December 9, 2025 • 50 mins
Emilia David comes from a long line of journalists. Her late mother, in fact, was a well-known and controversial Filipino political columnist. Her writing helped usher in women's reproductive rights in one of the world's most religiously conservative countries. So it was no surprise that Amelia got into journalism. Tech journalism, particularly AI, and in the United States, well, that's a much longer story.
Emilia joined us to tell that story, how she uses AI to help determine what is and is not a fit for her VentureBeat audience, and to talk about her unapologetic love for enterprise tech for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Emilia.
Here's our chat with Emilia. Enjoy.
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Dave Reddy (00:00):
Emilia David comes from a long line of journalists.
Her late mother, in fact, was awell-known and controversial
Filipino political columnist.
Her writing helped usher inwomen's reproductive rights in
one of the world's mostreligiously conservative
countries.
So it was no surprise thatEmilia got into journalism.
Tech journalism, particularlyAI, and in the United States,
(00:21):
well, that's a much longerstory.
Emilia joined us to tell thatstory, how she uses AI to help
determine what is and is not afit for her VentureBeat
audience, and to talk about herunapologetic love for enterprise
tech for this episode ofPressing Matters from Big Valley
Marketing, the podcast thatbrings you conversations with
(00:41):
the top media and influencers inB2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, head of BigValley Marketing's Media
Influencers Practice, and I'myour host.
Through research and goodold-fashioned relationship
building, we've identified B2BTech's top 200 media and
influencers, including Emilia.
Here's our chat with Emilia.
Enjoy.
Emilia David (01:53):
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Reddy (01:55):
We met a few months ago now at a Venture Beat AI
show in San Francisco.
It was one of the best showsI've been to in a long time.
And so we're going to talkdefinitely about AI.
And of course, I've I've donethat at least twice on this show
with your editorial director,Michael Nunez.
But I want to start with you.
So where did you grow up?
Did you grow up in New York orthe or the Philippines?
(02:16):
I saw that you went to schoolin the Philippines.
Emilia David (02:18):
Yeah, so no, I didn't grow up in New York.
I grew up in the Philippines.
I moved to New York to go tograd school, and I ended up
getting a job and staying.
And it's a constant process ofif I want to stay or not, but so
you're you may at some point goback.
Dave Reddy (02:36):
Do you still have family there, I presume?
Emilia David (02:38):
Most of my family are there.
My immediate family are there.
I do have a lot of relativeshere in the U.S.
that I can choose to spend theholidays with.
unknown (02:47):
Good.
Dave Reddy (02:47):
And you live in New York City now.
Emilia David (02:49):
I do live in New York City, yeah.
Dave Reddy (02:51):
Okay, correct.
So what did mom and dad do?
What was your upbringing like?
Emilia David (02:54):
Sure.
Well, my mom was actually ajournalist.
Really?
The reason why I wanted tobecome a journalist.
She used to, she has sincepassed, but it's okay.
Thank you so much.
Her death anniversary isactually on Wednesday.
It'll be two years, but youknow, she's she's watching over
(03:18):
me and all of that.
But yeah, so my mom was anopinion writer, a columnist for
the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
She people call her like apolitical commentator, which is
very interesting because she shedoesn't just write about
politics, but she is most knownin the Philippines as a
(03:40):
reproductive health advocate.
So a lot of her, a lot of thejournalism that she did really
centered around women's rightsand women's reproductive rights.
And she was part of a group ofwomen who really fought for the
reproductive health law in thePhilippines, which is law but is
(04:00):
not necessarily enacted.
But she that's she's how Ilearned and what journalism is.
She's not the only journalistin my family.
Her side of the family areactually mostly journalists,
other than my mom, who's acolumnist, used to be the the
(04:20):
editor of the opinion pages ofthe inquirer.
She was also she was also theshe wrote the editorials even
after she had retired from thepaper because that was her
severance package, and I waslike, that's not retirement,
that's still working.
So my mom was a journalist, myher eldest cousin was the
(04:44):
editor-in-chief of thePhilippine Daily Inquirer.
Basically, the inquirer is likethe family newspaper.
If we don't own it, a richfamily owns it.
It's just that my family hassomehow been in the paper.
I never I worked for it when Iwas a teenager in college.
(05:05):
But yeah, my my mom's cousin,my mom's cousin-in-law is still
a reporter, she's a Metroreporter.
Another cousin of my mother waslike an entertainment
journalist.
Her daughter is now anentertainment journalist as
well.
Yeah, so long line ofjournalists.
And my dad is an artist.
(05:26):
Um, he used to be, he used tobe a art director for San Miguel
Corporation, which is thelargest conglomerate, I think by
now.
No, not in Asia, at least inSoutheast Asia.
So he was the guy who wasmaking their annual reports, the
calendars.
And so he he did that for quitea while, and then he
(05:48):
transitioned to magazine work.
So he was a creative directorfor a food magazine, and now he
is home, bored out of his mindbecause he doesn't have my mom
to take care of.
He he doesn't have a jobanymore, and so yeah.
Dave Reddy (06:10):
Well, he's not really digging at retirement.
Maybe you should get him tomove to New York and live with
you.
Emilia David (06:14):
He doesn't even want to visit me to New York,
yeah.
He has a thing about flying, hedoesn't want light in the long
haul.
Uh I understand.
Yeah.
So uh honestly, I I come fromlike a family of basically
communicators.
My dad's official communicator,my mom is a journalist, so
that's how it kind of grew up,yeah.
Dave Reddy (06:36):
Yeah, you you guys must have amazing family
stories.
Your mother sounds like sheleft behind a wonderful legacy,
including you.
Emilia David (06:42):
Honest can look her up.
Right, she's always got her ownWikipedia page, right?
I mean, Wikipedia page.
What's your most word again?
Rena Jimenez David.
Sorry, I'm trying to say in theFilipino way, but Rena Jimenez
David.
So I yeah, there was a tonwritten about her.
She was in the news, like whenshe died.
A couple of like the eveningnews people called me, and it
(07:06):
was such a weird experience oflike this is how like I always
joke that my mother issemi-famous.
That's sure it is.
Yeah, yeah.
So it was like it was so weirdfielding calls from like
reporters, and I was like, wow,this is so odd.
Dave Reddy (07:26):
Yeah, being on the other end of it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Emilia David (07:28):
It was, and I actually even helped like a
reporter being like, I can thisis the question you should be
asking me about this.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (07:38):
This is what you want to know about my mom.
Very good.
So uh well, I'm interested.
I mean, I mean, obviously, avery artistic family, a
journalistic family, and yourmom, of course, sounds like she
was quite the powerhouse.
I'm very intrigued.
You know, in America, we tendto think only about America and
American reproductive rights,which is his own issue.
Emilia David (07:58):
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (07:58):
But you grew up in a majority Catholic country, I
think it's about 80% Catholicover in the Philippines.
Emilia David (08:03):
90% Catholic.
Dave Reddy (08:04):
90% Catholic.
So there you go.
So the only I've done a I'm uhI'm I'm half Irish Catholic,
half German Jewish, so I've donea lot of reading about
reproductive rights and otherhistory in Ireland.
And I know that in Ireland itwas a mess.
I would presume it was equallydifficult.
So talk to me about how yourmom, I mean, she that must not
(08:26):
have been a popular stance.
Emilia David (08:28):
It's it's one thing that's very interesting,
is that my mom and my dad met ina Catholic university, the
oldest Catholic university inAsia, in fact.
Actually, it's the oldestuniversity in Asia, point blank.
But because they grew up, theywere going to college during
martial law, there was a lot offocus on activism.
(08:50):
And that's how my parents andtheir cohort really became a
voice.
And one of the interestingthings is my mom is actually or
was actually fairly religious ina way that I am not.
It was ingrained in her by mygrandmother and my
(09:10):
great-grandmother, and justgenerally culture and how she
grew up, but she also understoodthat there are some unalienable
rights, and uh it what isinteresting is that when she
first started writing aboutwomen's rights around the time
(09:34):
that I was being born, so thisis around the people power
revolution, it wasn't verypopular.
She was talking about like thedifficulties of being pregnant
and working as a woman.
And over time that perceptionreally changed.
And by the time thereproductive health law was had
(09:57):
come about, there was moreacceptance in the public.
There was not a lot ofacceptance in the authority,
meaning that my mother wasthreatened with excommunication
and by the Pope himself or by abishop.
By the Pope, by the by by someof the Catholic leaders in the
Philippines.
Dave Reddy (10:16):
It's just very so she definitely faced a little
bit of pushback.
Emilia David (10:20):
Yeah, which is again is also very interesting
because my like her youngerbrother is a priest, but because
her younger brother is.
It's part of but it's it's partof a more liberal faction of
the Catholic faith.
There's a lot of uh there'sactually a lot of very cat
liberal factions in the Catholicfaith.
The the current Pope is one.
(10:41):
There was you know the shemaintained a good support system
within the within the church,but yeah, there's a lot of
government officials who didn'tlike it.
There's a lot of like religiousofficials who didn't like that
fact, but the law passed.
It's not when they say it's notentirely enacted, it's there
(11:03):
are a lot of provisions in itthat require a lot of government
support, be as mostly thingsaround providing like providing
condoms and birth control pills.
Partly it was USAID funded,which is an issue now.
It's an issue now.
(11:23):
And honestly, I think thegovernment just doesn't want to
have to deal with all of that.
Yeah, but it it it is it is alaw, but there it's there's a
long way to go.
The Philippines is the onlycountry other than the Vatican
that doesn't allow divorce, solong way to go.
Dave Reddy (11:40):
I did not know that.
Yeah, that was the case inIreland until late into the 20th
century.
