Podcasts about Riot Games

THIS WEEK'S SHOW: Bidenpeachment is imminent, but it's not the win you think it is! Trump dominates the polls, and wins the 2nd RNC Debate despite not even being there, Philadelphia riots lead to a comical self-own for a woke influencer, Hollywood's SAG-AFTRA strike ends, but Silicon Valley's SAG-AFTRA strike begins, Britney Spears is a crackhead again, we'll discuss James Gunn delivering the coup de grace to Aquaman 2, whether or not Riot Games is next on Microsoft's list of companies to buy, and whether or not Taylor Swift is a sign that society has rotted to its core! All this and more!FOLLOW OUR STREAMS & SOCIALS: https://allmylinks.com/cancelthispodcastBUY CTP MERCH: https://cancelthis.siteJOIN OUR GUILDED SERVER: https://guilded.gg/cancelthispodcastDONATE TO FUND OUR STREAMS: https://ko-fi.com/cancelthispodcast !

We are going to focus a bit on the business side of video games today with a small detour into the world of will they ever learn with a dash of back to the future with XBox. So lets get into it. http://www.joystickandmouse.com http://shop.joystickandmouse.com https://www.patreon.com/joystickandmouse Show Notes Who is the most hated company in all of gaming? Activision-Blizzard? Nope. Its not Riot Games either and even though EA is notorious for its microtransaction nonsense (and recent layoffs at Bioware) its not them either. You could also argue that Konami, Apple, and Ubisoft all have a good reason to receive plenty of hate from gamers too. But despite reputation of those companies, the most reviled company in the game landscape right now is Unity. https://www.themarysue.com/planned-parenthood-gaming-hated-company/ https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/18/23879029/unity-pricing-model-change https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-18/unity-overhauls-controversial-price-hike-after-game-developers-revolt?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTY5NTA1NjI4MCwiZXhwIjoxNjk1NjYxMDgwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTMTZYUzFUMVVNMFcwMSIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUM0REZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.TW0g4uyu_9WyNcs1sDARt9YUgkkzXQlA9BcsFmcr7pc You might no think that the current SAG-AFTRA strike wouldn't affect the video game industry but that doesn't take in the big picture. See, a lot of the voice actors that bring the characters to life are members of the actors guild. Video games have been exempt from this so far but if they vote to strike in solidarity what would it mean for the video game industry? https://deadline.com/2023/09/sag-aftra-president-fran-drescher-urges-members-approve-strike-authorization-video-game-companies-1235548504/ Oh, when will politicians learn? Haven't we had enough studies by now that prove that video games are not detrimental to youth development. Well someone should tell that to French president Macron because he spit out one of those ignorant statements earlier this year and had to back track this week. https://news.sky.com/story/emmanuel-macron-backtracks-on-video-games-after-blaming-them-for-french-riots-12964322 https://fortune.com/2023/09/18/video-games-integral-part-of-france-emmanuel-macron-riots/ The Microsoft - Activision/Blizzard merger is the gift that just keeps on giving. Two little tid bits that have come from court documents are the next XBox console release date and a tripple A title that won't be shared with Playstation. Although neither one of these things is happening any time soon let's look at how this could impact video games. https://kotaku.com/xbox-series-x-s-game-pass-gen-10-release-date-microsoft-1850849528 https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/microsoft-targeted-a-2028-launch-for-its-next-xbox-console/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/elder-scrolls-6-not-coming-to-ps5-and-wont-release-until-2026-at-the-soonest-microsoft-says/1100-6517794/?ftag=NL&campaignName=GameSpot_Report&date=091823&lctg=20cb827897db11f28a37f08b80d1d1fe8847e789eebd69af2959f3e006c92065 According to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, non-endemic companies like Netflix or Google are one of the biggest threats to the video game business today. Listing his top three concerns for the industry in the years ahead, he claimed that "consolidation can be an enemy of creativity," and that "rising costs in gaming are an existential threat to all of us." He then referred to non-endemic companies like Netflix, Google, Apple, and Amazon as "barbarians at the gate." Let's take a look at whether we think these companies represent a threat to video game business. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/former-playstation-boss-says-gaming-faces-existential-threat/1100-6517539/?ftag=NL&campaignName=GameSpot-Report&date=090723 Game Review Starfield - Diddi

You may think this Swift Scout, who has been in the game longer than like EVERYONE, might have more than a bio. A story. Just a single story? Or maybe a bio that has any bit of canon in it? Well, you'd be wrong! Riot has no idea what to do with Teemo, but thankfully, we do. Make him Ascended! There ya go. -------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Dragon Trainer TristanaArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

The Shield of Valoran doesn't really shield anyone. He also isn't in Valoran. Well at lest his gems are really important, yeah? Taric has some good stories, but it's mostly about his past. We're interested in what he's up to now since apparently Viego wasn't enough of a threat to get involved. I mean, it's not like he's an Aspect of Protection or anything! ----- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Taric, the Shield of ValoranArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

This week's guest is Matthew Grau of WildFire Games and we talked about his upcoming CthulhuTech: The Shadow War Quick-Start Rules (V2), working with the scumdogs of the universe to create his deck-building game Gwar vs. Time, his stint at Riot Games building the world of League of Legends, and growing up in the Twin Cities with D&D's Dave Arneson in his life.—Follow WildFire Games: Website - FB - DiscordThis pleasant cafe's walls are lined with tables and cat-condos covered in a menagerie of delicious tacos, hot sauce and churros. The proprietors are Keeper, a kindly middle-aged woman who'll train you to see a TacocaT, and Sage, an old, bearded, zen dude with long hair who'll teach you to symbiotically bond with a TacocaT. They're both wearing deer antlers covered in hanging crystals.To see a TacoCaT, you must clear your mind and think only taco thoughts. When you do, there's a ton of them. They're everywhere and it's cat chaos. They're pouring out of an interdimensional TacocaT waterfall into a cuddle puddle pool in the center of the room.A TacocaT is an adorable, squamous, symbiotic dream cat from the elemental plane of tacos. They have hard-taco-shell armor with fur tufts poking out between their plates, a hot-sauce hiss, and excrete delicious churros. When you bond with a TacocaT, they can regurgitate an infinite amount of tacos of whatever variety you can imagine, and they can attach to you to create a full body TacocaT armor. A TacocaT chooses its symbiotic host and bonds for life.Art: Tiger Wizard  Words: Steve AlbertsonStory by: Andrew Bellury, Steve Albertson, Matthew Grau—This episode is sponsored by Exalted Funeral, and we talk about ARC: Doom Tabletop RPG by momatoes aka Bianca Canoza. It's a rules-lite, tension-heavy, adventurous race against the clock to slay the apocalypse. —ANNOUNCEMENTSDungeon Cats is a rules-light, casual TTRPG by our own Tiger Wizard. The pre-launch page is now live on the Epic Level's Kickstarter! We'll be podcasting live at Gamehole Con in Madison on Oct. 19th- 24th. The Epic Levels - Armor Classy CDungeon is available for purchase at Exalted Funeral. —Thanks for listening to Season Two of the Epic Levels Mad Dungeon podcast, where D&D hip hop group Epic Levels and a guest create a system-neutral, playable dungeon room using improv, comedy, and lifetimes wasted on roleplaying games.You can support us via Patreon for early episode releases, bonus map content, extra art, access to our discord server, and lots of other exclusive goodies.Get nerd merch and stay up to date with socials: HEREMad Dungeon is hosted by Andrew Bellury, Steve Albertson, and produced by Zach Cowan.Theme song by Epic Levels and beat by Mason Grant.© 2023 Epic Levels. All characters in this adventure–even those based on real people–are entirely fictional.

