Cloudflare TV

Silicon Valley Squares

Presented by Dan Hollinger, Michelle Zatlyn
Originally aired on 

A send up of Hollywood Squares where Cloudflare experts fill the celebrity squares and answer high and low-level Cloudflare questions to help two guest stars (customers, AEs or new hires) get a a tic-tac-toe, or possibly the Silicon Valley equivalent - a TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK).

This week we have a takeover from Womenflare to celebrate International Women's Day!

English
Game Shows
Womenflare

Transcript (Beta)

Hello, hello, welcome everyone to Silicon Valley Squares. If you've never been here, thank you for joining us, whether on the live stream or one of the recordings.

We're welcoming and celebrating all of the women of Cloudflare here and celebrating Women's Empowerment Month and International Women's Day.

So we're going to have a whole bunch of time asking trivia questions of these great and capable women here on the call.

If you're unfamiliar with Silicon Valley Squares, for some reason you haven't tuned in yet, the way this works is I've got two guests here, Rachel and Mariana.

They're my contestants trying to get a tic-tac-toe that's three across, three down, or three diagonally by asking trivia questions of our amazing squares.

So with that, I'm going to ask you to like and subscribe. Oh wait, I'm being told this isn't YouTube, but if you want to, you can still dial in anytime that we have a live show.

And with that, I'll kick it off. Rachel, would you mind giving us a quick introduction of yourself?

Hi, I'm Rachel, woman, so very on-brand for the day.

I'm an engineer at a different company, and I am a stand-up comedian, mostly doing material on math and tech.

So very excited to be here, excited to play this game.

Awesome, happy to have you here. Yeah. All right, and Mariana, would you give a quick introduction to yourself?

Yes, hi everyone, I'm Mariana, also a woman, based in San Francisco.

I'm in Cloudflare, I've been in Cloudflare about a year and a half, and I'm on the Places team.

This is my fourth time on Silicon Valley Squares, but my first time as a contestant, so let's see how this goes.

So you know all the tricks, basically? Literally all, but I'm gonna, if I make any mistakes, it's because I'm trying to be nice and not because I'm, I have any flaws in any way.

Gotcha, that's a good strategy. Yep. All right, Rachel, as our guest, you have the pick of the board.

Where would you like to play first?

All right, Jen Kim. All right, Jen Kim, welcome to the Squares. Hi, first time here, happy to be here.

No pressure, Jen, no pressure. All right, and Jen, where are you dialing in from?

I'm based out of San Francisco office, and, well, virtually in the house, and I'm in the infrastructure team, leading the infrastructure interconnections commercial team and strategy.

Awesome, glad to have you.

So your question to kick off game one, in Greek mythology, who was the first god to be born after chaos?

Wow.

Can I just guess whatever I think it is? No, no, so Jen will guess, or if she's an expert in mythology, she will, you know, get the right answer, and then you're welcome to agree or disagree with that answer to win the square.

Sure, well, if it's, let's see, the first god after chaos, maybe chaos jr?

No, so let me think a little bit.

I should have paid attention a little bit more during this. I want to say I'm not the best, but it could be Erebus, Erebus.

All right, Erebus.

Well, I think the answer I have was Gaia, but that might have been the first goddess, or at least the first element.

So I'm going to go with Gaia.

So therefore, Mariana gets the square. I'm not sure it's an advantage to go first, by the way.

As far as I can tell, it's a disadvantage so far. But anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Yeah, it's case by case. Okay. Unless you're a Greek mythology expert.

The only way to win is not to play. I see. Okay, now we know the tips.

All right, Mariana, the board is yours, and you already got an O on the board.

Where would you like to play next? Let's go with Roshni. All right, Roshni, welcome back to the squares.

Thank you. Happy to be here. Happy International Women's Day.

Would you? Is your dog Roshni? Is Kaia going to make an appearance?

I mean, dogs are welcome today. I just had to take her squeaky toy away, because of course, she's been sleeping all day.

And then I get on this camera, and she starts squeaking.

I'm like, what are you doing? I need silence. So she's pouting on the couch right now.

Hope to see her later. That's the real reason I asked you, Roshni.

Like, we may be friends. Maybe I can drive her over with the tree in a bit.

