The Reality of Working, Big Tech, in the Pacific Islands.
How Auckland Is a Scale-Model of Pacific Challenges and AWS Summit Started Everything.
Talofa reader,
It’s been a busy several days, so apologies for the late edition.
Last week, I looked at the state of the Pasifika community in terms of the picture painted by the latest census data. I also examined a specific "solution" to one of those problems, considering possible second and third-order effects that could lead to positive outcomes for my community.
I was viewing these topics from a third-person perspective, standing outside and observing both aspects. This made me think about how these subjects come together in the present context which intersects quite conveniently with the role I currently hold in the Pacific Islands for a big tech company.
(I thought a series of questions would organise my train of thought better, hence the following interview of myself 😂 — enjoy.)
What Is My Role and How Does It Look at the Pasifika and Tech Issue?
My role is as an AWS Partner Solution Architect for the Pacific Islands. In a nutshell, that means I meet with public and private sector organisations in the Pacific, listen to the challenges they're facing, and try to figure out the best solution for them using the leading cloud technology available today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) 😉.
Disclaimer: all views here are my own and not of my employer.
At the organisational level, it's similar to most other corporations and government departments you might find in Australia or New Zealand. They run stuff on-premises, and they're trying to understand this cloud thing and leverage the technology to grow their business or serve their citizens better.
Other than the obvious fact that the Pacific Islands are not Australia or New Zealand, the infrastructure and resources are pretty much what you would expect from a reality where the GDP of the largest Pacific Island nation is 10% of New Zealand's and 1.9% of Australia's.
So, we have an economic factor... and a tech solution.
Again - like last week, just as a tech career isn't suddenly going to make all Pasifika problems disappear, neither is getting everyone and their government department on the cloud going to make economic and geopolitical issues vanish for the Pacific. However, in my opinion, it'll definitely help.
What’s It Like Working in the Pacific?
I’m going to skip right over the images of holidaying in hotels, sunshine, beaches etc cos that’s not really that interesting, imo.
One thing that's struck me taking on this role and looking at the landscape in the Pacific - and I've said this to a few people now - it makes me think of a large scale model of the same issues and challenges we have right here in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). A few examples are:
In the Pacific, the internet is often unreliable, slow and data plans are expensive in fact "The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and countries within Micronesia pay the highest prices globally per gigabyte of internet." - ‘Smart Islands Initiative: An affordable, accessible digital future for Pacific communities’.
In Tāmaki Makaurau the Pasifika community often can't afford devices and internet connections and "1 in 5 of Pacific peoples between the ages of 16 and 65 may use some technology but have no computer experience, have not passed a simple computer-use assessment, or they decline to use a computer."
The NZ Digital Government report on digital inclusion for Pacific peoples discusses the concerns surrounding the increasing number of services moving online. This shift compounds the issue of poor access to devices and the internet, making digital banking, job applications, and class enrolment even more challenging. In PNG, I saw lines stretching around the block for people to use ATMs and see bank tellers to manage their finances. These individuals carried several forms of ID to complete their banking transactions.
So How Are You & Big Tech Going to Help?
What's interesting is that another similarity between the local Pasifika community experience and that of the Pacific Island nations emerged during my visits. After leaving several very positive customer meetings in the Islands, the locals would say goodbye to me and my team as if they would never see us again, as if our visit was a one-time, Big Tech "tick the box" event, after which we'd be gone. This reminds me of the experiences in our communities here at home, where I hear of big companies coming in, making big promises, struggling to figure things out, failing to deliver, and then never returning. I don't blame our communities for expecting the same from all these big companies.
We had to convince our customers that we would be coming back, and we did. I don't have another "patch" to look after; I am a Solution Architect for the Pacific Islands - not NZ and the Pacific, or ANZ - just the Pacific Islands.
I know how some people feel about Big Tech, and everyone is welcome to navigate their life according to their values and beliefs. If you've figured out how to do good in this world in your own way, more power to you. I remember as a contractor, attending the AWS Summit in Auckland in 2017, and seeing all the swanky tech crowd in their "smart casuals", lanyards swaangin’, listening to speaker after speaker talking about free tiers and credits. I thought to myself, "Wow, all those free credits for all this cloud technology are going…. to these well-paid people?!" Not gonna lie, it pissed me off.
I remember thinking, "How do I route these free tiers, these credits, these how-tos, and this free knowledge of how to work in tech or build your own tech, to sell that tech, and get ahead to help my community?"
Well, "Big Tech" hired that guy—the one who got irritated by all the "haves" at the AWS Summit in Auckland and plotted how to get this tech to where it could help the most. Now he's part of a team dedicated to figuring out how to help folks in the Pacific Islands learn, upskill, navigate, and solve challenges with that same tech.
It’s time for my “I’m not naive enough to think…” moment: I’m not naive enough to think there’s nothing in this for Big Tech and that they’re saints - no, it’s still a business - but as long as they’re holding up their end of the bargain I’m going to go ahead and help the Pacific get at all this cloud technology.
Stay tuned I guess.
Thanks for reading. I'll see you in the next episode.
Learning
Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…
Studying for the ‘AWS Certified Security - Speciality’ certificate - S3 Bucket Policies now.
Building
Things I’m building or working on this week…
S3 Archive Solution with Lifecycle Policies, using CDK and golang - Random project cos I wanted to learn more CDK.
I’m creating a Cyber Security CTF for a High School after school programme that my charity ‘Pasifika Tech Education Charity‘ runs during the school term. -Completed this, trying it out this week.Work through a fewWell-Architected Labs— I did not do this last week.
Interesting Reads
Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…
‘Fooled’ - Seth Godin.
Gain Respect by Giving it - Tom Peters.
Community
Other projects in community I’m working on…
Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community.
Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners.