Episode 18 - Digital Operations Manager

Today we have Darell DeMakes, a Digital Operations Manager

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, welcome to the careers4kids podcast where kids learn careers.

(00:08):
This is Maxwell Valencia.
And this is Henry Morrison.
And today we have Darryl Linux, a digital operations manager.
Hello, Mr. E.
Hey, how are you guys doing?
Doing good.
Thank you for spending your time with me on careers for kids.
We are weeping.
But we hope you have a great day.
Let's get started.

(00:29):
Tell us what you currently do.
So I manage all the digital touch points in the town of Westport that you job see.
This is in Westport.
So things like the website, our social media strategy and tactics.
And right now I'm working on rolling out a platform for people to create permits to work in town.

(00:56):
It's a lot of working with people and business processes and working with technology to help them.
And working to understand what it is that we want to do for the people who live in town.

(01:17):
And a way that makes it easier for them and for the staff of the town.
And essentially using technology where it makes sense.
Sometimes technology is cool and it's interesting.
But it doesn't necessarily always do the right thing for what people want the end goal to be.

(01:42):
So it's really important to think about what it is that you want the technology to do.
So that you know that you achieve the goal in the end when you build whatever it is.
And you roll it out and people use it.
And it actually does something in a way that is either more efficient or better or more costly.

(02:06):
Or a great combination.
Wow.
So tell us more about your career and how you got into this position.
So I started in television. I started as a producer on a show called America's Most Wanted back in the day.
When I was on that show as a producer, the show was responsible for the capture of 11 of the FBI's 10 most wanted.

(02:31):
So we were capturing people who were wanted around the world sometimes.
And it was a really great environment.
It was my first job out of college. I went to school at the University of Florida.
And I learned everything from writing to editing to shooting.

(02:57):
And then post production.
And in post production, which is editing and sound effects and graphics and all that sort of stuff,
I learned a lot about how computers were going to start to become more the way that we did things.
When I started, there weren't computer editing systems.

(03:20):
And so, believe it or not, we would edit on tape.
And there were computers controlling tape machines.
You didn't tape the tape and then adjust it and then digitize it and edit. It was very much tape to tape.
And digital editing came in.
And I sort of found that there was going to be something coming, this internet thing that was sort of cocculating but not really real yet.

(03:49):
And I thought, this is all going to be coming to your desktop, to your laptop.
And 20, 30 years later, that was true.
So it wasn't like I knew that the internet was coming or anything like that.
I just thought, there is something. I just had to stay looking toward it.
And so, my next job after Mixer responded, I was working as a producer for a PR company.

(04:17):
And that's when the internet really started.
And I started to put video online.
And at the time, it was really not a great experience.
But if you were learning about how to optimize video for streaming and how to optimize it for different screen sizes and things like that.
So that was a really big part of the learning curve.

(04:41):
And after that, I went and started working for television brands but in the digital side.
So not so much working on programs or television shows but on the stuff that was secondary to it.
So I worked at J&E and the History Channel on building apps for, at first it was, building them for cable boxes.

(05:09):
And that, again, was sort of like an experiment because cable boxes didn't really have a lot of memory.
So you couldn't really do a lot of them.
And the internet was really fast becoming the way it was going.
And so we realized that we had to kind of pivot over to this new technology and to really start building apps for digital and then the iPhone.

(05:35):
And so we realized, well, now we have the build apps for the iPhone.
So I started building them for the iPhone.
And then my next job was at WWB, Arnold Schwarzenegger Entertainment.
And I built an app for them that was for their shows during the week.
And it was like if you were to watch the show on your phone, you would see stuff in between during the commercial break.

(06:03):
So like if someone was, you know, jumped out of the ring and then on TV it went to a commercial,
then on your phone see them, like what happened.
Go in and follow the guy to the dressing room, throw a chair, that sort of stuff.
So it's a way to kind of think about and test and it was sort of a laboratory of sorts to figure out, you know,

(06:30):
were people interested in the devices on their phone?
Were they watching from their 10 foot experience couch?
Or were they watching both?
We didn't really know at the time.
You know, people were trying to, not that people were trying to figure it out.
People were just doing stuff.
We were trying to figure out what people were doing.
And so that was a great learning experience for me there.

