By Emily Zheng, Jane Dornemann

Image by Emily Zheng and DALL-E 2

When we shared what our writers learned from using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, our design team naturally decided to use generative AI to create the blog image. That led us down another rabbit hole around the pros and cons of integrating smart platforms into our design process—from choosing amongst the latest offerings, like Midjourney and DALL-E 2, to wrestling with the ethics of them.

As of now, here’s what we know about generative AI for image creation:

These things are freaking fast. When we say we’re wowed by the speed of generative AI, we don’t just mean it can whip up an image in mere seconds—we’re thinking about how quickly it gets our minds going. Working with technology companies means we need to generate images for a lot of abstract concepts versus physical items. How does one depict the Internet of Things (IoT) or access management?

Typically, if we’re really stuck, we might run a Google image search on these terms to get some inspiration. But now, we can just enter those terms into tools like DALL-E and it spits out visual representations. These get us thinking of more original design concepts in a fraction of the time—making it ideal for brainstorming sessions and mood board creation. Kind of like Google…but on steroids.

They ignore a crucial part of our process. One thing the 2A design team treasures and sees as essential to producing a stellar product that aligns with a client’s ask is the feedback loop. No first-crack design, whether human-created or AI-generated, is going to be the final product. Design is a process—and this is where generative AI is of no help.

You can ask the AI to change a shade of blue to be darker or lighter, but that leaves a lot of room for the AI—not you—to choose. Sometimes you ask it to change just a few pixels and it ends up changing other aspects of the design you didn’t want. To really address feedback with our signature eagle-eye attention to detail, we would’ve had to import and manually edit our AI-generated works in more traditional design software. Since DALL-E 2 only lets users download non-editable PNGs, it becomes challenging to think of effective ways to manipulate these flat images. Not only does this defeat the purpose of a fast and at-the-ready product that AI seems to promise, but it ultimately can take up more time. The limited 1:1 aspect ratio of DALL-E 2’s images also required us to continue our work in Outpainting, which extends the borders of artwork beyond its original frames. It also ate up all our credits.

We must find the words. Having design vocabulary and training is extremely helpful in crafting prompts, because how you word a request will entirely determine what you get in return. Not only will infusing design concepts in your prompt help you get something closer to what you want, but it will help to create a visual that is more distinct from what everyone else is getting.

For example, we found that Midjourney tends to generate images that have a similar underlying style. (To see for yourself, check out this Instagram account that generates AI images based solely on headlines from The New York Times.) The ones that felt unique included requests to take inspiration from particular artists or included design terminology. For our ChatGPT blog image, we asked DALL-E 2 to create an image of “women looking at computer” in Corporate Memphis style, but the results didn’t quite hit the mark. So we asked it to mimic the works of Magdalena Koźlicka, a Polish digital artist. While the result was neither Corporate Memphis nor that of our chosen artist, we like what it gave us. Getting to the final product took more than 30 iterations.

Here’s a peak at what we got throughout the process:

How we issue credit? After all is said and done, who deserves the credit? As creatives, we want to honor the rights that other artists have to their own creations. But generative AI has resulted in a grey area where images have more than one creator. For the blog visual we published, we decided to credit both our designer and DALL-E to show that our designer used AI in her creative process. While DALL-E did most of the work, the final product would not exist without the designer’s carefully crafted prompts, edits in Outpainting, and overall creative direction (and none of it can be copyrighted).