Emilia David (11:44):
That's yeah, but um honestly because of that,
like I I learned a lot aboutlike about activism and how
reporters can be using theirvoice.
Not that I use it here as much,tenuous immigration status and
everything, but yeah.
Dave Reddy (12:00):
So that is an amazing opening story, maybe the
most amazing opening storywe've had.
So I'm gonna take a breaththere.
And there's no segue here.
How how did you end up in NewYork a few years ago at uh the
City University of New York?
Emilia David (12:17):
Yeah, I wanted to go to grad school.
Um I really wanted to go to agrad school abroad, mainly
because I worked with a lot ofI'd been a reporter in the
Philippines for five years.
So any school that I go to inManila, I would be, I would have
(12:41):
had a colleague.
So it didn't feel like whatwould I learn exactly?
And this was around so this was2013 and digital media was just
really starting to take hold.
This was the heyday of you knowthe the Buzzfeeds and Huffpos
(13:04):
and all of that.
So I knew I wanted to tap intothis emerging space, which
wasn't really big yet in thePhilippines.
It is now, but at that time, II think we only had really had
one purely digital publication,and that was Rappler, but the
(13:27):
legacy media companies were alsostarting to come out with their
own website, but they stillwere kind of more multimedia.
They would have an onlineversion, but there's also the
print version and the TV versionof the news.
But so I was trying to see whatis interesting about this and
how can I learn this.
And the idea was to bring itback.
(13:49):
So I wanted to go to gradschool abroad to learn from
people who I don't work with.
Because like I like ifespecially because like if I
knew them, if I worked with themin the same newspaper, that
doesn't feel like I'm learninganything that she also don't
know.
(14:09):
So I applied to several gradschools and eventually chose
CUNY.
Now it's called the CraigNewmark Graduate School of
Journalism at the same time.
Dave Reddy (14:20):
And who accidentally ruined journalism?
Emilia David (14:23):
Oh, oh no, yeah.
But it it was it was veryinteresting because I was very
drawn to the practical skillsthat CUNY continues to offer.
It wasn't a lot of it wasn't alot of like, here's the theory
of journalism.
We were doing a lot ofunderground stuff because it is
(14:46):
the City University of New York.
I learned a lot about how NewYork government works because I
had to or doesn't, but like Ihad to, I had a beat in grad
school, and my beat wasCommunity Board 11 in Harlem,
which is from like 95th Streetuntil 125th, I believe.
(15:08):
I can't remember now exactdetails, but I went to the
community board meetings, I knewelected officials, I learned
about how liquor licenses,parking licenses, a lot of the
things that permit theday-to-day business of New York
City goes on.
And that's why during themayoral election, I understood a
(15:32):
lot about it because I alsolike I knew what how the city
works.
And that was reallyinteresting, that was really a
good way of not just introducingmyself to my new city, but also
pretty much a crash course inkind of field journalism in the
US.
But so it was a it was a verygood practical grounding.
(15:54):
Um and we did a lot ofmultimedia stuff, so I don't use
it very often, but I still knowhow to edit a video, I know how
to edit audio.
I I did mostly data journalism.
Once in a while I get to do Iget to use it.
But yeah, it was a I I lovedit, but it was like I really
(16:15):
wanted to go somewhere where Iknew I could learn.
Dave Reddy (16:18):
How did this go over?
You've already explained how itwent over with dad.
How did this go over with momand the rest of the journalists
in the family into thePhilippines?
Emilia David (16:24):
I mean they my both my parents were very, very
supportive of me going to gradschool.
They they also wanted to go tograd school in New York, but it
was not, you know, they werejust starting a family.
There weren't a lot ofscholarships then, like back
into the 70s, 80s, in the waythat there is now, because
(16:47):
there's a I got a scholarshipfrom the Bloomberg
Philanthropies.
They are they I think theystill are big donors to the to
CUNY, so there just wasn't a lotof opportunities for them.
So they were very excited forme to take this opportunity.
They did think I would comeback in a year, and that was the
(17:07):
plan.
And my my parents never trulyaccepted that, especially
because I am now a green cardholder, so I'm a permanent
resident here in the US, whichkind of cements the oh no, she's
not going home, is shesituation.
But they understand that I thisis where my career is, so they
(17:29):
accept that.
Well, they don't accept it,they tolerate it.
Dave Reddy (17:34):
Fair enough.
Just I wanted to quickly puttwo and two together.
Around what time did yourparents meet and get married?
Emilia David (17:40):
They got married in 1978.
My brother, my older brotherwas born in 79.
Dave Reddy (17:46):
Okay, so for those who aren't as old as me or who
know Filipino history like youdo, this was the eight the 80s
and 90s, or at least the early90s, were quite interesting.
I I'm not gonna get into it,but I I would just ask our
listeners to look up AmeldaMarcos and her shoe collection,
and you'll get a sense of whatuh the Filipino government was.
Emilia David (18:06):
In fact, I was born on in 1986, the day the
Marcuses fled to Philippines.
Dave Reddy (18:14):
No way.
Emilia David (18:15):
My mom she wrote a she wrote a magazine story
about this, at Miss Magazine inthe Philippines.
But on the 25th of February,the day before I was born, she
had walked several miles to tryand get to the palace, the
presidential palace, MalakanMalakaniang Palace, normally
(18:38):
where the sitting presidentresides.
There was a mob, of course.
So she tried to walk thatheavily pregnant with me, which
is I always say, the reason Ithe reason she gave birth to me
early.
Because there's you shouldn'tbe walking that much.
But yeah.
Dave Reddy (18:56):
I was about 12 years old when Aquino went back and
you know basically got shot ashe walked off the plane, which I
presume he knew was gonnahappen.
So that took I mean literalsacrifice.
Yeah, the Philippines, andprobably and good for you, not
necessarily as in the news as itwas when I was a kid, but yeah,
those were some trying times.
(19:17):
And and congratulations to yourparents for getting through
those and being part of thechange as well.
You sort of answered thisbefore, but it it it sounds like
the Filipino journalismcommunity is more like the
American or Western Europeanjournalism community than it
would be like some moretraditional Asian places like
(19:38):
Japan or China where it's it'smuch more controlled or relaxed.
Emilia David (19:42):
Yeah, I mean, so it is there is a lot of free
press in the Philippines.
A lot of it is because ofseveral years of American
occupation in the Philippines.
So there's it's okay, we goteducation.
Dave Reddy (20:00):
Look at the bright side.
Emilia David (20:01):
Look at the bright side.
I mean 300 years of Spanishrule, and we we barely got a lot
of it.
So but there is um there is alot of like free press, and
there's a big there used to be amuch bigger tabloid culture in
the Philippines, not not so muchanymore.
There is a lot of that moreWestern idea of what journalism
(20:25):
is.
It isn't exactly the same.
There's a lot of differences.
So a couple of things.
First, in like how news iswritten, this was something that
I had to really learn when theymoved here.
In the Philippines, the way youwrite a news story is very
(20:46):
straightforward, very not a lotof liberties taken in your
prose.
Dave Reddy (20:52):
More wire style, AP or Bloomberg, perhaps.
Emilia David (20:55):
Yes, exactly.
There would be background thatis like weaved in, sure, but
it's not it's it's not poetic.
There's not a lot of editoriallicense, and that's because
that's exactly how thereadership likes it.
They want to be toldimmediately what the news is and
how they should be thinkingabout something that's happening
(21:18):
instead of pressing for anopinion, which is very different
here in the US.
There is always that bent orthat slant.
There is still a bent and aslant in the Philippines.
It's just harder to find.
And you will find it usually inthe types of stories that are
being covered, the types ofsources that are being put in
(21:39):
and quoted in the news stories.
Here in the US, it is so mucheasier to editorialize and
fortunate.
Like for good or bad, it doesmake for some really good
reading.
And I had to really learn, andI'm still learning to put my
voice in.
Because that's not somethingI'm very used to.
(22:00):
If I'm writing a straight newsstory, I'm not used to, you
know, having an having apersonality and writing about
it.
So that is something that I'veI've taken years to really get
to a point where there you cantell it's me that's writing.
So that's one difference.
The other difference is there'smore here in the US,
(22:20):
journalists are friends.
Like I most of my friends arejournalists, but we also work
very individually and andseparately.
In the Philippines, you arecompetitive.
Yeah, so in the Philippines, weare also all competitors, but
we move as a pack.
And uh we all worked in thesame press room.
(22:41):
Like you know how in courtroomsand police police beats there
are press rooms.
That was the way it was inevery beat in the Philippines.
I was working for BusinessWorld, which is a business
newspaper, and I had severalbeats there, and each of my
beats, whether it was coveringthe elections, the labor
(23:03):
department, the energydepartment, telecommunications,
or trade, I was always part of agroup of other reporters, and
we would be, we would have likepress rooms where we would all
gather.
It was easier to kind ofdiscuss what stories we would be
covering, which officials wewould all try to talk to all at
(23:26):
the same time.
So it was harder to tend tostand out and work independently
because there's this very, veryhard to get scoops.
One, because if you got a scoopoutside of the group, there's
always the why didn't you tellus this was happening side of
it?
But there's also the side ofyou, it was very hard to break
(23:48):
away from the pack because thesources themselves would be
like, Well, why am I onlytalking to you?
I want to talk to everyonebecause we want the most amount
of like attention to this.
Dave Reddy (23:59):
That is very different, yeah.
Emilia David (24:01):
So that it's it's it's very different.
So it's not so much the oh,there's like news and everyone
covers it.
It's also we're following alongkind of the same stories
because we all move together asa pack.
And when you do have somescoop, you know, people are
happy for you, but there's alsothat increased level of
(24:22):
competition.
