At Centercode we believe in technology's ability to make everyone's life better. In the Delta Huddle Podcast, we bring together industry experts and visionaries to share their insights about building products and bringing them to market.
Passionate, engaged communities are at the heart of every successful beta program. It's been a theme that we've had in a lot of our episodes, and today's episode is absolutely exemplary of that. Jake Francis has built beta programs with the help of these engaged communities. In his current role as GPU Software Dev Engineer and Game On Driver PM at Intel, he connects with passionate, engaged communities to help lead their beta program when it comes to graphics cards.
In this episode, Jake breaks down how he built his programs at AMD and Intel, starting with Discord as a basis before leveling up through the use of Centercode. We talked about how Centercode’s integrations allowed him to scale quickly, why it’s important to build strong communities through trust and transparency, and how Intel sees deep value in a continuous beta program.
Show notes
- Introduction: Stefan Stenroos introduces the episode, emphasizing the role of engaged communities in successful beta programs.
- Jake Francis' Early Career: Discussion of Jake's early interest in gaming and computers, leading to his career at AMD and then Intel.
- Starting in Beta Testing: Jake shares his unplanned entry into beta testing, learning on the job without formal experience.
- Beta Programs at Intel: Jake compares his experiences with beta programs at AMD and Intel, focusing on similar audiences and graphics products.
- Insights on Beta Testing: Highlights the importance of understanding customer needs, effective management, and the value of transparency and honesty in beta testing.
- Closing Remarks: Stefan wraps up the episode, appreciating Jake's contributions and expressing interest in future discussions.
About our guest
Jake Francis is a SW GPU Dev Engineer and Game On Driver PM at Intel. He has been in the discrete graphics industry for 14 years, primarily focused on gaming graphics software engineering in roles such as software product management, gaming social media, digital marketing, software quality strategy & execution, and program management. This breadth of unique experiences enables him to effectively communicate end user needs through to internal teams to drive meaningful change from critical feedback. Jake has launched two successful delta/beta programs with Centercode as the foundation for each, taking advantage of Centercode’s API integrations for true input/output workflows.
.png)