But with AI clearly pulling inspiration from existing art—and likely influenced by all the prompts that others submit—it’s clear this is an ethical question that doesn’t have an answer yet. And while this question may be new to AI-generated art, there are plenty of notable visual artists who conceive of a piece but don’t create it themselves, such as Sol Lewitt and Ai Weiwei, yet the credit is theirs alone. To sum it up, generative AI can speed up the creative process, but that involves an element of luck in how on-point its image generation is. And sometimes that saved time is spent editing files that are challenging to manipulate. We see generative AI in design today much like what the introduction of the calculator must have been like: did mathematicians feel like they were cheating? Was it still their work if they had assistance from a machine? It’s true that generative AI has helped us do our jobs—but is it doing our jobs? That’s one question we can answer—and the answer is no. For now, at least.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• HSBC, the only ethical bank on the planet that has absolutely never moved nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels, is using machine learning powered by AWS for its new AI Global Tactical Index. “This means we can execute criminal acts and simply blame AI,” one exec said. “AWS is the best thing to happen to us since Pablo Escobar. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt.”
• Ball Aerospace is working with Microsoft and Loft Federal (Ann Taylor for public servants?) on a mission to carry 10 satellites with “experimental payloads” (drugs?) to space (aliens on drugs?). Microsoft is providing productivity solutions, as well as cloud and ground station infrastructure. Interesting that Loft Federal’s website looks like a middle schooler did the bare minimum for a computer class 101.
• Media giant Sinclair Broadcasting Group has announced its selection of AWS as its preferred cloud provider. Sinclair will use AWS to create more compelling local news (MY FAVORITE) and sports content. The company also said it would be using the new (take a big breath:) AWS Elemental MediaConnect Gateway.
• Looks like Microsoft has a fever and the only prescription is more…healthcare software. Microsoft and EPIC, a leading EHR platform, are going to develop and integrate generative AI solutions. Microsoft launched a similar collaboration with healthcare personalization engine CueZen.
• Fever is still high: “health enablement solutions” provider Lightbeam is adopting Azure SQL Database.
• Bloomberg announced that customers can access real-time trading and other high-performance data using a private connection in the Azure Virtual Network.
• Cognizant is expanding its partnership with Microsoft to build an integration roadmap between the two companies’ healthcare solutions. Cognizant will run its SaaS healthcare solutions on Azure and migrate clients there, too.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Amazon’s CEO warned shareholders that the short-term is going to be rough (read: falling profits and projection shortfalls) because companies are putting their wallets away. Or as the CEO puts it, they are “cost-optimizing” 🤮 But not to worry, he says, because the new customer pipeline is robust—90% of global IT spending is still on premises and yet to migrate to the cloud.
  • The good news is that the government is still spending all your tax money like there’s not a care in the world (except if you need it for healthcare or children or education). Public cloud spending is up 22% from last year, according to Gartner.
• Microsoft shares rose 9% after its third-quarter earnings call, surpassing expectations. Its foray into AI is the reason, analysts speculate.
  • Coincidentally, Microsoft is allegedly working on an AI chip, codenamed “Athena,” to support large language models.
  • Which is interesting considering the person who was responsible for that at Microsoft just left to go help Meta do its own AI chip thing.
• He’s like the Voldemort of tech so I won’t even say his name, but he wants to launch a rival to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT. Hopefully it won’t catch on fire and crash itself like his other products. Not sure why this headline says he is doing it quietly, this man has never done anything quietly since that would require self-control. Anyway, in line with being the prince of petty, he’s also thinking about suing Microsoft because it’s pulling data from Twitter to train its AI.
• Microsoft and Google have been the main cloud contributors to open-source projects, but AWS may be pivoting its strategy around customer obsession to include open-source efforts. Read the speculation here. Or read this one instead, which was written first. By a woman. And it’s better.
• Generative AI-ish company SambaNova Systems has hired an ex-AWS managing director and an ex-VP of Google Cloud. I hope you’re sitting down for this shocking news, but they are both white dudes.

World domination

• Oil-rich Bahrain made a slick move by transferring 85% of its government data to AWS. If gas prices go up maybe there can be a lil’ outage or somethin’, I dunno…just spit-balling scenarios and whatnot.
• Who knew there was a UK wing of an Italian defense company? Leonardo will be the first major defense company in the UK to move to Azure. It will take longer than normal once you factor in two-hour lunch breaks/siesta hybrids, and then a three-month vacation.
• AWS put its kilt on to sign a memorandum of understanding with The National Quantum Computing Centre in Edinburgh and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. AWS will provide hardware to help establish a proof of concept that we can, in fact, bring Sean Connery forward through time.
• Microsoft is going to stop bundling Teams with Office to appease EU regulators.
• Brazilian telecom group Vivo is working with Microsoft Azure OpenAI service to develop solutions in a lab of sorts that could apply to different use cases, such as helping agents understand customer queries faster.

New stuff

• Big news for the AWS Well-Architected Framework!!! (Just as I wrote that I realized that this isn’t how I imagined my life, but I like it OK). A new version is out, and the same PR person who said budget cutting was “cost optimization” also came out with the term “enhanced prescriptive guidance” which makes it sound like the Well-Architected Framework is seeing a therapist. But no—it has just folded in some of the newer AWS services with 127 new or updated best practices, including implementation steps.
• Amazon GuardDuty, the favorite child of AWS security offerings, has three new capabilities. After crawling through the vast desert of despair that was this press release, I got to the updates: new container runtime protection for Amazon EKS, extended coverage for data stored in Amazon Aurora, and support for serverless applications in AWS Lambda.
• AWS announced the startups in its third cohort of its Space Accelerator program, and there’s a Seattle-based company in there. You can see the list here.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• Phishing is so yesterday. It’s smishing now. Smishing steals the credentials of administrators using mobile devices to remotely log into accounts.
• Microsoft is offering millions to any tech nerd who can find bugs in the new Bing chat. “Go get an English degree,” they said. “It’ll be great,” they said.
• To address security concerns first discovered by Orca Security, Microsoft will tighten how Azure Functions works with Azure Storage.

Best Friends Forever

• InfoSys is now a launch partner for AWS Cloud Operations Specialization.
• Torch.AI, which provides data infrastructure for AI, is now an Advanced Tier Partner and AWS Public Sector partner.
• Trend Micro achieved AWS Level 1 Managed Security Service Provider Competency.
• Seeq, which offers IoT analytics software, has earned its AWS Manufacturing and Industrial Competency.
• New to Azure Marketplace: Information risk management company HITRUST’s MyCSF subscriptions and connected healthcare cybersecurity platform, Cynerio.
• Federal tech consulting firm Acuity has acquired its Microsoft Solutions Partner status in Digital & App Innovation. And Xoriant earned a designation as a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security.
• Elevate Security is co-selling with Microsoft.
• Semiconductor company AMD joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program to co-sell integrated solutions.
• Merkle, the customer experience company and not the much-missed German PM, achieved AWS Digital Customer Experience and Data and Analytics Competency statuses. Caylent also achieved a D&A Competency.
• Arc XP, a digital experience platform, has earned its AWS Media & Entertainment Competency.
• New on AWS Marketplace: Conversational AI and automation provider Uniphore; SAS’ Customer Intelligence 360; monitoring and observability stack Grafana Labs; physician consultation service Atropos Health; and SecureFrame’s security and compliance automation platform.

