>> From Seattle Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're actually on the waterfront in Seattle at the AWS Imagine nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the AWS Imagine education event. This is really about nonprofits and solving big, big problems. So Dave Levy and team have you know dedicated to some of these big problems. And one of the big problems in the world is human trafficking, and problems that people are encountering and all kinds of nasty situations all over the world. And we're really excited to have someone who's tackling that problem, and really trying to bring a voice to those people that wouldn't otherwise have a voice. And she's Hend Alhinnawai, she's the CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. Hend, good to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, impressions on this event? >> Wonderful event bringing together technologists, people in nonprofits, really creating synergies for people to collaborate and talk to each other and network and learn how they can advance their organizations. >> Such important work. >> Yes. >> So give us kind of the background on what you're up to, what Humanitarian Tracker's all about. >> So Humanitarian Tracker's a nonprofit forum. It was created to connect and empower citizens using innovation and technology, but specifically for humanitarian events. We were among the first to combine crowdsourced reports with data mining and artificial intelligence and apply them to humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human rights violations, disease outbreak. All the way to tracking the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Really giving a holistic view of what's happening. >> It's interesting, you know, it's probably like the middle eastern spring, I can't remember the exact term that people use, where it was kind of the first use of regular people using their mobile phones to kind of grab a ground swell of action. You're not looking at the politics specifically, you're looking more at humanitarian disasters. But pretty amazing kind of what a connected phone represents to anyone anywhere in the world now to communicate what's happening to them. To share that story. We really didn't have anything like that before. To get that personal event on the ground. >> No it's really a new way of consuming, creating and consuming information. So the cell phone has really given people on the ground a chance to tell their own story. But it's not enough. If you have an event that happens to you. Something happens to you. And you record it, it stops there. But the unique thing with Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and tell them what's happening to and around them. >> Right, but it's not just about the individual. And what you guys are doing is using cutting edge technology, obviously you're here as part of the AWS event. In terms of machine-learning and big data to grab a large number of these reported events and distill it into more of an overarching view of what is actually happening on the ground. How did you do that, where did you get that vision, how are you executing that? >> Well, we're all about empowering the citizen. And in our line of work we deal with a lot of data, a lot of information, most of it is unstructured, most of it is crowdsourced. So we use machine-learning to help us extract important details. Information on time. Event location, what is happening. And at the same time we really cared that this reporter, stays anonymous for their own safety. We, privacy and security is utmost importance to us. So that's always our focus. So in that space, we de-identify them. We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest, or could lead to someone identifying that it was them that reported. >> And how do you get this information to the people that are suffering this activity ground? How do they know about you, how do they know that you are anonymizing their information so there's not going to be repercussions if they report. You know, how do, kind of I guess your go-to-market, to steal a business terms, in making sure that people know this tool's available for help? >> It depends on the situation. For example in the conflict situation, we rolled it out, and we kept it low key for awhile. Because we didn't want government attacks, we didn't want people to be arrested, or to be tried. So we rolled it out. And it was word of mouth that spreads. And people started submitting supports. Actually the first project we did with conflict, we weren't sure if we were going to get one report, zero reports. The first week we got nothing. And then slowly as people learned about it they started submitting their reports. And we see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice. So you submit a report to us, we then take it. We verify it. We make it public. And that, we welcome, we encourage, we want people to consume it. Whether you're a student, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a government, whether you work in a nonprofit, the UN. It's been used to address human rights violations, it's been used to identify humanitarian hotspots. The data's phenomenal, and what you get from it. It's not just collecting data. We're not just about collecting the data. We want to make sure it's meaningful, and we want to derive insights. So we want to know what is the data actually telling us? >> Right, right. So just to be clear for people that don't know, so you're making that data available, you're cleansing the data, you're running some AI on it to try to get a bigger picture, and anyone with a login, any kind of journalist can now access that data in support of whatever issue or topic or story they're chasing? >> That's it Jeff. >> That's phenomenal. And just kind of size and scope. You've been at this I think you said since 2011. You know kind of how many active, activities, crisis, I don't know, what the definition is of a bucket of these problems. Are you tracking historically at a given point in time? Give us some kind of basic sizing type of dimensions. >> It really ranges, because it could, when we were tracking conflict for example, we were really focused on one area, and the surrounding countries. Because you had refugee population, you had displacement, you had all sorts of issues. But it could be anywhere from five projects, it just depends. And we want to make sure that each project we're taking on we're giving it our full attention, full scope. And I like to run the organization like a two-team pizza team. And so I don't take on more than I could handle. >> Right, right. So then how did it morph from the conflict to the Global Sustainability Goal? So we've worked with Western Digital, they're doing a lot of work, ASP's doing a lot of work on kind of these global sustainability goals. How did you get involved in that, and how did the two kind of dovetail together? >> So the elasticity of the cloud has helped our operation scale tremendously. And in 2016 we were selected as a top 10 global innovation, that could be applied to the Sustainable Development Goals, and-- >> So they found you, the UN find you, or did you get nominated? How did that happen? >> We were nominated, and from over 1,000 solutions we were chosen. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. And we were showcased at the Solutions Summit which is hosted at the United Nations. And just based on that experience of meeting people that were doing really cool things in their respective communities, we launched the Global Action Mosaic. Because we wanted to create one place where people that are doing projects in their communities could submit it, and have it showcased. And the goals are not only to crowdsource the SGD's, but to also be a part of the effort to track what's happening. Who's doing what where, make it easy for people to search say, Jeff you decided to get involved in a project with education. You can go onto our Global Action Mosaic, search projects on education in your community or in other parts of the world and then get involved in it. So it's really creating a centralized place where people can get information on the global goals. >> Awesome. So that's pretty much the Global Action Mosaic. It's pretty much focused on the UN global goals versus your core efforts around the Humanitarian Tracker. >> Yes. >> That's great. So we're here at AWS. Have you always been on AWS? Is this something new? How does being on kind of the AWS infrastructure help you do your mission better? >> We are, we've been partners in running AWS since we actually started. >> Since the beginning. >> Yes we have Yusheheedi as one of our partners, development partners, AWS. And because one of the core, one of the most important things to us is privacy and security, we want to make sure that whatever data is being handled and received is stored securely. >> Right, right. >> And that information transmitted, handled is also being done so in a secure way. Like I mentioned, the elasticity of the cloud has helped us scale our mission tremendously. It's affordable, we've been able to us it, we've learned their machine-learning stock to de-identify some of the data that comes in. So we're firm believers that AWS is essential to how we run our operation. >> Because do the individual conflicts kind of grow and shrink over time? Do you see it's really a collection of kind of firing up hotspots and then turning down versus one long, sustained, relatively flat, from kind of a utilization and capacity point of view? >> Yeah, no it definitely, it flares up and you'll have like a year, months, weeks sometimes where it's just focused on one area. But one of the things we focus on, it's not just. So what is the data actually telling us? So say you're focusing on point A. But just down the street in location B there is a dire humanitarian emergency that needs to be addressed. The crowdsourced reports, combined with the data mining and the AI, helps us identify those hotspots. So everybody could be focused here, but there could be an emergency down the street that needs to be addressed as well. It just depends. >> And do you have your own data scientists or do you, do other people take your data and run it through their own processes to try to find some of these insights? >> We have both. >> You have both. >> Yeah. >> So what's been the biggest surprise when you anonymize and aggregate the data around some of these hotspots? Is there a particular pattern that you see over and over? Is there some insight, that now that you've seen so much of it, from kind of the (muffled speaking) that you can share and reflect on? >> I think it' very unique to each project to do. But there is one thing that I strongly support, that I don't see enough of, and that's the sharing of data within the organizations. And so, for example just getting to that culture where