Speakers

Yeah!
Speakers Keynote Speakers

27 Jun

Posted at 00:15h in Featured, Speakers, Thought Leaders

The day began as every other, but as soon as I arrived at work, I received an email: “Happy One Year Anniversary!” I love working at Amazon Web Services because I am on a continuous learning path. I run the group that helps to migrate Enterprise workloads onto the AWS Cloud. I have the opportunity to work with some of our largest customers and partners like VMware, Microsoft, and SAP.

Learning is a core part of my role at AWS, but it is also about sharing those lessons. To celebrate my one-year anniversary, I want to share some of the things I’ve learned at AWS.

6 Lessons I’ve learned in the past year:

1.    Customers first. This lesson is still the most important in my journey at AWS. Customers are always first. I love the story of Low Flying Hawk. At AWS, we genuinely read the forums and listen to customers. A person with the alias of Low Flying Hawk was constantly suggesting new features in one such forum, and the team came to look forward to that feedback so much that they would ask in meetings “What would Low Flying Hawk say?” Low Flying Hawk didn’t spend a huge sum with AWS, but this person’s input was so valued that we recently named an Amazon building Low Flying Hawk to honor the importance of what those comments and requests represent to AWS. It is real and lived hourly. Great products and services come from deeply understanding your customer. If we jump straight to a solution without spending time thinking about customer needs, we limit our options for inventing a delightful experience for customers.

2.    Learn from others. At AWS, we don’t present PowerPoints but we read six-page written narratives. To learn more about this, Jeff actually discusses it in the Amazon Shareholder Letter here. It was a bit hard to get used to at first, sitting quietly and reading, but now I get the importance of this process. Once we are done reading, anyone and everyone can ask a question or make a comment. It is a conversation starter to achieve clarity and customer focus. We read, discuss, and debate. We revise and make the idea better with each iteration. We push ourselves to invent on behalf of the customer. It is a pure learning experience that makes the ideas better and stronger. For example, our team had dreamed big on a new approach, but through our narrative process we found out that the technical approach just wasn’t going to work. And that’s what you have to do. Dream big but iterate and go deep, get the data, and figure out if the idea really has legs

3.    It’s usually the second, or third idea. One of my customers, Bridget Frey from Redfin, shared with me an illustration and story from one of her favorite graphic novelists, Kazu Kibuishi. His drawings are haunting, beautiful and complex. But they don’t start out that way. In his creative process, he forces himself to use the least expensive notebook paper for his initial drawings, to remind himself that his early drafts are disposable. It’s a reminder that innovators can fall into this trap, where we’re too precious in our designs. We refine a single approach, rather than starting anew with different ideas on different sheets of paper. Innovation doesn’t usually feel like one inspiring idea after another. But as you experiment you test new theories. You fall in love with an idea, you give it everything. And then you realize you were wrong, and you have to be ready to pick yourself up and fall in love with the next idea.

4.    It’s ok to fail! My team had a tough problem to solve and at first, we took a pure tech approach. We tried to completely automate a migration task, thinking technology was all people would need to get the job done. We thought we were being innovative – but we were building something that our customers couldn’t leverage until the culture inside their organizations was addressed. So, we started offering Digital Innovation workshops. A big part of innovation is just getting really good at learning from the ideas that don’t work, so you have space for the ones that will.

5.    AWS democratizes technology! I knew that the AWS Cloud was very powerful but I had no idea how much it was impacting customers. Recently at the San Francisco Summit, I heard the story of how it is powering the leaderboard of Peloton, helping Cerner in healthcare, and even making it easier to use machine learning with Adobe. Things that AWS has created like Amazon SageMaker are just too cool! Amazon SageMaker removes all the barriers that typically slow down developers who want to use machine learning. Machine learning often feels a lot harder than it should to most developers because the process to build and train models, and then deploy them into production, is too complicated and too slow. Or consider the new launch templates developed from 100s of customers wanting to make it easier. Launch templates for Amazon EC2 have made it flexible and easy for our developers. With launch templates you can apply access controls, ensure tagging policies, and even make sure that developers in the organization are only launching the most recent, patched version of your AMIs.