Unfortunately we already read all of what Riot has to offer for Talon, but it sure is fun to talk about him edging in the shadows while staring at Katarina. Or something. I'm still not really sure what The Edge is? Hopefully it doesn't mean Talon is going to sneak into the my house and ruin my furniture. --------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Dragon Trainer TristanaArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles 

Did y'all know that Taliyah has a bunch of lore? Because we didn't. They started her in a pretty interesting place between Azir and Xerath, while possibly being the only one who could stop them both, but have decided to ditch that in favor of the void instead. Cool, I guess? At least it gives us a new ship! ------WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Taliyah, the Stone WeaverArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles 

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/sylas/ Music: Sylas, the Unshackled (From League of Legends: Season 9) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Tahm Kench? Extremely cool. Demons in general? Meh, not so much. We need more info about demons in general, something lore fans have been complaining about long before this podcast came to be. We don't have a ton of backstory on The River King, and that's a good thing here, because all we need are these sweet, sweet stories about Tahm Kench doing what he does best: Luring people into a downward spiral of their own greed. ---------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Tahm Kench, the River King (From League of Legends: Season 5)Artist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/kayle-color-story/ A special thanks to The Sweet Sniper for this week's collaboration! http://www.twitch.tv/thesweetsniper https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRbxWsybsmmNAMGMtRQdIOw Written by Rayla Heide Music: Kayle and Morgana, the Righteous & the Fallen (From League of Legends: Season 9) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QIt's a great time for NA talent, but it's been here all along.  Have we just been underrating it this whole time?Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Sometimes we forget how old Syndra is, and then we remember when we look at her 15 quotes and read her lackluster lore. We got to use the "P" word again for this one because WOW does she have a lot of it. Between hating Ionia and not even knowing what the heck Noxus is, Syndra would pair up well with so many League champs. And yet, she has met none of them. She's just flying around Ionia throwing orphans out of a castle (probably). ---------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Syndra, the Dark Sovereign (From League of Legends: Season 2)Artist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/kayle/ Music: Kayle and Morgana, the Righteous & the Fallen (From League of Legends: Season 9) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Karim Fernandes - Content Creator, Counter Logic Gaming Parth Naidu - CEO, SIDO Nick Troop - Executive Producer, POSSIBLE Doug Watson - Director of Esports Strategic Advisory, Riot Games Greg Kim (moderator) - Head of CLG, Madison Square Garden Sports   There is arguably no place in sports that leverages social media, co-streaming, and cutting-edge technology better than esports. Over the past 5 years, esports storytelling has evolved, introduced new personalities, and made it possible for influencers to become bona fide superstars with tens of millions of followers and billions of views across YouTube, Twitch, and other streaming platforms. Fans are no longer content in having a single option for engaging with their favorite team or sport; they want options. Utilizing influencers, alt streams, and other technology, esports is developing strong connections with an extremely loyal fan base, scaling to new audiences, and generating unique integrations for partner brands. Join us to hear content creators, event producers, and sports leagues are using technology to change sports storytelling with new technology, virtual watch parties, and new forms of social engagement. This panel brings together perspectives from Riot Games, POSSIBLE, CLG, and SIDO to discuss the age of influences and co-streaming in esports and what it means for the development of the industry going forward.

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QWith Team Liquid winning a hard fought series against Golden Guardians, do they have what it takes to bring home the trophy against C9 in the finals?Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Mageseeker spoilers  1:34:45 - 2:06:53Rebecca would like to note she's not nearly as pro-Sylas as this episode makes her sound. LOOK I JUST GET HIM OK I WOULD ALSO BE A VILLAIN IN HIS SHOES JUST WITH WAY LESS MUSCLES I AM VERY WEAK.Sylas has sooo much lore, and it's all extremely interesting. Weird! That's probably why this is over two hours long. ------------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Sylas, the UnshackledArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/whatoncesailedfree/ A special thanks to The Sweet Sniper for this week's collaboration! http://www.twitch.tv/thesweetsniper https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRbxWsybsmmNAMGMtRQdIOw Written by Michael Luo Music: Dragonslayer Xin Zhao (From League of Legends: Season 7) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Today, I'm joined by Jason Scott, and we're talking about Transformational Leadership. Jason is US Navy Veteran, founder and CEO, speaker, author, instructor, and expert in transformational leadership. He is CEO of 120VC, where he has spent over 20 years leading global transformational efforts for companies like DirecTV, Trader Joe's, Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT Games, Sony Pictures, and others. He is the author of It's Never Just Business: It's About People. I'm excited to have him on the show to talk about transformational leadership. Show resources: It's Never Just Business: It's About People book 120VC website Jason Scott on LinkedIn Jason Scott's speaker page Sponsors: Ignite Management Services Liberty Strength  ____ Order my latest bestselling book, You Have the Watch: A Guided Journal to Become a Leader Worth Following Order my bestselling leadership book, All in the Same Boat - Lead Your Organization Like a Nuclear Submariner Order my bestselling leadership book, I Have the Watch: Becoming a Leader Worth Following Become a leader worth following today with these powerful resources: Subscribe to my leadership newsletter Follow Jon S Rennie on Twitter Follow Jon S Rennie on Instagram Follow Jon S Rennie on YouTube The Experience of Leadership book Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QIt's an exciting time for NRG fans as they clinch a spot into worlds with a surprising victory over GGS!  Join us as we discuss all the week's action plus a look ahead to the next round!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

So. Naafiri was a dagger. Now she's a dog. Neat!We might not have much here, but it's still fun, or maybe that was the rum talking. John's not impressed with Darkin, and asks Riot the most important question of all: Can dogs talk? We must know. ---------- WE HAVE MERCH!bit.ly/loreheadmerch Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Naafiri, the Hound of a Hundred BitesArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

IT'S EVO WEEK! Jason sits down with Evo general manager Rick "TheHadou" Thiher to talk about the show in two segments: one recorded before the Project L announcement, and one after! Jason then gives his hopes and dreams for this year's event.

