A couple days ago, we had the opportunity to visit the company that many of us were looking forward to, Amazon. It seems like amazon is taking over the world these days, and they are setting the efficiency standard across businesses. Of course I’m kidding when I say that they are taking over the world, but when we mentioned how scary their size an power in international business at the site visit, they almost agreed with us.
When arriving there, they immediately held us up at the front desk and made us all sign non-disclosure agreements. They were the first company to make us do this (Google didn’t even do it). After signing the NDA, the workers led us down into the basement level and we were out into what seemed to be a conference room. It all felt secretive and I was afraid to look in the wrong direction. It was funny because later one of the amazon guys told us that they were trying to be more open to the public. I can’t remember if I laughed at myself or out loud after he said that. Although, he did make a good point when he said that the reason that they do have to be so closed off is because of all the sensitive material, like credit card numbers, that they deal with. I wasn’t sure whether to feel safe or suspicious.
With that being said, I did really enjoy hearing them talk about and explain the Amazon Alexa. I didn’t know that research even went into the name “Alexa” because it is a series of syllables that rarely happens in human speech. The tone of voice is supposed to be like a butler’s, helpful but not invasive. Its all kind of crazy how much information goes into that little device, even though they did explain that the info comes from a cloud computing system. When discussing the future capabilities of Alexa, I asked the question, “Is it crazy to think that we could be having our doctor appointments with Alexa in the future?” He answering by saying, “It’s crazy to not think that.”
Other than Alexa, amazon also launched 1,400 other products last year to extend their already immense resume. It was as big and as powerful as we all thought it was… and more.
