Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

#873 NerdioCon 2026: Amol Dalvi - 🚀 From Code to Product Leadership: Building What Matters

• Joey Pinz • Episode 873

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🌍 What does it take to go from writing code to shaping products used by millions?

In this episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Joey Pinz sits down with a seasoned product leader to unpack a journey from engineering roots to leading product innovation at scale. From early days in India and the Middle East to building software that impacts global users, this conversation reveals what it really takes to create meaningful technology.

💡 You’ll hear how staying close to customers transforms products, why intuition matters just as much as data, and how adapting to rapid tech shifts—like AI—is no longer optional.

⚡ Whether you’re in tech, leadership, or building your own path, this episode delivers real-world insights on growth, decision-making, and staying relevant in a fast-changing world.

 

🔥 Top 3 Highlights

✅ Building software that truly impacts users’ lives

✅ The balance between data-driven decisions and gut instinct

✅ Why AI adoption is now critical for future success

 

 

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Join us for enlightening discussions that spark growth and exploration. 

Hosted by Joey Pinz, this Discipline Conversations Podcast offers insights and inspiration.

 

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Discipline. How does it play a role in your life? How does it drive your decisions? Do you have too much or too little? Every profession, hobby, or passion requires a level of discipline. I have used it in weight loss (+130 lbs.), family death, and found a +25 year business. Am I an expert? Absolutely not! Please join me, as I speak to interesting people and find out how discipline affects their career, life, goals, and decisions. Join me as I talk to interesting people in: #Health, #Fitness & #Wellness: #Business, #Technology & #Science: #Art & #Culture: Website: joeypinz.com All social media @TheJoeyPinz Do you wish to Sponsor? Get the prospectus here: www.joeypinz.com/sponsor

 

 

 

 

 

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SPEAKER_01

NerdioCon 2026. What a great event. What an absolutely great event. They're in Palm Springs, California. I believe it's their fifth or their sixth. First one I've been to, I was I reached out and I was graciously invited by the entire marketing and sales team, PR. Just a wonderful event. The Star Wars team was there. The opening day was May 4th. So of course, May the Fourth be with you. May the force be with you, excuse me. But just wonderful event, great theme carried through of Star Wars. I've never seen it done so well before. This is the best I've ever seen it done well, uh, really well. And the the attention to detail from the leadership team, from the marketing team was absolutely incredible. Wonderful keynotes. Um, I attended all the MSP, of course, related ones and lots of great MSPs. I had great side conversations. The vendor hall was pumping and thriving, a lot of great vendors there, but just an absolutely wonderful event. Um, glad I was a part of it. We set up a podcast station there and we had four great conversations. The first was was with Vedeen, the CEO, an absolute pleasure. A gentleman, kind, smart, uh, first time meeting him, a walkthrough, some you know, where he was and where he is now. Uh you know, Nerdio was nothing a mere seven years ago, in 2018, I believe, is when it started. Um, meeting his partner, partner Joseph, and wonderful conversation with Vadim, building the future of MSP cloud success. The next conversation was with Will Leminsky. I've had the great pleasure of knowing Will for six or seven years. Now we haven't talked in the last couple of years, but to see his career just skyrocket is is inspiring and makes me happy and and um really, really impressive. We were able to catch up a bit, uh, scaling smarter how MSPs went in a fast-changing tech world. Great conversation with Will. The third was with Amal Dalve. Great conversation. Amal was really, really cool to talk about some of the older technologies in the 90s and the 2000s that we're both familiar with, that we both kind of came up with. Uh, from code to product leadership, building what matters. We a real candid conversation. He exchanged, shared some of the things that he uh asks people on interviews, and really great conversation. Smart man, uh, where he grew up in India to where he is now. Really, really great conversation with Amal. And then lastly, with Christian Brenkoff, wonderful young man, very open, very smart, author of five books, holds all of these titles and awards. He was at Microsoft for a while, and uh really smart the way he uh systematizes everything. And um, he was really candid too. At the end of the conversation, he shared something that he generally doesn't talk about, but it was a really great conversation with Christian. I really, really enjoyed it. I thank the whole team there at Nerdio, Liz, and team and marketing and PR and sales and leadership uh to have me at this wonderful, wonderful event. I hope to come back to come back soon. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Hi, I'm Joey Pins. And here's my 45-second introduction. After starting my business in the 90s, I started developing poor habits of eating and my diet because of working way too much. I found myself at 340 pounds. The doctor told me if I don't lose the weight, I'm not gonna see my daughter graduate. I took the next seven months, lost 130 pounds. People ask me, How'd you do it? What's the secret? I need to lose weight. How'd you do it? How do I lose the weight in just one word? Discipline. I've had other successes in life, and I attribute them all to discipline. No, I'm not thinking of discipline, but I believe that it can help all of us. Friends convinced me to start a podcast. The podcast mission, how do we better ourselves and society? I talk to interesting people in health, fitness, sports, wellness, business, technology, science, art and culture. And I eventually asked them how discipline plays a role in their life. Podcast vision growth through learning from others. Tell me what life was like for you before 18 years old.