By Felip Ballesteros

Image by Emily Zheng

From buzzword-filled eBooks to websites that use more words than necessary to explain a simple concept, we have all been on the receiving end of marketing fluff. As a marketer with a multicultural background, I’ve spent my career recognizing the impact that words can have (or not have), particularly in creating lead-generating assets for clients. While fluffy marketing exists in every industry, tech is especially prone to weak messaging. Technology products often involve complex and rapidly changing components that may be difficult for marketers to explain to a broad audience. This leads marketers to rely on aspirational messaging and emotional appeals instead of technical details.  

So, I joined our skilled storytellers in pinpointing the top four tips for writing about technology in a way that is both informative and fun to read.  

1. Get factual with your figures: Want to make a bold statement about a tech product or service? Back it up with facts and figures. Use data, case studies, and research to support your claims and show your audience what makes your technology special. “Let’s say a process used to take 24 hours to complete, but now because of [enter tech solution] the process takes you one hour. Run the math on time saved as a percentage, and voila, you’ve got yourself a metric,” says our Editorial Lead Forsyth Alexander.  

Don’t forget to place numbers in your titles, too (see what we did here?). “People like to see real numbers to denote benefits, improvements, or value, which increases your click rate,” Forsyth adds. Using this tactic is how we beef up case studies and eBooks to get more eyeballs on our clients’ stories. And they get a lot of eyeballs.   

2. Buzzwords can be buzzkill: The tech industry has its own language, and it can be tempting to use buzzwords to sound like an expert. But resist the urge! When words are overused, our brains tend to skip them. Instead, explain complex concepts in plain, easy-to-understand language that everyone can follow. As 2A Storyteller, Richa Dubey, notes, “You might think you’re getting everyone’s attention by using buzzwords, but the reverse might be happening, and it can be counterproductive.”  

For example, instead of describing something as agile or data-driven, demonstrate how your product or service enables those approaches. 

3. Keep it short and sweet: No one likes to read a long-winded case study, especially when it comes to tech. Be concise and use examples to illustrate your ideas. As the 2A tech news troubadour, Jane Dornemann, puts it, “Fluff, to me, is too high-level and takes too long to get to the point. Don’t waste time explaining a scenario your audience is very familiar with. You don’t need to define CI/CD to developers, for example—just explain how you solve their problems, and don’t spend so much time expanding on what the problem is. They already know what it is.”  

And, if you must use highly technical terms but don’t want to shut out a broader audience (like an IT lead), briefly explain them in simple terms, make them somewhat understandable in context, or link to another resource with more details—but don’t use precious real estate defining things that your reader likely already knows. It just becomes filler and makes your target audience feel like the content is meant for someone else. 

4. Honesty is the best policy: Technology is amazing, but it’s not perfect. Don’t underestimate your readers’ ability to sniff out bravado. Avoid exaggerating the capabilities or benefits of a product or service and be transparent about its limitations. Our Managing Senior Storyteller Kimberly Mass suggests keeping it real. “Words have meanings. When you use precise language—exactly those words that mean what you intend to say—you have a much better chance of being understood and believed.”  

For example, is your product really “leading edge,” as in “at the forefront of technological development,” or would it be more honest to simply call it new or upgraded? Your audience will appreciate your honesty and trust your brand more in the long run. Acknowledging a product is in beta and that not everything is going to run amazingly is OK, friend.  

Ready to create content of substance and sizzle? Contact us. 

By Kate Forster

Image by Julianne Medenblik

Telling stories about robotics and artificial intelligence in an engaging and attention-grabbing manner is a rare talent. Chris Stetkiewicz, 2A Embedded Consultant (EC), has been applying this talent for the past two years as a writer and editor at Microsoft Research—one of only a few computer science research centers outside academia.

2A’s ECs are highly skilled and experienced professionals who function as contracted members of our clients’ teams, and Chris is one of our most accomplished. He and I recently sat down to talk about writing contests, robotics, and dog parks. Here’s a snippet from our conversation.

Kate: With all the groundbreaking work going on, Microsoft Research sounds like an incredible place to work.

Chris: It really is. I feel lucky to get to work with some of the most accomplished people in technology and science. I learn from them every day, and it makes my job interesting. I also work alongside some very talented writers and content creators, and I learn a lot from them too.

Kate: Working with some of the most renowned computer scientists in the world must be exciting, and slightly intimidating I imagine. How do you see your role?

Chris: I find it inspiring. For my part, I bring an external perspective and an appreciation for how people think about technology outside the company, which the researchers don’t always have. I help them understand what they’re doing in the larger context.

Sometimes I craft a story that isn’t exactly the story we were initially setting out to tell, but it’s an effective story to tell for our audience.

Kate: Can you share an interesting story you’ve worked on?

Chris: I recently completed a story on robotics. It’s about a technology called MoCapAct, which is a dataset intended to make it easier for robots to physically move the way people do.

There’s an existing database called MoCap, which stands for motion capture, in which technology is used to track and record people’s physical motions. It’s used to create animated films or computer-generated imagery (CGI). But it’s a lot harder to get robots to move in precisely the same way that people do. MoCapAct—motion capture in action—solves this problem.

Kate: You’ve been writing and reporting in some form or another over your entire career. What first drew you to writing?