sharing your data between organizations is encouraged and actually done. Could help create a, create a pool of knowledge. So, for example we worked with 13 different organizations that were all tackling humanitarian events. The same one, in Syria. And the 13 did not share data and did not talk to each other. And so we found that for example, they were all focused on one area. When just a few miles down, there was a need that wasn't being addressed. But because they don't share information, they had no idea. >> Right. >> It was only when we were able to take a look at it, kind of from the, from an overarching view, looking all their data, we were able to say you know, it would be helpful, it would actually, you could save on resources, and less time, and less effort, and you guys are tackling a small funding pool to begin with. If you shared information and tackled different things, instead of focusing on one area, because you don't know what the other guys doing. >> And were they using crowdsource data, is there source data, or were they just trying to collect their own from the field? >> They were collecting their own. >> So I assume that the depth, and the richness, and the broadness of data is nothing like you're collecting. >> Well you get a different kind of, you get different kind of information when the individuals actually telling you what's happening versus you asking a very direct question like, "Are you healthy? Yes or No?". Whereas you give them the chance, they might tell you that they haven't eaten, and their diabetic and you know, give you other pieces of information. Where they're living, are they refugees? Are they healthy? Are they not healthy? Do they go to school? Do their kids go to school? How many kids they have? Are they a female-run household? All this information could help guide development in the proper way. >> Right, right. All right. So give you the final word, how should people get involved if they want to help? >> You can go to humanitariantracker.org if you want to volunteer with us. And if you're doing a project that is related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, I would like you to go to globalactionmosaic.org, and map it there, and be part of our community. >> So Hend, thank you for taking a few minutes to share your story, and for all the good work that you're doing out there. >> Thank you Jeff it was a pleasure. >> All right, she's Hend, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine nonprofit. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (techno music)

>> from Seattle. Washington. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeff. Rick here with the Cube were in Seattle, Washington, right on the waterfront. It's a beautiful day. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics we're talking about today are not so beautiful. We're here at the AWS. Imagine not for profit. Imagine of it. Great event. Little under 1000 people here talking about solving very, very, very big important problems in AWS is helping him. We're excited to have our next guest on. He is Paul Shapiro, President and CEO of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Paul, great to see you. >> Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> I mean, the title of your organization says that this is not a not a happy problem. I wonder if you can speak a little bit too, You know, kind of the scale of this, this issue and, you know, I know that's part of the reason why you got involved. >> Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Someone once said to me, How do you do this for a living every single day and this person put it into perspective, I think in a profound way. It's a woman who works on our team in the education space. She works with teachers all over the world to help them in the prevention and response of sexually abused and exploited children. Right? And she said, to be in this job to do this every day you give up a little bit of your own innocence to preserve the innocence of others. And when she said that to me, it really hit home. And while it can be challenging every single day, you know, we we realized that the work that we do is very, very important. And, you know, someone has to be there for these children that are very much alone. And that's what drives us every single day. >> Very much God's work, and it's a it's great great for you to do it. So give us a little bit of background on the actual organization. What do you do every day? What kind of the mission and how are you >> executing around the world? >> Well, the mission, as as we like to say, is summarized up in just a few words, and that is no child stands alone And when you think about the children that are out there and the children that we typically focus on our first missing children and why do we focus on missing children? Because when a child goes missing, they become extremely vulnerable, and the urgency to find them quickly is extraordinarily important, the kind of things that can happen to them when they're alone. And for those of us who have children, there's a sense of panic when they're out of our sight for even a moment. Will. You can imagine what happens when a child actually goes missing for a period of time. It's so very important to find them quickly within the first few hours. If not, they're vulnerable, and they're vulnerable to things like trafficking to things like sexual abuse, things that that oftentimes lead toe very negative outcomes so way need to get on it quickly and to build. Um, this would be hard enough if we were just doing in the United States, but our organization was really built out of a necessary out of the necessity to build a global solution for this. So we've activated emergency response in over 30 countries, things like the you've heard of Amber Alerts in the United States? Well, we've helped activate those in over 30 countries. We've helped with building a technology platform that takes images of children and allows us to geo target those images in countries all over the world with just the push of the button sending out millions of images through redundant advertising space through our technology partners that allows for that to happen and a lot more. So when you think about us about the scale of the problem, I mean, how how big do you think the missing >> children probably want? I don't even want to guess, right? I mean, it's, it's, uh, knows all kind of in everyone's face back in the in the milk carton >> days right, which we don't really get seats so much on the milk cartons in the back of trucks. But it's it's >> hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But to your point, if it's the one, if it's that that one is is every one is as important as the other hundreds and hundreds of thousands. >> I guess what we do is a modern day milk carton, right? It's It's a way of activating um, the communities through a alert system that is constantly searching for a child on there's there's lots of different ways that we do that, but just getting back to the point of the size of the problem. I mean, there's there's well over 400,000 children missing in the United States. It's enough. If I think 424,000 I believe, is the number in the U. S. Alone. That's enough. That's what Is that the population of Miami? Too many, right? There's, um, 80,000 children missing in the UK That's that's enough children that are missing to Philip Wembley Stadium, Australia. 24,000 children are missing, right? >> So clearly, most of those kids didn't get picked up within hours of becoming missing, as you said, which is such an important piece. So you know what's kind of the ongoing, um, you know, kind of process to keep to keep those keep those faces alive and to use kind of >> modern methods to find them. Clearly, the milk carton was something that that was available a long >> time ago was kind of mass distribution kind of creative at the time. But I have a lot more tools at your disposal today. >> Yeah, you know what? One? One thing that is so important is just making sure a a country is ready and that that is an easy work. That means finding partners that are out there that want to make a difference in this area. Law enforcement is a huge piece of this. Other NGOs are a huge piece of this. And, of course, technology, with the help of organizations like Amazon really enable us to be able to do that on. And that's where things like facial recognition software come in. And, you know, we're big proponents of the partnership and advocacy that we have with a W S that allows us tow Dr that intelligence through our platform and will make it more possible to find more children. >> Right. So you say you're relatively new to the organization. Was there a specific charge in your mind in terms of, you know, kind of fresh blood, fresh energy, fresh point of view that you saw on this opportunity or they saw in you that was kind of York and a new strategic directive that maybe a little bit different than what was happening before, only >> as your new Yeah. Meanwhile, while this is all this has always been so important to me, you know, finding a way to give back and make the world a better place. I mean, that is something that has driven me my entire career. And, you know, ironically, 17 years ago, I worked for a company that really took on missing children as the purpose of their organization. So that's when I got my first exposure to this. If things have come back rather full circle in this new pursuit, by the way, missing children isn't isn't all that we D'oh. But my, uh, my day job over the last 15 years was really ah was organizational transformation. It was it was helping organ organization standardize and scale, um, so that they could be more productive. They can leverage technology so that they can engage a workforce thio drive the right behaviors, Did a lot of organizational training trained tens of thousands of individuals over the last 15 or so years. And when I had an opportunity to come to this organization, you know, I really saw an extraordinary team of people that were very effective at training countries. This organization is a very sensitive organization. What I mean by that is they're very sensitive understanding where country is in its readiness for child protection. And we go in the countries with that sensibility and make sure that the programs that we build first, that there is policy and legislation in place so that the country even recognizes that there's a problem. And by the way we've driven. We've driven policy and legislation where we've had significant influence in over 150 countries over the last 20 years, which is extraordinary work. That's very important foundational e to us being able to understand where countries that trying to go in and provide a cookie cutter solution doesn't work when you're talking about international work, the sensitivities of ah, of a