SPEAKER_00

Before 18 years old. So I grew up in India and I uh I was uh fortunate in some ways that I ended up going to a few different schools. So I had a great experience growing up, not only in India, but my uh father uh and worked in a company in the Middle East at the time. So I ended up doing a year of school in the Middle East, a year of school in a hostel, in a boarding school. So that was quite quite formative for me. I had just uh, you know, I had a wide experience not only outside the city I was born and grew up in, but in a different country completely. So that was uh quite the formative experience for me growing up when I was under 18.

SPEAKER_01

And what did you study? What were your passions then?

SPEAKER_00

So back then, of course, you know, you want to play a lot of sports, you know, being the boy that I am. I was back then. Uh so um I was able to, you know, I cricket cricket, yeah, of course, badminton. That was my racket sport I still love. There was something I think I inherited from my mother. She was is a uh badminton player, and uh I picked up on that sport.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh badminton is a great sport, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And now, of course, it's pickleball, it's got to be pickleball. It's pickleball, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I remember taking a badminton course in college and just loving it. Yeah. Hard to find around here, right? It is, yeah. Yeah, not many do it. Yeah, but my feed, Instagram, whatever, just comes up with all these great points.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, they can go on for minutes. And same thing with ping pong. I love watching those ping pong videos too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you your passion, I mean, you're a VP of product now. Uh so was there any engineering? Did you get in there before 18? Let's stay there. What did you have a passion there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it's it's interesting, right? So the passion was for engineering and science. I mean, I sort of found early on that that's where I gravitated to, more than towards languages, for example. Uh, and then I sort of got into the software engineering world and very quickly saw that the software I build can actually change how my users work and live, right? So that to me was quite something kind of an eye-opener early on in my career. And I realized the closer I can get to my users, to my customers, the better I can build my software as opposed to hearing it from second hand, third hand from somebody else. So, you know, back then when I was coming through the software coming up through the software career, uh, the term product manager didn't even exist. SaaS was something that didn't even exist. Uh, so back then the natural course of action was from a software engineering person, you moved into project management. Um, and then I I sort of graduated into that, and then from there I went into engineering leadership, product leadership, and that's how my career progressed from there.

SPEAKER_01

And when you were studying software engineering, this is what in the 90s? In the 90s, yes. So back then it was what? It was C, it was C plus, yeah, C flipper.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, you know, it was it's funny, you know, uh in the keynote, uh Kristen brought up a few technologies from the 90s, and I'm like, I can relate to that and brought brought back some uh flashbacks, you know. But back then there was this tool called Power Builder. Yeah, I'm not sure Power Builder, okay. That was the big It was huge. Yeah, it was like the GUI-based development. Now you can build GUI applications so much faster, right? And then of course Visual Basic comes along and eats Power Builder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And who made Power?

SPEAKER_00

I know it's not around anymore, but it's the company that makes it around. I I know they got bought by somebody else eventually, and then yeah, I think they just fizzled away and somebody bought it and buried it or something, right?

SPEAKER_01

At that time, Microsoft and some of the big companies were doing that. Yeah. So it was pretty popular in the 90s uh software engineering. Your friends were going into it. Why did you immediately go into it?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I mean, what I so it this was interesting. So in during college, you know, the college, when I went to college, uh, that was right. I mean, this is like a life change changing moment for me. I remember applying to the electrical engineering program to the college I went to. And then I had to make this decision uh almost on the spot because in the admission process works a little different in India. But you I had to almost make this decision on the spot that should I choose computer engineering or should I choose electrical engineering? And uh it was quite the life-changing moment where I ended up doing electrical engineering because computer engineering was being taught as part of that electrical engineering program. So I figured I could, you know, uh get a little flavor of both. And that worked out in my favor as I got into my uh sophomore year and my junior year, and I got into more programming classes. I just naturally excelled at that. So I was I got very passionate about that, and I could see myself enjoying that. So that just put me into that software engineering career.

