>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. (electronic music) >> Welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the ACGSV, it's a mouthful. Association of Corporate Growth Silicon Valley Awards, the 14th annual. We've been coming here for about three years. We're really excited to have tonight's keynote speaker on, many time CUBE alum, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware. Pat, great to see you. >> Great to be here, Jeff, thank you so much. It's always great to be on theCUBE, and so many good friends from theCUBE and great interviews. I really enjoy you guys, thank you. >> We're excited for VMworld later this year, we've got Dell Technology World coming up next week, so... >> Just working on my keynote this morning, so almost ready to go, so. >> But you're going to keynote tonight, so what's your keynote tonight on? >> Well, tonight, it's about tech as a force for good. And I'm going to talk about what I call the four superpowers today. You know in the past, we thought of superpower, like, USSR and the USA. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> Today I believe superpowers are far more powerful, and they're technology superpowers. And the four I talk about are mobile, unlimited reach, cloud, unlimited scale, A.I., unlimited intelligence, an IOT bridging from the digital to the physical world, and how those four superpowers are reinforcing each other today, and literally it's our opportunity to improve the quality of lives for every human on the planet as a result of those superpowers. And really how it's our responsibility as a tech community to shape those superpowers for good. >> It's so good to talk about the "for good" because there's so much bad in the news lately about some of the stuff that's going on, and you know, it's two sides of the same coin always. You can use it for good or you can use it for bad. And unfortunately, the bad has been in the news more than the good, but there's so many exciting things going on in medicine, healthcare, agriculture, energy. The opportunities are almost endless. >> Yeah, it really is, and as I say, technology is neutral. It can be used for good or bad. The Gutenberg Press. The Bible or Playboy, it works for both, and it really is our responsibility as a society, and I'll say even more so today as tech leaders, to be that force shaping those technological superpowers for good. You know, one of the statistics offside of my keynote, is in the last fifty years, we've taken the extreme poverty rate from over forty percent, to less than ten percent on the planet. It's stunning that we've lifted two and a half billion people out of extreme poverty. Healthcare reach, we've increased the length of life by almost twenty years on the planet, over the last fifty years. I mean, these are stunning things, and largely the result of the technological breakthroughs that we're doing, and as I say, today is the fastest day of tech evolution of your life. It's also the slowest day of tech evolution of the rest of your life. >> Of the rest of your life, pretty interesting. And with 5G coming just around the corner, kind of thinking of a world of infinite bandwidth, infinite compute, infinite store. How do you start to design applications and distribution when you can have all that power? And as you said, with cloud really at your disposal. You don't have to build it all yourself, you leverage companies like you guys to put it in place and I as an entrepreneur don't have to build all that stuff anymore. >> That's right, this really is impressive that way, 'cause today we've crossed over half the population of the planet has a persistent connection to the internet over some form of mobile or PC device. Half the population, you can now reach over the internet. I mean, it's just stunning that way. >> Jeff: Yeah. >> You can rent the world's largest super computer for a few thousand bucks. The scale that we're able to now conduct business to be able to develop software to reach customers, and truly to change people's lives. >> Right. You do a lot of work. I follow you on Twitter and you're out in the community, you do a lot of stuff with your faith and outside of work to help people. You see the power that you can bring to this technology. What are some of the inspiring stories that get you up everyday, when you do some of this stuff outside of your day job? >> It really is exciting and one of the charities that my wife and I are very involved in is called Missions of Hope International. They work in the slums of Nairobi primarily, and we help to start schools there that literally today have over fifteen thousand kids in the schools that we helped start. Over the summer, I'm climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in July, as a fundraise to build the next girls high school for those schools. As the girls get younger, they get pulled back into tribalism. For five camels, they get married off at young ages, and keeping them in school so that they can really advance and become proper members of society versus drug into tribalism, so that's one of my summer projects is doing that. Particularly in Kenya, we've been thrilled, things like M-Pesa, and we work with a company called Node Africa, to deliver farming and agricultural services. You know, the most basic things that give people market access, give people cropped information, and literally are lifting people out of poverty in the country of Kenya today. >> That's great work and like I said, follow Pat on Twitter. You're pretty active on there doing good work. >> Thank you. >> We look forward to your keynote tonight and we'll see you next week in Las Vegas. >> Look forward to it. Thank you so much, Jeff. >> Alright, he's Pat Gelsinger, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from the ACGSV Awards. