):
worth checking out. Oh, yeah,drop the link here in the chat.
It's It's lovely. It reminds mea lot of Brian Benz's, a lovely
Geocities page that we share iton a previous
Brandon Minnick (36:42):
question from yen's friend of the show former
guest on a bits, our ratiosbetween players correlated and
can be used to predict trendsfor upcoming players.
Sarah Guthals (36:54):
It's a great question. I did not do a huge
deep dive into all of the statsof basketball because we were
mainly trying to focus on againthat authentic technical
workflow, but generallyspeaking, yes. From the the
amount of research that we diddo, that is what we saw is that
(37:14):
that that the the data from allof the other statistics that
would predict p er, given thatdata and those trends, you could
potentially predict that andthat's that's kind of what we
wanted to do with all of thelearning modules I write they
are not the complete story. Theyare the, like springboard,
they're the starting point.
Because the goal is that, thatyou know, you hear about this,
(37:37):
or you try that learning moduleand you ask questions exactly
like this one. And then now youhave the skills to go answer
that question and contribute tothe broader kind of sense of
this knowledge. So generallyspeaking, yes. But I can't
answer that with like, 100%.
Confidence.
Brandon Minnick (37:55):
Yeah. Reminds me of the the movie Moneyball,
which, yeah, used similarstatistics kind of obscure at
the time statistics forbaseball, to kind of hack the
game. And yeah, it sounds likebasketball starting to pick up
pick up on that, too.
Sarah Guthals (38:10):
Yeah, yeah, we kind of we kind of do that in
the second module, we build a anapp for coaches, where what we
are doing is we're simulating ifyour your statistics get updated
based on gameplay. So you wouldchoose your first five players
for the first quarter. And thenbecause they've now played an
additional quarter, their PTRmight change, as you might want
(38:33):
to swap players out to make surethat if you have a really great
player, but they're gettingtired, so their PR, you know,
average is going down, you mightwant to give them a rest. So
then that way, they can comeback in the fourth quarter and
like help you win, right. Soagain, that is not actually how
a basketball coach would do itnecessarily. But it's giving an
insight into what data and whatexpertise a coach might have,
(38:57):
and how we can kind of simulatethat with with machine learning.
Unknown (39:00):
Now this gets tricky with tune squad, because we got
Tweety Bird who can fly likethere's a lot of
Sarah Guthals (39:05):
variables here.
But I know I tried to be honest,I tried really hard to get
information like that fromWarner Brothers. Unfortunately,
we were so early and they youknow, this was back in December.
So the film doesn't come outuntil now and they didn't want
to give too many details awayabout each of the two squads
like so you want to keep
Chloe Condon (39:24):
them in you're like Does someone have an
injury? I literally
Sarah Guthals (39:27):
was asking that but then I was like, you know,
what's someone like better atscoring like and I literally
said that Chloe, I was like 20can fly so does that mean 20 can
like totally, you know, get alot more, you know, like layups
or something. Tell me aboutthis, but um, they didn't want
to divulge too much information,which honestly, I'm just really
excited to watch the film now.
So yeah,
Brandon Minnick (39:49):
we have a nother question in the chat
about PDR. Could they be relatedto health condition so maybe
your body temperaturesincreasing or perspiration rates
are decreasing
Sarah Guthals (40:00):
I love this. This is exactly why I wrote this
module because this is all ofthe stuff I started to think
about too. So P er is based offof just kind of traditional
basketball stats. So like Isaid, like, how many minutes?
Have you played things likethat? But 100%, you could add
this type of data into maybe notplayer efficiency rating the
(40:20):
official one but like, you know,an augmented aper. Yeah, yeah. I
100% could imagine sensors,maybe in both of the shoes to
see like is all of a sudden, youknow, are they running with
maybe like, a little bit morepressure on one leg? Is that? Is
that knee already injured? Do wewant to take them out? Are they
(40:41):
not even realizing it? Becauseit's such a subtle difference?
Or maybe like you said, centersmaybe like in their jerseys? Are
they? Are they sweating more?