Chris: Oh, I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, and I always enjoyed it. In elementary school, I would enter every writing contest and always win. When I took a high school journalism class, I had a letter to the editor published by a local newspaper. After that I was hooked! I knew I wanted to be a journalist. I would read three of our local newspapers every day, cover to cover.

Kate: Seems like news and writing are in your DNA. I understand you started your career as a journalist for news organizations. Now you’re writing for a tech company. What connections do you see between the two?

Chris: A good story is a good story, no matter who’s telling it. The only difference is how the content is delivered. At Microsoft Research, the biggest part of my job entails writing and editing blog posts and social media content, but I’ve also written video scripts, built newsletters, and launched new content programs.

Kate: Sounds like you need to be pretty versatile. On a different note, I know you‘re a dog owner. In fact, your dog has made some cameos in video meetings we’ve both been in.

Chris: Heh. It’s as if he arrives on cue. He knows when it’s a bad time to come and interrupt me, and there he is.

Kate: Ha ha. As a new dog owner, I can relate. Do you have any recommendations for good dog parks in the area?

Chris: I recommend the dog park at Marymoor Park in Redmond. It’s near the Microsoft campus, and it’s got great swimming options. There are multiple spots where you can go on down to the Sammamish River and let your dog take a dunk or get a drink.

Kate: Hmm. I’ve yet to discover if my dog likes the water. Sounds like there’s a good opportunity to find out. Thanks.

Chris: You’re welcome. This park has a way of turning unsuspecting canines into water-loving dogs. Watch out.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Interested in becoming an EC? Check out our open roles, or submit a General Job Inquiry if you don’t see exactly what you’re looking for.

Want to hire an Embedded Consultant? Learn more here.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• Is AWS a cloud company or a VC firm? Instead of building its own generative AI, Amazon launched an accelerator for startups that will do it on AWS. In the same week, the cloud company announced that it has selected a new cohort of startups for its healthcare workforce accelerator and opened applications for fintechs in Africa.
• Even soap has moved to the cloud. Now you can experience digital transformation in the shower with Unilever’s shmancy new cloud-only infrastructure, of which Azure is the primary provider. Accenture helped the company make the move in exchange for a lifetime of lavender-scented bodywash.
• NVIDIA and Microsoft are up to more partner-y stuff again, this time it’s to host the “industrial metaverse” which just makes me think of a Mad Max world where people f*ck each other up with excavators and metal pipes. But really Microsoft is just gonna host NVIDIA’s Ominiverse, where industrial companies can develop applications. That sounds so painfully boring it’s almost more punishing than excavator fight-to-the-death battles.
• Experian has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider as part of its multi-year digital transformation initiative.
• Enterprise IT solution provider Denali Advanced Integration has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to deliver end-to-end automation capabilities. Specifically, the company will implement Computer Vision using AWS services that can be deployed on premises.
• Electronic corporate bond trading platform LTX (which makes me think of a stuffy old banker absolutely shredding a light-up Casio) has migrated its platform to AWS. The primary goal is to “optimize its data science processes” so it can analyze information faster for its AI-driven e-trading.

World domination

• Just when you thought a queer pirate comedy was the best thing to come out of New Zealand (wake me up when Season 2 releases), you can think again! Amazon is going to buy half the output of the country’s Turitea South wind farm to power its regional data centers next year. I hope their set up is… a breeze.
• Paradise Mobile will bring 5G to Bermuda on the AWS Cloud. In this report, Paradise isn’t trying to win market share for the 20-square-mile island, it just wants to test 5G on rich people (seriously, that’s what the article says).
• Palantir, which is home to the baby-eating illuminati OR a technology company run by Peter Thiel that was neck-deep in the Cambridge Analytica scandal—either one, really—is going to support the DoD’s contract with Azure.
• Microsoft finally learned what it’s like to realize you don’t have enough for all the groceries that were just rung up and now you have to put the bananas back. And the peanut butter. But not the soda, because you’re a growing boy. It’s pulling out of its new London office plans.
  • But it’s still pursuing plans for a new data center in Wisconsin.

Gossip (for nerds)

• To cut cloud costs, startups are renegotiating with service providers. “Pretty please?” they say. “We’ll think about,” the cloud providers say, then they cover the phone receiver and snicker because they know they won’t. But actually, shit is getting real down in cloud town. AWS is approaching startups offering lower prices if they switch from Google or Azure. Startups that are already on AWS are getting lower quotes from Microsoft and then coming back to AWS asking the company to match. I like to call this “when capitalism come backs to haunt you.”
• Amazon’s slower entry into AI may be its competitive advantage, after all. Echoing journalists with less exposure who have already said this, The NY Times reports that Microsoft and Google are each rushing to be the AI company, regardless of whether AI is ready for prime time or not (spoiler: it’s not). The two are “taking greater risks with their ethical guidelines,” as shown, for example, in a leaked internal email from Microsoft where an exec is basically like “We can fix it later.” EXCEPT YOU CAN’T, SAM.
• AWS just lost its UK and Ireland lead to Microsoft; the exec is now an EMEA president. But he won’t be able to escape Bri’ish problems, since a UK regulator is saying that AWS and Microsoft won’t make room for competition.
• Microsoft employees aren’t the only ones rationing access to server power. AI developers at AWS and Google can’t find enough specialized computers to make their software, thanks to a shortage of server chips. This is also limiting customer access to AI software.

