Brewing Beer at the Edge with Matthew Steinberg, Co-Founder of Exhibit ‘A’ Brewing, and Pierluca Chiodelli, Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies

In this episode Matthew and Pierluca describe how edge technology has helped Exhibit ‘A’ gather data and monitor processes for a more perfect brewing process.
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Matthew’s Bio: From the Boston metro area to Western Mass and the islands, Matt Steinberg has brewed all over the state. For nearly 20 years, Steinberg has plied his trade, brewing solid and delightful beers in a wide range of styles. He began his brewing work in the state with stints at Harpoon, John Harvard’s in Cambridge, before spending some time working sales at Concord Brewing. In 2003, Steinberg transitioned to become the head brewery at Offshore Ales on Martha’s Vineyard. In that position, Steinberg brewed a deep portfolio of beers, including Belgian styles, highly hopped ales, and barrel aged offerings. In addition to his brewing responsibilities, Steinberg also served as the brand manager for the pub’s growing package and draft business. At the time, Offshore contracted its bottle production to Casco Bay Brewing and Steinberg spent several days each week off the island, traveling between package stores and tap accounts in the promotion of Offshore’s beers. In 2007, Steinberg would next go on to be the founding brewer at Mayflower Brewing in Plymouth, a brewery where he became known as a master of the porter style. Steinberg went on to brew at Blatant and High Horse before finally settling into his own spot at Exhibit A in Framingham. Steinberg is not an extreme brewer but one more drawn to modern takes on traditional styles. He spent earlier years in his career testing boundaries before settling on a course of producing expressive, full flavored beers within familiar guidelines. Pierluca’s Bio: Pierluca Chiodelli is currently Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Manager and Customer Operations at Dell Technologies. Pierluca’ s organization is responsible for Edge Enterprise Dell Technologies roadmap and vision and strategic technical partners engagement across Dell Technologies. Previously, Pierluca served as VP of Product Management for Storage Portfolio and Customer Operations where his organization oversaw the Portfolio Strategy for the Storage BU and led the technical resources across the major storage products. Pierluca has been with Dell Technologies since 1999, with experience in field support and core engineering across Europe and the Americas. Prior to joining Dell Technologies, he worked at Data General and as a consultant for HP Corporation. Pierluca holds degrees in Chemical Engineering and Information Technology.

In this episode of Over the Edge, Matt Trifiro interviews Matthew Steinberg, co-founder of Exhibit ‘A’ brewing, and Pierluca Chiodelli,Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies

Matthew has been brewing beer for almost 20 years. After brewing a wide variety around Massachusetts, including Belgian styles, highly hopped ales, and barrel aged offerings, he founded his own brewery: Exhibit ‘A’. Here, he creates his own modern takes on traditional beer styles.

Pierluca has been with Dell Technologies since 1999, and is currently VP Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Manager and Customer Operations. He’s responsible for Edge Enterprise Dell Technologies roadmap, and strategic technical partners engagement across Dell Technologies.

Matthew and Pierluca represent a partnership between Dell Technologies and Exhibit ‘A’ brewing to bring edge computing and complex technology to small, locally-owned businesses.

In the first segment of this interview, Matthew dives into the details of beer making, from start to finish. He describes how edge technology has helped Exhibit ‘A’ gather data and monitor processes for a more perfect brewing process, and how it can fix problems and save money (and beer) for the brewery. In segment 2, Pierluca gives his definition of the edge, describes the importance of connectivity in a setting like Matthew’s brewery, and explains how Dell Technologies is using this project as an example of their core value of promoting human progress.

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Key Quotes:

Matthew Steinberg

“The exciting part for me is actually beyond this first project, which is to really dig deep into our pain points as a brewery and what we can do to add to this technology. Not just make better beer, but create better processes, create more consistency, give our staff the tools they need to do these jobs, right? And so it’s incredible. Like for a small craft brewery like us, that’s like producing you know the equivalent of maybe 70,000 cases a year, to be able to have this technology is ridiculous. I mean, it’s kind of a dream.”

Pierluca Chiodelli

“There is no necessity to have all these different silos because with our experience, we can run multiple things on the same infrastructure. We can manage that infrastructure in different way, but what we are doing is basically also simplify the edge. There is no reason why certain application, they cannot run with other applications. So that’s the technology we bring, with the security and with the simplification. So basically, it’s democratize the edge and make sure that people can manage from one to thousands of devices with always security in mind and with zero touch capability.”

Matthew Steinberg

“We have this art that is like my creative outlet for making, conceptualizing a beer. Whether it’s the ingredients or the process or even what the label looks like. There’s a lot of that art that goes into its. Science is like the yeast doing its thing, the malt being delivered properly, and it’s, and I thought about it as like, the great, the art of the beer  relies on the science to do what it’s supposed to do. The technology actually allows us  to control it. It allows us to, what was the word I used? Uh, you know, The tech helps us realize and observe the connection between the art and the science.”

Matthew Steinberg

“So all of this temperature probes and, and controllers and the interface that Dell has installed here is allowing us to study that to just make better beer. I mean, that’s literally the simplest way I can put it.  The exciting part for me is actually beyond this first project, which is to really dig deep into our pain points as a brewery and what we can do to add to this technology. Not just make better beer, but create better processes, create more consistency, give our staff the tools they need to do these jobs.”

Pierluca Chiodelli

One of the core value of Dell  is really about human progress. It’s very humble goal. It’s also very difficult to connect you to directly to human progress. Now, when I start to look at the edge, I can say that because it’s based on outcome, most of the things that we do are most impactful.

Pierluca Chiodelli

we’ve been selling at the Edge for many years. Uh, about 30 years. But, um, what is new at the edge is the data. Um, so I think, um, If you look at, so the brewer example, there are a lot of data that they’ve been collected. What is changing from the past is that everything needs to be connected now. What is changing also that the data they are producing at the edge, they need to be accessed at the edge

Pierluca Chiodelli

You don’t have an army of people and so you need to optimize. Optimize is important and have the ability to connect things and access those data immediately is very important. So the shift really why you need more compute, why you need more things at the edge is because the data are there. More data need to be processed there and the edge is different, is outside of the normal data center. So to me, that was the excitement to enter in the space that was not a familiar space, understanding the constraint of that space and understanding what we can do

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Show Timestamps:

[03:41] Matthew’s entrepreneurial start

[07:41] How beer begins

[09:55] How beer is made

[14:38] The art of balance in beer

[17:26] The fermentation process

[19:56] Why cans are the best package

[23:12] How to store your beer

[23:32] How Matthew maintains quality

[25:31] What does beer have to do with edge computing?

[28:29] How Matthew uses data to solve problems

[33:17] Pierluca’s start in technology

[36:09] Dell and Edge

[40:06] The edge is about constraint

[41:52] The edge and security

[44:29] Helping everyone understand edge

[49:08] Dell’s goal of advancing progress

[53:20] Constraints of the edge

[56:40] How Dell and Exhibit A work together

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Sponsor:

Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.

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Links:

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtrifiro/

Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-steinberg-26b96ab/

Connect with Pierluca on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluca-chiodelli-3b743a4/

Learn More about Exhibit A – https://www.exhibit-a-brewing.com/

Follow Dell Technologies Edge on social media at

https://www.linkedin.com/company/delltechnologies/posts/?feedView=all

https://twitter.com/Dell_Edge

Learn about Dell Technologies edge solutions – https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/solutions/edge-computing/index.htm#collapse&tab0=0&tab1=0

Learn more about how Dell Technologies is using edge for good –  https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/corporate/about-us/who-we-are.htm#video-overlay=6213824626001

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