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He’s an ultra-marathoner, a highly respected tech industry reporter, and an angel investor (he’s not at all fond of that last label for its sheer pretentiousness, but I can’t think of any other way to describe what he does). He works a lot, but doesn’t really work for anyone—except himself. All of which makes Ben Kepes an unusual, and unusually valuable, voice in the tech space. He can speak the truth—as he sees it—without worrying about angering an investor, his employer, or anyone else. And he’s not a mysterious oracle making pronouncements from a remote hilltop. The man traveled 350,000 miles by air this year alone to attend (and often speak at) all of the important industry conferences, a lot of the less well-known ones. He invests tremendous time learning about the latest innovations and speaking with the innovators themselves. Bottom line: He’s more than well-informed when it comes to cloud—he’s got a breadth and depth of insight you could argue most people will never have the time or resources to develop. And this week he joined us to share some of what he sees on Cloud Unfiltered. Among other things, he explains why:

  • He ran 100 miles last weekend
  • OpenStack is not dead
  • The OpenStack Foundation is abandoning the Big Tent concept
  • Serverless computing is on its way to becoming the new hotness
  • We ignore eastern tech vendors at our peril

See the video podcast on our YouTube page, or listen to the audio version on iTunes. And if you like what you hear, we invite you to subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss any of the other exciting podcasts we have scheduled over the next several months.