Corey Quinn sits down with Pasquale DeMaio, VP of Amazon Connect Customer , to talk about how Agentic AI is reshaping customer service, and why replacing humans isn’t necessarily the goal. They dig into the evolution of Amazon Connect Customer from a cloud-based contact center into an AI-powered customer experience platform, where agentic AI, real-time customer context, voice technology, and deterministic workflows work together to actually solve problems.They also explore where humans still mat
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
What happens when open source, AI, and decades of database technology collide?Corey Quinn sits down with German Eichberger, Principal AI Engineering Manager at Microsoft, to dig into DocumentDB, why it’s built on PostgreSQL, and the realities of MongoDB compatibility. They explore how Kubernetes and databases have evolved to better support stateful workloads, why MCP servers could give AI agents safer database access, and how AI may dramatically increase the number of databases organizations nee
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
AWS Morning Brief for the week of September 14th with Corey Quinn. Links:Amazon API Gateway now supports 1 MB execution logs with configurable delivery destinationsAmazon S3 Object Lock now supports variable retention with event holdsLambda's slow-motion reinvention of EC2Amazon EC2 now supports specifying compatible instance types on AMIsAnnouncing second-generation single-rack AWS OutpostsHow AWS thinks about FinOps Automation and TrustIntroducing Amazon EBS Volume Clones across AWS accountsHo
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
AWS VP of Global Networking Matt Rehder joins Corey Quinn to pull back the curtain on the massive network infrastructure behind AWS. They explore resiliency at scale, AWS’s move toward flatter networks, the advantages of building custom hardware, and why AI is making networking exciting again.Show Highlights: (01:08) Meet AWS Networking Lead(02:01) Why AWS Avoids Global Outages(05:23) RNG Flat Network Explained(10:08) Overbuild Capacity And Custom Hardware(17:37) VPC Virtual Network Origins(19:5
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Adam Larsen, Principal Developer at Aurora Educational Technologies, to explore what technology and AI should actually look like in K-12 education. They discuss using tech to empower teachers rather than replace them, the risks of outsourcing critical thinking to AI, student data privacy, and what happens when schools become dependent on tools that may not be affordable forever. Adam also shares how AWS became his go-to platfo
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
This week on Screaming in the Cloud, Corey sits down with Chris Hill, CEO of Humble Pod, to talk about the messy, nuanced reality of AI in media. From secretly cloning Corey’s voice for an ad using ElevenLabs (and almost getting away with it) to the growing tension between polished production and authentic content, they unpack what AI can actually do versus what it claims to do.They explore the shifting economics of podcasting, the rise of video-first formats, Netflix’s entrance into the space,
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, host Corey Quinn sits down with Roi Lipman, CTO and co-founder of Falco DB, to unpack the evolving role of graph databases in a world overflowing with data stores. Roi shares his journey from building RedisGraph at Redis to spinning it out into Falco DB, along with his enduring love of the C programming language (dad jokes included). The conversation explores why graph databases remain niche, but powerful, especially for pathfinding problems like supply
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
What happens when cloud economics meets the messy reality of business, AI, and human behavior?Corey and J.R. Storment unpack why cloud cost management is less about math and more about psychology, the real difference between FinOps for AI vs. AI for FinOps, and why automation still struggles with edge cases (despite all the hype). Along the way, they explore multi-cloud complexity, the rise of consumption-based pricing, and how businesses are navigating massive, unpredictable spend across cloud,
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. In this episode, Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times, joins Corey Quinn to talk about real-world cloud decisions, Kubernetes complexity, and the constant trade-off between building your own solutions and buying existing ones. From home labs to enterprise architecture, they unpack what actually works, and what engineers often get wrong.Show Highlights: (00:19) Intro(01:09) From Imposter Syndrome(06:34) Honest Community Feed
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
What happens when you stop trying to serve everyone, and start focusing on the right customers?In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Corey Quinn (yes, really) to talk about specialization, scaling service businesses, and the power of saying no. From growing a digital agency from $20M to $200M to escaping founder-led sales, this conversation dives into practical lessons for founders, marketers, and leaders looking to scale with intention.Show highlights: (00:00) Specialization Mindset(00:21
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
AI agents are moving fast, but the infrastructure behind them is still catching up. In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Paper Compute CEO Brian “B Dougie” Douglas to explore building telemetry for AI agents, open-source infrastructure, token economics, and what it takes to create developer tooling in the AI era. From local-first observability to agent runtimes and the future of AI workflows, this conversation dives into what’s next for AI-powered development.Sho
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with AWS Senior Principal Engineer David Yanacek to explore the next evolution of DevOps.After two decades of building systems to reduce operational pain, David shares how AWS’s new DevOps Agent is pushing automation to a whole new level, autonomously diagnosing incidents, suggesting fixes, and proactively improving systems before engineers even log in.From pager overload to autonomous remediation, this conversation is a glimpse into a world where software
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Dexter Horthy, CEO and Co-founder of Human Layer, to unpack what engineers are getting wrong about AI, especially when it comes to coding agents.From the obsession with “just throwing more tokens at the problem” to the reality of building scalable AI workflows, Dexter shares hard-earned insights on how to actually push models to their limits. They dive into the evolution of developer workflows, the rise of AI-powered software factories, and why underst
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
What happens when two cloud economists leave AWS behind and spend six days hiking 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail? Corey Quinn sits down with Caleb Hurd to share stories from the trail, including exploding sleeping pads, heroic shuttle drivers, lost phones, and the unique community that makes long-distance hiking special. Along the way, they draw surprising parallels between backpacking and cloud economics, discussing everything from serverless architecture and cloud cost optimization to the h
Series: Screaming in the Cloud
AI-generated code is no longer just producing low-quality pull requests. According to AWS Principal Engineer and Valkey core maintainer Madelyn Olson, the quality of AI-assisted contributions has improved dramatically in just the last few months.In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn and Madelyn discuss how AI is changing open source development, the growing burden on maintainers, and how projects like Valkey are using AI to find bugs, improve security, and harden production syst
Series: Screaming in the Cloud