SPEAKER_01

Very cool. So you graduate with what kind of degree?

SPEAKER_00

It's uh electric electronics and telecommunications. Wow. It's kind of like the electrical engineering equivalent here.

SPEAKER_01

And your first job doing that? What were you doing?

SPEAKER_00

My first job uh out of college was working for a newspaper, and I was in the IT department, and uh I was, you know, helping them basically print out newspapers. I mean, things we don't even read nowadays, but uh, you know, that was the that was the job back then. So it was all about making sure we had this very specific custom word processing application uh that was meant specifically for printing out newspapers in the format that we all know how newspapers look, right? So it was that it was a crucial piece of software. And uh, you know, I I was just one of the IT team making sure the newspaper went out every day.

SPEAKER_01

It is amazing because I I studied programming and I loved to do development, but these companies just needed so many, so much tech help. They just kind of married it, they just combined it. Well, it's still computers, yeah. So I ended up doing a lot of support as well. And so what did you do after that?

SPEAKER_00

So after that, then I started working for a company that was using Power Builder to build out business applications. So that was my foray into business applications, and then from there I ended up coming over to Eli Lilly and company in Indianapolis, Indiana, helping out with their IT uh program. So I was part of the environmental health and safety. So I was responsible for making sure we had software where we could track the uh environmental health and safety of all these different equipment that they had and all the people that worked on that equipment. So uh very, very interesting. I I I was able to actually go out and do site visits and see these huge, huge, I don't know what they call them, like underground um uh like big containers that they are using to produce all these beautiful medicines that we can all benefit from.

SPEAKER_01

It's a big company. It's a big company. Yeah, you were there for a long time?

SPEAKER_00

I was there for a bit. I was there for a good two years, so that was my big Fortune 500 experience. And then I went into consulting from there, uh, which was also a great experience. I was able to work on small startups to uh large Fortune 500 companies. Consulting doing what? Consult software consulting. I say, yeah, software consulting being a software programmer that our I our organization, the the comp name of the company was called Witman Hart back then. Software consulting company that uh would we would take on projects and we would bring in a whole team of project managers, software engineers, QA engineers, and build out a software that the company was looking for. And and your your title there was uh so I started off just like a software engineer, and that was my first foray into project management. Um and then from there, the big leap for me was I joined this small little startup called Exact Target. Uh, I was their engineering lead. Uh, we had a small team, and then Exact Target was this uh back when SaaS wasn't even being coined. Salesforce was the first SaaS company back then, and we sort of uh you know were one of the leaders in that space at that point around email marketing. So Exact Target sort of uh helped grew that company. Uh and uh I left, but then eventually that company, Exact Target, was bought by Salesforce, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud is now Exact Target. So yeah, so that was uh that was a pretty proud moment for me when the software and the company I built is now being used by millions of organizations out there.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, that is a nice feeling, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and how long ago was this? This was back in the 2000s, you know, 2002, 2005, 2006, yeah, that type of time. Right after Y2K. Right, right after Y2K, and right after figuring out, you know, how do you get these websites that are going to be these SaaS applications that need to scale and need to handle these customers coming in and expecting uptime, and how do you figure out security and compliance, and how do you create a team that is now we call it the DevOps team and responsible for 99.99 or 3.9s of uptime, you know? All that figuring out that we had to do back then.

SPEAKER_01

So we're here at NerdioCon. The big event of the year, it's a great event. How did you arrive here at Nerdio?

SPEAKER_00

So I arrived at Nerdio about 10 years ago. Uh so I was uh looking to move from Indianapolis, Indiana, closer to my family, uh or my wife's family and my family in Southern California. And at that point decided to look around, see what are the opportunities there are, ran into Vadeem, our CEO. Uh, we hit off really well.

SPEAKER_01

Great guy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, great guy. I love working with him. Uh, and he had this idea where he wanted to build out a software solution to manage all his customers in a in a uniform fashion. So that's where I come in as a product guy. We hire a couple of developers and the and the story starts from there. And so now you're VP of product. I am. So what keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night is uh, you know, a couple of things. I would say, you know, security is always top of mind, uh, especially in this AI-enabled world, you know, you need to make sure that you stay ahead of these threat actors out there. Um, and then secondly, you know, I I feel like I want to make sure my customers are always happy, you know, I want to make sure they are finding value in the work that we are doing. And how can I enable my team now to provide that value to my customers, solve their problems and and continue this trajectory that we are on?

