Chris Goosen: Welcome to the cloud architects podcast, a
podcast about cloud technology, and the people using it.
Nicolas Blank: The cloud architects podcast is sponsored
by Kemp technologies. Choose Kemp to optimize your multi
cloud application deployments and simplify multi cloud
application management. A single pane of glass for application
delivery, Kemp provides a 360 degree view of your entire
application environment, and even third party ADCs. Download
Kemp 360 for free today at Kemptechnologies.com
Warren du Toit: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the
post apocalyptic version of the cloud architects podcast. And we
have a new co host today. Anna Chu! Welcome back.
Anna Chu: Hey.
Warren du Toit: And again, we have the amazing little
wonderful the stupendous, Mr.
Nicolas Blank: Nicholas blank.
I was I was waiting. I waited too long. I think I ruined the
theatrical effect, but I gotta say that new Chris is a lot
better looking than the old Chris. Ah,
Warren du Toit: that's for sure. That's what you're gonna
say, Maxie. Same accent story.
Anna Chu: Is it? I don't know. I've been told it sounds a bit
strange that people ask me if I'm British people.And people
ask me.Yeah, but
Nicolas Blank: it's a South African if I was from Spain.
True Story.
Anna Chu: Oh la la
Nicolas Blank: la compadre. settled there differences in the
accent between that one and this one. But now we got to roll with
it.
Anna Chu: Well, I am very proud to be your fit like her horse
today. I'm not sure how this is gonna go or it might turn to
crap. But Oh, well. Let's roll with it.
Warren du Toit: Let's go with it.
Cool. So what are we going to talk about today, I think I
think something really important is we can talk about I'm not
going to say post apocalyptic again, because and it's just
going to mess things up. But let's let's go post Ignite. And
we look at the technology that Microsoft has brought to the
fold for CES. And so using innovations that Microsoft I
consider what react is and has done with inspire ignite ready,
bold. And I'm going to be using proceeds. That's a big deal.
Anna Chu: That's a huge deal. Yeah, yeah, the event team has
done a lot of work and they're really, you know, bullish and
proving themselves. So I'm, yeah, I'm really interested in
those down. Of course, us as Microsoft were a little bit more
forgiving of our own technology. We drink our own Kool Aid.
trigger on champagne. Is that was that the time? Um, so yeah,
I wonder if, how if What if we're really ready for primetime
with CES, I have high hopes, I definitely think that the team
will do pull out all the stops to make see is an awesome event
and what a great way to like actually be a partner for
events, right? Like CES is a is a was already. I think there was
a year that Microsoft decided not to be part of CES for
whatever reason. But I think it's a lot better to actually be
the one pairing the event instead of just being Hey, we're
gonna be like a major partner and showcasing our product. But
we're actually living it through through the event itself, which
is really cool.
Warren du Toit: That's super cool. And when it comes to I
mean, just just your personal question is, are you looking
forward to anything at CES?
Anna Chu: I havenever really been involved because CES is
typically consumer thing. I've always worked in the
commercials. Yes.
So I if I ever, like the only time I ever look at CES is just
as an observer, just as someone who's interested in, you know,
what's happening in the Xbox world or Surface devices or any
other, you know, mobile mobile devices, right. Um, for me, like
I've been spending a lot of time with online events. And I went
to Adobe max last week. I've been going to see to Montreal
for the last two years and this is the first time that they've
done a completely online event. For those of you who don't know
what C to Montreal is, it's a collaboration between the month
Getting agency for Cirque du Soleil called Sibley and another
company I can't remember. But it's all about the collaboration
between creativity and commerce. And so they always do a great
job of getting amazing speakers. And really great immersive
experiences. So I was really curious how they would do that
with everything being online. I mean, how immersive Can you be
when you're at the same desk that you read email and do teams
calls, you know, but they got had some workshops, and one even
involve me walking out of my house, and observing like, like
noticing what really stood out for me. And I think in this age
of, you know, we're still in pandemic work mode. More, and I
know that, when we were talking earlier, you were saying that
you will starting to feel a bit fatigued from working from home
for a while. So like, you do need to get outside and sick get
exposed to a completely different environment in order
for you to, you know, not only like stay sane and preserve your
mental health, but just, you know, just for a little bit of
relief, right?