(06:53):
I also built a game for John Cena called John Cena Raceway.
That was a racing game on mobile.
It was really fun and I also built the main WWE app for Xbox.
So working on different platforms, again going back to that topic though,

(07:14):
begin with the end in mind.
What is it that people want when they're on their mobile device?
What is it that they want when they're on their gaming device?
What is it that they want when they're on their 10 foot device?
Their television.
And how are they going to use it?
And what's the length of time they're going to be using it?
And are they going to want to interact with it or just be passive and let it pour over them?

(07:37):
So those were all things we were learning as the technology started becoming more and more powerful
and more and more capable of delivering video and interactive content.
And then from there I went to Disney and started doing Disney comic books.
And we developed the capability of being able to read a comic book on a small screen

(08:04):
which is by using flash technology, a layer of technology on internet material.
And it's kind of not really a thing anymore.
Back in the day it was a way to manipulate content and so it would auto play and take you from area to area.

(08:31):
You guys know comic books aren't like reading a book.
The bubbles are all over the place and the action takes place in different and your eyes scan the page in different ways.
So we were able to create this kind of camera movement on top of the comics that you would essentially play comic books for.

(08:54):
And then that technology got brought by Comicology.
And then I moved on to here at the town of Westport.
And that brings you to where we are today which is website, social media and harmony.

(09:15):
Yeah, back to where you felt something was coming.
That was definitely a good choice to keep on that part because now everybody has a laptop or a phone or some sort of thing.
Even I'm right here working on some thin laptop. It's crazy.
Yeah, exactly. You guys are exactly who you were thinking was going to be doing the stuff that we thought would happen.

(09:43):
We just didn't know your name.
What part of your job do you enjoy the most and what do you like the most?
I like solving problems. I like it and I can use chat GBT for a lot of things.
I'm using it a lot, a lot, a lot for myself.

(10:07):
For sort of mundane things, I find it fantastic to be able to say like, I've got the string in this column.
Can you take it apart and put it in two columns? And it gives me a formula.
And it's crazy how you can do things so quickly and intelligently just by really brief prompts.

(10:30):
I have been experimenting with it in other areas, with other prompts.
And prompt building is very fascinating to me because it's very interesting to see the different responses you get by building your prompts differently.
And maybe for your audience, those that don't understand what I'm talking about, prompts are what you ask or say to chat GBT or any AI large language model to elicit a response.

(10:58):
And the way you input the information or the kind of questions you ask will change the feedback.
And it's just fascinating to tell it things like a persona.
Chat GBT, you are a Fortune 100 marketing manager.

(11:19):
You need to think of a way to make this newsletter title sound official, but interesting and fun.
So, you know, things like that. That's a small example.
But I have contacts in the industry that are doing some incredible things with visual images and video, audio that is just mind blowing.

(11:47):
And by giving it information like lens sizing and the amount of light, the aperture of the camera and all those things that you can imagine it would know, but it does.
And then it's out something that is just like crazy.
It's like having an entire picture film on your laptop.

(12:15):
I didn't even realize I could edit videos. I'm thinking of like what I use for photos and videos.
I mean, I just mess around with it. I'm serious.
But it's like, have you heard of Open Pilot on Microsoft?
No. Oh, pilot. Yeah, yeah.
So I was just I met someone who did a little bit of a seminar about it's a co-pilot.

(12:37):
So she said there's 20 different co-pilot products.
But they're built into all the various different Microsoft products.
And there's the one that's a version for when you are on the browser on Edge.

(13:03):
And then within that, there's a professional product which will allow you to ingest information from your business and then interact with it through AI.
So it's an interesting thing that they're doing.
They've got a real leg up with the fact that they have this relationship with chat.

(13:25):
Because they're really kind of meeting right now. That's not to say that they're the one and only. There's so many different editors right now.
So it's a very interesting space.
And if I had any unsolicited advice to any of your listeners, learn all you can about AI.
Learn all you can about prompt engineering because AI is going to be it's not going to take your job.