All right. And Roshni, what team are you working with here at Cloudflare?

I'm on the recruiting team, based out of New York. Awesome. Your question.

This first lady was known for holding women-only press conferences. Which first lady is this?

I didn't even know that there were that many women in press back whenever this happens.

So that's interesting. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt?

All right. Eleanor Roosevelt is the guess. Mariana, do you agree or disagree?

I am 0% an expert in US history, because I did not grow up in the US. But I know Eleanor was married to Teddy, right?

And they were somewhat recent-ish, not ancient times.

I'm going to disagree. I feel like it might have to be a little bit more recent than then, based on my zero knowledge.

All right. Well, based on that zero knowledge, that is incorrect.

It was Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh. How many women do you think she had in the room for that press conference?

It might have just been a bridge club.

And Wikipedia changed it. OK. That's my attempt at a joke. I'm sorry.

All right. Well, here's the state of the board. It is an even one-to-one. Rachel, where do you like to play next?

Let's do Kelly.

All right. Kelly, welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick intro?

Yeah. Thanks for having me. My name's Kelly. I'm on the field marketing and events team.

Also with Amada and Yao, who are on Silicon Squares today as well.

Marketing in the house. Bring it. I'm based in San Francisco. And I think I'm one of the last few people who are actually still in San Francisco.

So happy to be here.

The last one there turns off the lights, right? That's the... Yeah. That was the memo.

All right, Kelly, your question. Frida Kahlo began painting self -portraits after being injured in this type of accident.

What type of accident was that?

Well, I guess maybe an accident when she lost her selfie stick, maybe. That would make sense.

I'm with you. Okay. On a more serious note, I'll go a swimming accident.

All right.

A swimming accident. Rachel, do you agree or disagree? I famously went to the Frida Kahlo house in Mexico City on my study abroad in college.

So not to claim that I'm an expert, but I do disagree.

All right. I tried to trick you. I feel like I should just be saying things, right?

Well, that is correct. It was a bus accident that started...

caused her to start painting self-portraits. All right. So here's the state of the board once I'm fixed the production value over here.

I got to yell at my producer.

High quality production, dad. It is. It is. Every show got to get a little bit better.

I feel like we can build some software for you. All right.

So that is loading. So let me reset this here. All I could think about when you said selfie stick, Kellyanne, is that how much I would love to travel right now.

So I would love to have a reason to use a selfie stick, but all I've been doing is in my house.

So I thought, what is that again? But that would be a nice accessory to bring out.

All right, Mariana, the board is yours. Where would you like to play?

Gotta be Yao. All right, Yao. Welcome to Silicon Valley Squares. You want to give them a quick introduction?

Yeah, sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Yao.

Thanks for having me and happy International Women's Day. I am also on the field marketing and events team.

Also one of the last people in San Francisco helping Kelly turn off the lights.

All right. Yeah, your question. What is Ada Lovelace famous for?

Yeah. So I think this is like one of those names where your name is like what you do.

So I believe she's famous for inventing a special way for tying your shoes.

It's called the Lovelace Knot. But yeah, if you're a Boy Scout or, you know, you go camping, you know all about it.

All right. The Lovelace Knot.

Do you agree or disagree? I was not a Boy Scout, but I happen to know that Ada Lovelace was, I believe, a programmer.

She was a women in tech like pioneer.

And the reason I know that is not because I'm a programmer, but because Francis Ford Coppola's winery slash distillery has an Ada Lovelace gin.

So I learned about women in tech while drinking alcohol.

Cheers. I'm going to disagree with you, Yao.

All right. That's fair. All right. I wonder if they named the gin after it because it has a complex, robust flavor.

Just like all the algorithms that she made.

Potentially. I was, it was free. That's why I was drinking it.

I wouldn't know. I don't know what good gin tastes like. All right. That would be my headcanon now.

All right. Rachel, you're, you were blocked. Where would you like to play next?

This is all part of my strategy. 4D tic-tac-toe. All part of the plan.

Michelle. All right, Michelle, welcome back to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick intro?

Sure. Thanks for having me. I'm Michelle. I'm one of the founders of Cloudflare and super excited to be here with all these wonderful women and Dan on International Women's Day.