Warren du Toit: Yeah, hundred percent Look, I mean, I guess,
we've tried to replicate the stuff that it is that we do on a
daily basis, but from home, so, you know, got a gym, or you have
a spinning machine or I don't know, you know, just those
little things that you try to replicate. I mean, the kids, you
know, joining meetings and sort of virtual, virtual and Roblox
games and things like that. But you're right. I mean, there's,
there's only so much that you can mean, there's some sort of
interaction that sort of has to happen, but it's not, you can't
necessarily get
Nicolas Blank: away actually, you get such digital fatigue,
that you don't care, you don't care about how amazing the
content is, you get to the point where I just want to be in the
same room as another human being, and talk to them and see
them and see the the pale blue blue light of another screen.
Anna Chu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really it's, it's
really, really tough. And I think we've said it many times
that COVID-19 is kind of like everyone's digital
transformation officer, I everyone's had to like, be
pushed into digital, kicking and screaming and set. The same
applies for online events. And one thing I've been thinking
about is, have the objectives of events changed. Because now that
we move to online, let's think about this, right? As I look at
the metrics for ignite 2020. And compare that to our metrics for
2019. We, in person event, we looked at things like how many
people turn up? How many registrations do we get? We
looked at things like that, now,
Warren du Toit: we're completely blown up.
Anna Chu: Yeah, totally blown out. Like, like, like, a lot.
I'm, like, 10 times just a little under 10. x, you know,
just crazy. But there's a couple of things behind that we might
be event free. And typically ignite, you have to pay like two
grand also, to for the price of admission. We've also looked at,
you know, session scans to get a sense of like, how many people
actually attended sessions? Well, when you are logging in
to, to a session, right? Is that person really there is not a
captive audience a distracted by, like, they could have three
other tabs open on their browser, that, yeah, it'd be a
source of distraction, let alone what's happening in their home.
Now, you could also argue that, you know, we weren't able to
capture people walking out of those rooms. But as someone who
used to stand by that door, didn't really I mean, you just
have like, maybe 10 1215 depending on the room, like
really point 01 percent of the people in the room. But
attention spans really difficult. And the other thing
too, is something that is been really on my mind is these
events have always been technical training events,
right? So how do we do this online when people's attention
spans are so limited? And I mean, you you've seen this at
Ignite, like, we've always done like 45 minutes, 75 minutes
session breakouts. We didn't do that for our online event. Like
we did 20 minutes, 30 minute things. So is that going to help
people get the technical depth that they need to be successful
in their jobs? I'm really interested in how technical
training organizations pivoting like have you guys seen
anything? Have you guys seen major changes? They're
Warren du Toit: not really not not remind me look Hi. For me
it's also an there's an excitement factor. I'm going to
the the person who led the session afterwards, and having a
chat to them saying that was amazing or seeing what sort of
shirt they were wearing, because I suppose he gave you some sort
of indication of what the kind of person what that person was
like. Whereas now, let's say it's pre recorded. They're
wearing a shirt that Microsoft told them to it, or how
rehearsed wasn't actually. Um, so it was, I think leading to my
next question is when it comes to the virtual table sessions
and the social virtual sessions that you tried to have it
ignited at work?
