A Look at Our Past, and a Vision Moving Forward: A 2019 Podcast Retrospective
Tags: general
Published: 2020-03-07 19:49:59

---
title: A Look at Our Past, and a Vision Moving Forward: A 2019 Podcast Retrospective
published: true
date: 2020-03-07 01:00:41 UTC
tags: General
canonical_url: https://www.thisdot.co/blog/a-look-at-our-past-and-a-vision-moving-forward-a-2019-podcast-retrospective
---

At this Dot Labs, we aren’t only obsessed with providing cutting edge technical solutions for our clients, but we love giving back to the community in the form of free educational content geared toward enterprise leaders, working developers, and those interested in breaking into the web development field. Between This Dot Media, and Modern Web, our organization publishes near daily content, including written tutorials, video content, live events, and podcasts.

This year we are so excited to continue sharing our expertise, and that of our gracious guests and contributors, but also wanted to take a moment to look back on some of our favorite episodes from 2019!

[This Dot Labs Podcast- Frameworks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4X7npGgP0&t=1951s) (Sep 17, 2019)

In this memorable episode of the This Dot Labs Podcast, host Rob Ocel sits down with Director at Shape Security, Jarrod Overson, and This Dot Labs Senior Developer, Frederik Prijck, to talk about the multiplying power of web development frameworks.

The topics they discuss include whether or not they believe a rising developer should start by learning a framework, or by working with the vanilla language, what frameworks they personally enjoy, as well as what they feel developers should consider before choosing to learn a particular framework. A fantastic listen for new developers, and a rare iteration of the This Dot Labs podcast in that it requires very little knowledge of enterprise level development to enjoy!

[Modern Web Podcast - Investing in Open Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EtSUq1nhaE&t=441s) (December 19, 2019)

Ever wanted to learn how open source works, how it is maintained, and how it can play a role in shaping a more inclusive future for the web development industry?  
In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel is joined by Eva Howe, Operations Manager at This Dot Labs, Moshe Millman, Co-founder and COO at Applitools, and Chris Whited, Senior Software Developer at This Dot Labs, to talk about the influence that open source technology has on the modern digital age.

Learn about the types of technologies and products that benefit from democratized development tools, dive deeper into the cultural and industrial benefits of using open source technologies, and find out how This Dot Labs and Applitools teamed up to leverage open source to help a new generation of diverse web developers.

[Fempire Podcast - Interview with Michele Cantos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgbsO7klu2U&t=140s) (October 1, 2019)

In 2019, we introduced our first episode of the Fempire podcast, which provided a platform for women in tech to share about their projects, initiatives, and experiences.

In this episode of the Fempire podcast, Eva Howe has a seat with Michele Cantos, Managing Director at Fullstack Academy, to discuss the bootcamp’s Grace Hopper Program. This initiative provides a 17 week immersive web development course to women and nonbinary students with no upfront costs!

Cantos and Howe then go on to have a broader, fascinating discussion about their experiences as women working in the tech industry, as well as some of the unique challenges facing women, and emergent opportunities that seek to address these issues.

Like all great things, however, the Fempire podcast came to an end in 2019, concluding its run with this episode. But, This Dot still dilligently works to provide community engagement resources for women and non-binary people through our [Open Source for All Initiative](https://www.opensourceforall.com/), as well as a monthly Women In Tech Mentorship Meetup Online!

<u>Our Vision Moving Forward</u>

We are so proud of the free resources we provided during 2019, and are excited to continue producing the Modern Web and This Dot Labs podcasts through 2020. But our upcoming program doesn’t stop there! Be on the lookout for new podcast series that will dive into the state of tech across different unique industries!

You can keep up with all of our new releases, and check out our back catalog by visiting our Podbean pages for the [This Dot Labs](https://thisdot.podbean.com/) and [Modern Web](https://modernweb.podbean.com/) podcasts, or watch the recordings complete with video on the This Dot Media Youtube page.

_This Dot is a company which focuses on keeping developers up to date with advancements in the web platform and providing teams with web platform expertise, using methods such as mentoring and training._