In this week's episode, we're featuring another of our most popular, inspiring sessions from ELC Annual 2022. Oksana Kubushyna, former VP of Entertainment Operations @ Riot Games, shares her best strategies for turning your career into a rocket, along with plenty of inspiring stories from her eight years and multiple promotions within Riot Games. She reveals why your mindset is the most important driver of career success, the importance of prioritizing your team, customers, & company over yourself when it comes to getting ahead, and tips for getting feedback, asking for help, prioritizing relationships, showing initiative, and much more. This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022. Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT OSKANA KUBUSHYNAAs VP of Entertainment Operations, Oksana Kubushyna (@GLHF2U) oversees operations of Riot's Entertainment division with a goal to imagine and develop bespoke IP experiences and products - animation, film, interactive narratives, music, consumer products and beyond - that deepen players' and fans' connections to the universe Riot has created in League of Legends.After joining Riot in 2014, she quickly rose through the ranks, holding positions including Head of Infrastructure, Development Director for League of Legends, founder and Head of Riot Platform Group, and VP of Game Studios Operations, helping build the foundation for, launch and operate Riot's new games globally.She has also been a leader of Diversity and Inclusion efforts within Riot. Her passion for the advancement of women in games and tech reaches beyond Riot, and she has been honored by groups such as Girls Inc. and Wonder Women Tech."If you're asking, 'How can I get ahead?', I'm here to tell you also that you gotta flip that. That's exactly the wrong question to ask because the more you ask questions like this, the more people will perceive you as self-serving. There is no quicker way to lose somebody's trust than for them to believe you are acting in your best interests and not in theirs, not in your company's, not in your customer's. Focusing on your customer, focusing on your manager's needs, on your company's needs, on your team needs is a much more effective way to move forward.”- Oksana Kubushyna   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You'll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Oksana & her roles within Riot Games over the past eight years (2:37)Secondary drivers impacting career success (5:53)Why your mindset is the primary driver of success (7:52)Always prioritize the company & customers over your own self-interests (9:57)Strategies for becoming non-reactive & showing initiative (12:53)The importance of prioritizing relationships (15:12)How to incorporate feedback to improve your leadership skills (16:38)Be in the right place so you're not a $10 watch (19:09)Audience Q&A: tips for going about getting feedback & asking for help (20:48)How to tell stories & adapting the skill for a remote environment (22:52)Tips for recognizing your value & overcoming imposter syndrome (25:10)Knowing you're not the right “watch” in your company / team (27:37)Defining anti-fragility & its impact on career success (29:14)Serve your team by managing up (30:32)Making the best use of your time in a one-on-one w/ high-level leadership (31:58)Why you should create time to think strategically (33:15)Frameworks for driving change within a larger organization (34:48)Oksana's advice for moving forward instead of retreating into your comfort zone (36:10)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

You've heard about him, you've seen his cro- er, ravens perched across the rooftops of Noxus, but now is the time to finally answer the question: Do Swain and LeBlanc incorporate assassin-play in the bedroom? And do the birds watch, or is it more of a ceiling mirror situation? While we can't help but enjoy the overflowing-with-cool Noxian strategist, we also can't help but wish Riot would stop being so dodgy about what his real deal actually is. Maybe our resident notTywin Lannister will get some more nitty gritty details in the future, but for now we enjoy his dark and mysterious aura. Big thanks to Shupamoustache for joining us on this one!---------- WE HAVE MERCH!https://www.bonfire.com/store/league-of-loreheads/ Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Swain the Noxian Grand GeneralArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QAs the first round of the playoffs finishes, we talk about how NRG is picking up steam and could prove to be trouble for some top teams in the upper bracket!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

You just inherited or built a new team. You've made a mistake of judgment, communication, or decision with the team. Now, the team doesn't like you or trust you but you still need to achieve an outcome together. What do you do? How do you come back from that situation and rebuild trust? It is unfortunately a common leadership story in everyday business. ---- Thank you to our sponsor! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠go.solsten.io⁠⁠⁠⁠ and mention Rise x Play for a demo and receive a free feature, theme, and art style study included with your Navigator purchase, a $20,000 value. Offer valid through 8/31/23. ---- In this episode, we go through ⁠Jen Donahoe's⁠ 20 years of career and leadership learnings at Disney, Mattel, EA, Zynga, Scopely, and Riot Games as a Growth and Marketing Executive. Moving from one company culture to another is a transition, and you will inevitably make cultural mistakes. Jen and I will share how we used the Trust triangle framework to rebuild trust with our teams, sharing personal and professional anecdotes. The 3 pillars to rebuild trust are Empathy, Logic, and Authenticity. Check Francis Frei's video for the full framework: https://www.ted.com/talks/frances_frei_how_to_build_and_rebuild_trust If you enjoyed today's episode make sure to rate it on Spotify, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, or simply share it with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.riseandplay.io/blog

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/xinzhao/ Music: Dragonslayer Xin Zhao (From League of Legends: Season 7) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

What happens when all the major studios pull out of comic con? nothing really, it keeps going because comic con is more then movies and television. We also learned about some major Ubisoft shakeups, kart racers are making a comeback, and Sony's Project Q leaks. Plus Barbenheimer makes for the 4th biggest box office weekend, MOVIES are in fact back! Also due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes, i have dedicated some time talking about old movies, this week we have my favorite movies made in the 1950's.

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QIts time for us to reflect back on this split and hand out who we think deserves our All Pro votes as well as our MVP candidates and some other fun categories.Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Reading about Soraka being from time immemorial gave us a warm, cozy feeling, like coming back to a familiar, thousand-year-old sweater. There's nothing about the goat lady that shocked or amazed us, and by the end we really were left wanting more for Runeterra's resident seer. At least we can sift through a bunch of banana jokes, and hear all about the various ways she had turned Warwick into a werewolf in the old lore. ---------- WE HAVE MERCH!https://www.bonfire.com/store/league-of-loreheads/ Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Dragon Trainer TristanaArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/galio-color-story/ Written by John O'Bryan Image Credit: Legends of Runeterra & SIXMOREVODKA Art Direction: Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic Sketch and Composition: Chris Kintner Artists: William Gist Music: Galio, the Colossus (From League of Legends: Season 7) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast I'm joined by Angela Roseboro, who is a Culture Transformation Leader, Tech Executive, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategist and Former Chief Diversity Officer at Riot Games, DropBox and Jones Lang LaSalle. Angela shares valuable insights from her career, discussing the importance of influence, leadership, and resilience in the DEI space. We also touch on the challenges and opportunities of incorporating DEI principles into AI systems.