Anna Chu: Yeah, I'll tell you what Hawks. Um, yeah. Last time,
when we spoke, I was talking about how it was a bit of an
experiment. I thought it went really well. The feedback that
we got from the table talks was like, Oh, my gosh, I could have
sat in these table talks all day, we had repeat customers, we
had people coming back, like Table to Table Talk, I had my
coffee, I woke up early stayed up late in order to be part of
as many of them as I could. And people really love the free
flowing conversation. They've really loved that, you know,
they had a place where they could have that hallway
conversation, that you typically have big conferences. And while
they was an agenda, it was super loose. It was more like, hey,
like, this is going to be a table talk about application
development. Got a couple of people here, like, let's find
out in the room, like what people are interested in
building what you're building right now. You know, just have a
chat, though. The main complaint I had was that 30 minutes is too
short. And I agree with that. I'm sorry, I'm hoping we can
expand that. I'm very interested in like, any advice or any tips
that people might have. So any listeners to this podcast, just,
you know, message me on on Twitter, at underscore HQ, if
you've got any ideas of how you've seen networking done
well, especially a really big events, right, like, like, the
Ignite reached like hundreds of thousands of people. So trying
to do intimate networking can be very difficult. But I'm very
excited about Microsoft Teams and the breakout room
functionalities. And maybe we can do it that way. Yeah, yeah,
that would be really fun. I see online events to and they have
used the breakout room functionality. I think the
difference the challenge with that from from that event is
that not everyone went into the breakout rooms like me included
guilty, because I was planning on just passively listening. And
so if you were pushing l had allocated, he would go into
breakout rooms, some would be more full than others. So I
don't know, it's just one of those things that we need to
take into consideration.
Nicolas Blank: You realize you celebrating something that was
successful there? And it was because it had interaction? And
we weren't just being statically presented at? And yeah, that's
sweet. We love interacting. And we had a conference and we
weren't just watching slide off the slide off the slide deck by
Anna Chu: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a, I think it was the best
solution for Yes, what you said there, like driving interaction
and connections. I have no idea whether people like started
connecting with other people in that check table talk one on one
afterwards. I don't have a way of measuring that. Nor do I want
to, like be so you know, big brother about it. Right? Like,
we kind of have to leave things to be organic. So yeah, um, but
we shall say, Oh, I also did one in Japanese Actually, I didn't
personally but I was like, you know, what, like, the people
community is also very local. Right? And with the Japanese,
they need to connect with people who speak their language.
English is not their mother tongue, right? Or something that
they feel super comfortable speaking in, and so interact
like, so they won't feel 100% comfortable interacting in, in a
in a format like that, where the predominant language is English.
And so I sat in on the the Japanese one. I don't understand
a lick of Japanese, but I just observed and people will, like,
turn the cameras on. They turn the cameras on. They unmuted
themselves. It was awesome. You know, like, I think, like, if
you look at all the sessions, we did, we did breakouts, We did
them in in teams live events, you had the interaction in the
chat, you didn't see anyone's faces. Like, one thing I did,
and I kept doing it was I turned on together mode for myself,
took a screenshot of that, paste it in the chat window. And but
and of course, if people don't know, or you don't turn on
together mode for everybody, you do it for yourself. So you can
see everyone in that beautiful format. And so it was a little
bit, it was two things. One, I was showcasing a feature of
teams through Table Table, as a good corporate citizen and a fan
of Microsoft Teams. And secondly, I was really
motivating people to actually turn on the cameras unmute their
microphone, so they can see themselves in together mode, and
start and stop just giving them a little signal, say, Hey, this
is the permissible thing to do, you don't have to, but if you
want to be involved in this way, you know, join in. So I think
you have to like Softly, softly let people feel comfortable.
With an interactive mode, like I learned a lot from doing
unconferences in the in person event 2019. Certainly some
people gave us feedback that there were some dominant voices
and dominant personalities, which is fine. But you have to
make sure that as a facilitator, you acknowledge that and play a
role in pivoting and making sure that everybody has a chance to
speak if they want the opportunity, you know, so I
think we did a really good job of using technology to to
advantage to facilitate who
Warren du Toit: at least it other than us, you know, how you
get these common meeting mistakes, or the common things
that happened inside of meetings or like you're on mute. Or you
know, your cameras or whatever the case may be is which leads
me to the next thing is who runs Microsoft Instagram, because
that's, that is hilarious. Instagram, it's really funny.
It's like, something you haven't heard in three hours, or
whatever the case is, and it's always like this, this random
meme about something bad you do. What's the funniest thing you've
done on a meeting? Like in the last month?