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: From the computer museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow Awards brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're in Mountain View, California at the ACGSV awards, the grow awards, 14th annual. We've been coming for a couple of years, about 300 people celebrating, really, there's a lot of networking, it's an interesting organization. Check it out, we're excited to have our next guest, he's Nick O'Keefe, partner of Arnold and Porter. Nick, great to see you. >> Likewise, great seeing you, great to talk to you. >> So we were talking a little bit off camera, you came to Silicon Valley in 2000, and were saying you seen a lot of changes in those 18 years. >> Yeah it's phenomenal, it's epitomized by the great gathering that we have here today. As I was saying earlier, when I came, I worked in Silicon Alley. Silicon Valley was sort of a bigger version of Silicon Alley and it's just kept growing. You know, the practice between East Coast and West Coast is converged. I mean, there's some of the biggest most successful companies in the world are based here now, and some of the biggest deals. It's just incredible in a short period of time how that's happened. As I was saying earlier, you know, one of the things that really opened my mind, opened my eyes to how successful Silicon Valley is, is I opened up the Middle East offices to another law firm right around the time of the Great Recession. And it's seems like every country is trying to emulate Silicon Valley. We advised on how they can replicate it, what kind of laws they'd have to put in place, what kind of ecosystem they'd have to build. And there's just something really unique here that's really difficult to emulate in different countries-- >> Right because it's all industries. Right, all industries tend to aggregate and congregate around a usually a specific location, or one or two. You think of financial services in New York and London. Because you get the people, and those people leave and start new companies. You have the schools that drive people in their associates. It's tough, it's tough to replicate a whole ecosystem if you don't have all those components, and then, as it gels for a awhile, I think the barriers to entry become even higher. So, you get different versions of it, but really not the same. >> Yeah that's right, I mean, we have all the ingredients here, we have the great educational institutions, you know, Berkeley, Stanford. You have the financial institutions or the venture money. Very sophisticated population, it's just wonderful living here. Just so many smart people around, you can't just lift them up and put them somewhere else, they all have ties in the community. It's just very tough. What's interesting about financial services you mentioned, typically that's a New York-based practice, but with Fintech, you're seeing some of that migrate over here. Cryptocurrencies, a lot of that technology is being developed here, and that's really a convergence of financial services and tech, and Silicon Valley is the hub of that. >> Yeah, I really think that Stanford and Cal don't get enough credit. And Santa Clara and some of the other schools, but those two particularly, because they attract really great talent. They come, their weather's great, they've got a culture of innovation, they've got very nice connections with the local business community, so people don't leave. So you got this constant influx of smart people, and they stay, where a lot of other places, even great academic institutions don't necessarily have the business climate, the weather climate, or kind of the ecosystem to keep their brightest, it's there locally. So I think that's just a huge driver. >> Yeah absolutely, I completely agree. And there's, even if they don't stay, they still maintain their ties here. You know, people all over the world come to study here, as you're indicating. You know, I'm doing a deal currently with some Chinese people who did graduate research locally, and they formed a very successful start-up in China, where currently, we're doing a deal with. And the fact that Stanford, they couldn't be where they were if they hadn't gone through Stanford, and they develop ties with the region, and with the companies in the regions, so they're very much, sort of a diaspora of Silicon Valley, the way they've operated it. >> Right, what is your take on China? 'Cause to me, China's the big competitor. That's the one, I think, where there's the potential because they got a huge internal market, they're really good at fast following, and you look at Alibaba Cloud, and some of the big, big players over there. I think that's really where the biggest threat to the current US incumbents is going to come. >> It's very interesting, it's sort of two, two faceted. On the one hand, obviously, a huge population, and as the country develops, I mean, ultimately within the fairly near future, the Gross National Product is expected to overtake the US. But you have sort of a different culture, and they have the same challenges as everyone else does, this sort of replicating Silicon Valley, I don't think they'll ever take Silicon Valley, you know, take the crown away from them. And I think, what I'm seeing now in a couple of deals is, so the current administration is obviously trying to defend the US trade position, but it's having deleterious effects in that it's preventing Silicon Valley companies from growing and from doing deals. You know, a lot of the Chinese funds they're lucky to invest in the US, where there's currently some regulations that are expected to be proposed next month that could inhibit Chinese investment in the US. Now that's not good for Silicon Valley, so the attempt is to, sort of, protect the US economy, but, you know, I can see certain effects that are happening that are not helpful. It's interesting, there's sort of a symbiotic relationship between development here in the US, and development in other countries, and it's difficult to fight it 'cause you're going to have weird effects. You know, I think the US, it's just a unique country. You know, I think it'll always be unique, and I personally, I don't have a fear that China is going to somehow usurp the position the US occupies, or India, or other huge country, I'm just very polished on Silicon Valley, and the US generally. >> Yeah it is amazing 'cause I've been here a little longer than you, and it just, it just keeps reinventing, right? It's just wave after wave after wave, it was originally silicon and microprocessors, and then it's software, and then it's IOT. And now, you see all the automotive people have innovation centers here. So wave after wave after wave, just continues to come, and then we're going to have, you know, 5G, and it's this whole move to asymptomatically approaching zero cost of store, compute, and networking, and infinite, basically, amounts of those on tap. It really opens up a huge opportunity. >> It really does, yeah, and it's, a lot of it's going to come from here. >> Alright Nick, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time, and stopping by. >> You bet, my pleasure. >> Alright he's Nick O'Keefe, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, from the ACGSV awards, Grow Awards in Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