And here in the US, we're allcompetitors, we all understand
that, but because we're nottogether all the time, it
weirdly leads itself to morecamaraderie.
Like all all of all of my oldcolleagues in the Philippines,
still my friends, stillextremely close to them.
But it is very different herebecause I don't I don't have to
(24:48):
kind of think of a scoop assomething that I am keeping from
anyone.
It just happens because I don'twork with anyone beside me.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (24:58):
So talk to me about you, you you've bounced around a
lot, which is very common thesedays.
Where did you learn the most interms of both that style of
journalism?
And you talked about your ownvoice.
And if that's Venture Beat, wecan certainly start talking
about that uh where youcurrently work.
But where do you feel like youyou started getting your own
voice and the notion of beingcompetitive and getting getting
(25:20):
scoops?
Where'd you learn that?
Emilia David (25:22):
The voice writing, I definitely got it from
Insider and The Verge,especially The Verge.
It's with the types, with thosetypes of publications, there's
an inherent perception of thetype of person who writes for
them and the type of audiencewho reads them.
(25:44):
So it was kind of easier toslot into that voice as opposed
to something that's more likeenterprisey, where you have to
find that balance of how much ofyourself and how much of the
company should you be talkingabout or like being respectful
of.
So, in terms of voice, it wasreally writing for Insider and
(26:08):
The Verge, and I thinkespecially The Verge.
It's like I look back in a lotof the things that I wrote for
The Verge, and it was the mostvoicey I'd ever been.
It was the good way.
It's the it's the type of likethe headline would be very,
like, very personality based.
And it's just that type ofwebsite.
(26:29):
And you you see it a lot inright now in the website.
It you know, very serious andvery expert talk about
technology, but you can alsotell who wrote it, and that was
like a very good way for me toreally learn how to do that.
And the same kind of goes forInsider because it was more
(26:51):
conversational.
I had to learn to write as if Iwas having a conversation and
not just dictating information.
So that was like a lot of a lotof where I learned that from.
Dave Reddy (27:03):
But in terms of Who's the editor that was
pushing you on that?
Because I know I have aneditor, Neil Greenberger, who my
God taught me how to painfullyfor him.
Emilia David (27:11):
Honestly, he's no longer in journalism, but Matt
Weinberger uh insider wasextremely, extremely helpful in
helping me develop my voice inwriting.
I was sitting in the techanalysis desk, and it was really
a lot of looking at what washappening in tech news and
understanding what was going on.
(27:31):
And that was not something thatme, when I first started in
journalism, would have been ableto really write.
And honestly, Adw Robertson inAt the Verge, extremely,
extremely helpful, reallypushing me on that.
So, you know, it's it's it'sactually all of them, all of the
(27:54):
editors that I've had in bothnews in both news organizations
have been really great in kindof helping move along in that
direction.
In terms of like the thingsthat I do most now, which is
looking at a news story andfiguring out angles around that,
that was something I learnedfrom Waters Technology because
(28:16):
that was the job.
I was there for about like fouryears.
That was the job, is liketalking about capital markets
technology and making thatinteresting and extrapolating a
trend to it.
And that was also the firstplace where I started writing
about AI.
And I swear that if I hadn'tstarted then, I wouldn't be at
Venture Beat now able to talk toan engineer and understand
(28:41):
their language and extrapolatewhat they mean in the technical
sense to a trend that is goingon with enterprise technology.
Dave Reddy (28:49):
Yeah, you know, my my my first gig, like like many
folks who came up in sports,which I did, my first gig was
covering high school sports.
And you know, there's a hundredhigh school football games any
given night in the metropolitanarea.
And I just remember Neilbeating into me next time,
because the story wouldn't begood enough.
He said, next time, explain tome why you're there.
And I I just at 20 years old, Ididn't get what he meant.
(29:11):
What he meant, of course, waswhy are you there instead of the
other 99 football games?
Why why why does this onematter?
And it's not about who scoredthe most touchdowns, it's you
know, it's about who we'relooking at, what's going on, and
things along those lines.
And it sounds like at Waters,you might have had that same
thing because there probablywere a lot of different things
you could have covered, but whywere you covering that thing?
Emilia David (29:33):
Yeah.
Honestly, what was veryinteresting with like with
Waters was learning whatenterprises cared about, which
was not something I tended tothink about.
So now I like enterprisetechnology a lot more than more
consumer technology because Ijust don't, I don't kind of
(29:55):
don't see the point of it often.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (29:58):
It's harder to explain.
Yeah.
I've been doing it my wholecareer.
I don't know, you know, so Godbless us.
So let's talk about VentureBeat.
It's it's a title that haschanged a lot.
Michael and I talked when hewas on the on the on the show
that the the title doesn'treally fit what you do anymore,
but it's it's there.
You can't really change thebrand.
You left The Verge in summer2024, so last year, to work with
(30:23):
Michael and Venture Beat.
What led to that change?
What was attractive to youabout Venture Beat and the role
you fill now?
Emilia David (30:30):
So I had a contract at The Verge.
I knew it was always going toend, but in the time that I was
there, I was also trying tothink of like where do I want to
go next?
Like what kind of what kind ofjob did I want to have?
And I knew I wasn't donewriting about AI, but I also
(30:51):
wanted to write about AI alittle differently.
I I do like writing aboutpolicy and I think it's very
important, but I also could seethat a lot of where the
technology could really flourishwas not in consumer goods and
not consumer products.
(31:13):
It was in the enterprise.
And that was not something thatI was writing a lot about at
the verge because it's not anenterprise website, it's a
consumer-focused website.
Dave Reddy (31:23):
A damn good one, but consumer nonetheless.
Emilia David (31:25):
Yeah.
So I was like, I want to talkabout, I had this theory that
has proven true that generativeAI was patterning cloud
technology.
And I wanted to really look atthat.
I couldn't do that where I was,and I knew that if I had
applied to a lot of the otherpositions that were out there,
(31:46):
that's probably not somethingthat would be to focus.
So when I saw that there was anopening at VentureBeat and I
knew the types of stories thatthey were looking for, I was
interested.
It's like I want to do this, Iwant to keep writing about the
space where I think thistechnology that is very
interesting could flourish orfail, but this is where the
(32:10):
innovation would be.
It is not going to be the typesof like voice agents you and I
would be using.
It's no, it's in the type ofagents that an enterprise, a
business is going to use.
And it wanted to explore that alot more.
So that's what attracted me alot to this job.
And I wanted to really explorethat area, which is why my beat
(32:35):
is orchestration, is applied AI.
It's not so not just the model,but it's how the model is
brought to the the user and howand how that kind of
orchestrates down.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (32:50):
Can you explain that a little bit more?
Even though my audience doestend to skew B2B, because we are
about the B2B tech top 200, butyeah.
Explain orchestration a littlebit more and why that's
important.
You know, when the headlinesare OpenAI just got another, you
know, invested anothercajillion dollars in a company.
What what is it about orchorchestration that's so
(33:11):
important?
Emilia David (33:11):
So in the in the very the very base sense,
orchestration is how you getfrom point A to point B.
Point A being a model, point Bbeing the application.
So how do you get from you havea model, you have to make that
fit into the application.
So you have to know how thatmodel will then parse that data,
(33:34):
will then understand that data,go through all those different
points that answers the queriescoming from the application.
So you need to manage, you needto manage an AI agent, you need
to manage all of your differentAI applications.
And they all have to worktogether into one stack so that
(33:54):
they're not just doingeverything and anything, that
you can able to control them.
So that's the very base layerof what AI orchestration is.
It's the ability to manage andcontrol a lot of what's going on
between the model and theapplication so that the business
(34:15):
doesn't accidentally launchnuclear codes or something.
Dave Reddy (34:21):
So well, that sounds important.
Emilia David (34:24):
Yeah, like it's it's one of those things where
you've actually always likeevery business have been using
orchestration, just maybe not AIorchestration.
Right.
This is how you this is how alot of different software work
together.
The difference with AIorchestration is that there's
kind of a lot more steps to it,but there's also built into it
into it the observability factorof knowing the performance of
(34:48):
how your applications and youragents are doing.
So that's very important.
So that's what orchestrationfor us is.
Dave Reddy (34:56):
You know, given that, I'm curious, particularly,
I mean, you're you're you'redeep into how to get from, as
you said, from A to B.
And as with any boom, I'm notgonna say bubble, because God
help us, but as with any boom,sometimes people focus on A and
not so much on B.
How do you feel about thisboom?
(35:17):
I mean, are people genuinelymaking sure that what they're
doing with AI just isn't, youknow, bells and whistles, but
actually does something?
Emilia David (35:27):
It's very easy to think of generative AI or just
enterprise AI in general asbeing one thing, but it actually
isn't.
The boom that you're seeing,that's in one area.
That's in the pursuit of AGI,whatever AGI means to different
(35:49):
companies, because they do meandifferent things to different
companies.
There is a race there that isvery hard to quantify.
What Venture Beat and I am moreconcerned of around is the
actual practical use cases thatwe are now seeing come up from
(36:12):
this hype.
And there are some of those,but these are also technologies
that have evolved fromtraditional machine learning,
traditional like algorithmicmatching, but these are more
evolved versions of that, andthese were always technologies
that enterprises were going tolatch onto because these were
(36:35):
things that are very efficientfor them.
A lot of the superfluous thingsof it can be ambient and it
does do things for you without alot of prompting, those are
nice to have.
And we will we will get thereeventually.
But that is where the attentionof a lot of stakeholders and a
(36:57):
lot of fundraising tend to be,but the quiet infrastructure
work that is still going on andis kind of you know being funded
as from osmosis, essentially,that's what we're focused on
because that's what companiesreally are getting to see a lot
of value in.