New stuff

• AWS updated its Amazon Chime SDK with ML-powered voice analytics capabilities. With voice tone analysis, developers will now have a better sense of sentiment. For example, when I get on a Chime call and say, “How is this platform still so awful, I’m signed into this call three times somehow,” developers will now realize I am not being sarcastic.
• The free version of Teams got some new features that are nowhere near as fun as the ones they’ve rolled out recently. Now you can invite people to meetings via SMS. NEXT.
• It’s preview madness! Microsoft announced the public preview of a new Azure Active Directory feature, something about APIs and tokens. Microsoft is previewing Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore, which lets devs run their data workloads between two architectures. The thrills never end. And, Azure API Management for Workspaces is in preview. It allows devs to manage multiple API services from a single location, rather than jump from coffee shop to coffee shop for each API. Finally, after laying off security and identity staff at Azure, Microsoft released Security Copilot, powered by none other than ChatGPT-4, in private preview. It accelerates incident investigation and response.
• Do you like to learn? Are you a needer of knowledge, a freak for facts? Well congratulations because you’ll love the new Microsoft Learning Rooms, a free online space that connects technical experts with students preparing for the Microsoft Certification Exams.
• Amazon VPC Lattice is now generally available. Companies can use it to manage network traffic in their cloud environments.

Best Friends Forever

• AWS named its top partner projects at the Cloud Innovation Awards, which included VoiceFoundry, Cognizant, and Zscaler, among others.
• AttackIQ, which sells breach and attack simulation solutions, has made its Security Optimization Platform available on Azure Marketplace.
• Red Hat’s OpenShift service is now on AWS. It lets customers build and manage containerized apps through the AWS Console.
• Snorkel AI has integrated with Azure to help mutual customers speed AI development. It also joined the Microsoft for Startups program.
• Moneyhub’s Open Banking APIs (and other services) are now available on AWS Marketplace.
• A cloud platform for frontend developers, Vercel, has joined the AWS ISV Program and made its offerings available on AWS Marketplace.
• Digital product engineering firm Xoriant has made its X-CELERATE Insights (you don’t have to yell!), which is built on Azure, available on Marketplace. It helps contextualize organizational data.
• KloudGin, which provides AI-powered field service management solutions, has earned its AWS Energy Competency status. And digital strategy and IT solutions provider Virtusa, which sounds like a Disney villain, achieved its AWS Managed Service Provider designation.
• ESW has made its e-retail solutions available on Azure Marketplace to help sellers expand their global presence while remaining compliant. More e-retail: you can get Cybertech’s point-of-sale billing software on Azure Marketplace.
• Cloud and cybersecurity professional services firm Aquia has joined the AWS Partner Network and the AWS Public Sector Partner Program.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• Say BingBang bug five times fast. Good. Anyway, that’s the name of the vulnerability on Azure that allowed hackers to search, steal, and leak private data from Outlook, Office 365, and Teams. It’s fixed now.

By BB Bickel

Image by Thad Allen

When asked what he does, our motion designer Brian Dionisi very simply says, “I make videos of complicated concepts and use shapes and colors to make them understandable and easy to follow.” That is Brian’s approach in a nutshell. He gets to the very essence of a topic so anyone can understand it. 

But this isn’t surprising from someone who has two degrees and a storied career. Brian is well versed in picking up new skills and applying them to his day-to-day work. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Drawing and Printmaking from the University of Central Florida, he went on to teach English as a second language in Italy. Then he came back to the U.S. to teach Italian and later graduated from the University of Washington with a Master of Arts in Italian studies. All mixed in were his stints as a customer service representative, a quality rater for Google, and a translator for a startup. 

Having drawn all his life, Brian became a freelance illustrator. He got into the Seattle arts scene by participating in a comics collective where a group of cartoonists self-published and distributed a quarterly anthology around the Pacific Northwest. It was then he decided he wanted a career in illustration, design, and animation, where he could develop characters for TV shows. So he went back to school for digital media-animation at Otis College of Art and Design in California. But his love of moving from one adventure to the next led him to a new opportunity—a design internship at an aerospace company. 

When Brian saw 2A’s job posting for a motion designer, his eyes lit up. Here was a creative agency that was neither a startup nor a big, faceless corporation. His hunch was validated during the interview process, where it was clear that 2A’s welcoming atmosphere meant he could be a vital part of the team. 

Outside of work, Brian draws fantastical and whimsical characters and environments, influenced greatly by 70s French sci-fi cartoonists. He’s singularly drawn to the aesthetic shape of the egg because of its fluid curves, and this shape informs his endless fussing over home décor decisions. Brian is also extremely meticulous and detailed, a trait that bodes well for developing tricky motion videos. 

When asked what he’d like to be known for the most, he replied, “I want to be that approachable person you can easily talk to about anything while also putting a smile on your face.” Having already won the hearts of 2A clients—and staff—we think his hopes have already been set in motion. 

