The Nextcloud Podcast

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The Nextcloud Podcast

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1 hour 11 minutes

Empowering through open source: Nextcloud's Director of Engineering Andy Scherzinger
In this episode, we dive into Andy Scherzinger’s journey from contributing to Nextcloud as a community member to becoming Director of Engineering. We explore his unique perspectives on our open source community, the importance of compliance in software development, and how he balances technical expertise with leadership responsibilities.

It gives me joy and recharges my batteries if at the end of the day I can see other people succeed.

Andy Scherzinger
Nextcloud’s Director of Engineering
From his approach to problem-solving and guiding others to his personal values that give him direction, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, community, and personal growth.

Episode Links
The post Empowering through open source: Nextcloud’s Director of Engineering Andy Scherzinger appeared first on Nextcloud.
18 December 2024, 10:10 am
55 minutes 59 seconds

Open source and Nextcloud in government: Insights from Sven Thomsen, Schleswig-Holstein's CIO
In this episode, we explore how open source solutions are revolutionizing the way governments work, from collaboration and knowledge sharing to digital sovereignty and artificial intelligence.

Join us as we learn about the world of open source in government with Sven Thomsen, CIO of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Sven shares the factors that influenced their decision to adopt open source solutions, their implementation strategies along the way, and lessons learned from the adoption of open source in Munich.

We also discuss Schleswig-Holstein’s 10-year journey into open source, from desktop solutions to database systems, and how it has become a key part of their digital sovereignty strategy. Sven shares his insights on the current discussion in Germany about the importance of open standards, open source, and open interfaces in promoting the idea of European IT resiliency.

We also hear about the political and technical challenges they faced, including the successful implementation of Nextcloud as a central hub for collaboration and knowledge sharing in their federal state. Sven will share his thoughts on the “hidden champions” of open source and how Nextcloud’s new data automation platform has helped them solve some of the most difficult challenges in implementing the Online Access Act (OZG).

With AI based tools in Nextcloud, we were able to close an automation gap that we weren’t able to close with rule-based automations. Implementing AI-based microservices into the ecosystem of Nextcloud, and following Nextcloud’s very good AI strategy, we were able to implement something that is perfect for an organization like Schleswig-Holstein.

Sven Thomsen
CIO of Schleswig-Holstein
Tune in to hear Sven’s words of advice for public sector adoptions, including the importance of community support and giving back. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in open source solutions in government or curious about the future of technology in the public sector.

Episode Links
The post Open source and Nextcloud in government: Insights from Sven Thomsen, Schleswig-Holstein’s CIO appeared first on Nextcloud.
23 October 2024, 11:00 am
48 minutes 8 seconds

Constanze Kurz: mass surveillance, Snowden, and the future of digital politics
Your host Brent Gervais is joined by special guest Constanze Kurz – German computer scientist, hacker, activist and spokeswoman for the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). Constanze celebrates 20 years of Netzpolitik, an independent reader-supported organization that has been at the forefront of digital politics, regulation, and tech surveillance in Germany, and shares her insights on some of the most pressing issues facing us today.

Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 were not only revelatory but also catalyzed a necessary discussion around mass surveillance and yet Constanze argues we’ve since lost momentum in this critical conversation. She expresses concern that, as the public has become increasingly complacent, the intelligence services have grown even more powerful and influential.

“We are in the age of mass surveillance. The problem is most of the public doesn’t discuss it anymore, and that its really a problem because what Snowden did was not only revealing, but also driving a debate. And we don’t have that debate anymore, and that really frustrates and concerns me.” – Constanze Kurz

We reflect on the changing landscape of hacktivism and investigative reporting, and how policy is struggling to keep pace with modern technological advancements.

Constanze also reminds us that there’s still much work to be done in addressing the pressing issues facing us today – from mass surveillance and data protection to predictive policing and platform capitalism.

Episode Links
The post Constanze Kurz: mass surveillance, Snowden, and the future of digital politics appeared first on Nextcloud.
27 September 2024, 1:35 pm
42 minutes 15 seconds

Bechtle and Nextcloud: Navigating Digital Transitions in the Public Sector
“It was logic: If we want to learn more about open source, then we need to meet Nextcloud.”

– Manuel Liesenfeld, Head of Head of Public Sector Division at Bechtle AG

With the recent accelerating pace of innovation, public sector institutions throughout Europe have come to prioritize digital sovereignty as a primary driver in designing resilient IT systems.

Manuel Liesenfeld, Head of Head of Public Sector Division at Bechtle AG, discusses the current innovations in the European public sector and the obligation of public buyers to deliver resilient and sovereign digital solutions that put citizens first.

We explore how Bechtle – Germany’s largest IT system house – and Nextcloud’s recent partnership in offering digitally sovereign collaboration services for the European public sector is an important step in building resilient IT systems that prioritize security and data protection.