country's culture and understanding of how law enforcement how the education system, how the political system hell healthcare views this problem is ready for this problem is really what we focus on. So that's really where we've built our core competencies are in those very areas and what along with my team and I, we're looking to do right now is to take these silos that we've been focusing on for nearly 20 years where we've been where we've trained, you know, tens of thousands of law enforcement professionals, educators and health care nationals. And we're taking that to the next level. We're building it into a global training academy that is going to take a multidisciplinary look at this that brings these teams together. And instead of us just going in with instructor led training, which is what so many organizations do, we're gonna be taking a look at a blended learning curriculum, using technology to take it online where we can, and to make sure that the time that we spend in these countries is really focused on helping these countries get to a level of certification where they are international center certified. And there will be accountability and expectations built in two. How they get there and how they stay there. And there will be a commitment, ongoing support from us to be able to, you know, keep them moving in the right direction. That's really the vision for the organization. >> Yeah, a CZ you're talking, you know, it's going through my mind is is is the surveillance >> society that we live in right We've got cameras everywhere as you talk to. You know, we're talking about the milk carton, So I'm thinking about pictures of these of these kids rights. We've got surveillance everywhere. We've got all types of laws around how that surveillance is used. We've got facial recognition software all over the place now, which is developing. And I just, you know, are >> these are these tools that you currently use that you envision using? I mean, I would would you know, there's always the privacy security, >> you know, kind of trade off and complexity. That said, I would imagine tools like surveillance at airports and tools like facial recognition and tools like a I and machine learning to do projected aging of individuals must be tremendous new assets for you guys to leverage in your mission. >> Yeah, they've been around for a while, but it's getting better and better, and I know the downward pressure that effects organizations like a W s relative to facial recognition. There's so many privacy laws that cause this this'll challenge for organizations like AWS and also organizations like ours. I guess where where I'm at with it all is we need, there's there's not a question about privacy in my mind, when it comes to protecting children, it's the one great unifier that we have. So we need to find ways to work within the confines of privacy, and that varies wildly country to country, right. But these are the tools that we need that are gonna be just absolutely vital to finding more children to protecting more children, whether these air children that are being trafficked in an airport or child that goes missing after two hours. And we need toe alert a community and feed their images into our system that constantly searches for them. Whether it's in the first hour or just spoke to a parent who had been on his 45th day of his missing son, his son had gone missing. And and and you see the desperation that a parent has when they have nowhere else to turn. It's our job to find places for them to turn toe, employ technology that never stops. I mean, that's you talked about how dark of, ah of a of a job this could be, Yeah, but you know, the hope that we provide really is is the light that keeps us going >> right. So, Paul, final question. What do people not >> know about the space that they should? If you if you could just say, you know, this is kind of the reality, but, >> you know, this is this is where I'm very careful, Thio to make sure that people are ready to hear the realities of the space. I spoke to a judge in the Philippines recently who talked about just the, you know, the kind of cases that she's trying when it comes to sexual abuse, when it comes to children who are trafficked. And I said, What? What exactly are we talking about here? And by the way, this is a conversation I'll have with a lot of people, especially in law enforcement, you know? What kind of age are we talking about? You'd be shocked to find out how high the percentage of children are under 10 years old. You'd be shocked to find out the percentage of children that are under one. And you say to yourself, How can this be? Well, it is. It is the reality of what we're dealing with. So, you know, you talk about something that drives you when you find out children that are that vulnerable in the scale that truly exists, the numbers that exist. You wake up every day and you run to this job and you try to find partners out there in every sector that you can. I don't care if it's in sports. I don't care if it's an entertainment. I don't care if it's in technology. I don't care if it's in religion or government. You find partners that have the ability to make you stronger. And that's a big part of our remit. And it's it's why I feel so fortunate to be here. Um, at this a w s conference, learning more about how we can employ even more technology to make us strong, >> right? Well, certainly with a w s behind you got all the technology >> could ever, ever hope Thio deploy. So hopefully that will help >> you be more effective in your work and >> your team's work. And thank you for taking a few minutes. >> You got Jeff. Thank you so much. >> All right, thanks. He's Paul on Jeff. You're watching the cube. Where? Need of us. Imagined nonprofit in Seattle. Thanks >> for watching. See you next time

>> Narrator: From Seattle, Washington it's the CUBE covering AWS Imagine non-profit. Brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're on the waterfront in Seattle, it's an absolutely gorgeous couple of days here at the AWS Imagine Nonprofit Conference. We went to the AWS Imagine Education Conference, this is really all about nonprofits and we're hearing all kinds of interesting stories about how these people are using AWS to help conquer really big problems. We're going to shift gears a little bit from the two footed problems to the four footed problems and that's animals and everybody likes animals but nobody likes animal shelters and nobody likes the ultimate solution that many animal shelters used to use to take care of problems. But thank you to our next guest, that is not quite the case so much anymore. So we're really happy to have Angie Embree on. She is the CIO of Best Friends Animal Society, Angie great to see you. >> It's great to see you as well and thank you for having me. >> Oh absolutely! So before we got on I just heard this crazy, crazy statistic that when your organization started in 1984 approximately 17 million animals were killed in US shelters per year. That number is now down to 700 thousand, that is a giant, giant reduction. And yet you, with big audacious goals really are looking to get that to zero. So, that's a giant goal, give us a little bit of background on the organization and how you decided to go after a goal like that and some of the ways you are actually going to achieve it. >> Well, the organization started in 1984 and it started with a group of friends in Southern Utah who decided that, you know the killing in America's shelters just had to go. So really the Best Friends founders started the no-kill movement along with a gentleman in San Francisco by the name of Rich Avanzino. And as you said, they took you know the killing down from 17 million in 1984 to approximately 733 thousand now. The organization started as just the sanctuary, we have the largest no-kill companion animal sanctuary in the country where we hold about 17 hundred animals every day. And we also have, you know, knowing that we needed to help out the rest of the country we have built life saving centers in Houston, Texas. Or we're working on Houston, Texas but Los Angels, California, New York City, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Georgia, it seems like I've left somebody out but, >> Probably, but that's okay. >> We have life saving centers all over the country. So it was really, you know, when they realized what was going on in America's shelters it was really the idea that we should not be killing animals for space. So, just recently in fact, I will say recently but in the last few years, Julie Castle our CEO put kind of, did our moon shot, put that stake in the ground and said we're going to take this country no-kill by the year 2025. >> Right. >> So it's super exciting. >> So it's really interesting because you guys are trying to execute your vision, and it's easy to execute your own vision, but it's a whole different thing when you're trying to execute your vision through this huge infrastructure of shelters that have been around forever. So, I wonder if you can explain kind of what's your relationship with shelters that you don't own. I guess, I think you said before we turned on the cameras there are affiliates, so how does that relationship work? How do you help them achieve your goal which is no-kill. >> Yeah, so we have over 27 hundred network partners around the country. And what we do is we help to educate them on, you know we understand their problems, we have creative programs to solve those problems. So we help to educate them on, you know, how they can implement these programs within their shelters. We provide them grant funding, we have an annual conference every year where they can come and learn. But they're really our partners and you know we know we can't do it alone. It's going to take us, it's going to take them and it's going to take everybody in every community to really step up and help solve the problem. >> Right, and what was the biggest thing that changed in terms of kind of attitude in terms of the way they operate the shelter because I think you said before that a lot of the killing was done to make room. >> Right, killing is done usually for space. >> So what do they do know? Clearly the space demands probably haven't changed so what are they doing alternatively where before they would put the animal down? >> Well alternatively we're doing transport programs. So there are areas in the country that actually have a demand for animals. So instead of killing the animals, we put them on some sort of transport vehicle and we take them to the areas that are in demand. We also do what's called a trap-neuter-return program. So one of the biggest problems across the country are community cats so those, a lot of people call them feral cats but they're community cats and usually have a caretaker. But what we do is we trap those cats, we take them into the shelter, we neuter them and vaccinate them and then return them to their home. That keeps them from making a lot of other little cats. >> Making babies (laughs) >> So yeah, cat's are one of the biggest problems in shelters today because of the community cats, they're feral cats and they're not adoptable. So if we can, we don't have to kill them. We can, you know, we can keep them from reproducing as I said and then we can put them back in their habitat where they live a long healthy life, happy life. >> Right, so you said you've joined the organization 5 years ago, 5 and 1/2 years ago and you're the CIO, first ever CIO. >> I am (laughs) >> What brought you here and then now that you're here with kind of a CIO hat, what are some of the new perspective that you can bring to the organization that didn't necessarily, that they had had before from kind of a technical perspective? >> Well, what brought me here was, I never expected to be here, if you would have told me I would be the CIO at Best Friends Animal Society you know 10 years ago I would have said you're kidding because I didn't really realize that there were professional positions in organizations like Best Friends. But I, you know, my journey begins the same as, began the same as a lot of peoples did. I was that little kid always bringing home animals and you know my mother hated it. You know it was always something showing up at our doorstep with me, you know. And I just loved animals all my life and as I went through college and got my degree and started my professional career, then I thought well I'm going to of course have animals because I can have as many as I want now, right! (laughs) So I started adopting, and I didn't even realize until I was in my 30s that they were killing in shelters and I learned that in Houston, Texas when I lived there. I was working for IBM at the time, and one day a lady came on the television and she said they were doing a new segment and she said we're a no-kill shelter and I thought oh my god if there are no-kill shelters then there are kill shelters, right? >> There must be the other. >> Yeah so, to make a long story short then I started not working in animal welfare but doing more to support the movement and donating. Adopting from shelters and fostering animals and then one day I had been to Best Friends as a visitor vacationing in this beautiful part of Utah. But I saw the CIO ... >> Position. >> position open and I said I'm going for it. >> Good for you. >> Yeah. >> Good for you, so now you're there so what are some of the things you've implemented from kind of a techy, you know kind of data perspective that they didn't have before? >> Well, they didn't have a lot. >> They probably didn't have a lot, besides email and the obvious things. >> Being the first CIO I don't know that I knew what I was walking into at the time because I got to Kanab, and Kanab Utah where the sanctuary is, is the headquarters. And Kanab is very infrastructure challenged. >> (laughs) Infrastructure challenged, I like that. >> There is one ISP in Kanab and there is no redundancy in networks so we really don't have, you know, you come from the city and you think, you take these things for granted and you find out oh my god, what am I going to do? And Kanab is you know the hub of our network, so if Kanab goes down, you know the whole organization is down so one of the first decisions I made was that we were going to the cloud. >> Right, right. >> Because we had to get Kanab out of that position and that was one of our, one of the first major decisions I made and we chose AWS as our partner to do that so that was very very exciting. We knew that they had infrastructure we couldn't dream of providing. >> Right, right. >> And, you know we could really make our whole network more robust, our applications would be available and we could really do some great things. >> You're not worried about the one ISP provider in Kanab because of an accident that knocks a phone pole down. >> Yeah, yeah. >> All right but then you're talking about some new things that you're working on and a new thing you talked about before we turned the cameras on community lifesaving dashboards, what is that all about? >> Okay, so a couple of years ago the community lifesaving dashboard is the culmination of two years of work. From all across the Best Friends organization not just the IT department, in fact it was the brainchild of our Chief Mission Officer Holly Sizemore. But it's really, in animal welfare there's never been a national picture of what the problem really is regarding killing animals in shelters. So we did this big. >> Because they're all regional right? They're all regional shelters, very local. >> They're all local community shelters, yes. And transparency isn't forced, so you know some states force transparency, they reinforce in the report numbers but a lot of states don't. >> At the state level. >> Yeah, a lot of states don't, so. You know when you're killing animals in shelters you really don't want people to know that. >> Yeah, yeah it's not something you want to advertise. >> Because the American public doesn't believe in it. So anyway we worked really hard to collect all this data from across the country and we put it all into this dashboard and it is now a tool where anybody in the public, it's on our website, can look at it and they can see that where we're at from a national level. They can see where they're at from a state level, they can drill down into their community and they can drill down to an individual shelter. >> Wow. >> And the idea behind the dashboard is to really, is to get communities behind helping their shelters. Because as I said earlier, it's going to take us all. >> Right. >> And not only Best Friends and our partners but the public plays a big part of this. >> Right, and so when did that roll out? Do you have any kind of feedback, how's it working? >> It's working wonderfully, we rolled it out at our conference in July. >> So recently, so it's a pretty new initiative. >> Yeah it's just a few weeks old. >> Okay. >> We rolled it out at our national conference and we were all a bit nervous about it, you know especially from a technology perspective. >> Right, right. >> We knew that being the first of it's kind ever in animal welfare that you know it was going to get a lot of publicity both inside and outside the movement. >> (laughs) How you want to say both pro and con. >> Yeah, and it's sitting on our website, well really pro and con. >> Right, right. >> But it's sitting on our website and we're like okay, we don't know what kind of traffic we're going to get, you know what are we going to do about this? So we spent a lot of time with Amazon prior to the launch, you know having them look at our environment and getting advice, discussing it with them. >> Not going to bring down that ISP in Utah. >> No, thank god! (laughs) >> (laughs) >> No it wasn't, thank god we were in the cloud. So Amazon really helped us prepare and then the day of the launch, we knew the time of the launch. So we actually had a war room set up, a virtual war room and we had Amazon employees participating in our war room. We watched the traffic and we did get huge spikes in traffic at all times through the day when certain things were happening. And I'm happy to say from a technology perspective it was a non-event because we did not crash we stayed up, we handled all the traffic, we scaled when we needed to, and we did it you know, virtually at the press of a button. >> Awesome. >> Or the flick of a switch, whatever you want to say. >> That's what you want right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> You just don't want anyone to know, I was like give a good ref, nobody's talking about you you probably did a good job. >> Yeah, exactly yeah. >> Good, so before I let you go so what are some of your initiatives now looking forward. You've got this great partner in AWS, you have basically as much horsepower as you need to get done what you need to get done. What are some of the things that you see, you know kind of next for your roadmap? >> Well, we have a lot. >> Don't give me the whole list (laughs) >> No I'm just going to hit on a few key points. I think, you know we used Amazon initially as our cloud infrastructure but I think the biggest thing we're looking at is platform as a service. There is so much capability out there with predictive analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, ARVR, you name it facial recognitions, so we're really investigating those technologies because we think they have you know they could have a huge impact on our movement and really help us achieve life saving. >> Right, right. >> And, I think that, you know we're starting we have our fledgling data science program. We're using the Amazon data lake technology, Athena, Glue, they were just telling me about data lake formation which I just a few minutes ago emailed my data guy and said start looking at data lake formation. >> Right, right. >> So, I mean we're really investing in the platform as a service. The other thing I see is that we're, animal welfare is sort of broken from a technology perspective and a data perspective. In that we have no interoperability and you know we don't have the data available. So lets say you want to adopt a 5-year old animal. Well, you go to a shelter you can't get 5 years of history on a 5 year old animal. So it's really starting to fix the foundation for the movement as a whole, not just Best Friends. So, making sure that you know the veterinary data is there, all the data from the pet ecosystem is there. So we're investigating with AWS they're actually coming to our sanctuary in a couple of months, we're going to do a workshop to figure out how we do this, how we really fix it so that we have interoperability between every shelter when an animal moves from shelter to rescue or whatever so that their data follows them wherever they go. So adopters are fully informed when adopting an animal. >> Because you're in a pretty interesting position, because you're not with any one particular shelter you kind of cross many many boundaries. So you're in a good position to be that aggregator of that data. >> Yeah, I don't know that we want to be the aggregator but we want to lead the movement towards doing that. Just getting the technology players, the shelter management systems, the other people who play a role in technology for animal welfare, getting them in a room and talking and figuring out this problem is huge. >> Right. >> And with a partner like Amazon we feel it can be solved. >> Right. Well Angie thank you for taking a few minutes and sharing your story, really really enjoyed hearing it. >> All right thank you so much. >> All right, she's Angie, I'm Jeff you're watching the CUBE we're at AWS Imagine in Seattle, thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in the waterfront in Seattle, Washington, it's absolutely gorgeous here the last couple of days. We're here for the AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the education event, now they have a whole separate track for nonprofits, and what's really cool about nonprofits is these people, these companies are attacking very, very big, ugly problems. It's not advertising, it's not click here and get something, these are big things, and one of the biggest issues is human trafficking. You probably hear a lot about it, it's way bigger than I ever thought it was, and we're really excited to have an expert in the field that, again, is using the power of AWS technology as well as their organization to help fight this cause. And we're excited to have Brad Myles, he is the CEO of Polaris and just coming off a keynote, we're hearing all about your keynote. So Brad, first off, welcome. >> Yeah, well thank you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so Polaris, give us a little bit about kind of what's the mission for people that aren't familiar with the company. >> Yeah, so Polaris, we are a nonprofit that works full-time on this issue. We both combat the issue and try to get to long-term solutions, and respond to the issue and restore freedom to survivors by operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline for the United States, so, it's part kind of big data and long-term solutions, and it's part responding to day-to-day cases that break across the country every day. >> Right, in preparing for this interview and spending some time on the site there was just some amazing things that just jump right off the page. 24.9 million people are involved in this. Is that just domestically here in the States, or is that globally? >> That's a global number. So when you're thinking about human trafficking, think about three buckets. The first bucket is any child, 17 or younger, being exploited in the commercial sex trade. The second bucket is any adult, 18 or over, who's in the sex trade by force, fraud, or coercion. And the third bucket is anyone forced to work in some sort of other labor or service industry by force, fraud, or coercion. So you've got the child sex trafficking bucket, you've got the adult sex trafficking bucket, and then you've got all the labor trafficking bucket, right? You add up those three buckets globally, that's the number that the International Labour Organization came out and said 25 million around the world are those three buckets in a given year. >> Right, and I think again, going through the website, some of the just crazy discoveries, it's the child sex trafficking you can kind of understand that that's part of the problem, the adult sex trafficking. But you had like 25 different human trafficking business models, I forget the term that was used, for a whole host of things well beyond just the sex trade. It's a very big and unfortunately mature industry. >> Totally, yeah, so we, so the first thing that we do that we're kind of known for is operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The National Human Trafficking Hotline leads to having a giant data set on trafficking, it's 50,000 cases of trafficking that we've worked on. So then we analyzed that data set and came to the breakthrough conclusion that there are these 25 major forms, and almost any single call that we get in to the National Hotline is going to be one of those 25 types. And once you know that then the problem doesn't seem so overwhelming, it's not, you know, thousands of different types, it's these 25 things, so, it's 18 labor trafficking types and seven sex trafficking types. And it enables a little bit more granular analysis than just saying sex trafficking or labor trafficking which is kind of too broad and general. Let's get really specific about it, we're talking about these late night janitors, or we're talking about these people in agriculture, or we're talking about these women in illicit massage businesses. It enables the conversation to get more focused. >> Right, it's so interesting right, that's such a big piece of the big data trend that we see all over the place, right? It used to be, you know, you had old data, a sample of old data that you took an aggregate of and worked off the averages. And now, because of big data, and the other tools that we have today, now actually you can work on individual cases. So as you look at it from a kind of a big data point of view, what are some of the things that you're able to do? And that lead directly to, everyone's talking about the presentation that you just got off of, in terms of training people to look for specific behaviors that fit the patterns, so you can start to break some of these cases. >> Exactly, so, I think that the human trafficking field risks being too generic. So if you're just saying to the populace, "Look for trafficking, look for someone who's scared." People are like, that's not enough, that's too vague, it's kind of slipping through my fingers. But if you say, "In this particular type of trafficking, "with traveling magazine sales crews, "if someone comes to your door "trying to sell you a magazine with these specific signs." So now instead of talking about general red flag indicators across all 25 types, we're coming up with red flag indicators for each of the 25 types. So instead of speaking in aggregate we're getting really specific, it's almost like specific gene therapy. And the data analysis on our data set is enabling that to happen, which makes the trafficking field smarter, we could get smarter about where victims are recruited from, we could get smarter about intervention points, and we could get smarter about where survivors might have a moment to kind of get help and get out. >> Right, so I got to dig into the magazine salesperson, 'cause I think we've all had the kid-- >> Brad: Have you had a kid come to you yet? >> Absolutely, and you know, you think first they're hustlin' but their papers are kind of torn up, and they've got their little certificate, certification. How does that business model work? >> Yeah, so that's one of the 25 types, they're called mag crews. There was a New York Times article written by a journalist named Ian Urbina who really studied this and it came out a number of years ago. Then they made a movie about it called "American Honey," if you watch with a number of stars. But essentially this is a very long-standing business model, it goes back 30 or 40 years of like the door-to-door salesperson, and like trying to win sympathy from people going to door-to-door sales. And then these kind of predatory groups decided to prey on disaffected U.S. citizen youth that are kind of bored, or are kind of working a low-wage job. And so they go up to these kids and they say, "Tired of working at the Waffle House? "Well why don't you join our crew and travel the country, "and party every night, and you'll be outdoors every day, "and it's coed, you get to hang out with girls, "you get to hang out with guys, "we'll drink every night and all you have to do "is sell magazines during the day." And it's kind of this alluring pitch, and then the crews turn violent, and there's sometimes quotas on the crew, there's sometimes coercion on the crew. We get a lot of calls from kids who are abandoned by the crew. Where the crew says, "If you act up "or if you don't adhere to our rules, "we'll just drive away and leave you in this city." >> Wherever. >> Is the crews are very mobile they have this whole language, they call it kind of jumping territory. So they'll drive from like Kansas City to a nearby state, and we'll get this call from this kid, they're like, "I'm totally homeless, my crew just left me behind "because I kind of didn't obey one of the rules." So a lot of people, when they think of human trafficking they're not thinking of like U.S. citizen kids knocking on your door. And we're not saying that every single magazine crew is human trafficking, but we are saying that if there's force, and coercion, and fraud, and lies, and people feel like they can't leave, and people feel like they're being coerced to work, this is actually a form of human trafficking of U.S. citizen youth which is not very well-known but we hear about it on the Hotline quite a lot. >> Right, so then I wonder if you could tell us more about the Delta story 'cause most of the people that are going to be watching this interview weren't here today to hear your keynote. So I wonder if you can explain kind of that whole process where you identified a specific situation, you train people that are in a position to make a difference and in fact they're making a big difference. >> Yeah. So the first big report that we released based on the Hotline data was the 25 types, right? We decided to do a followup to that called Intersections, where we reached out to survivors of trafficking and we said, "Can you tell us about "the legitimate businesses that your trafficker used "while you were being trafficked?" And all these survivors were like, "Yeah, sure, "we'll tell you about social media, "we'll tell you about transportation, "we'll tell you about banks, "we'll tell you about hotels." And so we then identified these six major industries that traffickers use that are using legitimate companies, like rental car companies, and airlines, and ridesharing companies. So then we reached out to a number of those corporate partners and said, "You don't want this stuff on your services, right?" And Delta really just jumped at this, they were just like, "We take this incredibly seriously. "We want our whole workforce trained. "We don't want any trafficker to feel like "they can kind of get away with it on our flights. "We want to be a leader in transportation." And then they began taking all these steps. Their CEO, Ed Bastian, took it very seriously. They launched a whole corporate-wide taskforce across departments, they hosted listening sessions with survivor leaders so survivors could coach them, and then they started launching this whole strategy around training their flight attendants, and then training their whole workforce, and then supporting the National Human Trafficking Hotline, they made some monetary donations to Polaris. We get situations on the Hotline where someone is in a dangerous situation and needs to be flown across the country, like an escape flight almost, and Delta donated SkyMiles for us to give to survivors who are trying to flee a situation, who needs a flight. They can go to an airport and get on a flight for free that will fly them across the country. So it's almost like a modern day Underground Railroad, kind of flying people on planes. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So they've just been an amazing partner, and they even then took the bold step of saying, "Well let's air a PSA on our flights "so the customer base can see this." So when you're on a Delta flight you'll see this PSA about human trafficking. And it just kept going and going and going. So it's now been about a five-year partnership and lots of great work together. >> And catching bad guys. >> Yeah, I mean, their publicity of the National Human Trafficking Hotline has led to a major increase in calls. Airport signage, more employees looking for it, and I actually do believe that the notion of flying, if you're going to be a trafficker, flying on a Delta flight is now a much more harrowing experience because everyone's kind of trained, and eyes and ears are looking. So you're going to pivot towards another airline that hasn't done that training yet, which now speaks to the need that once one member of an industry steps up, all different members of the industry need to follow suit. So we're encouraging a lot of the other airlines to do similar training and we're seeing some others do that, which is great. >> Yeah, and how much of it was from the CEO, or did he kind of come on after the fact, or was there kind of a champion catalyst that was pushing this through the organization, or is that often the case, or what do you find in terms of adoption of a company to help you on your mission? >> That's a great question. I mean, the bigger picture here is trafficking is a $150 billion industry, right? A group of small nonprofits and cops are not going to solve it on their own. We need the big businesses to enter the fight, because the big businesses have the resources, they have the brand, they have the customer base, they have the scale to make it a fair fight, right? So in the past few years we're seeing big businesses really enter the fight against trafficking, whether or not that's big data companies like AWS, whether or not that's social media companies, Facebook, whether or not that's hotel companies, like Wyndham and Marriott, airlines like Delta. And that's great because now the big hitters are joining the trafficking fight, and it happens in different ways, sometimes it's CEO-led, I think in the case of Delta, Ed Bastian really does take this issue very seriously, he was hosting events on this at his home, he's hosted roundtables of other CEOs in the Atlanta area like UPS, and Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot, and Coca-Cola, all those Atlanta-based CEOs know each other well, he'll host roundtables about that, and I think it was kind of CEO-led. But in other corporations it's one die hard champion who might be like a mid-level employee, or a director, who just says, "We really got to do this," and then they drive more CEO attention. So we've seen it happen both ways, whether or not it's top-down, or kind of middle-driven-up. But the big picture is if we could get some of the biggest corporations in the world to take this issue seriously, to ask questions about who they contract with, to ask questions about what's in their supply chain, to educate their workforce, to talk about this in front of their millions of customers, it just puts the fight against trafficking on steroids than a group of nonprofits would be able to do alone. So I think we're in a whole different realm of the fight now that business is at the table. >> And is that pretty much your strategy in terms of where you get the leverage, do you think? Is to execute via a lot of these well-resourced companies that are at this intersection point, I think that's a really interesting way to address the problem. >> Yeah, well, it's back to the 25 types, right? So the strategies depend on type. Like, I don't think big businesses being at the table are necessarily going to solve magazine sales crews, right? They're not necessarily going to solve begging on the street. But they can solve late night janitors that sometimes are trafficked, where lots of big companies are contracting with late night janitorial crews, and they come at 2:00 a.m., and they buff the floors, and they kind of change out the trash, and no one's there in the office building to see those workers, right? And so asking different questions of who you procure contracts with, to say, "Hey, before we contract with you guys, "we're going to need to ask you a couple questions "about where these workers got here, "and what these workers thought they were coming to do, "and we need to ID these workers." The person holding the purse strings, who's buying that contract, has the power to demand the conditions of that contract. Especially in agriculture and large retail buyers. So I think that big corporations, it's definitely part of the strategy for certain types, it's not going to solve other types of trafficking. But let's say banks and financial institutions, if they start asking different questions of who's banking with them, just like they've done with terrorism financing they could wipe out trafficking financing, could actually play a gigantic role in changing the course of how that type of trafficking exists. >> So we could talk all day, I'm sure, but we don't have time, but I'm just curious, what should people do, A, if they just see something suspicious, you know, reach out to one of these kids selling magazines, or begging on the street, or looking suspicious at an airport, so, A, that's the question. And then two, if people want to get involved more generically, whether in their company, or personally, how do they get involved? >> Yeah, so there are thousands of nonprofit groups across the country, Polaris is in touch with 3,000 of them. We're one of thousands. I would say find an organization in your area that you care about and volunteer, get involved, donate, figure out what they need. Our website is polarisproject.org, we have a national Referral Directory of organizations across the country, and so that's one way. The other way is the National Human Trafficking Hotline, the number, 1-888-373-7888. The Hotline depends on either survivors calling in directly as a lifeline, or community members calling in who saw something suspicious. So we get lots of calls from people who were getting their nails done, and the woman was crying and talking about how she's not being paid, or people who are out to eat as a family and they see something in the restaurant, or people who are traveling and they see something that doesn't make, kind of, quite sense in a hotel or an airport. So we need an army of eyes and ears calling tips into the National Human Trafficking Hotline and identifying these cases, and we need survivors to know the number themselves too so that they can call in on their own behalf. We need to respond to the problem in the short-term, help get these people connected to help, and then we need to do the long-term solutions which involves data, and business, and changing business practice, and all of that. But I do think that if people want to kind of educate themselves, polarisproject.org, there are some kind of meta-organizations, there's a group called Freedom United that's kind of starting a grassroots movement against trafficking, freedomunited.org. So lots of great organizations to look into, and this is a bipartisan issue, this is an issue that most people care about, it's one of the top headlines in the newspapers every day these days. And it's something that I think people in this country naturally care about because it references kind of the history of chattel slavery, and some of those forms of slavery that morphed but never really went away, and we're still fighting that same fight today. >> In terms of, you know, we're here at AWS IMAGINE, and they're obviously putting a lot of resources behind this, Teresa Carlson and the team. How are you using them, have you always been on AWS? Has that platform enabled you to accomplish your mission better? >> Yeah, oh for sure, I mean, Polaris crunches over 60 terabytes of data per day, of just like the computing that we're doing, right? >> Jeff: And what types of data are you crunching? >> It's the data associated with Hotline calls, we collect up to 150 variables on each Hotline call. The Hotline calls come in, we have this data set of 50,000 cases of trafficking with very sensitive data, and the protections of that data, the cybersecurity associated with that data, the storage of that data. So since 2017, Polaris has been in existence since 2002, so we're in our 17th year now, but starting three years ago in 2017 we started really partnering with AWS, where we're migrating more of our data onto AWS, building some AI tools with AWS to help us process Hotline calls more efficiently. And then talking about potentially moving our, all of our data storage onto AWS so that we don't have our own server racks in our office, we still need to go through a number of steps to get there. But having AWS at the table, and then talking about the Impact Computing team and this, like, real big data crunching of like millions of trafficking cases globally, we haven't even started talking about that yet but I think that's like a next stage. So for now, it's getting our data stronger, more secure, building some of those AI bots to help us with our work, and then potentially considering us moving completely serverless, and all of those things are conversations we're having with AWS, and thrilled that AWS is making this an issue to the point that it was prioritized and featured at this conference, which was a big deal, to get in front of the whole audience and do a keynote, and we're very, very grateful for that. >> And you mentioned there's so many organizations involved, are you guys doing data aggregation, data consolidation, sharing, I mean there must be with so many organizations, that adds a lot of complexity, and a lot of data silos, to steal classic kind of IT terms. Are you working towards some kind of unification around that, or how does that look in the future? >> We would love to get to the point where different organizations are sharing their data set. We'd love to get to the point where different organizations are using, like, a shared case management tool, and collecting the same data so it's apples to apples. There are different organizations, like, Thorn is doing some amazing big data-- >> Jeff: Right, we've had Thorn on a couple of times. >> How do we merge Polaris's data set with Thorn's data set? We're not doing that yet, right? I think we're only doing baby steps. But I think the AWS platform could enable potentially a merger of Thorn's data with Polaris's data in some sort of data lake, right? So that's a great idea, we would love to get to that. I think the field isn't there yet. The field has kind of been, like, tech-starved for a number of years, but in the past five years has made a lot of progress. The field is mostly kind of small shelters and groups responding to survivors, and so this notion of like infusing the trafficking field with data is somewhat of a new concept, but it's enabling us to think much bigger about what's possible. >> Well Brad, again, we could go on all day, you know, really thankful for what you're doing for a whole lot of people that we don't see, or maybe we see and we're not noticing, so thank you for that, and uh. >> Absolutely. >> Look forward to catching up when you move the ball a little bit further down the field. >> Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. >> All right, my pleasure. He's Brad, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS IMAGINE Nonprofits, thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (futuristic music)