(electronic music) >> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 14th Annual Association of Corporate Growth Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. We've been here for a couple of years now, and it's a big event, 300 people coming in to talk about an ecosystem of helping other companies grow. And we're excited to have the new CEO, Drue Freeman. Drew, great to meet you. >> Thanks Jeff, pleasure to be here. >> So you've been here two months, I think. What attracted you to the opportunity? >> It's kind of an exciting organization, actually. I've been working with ACG Silicon Valley for a little while now doing some programming with them around autonomous driving and the connected car. And I got to know my predecessor, Sally Pera, through that and through the course of discussions-- She's a wonderful salesperson, she kind of sucked me into the role and here I am. >> Jeff Frick: What is the mission, for people that aren't familiar with ACG? >> Essentially what we are is an organization that's dedicated towards providing networking opportunities, education opportunities, programming for C-Level executives, and other senior-level executives at companies to help them develop their career and also grow their businesses. >> Like you said, Sally's been at it for 13 years, she's stepping out of the role, which opened up the opportunity for you. What's your charter now, as you take the baton from Sally? Fresh enthusiasm, fresh energy, fresh face. What are you excited about? >> Of course, it sounds silly, but to take things to the next level, whatever that means, to try to identify a vision for the organization, going forward. Maybe find some new areas to develop content around. Attract some sponsors in the technology domain, and bring content that will maybe continue the Thought Leadership area. We are recognized as a Thought Leadership within the community here in Silicon Valley, and also within the greater ACG community. But we want to really kind of notch that up a little bit. We're bringing in some university sponsorship now and really looking at some of the leading edge areas that Silicon Valley is on the tip of the spear of, essentially, globally, for innovation. We want to make sure that we're putting that content out really to our community. >> Right. And this is the GROW! Awards, this is an awards banquet, a celebration tonight, but you guys do a number of different types of events throughout the year. What are some of the formats of the different ways that people can get involved? >> The one that most people are aware of is our keynote panels because those are open to a larger audience. Typically we get about 100 people there at these events. We bring in a panel of experts and we have a discussion on some topic that's quite current at the moment. But we also have a Public Board Circle, where people who are on public boards of publicly traded companies will have a discussion within that smaller group of people about relevant topics. We have a C-Suite Circle, where C-Level executives come together. We bring in outside experts that will come in and talk about things like economic trends or whatever the current issues are, and then they have a robust discussion around that topic. We have an MNA Circle. We also have an accelerator environment, where we have younger companies, sometimes start-ups, sometimes mid-market companies, where we bring in some experts that kind of help them pop the hood and look at what some of the strategic issues are that they might be facing, et cetera. >> Okay, so that's all great, but let's talk about the stuff I know you're passionate about and is so fun right now, that's autonomous vehicles. It's a really crazy time in the industry. You've got changes in the players. You've got changes in the propulsion. You've got changes in the ownership structure. You've got so many changes happening in the autonomous vehicle space and all the ecosystem around it. I'd just love to get your impressions. You've been playing in that space for a long time, in the automotive space, but to see the changes really accelerate driven in a large part, obviously, by Tesla and Elon Musk. And we're here at the Computer History Museum. They've got that great little display over there with the Google cars. Which they now weigh more and they have to keep changing them out because it went from the little bug-looking thing, now they're driving the vans. I'd love to get your impressions as to the speed, some surprises, not surprises, as we see this autonomous vehicle trend coming down the pipe. >> Technology is evolving at a remarkable speed. That's being driven largely by the availability of increased processing power. You need to address the data bandwidth power, as well. You've got to move a lot of different data around the car to address this technology. And that's really pushing the envelope of what cars can do. The industry itself still needs to make sure they can bring that to the market in a way that the market will accept. That people in Main Street, USA, or Main Street, Europe, or Main Street, Asia are going to be comfortable driving in. Car ownership is going to change a little bit, especially in urban areas. People may not choose to buy a car in the urban areas. They might choose to do carsharing. But in the Midwest, I think car ownership is still going to be a key element, and it's not clear yet how ready people are to have a self-driving car as part of their own ownership. The technology, while we can demonstrate it works, still needs to be demonstrated that it works in a way that makes people feel comfortable. And so, I think there's still a lot of innovation to be done in the software, in the AI, the machine learning, that makes people feel comfortable with that. And there's a lot of great companies working on that. I'm amazed every day at the companies developing not only the sensors and things that enable the perception of the vehicle to improve, but also the AI around that. But honestly, I think the roll-out in-- Making it available to you and I on the street it's going to be a lot slower than I think a lot of us have been thinking about for a while. >> Yeah. The trust issue is so interesting to me. 