Manuel and Brent discuss many other topics, including:
- The importance of digital sovereignty in the public sector
- The benefits and advantages of open source solutions for public sector customers
- How Bechtle and Nextcloud are together committed to helping public sector customers succeed with open source technologies
- How Nextcloud is helping Bechtle’s focus on providing on-prem opportunities for AI, resilience, and data sovereignty.
- Advice on the most critical aspects of digital transitions for organizations, especially those in the public sector
- How Bechtle and Nextcloud’s sovereign AI approach address the challenges of AI adoption when working with private data
Episode Links
Join us at Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Frankfurt
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On November 6 2024, explore Nextcloud offerings for enterprises, hear impressive keynotes, and meet the team behind Nextcloud.
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The post Bechtle and Nextcloud: Navigating Digital Transitions in the Public Sector appeared first on Nextcloud.
28 August 2024, 8:31 am
54 minutes 30 seconds

Lea Gröber: Understanding self-hosting and security through Nextcloud
So many Nextclouders – from enterprise and education to activists and families – decide to self-host their privacy-focused IT infrastructure. What exactly motivates us to self-host? Is this inherently an increased data security risk? What of the grit needed to host your own digital infrastructure? The answers to these questions may surprise you!

Lea Gröber, PhD student in Usable Security @ CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, shares insight from two recent studies exploring motivations in self-hosting and Nextclouders specifically.

We explore the topic of Usable Security and how, in terms of security, the human aspect of your digital infrastructure may be the most important, and yet the least understood. Afterall, “Users are not the enemy.”

Lea and Brent touch on a wide gamut of related topics throughout, including:
- CISPA’s study featuring 1000 Nextcloud instances in understanding self-hoster motivations
- Technological self-determination as a modern fundamental right
- Self-hosting as a socially embedded activity, and a democratic act
- The many multi-layered trust relationships involved in self-hosting
- Are self-hosters more privacy-aware than the general population? (spoiler: no!)
Episode Links
The post Lea Gröber: Understanding self-hosting and security through Nextcloud appeared first on Nextcloud.
19 July 2024, 11:02 am
1 hour 28 minutes

Open source dynamics, philosophy, and community: Jos Poortvliet's Nextcloud insights
I always say: people come for the technology, and they stay for the people.

Jos Poortvliet
Director of Communications at Nextcloud
Jos Poortvliet, Director of Communications at Nextcloud, shares an insightful conversation with your host Brent Gervais on the world of Nextcloud and open source philosophies.

With a rich history throughout the Linux and open source world – from KDE to openSUSE, GNOME and more – Jos’ insights into the power of community make it clear why the Nextcloud community is an essential aspect of our vision. With so many key community projects getting integrated and supported fully into Nextcloud, the open source lifestyle runs deep in Nextclouders’ culture.

Jos and Brent explore a wide range of topics, including:
- AI’s impact on Nextcloud and its ideals
- How Nextclouders approach AI with ethical and thoughtful consideration
- the beautiful chaos important and necessary in open source communities
- How security disclosure culture and processes leverage HackerOne’s bounty program
- The careful blending of business and community in the world of Nextcloud
- How Nextcloud evolved from file sync & share to a fully integrated content collaboration suite.
If you’re curious about the inner workings, personalities, history and friendships at Nextcloud – this episode has it all!

A thank you to Jupiter Broadcasting for the collaboration on this episode, where Frank and Brent’s conversation originally appeared in part on LINUX Unplugged and here today in full.

Episode Links
The post Open source dynamics, philosophy, and community: Jos Poortvliet’s Nextcloud insights appeared first on Nextcloud.
27 June 2024, 11:00 am
54 minutes 54 seconds

A fireside chat with Nextcloud founder Frank Karlitschek
From Nextcloud’s inception Frank hoped to change the world, and today it’s clear Nextcloud’s original big ambition to be a private and open source alternative to Big Tech has achieved this goal.

Frank provides some insights and updates into Nextcloud’s anti-trust case against Microsoft’s monopolous cloud practices. He also shares how the introduction of Artificial Intelligence evolved from a perceived crushing blow for open source projects like Nextcloud, to a clear opportunity to grow the Nextcloud community’s vision and ambition for the project.

Throughout the conversation we learn a little more about Frank’s personal adventures as a long-time open source contributor to projects like KDE, his passion for travel photography as a means of deeply connecting with people of all walks of life, and his belief that privacy in today’s world is deeply important and yet vastly under-appreciated.

A thank you to Jupiter Broadcasting for the collaboration on this episode, where Frank and Brent’s conversation originally appeared in part on LINUX Unplugged and here today in full.