We're still not sure what thereal ROI is, it's still it tends
(37:20):
to be a little early.
But conversations with a lot ofcompanies, we're seeing at
least a time gain.
But the actual like moneyreturn on investment, probably
we're probably not gonna seethat for a while.
But you know, if if if theorganization values time savings
and efficiency more, then whoam I to say that's not ROI?
(37:43):
So, you know, there there arethings that you can clearly see
is working, it but like a lot ofthe attention tends to be taken
over by you know the moredreamy, high fruit, like very
high-reaching apple thing that'sout there.
Dave Reddy (38:03):
Well, that and the controversy.
So let's talk a little bitabout that, because if
anything's gonna derailsomething that's hypey, other
than the fact that it justdoesn't work, which it seems to
be you seem to believe it itdoes or should, it's
controversy.
So is this a force for good?
Is it a force for evil?
Is it both?
Emilia David (38:21):
It's both.
One of the reasons why I say Idon't see a lot of innovation
for consumers is because there'sno point in consumers to be
using AI.
This is controversial.
Dave Reddy (38:34):
That is, uh keep going.
Emilia David (38:36):
I one day I will find a use for an AI agent, but
because the real world, reallife isn't orchestrated in a way
an enterprise workflow is, Ican't book a yoga class through
an AI agent because my yogastudio or the software that my
(39:02):
yoga studio uses is notvertically integrated into or
doesn't have an API that wouldconnect itself to Chat GP.
That's not, it's the least oftheir problems.
Like the first problem thatthey have to fix is, you know,
sometimes it's terrible to booka class.
Dave Reddy (39:22):
Right.
Emilia David (39:22):
That's the number one problem that they have to
do.
There's a lot of there's stilla lot of real life things that
don't really need AI for.
I, for example, would rathercall my doctor directly to book,
like to go explain why you needan appointment instead of
(39:44):
explaining it to an AI agent.
The AI agent taps the AI agentof my doctor's clinic who then
explains it to my doctor.
That's just a lot more steps.
Dave Reddy (39:54):
I I am really glad to hear you say that because
you're way younger than me, andand and that that I just
thought.
That was the I thought thatbecause I was I'm an old man.
But what that is, I appreciatethat.
Let's talk about something alittle bit different than your
beat, but it's certainly gettinga lot of headlines, not just
the infrastructure wars, but theuse of AI in the creative world
(40:17):
and the ability.
So, you know, last month theScreen Actors Guild, you know,
announced that it it had made adeal uh with OpenAI, I think it
was, or in general, about theproper use of AI in Hollywood.
Martin Luther King's family uhmanaged to get OpenAI and others
(40:41):
to stop having users use hisimage in Sora 2.
When it comes to this issue,can the industry police itself
or are we looking at moregovernment regulation?
Emilia David (40:54):
The the the difficulty here is there has to
be willingness on both sides toself-regulate or self-police.
I disclaimer, VentureBeat usesMid Journey to generate photo
like photos and illustrationsfor our for our stories.
(41:15):
So there is already that likeaspect of you know, where did
Midjourney get a lot of you knowthe the art aspect of like
where can could it train?
So there is that copyrightissue, yes.
There's also the deep fakeissue, which is a separate
matter altogether, yes, that isa problem, but um, I think the
(41:40):
difficulty is trying to separatethe eventual consequence of
using AI for art and the how itcame about.
So those are like two differentthings, and in the middle of
all of this is the innovationpart.
I get why a lot of industrygroups are trying to at least
(42:05):
kind of make deals that theyfeel would protect their
constituents because at leastthey can control the narrative,
but that's not enough becausethat's not self-policing, that's
not also controlling thenarrative, that's just adding
your voice in hopefully thecompany would listen to you
because it's not it's just apartnership, it's not as if
(42:28):
you're Microsoft that candictate to open AI.
So there needs to be a largerkind of coalition that would not
just involve like the ScreenActors Guild or the Writers
Guild, it should also involvethe studios, it should also
involve a lot of just even justlike politicians.
(42:48):
There has to be there has to bean agreement from a lot of the
stakeholders on what needs to beprotected and what needs to be
allowed for using AI in thecreative sense.
So you need to understand thewell, it's been trained, so what
are we going to do now with thecopyright infringement that may
(43:10):
have gotten into that?
Whether we can't necessarilyretroactively punish companies
to do that.
Okay, great.
So now the other consequence,the consequence of like the deep
fakes, of maybe people losingtheir jobs, that's a thing that
that could still be regulated.
But there needs to be agreementon what we value more for that
(43:34):
thing.
Do we value the innovation?
Do we value the artisticintegrity of artists, or do we
value the privacy protection ofpeople?
And the problem is everythinggets conflated in this
conversation, but it getsconflated when everyone is not
on the same table, and we don'thave administrations, unless
(43:56):
they're California and Texas andNashville, that are very
interested in protecting andregulating some aspects of the
technology.
But that's also that's alsolike there needs to be a
constant conversation.
Dave Reddy (44:13):
That's fascinating.
At the end of the day, it's umAI may be new-ish, but this is
uh a fundamental issue ofliberty versus privacy, which
constantly comes up in all sortsof ways.
Emilia David (44:27):
Yes, yeah.
Dave Reddy (44:29):
You mentioned that you use Midjourney.
I I've again I've spoken withMichael several times.
He is very bullish about AI.
He even told me that if hisfolks aren't using AI, he gets
upset.
So I uh I asked this questionof every reporter, but it's a
little different asking you.
How are you using AI and howare you not?
Emilia David (44:48):
I have so I I joke about this.
I'm very lazy in whichplatforms I choose.
I use ChatGPT because it'sinstalled in my laptop, but also
it's the one that I've used thelongest.
So it's the one I've trainedthe most.
I have a custom GPT that'strained that is basically the
(45:09):
persona that I am writing for.
So I plugged in the the likethe types of readers and
audience that Venture Beatthat's looking for, and I use it
to soundboard stories.
I use it a lot to summarizeresearch papers.
So I plug in a research paper,ask for a summary, and also ask
(45:32):
for would this be interesting toa Venture Beat reader?
And I kind of go back and forthwith it.
So it's been a really helpfulguide because I at least come to
the table when I'm talking tomy editors with a base sense of
this is why I think and thiswould work for us.
And and when they come backwith like feedback, I also feed
(45:55):
it in, and so it has the memoryof okay, this is the feedback,
this is what we learned before.
How can we make this pitchstronger?
How can we make this headlinelike just a little bit better?
And then I edit that beforesubmitting.
Like I rewrite it, it'sbasically what I use to
(46:15):
soundboard and to gut check whatI think is an interesting idea
to see that okay, it does map towhat I think would be a good
VentureBeat reader.
Then I bring it to my editorsand they say yes or no.
So that's been really, reallyhelpful.
And honestly, I used to takeabout an hour and a half just to
(46:40):
read a research paper, not evento understand it.
It takes me 30 minutes, and Ican finish a research paper
story for the day, and I havesome time left to do something
else.
Dave Reddy (46:55):
But it's more time for enterprise writing and
things like that.
Emilia David (46:59):
And also, I would be remiss to say I still use
otter and I I love using otter.
It's been very, very helpful ina lot of these more technical
conversations that I have.
I continue to try a lot ofdifferent transcription
programs.
(47:19):
I have read AI, I have scroll.
So I'm constantly trying toexperiment with all of that.
But I think that's the bestthing that's come out of AI is
transcription.
Dave Reddy (47:32):
Yeah, well, I I gotta tell you, that was the
first thing I started using whenit came when it came to AI for
ChatGPT.
And oh my God, right?
I mean, I I can't tell you backin the day when I was a
reporter how many quotes I blewbecause I was just writing
writing stuff down and Icouldn't read my own
handwriting.
It's kind of embarrassing.
But uh, I don't think I couldfix that, but at least I could
(47:53):
just record it and not worryabout it.
Well, this has been anextraordinarily thoughtful
conversation, one of the mostthoughtful we've had on the
show.
But now I'm gonna go back to myfavorite fun last question.
New York City or thePhilippines?
Emilia David (48:07):
New York.
I love the Philippines.
If I do decide to start afamily, I would definitely move
back.
I am not raising a child in theUS.
But New York, it's I'm tooneurotic to live anywhere else.
Dave Reddy (48:23):
Wow.
I I I that's that that's new.
That New York, uh well, I guessthe we what you're saying is
you fit in with the rest of theNew Yorkers all the time.
Emilia David (48:32):
I I someone mentioned this.
I was watching a Twitch streamthe other day, and someone had
mentioned people actually havedifferent times within them.
And my time, my pace is NewYork fast.
And I anywhere else that isn'tas fast is very difficult for me
(48:52):
to adapt.
So, you know, New York was.
Dave Reddy (48:59):
I've been to a lot of places.
I've been to a reasonableamount of places around this
world, and uh New York's aboutas fast as it gets.
So you are in the right place.
Emilia, that was wonderful.
Thank you so much for yourtime.
Thank you so much for your yourdeep thinking about AI.
And just want to credit you,congratulate you for continuing
your mother's and your family'slegacy in journalism.
(49:21):
And best of luck to you as youcontinue what's already been a
fantastic career.
Emilia David (49:26):
All right.
Thanks so much.
Dave Reddy (49:28):
Thanks for being on.
I'd like to thank you all forlistening today.
And once again, a big thank youto Emilia David of Venture
Beat.
Please don't forget to join usnext month when we chat with yet
another member of the B2B TechTop 200.
In the meantime, if you've gotfeedback on today's podcast, or
if you'd like to learn moreabout Big Valley marketing and
how we identified the B2B TechTop 200, be sure to drop me an
(49:48):
email at d ready atbigvalley.co.