By Jane Dornemann

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Now boarding Premium Ultra Sky Club Plus members, followed by Premiere Diamond Blue Rewards travelers! Then veterans and then babies, then trash—I mean group 20. Southwest Airlines, which has been plagued with serious issues they’ve blamed on legacy systems, is now boarding AWS as its cloud provider. But will it stop the Sky Karens? Likely not. 
• “You shouldn’t let Microsoft tell you what to do!” said Sony, as it told the UK government what to do. Sony wants Microsoft to sell Call of Duty or else be forced to cancel its Activision deal.
  • Microsoft couldn’t hear Sony’s whining over its dealmaking with Boosteroid, a cloud gaming provider.  
  • Microsoft is also preparing to launch its new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones next year, which will come with a free box of tissues that hyper-absorb Sony tears. 
  • Sony is gonna need those—in yet another deal with NVIDIA, Microsoft is bringing its Xbox games to NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service, GeForce NOW. 
• UK broadcaster ITN is moving to AWS, so now it can air all its AMAZING content more reliably—cliffhangers like Sainsbury’s Christmas Food Secrets and Castle Howard: Through the Seasons are not to be missed, I’m sure. 

New stuff  

• Hold the telephone, it’s all about telcos this month! AWS made it easier for network operators to move everything to the cloud and get 5G support with its AWS Telco Network Builder. The angle is cost effectiveness and easy integration with AWS services for faster launches.  
• Last month, Microsoft announced its own set of services geared at telcos, making the mad grab for mobile between Azure and AWS super spicy. (Not like a pretend-I-can-handle-spice spicy, but a I-want-to-bleed-from-my-eyes spicy.) 
• This comes just as 21 telco carriers announced Open Gateway, a framework for universal, open source APIs that network developers can use to build…whatever telecoms build. AT&T is involved so maybe that can build internet that doesn’t fail at least twice a week.  
• Microsoft has announced Copilot for Microsoft 365. Powered by ChatGPT-4 it will “work alongside you” which really means “work for you”—writing emails, creating PowerPoints, summarizing and analyzing documents, buying your kid’s birthday present, etc. etc. Why even be alive anymore, really? Let’s just sit here until our brains atrophy into oblivion and rats start gnawing at us and we don’t even feel it. ChatGPT-4 has us covered. Here’s the demo video if you feel like shitting your pants. 
• Developers and artists will not be left out. Devs can now integrate ChatGPT into applications they design for Azure, and the three users who chat with Bing are now able to generate images using DALL-E. 
• But hold up—if you actually work for Microsoft you might have to wait in line for all this. A server hardware shortage is forcing the company to ration access amongst internal teams. 
• In a pretty rad flex, AWS has integrated AWS Chatbot into Microsoft Teams. The integration lets AWS users interact with their AWS stuff…IN TEAMS. 
• Now that ChatGPT is living life for us, we have more time to mess around with our Teams backgrounds—soon you’ll be able to add animation to your screen, change hues, and have an avatar. The Teams product marketing manager had the GALL to say that this can “remove unwanted distraction” and is a way for employees to express their personalities. I can’t tell you how many things I have planned in my head already. What? I’m CONCENTRATING and I need to express my personality by having an elephant trunk for a nose and an animated mariachi band behind me. Don’t be a Judgy McJudgerton. 
• Also, Teams 2.0 is in the works and it will be faster. 
• When they’re not growing an excessive amount of corn crops that they’ll be paid to burn, farmers can turn to Azure Data Manager for Agriculture for precision farming. Integrating data around things like weather and ground sensors will help them predict what to do next. I would love to write a case study on this just because I want to video chat with a farmer. But a nice one with a straw hat and overalls, not one of those rough and tumble ones that chews tobacco in church. 
• Other new stuff from Microsoft: Azure confidential containers are open for public preview; new virtual machines for Azure will help devs build generative AI apps; Azure Firewall Basic has been commercially released; Azure Kubernetes can now run multi-tenant workloads more securely; serverless for Hyperscale in the Azure SQL Database is in preview; Microsoft launched Cognitive Speech Services for translation, text to speech, speech to text, and other things I can see my teenage self using for the sole purpose of harassing my father. 
• Looks like AWS wasn’t fudging the price/performance advantage on the Graviton3, which is seeing 25% better performance than previous generations. Move faster for less money? Wait—is this a processor or an Amazon warehouse? 
• AWS has opened an accelerator for B2B SaaS startups in the UK and Ireland. It comes with free shepherd’s pie and sad stories. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Twitter owes AWS $70M because Elon Musk.  
• But AWS won’t even notice, what with Snowflake’s commitment to spend $2.5B with AWS in the next five years, which includes joint GTM efforts.  
• And AWS client Goldman Sachs is joining the party! GS is signing on with Snowflake so it can share data with its clients, though how they will monetize the data is “unclear.” I’m sure, whatever it is they’re cooking up, it’s a HIGHLY ETHICAL, RISK-FREE PLAN that prioritizes the greater good. 
• Fivetran has extended its data integration platform to AWS GovCloud and other private clouds.  
• RingCentral is collaborating with AWS to help customers advance their migrations to the cloud.  
• New to the AWS marketplace: relational database provider Fauna, and secure enterprise browser hawker Talon Cyber Security (which also joined the Azure Marketplace). Health data services company Smile Digital Health has hit the AWS GovCloud.  
• Limeade integrates with Microsoft Teams. But TBH, nothing is gonna make me feel well like a mariachi band playing in my Teams background. 
• In AWS Partner news: DeepBrainAI has completed its Foundational Technical Review with AWS; software and services company Clovertex is now an AWS Advanced Tier Partner (do they board first?)—as is Tech Data and Intetics; bespoke solution provider SourceFuse has earned AWS Migration Competency Partner status; and conversational AI company Cognigy has entered the AWS ISV Accelerate Program.  
• In Microsoft Partner news, operational data science company Striveworks developed Chariot on Azure, an MLOps  platform. And communications technology companies Comviva, Amdocs, and Inventec have developed solutions for Azure customers, supporting Microsoft’s push to dominate the telco market. 

