Speaker: Bobby Allen, Cloud Therapist, Google
Why do you call yourself a cloud Therapist?
Bobby Allen: So some of you may be wondering why do I call myself a cloud therapist or at least what is a cloud therapist? And the reality is I made up that title. I made up that title because I believe it's indicative of what many of us are doing in cloud. We are making it up and figuring it out as we go along. I've often said in other formats that Cloud is at best a teenager that just learned how to drive and there is both a lot of excitement and a lot of anxiety that comes along with either of those concepts. And so as a cloud therapist, the biggest thing that I want to do is to make sure that you understand if you're a customer or a partner listening, that I'm there to listen first because there are probably many good things and many bad things that happened well before I showed up, in the case of the many bad things. Unfortunately, that's often because vendors over promise and under deliver. So I want to make sure that I listen first. Finally, I want to make sure that you feel like I'm there to tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear.
Why did you join Google?
Bobby Allen: So I joined Google for three. Very simple reasons. Number one, I feel like Google has the best connection between people and technology, not in a generic sense of companies that have people working in virtual ivory towers, but in names and faces of people that I can relate to. I can picture my parents or my grandparents going online to search or look up a term that they may need more information about. I can picture my teenagers going on youtube to look at their favorite tennis stars because they're excited from watching the US. Open technology for the sake of people to make someone's life better and solve a problem is what gets me excited. I don't want to just be a part of a technical science fair project if you will where we're tinkering with things, but we're not using technology to really serve people I've said in other formats, the solar technology has to come back to people. Tech was made to serve people not the other way around and I feel like Google has a good handle on that. Number two. I love the fact that Google's cloud is robust enough to run applications well today, but then also in the future on top of that, I like the fact that we've taken a very collaborative open approach that you're not locked into using our cloud, we want you to use it because you want to use it not because you have to. And so if you do have a need because maybe there is something that you do have a justifiable reason to leverage another cloud. You can mix and match technology as you need to, to serve your people to run your applications and to hopefully also impact the world in your own way. Finally, to take a step back for a second, big picture. I love google's mission, right? Listen to this for a second to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful who couldn't get behind that. And so having an opportunity to play a very small part in such a grand mission. It's something that I'm very thankful for and I hope that I can make a small dent and something that I think is super relevant for where we are today. Information is what really drives the world, making it accessible, especially to the least of these and those who may not have a lot of financial means is something that I'm super excited about. That Google has done very well and folks have gone on google to search for things, go onto Youtube University looked up things and had access that their pocketbooks could have never imagine. But now your imagination doesn't have to be limited by your wallet. I love that mission
What do you hope to accomplish in your new role?
Bobby Allen: So there are a few things that I hope to accomplish in my new role with Google. Number one, I hope to convince you if you're following me to take a fresh look at google and Google Cloud specifically, I believe that Google can be the innovative, empathetic cloud, doing the things that will cater to what your applications need in the future, but listening to you well as a customer, not pushing products and acronyms and services, but understanding what you're trying to solve and then bringing the solutions to bear that will help you get there most sustainably. Number two, I've been very open about the fact that I didn't have experienced previously as a product manager. I have very little experience with google cloud and I want to document my learning journey. I hope that you're willing to come along with me if you want to learn about cloud and specifically around Google Cloud, I'm going to be very transparent around the things that I don't know, number three related to that, I want to push a whole new level of transparency in a world of information overload, watch those three things, I can't do it all, I can't know it all and I can't learn it all. I hope that someone can benefit for me admitting that I don't know everything about the world of cloud, even though I've been doing this for a long time and I hope that it becomes okay to raise our hand and say that I need help or I don't have it all figured out. Finally kind of personal goal. I want to model for people that you don't have to sacrifice your health and your relationships for your career. It is possible to be both excellent and kind along the way. If this is something that you wanna, you know, identify with, please track with me on my journeys. I document what I'm learning about clouds and about google class. Specifically some of your comments, some of your questions. I hope to be able to respond to the community and I hope that I do something and put something out there that is useful for you. Thank you.
