This week’s line up was nothing short of spectacular. To kick it off, we headed to the headquarters of the multifaceted tech giant, Amazon! Upon arrival, we were informed that absolutely no pictures were allowed and served with NDA’s by the very sweet ladies at the reception desk. Immediately I knew that Amazon meant business and we were in for a treat.

After we picked apart the fully stocked employee kitchen area for sweets and refreshments, we were brought to a board room for a presentation on the company’s history, Amazons Web Services (AWS) and Alexa. The Amazon subsidiary, AWS, serves an array of companies by offering cloud computing, database storage and content delivery to help businesses scale and grow. AWS aids a number of different start up companies as well as some big tech companies like the New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, Netflix, and Reddit. There involvement in so many different industries is mind boggling and speaks volumes to the power and control that Amazon has with just this business endeavor. We also got some insights on Jeff Bezos’ work ethic and his efforts early on that helped him transform his small book company into one of the world’s largest online shopping retailers. One of the speakers, told about what is to be expected from Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, in the future and the origins of her voice and the naming scheme and the thought process behind it.

Overall, the visit was a great experience but I couldn’t help to feel like I sat through an advertisement for Alexa. The information on AWS was interesting and I definitely did some research on cloud computing after the presentation and I feel like I have a better understanding of Amazon’s pull in the game. My view on Amazon as a company has shifted a bit I can definitely see Amazon being as influential as Microsoft was in the early 2000’s.