Kids and Clouds - they are ready are you?

Like many fortunate/unfortunate (delete as appropriate based on level of tiredness) people in the world, I am the father of three amazing children.

With the joys of parenthood and the milestones and surprises they bring on a daily basis, it’s still always a shock when they hit you from the blindside with a question that makes you really have to think hard about the answer. To bring this back into a more relevant blog, a couple of months ago I was blindsided by my six year old son.

“Do I save this to the Cloud Daddy?” Erm, excuse me, what did he say? In fact he was readying himself for his weekly allowance of Xbox time (they have to see actual sunshine as well I am told) and it had asked him where he would like to save his games, locally to the Xbox or Cloud storage. “Just to the Xbox will do” was my attempt at diverting the inevitable.

“What is Cloud storage Daddy?” Well thank you very much Mr Gates, as if the birds and bees weren’t enough to contend with!

Then it occurred to me, if I couldn’t clearly and concisely explain Cloud in basic terms to a six year old how could I ever expect to do the same to the non technical audience I often find myself addressing.

So there I was, looking into his expectant eyes (Daddy knows EVERYTHING of course) and I decided to just talk him through it as honestly as possible.

By the time I finished he did have the look of someone who wished they had never asked, but he seemed to understand in that boyish way they do, clicked Cloud storage and said “that’s going to be in a big building full of computers (data centre) and I can get it back wherever I am in the world now, can’t I?”

That’s close enough! “That’s right, well done” I said. I know that’s just one aspect of Cloud but was in danger of overheating his brain!

This isn’t the end of this tale quite yet, as now he has told everyone he knows that I work with Clouds, and I am constantly harassed by children and their parents alike for explanations, and they then seem pretty miffed I am nothing to do with the weather.

The truth is though, as much as this is a light hearted yet true tale, the kids are asking about Clouds, they see it when they play games, they see it on adverts on TV, they get it and accept it – they are our future. Is the Cloud a seed sown now to bloom with the next generation or something we need to make sure we understand ourselves now?

I am reminded of being 15 or so and having to always programme the video recorder for my mother, I really don’t want to have to ask my kids to sort Clouds out for me!

Take the blog challenge and try to explain Cloud to your children and see how you get on!