Anna Chu: Ah, I've been using the snap snap camera filters are
using playing with that. I actually have and I could put a
cat on my head on it. Let me see if I could do I could miss a cat
one as a whole bunch of them. I could I haven't done anything. I
have Oh, this one's gonna be interesting. Oh my gosh, I can
be a on this is going away. Oh, look, I'm a Halloween bride.
This better make the blooper reel.
Nicolas Blank: I'm not so sure about the blooper reel. I think
this is gonna make mainstream.
Warren du Toit: mainstream.
Anna Chu: Yes. I mean, look at this. Look at these cheekbones.
It looks amazing. I haven't know I feel like I'm pretty good at
teams etiquette. And I think I don't know why it's just been
drilled into me to, you know, oh, one thing I will say I don't
think it's so much mistakes. I think using teams to have
meetings is just has really helped introverts because if
that like this couple of things. One, the raise hand feature is
excellent. Because, yes. You know, Nicole with 2050 people,
and you just can't get a word in edgewise. So the right hand
features is great for that. Also, you can see through too
intense as someone is trying to say something because you can
see that little avatar profile picture like flash purple. So
hey, like there's audio being detected on their microphone. So
maybe they're trying to say something. And so if you
visually you see that you like, hey, Nate, do you want to do it
looks like you have something?
Nicolas Blank: I'm sorry. Thank you. Yes.
Anna Chu: quesion All right. There we go.
Um, so yeah, I think it's been really good in driving people
to, you know, be more inclusive of all the different voices in
the room. Yeah, yeah. Um,
Warren du Toit: You want to say something?
Nicolas Blank: Well, you know, for the fact that you're looking
so blue today, wine, I don't know what you've done with your
camera. But don't do it again. It's fine. You know what we can
talk and calibrated afterwards? Magic?
So yeah, we keep on talking about COVID and the success of
Ignite. And what is the next one gonna look like was ignite never
going to end because we used to have a show called ignited
chirp. So what do we have not we have an everlasting ignite
Anna Chu: FCM never ending story No, um,
Nicolas Blank: do we even one? Is ignite still special if it
never ends?
Anna Chu: Yeah, I well okay this.is it's coming, there is
gonna be another ignite happening in March. That's all I
can communicate in terms of time frame right now. So
Warren du Toit: you heard it here, folks all much.
Anna Chu: I think where what the future of digital events will be
interesting. I don't really nor we one thing that is very clear
from the conversations we've been having the planning team is
we want to do more to drive local engagement. I mentioned
the experiment we did with a Japanese Table Talk. And we
certainly want to do more to reach out to our Asia Pacific
audiences, because I think they felt a little left out with the
English centric content just fine. We just need to do a
better job of reaching people in different languages, right. And
that's inclusive of Spanish, French, German, Brazilian
Portuguese, whatever it may be, right. So we want to do more of
that. And perhaps we need and but it's just not, it's not just
the language thing, like localization is about translated
the tire experience. And like, I website, the Register button,
like the clothes cache, everything, it's a lot more than
just the content. So and also culturally, for some coaches,
like they need that. I haven't delved deep into this. But we
need to consider cultural differences as well. It's not
just a straight up AI language translation. chozo isn't
perfect, either. So we're thinking about that. Um, but I
think something I was alluding to earlier, in terms of, you
know, the content now being shorter. And technical
readiness, we also have to think about on demand event strategy,
too, because going back to what you were saying, around fatigue.
And this, there's a lot of content and to expect people to
tune in for like eight hours straight, 12 hours straight,
2448 hours straight is not really healthy. So we want to
motivate people to go at their own pace, especially when the
content gets very technically deep, like level 300 400 level,
right? I've been thinking about that. So there's an on demand
piece of that. But how many times like would you also be
motivated to go if that was pre recorded, and there was no one
there to like guide you. So I'm thinking about interaction
styles to there's a lot to think about. Um, I know that in the
last podcast we did together talking about ignite, we were I
was using the analogy of television for our content,
which is very true, like we had to operate like this clockwork.