That's D-R-E-D-D-Y atBigvalley, all one word dot co.
No am.
You can also email the wholeteam at pressingmatters at
bigvalley.co.
Once again, thanks forlistening.
And as always, think big.
Emilia David comes from a long line of journalists.
Her late mother, in fact, was awell-known and controversial
Filipino political columnist.
Her writing helped usher inwomen's reproductive rights in
one of the world's mostreligiously conservative
countries.
So it was no surprise thatEmilia got into journalism.
Tech journalism, particularlyAI, and in the United States,
(00:21):
well, that's a much longerstory.
Emilia joined us to tell thatstory, how she uses AI to help
determine what is and is not afit for her VentureBeat
audience, and to talk about herunapologetic love for enterprise
tech for this episode ofPressing Matters from Big Valley
Marketing, the podcast thatbrings you conversations with
(00:41):
the top media and influencers inB2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, head of BigValley Marketing's Media
Influencers Practice, and I'myour host.
Through research and goodold-fashioned relationship
building, we've identified B2BTech's top 200 media and
influencers, including Emilia.
Here's our chat with Emilia.
Enjoy.
Emilia David (01:53):
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Reddy (01:55):
We met a few months ago now at a Venture Beat AI
show in San Francisco.
It was one of the best showsI've been to in a long time.
And so we're going to talkdefinitely about AI.
And of course, I've I've donethat at least twice on this show
with your editorial director,Michael Nunez.
But I want to start with you.
So where did you grow up?
Did you grow up in New York orthe or the Philippines?
(02:16):
I saw that you went to schoolin the Philippines.
Emilia David (02:18):
Yeah, so no, I didn't grow up in New York.
I grew up in the Philippines.
I moved to New York to go tograd school, and I ended up
getting a job and staying.
And it's a constant process ofif I want to stay or not, but so
you're you may at some point goback.
Dave Reddy (02:36):
Do you still have family there, I presume?
Emilia David (02:38):
Most of my family are there.
My immediate family are there.
I do have a lot of relativeshere in the U.S.
that I can choose to spend theholidays with.
unknown (02:47):
Good.
Dave Reddy (02:47):
And you live in New York City now.
Emilia David (02:49):
I do live in New York City, yeah.
Dave Reddy (02:51):
Okay, correct.
So what did mom and dad do?
What was your upbringing like?
Emilia David (02:54):
Sure.
Well, my mom was actually ajournalist.
Really?
The reason why I wanted tobecome a journalist.
She used to, she has sincepassed, but it's okay.
Thank you so much.
Her death anniversary isactually on Wednesday.
It'll be two years, but youknow, she's she's watching over
(03:18):
me and all of that.
But yeah, so my mom was anopinion writer, a columnist for
the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
She people call her like apolitical commentator, which is
very interesting because she shedoesn't just write about
politics, but she is most knownin the Philippines as a
(03:40):
reproductive health advocate.
So a lot of her, a lot of thejournalism that she did really
centered around women's rightsand women's reproductive rights.
And she was part of a group ofwomen who really fought for the
reproductive health law in thePhilippines, which is law but is
(04:00):
not necessarily enacted.
But she that's she's how Ilearned and what journalism is.
She's not the only journalistin my family.
Her side of the family areactually mostly journalists,
other than my mom, who's acolumnist, used to be the the
(04:20):
editor of the opinion pages ofthe inquirer.
She was also she was also theshe wrote the editorials even
after she had retired from thepaper because that was her
severance package, and I waslike, that's not retirement,
that's still working.
So my mom was a journalist, myher eldest cousin was the
(04:44):
editor-in-chief of thePhilippine Daily Inquirer.
Basically, the inquirer is likethe family newspaper.
If we don't own it, a richfamily owns it.
It's just that my family hassomehow been in the paper.
I never I worked for it when Iwas a teenager in college.
(05:05):
But yeah, my my mom's cousin,my mom's cousin-in-law is still
a reporter, she's a Metroreporter.
Another cousin of my mother waslike an entertainment
journalist.
Her daughter is now anentertainment journalist as
well.
Yeah, so long line ofjournalists.
And my dad is an artist.
(05:26):
Um, he used to be, he used tobe a art director for San Miguel
Corporation, which is thelargest conglomerate, I think by
now.
No, not in Asia, at least inSoutheast Asia.
So he was the guy who wasmaking their annual reports, the
calendars.
And so he he did that for quitea while, and then he
(05:48):
transitioned to magazine work.
So he was a creative directorfor a food magazine, and now he
is home, bored out of his mindbecause he doesn't have my mom
to take care of.
He he doesn't have a jobanymore, and so yeah.
Dave Reddy (06:10):
Well, he's not really digging at retirement.
Maybe you should get him tomove to New York and live with
you.
Emilia David (06:14):
He doesn't even want to visit me to New York,
yeah.
He has a thing about flying, hedoesn't want light in the long
haul.
Uh I understand.
Yeah.
So uh honestly, I I come fromlike a family of basically
communicators.
My dad's official communicator,my mom is a journalist, so
that's how it kind of grew up,yeah.
Dave Reddy (06:36):
Yeah, you you guys must have amazing family
stories.
Your mother sounds like sheleft behind a wonderful legacy,
including you.
Emilia David (06:42):
Honest can look her up.
Right, she's always got her ownWikipedia page, right?
I mean, Wikipedia page.
What's your most word again?
Rena Jimenez David.
Sorry, I'm trying to say in theFilipino way, but Rena Jimenez
David.
So I yeah, there was a tonwritten about her.
She was in the news, like whenshe died.
A couple of like the eveningnews people called me, and it
(07:06):
was such a weird experience oflike this is how like I always
joke that my mother issemi-famous.
That's sure it is.
Yeah, yeah.
So it was like it was so weirdfielding calls from like
reporters, and I was like, wow,this is so odd.
Dave Reddy (07:26):
Yeah, being on the other end of it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Emilia David (07:28):
It was, and I actually even helped like a
reporter being like, I can thisis the question you should be
asking me about this.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (07:38):
This is what you want to know about my mom.
Very good.
So uh well, I'm interested.
I mean, I mean, obviously, avery artistic family, a
journalistic family, and yourmom, of course, sounds like she
was quite the powerhouse.
I'm very intrigued.
You know, in America, we tendto think only about America and
American reproductive rights,which is his own issue.
Emilia David (07:58):
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (07:58):
But you grew up in a majority Catholic country, I
think it's about 80% Catholicover in the Philippines.
Emilia David (08:03):
90% Catholic.
Dave Reddy (08:04):
90% Catholic.
So there you go.
So the only I've done a I'm uhI'm I'm half Irish Catholic,
half German Jewish, so I've donea lot of reading about
reproductive rights and otherhistory in Ireland.
And I know that in Ireland itwas a mess.
I would presume it was equallydifficult.
So talk to me about how yourmom, I mean, she that must not
(08:26):
have been a popular stance.
Emilia David (08:28):
It's it's one thing that's very interesting,
is that my mom and my dad met ina Catholic university, the
oldest Catholic university inAsia, in fact.
Actually, it's the oldestuniversity in Asia, point blank.
But because they grew up, theywere going to college during
martial law, there was a lot offocus on activism.
(08:50):
And that's how my parents andtheir cohort really became a
voice.
And one of the interestingthings is my mom is actually or
was actually fairly religious ina way that I am not.
It was ingrained in her by mygrandmother and my
(09:10):
great-grandmother, and justgenerally culture and how she
grew up, but she also understoodthat there are some unalienable
rights, and uh it what isinteresting is that when she
first started writing aboutwomen's rights around the time
(09:34):
that I was being born, so thisis around the people power
revolution, it wasn't verypopular.
She was talking about like thedifficulties of being pregnant
and working as a woman.
And over time that perceptionreally changed.
And by the time thereproductive health law was had
(09:57):
come about, there was moreacceptance in the public.
There was not a lot ofacceptance in the authority,
meaning that my mother wasthreatened with excommunication
and by the Pope himself or by abishop.
By the Pope, by the by by someof the Catholic leaders in the
Philippines.
Dave Reddy (10:16):
It's just very so she definitely faced a little
bit of pushback.
Emilia David (10:20):
Yeah, which is again is also very interesting
because my like her youngerbrother is a priest, but because
her younger brother is.
It's part of but it's it's partof a more liberal faction of
the Catholic faith.
There's a lot of uh there'sactually a lot of very cat
liberal factions in the Catholicfaith.
The the current Pope is one.
(10:41):
There was you know the shemaintained a good support system
within the within the church,but yeah, there's a lot of
government officials who didn'tlike it.
There's a lot of like religiousofficials who didn't like that
fact, but the law passed.
It's not when they say it's notentirely enacted, it's there
(11:03):
are a lot of provisions in itthat require a lot of government
support, be as mostly thingsaround providing like providing
condoms and birth control pills.
Partly it was USAID funded,which is an issue now.
It's an issue now.
(11:23):
And honestly, I think thegovernment just doesn't want to
have to deal with all of that.
Yeah, but it it it is it is alaw, but there it's there's a
long way to go.
The Philippines is the onlycountry other than the Vatican
that doesn't allow divorce, solong way to go.
Dave Reddy (11:40):
I did not know that.
Yeah, that was the case inIreland until late into the 20th
century.
Emilia David (11:44):
That's yeah, but um honestly because of that,
like I I learned a lot aboutlike about activism and how
reporters can be using theirvoice.
Not that I use it here as much,tenuous immigration status and
everything, but yeah.
Dave Reddy (12:00):
So that is an amazing opening story, maybe the
most amazing opening storywe've had.
