Culture of Cloud: A Podcast about Humans and High Tech by MaaxaLabs
With Ali Maaxa and Siân Riebe. Coming Spring 2024!
Announcing the debut of Culture of Cloud, a podcast where we bring the people who MAKE high-tech software into conversation with the everyday people who live in a world defined by it.
What we’re up to:
In Silicon Valley and far beyond, teams are constantly looking to build the tools for the future.
We’ve noticed that most tools have been built for a purpose that only scrapes the surface of the change they bring.
At the same time, we’re seeing conversations about multifaceted new technologies - like a TON of new AI applications, both in the consumer and business worlds - getting collapsed into “is it GOOD OR BAD?” conversations. We want to help engineers, users, citizens and founders - begin to share a language for exploring the shades of grey - and the hidden pitfalls and possibilities - of high tech.
What you’ll hear:
Each week, we’ll have an engineer, product leader, or someone else who helped MAKE emerging technology tell us more about what they’ve made and what they are trying to make, what they hope it will do in the world, and how they’re bound by the LIMITS of what the tech is capable of.
Value Prop for Listening: There are so many good things you’ll get when you join us, once a week, for our revolving series of guests.
Get informed about what’s going on in tech, in plain language, and WHY it is, THE WAY it is so you can really engage in the conversations that surround it
Learn about cool new tech that’s about to impact our lives on a daily basis.
Hear from the horse’s mouth about what they built, how they built it, and who it was built for
And discover the pitfalls and limitations of building tech in a world where the things the developer WANTS to do, and the things end user NEEDS to do, don’t always line up
Why we’re different:
A lot of podcasts explore technology, its uses, and the structures that help build it, but we have yet to find one that brings the creators of tech and their end users into open conversation.
Drawing from our backgrounds in User Research and Data, while tapping into a belief in the need for integrating user testing throughout the development process, we’re hoping to give people outside of tech a portal into the conversations, successes, and (sometimes) consequences of tech not tapping into their most valuable input, the people they’re building for.
Topics we’ll cover:
Our plan is to cover everything from how Spotify algorithms affect the careers of your favorite local bands, to what kinds of AI will be used in your work life in 5 years, to who’s keeping track of that little green light next to the camera on your laptop.
We’ll showcase companies like the MOM project, who are largely a group of working moms building digital tools FOR working moms.
We look at the BIG SYSTEM picture of global cloud infrastructure and data, and what that means when you’re trying to find the best bike route to a cool new pub across town.
We’ll find out what those screeners are really doing with your resume when you apply for a job, and we’ll hear from people who got hired - and others who got counted out - by the system and why.
We’ll listen in on how online sex workers do to game algorithms at OnlyFans to bring in a sustainable income - and how changes in those algorithms affect them.
Culture of Cloud covers the cutting edge of the digital world, but also the messy reality of everyday life. Sian and Ali tie these together into a SHARED GLOBAL LANDSCAPE…. in which the digital world crisscrosses the human and natural ones, and where we can have the conversations we need to make it better.
Who we are:
Dr. Ali Maaxa is a media anthropologist who’s conducted research on how the digital world is made - and used - all over the globe: from hip-hop artists using new recording technologies to make revolutionary music, to young people in West Africa remaking social networking sites to work for them, to major telecoms, retail, and entertainment companies toiling over their cloud migrations. For the past few years, I’ve been in the trenches, working on AI tools for some of the world’s biggest providers - and investigating how they affect real people, and everyday lives.
Sian Riebe is an anthropologist turned data dork. I wrote my thesis on World of Warcraft; now I use code to deep dive on information across social networks, and within various companies. It’s been a wild ride through the data sphere, helping companies turn data into magic for their products, marketing, and their users, loving the time I’ve spent decoding the quirks of human behavior in the easily accessible, and very trackable, cloud that we live in.
The two of us met years ago working in the Software as a Service industry, making tools that monitor cloud systems breakdowns and failures. As we worked with engineering teams and realized how curious they were about how their products work out in the world, we dreamed up Culture of Cloud, so they would hear from users, and so users could understand how the tech is made. We’re connectors.
JOIN US IN 2024!