But is that at compromising? The longer form content that people
need to help them be better developers? Better IT
professionals? Right. So yeah, curious on your on your thoughts
about, you know, how we could, you know, still help people get
hands on with technology in this work from home setting, you
know? Yeah. But on that, on that, I will say we launched a
new feature, and I was I couldn't talk about it. Now,
last episode. In the tech community, it's the video hub.
So we've got hundreds of videos and interactive demos. So click
through demos. So that kind of talks to a little bit of
technical readiness. If you go to the tech community tech
community.microsoft.com, and garter the top navigation cord
community hubs, we have a new video and you'll see lots of
video content. And also if you you know love SharePoint love
Azure and you go to the actual as you can community hub
SharePoint community hub, you'll see the latest videos that have
come in from the video have served up to you on that landing
page. So you don't have to like go specifically to the video hub
to find it, we will recommend content view based on the
community hub you're in. So that's a new feature that we
pushed out to hopefully help people with getting familiar
with with, you know, the new announcements and the new
products and new features coming. So yeah, yeah. So we're
always ever expanding the features that we have on the
tech community.
Nicolas Blank: And it's a double edged sword, though, because the
content is fantastic, not taking away from that, I think we've
gone from, because in physical events, we had the constraints
of what we could do physically in terms of walking from one
session to another. And I could only physically talk to so many
presenters and look at the T shirts per day. And I feel like
from a content point of view, we've gone from ignite, which
was the fire hose to a digital only format, which is now
several sets of tidal waves. And I don't think we need to
navigate there, we don't have the guidance that says, in your
role in your job in your persona. This is how much or how
little you need to do what you need to do.
Anna Chu: Yeah, like, Are you saying you don't know what the
minimum you know, table stakes are to be a certain level of
certain expertise.
Nicolas Blank: I'm saying this so much content that I could if
I just look at the the folks that are followed from the the
Azure group, the Azure AD group and office 365 group. And I
could do nothing but consume content, eight hours a day,
excluding the stuff that has been added to community. And
then there's the video content, which I play at normal speed,
and I don't fast forward, plus some of the most amazing
podcasts that are out at the moment. Like, I don't have
enough hours in my day to consume content and work.
Anna Chu: Hmm, yes. Yes, that's very true.
Warren du Toit: hasn't been hasn't always been like that,
though. Like, because now you just
Nicolas Blank: multiply Oh,
Warren du Toit: yeah, but you're forced to consume it that way.
Now, because if we had to have sort of a said, we have to think
back a little bit you'd ignore could be your week of lateness
from work. But now what happens is you've got that sort of
context switching that has to happen sort of, in between, so I
completely understand what you're saying. But also at the
same token, we, like we were forced to take those days and
dedicate them to something, whereas now you don't. And
maybe, maybe that's our issue is I mean, like, I know, you know,
as if he, they, they say quite a bit is make time for your, your
personal learning and your growth and, you know, you know,
like, sort of take time out of the day, because they understand
exactly how many meetings somebody will put in your
calendar if they could. So maybe that's something that we, we
suppose need to say, Okay, well, can we just break out like a two
hour? I mean, is it possible, you break out two hours in your
day and say, Okay, well, this is exactly what I'm gonna look at.
Um, so the fire hose becomes just a little bit smaller. We
have to adapt to, I suppose. But it's like you say, you, you are
limited to physically, you walked into the room, and that
was where you were for that hour. So maybe that's what you
sort of need to do, I guess?
Nicolas Blank: Yeah, I'd like some, some guidance on this so
that we could share with like, we've had to teach digital
netiquette. Right. So don't Yeah, don't schedule an
appointment for an hour and a half or an hour. Because you
know, people need space to be human. So make it 45 minutes.