As Head of Product Design & Research at Oracle, Jod Kaftan leads a design practice that strives to meaningfully impact climate change and provide SaaS solutions that bring critical energy services to populations globally. Jod has more than 20 years of extensive end-to-end expertise in the enterprise and at both agencies and start-ups, driving cross-channel experiences across platforms for blue-chip clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Riot Games, Google and Wells Fargo. Before leading design teams at Oracle and Accenture Song, Jod was an experience designer and strategist at shops such as Razorfish and Possible, where he's been exposed to a large spectrum of business models and design problems, from CPG, Financial Services and Entertainment to Non-Profits, start-ups and innovation labs. When not at home in Los Angeles, Jod is probably hiking with his wife, 12-year-old son and dog in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QThere is only one more week for the LCS regular season and this is probably one of the most competitive splits in a while.  Join in as we discuss what teams will have what it takes to be crowned champs when it's all said an done.Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

We really loved the long story linked on Sona's Universe page, unfortunately Sona is barely in the dang thing. She has some good here, and some potential  of course, and uhhh a lot in common with a similar support. We're thinking with a mix of some old lore and a lot of changes to Seraphine, a lot could be fixed here. ---------- WE HAVE MERCH!bonfire.com/store/leagueofloreheads Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | KineticArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/galio/ Music: Galio, the Colossus (From League of Legends: Season 7) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QWith TSM subbing Insanity back in and APA earning the starting spot on TL, their teams see drastic improvements immediately.  How far can they go with these solidified rosters?Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Apparently The Crystal Vanguard is getting a lore update soon, and boy does he need it. There's so little here, and it's definitely all very confusing right guys? It wasn't just me? RIGHT??? -------- WE HAVE MERCH!bonfire.com/leagueofloreheads Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Dragon Trainer TristanaArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

All credit for these stories goes to Riot Games, League of Legends, and their respective authors. The original text can be found at: https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/axiomata/ A special thanks to The Sweet Sniper for this week's collaboration! http://www.twitch.tv/thesweetsniper https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRbxWsybsmmNAMGMtRQdIOw Written by Daniel Couts Music: Honor - Theme (From League of Legends: Season 7) More stories coming soon! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/prestigeedition/support

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QFaker is sitting out with a wrist injury and it got us thinking about whether or not the GOAT might retire and what that would mean for the game!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

This week Yon welcomes Jonathan Pan into the metaverse. Jonathan is the Head of Product at Store No. 8, the incubation arm of Walmart. Between his current role and his prior stops at companies such as Riot Games, Amazon, and Meta, Jonathan has built a long track record of working in and on emerging technologies where he can let his passion for building content and teams thrive. During their conversation Yon and Jonathan discuss how emerging technologies will both contribute to and complement the metaverse, break down key insights from Jonathan's article on the practical metaverse, lay out the advantages Roblox's dedicated developer community affords them, and much more. Chapters: Introducing Jonathan Pan (00:25) How Jon Defines the Metaverse (01:25) How Do Emerging Technologies (AI, Blockchain, Etc) Contribute to and Complement the Metaverse (04:30) Key Insights from Jonathan's Article on the Practical Metaverse (08:30) First Time Realizing the Potential of Roblox and Minecraft as Platforms (12:30) What Will Still Be True About Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft Three to Five Years From Now (17:45) The Advantage of Roblox's Dedicated Developer Community (22:40) One Thing Jonathan is Most Excited For in Next Five Years (29:30) Learn more about Jonathan and Store No. 8 by visiting their website. To read Jonathan's article The Practical Metaverse visit here. Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn | Medium Learn more about Into the Metaverse and Yon by visiting the website. Follow Yon: LinkedIn | Twitter Learn more about Supersocial by visiting the website.

This week Jared, Ky, and Ben are joined by Jason Salas of Riot Games to discuss the Tears of the Dragon and Hyrule Castle. Jason gives his opinion on the game from the viewpoint of a developer, and the gang discuss the Tears of the Dragon and how they feel about the way they were introduced to the game. Jared also puts on his tinfoil hat and predicts what Tears of the Kingdom means for the world of Zelda! Find all of our socials, our site, as well as our discord server here!: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/PlayAlongPodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠playalondpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Episodes of this podcast go up every Tuesday at 9 am PSTIntro and outro music is done by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://boqeh.bandcamp.com⁠ Music Break 1: Hyrule Castle Music Break 2: The Demon King's Saboteur (Phantom Ganon Battle) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/playalongpodcast/message

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QThe 1st round robin is done and the boys are here to discuss mid split MVPs and how they are feeling about the teams up to this point!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

We've been getting through quite a few of the very first champions lately. Apparently Riot had a thing for the letter S! Sivir didn't have much going on until they used her to resurrect Azir and kick off a war between a bunch of Ascended, although Sivir doesn't seem to care about any of that (mood). She's a simple gal with dead parents who just wants to rob people, but also maybe uhhh take away Ascenion from Darkin and uhhh use it for something else. We'll see I guess! --------- WE HAVE MERCH!bonfire.com/leagueofloreheads Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Dragon Trainer TristanaArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

The FTC case against Microsoft is getting spicy, and we take this episode to try and go through all the highlights. How's the case going? How does PlayStation look? How does Xbox look? We try and answer all these questions during this week's show. Opening song is Deja Vu by Popskyy - https://popskyy.bandcamp.com/If you'd like to donate to us using PayPal, you can do so with this link. https://www.paypal.me/digitaldaysgamingIf you would like to order DDG merchandise click below: https://teespring.com/digital-days-gamingPatreonDiscordTwitter: @DigitalDaysPodDave Twitter: @GoodDaveHuntMichael Twitter: @The1stMJCTwitch: @DigitalDaysGamingFacebook PageFacebook GroupYouTubeTikTok

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QNow that they are 0-6, FlyQuest looks like they are in big trouble!  TSM and DIG are much better than we thought, and 100T and NRG are big flops.  All this in more in our newest episode!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Without much lore to his name, everyone's favorite giant, undead, monster man left us to our own devices; devices which include conjecture about Sion being a literal big baby and workshopping Noxian infomercials. It might be nice for Riot to revisit Noxus' most recent revenant, but until then we'll have to hope Swain has been regularly changing out the straw in Sion's cage and feeding him sanguine gerbil pellets. -------- WE HAVE MERCH!bonfire.com/leagueofloreheads Twitter! twitter.com/loreheads Discord! https://t.co/o21E0W4C8z?amp=1 Twitch! twitch.tv/loreheads Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leagueofloreheads Song Title | Sion the Undead JuggernautArtist | League of LegendsCourtesy of Riot Games https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines/Image by Yuri_B from Pixabay - book with sparkles