SPEAKER_01

I'm a former MSP. So, how does Nerdio help MSPs?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Nerdio help helps MSPs in a few different ways. First of all, you know, having that ability to manage many of your customers in a single uniform fashion. I think that is the biggest thing. The multi-tenant management, our MSPs love that. You know, they are able to set things up once and then apply that to all their customers. So that efficiency that they gain from being able to have a bird's eye view across all their customer tenants just simplifies their lives on a daily basis. And then we the other thing we do for them is that you know we help them s build out a Microsoft cloud practice. It's it's about building out their whole business. Um, all these MSPs have invested in Microsoft, they are betting on Microsoft. So, how do we help them maximize their business and grow their business? And that Microsoft cloud practice, you know, it's it's Microsoft has so many products, so many options, so many licenses, so many opportunities. We help MSPs navigate that world through our education and consulting as well as through our software itself.

SPEAKER_01

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SPEAKER_00

I try to uh maintain that balance, right? I mean, I want to be that uh the face of the product to my customers. I also want to be constantly taking feedback from them and building that into the product. You know, we are really proud to be an outside in company. Uh and at the same time, you know, I want to keep my team building the product with the same culture, the same sort of clarity we have had over the past few years. So, yes, definitely uh you know, maintaining that balance is extremely important. Uh, what we have done is you know, over time we have sort of started to formalize things a little bit. So, for example, we have these advisory board meetings. And being a global company, there these are advisory board meetings that happen three times a year. I'm sorry, twice a year in three different regions uh of the world. So once in Australia, once in the US, once in London. And that's a great way for us to uh sort of get in front of our customers, in front of those MSPs and have direct conversations with them, showcase some ideas that we are thinking about, get their feedback early on. And you know, so I I love having those direct con direct conversations. Oh, that's a great question. You know, the question I ask, uh so this is okay, I'm I'm giving away an interview question that I ask. I ask a lot of people as as they are trying to be product managers, I ask them, what is the greatest product anyone has ever built? Humanity has ever built? Like if you go back centuries, right? Humans have been building products many, many years.

SPEAKER_01

What a great question.

SPEAKER_00

Right? So I I mean, so that's a question I ask others, and I expect people to ask me that back again. So that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01

And what's your answer to that?

SPEAKER_00

Good question. So my answer to that, I've obviously I've had a lot of time to think about this. Uh, my answer to that actually is a deck of playing cards, like cards. And I mean, think about it, that is the a deck of playing cards. First of all, it's something that a very wide audience can use it. My three-year-old daughter back when she was three-year-old, came back from YMCA and she was playing card games to my 80-year-old grandmother from back when she was 80 years old, she was playing, right? So there's a huge, wide age audience that can use that product. It's mobile, it's it's small enough, it fits into a pocket, fits into a purse, you can take it with you everywhere you go. And it's created in such a way that you can create your games from it. Right? It's it's like this platform, really, from which you can create your games. You can come up with your own games, and there, you know, you can bet on it and you can have poker playing and money all the way to simple, you know, go fish kind of games. Yeah, so so. So it's just uh it's just such an amazing, flexible product that and it has stood the uh test of time. That's another criteria in my mind. I mean, if I I had to look this up, but playing cards were something that first came out in 1300 or some somewhere around that time frame. So it's something that has stood the uh test of time as well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I think about the combustible engine, of course.

SPEAKER_00

I think about the uh um electricity is another big one. Yeah, taming fire in a sense could be. The wheel. The wheels.

SPEAKER_01

I think about birth control, how that shaped the the future of women. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00

That that for sure.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a f it's a fascinating question. I'm gonna be thinking about that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, what happens, sorry, what happens there is then when you if you're a product manager, you see products everywhere, right? And that's the kind of mentality that I'm looking for when I'm hiring PMs on my team. Like all these examples you brought up are products, right? Right? Somebody came up with that idea, somebody then put that out there, somebody made sure it's usable, somebody communicated the value for it. So I I want product managers that think in that way.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And there's no wrong answer. There's no wrong answer. That's that's the best question ever. If we go back about 10 years, Amal, what's something you believed firmly then that you no longer believe now?