(13:53):
It might take some jobs, but it's not going to take your job. It's going to be your co-worker.
It's going to be you're going to be here with AI.
You're going to be to be like the RGPG essentially to work with on a daily basis and to utilize in a way that's going to be able to think of ways to do things differently.

(14:17):
Think of ways to be more efficient, think of ways to be more creative that we haven't really considered yet.
So I'm very excited by it.
I know there's a lot of pluses and minuses about the technology.
You know, there's banks and there's people doing things that they shouldn't be doing with it.

(14:40):
And that's going to happen.
But there's also good stuff that's going to happen too. That's really, you know, putting some parameters on it.
I don't think it's for everybody. I don't think, you know, necessarily, you know, people who are not knowledge workers are going to get a lot of benefit for.

(15:01):
But I think even they can too.
I think, you know, just being able to ask it about your car, how do I, you know, fix this thing in my suspension?
It's a 2022 Honda.
And it'll like tell you exactly what to do.

(15:23):
And you do have to be careful with it because I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but it can hallucinate.
Have you ever had a JET GPT spit out something that's totally wrong and you know, hey, JET GPT, that's wrong.
Well, yeah, Maxwell. We're a pretty small company and we haven't been around for that long.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.

(15:52):
And all these information up to a certain date.
Yeah, that's true.
It's getting closer to real time.
I think it's up to last year.
I think it's 2021, September.
You know, I think it's, I think it's, JET GPT 4.

(16:13):
I think the, if you have a
Yeah, 3.5 is what I said today.
Yeah.
I'm not paying.
Yeah, I'm paying just because I want to know, I want to keep experimenting.
I think that's part of my, when I look back and just talking with you guys about my experience, you know, I feel like I, there's two ways to look at it.

(16:40):
One is, a friend of mine used to call this the bright and shiny adapter.
And it's like, oh, look, there's something bright and shiny.
Let's go towards it.
And that's one way of looking at it. And that can be a deficit.
That can be, you take your eye off something and you're looking for the new fun, cool thing.
And you're not really, you know, I don't know, digging in to the thing that you maybe could or should be doing.

(17:07):
And I've experienced that.
I think we all do some degrees of that.
But I also feel like I like being in a position where I can give the best of my skill set to the people around me and also keep learning, keep growing, keep thinking about new things.

(17:30):
And that's just kind of who I am and what I like.
I like when I can figure out something that's fun for me.
So what's the dream job you had yourself doing in your career?
I really enjoyed my time at Disney.

(17:53):
When I was there, they moved from White Plains, New York to California.
This was Disney publishing.
And I really was thinking about moving, but I had two new kids and I didn't really think that I should move to California.
This didn't seem like the right move at the time.

(18:14):
And would love to continue to work with them.
And if I were to ever do, I would love to work in their Imagineering group.
To me, that would be my dream job.
You know the Imagineers, right? The guys and women that build the rides and the animatronics and all the other cool new stuff that they're doing.

(18:39):
I saw this really interesting product that they just developed there.
It's a floor that is made of little hexagons that are about the size of a golf ball.
They are underneath your feet and you can move.
So if you're in a VR meet, you can walk.

(19:06):
So you know how right now you're walking, like walking through a wall.
This allows you to actually literally walk in a run.
It takes you at the speed that you're running through the virtual reality environment.
That is cool.
It's in prototype now, so it's not a commercially available product.

(19:31):
It seems really cool. It seems like an answer to something that's been sort of a roadblock in the expansion of virtual reality is that rotation.
Say it again. Sorry.

(19:53):
Sorry, Maxwell. You're really low and I can't hear you.
I got you turned up all the way.
Oh, who were your main idols when you were young? Sorry about that.
No problem. My main idols were musicians.
I love music since I was a little kid.
I heard the Beatles Abbey Road album from my sister and I listened to it until there was no music left on it.

(20:24):
I just love what they were doing.
And it was an interesting thing because now I know after watching the documentary on Apple Plus that that album was really stuff that was left half done.
And so there's one side of the album that is a medley of a bunch of different songs that seems very carefully constructed and very interestingly interwoven as being so different.

(20:56):
Each of these songs are different. They have a little sense together and they're talking about different things and there's no continuity.
And I just thought it was like just artistic creativity.
But it really was that plus the fact that they were disintegrating and they were just tying up with another album.