Aaron Torres and Ala Shiban are from Klotho, which powers Infrastructure Copilot, the most advanced infrastructure design tool that understands how to define, connect, and scale your infrastructure-as-code. Victoria talks to Aaron and Ala about the Klotho engine, Klotho the CLI tool, and InfraCopilot and how they work together to help enable developer teams to iterate on applications and features quickly. Klotho (https://klo.dev/) Infrastructure Copilot (https://infracopilot.io/) Follow Klotho on Github (https://github.com/klothoplatform/klotho), Discord (https://discord.com/invite/4wwBRqqysY), Twitter (https://twitter.com/GetKlotho), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/klothoplatform/). Follow Aaron Torres on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/torresaaron/), or Twitter (https://twitter.com/aarontorres). Follow Ala Shiban on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alashiban/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/AlaShiban). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Aaron Torres and Ala Shiban from Klotho, which powers Infrastructure Copilot, the most advanced infrastructure design tool that understands how to define, connect, and scale your infrastructure-as-code. Aaron and Ala, thank you for joining me. ALA: Thank you for having us. AARON: Yeah, thank you very much. VICTORIA: Well, great. I wanted to just start with a little bit of a icebreaker; maybe tell me a little bit more about what the weather is like where you're currently at. AARON: So I'm in St. Louis, Missouri. Right now, it is definitely...it feels like summer finally. So we're getting some nice, warm days and clear skies. ALA: And I'm in LA. And it's gloomier than I would like compared to what it's been in the last few years. But I'll take it if this means we're getting closer to summer. VICTORIA: Right. And I'm not too far from you, Ala, in San Diego, and it's a little chillier than I would prefer as well. But that's what we get for living close to the beach. So there's always trade-offs. Well, wonderful. I'm so excited to talk to you about your product here today. Let me start with a question about, let's say, I'm a non-technical founder, and I've just heard about your product. What's your pitch to someone in that position on the value of your tool? ALA: For somebody who isn't technical, I would say you can enable your team, your developer team, to quickly iterate on their applications or features and let InfraCopilot and Klotho take care of taking that application or features and deploy them and getting them running on the cloud. VICTORIA: Okay. So maybe I've been thinking about having to hire an AWS engineer or someone who's an infrastructure engineer. I could consider getting a tool like Klotho and Infrastructure Copilot to allow my developers to take on more of that responsibility themselves. ALA: Absolutely. VICTORIA: Gotcha. Okay, well, great. So let me ask about how did it all get started? What was the impetus that set you on this journey ALA: Both Aaron and I used to work at Riot Games, and I used to lead the cloud services org at Riot. I had about 50 people, 40 engineers, as part of a larger 120-person org, infrastructure platform org, which was tasked with building the platform that runs League of Legends, VALORANT, for 200 million people all around the world, in China. Full DevOps mode for Riot developers and full ops mode for running in China. It took us three years, a lot of effort. And by the time we were done, it was already legacy, and that seemed broken to me. We were already getting started to do another round of upgrades and iterations. At that point, I decided to leave. But I couldn't let go of this feeling that we shouldn't have had to spend so many years solving a problem only for it not to be solved. And based on research and conversations, it was clear that this was an industry-wide phenomena. And so I went about trying to figure out why that happens and then how we can solve it, and that's how Klotho came about. VICTORIA: That's so interesting. And I've certainly been a part of similar situations where you spend so much time solving a big problem and infrastructure only to get to the end of it and realize now you have a whole nother set of problems. [laughs] And you get upgrade. And they've also invented new ways of doing things in the cloud that you want to be able to take advantage of. So you had that time with Riot Games and League of Legends and building this globally responsive infrastructure. What lessons learned did you take from that into building Klotho and building your product, Infrastructure Copilot? AARON: We learned a bunch of things. One of the more difficult problems to solve isn't technical at all; it's organizational and understanding how the organization flows and how the different teams interact with each other. So we really endeavor to solve that problem. I mean, our product is a technical product, but it is meant to help bridge that gulf and make that problem a little bit easier as well. Otherwise, yeah, exactly to your point, part of the problem with these migrations is that new technology comes along. And there's definitely a feeling of when you hire new developers, they are excited about the new thing, and there's other reasons as well. But you get this kind of natural, eternal migration going to the newer technology. VICTORIA: That makes sense. And you bring up a great point on some of the issues, not being technical but organizational. And when I look at a lot of infrastructure-as-code tools, when we get to security, I wonder how it fits in with the organizational requirements for security, right? Like, you have to have defined groups who have defined access to different levels and have the tools in place to be able to manage identities in your organization. So I'm curious how that fits into what you built with Klotho and the Infrastructure Copilot. ALA: The way we think about infrastructure is as a set of intents or things that developers, and operators, cloud engineers, infrastructure engineers are trying to satisfy or to do. So you have tasks. You're trying to build a solution. You're trying to build an architecture or add something to it. And organizations have constraints, whether it's their own Terraform, or their own ruleset, or security expectations, or compliance expectations. And the way we look at this dynamic is those rules are encoded in a way that Klotho, which is a cloud compiler, it has the ability to reason about both the application and the infrastructure-as-code and enforce or at least warn about mismatches between the constraints that the organization sets, and what the developer or operator are trying to do, or the intent that is being described high level or low level within the tools. And then that is reflected both visually and in code and in the infrastructure-as-code, one or more. And so it's very much rooted in how the entire set of technologies and product and tools are designed. VICTORIA: Got it. So do you see the tool will be more fit for the market of larger development shops who maybe have existing infrastructure but want to experiment with a different way of managing it for their developers? ALA: It depends. So because we went about solving the problem rather than just building a specific vertical or a specific stack piece, we try to only play in this space of intelligent editing and intelligent understanding of the alignment between infrastructure and code. And so you could, as a developer, effectively with Klotho, write a plain application and have it be running in the cloud without knowing anything in the underlying cloud systems. It will set up storage, and persistence, and security, and secrets. All those elements are easily accessible within the code itself. It can also work in the context of a company where the infrastructure or platform team have set those rules and guidance within the tools. And then, developers can continue working the way they expect to work, either in code or in the infrastructure-as-code layer. And it would still allow them to do the same intents that they want only within that sandbox. Or if they can't be satisfied because they're trying to do something that isn't allowed, they have a mechanism of, one, knowing that but also asking, in our case, InfraCopilot to help it reshape what it's doing, what they're doing into the sandbox and the trade-offs that that brings in. VICTORIA: Got it. So you can both start from scratch and start a brand new application using it, or you can integrate it with your existing rules and systems and everything that already exists. ALA: Exactly. VICTORIA: Gotcha. Yeah, I think one interesting thing we've found with very new founders who are building their application for the first time is that there are some essential things, like, they don't even have an identity store like a Google [laughs] or Microsoft Azure Directory. So starting to work in the cloud, there are some basic elements you have to set up first that's a little bit of a barrier. So it sounds like what you're saying with Klotho is that you wouldn't necessarily have those same issues. Or how would you get that initial, like, cloud accounts set up? AARON: Yeah. So, for the situation where you're bootstrapping everything from scratch, you've done nothing; we haven't invested much in setting up the initial accounts. But assuming you get to the point where you have AWS credentials, and you're able to hit the AWS API using the CLI, that's sort of where we can take over. So, yeah, like, I would say right now, as a business, it's definitely where the value is coming is going to be these mid-sized companies. But for that scenario specifically, bootstrapping and starting something from scratch, if you have that initial setup in place, it's one of the fastest ways to go from a concept to something running in the cloud. ALA: And if you think about the two tools that we're building, there's Klotho, which InfraCopilot...or the Klotho engine, which Klotho the CLI tool