Yeah, those are skills that we we don't naturally have, because
the calendars and an hour block. It'd be good if we could give
some guidance in terms of how did you laugh in digital age
where there's so much content, but at the same time, I still
need to do my day job. But the content is really very relevant
to my job. But I can't spend 12 hours a day consuming content
and I can't spend 12 hours a day doing my job because neither one
is actually healthy. And then I work from home. My life is a
mess. COVID Yeah. 2020 about
Anna Chu: Yeah, yeah. So taking the an out the fire hose
analogy. You got to lay it pipes. Right and evaluate it.
You got to figure out like hey, like how, where am I going to
divide my time, your time is like a pie chart. And you figure
out how much time you want to spend with your family, how much
time you want to spend with work, and then you and how much
time you want to spend on learning. And figure out, you
know, what that looks like in your day. Like exercise as well.
And that's us. Like I, I feel one thing I've I'm trying to do,
and I fall off the wagon, every so often is prioritize workouts
in the morning. So this morning, I did my workout I, I'm using an
app, and it makes me do a bunch of, you know, things today on
Monday was like, but you know, I did it, and I feel so much
better for it. I worked out, I took my shower, I got ready, I
turned on my camera did this podcast. And you have to when
you when I say lay your pots, it also is another way of saying
define your boundaries. So if you are wanting to work nine to
five, it is strictly nine to five, you do not take a meeting
at eight, you do not take a meeting at six. That is like
that is when you work. And I think Don does this really well
don't asaka a lot of people, I encourage everyone to like be
very clear on your boundaries and do not do not make
exceptions unless it really is an exception. Exceptional
situation. But then like, then you've got things in lieu. So if
you are going to take that 8am meeting then you finished up at
four. Right? You've got you are in control of your and your
calendar. So stick to it.
Nicolas Blank: That's good. Scrap brass. Yeah.
Anna Chu: Yeah. And also, like go back to like, your, your New
Year's resolutions. I know, it was very weird back, like, you
know, pre COVID. But, um, like I had a mission to read more books
to see. And I know, it's very vague. And I'm definitely
reading more books than I did the previous year. But I have
like, I'm actually refinishing them. Can you believe I never
used to finish books. But if you have goals for yourself, set
aside time to achieve them. Whether it is like to be
healthier or to like ferociously read more. allocate time to do
it. Because if you don't prioritize time and actually
plan to do it, you will never get it done. Something else will
always steal your time. It's usually work.
Nicolas Blank: Yeah.
Anna Chu: Still still more of a time than any email? Yeah,
email,
Warren du Toit: emails, terrible emails thing for me. Yeah, email
is one thing I'm always behind. I know what
Anna Chu: I turned off my email notifications. And I've done
that for the last five years, and I've never looked back.
Like, it doesn't make a difference. You don't? Like,
what's the point? What's the, like, you're also setting bad
examples if you are responding immediately. Right.
Warren du Toit: Like for sure. It's a very good point.
Anna Chu: Yeah, yeah, like 4am in the morning. 1am in the
morning, what are some ridiculous out like you also
causing anxiety, other personnel around who thinks Oh, shit,
like, I shouldn't be doing this? I should be responding. I should
be working. No, no. I think we all have a responsibility to
drive better work life balance to everybody. And sadly, you
know, if you're causing work for someone, you are causing someone
else's anxiety, too. So
Nicolas Blank: Wow. I think this has been the deepest show that
we've done for a while.
Anna Chu: Hey, why don't we
Warren du Toit: take away a whole bunch of things? Yes.
Like, do not email me tweet it.
Anna Chu: And I will respond to when I want to when I wake up
set notifications on my Twitter either because it was a point
where I'm like, I'm getting inundated. I do not want to like
be like a squirrel and just like, just Sure. Attention to
like the latest thing someone tweeted at me. I don't need
that. I'm, like away.