6.    Make history. The Amazon mantra is work hard, have fun, and make history. I am motivated to help our customers make history. I’ve learned a lot as I have gained more experience working with a great team on great projects. For example, working on the partnership with VMware to reduce the cost of hybrid cloud while offering unparalleled access to the cloud will be one of those partnerships of a lifetime.

Sandy Carter is VP of Amazon web services and Forbe’s 2016 Digital Influencer & CNN’s Top 10 Most Powerful Women in Tech; recipient of more than 25 social media awards for innovative and successful implementation of Social Business techniques.  Invite Sandy to your next event!

30 Apr

Posted at 22:09h in Featured, Speakers

I’ve taught at Stanford University for more than twenty-five years and it’s a privilege to “warp young minds.” You may not realize it, but not everyone wants to build a better smart phone app, a new way to talk to his or her friends, or another way to buy something. Many students want to do something meaningful—something that might change the real world. But, what might that be?

Let’s start by realizing the global economy is driven by developing economies. Developing economies are driven by population growth, which is why Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa are interesting. Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Nigeria is projected to become the third most populous country in the world before 2050. Vietnam will soon have a population of 100 million with an average age being just 30 years old.

So what do developing economies need? They need infrastructure: power, water, agriculture, transportation, construction, healthcare and telecommunications. But will these be delivered the #firstworld way? Would you put up landlines for telecommunications in Rwanda? Of course not; instead you’d skip the old technologies and go straight to implementing a 4G cellular network.

What about electricity? Would you build giant, centralized, coal-fired plants and hierarchical power distribution networks? No, you’d build a distributed grid of solar, wind, battery storage, and hydroelectric generators all managed by software. You might even never go to AC and build a DC network on day one.

What about healthcare? There is no way for developing economies to build enough medical schools and hospitals to replicate a #firstworld healthcare system. But, maybe it’s an opportunity to re-think healthcare. Today, hospitals are buildings with expensive machines sitting next to the people that use the machines. In the world of computing, we used to do it the same way; people were located next to their compute and storage machines. But twenty years ago we discovered networks, and now the servers are centrally located and the people are all on the network. So why don’t we do the same thing with healthcare machines?

But this doesn’t have to just apply to developing economies. Today, there are about 500 children’s hospitals on the planet and on average there are 1,000 machines in each hospital. What if we could connect them all? The consumer Internet took off when 1,000,000 machines were connected. Maybe with 500,000 machines connected children’s healthcare could become dramatically different. Sadly, most of the attention today is on EMR/EHR applications, where doctors spend their evenings and weekends typing data into these pre-Internet applications. But the massive amounts of data, which will power AI applications is not there. The data is in the machines: the blood analyzers, gene sequencers, CAT scanners, and ultrasound machines.

These are just a few examples of the potential of software to change the planet. During the past 15 years, the Internet revolution has redefined business-to-consumer industries such as media, retail and financial services. In the next 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum, the Internet of Things will dramatically alter power, construction, agriculture, healthcare, textiles, mining, packaging, oil, gas, buildings, transportation, which together account for nearly two-thirds of the global gross domestic product.

Software has the potential to change the world—the real world. And unless we’re all moving to Mars—and I know some people are working on this—we’ll have to operate much more precisely. Next generation software can transform the planet in everything from power to healthcare, shrimp farming to textiles, and water to transportation. So if you’re a student at Stanford or any other university in the world, you can really change the world.

Timothy Chou has been lucky enough to have a career spanning academia, successful (and not so successful) startups and large corporations. He was one of only six people to ever hold the President title at Oracle.

19 Sep

Posted at 04:11h in Speakers

It has been just over 100 days since I began my new role at Amazon Web Services (AWS). I have received hundreds of LinkedIn questions, Facebook comments, and even DMs on Twitter asking what it is really like on the “inside” of one of the world’s most innovative companies. Here are 7 of the most valuable lessons I have learned so far.

