Ashley

[00:00:00 ]Brett: [00:00:00 ] This week’s guest is Ashley Esqueda, senior producer at CNET and woman about the internet. Welcome back to the show, Ashley.

[00:00:08 ] Ashley: [00:00:08 ] You for having me back? I it’s been a few years, so I figured I was on a black list.

[00:00:12 ] Brett: [00:00:12 ] No, there was a year in there where systematic was just off the air.

[00:00:18 ] Ashley: [00:00:18 ] I got, Oh, okay. I see. I see.

[00:00:19 ] Brett: [00:00:19 ] I burnt out, I guess.

[00:00:22 ] Ashley: [00:00:22 ] My PR it was so bad. My last appearance was so bad that you had to take a year long break

[00:00:28 ] Brett: [00:00:28 ] was a slow burn because your last appearance was in 2015 and it just took until about 2019 for it really to sink in.

[00:00:36 ] Ashley: [00:00:36 ] I get it. I get it. Have that effect on people years later, they realize what have I done?

[00:00:43 ] Brett: [00:00:43 ] So how’s the pandemic treating you?

[00:00:45 ]Ashley: [00:00:45 ] You know, uh, what is good anymore? It’s as we’ve discussed, it’s all relative, right? So I’m, we’re surviving. That seems we’re very fortunate. Um, we’re very we’re we are very grateful to still be [00:01:00 ] employed. Um, we are very grateful that, uh, we do not have to do distance learning because our. Son who was born last year is too little for that.

[00:01:10 ] Um, we are, we are feeling very grateful for those things and, um, and just grateful that, uh, you know, the people that are closest to us have stayed for the most part, very healthy, um, and. Safe. So we’re, you know, it’s a, you know, the holiday season, you kind of start thinking of yourself, but all the things you’re grateful for, the things that you’re, you know, that you want to keep safe, the things that you care about.

[00:01:35 ] And, um, all of those things have held thus far. So I will take it as a win.

[00:01:40 ] Brett: [00:01:40 ] So when you say you’re still employed, um, what, what does your current job entail?

[00:01:47 ] Ashley: [00:01:47 ] So I, well, it’s been a fun year for CNET. So, uh, if, if you hadn’t heard, we were sold, um, we do not. Uh, any longer have CBS as a parent company, [00:02:00 ] we are now owned by red ventures, um, who owns a lot of websites that you might be familiar with? They own, the point sky is one that a lot of people are familiar with.

[00:02:09 ] Um, and so they. Yeah, good old Darren. Um, and so, uh, there are a lot of, uh, sites under sort of the CMG, uh, Seanet media group, um, banner that, that red ventures now own. So like GameSpot, um, Metacritic like all of the sites that CBS had, like a lot of them in interactive and digital have now moved over to red ventures.

[00:02:33 ] So, um, so, but I’m still doing the same thing, which is, uh, that I’ve been doing for almost seven years now. I’m, I’m producing and hosting a video about technology and, uh, and all of the things that touch it, which at this point is pretty much any, anything is fair game, as long as it kind of plugs in or powers on.

[00:02:51 ] Right.

[00:02:52 ]Brett: [00:02:52 ] Yeah. So are you you’re producing and doing on-air stuff from home?

[00:03:00 ] [00:03:00 ] Ashley: [00:03:00 ] Yes, uh, that has been a challenge. Um, I so funny story. So at the beginning of this year, um, I had just come back from maternity leave in November of 2019. And, uh, we had finished CES and I talked to my boss and I said, Hey, like I have a seven month old. Um, I’d really love to kind of spend a little more time at home.

[00:03:24 ] Um, and the office that we were in was sort of a shared space with a lot of other CBS teams. So we struggled, uh, from time to time getting booking a space in our studio and, um, And so I said, Hey, like, because that’s the case, like I could really do something at my home office. That would be nice. Um, and he said, yeah, that seems fine.

[00:03:44 ] Like, I’m willing to let you do that. You you’re pretty self-sufficient. And as long as you guys feel, um, at team LA that you could do your job like that. That’s cool. So, um, Huge huge props to my boss for allowing me to even just look into that. [00:04:00 ] Um, and as I was looking into it and sort of, kind of tinkering around with the idea, boom, the pandemic hit.

[00:04:04 ] And so I was a little bit ahead of the curve on having a set up, um, to record from, um, compared to some of my other colleagues at work who were taken, uh, quite a bit by surprise. And the San Francisco office for seeing is. You know, it’s a, it’s a major office. It’s where most of our employees are and they have full studios there that they shoot in, in New York as well.

[00:04:27 ] So, um, that was a little bit of a, more of a shock for them, uh, to have to work from home, shoot from home. Um, then, then, you know, maybe me, so, um, I got to work, right? So I cleaned out my office, which was. Up until that point a storage space for all of the baby stuff people had given us. Uh, and, and I just had not gotten around to cleaning it up.

[00:04:50 ] And with the help of my very lovely husband, I was able to clear the space out and kind of rework some of my furniture. Uh, thanks to animal crossing for [00:05:00 ] inspiring me to keep furniture away from my walls at certain points, because that was actually very oddly helpful, uh, in figuring out how to sort of Tetris all of this together.

[00:05:09 ] So now, um, as it stands, I actually have three different shooting spaces in about a 10 by 10, uh, office in my house. So I’ve got a desk space that is sort of a streamer setup. Uh, and it’s kind of where I do all my video meetings and there’s a bookshelf behind it, very sort of classic, uh, desk set up. And then I also have a vlogging set, which is a seated set.

[00:05:34 ] I have a chair there it’s, it’s free standing. There’s no desk in front of it. Uh, and that is sort of more of a set set. I painted the walls matte black. I have acoustic foam on those walls. Um, I have a shelf in the b