So I'm gonna take a breaththere.
And there's no segue here.
How how did you end up in NewYork a few years ago at uh the
City University of New York?
Emilia David (12:17):
Yeah, I wanted to go to grad school.
Um I really wanted to go to agrad school abroad, mainly
because I worked with a lot ofI'd been a reporter in the
Philippines for five years.
So any school that I go to inManila, I would be, I would have
(12:41):
had a colleague.
So it didn't feel like whatwould I learn exactly?
And this was around so this was2013 and digital media was just
really starting to take hold.
This was the heyday of you knowthe the Buzzfeeds and Huffpos
(13:04):
and all of that.
So I knew I wanted to tap intothis emerging space, which
wasn't really big yet in thePhilippines.
It is now, but at that time, II think we only had really had
one purely digital publication,and that was Rappler, but the
(13:27):
legacy media companies were alsostarting to come out with their
own website, but they stillwere kind of more multimedia.
They would have an onlineversion, but there's also the
print version and the TV versionof the news.
But so I was trying to see whatis interesting about this and
how can I learn this.
And the idea was to bring itback.
(13:49):
So I wanted to go to gradschool abroad to learn from
people who I don't work with.
Because like I like ifespecially because like if I
knew them, if I worked with themin the same newspaper, that
doesn't feel like I'm learninganything that she also don't
know.
(14:09):
So I applied to several gradschools and eventually chose
CUNY.
Now it's called the CraigNewmark Graduate School of
Journalism at the same time.
Dave Reddy (14:20):
And who accidentally ruined journalism?
Emilia David (14:23):
Oh, oh no, yeah.
But it it was it was veryinteresting because I was very
drawn to the practical skillsthat CUNY continues to offer.
It wasn't a lot of it wasn't alot of like, here's the theory
of journalism.
We were doing a lot ofunderground stuff because it is
(14:46):
the City University of New York.
I learned a lot about how NewYork government works because I
had to or doesn't, but like Ihad to, I had a beat in grad
school, and my beat wasCommunity Board 11 in Harlem,
which is from like 95th Streetuntil 125th, I believe.
(15:08):
I can't remember now exactdetails, but I went to the
community board meetings, I knewelected officials, I learned
about how liquor licenses,parking licenses, a lot of the
things that permit theday-to-day business of New York
City goes on.
And that's why during themayoral election, I understood a
(15:32):
lot about it because I alsolike I knew what how the city
works.
And that was reallyinteresting, that was really a
good way of not just introducingmyself to my new city, but also
pretty much a crash course inkind of field journalism in the
US.
But so it was a it was a verygood practical grounding.
(15:54):
Um and we did a lot ofmultimedia stuff, so I don't use
it very often, but I still knowhow to edit a video, I know how
to edit audio.
I I did mostly data journalism.
Once in a while I get to do Iget to use it.
But yeah, it was a I I lovedit, but it was like I really
(16:15):
wanted to go somewhere where Iknew I could learn.
Dave Reddy (16:18):
How did this go over?
You've already explained how itwent over with dad.
How did this go over with momand the rest of the journalists
in the family into thePhilippines?
Emilia David (16:24):
I mean they my both my parents were very, very
supportive of me going to gradschool.
They they also wanted to go tograd school in New York, but it
was not, you know, they werejust starting a family.
There weren't a lot ofscholarships then, like back
into the 70s, 80s, in the waythat there is now, because
(16:47):
there's a I got a scholarshipfrom the Bloomberg
Philanthropies.
They are they I think theystill are big donors to the to
CUNY, so there just wasn't a lotof opportunities for them.
So they were very excited forme to take this opportunity.
They did think I would comeback in a year, and that was the
(17:07):
plan.
And my my parents never trulyaccepted that, especially
because I am now a green cardholder, so I'm a permanent
resident here in the US, whichkind of cements the oh no, she's
not going home, is shesituation.
But they understand that I thisis where my career is, so they
(17:29):
accept that.
Well, they don't accept it,they tolerate it.
Dave Reddy (17:34):
Fair enough.
Just I wanted to quickly puttwo and two together.
Around what time did yourparents meet and get married?
Emilia David (17:40):
They got married in 1978.
My brother, my older brotherwas born in 79.
Dave Reddy (17:46):
Okay, so for those who aren't as old as me or who
know Filipino history like youdo, this was the eight the 80s
and 90s, or at least the early90s, were quite interesting.
I I'm not gonna get into it,but I I would just ask our
listeners to look up AmeldaMarcos and her shoe collection,
and you'll get a sense of whatuh the Filipino government was.
Emilia David (18:06):
In fact, I was born on in 1986, the day the
Marcuses fled to Philippines.
Dave Reddy (18:14):
No way.
Emilia David (18:15):
My mom she wrote a she wrote a magazine story
about this, at Miss Magazine inthe Philippines.
But on the 25th of February,the day before I was born, she
had walked several miles to tryand get to the palace, the
presidential palace, MalakanMalakaniang Palace, normally
(18:38):
where the sitting presidentresides.
There was a mob, of course.
So she tried to walk thatheavily pregnant with me, which
is I always say, the reason Ithe reason she gave birth to me
early.
Because there's you shouldn'tbe walking that much.
But yeah.
Dave Reddy (18:56):
I was about 12 years old when Aquino went back and
you know basically got shot ashe walked off the plane, which I
presume he knew was gonnahappen.
So that took I mean literalsacrifice.
Yeah, the Philippines, andprobably and good for you, not
necessarily as in the news as itwas when I was a kid, but yeah,
those were some trying times.
(19:17):
And and congratulations to yourparents for getting through
those and being part of thechange as well.
You sort of answered thisbefore, but it it it sounds like
the Filipino journalismcommunity is more like the
American or Western Europeanjournalism community than it
would be like some moretraditional Asian places like
(19:38):
Japan or China where it's it'smuch more controlled or relaxed.
Emilia David (19:42):
Yeah, I mean, so it is there is a lot of free
press in the Philippines.
A lot of it is because ofseveral years of American
occupation in the Philippines.
So there's it's okay, we goteducation.
Dave Reddy (20:00):
Look at the bright side.
Emilia David (20:01):
Look at the bright side.
I mean 300 years of Spanishrule, and we we barely got a lot
of it.
So but there is um there is alot of like free press, and
there's a big there used to be amuch bigger tabloid culture in
the Philippines, not not so muchanymore.
There is a lot of that moreWestern idea of what journalism
(20:25):
is.
It isn't exactly the same.
There's a lot of differences.
So a couple of things.
First, in like how news iswritten, this was something that
I had to really learn when theymoved here.
In the Philippines, the way youwrite a news story is very
(20:46):
straightforward, very not a lotof liberties taken in your
prose.
Dave Reddy (20:52):
More wire style, AP or Bloomberg, perhaps.
Emilia David (20:55):
Yes, exactly.
There would be background thatis like weaved in, sure, but
it's not it's it's not poetic.
There's not a lot of editoriallicense, and that's because
that's exactly how thereadership likes it.
They want to be toldimmediately what the news is and
how they should be thinkingabout something that's happening
(21:18):
instead of pressing for anopinion, which is very different
here in the US.
There is always that bent orthat slant.
There is still a bent and aslant in the Philippines.
It's just harder to find.
And you will find it usually inthe types of stories that are
being covered, the types ofsources that are being put in
(21:39):
and quoted in the news stories.
Here in the US, it is so mucheasier to editorialize and
fortunate.
Like for good or bad, it doesmake for some really good
reading.
And I had to really learn, andI'm still learning to put my
voice in.
Because that's not somethingI'm very used to.
(22:00):
If I'm writing a straight newsstory, I'm not used to, you
know, having an having apersonality and writing about
it.
So that is something that I'veI've taken years to really get
to a point where there you cantell it's me that's writing.
So that's one difference.
The other difference is there'smore here in the US,
(22:20):
journalists are friends.
Like I most of my friends arejournalists, but we also work
very individually and andseparately.
In the Philippines, you arecompetitive.
Yeah, so in the Philippines, weare also all competitors, but
we move as a pack.
And uh we all worked in thesame press room.
(22:41):
Like you know how in courtroomsand police police beats there
are press rooms.
That was the way it was inevery beat in the Philippines.
I was working for BusinessWorld, which is a business
newspaper, and I had severalbeats there, and each of my
beats, whether it was coveringthe elections, the labor
(23:03):
department, the energydepartment, telecommunications,
or trade, I was always part of agroup of other reporters, and
we would be, we would have likepress rooms where we would all
gather.
It was easier to kind ofdiscuss what stories we would be
covering, which officials wewould all try to talk to all at
(23:26):
the same time.
So it was harder to tend tostand out and work independently
because there's this very, veryhard to get scoops.
One, because if you got a scoopoutside of the group, there's
always the why didn't you tellus this was happening side of
it?
But there's also the side ofyou, it was very hard to break
(23:48):
away from the pack because thesources themselves would be
like, Well, why am I onlytalking to you?
I want to talk to everyonebecause we want the most amount
of like attention to this.
Dave Reddy (23:59):
That is very different, yeah.
Emilia David (24:01):
So that it's it's it's very different.
So it's not so much the oh,there's like news and everyone
covers it.
It's also we're following alongkind of the same stories
because we all move together asa pack.
And when you do have somescoop, you know, people are
happy for you, but there's alsothat increased level of
(24:22):
competition.
And here in the US, we're allcompetitors, we all understand
that, but because we're nottogether all the time, it
weirdly leads itself to morecamaraderie.
Like all all of all of my oldcolleagues in the Philippines,
still my friends, stillextremely close to them.
But it is very different herebecause I don't I don't have to
(24:48):
kind of think of a scoop assomething that I am keeping from
anyone.