So I'm lucky to be able to say that this is work.

So thanks for having me. Awesome. Glad to have you here. And your question, the circular saw, aquarium, and a submarine telescope.

What do all these items have in common?

Oh, that's a good one, Dan. That's very appropriate since we are a tech company and a very tech focused.

So they all, what they all have in common is they're all the latest, they're all hot startup names.

And so if you think about it, the submarine telescope, that's really Periscope, which of course Twitter famously bought.

And that was a hot company. You think about aquarium and that's really Clubhouse in reference to Clubhouse, the new hot company.

If you're not on Clubhouse, you're late. So go sign up. That's where all the cool kids are.

And then of course, circular saw, I did a lot of shop in high school, most popular machine or not instrument, but anyway, and if you think about the circular saw, it's something that everyone uses.

It was the most popular. And so that's like Figma, the online tool for sharing design.

It's the most common way to clear it online. So the thing that all three of those have in common is three hot startups.

All right. Three hot startups walk into a VC.

Do you agree or disagree? And they go get some gin at a winery.

I just learned what Figma was this week. So glad it was in time for your reference.

Oh, I'm going to disagree. All right. That was a good choice. They were all invented by women.

I mean, those three hot startups are not invented by women, but they should be.

So the next three. Yeah. Wait. So what was it? Circular saw aquarium and submarine telescope.

Submarine telescope. Oh, interesting.

That's cool. Go women. All right. There's so many amazing women in the world doing so many interesting things past and present and in the future.

So thanks for telling us about that, Dan.

Awesome. Oh, I got more. I got all the trivias.

All right. Mariana, board is yours. Irina, I need to defend my turf. All right.

So you're picking Talia? No, Irina. Oh, Dan, I just realized there's a double thing.

Okay. Well, I'm going to stick to Irina. All right, Irina, welcome to the squares.

Thank you. Hi, guys. How are you doing today? Good, good. Quick intro.

I am based out of San Francisco, though I'm in Boston. I have been here for the last three weeks, and I'm on the partnerships team at Cloudflare.

And this is my debut on Cloudflare TV, which I'm very excited about.

Awesome. Good team. I might be biased, but good solid team.

I think so. All right. Your question. In 1997, this person became the first female Secretary of State.

Ooh, I feel like I need to know this one.

First female Secretary of State. 1997. I want to say...

I keep thinking Condoleezza Rice, but I don't think it's her.

The other person I can think of is Madeline Albright. So maybe I'll go with her.

I think it's her. All right. Madeline Albright, do you agree or disagree? The only thing I know about Madeline Albright is she was in that cameo in Parks and Rec with Leslie Knope, aka Amy Poehler.

And I was like, who is Madeline Albright? So I actually looked it up, and if I remember what my brain absorbed five years ago, the answer is correct.

I do agree. Awesome. It is Madeline Albright. She was the first Secretary of State in 1997.

All right. Wait, I have a nice story about her. She actually once came into our office a couple years ago, so I got to meet her.

And she was in her late 70s, early 80s when she came in, and she was so interested in learning about technology, incredibly curious, so smart.

And you thought, oh, my God, you've done so much in your career, and you're here meeting with a small company.

And she was so interested in understanding how things worked.

And so she's an amazing woman, a lifelong learner, I guess. So there's my little story about Madeline Albright.

That's awesome. I had to be surreal. That's awesome.

All right. Here's the state of the board. Rachel, where would you like to play next?

Talia? Did I say that right? Talia? All right. Talia, can you hear us?

Oh, it's Talia. Sorry. Yes. Hello. All right. Welcome to the Squares. Thank you.

Hello. This is my first time playing Silicon Valley Squares. First time player, long time watcher?

Yes, definitely. I work out of our Customer Success Programs team, which is new at Cloudflare.

And I'm also probably the third last person left in San Francisco.

Although I don't know if I helped turn off the lights.

All right. Well, glad to have you. And your question, maybe the last one of game one.

Which ancient civilization gave women equal rights to royal positions and the throne?

That's a good one. There's only a handful of ancient civilizations. And I think the woman leader we all think of, or know of most often is probably Cleopatra.

So I'm going to say Egypt. Egypt.