Warren du Toit: Which I guess is another question that we could
we could probably pose since we're on this subject is the
subject of social media. Oh, yeah. And has has the social
media effect changed? Because, and obviously, in some ways,
it's the only way that you can communicate with those peers or
those people that you would see, but have people become more
liberal now. And Is it like, every single morning somebody
wakes up and they post a photo of something that they would
have never had done post? I mean, previous before code. So
like, you know, they would get to the office and then they tell
somebody about it. But now that they're not going to the office,
they're telling the whole world about it. And then it says, Have
you noticed there's been like a slight shift in who's posting
what and why they're posting it. And I posted this, I think, to
be perfectly honest with you and become a bit of a sort of like a
social media hermit moment. And I don't like a completely. I'm
not sure why. Yeah, social media butterfly in the family, not me.
But um, have you noticed a change in what you want? I
guess,
Anna Chu: I, I've noticed the chain, I there's, I've noticed a
lot of different things a lot. I've noticed people take and
delete Facebook. One, I've noticed people just completely
like, go on that end of the spectrum. And that may be
because of, you know, that recent documentary on Netflix.
This dilemma, I'll highly recommend people watch. It. I've
also seen Yes, on the other end people post more. I go in waves
between posting a lot or posting less. I, I've noticed that, you
know, people just miss people and interactions. And yes,
you're right. It's a little, like hanging out in the in the
office, like cafeteria or in the kitchen. You know, like, there's
like, that's just completely pure randomness as someone else
walks in while you're making a cup of tea. And then you have a
chance to do them, right. Um, but I've also been like, you
know what, I'm just going to, like, post a selfie of myself
with my morning cup of coffee. And hopefully that, you know,
and I'm trying to send some positive vibes out there. So
people have a great morning, you know, like, and I have no idea.
But I'm glad you do. Someone might roll their eyes and Gosh,
like, geez, but that's fine. That's fine. I couldn't meet me.
I want like, I'm not doing it incessantly. I'm just like, Hey,
I just want to stay alert to people and see how everyone's
doing because I miss everyone you know? So yeah, I like it's
really hard. I definitely feel like there's a bit of there's
there are people who are opting out and there are people who are
like all in I'm going to be all social and I'm going to share
all my like, you know, thoughts onto the internet which can be
dangerous.
Warren du Toit: Dangerous, so dangerous. Let's delete that.
But the damage is done, right? Yeah, yeah. damages. I mean,
there are some people that cannot show their faces. Like
around anyway. We've had the kind of no it happens
everywhere. I guess really. But we've had like, a couple of
social media influencers stars or TV personalities that just
some problems they get some somebody posts something bad on
tik tok. They are gone. Oh, yeah.
Anna Chu: Oh, gosh. Yeah. There's been so many warnings
from 2020. Oh, like it has been the volumes in turn up to 13. I
tell you what, like, there's been a lot of things that I've
learned Personally, I feel like this, which has been a reckoning
on many, many things. And yes, it was probably the, the
medicine we all needed to take. But you know, I have like I'm
Look, I'm hopeful that we're going to come out the other end
is all more enlightened individuals, enlightened humans
who have a better appreciation of community, have a have
exercise deeper empathy is one thing that I have spent the last
two weeks doing is a lot of introspection. I was watching a
session delivered by Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist. He's
Canadian, American, many things. And he had a very, very
interesting take on deep empathy. In terms of, you know,
you don't really like when I was taught in school, what empathy
was. They translated that as being able to walk a mile in
someone's shoes. But the problem with that is that I'm imagining
what it's like to walk in worn shoes on Nicholas's shoe. If I
haven't actually sat down to speak to you individually
understand your points of view, your perspectives, your
experiences, your influences. I do not really understand you
deeply. Right. And I think Especially given the current
climate and what's going to happen next week with the US
election, it is even more important to exercise that and
put your biases aside, right? And so next time you see that
what you perceive as a crazy Facebook post or social media
post, have a think about that person and you may not have a
full understanding as to why they did that, that they may be
having a mental breakdown. We're all under massive amounts of
stress. And we're not very good at expressing it or maybe too
good at expressing. You know, I think if we have all exercise
that well and being a bit more perceptive, I think we're all
going to come out of this the other end that a human being so
you're right Nicholas's has been the most deep episode you'll
ever have on the cloud pockets, fix it
Nicolas Blank: book. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's, it's necessary
because I shows not just about technology, it's about the
people in it. And we, we desperately need each other. And
I've been looking at my Facebook feed, and especially my American
friends. And I've seen things that I've, as a non American
I've looked at, and I see such depth of emotion on so many
topics, and especially the politically charged ones and
direct challenges to unfriend me if you don't like this and and I
just think that is, there's so much space available that we
need to give, in terms of this empathy topic, we need to figure
out how, how do I how do I support a person? Or how do I
just let them be when things are difficult, and other expressing
things on a political topic, and they've got left to deal with
and family and, and work? And it's, it's not an easy world at
the moment in COVID?