It just happens because I don'twork with anyone beside me.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (24:58):
So talk to me about you, you you've bounced around a
lot, which is very common thesedays.
Where did you learn the most interms of both that style of
journalism?
And you talked about your ownvoice.
And if that's Venture Beat, wecan certainly start talking
about that uh where youcurrently work.
But where do you feel like youyou started getting your own
voice and the notion of beingcompetitive and getting getting
(25:20):
scoops?
Where'd you learn that?
Emilia David (25:22):
The voice writing, I definitely got it from
Insider and The Verge,especially The Verge.
It's with the types, with thosetypes of publications, there's
an inherent perception of thetype of person who writes for
them and the type of audiencewho reads them.
(25:44):
So it was kind of easier toslot into that voice as opposed
to something that's more likeenterprisey, where you have to
find that balance of how much ofyourself and how much of the
company should you be talkingabout or like being respectful
of.
So, in terms of voice, it wasreally writing for Insider and
(26:08):
The Verge, and I thinkespecially The Verge.
It's like I look back in a lotof the things that I wrote for
The Verge, and it was the mostvoicey I'd ever been.
It was the good way.
It's the it's the type of likethe headline would be very,
like, very personality based.
And it's just that type ofwebsite.
(26:29):
And you you see it a lot inright now in the website.
It you know, very serious andvery expert talk about
technology, but you can alsotell who wrote it, and that was
like a very good way for me toreally learn how to do that.
And the same kind of goes forInsider because it was more
(26:51):
conversational.
I had to learn to write as if Iwas having a conversation and
not just dictating information.
So that was like a lot of a lotof where I learned that from.
Dave Reddy (27:03):
But in terms of Who's the editor that was
pushing you on that?
Because I know I have aneditor, Neil Greenberger, who my
God taught me how to painfullyfor him.
Emilia David (27:11):
Honestly, he's no longer in journalism, but Matt
Weinberger uh insider wasextremely, extremely helpful in
helping me develop my voice inwriting.
I was sitting in the techanalysis desk, and it was really
a lot of looking at what washappening in tech news and
understanding what was going on.
(27:31):
And that was not something thatme, when I first started in
journalism, would have been ableto really write.
And honestly, Adw Robertson inAt the Verge, extremely,
extremely helpful, reallypushing me on that.
So, you know, it's it's it'sactually all of them, all of the
(27:54):
editors that I've had in bothnews in both news organizations
have been really great in kindof helping move along in that
direction.
In terms of like the thingsthat I do most now, which is
looking at a news story andfiguring out angles around that,
that was something I learnedfrom Waters Technology because
(28:16):
that was the job.
I was there for about like fouryears.
That was the job, is liketalking about capital markets
technology and making thatinteresting and extrapolating a
trend to it.
And that was also the firstplace where I started writing
about AI.
And I swear that if I hadn'tstarted then, I wouldn't be at
Venture Beat now able to talk toan engineer and understand
(28:41):
their language and extrapolatewhat they mean in the technical
sense to a trend that is goingon with enterprise technology.
Dave Reddy (28:49):
Yeah, you know, my my my first gig, like like many
folks who came up in sports,which I did, my first gig was
covering high school sports.
And you know, there's a hundredhigh school football games any
given night in the metropolitanarea.
And I just remember Neilbeating into me next time,
because the story wouldn't begood enough.
He said, next time, explain tome why you're there.
And I I just at 20 years old, Ididn't get what he meant.
(29:11):
What he meant, of course, waswhy are you there instead of the
other 99 football games?
Why why why does this onematter?
And it's not about who scoredthe most touchdowns, it's you
know, it's about who we'relooking at, what's going on, and
things along those lines.
And it sounds like at Waters,you might have had that same
thing because there probablywere a lot of different things
you could have covered, but whywere you covering that thing?
Emilia David (29:33):
Yeah.
Honestly, what was veryinteresting with like with
Waters was learning whatenterprises cared about, which
was not something I tended tothink about.
So now I like enterprisetechnology a lot more than more
consumer technology because Ijust don't, I don't kind of
(29:55):
don't see the point of it often.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (29:58):
It's harder to explain.
Yeah.
I've been doing it my wholecareer.
I don't know, you know, so Godbless us.
So let's talk about VentureBeat.
It's it's a title that haschanged a lot.
Michael and I talked when hewas on the on the on the show
that the the title doesn'treally fit what you do anymore,
but it's it's there.
You can't really change thebrand.
You left The Verge in summer2024, so last year, to work with
(30:23):
Michael and Venture Beat.
What led to that change?
What was attractive to youabout Venture Beat and the role
you fill now?
Emilia David (30:30):
So I had a contract at The Verge.
I knew it was always going toend, but in the time that I was
there, I was also trying tothink of like where do I want to
go next?
Like what kind of what kind ofjob did I want to have?
And I knew I wasn't donewriting about AI, but I also
(30:51):
wanted to write about AI alittle differently.
I I do like writing aboutpolicy and I think it's very
important, but I also could seethat a lot of where the
technology could really flourishwas not in consumer goods and
not consumer products.
(31:13):
It was in the enterprise.
And that was not something thatI was writing a lot about at
the verge because it's not anenterprise website, it's a
consumer-focused website.
Dave Reddy (31:23):
A damn good one, but consumer nonetheless.
Emilia David (31:25):
Yeah.
So I was like, I want to talkabout, I had this theory that
has proven true that generativeAI was patterning cloud
technology.
And I wanted to really look atthat.
I couldn't do that where I was,and I knew that if I had
applied to a lot of the otherpositions that were out there,
(31:46):
that's probably not somethingthat would be to focus.
So when I saw that there was anopening at VentureBeat and I
knew the types of stories thatthey were looking for, I was
interested.
It's like I want to do this, Iwant to keep writing about the
space where I think thistechnology that is very
interesting could flourish orfail, but this is where the
(32:10):
innovation would be.
It is not going to be the typesof like voice agents you and I
would be using.
It's no, it's in the type ofagents that an enterprise, a
business is going to use.
And it wanted to explore that alot more.
So that's what attracted me alot to this job.
And I wanted to really explorethat area, which is why my beat
(32:35):
is orchestration, is applied AI.
It's not so not just the model,but it's how the model is
brought to the the user and howand how that kind of
orchestrates down.
Yeah.
Dave Reddy (32:50):
Can you explain that a little bit more?
Even though my audience doestend to skew B2B, because we are
about the B2B tech top 200, butyeah.
Explain orchestration a littlebit more and why that's
important.
You know, when the headlinesare OpenAI just got another, you
know, invested anothercajillion dollars in a company.
What what is it about orchorchestration that's so
(33:11):
important?
Emilia David (33:11):
So in the in the very the very base sense,
orchestration is how you getfrom point A to point B.
Point A being a model, point Bbeing the application.
So how do you get from you havea model, you have to make that
fit into the application.
So you have to know how thatmodel will then parse that data,
(33:34):
will then understand that data,go through all those different
points that answers the queriescoming from the application.
So you need to manage, you needto manage an AI agent, you need
to manage all of your differentAI applications.
And they all have to worktogether into one stack so that
(33:54):
they're not just doingeverything and anything, that
you can able to control them.
So that's the very base layerof what AI orchestration is.
It's the ability to manage andcontrol a lot of what's going on
between the model and theapplication so that the business
(34:15):
doesn't accidentally launchnuclear codes or something.
Dave Reddy (34:21):
So well, that sounds important.
Emilia David (34:24):
Yeah, like it's it's one of those things where
you've actually always likeevery business have been using
orchestration, just maybe not AIorchestration.
Right.
This is how you this is how alot of different software work
together.
The difference with AIorchestration is that there's
kind of a lot more steps to it,but there's also built into it
into it the observability factorof knowing the performance of
(34:48):
how your applications and youragents are doing.
So that's very important.
So that's what orchestrationfor us is.
Dave Reddy (34:56):
You know, given that, I'm curious, particularly,
I mean, you're you're you'redeep into how to get from, as
you said, from A to B.
And as with any boom, I'm notgonna say bubble, because God
help us, but as with any boom,sometimes people focus on A and
not so much on B.
How do you feel about thisboom?
(35:17):
I mean, are people genuinelymaking sure that what they're
doing with AI just isn't, youknow, bells and whistles, but
actually does something?
Emilia David (35:27):
It's very easy to think of generative AI or just
enterprise AI in general asbeing one thing, but it actually
isn't.
The boom that you're seeing,that's in one area.
That's in the pursuit of AGI,whatever AGI means to different
(35:49):
companies, because they do meandifferent things to different
companies.
There is a race there that isvery hard to quantify.
What Venture Beat and I am moreconcerned of around is the
actual practical use cases thatwe are now seeing come up from
(36:12):
this hype.
And there are some of those,but these are also technologies
that have evolved fromtraditional machine learning,
traditional like algorithmicmatching, but these are more
evolved versions of that, andthese were always technologies
that enterprises were going tolatch onto because these were
(36:35):
things that are very efficientfor them.
A lot of the superfluous thingsof it can be ambient and it
does do things for you without alot of prompting, those are
nice to have.
And we will we will get thereeventually.
But that is where the attentionof a lot of stakeholders and a
(36:57):
lot of fundraising tend to be,but the quiet infrastructure
work that is still going on andis kind of you know being funded
as from osmosis, essentially,that's what we're focused on
because that's what companiesreally are getting to see a lot
of value in.
We're still not sure what thereal ROI is, it's still it tends
(37:20):
to be a little early.
But conversations with a lot ofcompanies, we're seeing at
least a time gain.
But the actual like moneyreturn on investment, probably
we're probably not gonna seethat for a while.
