The FODcast S2E3 - John Williams CTO at Amplience

The FODcast

We’ve just launched the first FODcast episode of 2022 - and it’s a cracker. After a little (a lot) of coaxing from Tim, our guest kicking the New Year off is none other than John Williams, CTO at Amplience.

Adding some flair to this installment of the podcast, John shares the details of his impressive 25-year long career in tech, spending just over 17 of those years in a C-Suite position.

John tells us that not only did he set up Amplience - an API-first, headless content management platform - in 2010, but he’s also an accredited member of the technology counsel in the MACH Alliance.

Throughout the episode, John states how he believes in a ‘remote-first’ approach, and that when living in an uncertain world, having a multi-pronged, flexible perspective is what will make you thrive. Don’t get stuck in the “old world” and lag behind your competitors; John says keeping up with the changing digital landscape is what will set you apart and keep your business up-to-date.

His lengthy repertoire deserves a worthy explanation, so John takes us right back to the very beginning and talks us through how he became so successful in the world of tech.

Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.

Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/

Rozdziały

1. The FODcast S2E3 - John Williams CTO at Amplience (00:00:00)

2. What have you found the most difficult thing in running your own business? (00:09:51)

3. What do you think is shaping the industry most right now? (00:12:03)

4. How many years do you think the pandemic has fast forwarded eCommerce? (00:17:56)

5. How are the changes brought on by the pandemic, social media and sustainability affecting Amplience strategy? (00:19:15)

6. Is headless genuinely a new concept or is it existing ecom platform re-packaged and re-marketed? (00:22:15)

7. Are you seeing a trend with the type of retailer, ie tier 1 or 2 adopting headless right now? (00:27:26)

8. Microservices are versionless, how does this work? (00:29:00)

9. If you are a big retailer functioning on a monolith platform now, when is the best time to consider moving to headless and what are the main considerations? (00:33:40)

10. One of the considerations of moving to new/better tech is to retain your tech talent, How is the current skills shortage affecting Amplience and also, how is the adoption of headless changing the skill set you are hiring? (00:36:35)

11. Historically you would have looked for eg.a Hybris BA or Hybris front/backend devs. As more companies move to headless, what skills sets are you looking for in your BA or PM? (00:41:07)