EP19 - Student to CTO: 34 Years at Clemson

Episode Summary

This week on the Carolina Code Cast, host Barry Jones chat with Barry Johnson, Trainer and CTO of Seek Quality. During episode, Barry Johnson talks about his career from early beginnings as a student at Clemson, through starting Carolina Online which eventually became Nuvox Communications and now Windstream, watching the formation of the internet at Clemson culminating with his position at Clemson’s CTO. They also discuss is current role with Seek Quality at CTO and Trainer, the process of transitioning into a technical leadership position and the upcoming The Family CTO podcast. It’s a great story and a journey that you don’t want to miss!

“If somebody offers you leadership training that means they see potential in you and you should take it.” - Barry Johnson

Episode Notes

Highlights from this week’s episode include:

• 34 Years at Clemson University: From Student to Clemson CTO (1:36)

• Computer Science with AI in 1989 (3:20)

• COBOL on Mainframes, Usenet, Hubcap and early Internet (8:56)

• The 1st Online T-shirt Business (potentially) and the Podfather (21:21)

• The Carolina Online story (28:18)

• Back to Clemson: LAN Parties, Roommates and Building Clemson IT (40:58)

• Auth systems, SAML and the CTO step (52:23)

• Next steps with Seek Quality, GitLab and DevOps (59:08)

• Early Years: SciFi, Commodore 64 and Apple II (1:06:06)

• Being the Family CTO (1:08:25)

• Transition from Technology into Leadership (1:11:18)

Links

• Barry Johnson on LinkedIn

• Seek Quality

• Clemson University

• Coming soon - The Family CTO Podcast

Carolina Code Cast is a podcast that covers a wide variety of topics in the coding and data space. Learn more about this year’s Carolina Code Conference at carolina.codes.

Developed with assistance from Heard Media.