World domination 

• Malaysia gave us Michelle Yeoh so we’re gonna give Malaysia…reduced latency, thanks to a new AWS Region.  
• Not long after AWS told the world that ChatGPT is full of crap, the cloud provider extended its partnership with French company Hugging Face to make it easier for developers to build generative AI applications on AWS.  
• Australian bank Westpac has signed a five-year deal with AWS to use the cloud provider’s ML, compute, and data analytics capabilities. Interestingly, the bank isn’t jumping into conversational AI just yet, as the CTO says there’s no way in hell he trusts generative AI convo bots with customers because AI “has the potential to hallucinate.” I, for one, would love to have a conversation with a hallucinating AI. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• AWS is having a hard time sustaining its sustainability team. Several senior team members have departed, and a hiring freeze has prevented their replacement—slowing the company’s movement toward its emissions goals. Without leadership, that team must be coooooasting, I’m talking 11 a.m. dry martinis AT the desk, not even at a bar, and inter-cubicle napping. But you know what they’re not doing while they are doing those things? Driving gas cars. So, there you go. 
• Microsoft allegedly illegally fired construction workers for protesting wage theft. The union is called The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and I just want to turn that into a musical. Curtain rises, people are sawing away at some boards, cue music, and carpenters are just skipping around the stage singing about nails and wood and life and whatnot. Then Bill Gates walks in and he holds out their paychecks but then SNAPS THEM BACK before they can get them, and says YOU’RE FIRED. Scary music as curtain closes.  
• In updates to its Solution Partners program, Microsoft has made it harder to join their club. One company said there was “concern in the industry that changes to the Microsoft criteria may make the accreditation unachievable for some firms.” I never would have guessed that from a program where the “qualifications” paragraph has an asterisk that leads to ten pages of must-haves. 
• The CEO of Tackle.io, who looks like he just had a refreshing shower and took this interview barefoot in his backyard (I’m just a regular guy like you!!!!), said that if he “puts his ISV hat on” (AWWW, that’s cute, I like him now!!), it’s clear that cloud marketplaces will be the default driver for ISV revenue over the next five years.  
• Microsoft took a direct shot at AWS (respect) with its claim that the company’s SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines is up to 57% faster than EC2 and 54% cheaper.   

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• A military email server—and its terabyte of emails—was exposed to the internet. The emails included conversations among officials, and if I had to guess, the prevailing topic was something like “these army goggles suck, wtf dudes.”  
• Even though the government can’t keep its info safe, it feels that Twitter and Microsoft need to do a better job with cybersecurity—and suggested Apple as a role model. 

Miscellany 

• Amazon will lay off more than 9,000 employees in the coming weeks. Hardest hit will be AWS, advertising, HR, and Twitch livestreaming teams. 
• In a hold- my- beer moment, Microsoft laid off its entire AI ethics and society team—specifically, the team that taught employees how to use AI responsibly.  
• Former AWS VP Dave McCann joined Cloudsoft’s board of directors. He’s Scottish and so is Cloudsoft, which means they don’t have to worry about competitors eavesdropping on meetings because nobody will understand them. 

By Richa Dubey

Image by Guangyi Li

At 2A we take pride in the quality of our storytelling, and it’s always affirming to have that validated. We created a lot of content for the AWS Partner Network last year, which recently shared its most viewed case studies in 2022. Guess what? 2A produced four of the top 10.

Just like AWS, AWS Partners are customer obsessed. When we interview partners and customers for case studies, our storytellers ask questions that get at the heart of the story. How was the customer’s business transformed by this partner and AWS? What are the key takeaways from the story—and how can readers apply them to their own business? Oh also, can we get some metrics to back it all up?

As a content marketing agency in the tech space, we know our content has a global audience. One reason our work resonates across markets is that we have a geographically, professionally, and culturally diverse team creating it. Our case study team of project managers, consultants, storytellers, and designers comes from backgrounds as varied as fashion, nonprofit, education, government, cultural anthropology, and theater. That helps us craft questions and write stories that encompass the wide-ranging experiences of AWS Partner customers.

Those four case studies that made the top ten really exemplify the innovation happening with AWS and Partners on that global scale. Over in Ohio, Cincinnati Airport improved employee experiences and addressed flight delays with TaskWatch’s computer vision application on AWS Panorama. Meanwhile, across the ocean in the UK and Australia/New Zealand, Sandstone Technology improved customer experience by shifting transaction processes to the cloud and increased security measures by migrating to AWS. Premier Foods, one of the leading food businesses in UK, turned to AWS Partner Pyramid Analytics for help with its business efficiency and productivity. And finally, AWS created fertile ground for innovation by supporting Canada-based Nutrien, a fertilizer company, to leverage its data for insight-based growth.

With the hundreds of case studies under our belt over the last few years, we come to each new engagement with the knowledge, processes, and team to tell the story of your first win—or your next great success. And who knows, maybe you’ll hear your company called in the top 10 next year!