uses and InfraCopilot uses. The Klotho engine is responsible for the intelligence. It knows how to translate things like I want a web API that talks to DynamoDB. And it will literally create everything or modify everything that is needed to give you that and plug in your code. You can also say things in a much higher level degree, which things like I want a lambda which handles 10,000 users. And I want it to be lowest latency talking to an RDS Instance or to a Postgres database. And what that would do is, in our side, in the Klotho engine, we understand that there needs to be a VPC and subnets, and spin up RDS, and connect an RDS proxy. Because for connection pooling with lambda specifically, you need one to scale to that degree of scale. And so that is the intelligence that is built into the Klotho engine if you want to start from the infrastructure. If you want to start from code, all you have to do is bring in the Redis instance, the Redis SDK, and, let's say, your favorite web framework, and just add the annotations or the metadata that says, I want this web framework to be exposed to the internet, and I want this Redis to be persisted in the cloud. And you run Klotho. And what comes out the other end is the cloud version that does that for you. And it's one command away from getting it to run. VICTORIA: So that's interesting how the two tools work together and how a developer might be able to get things spun up quickly on the cloud without having to know the details of each particular AWS service. And reading through your docs, it sounds like once you have something working in the cloud, then you'll also get automated recommendations on how to improve it for cost and reliability. Is that right? ALA: That's where we're headed. VICTORIA: Gotcha. I'm curious; for Aaron, it sounds like there is more in that organizational challenges that you alluded to earlier. So you want to be able to deliver this capability to developers. But what barriers have you found organizationally to getting this done? AARON: So I'm going to speak specifically on infrastructure here because I think this is one of the biggest ones we've seen. But typically, when you get to a larger-sized company, we'll call it a mid-sized company with, you know, a couple hundred engineers or more, you get to the point where it doesn't make sense for every team to own their entire vertical. And so you want to really put the cloud knowledge into a central team. And so you tend to build either a platform team, or an infrastructure team, or a cloud team who sort of owns how cloud resources are provisioned, which ones they support, et cetera. And so, really, some of the friction I'm talking about is the friction between that team and developer teams who really just want to write their application and get going quickly. But you don't have to fall within the boundaries set by that central team. To give, like, a real concrete example of that, if you wanted to prototype a new technology, like, let's say that some new database technology came out and you wanted to use it, it's a very coordinated effort between both teams in terms of the roadmap. Like, the infrastructure team needs to get on that roadmap, that they need to make a sandbox and how that's going to work. The code team needs to make an application to test it. And the whole thing requires a lot more communication than just tech. VICTORIA: Yeah, no, I've been part of kind of one of those classic DevOps problems. It's where now you've built the ops team and the dev team, [laughs] and now you're back to those coordination issues that you had before. So, if I were a dev using Klotho or the infrastructure-as-code copilot, I would theoretically have access to any AWS sandbox account. And I could just spin up whatever I wanted [laughs] within the limits that could be defined by your security team or by your, you know, I'm sure there's someone who's setting a limit on the size of databases you could spin up for fun. Does that sound right? AARON: Yeah, that's totally right. And in addition to just limits, it's also policies. So a good example is maybe in production for databases, you have a data retention policy. And you have something like we need to keep three months of backups for this amount of time. We want to make sure that if someone spins up a production database from any of those app teams, that they will follow their company policy there and not accidentally, like, lose data where it has to be maintained for some reason. ALA: That's an important distinction where we have our own set of, you know, best practice or rules that are followed roughly in the industry. But also, the key here is that the infrastructure central teams in every company can describe the different rulesets and guidelines, guardrails within the company on what developers can do, not only in low-level descriptions like instance sizes or how much something is, whether it's Spot Instances always or not in production versus dev. But also be able to teach the system when a developer says, "I want a database," spin up a Postgres database with this configuration that is wired to the larger application that they have. Or, if I want to run a service, then it spins up the correct elements and configures them to work, let's say, Kubernetes pods, or lambdas, or a combination based on what the company has described as the right way for that company to do things. And so it gives flexibility to not know the specific details but still get the company's specific way of doing them. And the key here is that we're trying to codify the communication patterns that do happen, and they need to happen if there's no tools to facilitate it between the infrastructure platform team and the feature teams. Only in this case, we try and capture that in a way that the central teams can define it. And the developers on feature teams can consume it without having as much friction. VICTORIA: So that will be different than, like, an infrastructure team that's putting out everything in Terraform and doing pull requests based off GitHub repository to that. It makes it a little more easier to read, and understand, and share the updates and changes. AARON: Right. And also, I mean, so, like, the thing you're describing of, like, the central team, having Terraform tends to be, like, these golden templates. Like they say, "If you want to make a database, here's your database template." And then you get a lot of interesting issues like drift, where maybe some teams are using the old versions of the templates, and they're not picking up the new changes. And how do you kind of reconcile all that? So it is meant to help with all of those things. VICTORIA: That makes a lot of sense. And I'm curious, what questions came up in the customer discovery process for this product that surprised you? ALA: I think there's one...I don't know that it was a question, but I think there was...So, when we started with Klotho, Klotho has the ability to enable a code-first approach, which means that you give the tool to developers as the infrastructure or platform team, or if you're a smaller shop, then you can just use Klotho directly. You set the rules on what's allowed or what's not allowed, and then developers can work very freely. They can describe very succinctly how to turn a plain object, SDK, et cetera, how to build larger architectures very quickly with a few annotations that we describe and that give cloud powers. We had always thought that some teams will feel that this encroaches on their jobs. We've heard from people on infra, you know, platform teams, "This is amazing. But this is my job." And so, one of our hypotheses was that we are encroaching into what they see as their responsibility. And we built more and more mechanisms that would clean up that interface and give them the ability to control more so they can free themselves up, just like most automations that happen in the world, to do more things. What happened later surprised us. And by having a few or several more discoveries, we found out that the feeling isn't a fear of the tool replacing their job. The fear or worry is that the tool will make their jobs boring, what is left of the job be boring, and nobody wants to go to work and not have cool and fun things to do. And because I think we all, on a certain degree, believe that, you know, if we take away some of the work that we're doing, we'll find something higher level and harder to solve, but until that exists in people's minds, there's nothing there. And therefore, they're left with whatever they don't want to do or didn't want to do. And so that's where we tried to take a step back from all the intelligence the Klotho engine provides through that code-first Klotho. And we built out focusing on one of the pillars in the tech to create InfraCopilot, which helps with keeping or making the things that we already do much simpler but also in a way that maintains and does it in a fun way. VICTORIA: That makes sense because my understanding of where to use AI and where to use machine learning for best purposes is to automate those, like, repetitive, boring tasks and allow people to focus on the creative and more interesting work, right? ALA: Yes and no. The interesting bit about our approach to ML is that we don't actually use machine learning or ChatGPT for any of the intelligence layers, meaning we don't ask ChatGPT to generate Terraform or any kind of GPT model to analyze a certain aspect of the infrastructure. That is all deterministic and happens in the Klotho engine. That is the uniqueness of why this always works rather than if GPT happened to get it right. What we use ML for is the ability to parse the intent. So we actually use it as a language model to parse the intent from what the user is trying to convey, meaning I want a lambda with an API gateway. What we get back from our use of ML is the user has asked for a lambda, an AWS lambda, and API gateway and that they be connected. That is the only thing we get back. And that is fed into the Klotho