エピソード

  • Access Granted: A Conversation with Rachel Eastlack

    Access Granted: A Conversation with Rachel Eastlack
    2026/06/03
    Rachel Eastlack has spent her career at the intersection of education, community, and opportunity — first as a social worker, and now as a program leader at TechBuffalo, where she builds pathways for students, families, and others who haven't always seen themselves as "tech people." Through initiatives like Family Code Night, youth navigator programs, and a K-to-Gray continuum of workforce development, she is helping reshape the Buffalo tech ecosystem and who gets to be part of it.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    29 分
  • Context Engineering for Intelligent Systems with Jamie Bono

    Context Engineering for Intelligent Systems with Jamie Bono
    2026/05/22
    Jamie Bono spent nearly a decade as a paramedic in Buffalo-Niagara before a career arc that took him through disaster planning, Medicaid redesign, graduate school, and eventually into building NLP pipelines and knowledge graphs at UB's Department of Biomedical Informatics. Today he works at the intersection of information architecture and artificial intelligence as a Principal Consultant at EmergenceTek Group — and the thread connecting all of it is a single question: how do you structure information so that the people and systems working inside it can actually reason well? In this episode, we dig into context engineering, healthcare data infrastructure, agentic systems that work, and the reality that AI is only as good as the structure built around it, even as many organizations tend to optimize the wrong layers.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    37 分
  • Music Heals, Kinship Reveals

    Music Heals, Kinship Reveals
    2026/05/01
    Nicole Palsa is a journalist, marketer, and genealogist who has spent her career watching technology reshape the music industry and the world of family history research. The country music industry has been turned inside out by streaming, social media, and algorithmic discovery — and Nicole has witnessed that transformation from inside the industry for over a decade. At the same time, she uses technology as a practitioner: gathering and organizing research, capturing interviews and oral history, creating and publishing multimedia, building family trees, navigating genealogical databases, and analyzing genetic genealogy data through DNA testing services. This episode is a conversation about technology through the eyes of a storyteller — what it's doing to the music industry she loves, what it enables for people trying to find where they come from, and what gets lost when the algorithm replaces the human voice.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    23 分
  • Atlas SWIMs

    Atlas SWIMs
    2026/04/23
    Most organizational problems aren't people problems — they're system problems. In this episode of TechXY Turbo, Dustin Snyder, founder of Wayforward Associates and author of Sink or SWIM, breaks down human systems theory and his Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping (SWIM) methodology to explain how to design an organization with intention. We also discuss the role and limits of tech in human systems, the importance of systems thinking and design, and how automation in some cases is elevating skilled workers rather than replacing them.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    47 分
  • How Strategic Design Drives Funding, Revenue, and Growth

    How Strategic Design Drives Funding, Revenue, and Growth
    2025/12/23
    This episode of TechXY Turbo explores how the right design and development approach can dramatically accelerate a product's path to market and profitability. Lena Levine, CEO of Forcoda and TEDx speaker, has spent over a decade helping founders transform ideas into successful software solutions. Her track record speaks volumes: clients have secured millions in funding, achieved pre-sales before launching MVPs, and seen revenue jump from.

    As Entrepreneur in Residence at Launch NY and co-founder of multiple tech initiatives including Startups Community and the former Girl Develop It Buffalo chapter, Lena bridges the gap between technical execution and business strategy. Her approach focuses on market validation before expensive development, strategic design that turns users into advocates, and go-to-market strategies that prove product-market fit early.

    In this conversation, Lena shares insights on why most startups waste money on premature development, how design thinking drives funding success, and what it really takes to get a product from zero to revenue without burning through your budget. Listeners will discover the frameworks behind products that sell themselves and the strategic validation process that separates successful launches from expensive failures.

    Recorded at ROC Vox Recording & Production in Pittsford, NY. Learn more at https://rocvox.com.

    #MVP #design #startup #UX


    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    35 分
  • Building the Future with Community Robotics

    Building the Future with Community Robotics
    2025/12/17
    This episode of TechXY Turbo explores how robotics competitions and hands-on engineering education are changing lives for Buffalo's youth. Dillan Sayers, founder and director of Rust Belt Robotics, Buffalo's first and only community-based FIRST Robotics Competition team, joins the show to discuss how technology education can break down barriers and create opportunities for students from all backgrounds.

    As a mechanical design engineer at EWI and former R&D manager with experience in advanced manufacturing and battery technology, Dillan brings real-world engineering expertise to his volunteer work. But his most important title might be Team Director of Rust Belt Robotics, a free program he founded in 2022 to serve Buffalo's youth. Unlike school-based teams, Rust Belt Robotics welcomes any student regardless of which school they attend or their family's financial situation.

    In this conversation, Dillan shares what it takes to build competitive robots with high school students, how teaching electrical, programming, and mechanical design skills prepares the next generation for advanced manufacturing jobs, and why Buffalo's industrial heritage makes it the perfect place for a robotics renaissance. Listeners will discover how technology competitions teach more than just engineering - they build confidence, teamwork, and a pathway to careers students might never have imagined.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    35 分
  • From Fintech to EdTech

    From Fintech to EdTech
    2025/12/11
    This episode of TechXY Turbo explores how technology platforms are tackling one of higher education's most expensive challenges: student retention. David Gonzalez, Co-Founder and CEO of Arbol, brings a unique perspective from his background scaling fintech solutions at HSBC and M&T Bank to now building EdTech platforms that transform how colleges support students financially.

    Arbol's mission is deceptively simple yet powerfully complex: turn fragmented student financial systems into unified, actionable experiences that prevent dropouts before they happen. David shares insights on why traditional financial literacy programs fall short, how AI and data integration create early warning systems for at-risk students, and what he learned from reducing HSBC's customer service costs.

    Listeners will discover how the intersection of fintech innovation and higher education challenges is creating a new category of technology—one where the ROI isn't just measured in cost savings, but in lives changed and degrees completed.

    #AI #edtech #accessibility #education #fintech

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    24 分
  • Balancing AI and the Human Side of Contact Centers

    Balancing AI and the Human Side of Contact Centers
    2025/12/04
    This episode of TechXY Turbo explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing contact centers, but not in the way most people think. Melissa Copeland, named "America's Top Contact Center Expert" by Forbes, joins the show to discuss how AI and technology are transforming customer service operations while keeping the essential human element at the center.

    While recent news focuses on the reductions in jobs, especially front line customer service roles, Melissa reveals how properly implemented AI amplifies human capabilities and creates exponential ROI. From her work helping organizations navigate platform transitions to implementing AI assistants that make contact center functions and roles more effective, Melissa shares insights on why so many technology implementations fail and what it takes to deliver the 10x returns her client experience.

    Listeners will gain a rare insider perspective on how contact centers are evolving from necessary cost centers to strategic business assets, and why the future of customer service isn't about choosing between humans and AI, but about getting them to work together.

    Recorded by ROC Vox Recording and Production, Rochester, NY
    www.rocvox.com
    続きを読む 一部表示
    44 分