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Emily Zheng and DALL-E 2

As an agency that works with companies at the forefront of technology, we endeavor to do the same. When generative AI gained more steam (and headlines) in the last couple of months, we didn’t shy away from it. Instead, we invited ChatGPT to play—and learned some pretty surprising things.

1. It can deny your request! (And we got scolded, too) 

When my sister, an academic, joined me in working from home one day, we jokingly asked ChatGPT to write a sarcastic thank you note for receipt of a (very small) grant. ChatGPT was not pleased—not only did it deny our request due to its inappropriate nature, but we got a mini lecture about how we should be grateful for funding. Lesson learned: aspiring comics can forget AI. Turns out we aren’t alone in our experience—there are several Reddit threads (like this one and this one) that recount ChatGPT’s dismissal of ridiculous but largely harmless queries, followed by a brief morality lesson. 

Additional bummer: even if ChatGPT is cool with your query, you can’t rely on its availability. The free version is increasingly unavailable due to high demand, so we suggest saving your burning questions for a Saturday night.  

2. It can’t create a poem that doesn’t rhyme—even when you specify that 

We tried so many times, but alas, ChatGPT simply can’t conceive of a poem without rhymes (hey, that rhymed)—even when explicitly asked. This was perhaps the biggest sign that generative AI still has a way to go in bending to our wills.

3. It can offer a quick explanation, but you still need to do some work 

We love ChatGPT for its quick overviews and definitions. Instead of spending 20 minutes sifting through Google search results to learn what referential integrity means in the database world, ChatGPT breaks it down in an understandable way—in less than a minute. However, the AI can’t discern between a reliable and an unreliable source and can supply incorrect or inaccurate information. A great example is when ChatGPT was asked to review Conan O’Brien’s podcast; the AI reviewed it as a memoir and said it included topics such as O’Brien’s divorce (he has never been divorced). Not catching these things can be a huge risk for brands, and in the case of Google, it was a $100B risk. 

4. Input and output are limited 

What you give will determine what you get, so practice strategically worded queries. Because we can’t feed ChatGPT all the sources we’d use to inform new content, we end up getting only a few paragraphs that sound good when you read them, but ultimately, say nothing of consequence. This input limitation often results in copy that omits the “but how/but why” aspect, which is crucial for effective marketing content.

At 2A, we comb through a wealth of materials—such as research reports, press releases, blogs, and interviews—to build out content. We absorb them like pieces of a puzzle and put them together as a strong piece of content that helps our clients meet a specific goal. An additional input limitation is that the platform can only draw information from 2021 and earlier, so it knows nothing of what’s happened since 2022.

5. It’s a great starting point, but won’t get you to the finish line  

ChatGPT is valuable for high-level brainstorms, general outlines, and inspiration for social media copy. But to create a stellar product, it’s best to limit ChatGPT to the role of springboard and then dive in with human talent and experience. This is especially true for marketing assets such as case studies, which are about highly unique experiences that integrate effective ingredients like real-life quotes.

Want to pen a personal essay, reflective blog post, or investigative report? ChatGPT can’t help you there. Everything we asked ChatGPT to produce required a fair amount of tweaking and additions, so use it for its bits and pieces but not as something that will give you a final product. Keep an eye out for embedded bias and other gaffs that could ruin your reputation—something this creator experienced at the height of popularity. In short, think of generative AI like a 5-year-old: it can say insightful things, but don’t leave it home alone. 

TL;DR

We are embracing ChatGPT for what it is currently good at, which is its ability to assist and accelerate our own creative process. As content creators, we were admittedly not crazy about the idea at the start—but we know things change and we plan to be along for the ride.

By BB Bickel

Image by Emily Zheng

Being an anthropologist makes for a great consultant. What’s that again? Yes, when it comes to Olivia Witt, 2A consultant extraordinaire, her years spent learning why people are the way they are now helps her wow 2A clients. Adding to her expertise on the science of humanity, her previous tenure at boutique marketing and advertising agencies revealed her love for producing content that best reflects a brand’s vision.

While studying anthropology, Olivia became a real coffee nerd. During college she helped the Husky Grind, the school’s only student-led specialty coffee shop. For three years she worked with farmers and roasters all over the world to learn about the roasting process, ordered coffees for the shop, and attended cuppings (coffee tastings). Ask her what a double espresso with three ounces of seltzer water—a drink known as espressoda—tastes like, and she’ll swoon!

Olivia is also a photography buff, a passion that stemmed from an anthropology course taught by a National Geographic photographer. She got the picture-taking bug so intensely that when she traveled to India for her honors thesis, half of the 90-page paper featured her ethnographic photos, which captured the textile industry in South India. During her senior year in college, Olivia served as a photography intern at the Seattle Met, honing her skills on depicting people in their everyday lives. Because Olivia finds snapping shots of people in their own element fascinating, she always wears her Nikon camera around her neck when she is out and about—she never knows when she’ll see the perfect human tableau.

One thing that likely no one else but Olivia can say is that they have 16 pets, which includes two dogs, a bearded dragon, and a giant green iguana. Yes, they all live inside and yes, she loves them all equally.

Olivia, who firmly believes that 2A is the unicorn of all companies, adds to its uniqueness with her ability to be a welcoming resource from coffee to copy—and we know clients will appreciate her distinct perspective on every project.