engine. And then, we do the intelligence to translate that to an actual architecture. VICTORIA: That's a really cool way to use natural language processing to build cloud infrastructure. MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you're tight on time and investment, which is why we've created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product's next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. VICTORIA: I'm curious; you said you're already working on some issues about being able to suggest improvements for cost reduction and efficiencies. What else is on your roadmap for what's coming up next? AARON: So there's a bunch of things in the long-term roadmap. And I'll say that, like, in the short term, it's much more about just expanding the breadth of what we support. If you think about just generating all the different permutations and types of infrastructure, it's, like, a huge matrix problem. Like, there's many, many dimensions that you could go in. And if you add an extra cloud or you add an extra capability, it expands everything. So you can imagine, like, testing it to make sure things work, and everything becomes very complicated. So, really, a lot of what we're doing is still foundational and trying to just increase the breadth, make the intent processing more intelligent, make the other bits work. And then one of the areas right now is for our initial release of the product; we chose to use Discord as our interface for the chatbot. And the reason for that is because it gives us a lot of benefits of having sort of the community built in and the engagement built in where we can actually talk with users and try and understand what they're doing. However, we really have a lot of UI changes and expansions that we'd like to do. And even from some of our early demo material, we have things like being able to right-click and being able to configure your lambda directly from the UI. So there's a lot of areas there that we can expand into an intent, too, once we get sort of the foundational stuff done, as an example. The intelligence bit is a much bigger process, like, there's a lot of things to unpack there. So I won't talk about it too much. But if we were to just talk about the most simple things, it'd be setting up alerts somehow and then feeding into our system that, like, we're hitting those alerts, and we have to make modifications. A good example of that would be, like, configuring auto scaling on an instance for [inaudible 22:17]. So we can get some of those benefits now. The bigger vision of what we want to do with optimization requires a lot more exploration and also the ability to look at what's happening to your application while it's running in the cloud. ALA: Let me maybe shed a bit more light on the problems we're trying to solve and where we're headed. When it comes to optimization, to truly optimize a cloud application, you have to reason about it on the application level rather than on the one service level. To do that, we have to be able to look at the application as an application. And today, there's a multi-repo approach to building cloud applications. So one of the future work that we're going to do is be able to reason about existing infrastructure-as-code from different portions of the teams or organization or even multiple services that the same team works and link them together. So, when we look at reasoning about an architecture, it is within the entire context of the application rather than just the smaller bits and pieces. That's one layer. Another layer is being able to ingest the real runtime application metrics and infrastructure metrics, let's say, from AWS or Azure into the optimizer system to be able to not only say, oh well, I want low latency. Then this is hard-coded to use a Fargate instance instead of a lambda. But more realistically, being able to see what that means in lambda world and maybe increase the concurrency count. Because we know that within the confines of cost limitations or constraints that the company wants to have, it is more feasible and cost-effective to raise the minimum concurrency rate of that lambda instead of using Fargate. You can only do that by having real-time data, or aggregated data come from the performance characteristics of the applications. And so that's another layer that we're going to be focusing on. The third one is, just like Aaron said, being able to approach that editing experience and operational experience, not just through one system like InfraCopilot but also through a web UI, or an app, or even as an extension to other systems that want to integrate with Klotho's engine. The last thing that I think is key is that we're still holding on to the vision that infrastructure should be invisible to most developers. Infrastructure definition is similar to how we approach assembly code. It's the bits and pieces. It's the underlying components, the CPUs, the storage. And as long as we're building microservices in that level of fidelity, of like, thinking about the wiring and how things interconnect, then we're not going to get the gains of 10x productivity building cloud applications. We have to enable developers and operators to work on a higher abstraction. And so our end game, where we're headed, is still what we want to build with Klotho, which is the ability to write code and have it be translated into what's allowed in the infrastructure within the constraints of the underlying platforms that infrastructure or platform teams set for the rest of the organization. It can be one set or multiple sets, but it's still that type of developers develop, and the infrastructure teams set them up to be able to develop, and there's separation. VICTORIA: Those are all really interesting problems to be solving. I also saw on your roadmap that you have published on Klotho that you're thinking of open-sourcing Klotho on GitHub. AARON: So, at this point, we already have the core engine of Klotho open-sourced, so the same engine that's powering InfraCopilot and Klotho, the tool itself is open source today. So, if anyone wants to take a look, it is on github.com/klothoplatform/klotho. VICTORIA: Super interesting. And it sounds like you mentioned you have a Discord. So that's where you're also getting feedback from developers on how to do this. And I think that challenge you mentioned about creating abstractions so that developers don't have to worry as much about the infrastructure and platform teams can just enable them to get their work done; I'm curious what you think is the biggest challenge with that. It seems like a problem that a lot of companies are trying to solve. So, what's the biggest challenge? And I think what do you think is unique about Klotho and solving that challenge? AARON: I guess what I would say the biggest challenge today is that every company is different enough that they all saw this in a slightly different way. So it's like, right now, the tools that are available are the building blocks to make the solution but not the solution itself. So, like, every cloud team approaches it on, let's build our own platform. We're building our own platform that every one of our developers is going to use. In some cases, we're building, like, frameworks and SDKs that everyone's going to use. But then the problem is that you're effectively saying my company is entering the platform management business. And there's no way the economies of scale will make sense forever in that world. So I think that's the biggest issue. And I think the reason it hasn't been solved is it's just a very hard problem. There's many approaches, but there's not a clear solution that kind of brings it all together. And I think our product is positioned better than most to solve some of the higher-level abstractions. It still doesn't solve the whole problem. There's still some things that are going to be tricky. But the idea is, if you can get to the point where you're using some of our abstractions, then you've guaranteed yourself portability into the future, like, your architecture will be able to evolve, even in technologies that don't exist yet once they become available. ALA: To tack on to what Aaron said, a key difference, and to our knowledge, this doesn't exist in any other tool or technology, is a fundamentally new architecture we call adaptive architecture. It is not microservices. It is not monoliths. It's a superset that combines all the benefits from monoliths, microservices, and serverless if you consider it a different platform or paradigm. What that means is that you get the benefits without the drawbacks. And the reason we can do it is because of the compiler approach that we're taking, where everything in the architecture that we produce is interchangeable. The team has decided to use Kubernetes, a specific version of Kubernetes with Istio. That works great. And, a year later, it turns out that that choice no longer scales well for the use. And we need to use Linkerd. The problem in today's world and what companies have to do is retrofit everything and not only the technology itself, but it's the ripple effects of changing it into everything else that all the other choices that were made that depended on it. In the Klotho world, because of the compilation step or the compilation approach and its extensibility, you could say, I want to take out Istio and replace it with Linkerd. And it would percolate all the changes that need to happen everywhere for that to maintain its semantic behavior. To our knowledge, that doesn't exist anywhere today. VICTORIA: So it would do, maybe not, like, would do migrations for you as well? ALA: I think migrations are a special case. When it comes to stateless things, yes. When it comes to data, we are much more conservative. Again, bringing what we've learned in different companies in, a lot of solutions try to solve all the things versus we're trying to play in a very specific niche, which is the adaptive architecture of it all. But if you want to move data, there's fantastic