And now, the most important images from my time in Cape Town for #ICA26 -- the *adorable* African penguins at Boulders Beach and the beautiful sights at the Cape of Good Hope. I'm so grateful to have a job where I get to travel and talk with/learn from so many other smart people while also getting to see parts of the world that I might otherwise never see!
https://aws.amazon.com/training/skills-centers/
Globally, there are 3 physical "AWS Skills Center" locations:
Seattle, WA
Arlington, VA
and Cape Town, ZA
There's surely a fascinating project in here somewhere about the colonialism 2.0 of cloud providers establishing footholds across the world and how the placement of infrastructure (data centers, cable landing sites, etc.) *and* public education projects like these skills centers export tech industry power globally...
While in Cape Town for #ICA26, I noticed this interesting "storefront" near the convention center: The AWS Skills Centre, which I can really only describe as an Amazon Cloud Propaganda Department
It offers "free cloud training and interactive exhibits" -- and, of course, advertisements for AWS products. There are free classes—ranging from basic computer skills to specific sysadmin training
Very interesting to see how the tech giant curates its physical presence
🇿🇦🛬🇺🇸 Just arrived home from South Africa.
I sat next to a nice young Boer who's leaving SA because it's too "dangerous" & is getting a GREEN CARD for doing agricultural labor here.
Totally get it from his perspective but it is crazy to see the Trump/Musk racial replacement policy in action.
Not sure I’ve ever posted from a check-in queue before, but this one is VERY slow today, so I’ve now put up the final few posts from our #ICA26 communicative AI panel. This also included our own paper on how chatbots respond to conspiracist queries. 🤖😱
ICA CAT
Ben Pettis
Aram Sinnreich
Claes de Vreese
Axel Bruns