Are they getting more tired? Canthey feel like, you know,
they're chivay, hydrate heavier.
All of you could put sensors intheir water, like so many things
that you could neither just sendsurveys things. But you could
(41:01):
also have like information fromthe like medical staff on the on
the team to say like, Hey, weneed to watch for this 100% you
could totally add this stuff in.
And I think if we had morepeople who loved basketball or
loved sports, who alsounderstood and were interested
in tech, you don't evennecessarily have to be the one
to make the tech. You could betalking though, with the people
(41:23):
who do make the tech and and andyou could get more information
that keeps your playershealthier, and happier and keeps
your team winning more.
Chloe Condon (41:34):
I love the idea of the Internet of basketball is
Yeah,
Brandon Minnick (41:39):
I love it. I feel like it's all it's gonna
take is one NBA coach, onecollege basketball coach, high
school basketball coach to dothis. And then everybody else is
going to copy because this wouldgive such a huge competitive
advantage to a coach that knows,oh, this player based off the
(41:59):
sensor readings needs to take abreak. Like, I don't have to
guess anymore.
Sarah Guthals (42:04):
They do this in football to an extent I know
that they have helmets now thathave sensors to check for
concussions. So if a player getshit too hard, yeah, sorry,
American football. If a playergoes hard, they can know whether
or not they're at risk forconcussion, which is extremely
important in football andAmerican football, because that
happens so often. So yes, 100%I'm sure they use some things
(42:27):
but but the more we canintersect tech into as a tool.
And as just like a part ofgeneral knowledge, the more
people who go into any industrycan see how they can slightly
transform it. I wrote a papercalled computing as the fourth
R. Right? Everyone should haveit. You don't have to become a
(42:48):
developer. You don't have tobecome a computer scientist, you
don't have to go into a techcareer. But if everyone had at
least some knowledge of reading,writing, math and computing,
then we could be transformingindustries in ways that help
people and not just, you know,make money.
Chloe Condon (43:07):
Wow. I'm literally sitting here thinking like, this
is so inspiring, I thinkespecially the kids who are
going to be consuming this SpaceJam, do legacy type content and
thinking about it. I'm eventhinking like, if young Chloe
had known about this, I wouldhave been measuring the
telemetry of my slip inside tomake sure I was getting the
(43:27):
right amount of water and theangle. Like there's just so many
cool things that that when youput these things in practical
situations you start thinkingabout and I love to see it. You
love to see the tech. Oh, we'vegot a nice comment here. Let's
see Danish soccer player.
Christian Eriksen died brieflyin a game against Finland in the
European Championship thisSaturday. He's had he had the
(43:49):
sensors on it.
Brandon Minnick (43:56):
He's still alive in Yeah, yeah.
Chloe Condon (44:00):
We had a student who worked with us with big
project, who had never workedwith IoT before. I had never
worked with Azure before. And wedid the serverless boot camp.
And it was during the pandemic.
So we were in quarantine. And hewas away from his grandmother or
Yeah, his grandmother. And hebuilt a sensor that she could
wear that was integrated withAzure Functions and Twilio. And
(44:21):
he you know, he demoed it for usby doing jumping jacks on
himself. But essentially, hewanted to be able to get a
notification on what hisgrandmother's heart rate was if
it went below or above a certainlevel, and he would get a text
to his phone. So the fact that ahigh school student can build
that And literally, we justhanded him the resources of
Azure credits and the knowledgeof Azure like there's so many
(44:43):
amazing things that when you putthem in context, you can build
and I think his inspiration forthat project was my fake
boyfriend app. So you never knowwhere technical inspiration will
strike
Sarah Guthals (44:56):
well and your context of your fake boyfriend
app. Give Other people contextfor things that they care about,
or that are problems in theirown lives. Right. And that's why
I think it's not necessarilyabout writing curriculum or
giving examples with everycontext, but having some context
to to kind of ignite that thatinitial thought I think is so
(45:18):
critical.