SPEAKER_00

Good question. Um, you know, uh I mean, I would say maybe even a little bit more than that. Like about 20 years ago, I firmly believed in making sure that. You work closely with someone. If someone's not working out on your team, you work even more closely with them and try and help them succeed. Interesting. But then what I've learned over time over experience from both parties, right? Someone, someone who isn't excelling at the job that they are they have been assigned, and for a manager to have someone on their team who's not excelling at their job, uh, it is best for both parties to come to a realization quickly that it's not a good fit. And at that point, what you do with that is is is a good is an important decision. You don't necessarily have to fire them, you have to find the right home for them. And that is something, you know, as I've grown in my career and done leadership and I've read books and and sort of had this practical uh lessons learned, that is something that I believe I have changed a little bit. It's like, let's, you know, let's not waste each other's time. And it's um I'm gonna support you every single way I can. Obviously, I want you to succeed, but if this is not the right fit for you, then it's not gonna help either of us for you to struggle in the job that you're in and for the company to not get the value out of it.

SPEAKER_01

It takes maturity and experience to come to this, right? Yeah, yeah. Like to think we could save everyone, right? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Empathy and kindness is important. It's very important. Very important. But then you need to help that person get to the right place rather than trying to shoehorn fit them into the wrong spot.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly right. It reminds me of the old fable story, who knows if it's true, but a big storm washes up all you know thousands of starfish on the on the beach, and the a child comes and sees it all and you know gets one and starts, you know, flings it in the water. Yeah, and so then an older gentleman comes in and says, What are you doing? You can't save all of these starfish. She picks one up and throws it. She goes, Well, I just saved that one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, that's a very good story. That's true.

SPEAKER_01

Started my MSP back in the 90s, was working way too hard on my wasn't paying attention to myself. 14, 16 hour days, you're no stranger to this, you know. And putting my diet and exercise in the back. And I get in front of the doctor, she tells me I'm at 340 pounds. Okay. I I knew I was getting big, I didn't think I was getting that big. But she says to me, if you don't lose this weight, you're never gonna see your daughter graduate. So my daughter was just born, scared the life out of me, angered me and scared me. Driving home, you know, punching the steering wheel. I can abuse myself all I want, but it's I have a family now, it's much bigger.

SPEAKER_00

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

I spent the next six, seven months, lost about 120 pounds. Amazing. And I kept it off. You know, these are people look at it like a like a finishing line, is lifelong changes you have to make. When I tell people the story, they always say, What's your secret? What you do? I say, There's no secret, discipline, you know, motivation, routine, focus, you know, all under discipline. How does discipline play a role in your life?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great story. That's uh amazing that you that you do that. Um discipline, yes. So you the the discipline sort of to me comes from clarity in what my goals are, right? Being able to know that this is what I want and this is where I'm heading, and I do and then I'm willing to now say no to the other things that will distract me from that goal. I think that discipline is something that I've cultivated over the years and and you did as well. And that has helped me sort of succeed and focus on what I can succeed. And when I look back, you know, there's always regret. Oh, I wish I had done this and I've done that, but I stay focused on the goals that I had set for myself. And if I know that I have succeeded in those goals, then I have succeeded in what I wanted to go after and not worry about the other options.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, as an engineer, I could see the so you kind of come up with systems and you remove obstacles as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00

That's correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

If you're trying to lose weight, get rid of the stuff that you know that's bad in the house. You know, if you're trying to get a particular goal done, remove those obstacles.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

In your life, uh you're you're an engineer, you're very smart, you're very focused, you have systems. Do you ever I'm gonna like the art versus science question? Do you ever rely on your your gut at all? Do you ask your gut ever to like to make a final decision? You bring data in. What's your process there, mom?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, especially working in uh in a smaller organization. So back when Nerdio was much smaller and we were getting started, right? We had to move quickly. The startup mentality, you have to make decisions quickly. Um and I think yes, I we do rely on our gut a lot, but we make sure to that when those decisions are based on the on the gut feeling, it's based on gut feeling that has accumulated through years of experience, through knowledge that you have accumulated, through ideas being pressure tested by a colleague or a peer that has similar experiences. Right. So it's not just a it's not just a feeling or it's just not an opinion, but it is at least something that's based on uh fundamental experience that you have had and you have built it into your system over time.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I always make you know, I like to play golf and uh you know it's I'm 150 yards out, there's barely any wind. The pin's in the middle, my got a nice lay on the ball, and everything is saying eight iron, eight iron, but you know what? I'm not gonna get it there in eight iron. So I I kind of collect the data and then ask my gut. Yes. That's kind of my process. It sounds similar. Yeah. Exactly. That's right. The final kind of uh, you know, confirmation.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. That intuition comes from the experience, you know, from having failed in the past, from having succeeded in the past, from having observed somebody else fail or succeed in the past. So, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Has there been anything in the last month or so you changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_00