'Cause on one hand, people do have to have some trust and we've talked to Phantom Auto and some other companies that are trying to kind of insert a person back in at some point in time to help with that trust. On the other hand, you have people driving the Teslas especially, or at least that's the ones we hear the most about, that's a level two assist that people are treating like a level five fully autonomous vehicle. And unfortunately, there's been some fatalities and they're not level five vehicles. So it's really two opposite extremes, that we see people and their interaction with these things. They want it to be fully autonomous today, and it's not but people are treating them that way. It's weird. >> Yeah, and I think that's one of the risks, right? I think level three is one area where I really think you probably will not see a lot of. I think level four, where you can basically have fully autonomous but in a geo-fenced area, will I think be the first area that really takes off. So on campuses, in maybe urban areas that are fenced off from other vehicles. I think you will see that develop first. I don't think mixed-mode traffic where you have a lot of vehicles where they're fully autonomous but you're going to expect the driver to be paying attention all the time and willing to take over the vehicle at any minute. I don't think that works. The human brain doesn't work that way. >> No, it doesn't work. It's funny, we were at a Ford event, and it was a press event so they had the sample driver guy ready to go, and they had a guy sitting in the right seat with a laptop, checking things out. And this poor guy in the left seat, he had his hands half an inch from the wheel on both side, just completely alert and ready to go. You couldn't do this for more than fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. It was the worst of all worlds for this poor guy. It is going to be interesting, that intermediate phase, and it's going to be complicated, but it's clearly coming at an incredible rate of speed. >> Right. Exactly. And then you also have to manage-- How do you manage the traffic when you have mixed mode, when you have human-driven vehicles combined with autonomous vehicles? How do the autonomous vehicles react to the human-driven vehicles and how do the humans react to autonomous-driven vehicles? And we haven't really figured that out yet. >> Right, and then there's all the other law of unintended consequences with, what do you do with the parking structures? I think curb management is an interesting thing that's really been highlighted lately in San Francisco with all the electric scooters that are now littering the sidewalks, which nobody ever really thought about when they rolled out hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of these scooters all over San Fransisco. Good opportunities and crazy times ahead. >> And that's the beauty of this, right? All of these things actually create opportunities, you just have to stick with it and look at solutions, and there's no shortage of really talented, creative people to go address these opportunities. And it is so fun to be involved in it right now. >> Alright, Drue, well congrats on your new position, and we look forward to watching ACGSV evolve. >> Thank you very much. >> Alright, he's Drue Freeman and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the 14th Annual GROW! Awards. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCube, covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards, brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're at the ACG SV 14th Annual GROW! Awards. It's their big annual event, about 300 people here at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. We're excited to have one of the board members join us. She's Anita Ganti, SVP and Global Head of Product Engineering Services, for Wipro, and a board member, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me here. >> So how long have you been involved in this organization? >> Not very long. It's just a little over a year. >> All right, and what attracted you to it? >> I actually got introduced by a friend. She connected me to the board of ACG, and I could see what the organization was doing in terms of bringing more growth, more energy here in the Silicon Valley, not that we don't have enough already, but I'm very passionate about it, and so I was really glad to be introduced and brought into the fold, so to speak. >> All right, good. So I'm going to set you up, I did a little research before we have you on, famous Jeffrey Hammerbacher quote, you probably know what I'm going to say, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about "how to make people click on ads, and it sucks." You're all about using tech for good, that's what you're passionate about. Not just using it to get people to click ads, but really doing some meaningful work around meaningful things. What are some of your favorite projects you're working on? >> I'll just clarify, right? It's that clicking on ads is a bad thing. I mean, people do need to buy, we need to get commerce going and all that. But with all the technology that we have access to, it seems such a shame that we are not paying attention to real world problems, larger world problems. I think global warming is something that's real. I'm in the camp that believes that it's very real. And there's a lot of harm that some aspects of technology have cost our planet. It's important to really look at not just the First World problems those of us here in the Silicon Valley see every day, but really open our eyes to what's happening in other parts of the globe. The need for water, clean water, water filtration, clean air, combating some of the changes that have been created as a consequence of global warming, having access to information, education. So these are some things that are really personally dear to me. >> Right, right. So we've done some stuff with the Western Digital. I know SAP is part of this work with the United Nations for some of their really big, global goals that they're addressing. A lot of them you talked about. Simple things: water, access to information, better food production. There's so much inefficiency in Ag that we see that people are applying technology to. So there is a real opportunity and we are seeing, I think, some movements into that area. >> Absolutely. And it doesn't always have to be done by the corporate arm that's focused on social issues. We can do that as engineers who are working just in our day-to-day lives. We could be looking for ways in which we apply things like IOT, Internet of Things, to providing services as a service to enable smart cities. Really look for avenues