Chloe Condon (45:19):
Sarah, you very, very quickly breezed over the
fact that you've written sevenbooks. What? When do you find
the time man? Good question.
Sarah Guthals (45:37):
Most of them I read wrote, pre daughter being
born one of them I did rightafter she was born. But
honestly, it's whenever I'm in arole where I'm not writing
curriculum. I just have thislike itch to write curriculum
Chloe Condon (45:52):
flows out of you.
Sarah Guthals (45:54):
Yeah, so I wrote a couple that were for kids. So
building a mobile app, forexample, or, or just like
learning basic spriteprogramming for kids. And then I
also wrote a what a GitHub fordummies book. That one was a ton
of fun, I got to write that withmy old manager from GitHub. And
(46:16):
then I also wrote a helping kidslearn how to code book with
another PhD in education intech. And her and I wrote this
kind of like, if you are anadult, whether you're a parent
or you know, or an educator, anykind of adult where you have
children in your life, and youwant to help them learn how to
code. We wrote that book foryou.
Chloe Condon (46:38):
Okay, so Sarah, I noticed in our pre show notes
that you dropped, you dropped avery interesting fact in here,
which is that when you weredoing your PhD in computer
science, you got to go toDisneyland, Paris. Please tell
us about that. And also, tell usyour favorite Disneyland, right.
It's been a while since we'vetalked about favorite theme park
(46:59):
rides on the show.
Sarah Guthals (47:00):
Alright, so favorite theme park ride is
definitely Oh, gosh, it's sohard. So it's either Thunder
Mountain or Space Mountain,those who are just my favorite.
These a roller coaster girl.
Okay. Yeah, the Thunder Mountainin Disneyland Paris is so
incredible, you actually gounderground. And so like you
start in this mountain overhere. And then you go
(47:22):
underground, and you end up inthis like little island for a
little bit and then go backover, it is so cool. But it is a
little bit more jarring. Like,it's it's definitely more of
like a roller coaster. Whereas Idon't know that the one in
Disneyland in California is alittle bit more smooth, I think.
Um, but yeah, my so for those ofyou who don't know, which I did
not know this, again, I comefrom a very, very, very low
(47:45):
income family. And I paid forcollege by working three to four
jobs throughout undergrad. Andwhen I was thinking about doing
my PhD, I was like, I can't,like I can't afford this. And I
had already also taken out loansand gotten grants and
scholarships and others. And Iwas like, I can't afford this.
(48:06):
But most PhD programs incomputer science, at least and
and most worldwide, but youknow, it definitely depends.
They actually pay you a stipend,and pay for your school. Now the
stipend is not big, it's, youknow, back then it was, it was
about $20,000 it was way morethan enough, right? It's not,
(48:29):
but I'm just saying it's notlike, you know, a, like a job
job. in tech. I mean, it's itbut it was way more than enough
to live on, especially if youdidn't have to pay for school.
And that was just incredible. Inever knew that that was a
thing. I felt so lucky. And theneat thing about it is that in
addition to that you're oftenput on you often write grants
(48:50):
with your faculty advisors. Andthose grants include funds to
travel to conferences whentravel is appropriate. And those
conferences tend to be worldwidebecause we are a worldwide, you
know, field. And so yeah, I gotthe opportunity to on kind of
the university's dollar fly toFrance for a conference that I
(49:13):
had. And then since it was thesame price in terms of flights,
I just made my flight like alittle bit later, a few days a
few I think it was about a weekafter the conference and ended
the university did not pay forthe time I was in France when I
wasn't at the conference to beclear, they did not pay for my
housing, nothing like that. Butthe flight was paid for. And
(49:35):
that was just huge. So I got theopportunity to stay a little bit
longer and go to DisneylandParis and check out a couple of
the castles and we got to dothat in New Zealand. We got to
do that in London, Scotland. Andthen you know, around the United
States some some places inCanada I think those are the
ones that I've been to It wasincredible. It's the only time
(49:57):
I've ever been out of thecountry has been on on research
trips.