tools for it, and we will guide you through getting the access to the actual underlying services and, say, great, write a migration system, or we can generate for you. But you will run it to move the data from, let's say, Postgres to MySQL or from being able to drain a unit on Kubernetes to a lambda. Some of those things are much more automatic. And the transition happened through the underlying technologies like Terraform or Pulumi. Others will require you to take a step, not because we can't do it for you but we want to be conservative with the choices. AARON: I would also add that another aspect of this is that we don't position ourselves as being the center of the universe for these teams. Like a lot of products, you kind of have to adopt the platform, and everything has to plug into it, and if you don't adhere, it doesn't work. We're trying very, very hard with our design to make it so that existing apps will continue to function like they've always functioned. If app developers want to continue using direct SDKs and managing config themselves, they can absolutely do that. And then they'll interact well with Klotho apps that are also in that same company. So we're trying to make it so that you can adopt incrementally without having to go all in. VICTORIA: So that makes a lot of sense. So it's really helpful if you're trying to swap out those stateless parts of your infrastructure and you want to make some changes there. And then, if you were going to do a data migration, it would help you and guide you to where additional tools might be needed to do that. And at your market segment, you're really focusing on having it be an additional tool, as opposed to, like, an all-encompassing platform. Did I get it all right? [crosstalk 31:07] ALA: Exactly. VICTORIA: [laughs] Cool. All right. Well, that's exciting. That's a lot of cool things that you all are working on. I'm curious how overall the workload is for you two. How big of a team do you have so far? How are you balancing out this work of creating something new and exciting that has such a broad potential scope? AARON: Yeah. So, right now, the team is currently six people. So it's Ala and I, plus four additional engineers is the current team. And in terms of, like, where we're focusing, the real answer is that it's somewhat reactive, and it's very fast. So, like, it could be, like...in fact, Copilot went from ideation to us acting on it extremely quickly. And it wasn't even in the pipeline before that. So I'd actually say the biggest challenge has been where do we sort of focus our energy to get the best results? And a lot of where we spend our time is sort of meta-process of, like, making sure we're investing in the right things. ALA: And I think that comes from both Aaron and I have been in the industry for over 15 years. We don't, you know, drop everything and now switch to something new. We're very both tactical and strategic with the pace and when we pivot. But the idea is when we decide to change and focus on something that we think will be higher value, and it's almost always rooted in the signals and hypotheses that we set out to kind of learn from, from every iteration that we go after. We are not the type that would say, "Oh, we saw this. Let's drop everything, and let's go do it." I think we've seen enough in the industry that there's a measure of knowing when to switch, and when to refocus, and what to do when these higher tidbits come, and then being able to execute aggressively when that choice or decision happens. VICTORIA: Are there any trends that you're watching right now that the outcome would influence a change in direction for you? ALA: Not technically. I think what we're seeing in the industry is there's no real approaches to solving the problem. I would say most of the solutions and trends that we're seeing are...I call them streamlined complexity. We choose a set of technologies, and we make that easy. We make the SaaS version, and it can do these workloads, and it makes that easy. But the minute you step out of the comfort zone of those tools, you're back into the nightmare that building distributed systems brings with it, and then you're back to, you know, square one. What we're trying to do is fundamentally solve the problem. And we haven't seen many at least make a lot of headway there. We are seeing a few of the startups that are starting to think in the same vein, which is the zeitgeist. And that's fantastic. We actually work with them closely to try and broaden the category. VICTORIA: Right. Do you feel that other companies who are working in a similar problem space that there is...is it competitive between each other? Or do you think it's actually more collaborative? ALA: It depends on the companies and what they're trying to achieve. Every set of companies have different incentives. So Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have, you know, are incentivized to keep you on their clouds. They may care less about what they have in there as long as you are happy to stay. So you'll see more open source being adopted. You will see Amazon trying to copy or operationalize a lot of open-source tools. Microsoft will give their...because they are working with larger companies to have more vertical solutions. Google is trying to catch up. If you look at startups, you will see some focus more on developers. You'll see others focus on infra team. So it really depends on the intersection of the companies, and then they either collaborate or they compete, depending on how it affects their strategy. In our case, we recognize that our competition is the incumbents and the current way of doing things. And so we are happy to collaborate with all the startups that are doing something in the vicinity of what we're doing, startups like Ampt, and Encore, and Winglang. And there's several others. We have our own Slack channel where we talk about, like, where we're headed or at least what we can do to support one another. VICTORIA: Great. And I wonder if that's part of your business decision to open source your product as well or if there are other factors involved. ALA: I think the biggest factor that we've seen, realistically, is the expectation in the developer community to have a core that is open source, not even the source available model but to have an open-source core that they can rely on always existing and referencing when, you know if the company disappears or Oracle buys them. And so I would say that that was the biggest determining factor in the end to open-sourcing the Klotho engine. It's a very pragmatic view. VICTORIA: That makes sense. Well, I wanted to make sure we had time to ask one of my favorite questions that I ask on the podcast, and you can both answer. But if you could go back in time to when you first started this project, what advice would you give yourself? ALA: I guess the advice that I would give is keep selling and start selling as early as you can, even before the vision is realized. Or let's say you're making kind of headway towards what you'll wind up sharing and giving companies, the lead time to creating the opportunities and the belief and the faith that you can solve problems for companies, and the entire machinery of doing that is a lot more complex than most founders, I think, or at least first-time founders or, honestly, myself have found it to be. AARON: Yeah. If I try and answer that same question, it's very challenging. I guess my perspective now is there's nothing I could tell myself that would make me go any faster because a lot of it really is the journey. Like, the amount of stuff that we've learned in the last year of working on this and exploring and talking with people and everything else has been so vast that there's nothing I can communicate to past me that would prepare me any better. So [laughs] I think I would try just my best to be encouraging to just stick with it. VICTORIA: Well, that's good. And who knows what you're going to learn in the next year that [laughs] probably might not help you in the past either? That's wonderful. Do you have any final takeaways for our listeners today or anything you'd like to promote? ALA: So, from my lens, I've always wanted to do a startup but felt that the life setting wasn't quite ready. And a lot of the startup culture is talking about younger, earlier founders. I think having had the industry experience and understanding both the organizational and technical challenges, knowing more people, and engineers, and founders, potential founders, has been vastly more helpful than what I would have been able to pull off ten years ago. So, if you are thinking maybe it's too late, it is not. It's probably easier in some regards now. And yeah, check out InfraCopilot. It's on infracopilot.io. We would love to have you try it out and go on this journey with us. AARON: Yeah, I would definitely echo that. I mean, sort of the same thing on the journey. Like, it's never too late to start. And yeah, like, I would say being in the industry and actually seeing these problems first-hand makes it so much more fulfilling to actually try and solve them. VICTORIA: That's [inaudible 38:15]. I'm excited to see what you all accomplish. And I appreciate you coming on the show. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you could find me on Twitter @victori_ousg or on Mastodon @vguido@thoughtbot.social. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guests: Aaron Torres and Ala Shiban.

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QWeek 1 is in the books for the LCS and we are here to discuss all the surprises as well as our over reactions!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show

Join our discord:https://discord.gg/dmFdVEZW3QFinally the LCS is back!  In this episode we talk about the resolutions between Riot and the LCSPA as well as what teams we think will make it into Worlds this year!Get the Podcast:https://pod.link/theallinpodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/c/theallinpodcastSupport the show