in which we look at technologies that are available to us every day and then just like people invest in social causes without really looking at it as philanthropy, look for for-profit avenues, avenues to enable technology but then keeping the impact to our planet in mind. >> You guys deal with a ton of customers, right? You're out on the leading edge, you're helping people implement technology. So are you seeing people add that in, as kind of a, you think of a public works project or a building project, there's always some carve out for art or other things to keep cities beautiful. Is there similar type of thing you're seeing for social good in some of these projects where there's some carve out, some allocation, to make sure that that base is being covered? >> No, what I want to say is you don't have to think of it as a carve out. You can make that as a part of your mission in what you do. So here in the Silicon Valley we are creating so much technology and all that technology has multiple applications. It's like both sides of the coin. And if we are making technology available for artificial intelligence machine learning, we're creating technology to do things like block chain authentication, distributed ledger, it's just about opening our minds a little bit and then taking those products, taking that technology to other markets. There are in many ways the technology-haves and the technology-have-nots. >> Absolutely. >> A lot of it is not just about making the product but then taking the product you made and then implementing it in various use cases that really make a change come about in the world. So that's something that I'm very passionate about. >> All right, Anita, well thank you for taking a few minutes to stop by and give us the update. And really excited for doing tech for good because we hear so much about the bad these days. So thanks for your time. >> Thank you. My pleasure. >> She's Anita Ganti. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCube from the ACG SV Awards, Mountain View California. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the 14th Annual ACG SV GROW! Awards. There's about 300 people coming together. It's their once-a-year big event for the awards. They do about two events a month for the balance of the year. And we're really excited to have one of the speakers on. She's Dr. Karen Lojeski, the founder and CEO of Virtual Distance International. Karen, great to meet you. >> It's great to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely, so virtual distance. What does virtual distance mean? >> Well, that's a long story but the short answer is virtual distance is actually a measure that I discovered that basically describes what's lost when the human being gets translated through our devices and it actually shows up as an emotional and social detachment that grows unconsciously when we are constantly talking through mediated communications. >> Jeff: Right. >> And when virtual distance is high, it has a very significant impact on things we care about as business leaders. But we can predict virtual distance, we can reduce it, we can manage it, and therefore we can improve performance while maximizing the technology but minimizing the impact it's having on human beings. >> So before we jump into that, so virtual distance can be really close physical distance, right? >> Karen: Yeah. >> I think I saw something >> Exactly >> in one of your research, doing some research where people are sending IMs and emails to somebody who's sitting right across the way. >> Yeah. >> So it's just so prolific because we're so used to communicating via these devices. >> That's right. I mean we see it all the time. You go out to restaurant to have dinner and you and I could be sitting just this close and both of us are doing this, there's virtual distance right at that table. >> Right. Right, or the kids not doing what what they're supposed to >> That's right. >> And you text them, "Hey, look up." You know? >> Yeah. >> "Let's pay attention." >> And then it's actually affecting how that child develops or how we feel about each other >> Right. >> but it's invisible. >> So, how do you measure it and what are some of the really key indicators that leaders should be looking for, measuring, keeping track of to try to minimize some of the negative impacts of this? >> Well, we measure through the Virtual Distance Index Assessment and our clients take that and then we generate analytics reports and we actually give them predictive solutions on how to reduce it so that they can impact performance in a positive way. >> So what are some of the examples? Some of these cases you can share that where it just went way one way >> Yeah. >> or way the other way? >> I'm glad you brought up, it can sort of be, virtual distance can be even as close as we are and also between people who are thousands and thousands of miles apart. And we've also seen virtual distance very low between people who sit oceans away and who've never met. For example, I had a large financial services company that actually had 90% of their employees clock in to the same location every day and we went in and measured virtual distance and we found that it had caused multimillion dollar losses in a strategic IT project even though the people on that project were literally as close together as you and I. So, we were able to show that. We knew exactly where it was coming from and we could prescribe solutions to reduce it which they did >> Right. >> And they saw immediate bumps in performance. >> So what are some of the things you can do because we're so addicted to these things? The stats of the number of times we touch them and look at them, it's mind-boggling actually. So what are some of the things you tell people to reduce that virtual distance? >> Well, I actually start by telling them that what they have to realize is that when they're talking to the screen, they're actually talking to themselves. And I know it sounds crazy but that's actually how we operate as human beings. >> Right, right. >> So just by becoming aware that that's what we're doing actually pulls people back and makes them stop and think, "Do I really know what this person means?" Because in essence what happens is we lose all the context we need as human beings to actually figure out what people really mean. So I work with leaders to bring that context back and constantly be explicitly referring to it because unconsciously it's all disappeared behind these virtual curtains. >> Right, and consciously