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Community Spotlight: Mike Graff, Infrastructure Architecture Director at Dolby Laboratories - Ask Mike Anything!

Ella (she/her/elle) on November 28, 2022

I was lucky to find some time in @cloudyadvice's busy schedule in September, and got the chance to spend some time chatting about his life, career,...
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Michael Tharrington • Edited

Heyo @cloudyadvice! It was super interesting learning about your history with Dolby and how you moved from English Lit major into the tech world. Just an all around awesome interview!

I'm curious, what do you think is the most interesting project that Dolby is currently working on? And what are some of the specific challenges that y'all are facing with that project?

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Mike Graff

@michaeltharrington thanks for your question. Probably the most interesting project is something I can't talk about lol!

But seriously, I think the most interesting thing that I can talk about is dolby.io, our developer platform that makes Dolby technologies available via an API call. This is a big departure from our traditional business model of licensing our technologies but is a great example of Dolby's "inventor's spirit"...we are always looking ahead at what's coming next and adapting to the new realities in the entertainment world.

The challenges we are facing are not unique I'd say...building a highly scalable solution that is also COST EFFECTIVE is the name of the game in 2022/2023.

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Michael Tharrington

Haha, all good that ya can't disclose the most interesting thing. It's exciting to know that there's something coming but it's currently hidden behind the veil.

And wow, dolby.io sounds super cool! Providing APIs to make Dolby tech available for other applications sounds like a really powerful offering.

This is my lack of API wisdom speaking, but what's the business case for y'all offering an API? You mention that it's a departure from licensing tech... I'm curious if there's a price for devs to use the API in their tech. I've wondered this about other APIs as well — for instance when I see the Google Maps API being integrated into a website.

Also I appreciate the challenges. Making cost-effective, scalable tech is indeed a familiar challenge!

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Patrick Londa

Loved hearing about @cloudyadvice's background in medieval literature! It pays dividends to have interests in multiple disciplines. Having unrelated skills or experience means you can approach something in a distinct way and stand out among peers. Great advice!

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Brad Johnson

I was so excited when I heard about this interview @ellativity and now I'm even more grateful you both took the time to create this video.

Especially for #CloudOps newbies, it can seem daunting to tackle the latest and greatest but it's often more important to understand how we ended up with #k8s or #terraform or #aws in the first place. Businesses are continuously undergoing digital transformation from traditional servers > virtualization > cloud-native and @cloudyadvice does such a great job grounding his advice within that context.

Using your technical knowledge and ability can help identify opportunities for your employer. It might even lead to your biggest, most exciting project yet!

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Ella (she/her/elle)

@ivancernja we can finally have that discussion about "infrastructure AS code" or "infrastructure FROM code"! @cloudyadvice what do you think about Ivan's proposal here?

@techielass and @argonaut I'm sure y'all have something to contribute to this discussion, too!

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Brad Johnson • Edited

Also, everyone make sure to give @ellativity props for her first Ops video project. New things can be scary!!!

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Ella (she/her/elle)

Thanks, @johnson_brad 🙏 I admit I really felt a lot of pressure to do justice to all the knowledge and wisdom that @cloudyadvice has to impart. I hope just enough of it came across in the final edit to get our members asking those questions!

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Ella (she/her/elle)

@jatin I promised you an interview! It took a while to make good on it, but it looks like you're back just in time! 😁

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Jatin Mehrotra

Hi @Ella. Thank you for this <3. I would love to know about the details.

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Ella (she/her/elle)

It was literally months ago.

I remember you asked about a talk on a topic, so a topic that I thought Mike was really well-equipped to talk about is career growth and development. Especially, considering how much change he's seen during his career, I found it fascinating to discover the mindset of someone who has really been able to evolve and grow as tech has.

Wdyt?