Do you agree or disagree? I have no idea. The fun part about this game is I'm realizing other people also don't know as much as we should.

I like that logic, though.

That makes sense. I feel like we hear of the famous Egyptian women. So yeah, I'm going to agree.

All right. Egypt it is. Wow. Rachel takes game one with three across the middle.

And with that, we'll kick off game two. So... That was neck and neck, crew.

That was neck and neck. Look at that. On that board. It was all about the strategy.

The frenemy tension is buzzing right now. Okay. It's tough.

Nice woman Mariana is going away. Yeah, it's on. All right. And with that, I got to get to the ad.

So game one was brought to you by Cloudflare Magic Transit.

Help get rid of your network perimeter hardware and provide the same level of DDoS protection.

When you don't want no scrub, Bing centers. And with that, off to game two.

Mariana, the board is yours. Where would you like to kick us off?

Let's see. Who hasn't gone yet? Angela, have you gone yet? I have not. Let's start with Angela.

All right. Angela, welcome to the Squares. Would you mind giving a quick intro?

Thank you. Yes. First time on Silicon Valley Squares. Long time watchers.

You mentioned earlier. I am a strategic customer success manager at Cloudflare.

I'm working very closely with Talia's programs team. And very, very excited to be here.

Thanks. Awesome. Glad to have you. Your question to kick off game two.

In 1992, Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman elected to what?

Well, I happen to know Carol personally. But from my childhood home state of Illinois.

But I want to say the better question is what hasn't she done? Wasn't she first elected to?

And that's where I'm going to have some trouble. I want to say it was the House of Representatives.

I'm almost positive. I'm going to say House of Representatives.

You sound really confident. So I'm just going to agree with you.

Because I really don't know the answer. And have not heard this wonderful woman's name before.

All right, Angela. All right. She was actually the first U.S.

Senator. The first female U.S. Senator for Illinois. Sorry, Mariana. It's okay.

Pick me first and everything. And I steered you wrong. All right. So Rachel takes the square.

That's such a nice. Between squares.

Between contestants. Got a friendly board. All right. Maybe. I've just seen a lot of games.

All right. Rachel takes the square. And where would you like to play next, Rachel?

Well, Amada hasn't gone yet. All right. I love that. I'm here to support women.

I love it. That's the reason I was picked. Like we need equal representation of all women.

All right. Amada, welcome to the squares. Do you mind giving a quick intro?

Thank you. Yes, I'm Amada. I'm on the field marketing and events team with Kelly and Yao.

And I'm based in New York City. And stayed here throughout the pandemic.

And I'm not leaving. First time on this show. And third time on Cloudflare TV.

And ninth week at Cloudflare. You're not going to Florida like everyone else from New York, Amada?

No, I'm from Florida. So I try to avoid it.

I just escaped Florida last weekend. I drove all the way from New York.

So. Oh, wow. Wow. How long was that? 17 hours. But we broke it up. We stayed in Ohio with family too.

So nice. That made it longer. Yeah, Ohio. I'm from Ohio. So I can say these things.

All right. Your question, Amada. Women hold 60% of these globally compared to men at about 40%.

What are these? Cramps.

No, my real answer is PhDs.

I think that sounds right. I'm not positive. But I can see women surpassing men in earning PhDs for sure.

Oh, should I reply?

Do you agree or disagree, Rachel? I want to say the answer is advanced degrees.

Mm-hmm. So I think PhDs are inclusive of what it is. So I agree, but I think the answer is wider.

All right. I'll check with my producer. Yeah, we'll accept it.

College degrees. So women have earned more bachelor's degrees than men since about 1982.

And that trend has continued. Women definitely have more than 60.

I feel like 60% is too low for... I feel like women have way more PhDs than men do.

I don't know if that's true. All right. Rachel, you work in data, right? You said you work in data.

Oh, yeah. I didn't see that. Yeah, exactly. There we go.

This is like... Right. You're well -suited for your career choice. Yeah. So I work.

I'm a support engineer, but I'm actually moving and I'm starting our QA team.

And there's only one other woman on our whole engineering team. So this is so cool for me to see.

But yeah, I do data and all that stuff. So I don't know. All right.

Mariana, the board is yours. Where would you like to play next? I pick Michelle Zatlin.

