automated talk.

Chatbot Interview
 

• your morning medium? 

  Over the first two moka pots of espresso, I make a quick tour through LinkedIn, Mastodon, X, Letterboxd, and The Guardian, then scan dashboards from our cloud providers, followed by the inevitable slog through email and Slack!

• which MarTech was/is groundbreaking for you? 

  Over the past year or so I've been helping advise some colleagues as they were building Leed https://leed.ai/ and the results of their creation of an "AI native" MarTech platform has been the most groundbreaking that I've seen.  Especially their use of CloudFlare intelligent edge cache, in what is called "JAMstack" approaches.  This wipes several other vendors off the table and make data integration so much simpler for the full lifecycle of online marketing work.

  That said, I was also involved in the early use cases at scale for Hadoop on AWS (e.g., for ad networks) and got to see that kind of data science revolution in advertising/marketing first-hand, by leading some of those data science teams!

• your biggest PAIN pitch and what you learned from it?  

  For me, on the tech side, having to convince the IT staff of a large ad network company to use cloud computing circa 2007, when it was inevitable that they would cutover (plus, their CEO, my boss, insisted).  They went kicking and screaming, insisting how all data must always live in Oracle only.  Some months later the former Oracle DBAs were getting cloud certificates. Also, we took $3MM capex and $1MM annual maintenance fees off the table, replacing an 11-hour batch window with a 3-hour batch that cost $400/day. Finance was ecstatic.  I learned that executive air cover was essential, along with following up with winning results.

• what would you like to automate and what would you never automate?

  This may sound odd, given my background in AI and deep interest in second-order cybernetic systems, although I'd really rather not automate much of anything. Narrow focus on task analysis followed by *augmenting* not automating generally works better, keeping "humans in the loop" so to speak. Then making sure the augmentation gets conducted more as a design activity than an IT project.

• do you prefer group or family business? 

  If I understand the distinction correctly, family business.

• which event is more important for your company:
  company party or future workshop? 

  Great question. This may be kind of a San Francisco thing, but we tend to combine both :) Or rather, we peel off a diverse group from the company plus some interesting and inspiring guests, then grab some quiet restaurant space for a long discussion over dinner, with many sidebar convos.

• how do you make room for the further development of your corporate strategy in your daily operations?  

  I've got a list of principles, as guidance about our strategy, on a custom poster next to my desk. It's right there, ready to be stared at frequently. So I take breaks during daily operations to run through the list and consider each point. Some might resonate more on a given day than others, and that's the point of having a list of "reminders" for frequent reconsideration.

• your dinner tip in Bodega Bay?

  Fishetarian, 599 S Highway 1, Bodega Bay, California 94923-9783 United States
  1.5 hours north of San Francisco

  Casual seafood, directly off the fishing boats, with fresh oysters from nearby Tomales Bay and local wines and beers.  Lots of great side dishes following themes from Mexico. If you sit outside by the bay, you may have seals, seagulls, and other wildlife come up and visit!

  Bodega Bay is near where Alfred Hitchcock filmed "The Birds" in 1963, and you'll probably recognize the white church on the hill from the film.

• at the top of your dream travel bucket list is...

  Ecotourism at farms on the island Sardinia, getting to sample some of the rare handmade pastas there which trace back to Roman times, and bizarre cheeses, etc., all after a long day's work on the farm.  Or maybe just go wander around music venues and restaurants in Cardiff for a while...