(21:17):
But I think if there's any positive spin to put on that is that sometimes when you're faced with creative challenges, you make your best stuff.
And so sometimes you may think to yourself, well, if I had more time to do thus and such, I could do it or be better.

(21:41):
Or if I had more money or if I had more resources or if I had more computing power, I have more whatever.
But sometimes giving yourself limitations is actually a catalyst for creativity.
It's a way to challenge yourself to do something in a way that hadn't been done before.
So, yeah, I think not that my young years at five years old knew about music, but in fact I really liked it.

(22:10):
And I certainly didn't know how it was created. I was drawn to it and a lot of people were too.
And I think there's something about that. I think there's something about that creativity on the run that is sort of interesting.
It can create interesting stuff. It can create a lot of bad stuff too.

(22:33):
But yeah, it's an interesting thing. So my heroes were musicians. I liked all music.
I remember like 80s and New Wave music, David Bowie, Elton John. Yeah, people like that were really the people I looked up to when I was growing up.

(22:58):
And I think now, you know, it's more people who are doing things to help save the planet because I feel, you know, you're going to inherit all that has come before.
And it's things that we adults are not looking at in the way that we should be looking at.

(23:20):
It's that we need to do things in a way that is sustainable. So people who are building green homes and people who are not using things that are not renewable.
And here in Westport, we're championing an effort to have people when they go and get takeout food to leave behind and not get utensils and all the extra stuff.

(23:56):
Because while it seems like a little bit of stuff, it adds up to mountains of things that get thrown into our waste stream. And if you, you know, put three of us on this call, you know, every other time say no to the extra stuff.
And times of bazillion, right, that could really slow the amount of trash that goes into the planet. And so I find, you know, those are little things that is when you look at it, well, what's that going to do to the planet?

(24:33):
But multiply it times a billion becomes something. And so that's those are my my heroes now are people who are working on those types of goals.
What are the biggest challenges that can be solved by our generation?

(24:54):
Well, I think, you know, one of the things that is first of all, once in my mind is we need to start realizing that we're all human, that while we all may have different points of view, upbringings,
places we're from, religions, things that we value, that we're all human and we're all in this together, and that you give respect to one another. I'm hoping that your generation is able to take that in and reflect it back out to the planet.

(25:29):
Because we're all on this one spaceship.
At this point, there's not another spaceship. So if there were, I'm sure a lot of people would want to get on it.
But right now there's not. And so we need to all be pulling in the same direction.
That's the main thing I'm hoping for your generation to do, are part of the wave of people who look beyond, you know, skin color and wealth and privilege and, you know, just difference.

(26:07):
Are you able to say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And if someone wants to follow in your footsteps in your careers, what would you tell him or?
I would say, learn to code at least something like Python.

(26:31):
And then learn database, some database, like a SQL database, and then learn about engineering and statistical analysis.
I think if you compile those four things into a high school curriculum and or college major, you would be set for being able to essentially design your own company.

(27:08):
You want to create your own company or work anywhere, any large corporation or any.
Sorry, I lost the thread.

(27:30):
You're trying to get us to stop because you're flashing the.
Oh, OK.
But where was I said?
A large corporation.

(27:51):
Large corporation or your own company or in a research facility or research institution where you develop a new technology.
So I think that is what I would say for someone who is looking to do something like what I'm doing to learn those things, to have them be a part of your basis of understanding.

(28:23):
You don't have to be an expert in any one of them.
You don't have to drill down into a four year program.
At least get some fluency, some baseline ability.

(28:51):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, it's all good because when you learn one, you'll realize that a lot of a lot of things you learn are the basis for other languages.
And then once you know one, the other one's coming.

(29:14):
And that's true with foreign languages as well.
Oh, that's the other thing. Yeah, foreign language.
Thank you so much.
There's so many things, though, you know, you guys.
Well, I know you got to wrap up.
Yeah. So thank you so much, Mr. Dimex for allowing us to interview you.
I'm sure more kids will be inspired by this interview.

(29:37):
And whoever's listening, thanks for listening to the Creators for Kids podcast.
I hope you enjoyed the episode and we'll see you in the next episode.
Bye.