Chloe Condon (50:04):
And I feel like Disney has done such a great job
at educating throughentertainment content. And I
know Sarah and I have a sharedlove for 90s nostalgia, of
course. What are some of like,when you think back on your
time, you know, learning aboutcomputers and things like that?
(50:25):
What kind of Was there anythingthat kind of like stood out as
far as education wise, that wasreally an important, like, for
me, I think back on learningabout a lot of things from the
dinosaurs about like, theprehistoric ages and things like
that. Are there? Is therecontent like that, that really
speaks to you from yourchildhood that inspires you now
to create the content you donow?
Sarah Guthals (50:48):
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to give away too much
about a secret project thatwe're working on. But honestly,
literally, everything from the90s had to do with like,
detectives and spies, likeeverything had to do with like,
figuring things out. And that'swhat I realized. When I got
(51:12):
older, when I switched from premed to computer science, and I
realized what I love is problemsolving. What I love is that
there's a mystery, whether thatmystery is, you know, like fibl
got lost and can't find hisfamily. And he needs to, like,
you know, explore the world andtry to find them. Or that
(51:32):
mystery is that this error andthe error message makes
absolutely no sense. It's stilla hunt for clues. It's still a
well, let me I have ahypothesis. Let me try this. Let
me see what the result of thatis. And then let me adjust my
hypothesis, you know, as aresult, and that kind of like
detective spy, you know, problemsolving hunt for clues. That's
(51:55):
what I loved. There was thisincredible from highlights
magazine, which was a kid'smagazine back in the days, I
think. Yes, yeah, they, yeah,they had this, they had this
adventure spy series where theywould send you like a book about
(52:15):
a country and then some likeplayer cards for like, who the
characters were, and you had tolike discover something. And
there was like a workbook. Andthen you had like, read about
the country. And it was just allof that like that. All of that
is is is what I realized nowinspired me,
Chloe Condon (52:31):
you're now making me realize that American Girl,
although it'd be an adult that Ivery, very much wanted and
begged for also came with booksthat taught me about historical
time period. So I got the GreatDepression through American girl
and I knew about all thesedifferent areas, Brandon, I
don't know if you've seen butthere's a new American Girl
(52:52):
doll. That's an 80s AmericanGirl doll. And she loves to play
video games. And she programsthem, which is so amazing and
cool to see. I wish I had thatone.
Sarah Guthals (53:01):
amantha Barbie does vlogs and they're amazing.
She's an icon Just saying.
Brandon Minnick (53:11):
Barbie makes videos.
Sarah Guthals (53:13):
Yeah. She does.
vlogs I mean, they have like ananimated Barbie. But she talks
about racism. She talks aboutlike being insecure. She talks
about trying new things. Shetalks about like everything, and
it's gorgeous.
Chloe Condon (53:29):
It's very cool.
I'm one of those, I would sayweirdos. But it's one of my
hobbies. I go to Target. And Ispend most of my time walking up
and down the toy aisle becauseI'm very fascinated with like,
what kind of games and toys likechildren are interested in
getting educated by and I alwaysget so so excited when I see
just like you said that, that Iguess what do you call the
(53:51):
opposite of anti chocolatebroccoli, like delicious cake?
is learning experiences. It'snot like yeah, I can climb but
it's it's technically stembecause you're learning about
all the ingredients that makeslime or even just seeing.
There's a game that I play onNintendo Switch called human
(54:14):
resource machine, which isactually just doing little
algorithms and figuring themout. So I get so excited when I
see the type of stuff thatyou're working on Sarah that
makes it just they don't knowthat they're learning and it's
just a fun experience and youlearn something along the
journey.
Sarah Guthals (54:31):
And even something again, even if it's
not teaching something actively.
My daughter loves to playMinecraft. I do too. So that's
where she learned it from. Andlately, she's been playing the
how to drink How to Train YourDragon World in Minecraft. It's
not intentionally teachinganything. It's not an
educational thing. You know,technically, but she loves the
film. She loves that world. Soshe'll be playing the film, and
(54:54):
then playing in the Minecraftworld and she tells She's like,
Mom, can you please play Thefilm also be or she says movie?
But like, can you also play themovie? Because I want to see
what I need to do in the game?
And like, I'm like, Yes. I mean,it's not directly correlated.
She doesn't that doesn't matter,though, right? The point is that
she's gathering information fromthe film that has all these
(55:17):
details, and then she'sexperiencing it in the 3d
immersive game, and likeapplying that knowledge back and
forth, and I just, I think thatthat's just so important. Yeah.
Brandon Minnick (55:29):
Yeah, it's we only have five minutes left,
this has flown by. Amazing,thank you. But there was there's
one more link, I actually forgotabout this one that you shared
with us. It's pronounced Yankeefan. ky.com.
Sarah Guthals (55:47):
Speaking of kids, and kind of tying things all
together, bannock is thisincredible organization. They
have a sister organizationcalled Beyond the ball dotnet.
And both of these organizations,they're all around tying
together eSports like gaming ata professional level,
technology, sports andentertainment. And banchi in
(56:12):
particular, has students, highschool and undergraduate
students who make content foryounger students or their peers
in partnership with educators,but that are relevant to what
those their peers and thisgeneration cares about. And so
we're partnering with banchi onJune 26. Two to just have this
(56:33):
incredible all day event, wherewe're going to have folks if
you're into eSports, and gamingfrom the FaZe clan. skeptic, I
think I'm pronouncing his nameright.
Chloe Condon (56:43):
We're always successful. It's good. Yeah. My
name is Izzy. I don't remembergonna be in a different event.
JJ.
Sarah Guthals (56:52):
No, yeah, you're you're gonna be joining us but
Xbox producer Gabby Ponce isgoing to be joining us. We're
going to have it's Cassie AprilSpeight and Sana. Honey, they're
all going to be joining us. Andthen we also have Ian Brock. And
if you haven't heard of him,Brock, I suggest you look, look
him up. He's absolutelyincredible. hosting the whole
(57:13):
event. It's going to be amazing.
We're gonna have technicalcontent, we're gonna have
eSports content, we're gonnahave sports content,
entertainment content, andchances to win Xbox controllers,
x, potentially some x boxes andsurface books. So check it out.
It's free. It's public onTwitch. Just go to Vanek comm
(57:33):
slash find your seat. It's gonnabe such a good time. Yes, yeah.
And
Brandon Minnick (57:41):
that's spelled b a neky.com. Slash find your
seat. Yeah. Amazing. Do 26 Yes.
See that?
Chloe Condon (57:51):
I will be there.
I'll be speaking. I'm veryexcited. It's gonna be really
cool. And I think also, youknow, just like we've been
saying this whole episode, it'sa great blend of like, gaming
sports. Kids. Yep. Adultsteaching kids. It's bunnies
teaching kids. So great. Verynice. And Sarah, where can
(58:12):
people find you on the internetand follow all the awesome
things that you do?
Sarah Guthals (58:18):
Yeah, I am Dr.
bethells on everything, prettymuch. Which was annoying when I
had to switch my GitHub over butit's fine. It makes it easier.
So yeah, I've doctor got thoseon Twitter is where I'm most
active. But you can find me ontik tok, Instagram, LinkedIn,
GitHub, all of them are atdoctor grapples.
Chloe Condon (58:38):
me saying and also, we will be having this
video live afterwards. So youcan check it out at eight
bits.tv on YouTube. We also havea podcast you also check out the
podcast add us on your favoritepodcasting app. We have lots of
awesome, amazing episodes withlots of folks that we mentioned
on the show today, actually.
Very cool. Well, y'all, this hasbeen another episode of eight
(59:03):
bits. And we're coming up on ourone year anniversary here. So
check out some really awesomeposts we're going to be doing on
our social. Check us out ateight bits pod. We're going to
be posting a lot of fun stuff onthere. And until next time,
we'll see you next Wednesday.
Thank you for having me.
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