>> from Seattle Washington. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web >> service is >> Hey, welcome back already. Jeffrey here with the Cube were in >> the waterfront, actually in Seattle, Washington. It's an absolutely gorgeous August day. We're here for the AWS. Imagine nonprofit event. It's the fourth year they've had. It is the first year's been kind of open to the public. It was invitation only. And we're excited to be here for our first time. Our >> guest is here for his first time, too. And >> we're excited to sit down with side L. Nash. He is the vice president. And of I t and C i o for the National Council on Aging. Say great to see you. >> Thank you. Good to see you. Yeah. So, first >> off, just kind of impressions on the event So far. Really good keynotes this morning. And they got a full two days planned for you. >> Yes, it was an excellent good note. Keynote speaks to the speech this morning and, uh, started off talking about impact and how nonprofit organizations make it make a difference in the world. >> Right. So National Council of Aging, the population is aging Maur Every day they keep sending me my my card in the mail that keep pretending I'm not old enough to get. But >> don't try to pretend exactly they are >> double AARP. Thank you very much for the car, but, um, there's a lot of unique challenges with as the population continues to get holding. What are some of your organisation's priorities? How do you address this kind of growing population in our society? >> So I'll share with you some statistics on aging. So there are about 72,000,060 and older adults in the U. S. 70 >> 1,000,000 to three on its growing >> and growing. It will be 92,000,000 in 2030. So it's a growing larger segment of the population. People are living longer, saving less about but half of those so are 60 plus have saving off about $30,000 about 80% off 60 plus have about maybe to chronic disease conditions. So people are living longer, saving less money, and obviously with that, there are a lot of challenges, and this is where we step in. So we step in. Our mission is to help people age healthier and wealthier, try to make sure that they planned correctly for their savings. And they plan correctly also for their convention there chronic diseases and managing their health in general. And so for that, we have a lot off just products, actually that help older adults figuring out there how to live in older and healthy life. One of them is our flagship product, helping people get access to ah, federal, state and local government benefits. It's called benefits. Checkup is the largest system decision support system in the country that helps older adults figuring out how what benefits take all 54 and how to apply. And we walked them through that whole process. >> So it's also not necessarily the most technically astute population, either, especially today seniors who didn't grow up his digital natives like a lot of the kids are today. And >> as you said, your your guys >> objective number one is economic security. Maybe not necessarily number one, but top of the list and then healthy living. And they don't have the benefit of of time for therefore one case and stuff to grow. So these air pretty unique challenges. How are you helping him? And then you know we're here in eight of us. What role has eight of us played in helping you reach your your constituent? >> Clear? You're asking a lot of questions in one. So let me try and answer them one by one. So let's take a >> look at the aging population, especially the older adults. 70 plus those who actually don't have. Ah, I don't know. They're not necessity technology savvy, but they have Ah, they have cell phone. It's over. 73% of them have cell phones and some have smartphones. S o. We looked at the different ways of trying to reach out to them. And one of the things that we experimented with is looking at an SMS texting pilot. So we actually started that pilot and was very successful. And well, now we're rolling out into a full production system. It's a we found out that it's a great channel. It's very simple asking simple questions. Did you apply yes or no? Just answer us if you were to do one or two. So tell us give us a very simple answer and we found that the engagement rates are way above the average industry. People tend to respond to text messages for better than actually telling them. Hey, there's the mobile app. Go download my mobile already So that's one aspect of it on the AWS Sod off it. So when I joined and see away about a year and 1/2 ago, we were in Private Cloud and in that situation we had a lot of single point of failures and disaster recovery was in bad shape. And so we realized that we needed to move into a new and more robust environment, one that solved the single all the risks that we had from disaster recovery. Single point of failures to also being able to innovate quickly and fast. And so we looked that we started the ah migration process to the cloud and we ended up on AWS back in February. This year would move 95% of our assets to the cloud to AWS Cloud and we medicated the two major risks. The single point of failure is disaster recovery and so on. And with that, we also have a lot of other tools that are out of the box that we're using right now with the AWS platform. >> That's great So, um, I want it back up to the S, the best comic cause That's really interesting. So how do you find your customers? How do you get people get engaged? Obviously, art center the card in the mail. You know, there's a lot of organizations that that we get involved with. How do you directly engage with your clients? >> So we do a lot of digital marketing, believe it or not. So we spent a lot off time money and energy into digital marketing on Facebook. So a good number of older adults are on Facebook. There's also a good percentage of them that are on YouTube. Unfortunately, older adults spend about 46 hours watching either TV or videos on the Web, those who have access to the Web. So that's one way we're trying to reach them. So these are our sort of marketing funnels. In addition to that, we have about close to 100 centers around the U. S. Where older those can actually go in and be helped and go walk through the process of applying for federal state local government benefits. And so we have. They're called benefits benefits centers. And so the those centers are open to the public. We also try to collaborate with different with different organizations around the country, through through whom we get older adults too engage with us and joined the benefits checkup program. And with that, we we ask people to our 10. So we take a very cautious and very respectful approach to data and privacy to ask people to opt in. And we tell them about how we're using the data. We encrypt the data address. We take very caring very good care of it. We don't share it outside of organization. So we have our own internal data privacy principles. So we take this matter very seriously again. Our objectives always the hope older adults live a better, healthier and wealthier life, >> right? I just love that the older people are now using Facebook and SMS like kids. >> 15 years ago, they moved on >> to other platforms. Thank goodness for the old folks keeping the Facebook and, uh >> so let's shift gears. A little >> bit of talk about your transformation in your movement to the cloud. How big of an effort was that? How long did it take? And, you know, hasn't really opened up the innovation because there's clearly cost savings. And as you talked about a single point of failure and kind of mitigating the negatives, but as well as we've seen over and over again, really, the benefits from from Cloud are really that innovation and delivering service is faster. So how's your experience? >> That's exactly right. So So let me talk a little bit about the traditional transformation. So about, I would say, year over year ago, we started our digital transformation initiative. It's really focused on customers, we call it, knowing our customers as individuals with individual needs. Traditionally organizations like ours looked at older adults. In the perspective, off percentages averages, on average is is how old they are on average, in this is their income. On average, this is their health. But in reality, every older adult is an individual that has specific and individual needs, and we need to really take a look at that and caters to those very specific needs that they actually changed over time. So the transformation really enabled it. We needed to move to a cloud where we can have products immediately that we can spend off and use a I machine learning products and so on. And so I'm gonna go back and talking more about our a digital transformation and the perspectives off it. So our objective long term is to build was recalling the the aging Well, aye aye. Engine. It's basically imagine an older adult waking up in the morning and trying to decide what are the top best three things for me to do. Stop the actions for me to do to improve my life. And we wanna help that older adult make those decisions easily and quickly through a frictionless interactions. Frictionless. Conversational. Aye, aye. Speaking to an Alexa like voice enabled smart speaker asking Alexa, what should I do today? Alexis, respond. The weather is nice out there. Call your friend. Go for a walk. Call your doctor, get the lab results and so on. And check your benefits on benefits. Check up and figure out and improve your life. So the idea is to really get the person to actively and the actively using technology and simple, frictionless way to be able to make those decisions that improve their lives. So for us to do this kind of work to build the aging. Well, Aye, aye. Engine. It is impossible without being on a cloud like >> a w. Interesting. So, uh, first time I've heard about Lexus since we've been here. A lot of talk about Lex at the education conference a couple of weeks back. So is Alexa. Pretty key piece of your strategy going forward, you really see voice as a different type of communication. You mentioned. That's a message. Just kind of old, but really effective. How do you see Alexa playing >> so absolutely so voice enabled communication channels. So