But you know, if if if theorganization values time savings
and efficiency more, then whoam I to say that's not ROI?
(37:43):
So, you know, there there arethings that you can clearly see
is working, it but like a lot ofthe attention tends to be taken
over by you know the moredreamy, high fruit, like very
high-reaching apple thing that'sout there.
Dave Reddy (38:03):
Well, that and the controversy.
So let's talk a little bitabout that, because if
anything's gonna derailsomething that's hypey, other
than the fact that it justdoesn't work, which it seems to
be you seem to believe it itdoes or should, it's
controversy.
So is this a force for good?
Is it a force for evil?
Is it both?
Emilia David (38:21):
It's both.
One of the reasons why I say Idon't see a lot of innovation
for consumers is because there'sno point in consumers to be
using AI.
This is controversial.
Dave Reddy (38:34):
That is, uh keep going.
Emilia David (38:36):
I one day I will find a use for an AI agent, but
because the real world, reallife isn't orchestrated in a way
an enterprise workflow is, Ican't book a yoga class through
an AI agent because my yogastudio or the software that my
(39:02):
yoga studio uses is notvertically integrated into or
doesn't have an API that wouldconnect itself to Chat GP.
That's not, it's the least oftheir problems.
Like the first problem thatthey have to fix is, you know,
sometimes it's terrible to booka class.
Dave Reddy (39:22):
Right.
Emilia David (39:22):
That's the number one problem that they have to
do.
There's a lot of there's stilla lot of real life things that
don't really need AI for.
I, for example, would rathercall my doctor directly to book,
like to go explain why you needan appointment instead of
(39:44):
explaining it to an AI agent.
The AI agent taps the AI agentof my doctor's clinic who then
explains it to my doctor.
That's just a lot more steps.
Dave Reddy (39:54):
I I am really glad to hear you say that because
you're way younger than me, andand and that that I just
thought.
That was the I thought thatbecause I was I'm an old man.
But what that is, I appreciatethat.
Let's talk about something alittle bit different than your
beat, but it's certainly gettinga lot of headlines, not just
the infrastructure wars, but theuse of AI in the creative world
(40:17):
and the ability.
So, you know, last month theScreen Actors Guild, you know,
announced that it it had made adeal uh with OpenAI, I think it
was, or in general, about theproper use of AI in Hollywood.
Martin Luther King's family uhmanaged to get OpenAI and others
(40:41):
to stop having users use hisimage in Sora 2.
When it comes to this issue,can the industry police itself
or are we looking at moregovernment regulation?
Emilia David (40:54):
The the the difficulty here is there has to
be willingness on both sides toself-regulate or self-police.
I disclaimer, VentureBeat usesMid Journey to generate photo
like photos and illustrationsfor our for our stories.
(41:15):
So there is already that likeaspect of you know, where did
Midjourney get a lot of you knowthe the art aspect of like
where can could it train?
So there is that copyrightissue, yes.
There's also the deep fakeissue, which is a separate
matter altogether, yes, that isa problem, but um, I think the
(41:40):
difficulty is trying to separatethe eventual consequence of
using AI for art and the how itcame about.
So those are like two differentthings, and in the middle of
all of this is the innovationpart.
I get why a lot of industrygroups are trying to at least
(42:05):
kind of make deals that theyfeel would protect their
constituents because at leastthey can control the narrative,
but that's not enough becausethat's not self-policing, that's
not also controlling thenarrative, that's just adding
your voice in hopefully thecompany would listen to you
because it's not it's just apartnership, it's not as if
(42:28):
you're Microsoft that candictate to open AI.
So there needs to be a largerkind of coalition that would not
just involve like the ScreenActors Guild or the Writers
Guild, it should also involvethe studios, it should also
involve a lot of just even justlike politicians.
(42:48):
There has to be there has to bean agreement from a lot of the
stakeholders on what needs to beprotected and what needs to be
allowed for using AI in thecreative sense.
So you need to understand thewell, it's been trained, so what
are we going to do now with thecopyright infringement that may
(43:10):
have gotten into that?
Whether we can't necessarilyretroactively punish companies
to do that.
Okay, great.
So now the other consequence,the consequence of like the deep
fakes, of maybe people losingtheir jobs, that's a thing that
that could still be regulated.
But there needs to be agreementon what we value more for that
(43:34):
thing.
Do we value the innovation?
Do we value the artisticintegrity of artists, or do we
value the privacy protection ofpeople?
And the problem is everythinggets conflated in this
conversation, but it getsconflated when everyone is not
on the same table, and we don'thave administrations, unless
(43:56):
they're California and Texas andNashville, that are very
interested in protecting andregulating some aspects of the
technology.
But that's also that's alsolike there needs to be a
constant conversation.
Dave Reddy (44:13):
That's fascinating.
At the end of the day, it's umAI may be new-ish, but this is
uh a fundamental issue ofliberty versus privacy, which
constantly comes up in all sortsof ways.
Emilia David (44:27):
Yes, yeah.
Dave Reddy (44:29):
You mentioned that you use Midjourney.
I I've again I've spoken withMichael several times.
He is very bullish about AI.
He even told me that if hisfolks aren't using AI, he gets
upset.
So I uh I asked this questionof every reporter, but it's a
little different asking you.
How are you using AI and howare you not?
Emilia David (44:48):
I have so I I joke about this.
I'm very lazy in whichplatforms I choose.
I use ChatGPT because it'sinstalled in my laptop, but also
it's the one that I've used thelongest.
So it's the one I've trainedthe most.
I have a custom GPT that'strained that is basically the
(45:09):
persona that I am writing for.
So I plugged in the the likethe types of readers and
audience that Venture Beatthat's looking for, and I use it
to soundboard stories.
I use it a lot to summarizeresearch papers.
So I plug in a research paper,ask for a summary, and also ask
(45:32):
for would this be interesting toa Venture Beat reader?
And I kind of go back and forthwith it.
So it's been a really helpfulguide because I at least come to
the table when I'm talking tomy editors with a base sense of
this is why I think and thiswould work for us.
And and when they come backwith like feedback, I also feed
(45:55):
it in, and so it has the memoryof okay, this is the feedback,
this is what we learned before.
How can we make this pitchstronger?
How can we make this headlinelike just a little bit better?
And then I edit that beforesubmitting.
Like I rewrite it, it'sbasically what I use to
(46:15):
soundboard and to gut check whatI think is an interesting idea
to see that okay, it does map towhat I think would be a good
VentureBeat reader.
Then I bring it to my editorsand they say yes or no.
So that's been really, reallyhelpful.
And honestly, I used to takeabout an hour and a half just to
(46:40):
read a research paper, not evento understand it.
It takes me 30 minutes, and Ican finish a research paper
story for the day, and I havesome time left to do something
else.
Dave Reddy (46:55):
But it's more time for enterprise writing and
things like that.
Emilia David (46:59):
And also, I would be remiss to say I still use
otter and I I love using otter.
It's been very, very helpful ina lot of these more technical
conversations that I have.
I continue to try a lot ofdifferent transcription
programs.
(47:19):
I have read AI, I have scroll.
So I'm constantly trying toexperiment with all of that.
But I think that's the bestthing that's come out of AI is
transcription.
Dave Reddy (47:32):
Yeah, well, I I gotta tell you, that was the
first thing I started using whenit came when it came to AI for
ChatGPT.
And oh my God, right?
I mean, I I can't tell you backin the day when I was a
reporter how many quotes I blewbecause I was just writing
writing stuff down and Icouldn't read my own
handwriting.
It's kind of embarrassing.
But uh, I don't think I couldfix that, but at least I could
(47:53):
just record it and not worryabout it.
Well, this has been anextraordinarily thoughtful
conversation, one of the mostthoughtful we've had on the
show.
But now I'm gonna go back to myfavorite fun last question.
New York City or thePhilippines?
Emilia David (48:07):
New York.
I love the Philippines.
If I do decide to start afamily, I would definitely move
back.
I am not raising a child in theUS.
But New York, it's I'm tooneurotic to live anywhere else.
Dave Reddy (48:23):
Wow.
I I I that's that that's new.
That New York, uh well, I guessthe we what you're saying is
you fit in with the rest of theNew Yorkers all the time.
Emilia David (48:32):
I I someone mentioned this.
I was watching a Twitch streamthe other day, and someone had
mentioned people actually havedifferent times within them.
And my time, my pace is NewYork fast.
And I anywhere else that isn'tas fast is very difficult for me
(48:52):
to adapt.
So, you know, New York was.
Dave Reddy (48:59):
I've been to a lot of places.
I've been to a reasonableamount of places around this
world, and uh New York's aboutas fast as it gets.
So you are in the right place.
Emilia, that was wonderful.
Thank you so much for yourtime.
Thank you so much for your yourdeep thinking about AI.
And just want to credit you,congratulate you for continuing
your mother's and your family'slegacy in journalism.
(49:21):
And best of luck to you as youcontinue what's already been a
fantastic career.
Emilia David (49:26):
All right.
Thanks so much.
Dave Reddy (49:28):
Thanks for being on.
I'd like to thank you all forlistening today.
And once again, a big thank youto Emilia David of Venture
Beat.
Please don't forget to join usnext month when we chat with yet
another member of the B2B TechTop 200.
In the meantime, if you've gotfeedback on today's podcast, or
if you'd like to learn moreabout Big Valley marketing and
how we identified the B2B TechTop 200, be sure to drop me an
(49:48):
email at d ready atbigvalley.co.
That's D-R-E-D-D-Y atBigvalley, all one word dot co.
No am.
You can also email the wholeteam at pressingmatters at
bigvalley.co.
Once again, thanks forlistening.
And as always, think big.
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