Episode Links
The post A fireside chat with Nextcloud founder Frank Karlitschek appeared first on Nextcloud.
30 May 2024, 9:00 am
58 minutes 22 seconds

MagentaCLOUD + T-Systems: Building a 2.2M User Nextcloud
One of the most impressive Nextcloud deployments is certainly Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaCLOUD: currently serving 2.2 million active users storing 3.5 billion files, and totaling a massive 7.2 petabytes of data! This makes it among the largest Nextcloud deployments in the world.

The Nextcloud + MagentaCLOUD relationship stems from T-Systems and their very large, successful migration to Nextcloud in 2020, where the data of millions of users was migrated from their old system to Nextcloud.

Our guest today on the Nextcloud Podcast – Bernd Rederlechner, Principal Lead Cloud Architect Emerging Industries at T-Systems – tells the story of how Nextcloud became the solution of choice for migrating their collaborative cloud offering, and how every Nextcloud deployment is benefiting from the technical partnership between Nextcloud and T-Systems.

“Our relationship with Nextcloud fostered a lot of good things – I had never before a partner who, in a crisis situation, stands by your side and takes active responsibility. This makes the relationship between Nextcloud and T-Systems very special, because it’s a relationship built on trust…”
– Bernd Rederlechner
Bernd shares how Nextcloud’s open source nature was new to them and now plays critical role in Deutsche Telekom’s success with MagentaCLOUD, how the S3 drivers were improved to accommodate the requirements of their deployment, some very specific praise for Nextcloud engineers, and the potential future for this self-healing, auto-scaling, Euro-sovereign Nextcloud success.

T-Systems at Enterprise Day
Attend T-Systems’ presentation on large-scale migrations to Nextcloud Hub at Nextcloud Enterprise Day 2024 on April 24.
Register now
Episode Links
The post MagentaCLOUD + T-Systems: Building a 2.2M User Nextcloud appeared first on Nextcloud.
7 March 2024, 2:00 pm
43 minutes 9 seconds

The Nextclouder's Journey with Julien Veyssier
In this episode of the Nextcloud Podcast, Julien Veyssier shares his unique journey from prolific Nextcloud community contributor to joining the Nextcloud team as Software Engineer.

We learn how his PhoneTrack app saved a user’s family in an emergency, how the Nextcloud ecosystem is a rich canvas for app development, the philosophical differences between Open Source and Free Software, and explore the current state of the artificial intelligence landscape.

“If you’ll allow me to state the obvious: Publishing your code is one of the best ways I know to make sure you’re going to get better.”
– Julien Veyssier
Julien has a master’s degree in Computer Science and does public research for 10 years as scientific computing engineer in biology and geographical data processing. His love for interactive maps, collaborative tools, and a special passion for the Free Software movement led to his contributing to the Nextcloud code base in 2015.

Links
The post The Nextclouder’s Journey with Julien Veyssier appeared first on Nextcloud.
24 January 2024, 10:11 am
16 minutes 47 seconds

Privacy and Surveillance Law with Max Schrems
Your new host, Brent Gervais, had the opportunity to sit down with Max Schrems – privacy lawyer and pioneer in the European data privacy movement – to explore some thoughts and ideas that stemmed from Max’s keynote given at the Nextcloud Conference 2023.

We explore the newly adopted Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework, it’s implications and why we all need to care and pay attention. We also touch on the 15-year debate on EU-US data transfers, surveillance law, anti-competitive behaviours in Big Tech, and the need for regulation despite the challenges presented by the process.

“If we move into this information age, and information is the new gold or the new currency, how do we distribute the rights to that information in a fair and balanced way? Different cultures and different democracies will have different answers to that.. there can be parts that are open source that allows you to move your data out into another system, which is one of your rights as an individual – your right to privacy.”
– Max Schrems
Max became known for campaigns against Facebook for its privacy violations, including violations of European privacy laws and the alleged transfer of personal data to the US National Security Agency (NSA). He is most well known for his lawsuits on the Safe Harbor agreement (Schrems I) and the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (Schrems II).

Today he is the Founder & Honorary Chair of NOYB – European Center for Digital Rights.

Episode Links
The post Privacy and Surveillance Law with Max Schrems appeared first on Nextcloud.
15 November 2023, 10:53 am
42 minutes 41 seconds

Unleashing Nextcloud on Small Devices with NextcloudPi
In this episode, Marius sits down with Tobias Knöppler and James Sundquist to dive into the world of NextcloudPi, a community-driven project that brings Nextcloud to single board computers like the Raspberry Pi and other boards. They discuss the ins and outs of the project, its impact on the Nextcloud community, and more.

Show notes
Announcement
- NextcloudPi planning to discontinue its docker version with NC 25
The post Unleashing Nextcloud on Small Devices with NextcloudPi appeared first on Nextcloud.
17 April 2023, 4:37 pm
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The Nextcloud Podcast

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Andy Scherzinger

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Sven Thomsen

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Join us at Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Frankfurt

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Jos Poortvliet

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T-Systems at Enterprise Day

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