we actually see evidence of it all the time. Email I think is one of the worst communication vehicles of all time. It's certainly convenient but so many times the nuance is not carried through. The intention or the degree of pissed-off-ness, I'll just use which is probably not a vocabulary word but that's okay. >> That's okay. >> It doesn't really come through either way over-positive or way over-negative depending on a whole bunch of factors when you read that or just bad choice of words. >> That's right. >> Or unintentional affect onto those words. >> That's right. >> It's not a great form of communication. >> Well, I would add to that that it actually is a good form of communication but in certain circumstances. So what Virtual Distance analytics, measurable, quantifiable things tell us is that email is great for things like, "Jeff, let's have lunch at 12 and meet "at the Computer History Museum." or, "Here's the file you wanted. "Please have a look and give me a call." It is actually a very good tool for things like that. But what we do all the time is we try to explain ourselves in email and that is not a good use of email because as you're saying, what happens is since we have no context we use our own context and that's not good because it's usually wrong. >> Usually wrong. >> And then we misinterpret everything and people think other people are just jerks or something when in fact it's really just virtual distance. >> Now what about Zoom and Webex and the virtual meeting rooms that are so prolific now as an alternative to the actual phone call? Do those things work from your point of view? Do they not work, are they a nice substitute and better than the alternative with all these distributed teams? What's your take on video conferencing? >> Yeah, so the first thing I would say is virtual distance is actually not about the technology, it's about the people, so we have to recenter ourselves on that notion. But things like Zoom and Webex and things can be helpful but only if they work properly when we need them. If they don't, one of the ways to reduce virtual distance in the operational sense is we need to have plan A, plan B, plan D, plan C if that technology goes down because the problem with it is it's not always reliable and you know, you've been on calls, right? >> Right. >> Where if there's a problem, it takes about 10 seconds maybe before you're off doing something else while someone is trying to fix it and that actually adds to virtual distance. >> Still one of my favorite YouTube videos, and very sad that it's still so relevant is the joke one about the Webex meeting or the virtual meeting, especially at the end where it's like, "Bob, you've been here the whole time?" >> Yeah (laughs). >> And it's still the same. It's so much wasted time trying to get the thing to work. So I want to wrap it up with what are the consequences from leadership skills? What should leaders be thinking about? It's the world we live in. We're still connected to these things. What are some of the concrete things that they can do to reduce the virtual distance and have better comms amongst their people? >> Yeah, so the first thing we have to do is to know, I've been collecting data on this for 14 years, more, and virtual distance is now everywhere. It's not a matter of geographic distance as we said in the beginning. First, they have to understand that they have to be managing it all the time. The second thing is that there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to always be on the watch for readiness instants or these technologies failing. But the big thing they have to understand is that they things that cause the most significant and negative impact to performance are the things about us as human beings that lie underneath the surface and that disappear behind virtual curtains. So what leaders need to do is make those explicit in everything they do and we have specific tactics on how to do that so that everybody can see each other in a deeper way because when virtual distance is high we get much lower trust by 90% and it's not just lower trust, it's distrust. >> Jeff: Right. >> So if we reduce virtual distance, we increase trust, we get better performance and it's immediately seen by executives all over the world. >> And trust is one of these foundational things. >> Absolutely. >> That if you don't have trust it just crushes everything. >> No, and without giving away what I'm about to go talk about tonight, I can tell you that we're at the point where we have so much data that statistically speaking, high virtual distance is the statistical equivalent of distrust. So if we lower virtual distance, we statistically get the equivalent of strong trust. >> All right, well if you want to see Karen speak, you got to go watch her key note or I think you've got books and all kinds of great, great research around this. >> Yeah, and they can visit us at virtualdistance.com and all kinds of good places. >> All right, she's Dr. Karen Lojeski, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from ACG SV. Thanks for watching. >> Karen: Thank you. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the CUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the CUBE, we're at the ACGSV, the 14th annual Grow! Awards, Mountain View California. They're just about ready to pull everybody into the keynotes and we are able to squeeze in one more interview. Excited to have Christian Kim, SVP of sales from Dell EMC. Christian, great to meet you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely, so you know, Dell, EMC merger took place about a year and a half of so ago, seems like it's doing really well, we'll have Michael on next week; we'll be at Dell Tech World in Vegas. >> Excellent. >> And so you're out on the front line, you're out in the sales role. How's it going out there? What's going on with the merger? How are customers digging it? How do you like having all those extra resources at your disposal? >> Well, I would say Jeff, it's a great question. The integration and the merger has gone exceptionally well, in my opinion in our first year. I think when you put the two big companies together like that, generally there's going to be a few bumps in the road but I would say the reception from our customer base has been very positive. I think the biggest thing that we see is, just the whole "better together" message, that all of the resources from the strategically aligned businesses like Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, Vmware, VirtuStream, RSA, and