All right. Michelle, your question for game two. Female mathematicians from Harvard were the first programmers of this early calculating machine called what?

I know you didn't like my three hot startup analogy, but this I definitely know.

So Mariana, I'm setting this up for you. So Grace Hopper was a mathematician at Harvard.

She's amazing. She has the whole Grace Hopper celebration, which is this huge celebration of women in technology.

I think usually 100,000 people show up to this event.

And they created the Mark I, which was the computer that helped during World War II.

I really don't know much about this either.

But Michelle went to Harvard and Grace Hopper went to Harvard.

So they must have some sort of deep affinity. I'm going to agree with Michelle.

That was said very confidently. All right. Well, actually, the answer was the ENIAC.

So one of the first ever. Reword of the question, Dan.

I give it to you. It was a little vague. Like I could have been more specific with the year, like timing.

I was aiming for ENIAC. Or my producers were. All right.

Well, Rachel. I really was trying to set you up, Mariana. It's OK. You tried your best.

All right. Well, Rachel, I can't give it to you since it's a winning square.

But you're welcome to try another question for Michelle. And we can see what's next.

All right. Michelle, let's do it. Let's do it. Can I call a friend?

All right. Let's do this. I don't know. You might be able to get this one. This person might have stopped by Cloudflare as well.

I don't know. We'll check.

Your question was this former Google VP served as CTO under President Obama, hoping to update the technology of the US government.

Who was this former Google VP?

I definitely know the answer to this question. Unless the question is vague.

And then I don't. I'm not competitive at all. There have been many CTOs of the US government.

But the person, especially because it's International Women's Day, it's a woman, Megan Smith.

I'm going to agree. I like the confidence. All right.

And I have no, yeah. All right. It is Megan Smith. So game two was just a wipe.

That was, I think this is the first. Have you ever seen your board like this, Dan?

Just like straight down the middle. No, no. I think this is a first. This is just very, very effective.

Very. Really rub it in and make Mariana feel good. Okay.

I'll come back for my revenge. This will just motivate me to sign up for SBS even more.

I'll go easy on you this round. All right. And with that, let's do the ad real quick.

Cloudflare game two was brought to you by Cloudflare's secure access service, Edge, including tools for Zero Trust access, secure web gateway, and magic transit.

You can think outside the box and get sassy. I like that. All right. That's the end of my jokes.

That's peak my joke. Game three, we'll have a time for about one or two questions.

Who would like to? Rachel, I think it's back to you to kick us off.

Let me bring up the board just in case no one hasn't memorized yet. Everyone went, right?

I guess Michelle is probably done. Yes. Okay. I'll do Amata again.

All right, Amata, your question. Donna Dubinsky helped create the precursor of smartphones called PDAs.

What does PDA stand for? Public display of affection. I think that Donna had the foresight to predict that these devices would be used to communicate with loved ones, especially loudly in inappropriate places like buses, trains, cars, where you shouldn't be speaking so loudly.

And she had the foresight to call them public display of affection devices, foreshadowing their ultimate use case.

All right. PDA devices. Rachel, do you agree? I want to agree, but unfortunately, I have to disagree.

All right. That is correct. They are personal digital assistants.

And Donna worked- Public display of affection is personal display of affection.

It's such a better term. At least what smartphones have turned into, definitely.

Yeah. Evolved into that. All right. Mariana, probably our last question of the game.

Where would you like to play? Jen can. Take us home. All right, Jen. Your last question is Hidden Figures, a 2016 film highlighted the life of Katherine Johnson as she successfully plotted what as a human computer?

So just considering the time of her life, I mean, I've known about her.

I've heard about her in my childhood.

I can't remember, but I want to say it can't be Apple because Apple was just like, just starting back then.

So IBM was huge. I know my brother used to have an IBM when I was growing up.

So I'm going to say IBM, but then I'm not sure.

Sorry, but I think IBM sounds good. All right. IBM, do you agree or disagree?

I agree with Jen. That sounds good. That is incorrect. It was Orbital Trajectories.

She was working for NASA. And with that, that's the end of game two out of time.

Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. And thank you, all these amazing women of Cloudflare.

Thank you. Happy International Women's Day, everyone.