I originally came to the In Tech We Trust podcast as it was mentioned by Nick Howell over on the NetApp Communities Podcast so I thought I’d check it out. In Tech We Trust is a relatively new podcast that is hosted and run by some podcasting stalwarts from the IT industry in Nigel Poulton, Hans De Leenheer, Mark Farley, Gabriel Chapman and Rick Vanover. These guys have some serious IT backgrounds and knowledge to bring to the table and if you want to know what the trends are in IT, what’s the top topics to look at etc. then this is the podcast to listen to. In some recent podcasts they’ve discussed Docker, OpenStack, MesoSphere and VSAN vs VSA. That’s just the technology aspect. For me the most interesting area that the guys cover is the positioning of these products and where vendors are positioning themselves in the market. All of the presenters have an understanding of the business side of IT and provide really good insight into topics like ‘what the Cisco divorce from EMC means’ or ‘why IBM are selling off their server platform to Lenovo, can Lenovo make a play into storage?’. In order to understand the industry fully and also understand which trends are likely to become mainstream there’s a need for general IT workers to be across the business aspects of IT and not just the technical side.

There’s are a great rapport between all the presenters. Nigel Poulton is the primary host and keeps the discussions moving throughout the podcast. However, the responsibility of the main presenter moves around between the presenters from time to time and also if someone drops off or can’t make the podcast then it can still go ahead as there’s another host available. The core presenters remains the same but depending on their availability some presenters can’t make it all the time (I’m looking at you Rick Vanover!!). I think the discussions when all presenters are online are more in-depth and varied that when it’s just one or two presenters. This doesn’t diminish the podcasts where there’s just a few online though. There are times when the discussion gets heated but there are no wallflowers here, everyone gets stuck in and gives their opinion and there’s no ‘yes-men’ which I think add the most value to the podcast. It’s a discussion not a mouth-piece for how great/crap a specific product is.

The production quality of the podcast is good. There are times when people drop off and sound like their talking from the back of a cave but considering there can be up to 6 presenters on the same podcast at once then this would have to be expected. Despite this criticism I have to admit that this rarely happens. The vast majority of the time there are no issues and given that all the presenters are in different time-zones it’s amazing that they are able to produce a podcast at all. There’s some serious commitment from everyone to be able to churn out one podcast a week.

If you’re going to listen to just one podcasts to get a feel for the interactions between the guys then I’d recommend Episode 15 – Our First Annual Christmas Quiz. I was listening to this in bed last night and couldn’t stop laughing. My wife thought I was having some sort of spasm attack. I had to reassure her that a joke about 69 being your favourite number is funny no matter what age you are. Some of the other podcasts to check out are Episode 16 – 5 Trends in 2014, Episode 11 – Archiving Fibre Channel Connections to a Titsup Cloud, Episode 9 – Startups vs Big Companies, Episode 6 – Cisco Divorces EMC, Episode 5 – VSANs vs VSAs and Episode 1 – Cisco Wars and EMC Shipping Alpha Code.

If you have some free time definitely catch up on an In Tech We Trust podcast, I really don’t think you’ll regret it. You can find the podcasts either over at the iTunes store or on PodBean.