Anna Chu: It's not Yeah. It's brought a lot of things to the
fore. I mean, like, while learning, I feel like I've
learned a lot about people's challenges, like some people,
I've learned about people's health issues, physical health
issues, people have come out and talked about, you know, that
they have bipolar, or ADHD. And I'm also learning that, you
know, for some people, they really don't want to be fully
transparent about their sexuality, or, you know, the
gender that they most associate themselves with. That is totally
their call. It's just, it's, it's really opened my eyes this
year. And maybe I knew about this stuff, I just didn't delve
deeper into it. But this year, I'm definitely much more in
sharing with people and not like me, and nor should they be. And
I should seek, like, seek to be super curious about it. But only
with that mission to write. Like, I don't want to look at
people like as museum artifacts, I want to look at people as
human beings, and just so I can have better relationships with
them, you know? So, yeah,
Nicolas Blank: so let me try and condense that and ask you to
summarize that into and it doesn't matter how many there
are, it's a top 1235 skills. What do you think, as people in
the professions that we are in being technology focused, being
people focused? What are the skills that we need right now?
And if we don't have those skills, how do we build those
skills?
Anna Chu: I think a skill that everyone needs to work on is
self awareness. I think that underpins a lot of things, self
awareness, because it is you are in control of of yourself.
Right? But are you aware of how you're, what you're doing
affects other people? Like, even the whole, you know, responding
to email at midnight, is, is that you need to be aware of how
that action is impacting the person on the other end of the
email, right? Same goes for your posts on social media. It might
be just you venting the how's it making other people feel? It's
also like how do you spend your time if your family or your
colleagues see burning the midnight oil? Is that is that a
good example you're setting for your kids or for you colleagues
and that kind of goes back to empathy a little bit too,
because people need to like it. It's a self awareness in terms
of how your, your actions and your words impacting others, but
but also deeply understanding the other end, like who is this
person and how my actions impacting them. So, yeah,
Nicolas Blank: that's stunning. The speaking of empathy, we want
to respect your time. Getting to the Thai LAO,
Warren du Toit: look at that. Hey, geez. Yeah, really quickly.
A really good Yes. Yeah. I really missed you guys. For
ages. Oh, we missed you, too. Oh,
Anna Chu: it's just hard right now, sir. I hope you're all
staying well and staying healthy. And, you know, drawing
your boundaries, if he goes to take one piece of homework away
from this is to, you know, line your boundary so that you can
better respect your time and in turn respect thistime
Warren du Toit: reject the meetings man, Chelsea? No. No,
no, no meetings are allowed to recruit more than three times.
Yeah.
Anna Chu: That's tough when way in planning parties or events.
But I think I should take that principle put a little Asterix
on it. Like some exceptions apply. Yeah, no, you're right.
You're right.
Nicolas Blank: We have loved this format. And we'd love to
have you on again, as a co host. And you you are part of the
furniture now. So we're going to have to have you on as host and
get you to grill someone with us and, and and be proud of the
show.
Anna Chu: What I always love talking to you guys, and I hope
everyone who listens to podcasts got something out of today. So
thank you.
Warren du Toit: I think they definitely did. Thanks,
everyone. Before you go, we just wanted to say thank you for
listening. We really enjoyed putting this podcast together
for you every two weeks, please visit us at the architects
cloud. Alternatively, drop us a tweet. We'd love to hear what
you have to say @TheCloudArch.