SecureWorks all working together to support the customers. >> Pretty amazing group of companies. We've just had Pat on a little while ago, you know, there was a lot of concern a couple years ago, 'what's going on with Vmware?'and they've really done a great job kind of turning that around, getting together with Amazon and that partnership RSA was last week, 45,000 people. Hot, hot hot in the security space and obviously Pivotal just did their IPO, right, last week. >> They did, yes. >> So you guys are in a good space, I mean, I remember when Michael first went private you could tell he was like a kid in a candy store, right, as he's talked about the '90-day shot clock' they didn't have to worry about it anymore. And so, you know, having an aggressive founder as the leader, I think really puts you guys in a great position. >> It does. When the founder's name's on the building, I think generally it sets a good tone for the culture and the objectives for all of the employees across Dell Technologies. >> And he's such a real guy, right? He tweets all the time, he's really out there and I always find it interesting that there's certain executives that like to tweet, that like to be social. Beth Comstock is another one that comes to mind. Pat tweets a little bit when he's really doing some of his philanthropic things, Michael does as well. And then you have other people that are scared of it, but Michael really wants to be part of the community, he tweeted out today his condolences around the crazy tragedy up in Toronto, so it's really nice to have a person running the organization. >> Yeah, he's a very active CEO and Chairman. Likes to be in front of customers, very involved with the employee base, I couldn't ask for anything more. >> Alright, so we're almost out of time, priorities for 2018, we're, hard to believe, a third of the way through, what are some of your priorities, what are you guys working on, what's top of mind? >> I'd say our priorities are certainly customer focused, focusing on business outcomes, the four areas that we really drive and work closely with our customers on are all about digital transformation, IT transformation, security transformation, and workforce transformation. Those are the big things for us this year. >> It's a good place to be. >> Thank you very much Sir. >> Well Christian, we've got to leave it there, they're shooing everybody into the keynote room so thanks for taking a minute. >> You got it. My pleasure. >> He's Christian Kim, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the CUBE from the ACGSV Awards, Mountain View California. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering AGC Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. The program is just about to begin here at the ACGSV GROW! Awards, 14th Annual. We're excited to be here for our third year. 300 people are going to be giving out some hardware here shortly. But, before we do that we're excited to have Alex Wolf, all the way up from Santa Cruz. He's the dean of the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Welcome, Alex. >> Thank you very much, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely. So, what do you think of this organization? How did you get involved? >> Well, it's been great for us. We've been drawn in by some great alumni who have been involved with the organization, and they're interested in helping Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz School of Engineering, and partnering with ACG is just a perfect way to do it. >> Excellent. So, I was doing a little homework, obviously, before you came on. I was looking through the curriculum of the school, the engineering school, and you've got CS and E, and all the normal stuff, but two things jumped out to me, biomolecular engineering and computational media. >> That's right. >> What are those disciplines? >> Well, let's start with biomolecular engineering. That's where we are doing a lot of work in health and life. Santa Cruz is famous for one particular thing that happened a number of years ago, which was the sequencing of the human genome. Now, Santa Cruz played a huge role in that. This was the place where we were able to assemble the human genome for the first time, and publish it on the web. >> What year was that? >> That was 2003. >> And back then it took massive amount of computer, massive amount of time. >> Lots of time, millions and millions of dollars. This was a project that was run by the government. Many partners and Santa Cruz researchers in School of Engineering were able to crack that nut and get this genome sequenced. >> And now we can do it-- Now, it's getting cheaper and cheaper, we've got researchers who've been working on that, we've spun out a bunch of companies that have worked on less and less expensive, faster and faster sequencing techniques. >> Really, with the goal to get to individualized medicine, right, to get to individualized treatment. >> That's right, personalized medicine, precision medicine, that's the goal. It's amazing what you can do if you know the genome history, if you can apply that to the drug treatments, it's fantastic. >> I think medical science is so interesting, because from whatever point you are, you look back 10 years and it looks like bloodletting. No matter what we do today, in 10 years from now, we're going to look back >> It's true at cancer treatment, like we give people poison until they almost die, >> That's right. >> that's the way we treat 'em? >> That's right, and the genome will tell you so much about that cancer treatment. We're doing other things too, in stem cell and nanopore technology, so there's just a wonderful set of technologies that people are inventing in the school. >> Great, now what about computational media? >> Computational media is a rather different thing. That is a concept where we're looking at how media can be generated through algorithms, and this has very interesting applications in the game industry, in journalism, in many parts of our interaction with humans. It's great to be able to have a computer that really understands how to generate meaningful, realistic text. >> What is the main benefit in some of the early research that you see, because we've seen some really simple versions of this out there, straight little app that kids play sports, you know, you finish the game, you hit the game over, and it generates a nice little article for you. >> Absolutely. You know, you mentioned personalization before. It's the same thing