1.   Create a Personalized Launch Plan for Success
Like at many organizations, new employees from all over the company attend orientation together. For me, one of the unique and impressive components was what Amazon calls, “The Launch Plan.” This document provides an individualized roadmap for your success. My plan listed people I needed to meet, things about the culture I needed to grasp, and emphasized self-service. Everyone takes this seriously and moves quickly to schedule time on their calendar. Employees are welcoming and share a love for imparting knowledge and insight. It was one of the best ways to get up to speed that I have ever experienced.  Special thanks to Matt Garman, my manager and super smart “Compute” expert, who spends time with me on complex situations that are so simple for him. His commitment to my success is impressive.

2. Prioritize Rewards and Constant Improvement
During my first week, I attended AWS’s weekly operational review. It is run by Charlie Bell, AWS’s SVP, and showcases AWS’s culture at its best. In the meeting, he recognized an engineer for some outstanding work he had done not just for his area of the business but for the fact that he ensured that he shared the work with other engineers. Imagine a room filled with 200+ engineers applauding the work!!   An award was given to this employee, and afterward, Charlie asked how we could replicate this type of leadership across the organization. This process happens every week. Praise is given, and then we dive deep into our services’ operational metrics and identify where we can improve. It is authentic and embedded into the fabric of the company.

3.  Make Customer Obsession Real
For every proposal, the executive team will ask what the customer wants and needs. Customer obsession is a business, and we leverage consumption data and outcomes as a sign of a customer’s desires and willingness to use our platform more.   We always start with a press release and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document. For my first review, I spoke with over 40 Windows on AWS customers, did a customer survey, and listened to many partners. While I have always engaged with customers for knowledge, here it is expected. It is not a nice to have; it is a must have. This practice starts at the top with Andy Jassy, our AWS CEO, who meets regularly with customers and engineers.

4. Complex Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Matter
At Amazon, we don’t use PowerPoints! We write detailed, six-page papers, called narratives, to describe opportunities and how to address them. You must dive five levels deep. No high-level ideas gain traction without a deep analysis of solutions and options. It was harder than I thought it would be, but the end result makes execution more efficient and impactful.

5. Innovation Requires a Focus
How many times a day are you asked for your most disruptive idea to help customers? At Amazon, it’s more than I can count. Earlier this year I published a book on Extreme Innovation (ExtremeInnovationBook.com), based on research conducted with Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, which reviewed data from 5,000 startups and 50 established companies. For example, from the Carnegie Mellon study, I discovered that innovative companies use technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) inside their businesses to improve the value they deliver.

Amazon uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning across many areas of their business such as our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones. The drones use a tremendous amount of machine learning, machine vision systems, and natural language understanding. And I love Amazon Go – a grocery store where you can just grab and go! Users simply visit the store—located in Seattle—and shop for the items they need. The technology detects what you take and charges your Amazon account after you leave the store – using massive machine learning that I had written about before I worked here! It is this rapid innovation and big thinking that enabled AWS to be successful and ultimately disrupt the traditional IT industry.

6.  Get Serious about Diversity
AWS continuously innovates on behalf of the customer. We have a keen understanding that innovation is driven by a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are always looking for ways to engage with our community and find top talent. I lead the Board for Girls in Tech, and Amazon jumped in immediately to sponsor their conference and leverage this experience to recruit great new talent. They are purposeful in the way they approach diversity.

7.  Small Decisions Have Big Impacts
This one is actually from just before I started at Amazon. I was elated when I received my job offer from AWS. The executive recruiter, Aloka Naskar, one of the best in the business, had me so jazzed that I didn’t seriously consider other opportunities. She convinced me that I was “Amazonian.” Having seen me deliver a keynote on the Top Trends in Technology, she liked that I carefully and skillfully went deep enough to showcase knowledge, but made it fun and exciting as well. I almost missed that keynote as I flew in the night before from Japan, which just goes to show you how much small decisions have big impacts on your life – but that’s a blog for another time.

Sandy Carter is VP of Amazon Web Services and was the former IBM global evangelist fostering community of innovation. The author of Extreme Innovation: 3 Superpowers for Purpose and Profit has also received top accolades such as 2016 Digital Influencers – Forbes magazine, Top 100 Influencer both for Cloud and IoT – Onalytica, Top Channel Chief – CRN Magazine, and CNN Top 10 Most Powerful Women in Tech. Invite Sandy to keynote your next event?
*For a complete list of speakers on this topic "contact us”.