Uh so I I mean we can't not talk about AI. And I have changed my mind on AI. I wouldn't say in the past month, but in the last three months, I think I have seen some uh excellent advancements in the AI technology that have completely changed my mind. So, you know, about I I started using Chat GPT and AI about the same time everybody else did and you know went through the same It's fun, it's fun, and hey, this isn't accurate. Yeah, I actually even remember uh flying into San Francisco to go see my daughter at one point, and there were so many billboards all over San Francisco, even coming in from the airport, about our AI product is higher accuracy, higher accuracy. So to me, that to me meant okay, there was there's an accuracy problem, and you're trying to message to that, right? So this was about a year and a year and a half ago. But so at that point, we all knew AI had its accuracy challenges, but over the last three months I have seen sort of that been addressed, and some of the models that are coming out, some of the solutions that are coming out are so far superior that there it is imperative that we have to adopt AI.

SPEAKER_01

And it's never gonna be as uh dumb as it is now, right?

SPEAKER_00

It just keeps it's keeps going, yeah, keeps getting better, and it's like exponential growth. It's like it's not a linear growth, it's a logarithmic growth where it's every every model is so much better.

SPEAKER_01

And there's player more players entering, and I find that some of the LLMs are better at certain things than others, and they I don't know, personalities or whatever you want to call it, but you know, depending on what I want to do, I kind of have my favorite and even the way it builds code and everything now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We have been adopting AI in our organization at Nerdio in sort of two ways. You know, I've got a path where my uh team and everybody at the company, we are making sure our own efficiency is improved by using the AI tools. And then the second path we are looking at as product managers, how do we improve the efficiency of our users that are using our product? So it feels like user habits are changing, and a lot of us are now finding ourselves non-lessly going to Google and doing a search, or even if we do that search, it's in a very AI chatbot conversational format, right? So our user habits are starting to change, and we are starting to see that reflect in other products and much like that in Nodeo, you will see that as well. It's exciting time. Exciting time. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Imagine back in the 90s when we were doing Power Builder and Clipper. If we had all this to I mean gosh. You know, back then it we were we were trying to move people to the cloud, right? That was the push. And so you have these those companies that were starting, they were born in the cloud. Now all these startups are born in AI.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I'm gonna date myself, you know. You're talking about moving to the cloud, but since we're talking about Power Builder, I rem I remember this movement from these green screen forms, like Oracle form systems to the GUI system, right? I mean, nobody talks about that, but that's another shift that we have had. So that's the part that's technology. If you want to be in technology, you have to be ready to go with these shifts. You know, like you mentioned, moving to the cloud, mobile, social media, all of these are major shifts that have happened and have to be uh part of a technologist's life.

SPEAKER_01

I remember some of the first Oracle classes. Yeah, it was there was no mouse. It was all text-based. You're building tables and you're doing alter statements and SQL statements. Oh I mean, you could scratch some notes and then try to figure it out. And then I remember trying to train companies on how to use a mouse. And and I I'll never forget this one, and this is this actually happened, but the question was why won't the foot pedal work? And so the user was putting the mouse on the floor and they were trying to do that. So this is late, yeah, late 80s, no, no, early mid mid-90s, yeah. So and we've since then it's everywhere. It's it's ubiquitous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

For sure.

SPEAKER_01

Your final message to MSPs this week at NerdioCon 2026 is what a mile?

SPEAKER_00

Uh, you know, be the MSP, you have always been. You have chosen to be in the technology uh arena, help your customers succeed. Their success is your success, um, and help them navigate this turbulent times. You know, they are just as much trying to understand what's happening in their world, how is their lives, how are their business lives going to be affected, how what does their personal job mean in this world? So they are relying on MSPs to help guide them. So MSPs need to step up, they need to work with organizations like us. You know, they need to, of course, figure out things for themselves, but they have customers relying on them as well, and that's where they can bring value to in in this world right now.

SPEAKER_01

Fantastic. Everybody wants to contact you. Is LinkedIn the best way? LinkedIn's the best way. We'll make sure to put on this show much. Umal, thank you so much for your time. Great pleasure. Thank you for listening and/or viewing Joey Pins Discipline Conversations. Please share this episode with one or two of your friends who you think may benefit from the episode. Our website, www.joepins.com. There you find lots of resources, and you could join our mailing list. Please follow us on all our social media: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Podcast information, the video version of our podcast is on YouTube. Please subscribe. Audio is on all major podcasting platforms. Please follow them. And if you like it, please consider giving five star ratings. We'd really appreciate that. Thank you again for listening or watching Joey Pin's Disciplined Conversation.