with computational media. You can get a game to be much more personalized to the player. It can understand that experience, understand the interests of the game player, and then tailor itself to that player. >> So, how much do you work with the psychology department in this world, because it's so much human factors, right? >> Absolutely. We have a great collaboration with psychology. That's really, really important. You know, the computational media department is actually going to be growing into Silicon Valley. You see Santa Cruz has recently opened a campus in Silicon Valley. >> Where? >> It's in Santa Clara, and we're right now hiring faculty into that campus. >> So, is it open then, or when will it be open? >> The facility is open. We held an ACG event there in January. We're going to be holding more of them there. It's a great location. >> Excellent. All right, well, maybe we'll have to come by and do a field trip >> Please do. when you get it all outfitted. >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> All right, well, unfortunately, we have to leave it there. They're going to pull everybody into the keynotes, but thanks taking a few minutes. >> I'm looking forward to it. Thank you very much. >> All right, he's Alex, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from ACGSV, Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. (techy music)

>> (Narrator) From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE. Covering ACG Silicon Valley GROW! Awards. Brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the ACGSV 14th Annual GROW! Awards About 300 people. It's their annual event to give out a couple innovation awards. We're excited to be here, it's our 3rd year. And we're happy to have a board member on. He's Andy Armstrong, a partner at SingerLewark. Andy, great to see you. >> Hey, excited to be here. >> (Jeff) So you said you've been on the board for about a year. >> Yes. >> Why on the board? What is this organization about? Why are you excited to be part of it? >> So actually, this last year's been incredible for me with my affiliation with the group. So the board, I was able to join so I could co-sponsor and lead the young accelerator program with Jim Chapman. And what we do is, we take young start-up companies and work with them. We create a panel of experts that is about 5-6 experts and we sit down for two hour increments with these companies and really try to work out some of the issues that they might be beating their head against the wall. And we kind of help them try to jump over those hurdles that they're facing and take them to the next level. >> How old are they generally when they're in this process? In terms of number of employees or age or, how do you bucket it? >> Pretty young start up companies. I would say some are pre-revenue. Others, they might have 5 to 10 employees and they maybe have anywhere from pre-revenue to a million dollars worth of revenue, just kind of moving up the ladder so to speak. >> Right, and they don't have to be a client of your guys to participate. >> Absolutely not, no. Really we're looking for kind of open-minded executives that are really wanting to take advantage and tap in to some of the phenomenal executives that are part of ACG, as well as here in Silicon Valley. >> Right, and then you said your firm is also very involved in southern California. So there's a number of chapters of ACG. >> Absolutely. There's chapters of ACG throughout the country. The president of ACGLA for example is one of my partners down in my firm in LA. My marketing director runs one of the largest ACG conferences in the country, which is down in LA every September, so. >> Yeah, we're heavily involved as a firm in ACG. >> So we're pretty tech focused up here. Obviously, were in the Computer History Museum and I'm curious in southern California, what are some of the industries that you guys really help and leverage? >> You know, we work a lot with down there a lot of public companies. We do a lot of public company audits. We also work with what we call our family and entrepreneurially owned companies. So we like to say that's the life blood of SingerLewark, in terms of working with companies, again big or small, mom and pop, but that's really what the focus is down there. >> Right. So, biggest surprise in working with some of these entrepreneurs. It's always fun to work with people that are getting started, they're so enthusiastic. What are some of the kind of surprises as you've worked through some of those sessions with them? >> You know, maybe not surprises, but just the realization of, they're young. They're hitting their head against the wall just like you and I do sometimes. >> Right. >> And I think it's fun to get in to that environment in the accelerator because it's what I like to call a safe environment for them. It's not like they're coming in to pitch for an investment. They're coming in and kind of airing some dirty laundry and just kind of opening up and being honest with us. And that's where they get the most out of that program. >> Right and I would imagine they get quite a bit also from their peers in that environment as well. >> Um >> (Jeff) Maybe not. (laughter) >> Yeah, well in terms of the peers on our panel, absolutely. I don't know in terms of the peers, in terms of how much they're networking with their competitors so to speak. >> (Jeff) Right, right. >> It's phenomenal the experience that each one of these companies has. >> Competitions a big part of what drives us up here, for sure, so. You know, can be a partner in one area, you can be a competitor in the other, and you know, there's so many places and so much opportunity in a lot of the growth areas as well. So there's a lot of room to run. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's great. >> Well, Andy, I'll give you the last word. What are you looking forward to tonight? >> You know, it's fun just to get into a room full of top executives, very successful people here in the Bay Area. To get to kind of rub shoulders and meet and talk to them and just appreciate the success that ACG has had in working with these kind of people. >> Yeah, they bring in good ones for sure. Pat Gelsinger, will be keynoting tonight. He's been on theCUBE many times, really doing great things at VMware. So it should be a good evening. >> (Andy) It's really exciting. >> Alright, well, he's Andy Armstrong and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from the 14th Annual ACGSV Awards. Thanks for watching. (tech music)