we look at it as actually we look at our communication with older adults. We look at it as an Army channel communication. Every person have their own preference of the way they interact with technology. Some people prefer SMS. Others like to speak to Alexa. Others like to go through the web and so on. Some are on Facebook or YouTube, etcetera. So each we have our own choices. And that's exactly why we need to look at the older adults as individuals with their individual needs. And then our job is to deliver those to deliver all products through those different channels individually. So delivering the right product with the right customer at the right time and through the right channels. So lax is one of the channels it is. It's not the only channel or the voice channel I would call it is not the only channels. What we found out is that older adults find Alexis is very engaging. It reduces social isolation. It helps with the many other tests, especially for those who are visually inferred. The the complexity. The challenge for older adults is setting it up, so that's what we're trying to look at. Ways of trying to packages will be package so that it is possible for the older adult to plug it in and be able to use it. The other thing that we discovered, we probably need to look at family caregivers as the customer segment of the customer target that we would work with really enable looks, um, >> interesting. Let's see, it seems like a natural fit once you get kind of the tone and the and the comfort worked out, and I would imagine you're writing all types of specific things for to do and types of activities for Alexa to do for the specific needs of this older generation, >> so yeah. So we started >> a very small proof of concept project with Alexa trying to engage an experiment for me, everything that we do has to bring in value. And I need to also make sure that we are when we deliver a product or customers. That product actually delivers that value and engages the customers. So we know that there are there is the value in there were also working with partners on delivering this voice channel. So I know that we have, as a non profit organization with our, you know, a limited resource is. And so we look at partners as a way to enable those votes channels on the different channels that we have >> exciting, exciting times. And I look forward to watching that innovation pulls out at a high rate of speed. So thanks for taking a few minutes and safe travels home. >> Okay. Thank you, Seed. I'm Jeff. You're watching the keyboard aws. Imagine >> in Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back and ready Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle, actually, right on the water from the AWS. Imagine nonprofit event. We're here a couple weeks back for the education version of this event. First time to come into the non profit of it, and >> we're really excited to have our next guest. I knew a little bit about this organization before. Now we know a lot more. As he came off his keynote, he's brought Excuse me, Byron Hill, global head of >> technology for the Movember Foundation. By a great job on the keynote >> in the bay here to talk to you. >> And I think you came further than anybody did. Any other hands come up? I couldn't see the audience. 1000 miles, one >> I actually asked with from. So my whole stick around, you know, being from Australia 8140 miles to Seattle lost its appeal. If I'd said half Are you from 10,000 miles? >> Yes. Yes. We're glad we're glad you made it so that for the people that aren't >> familiar with them. Forgive him. Kind of a quick overview, Absolutely so in November >> is one of the world's largest men's health charities. We focus on three areas of men's health. Prostate cancer, mental health and testicular cancer. And every year we have annual fundraising campaign where we encourage men and women to fund. Rise for our cause is >> so Men's health is a really tricky situation. Let's met with GAL. She's like, Yeah, I'm going to do this. Start up. I'm gonna help. I'm gonna help all my male friends get to their doctor. Please. I was like, That's not the problem. The problem is, I never want to go in the first place. I don't want to talk about it. They want to acknowledge it. You know, they don't want to get their colonoscopy. They've heard horrible things about the prostate exam. So this is a really challenging thing to tackle. So how did you guys decide to go after it? How are you doing it a little bit differently so that you can have some success and he's not easy to operate areas. >> We realize that men's health was in a state of crisis. Men live on average sixties. Lesson. Women. And as you say, it's because way sit on the couch. We don't let things. We don't take action as opposed to women who always talk to themselves and should get out there and get something checked. So focusing on areas such as prostate cancer, where we know the family, history and ethnicity really important factors around these disease types and really targeting those populations and making sure we can have a big impact. We also spend a lot of time looking at survivorship. But how we can help people through that journey and understand what that journey looks like and help them actually have a really positive outcome At the end of it. My oh suicide is a huge area. Focus. One man every minute globally will die by suicide. And while that's not a uniquely mild disease, three out of four suicides a mile to really try to develop unique messaging, to talk to men in a very direct way is being one way we've I tried to get a cut through to really make a difference, right? >> So the mustache is in November in November, How did that come together? So you know, you've got these very serious diseases that we're trying to address a really big global problem. And you're coming at it with this kind of fun, kind of tongue in cheek thing. Movember. So for the folks that aren't familiar, what is movin, roll about? How did it come about? And really, what's the impact that actually, he has a huge impact with you outlined in the keynote? >> Absolutely So remember, started with two guys in a pub talking about fashion trends. They got onto the fact that the mustache had been the mainstay of seventies and eighties fashion and all but disappeared in the nineties. They just started to bring the mustache back as a gag. They got 30 mites, my yoga, robust ashes. They raise $0. They realized that papal complete strangers in the street. We're coming up to them asking about the mustache. What's that thing when you leave? And they realize the power of the mustache was something much more created conversations and allowed people to connect with one another to create an environment. We were able to talk about men's health. That's where we started. We never intended to become a men's health charity, but fast forward to 2009 and we've had over 6,000,000 people participating in a fundraising campaigns in the top 45 engineers globally and have funded over 1200 men's health programs. And again, all starting with two guys and pub. Having having a conversation about fashion trends >> you have, The numbers are amazing. I >> think you said S O start in 2004 and you guys were raising over $100,000,000 a year. How does it tie back to the mustache? Is just a conversation starter? No, by the way, this is why I'm doing it and please go go to the Web site. One of the mechanics. >> It's all about fun. Originally, the idea of the moustache was just fun. Just grow a mustache. Race and funds. That's it. We've really matured and progress in the last few years around really focusing in on the importance of men's health. So it started as a fun thing back in the day, and now we still try to maintain the fund. We also have a serious message to get through. So, quite literally, will ask people to grow a mustache last. Him too host and van will ask them to move. We've got a whole range of different fundraising ideas, and the idea is to absolutely get people raising funds in November. Getting as many people as we can to sign up and to grow moustache is and two doughnuts. So that's quite literally how we do it. And then we invest those funds back into women's health records. A >> great Well, I can assure you, after today we will be. The Q team will all be doing their best to get them. The mustache is there in a couple of months, but >> you had a >> lot of other really interesting messages within your within. You're talking about a culture of innovation, Mom. And everyone is always struggling. How do I and still a culture of innovation, especially in a large organization? You had a great quote. You're not the 1st 1 ever say it, but you said it with such passion, and clearly it's fall in love with the problem, not the solution to many people especially intact. Yeah, they want to talk about the attack. They don't want to talk about the problem. How do you know X ticket that? How do you instill that in your team. And how's that be really been a great driver for your success in development as a zone organization? >> Absolutely. So you're quite right. Paper will jump to the solution. And it's not just technical. People, like most people will come to you with a solution because I think they're actually helping. They think that they know exactly what the problem is to really just trying to position that to say, Well, let's get really clear and say Fall in love with problem Get really clear around the outcomes, withdrawn and deliver. Think about the experience is withdrawn. Give people here and then think about the technology. I talked about bringing the community into the conversation. Imagine the power you can have by bringing the community at the table when you're designing a new product. We try to do that all the time having a man in the room that suffered from prostate cancer. The insights they give you. We're very quickly highlight that you may have absolutely no idea of what the problem is. I talked a lot about assumptions. We form assumptions in her mind that crystallized. We have this bias and you have to challenge yourself to constantly go back to the coalface and look at those assumptions. Are they right? Are we solving completely the wrong problem Here you can deliver a great solution that completely misses a problem. So how do we do that? We encourage people to think about the problem. Immersed herself in the research. I talked about an example in testicular cancer. We spent three months on understanding the problem. Three months we spent four weeks on building a solution, and that was for a feeling that we didn't quite have the confidence that we knew what the problem. Waas. We wanted to know what itwas who wanted to delve into that research and really engage with people. Engage the community to get a deep seated understanding of what we were trying to solve. Right? >> Another PC talked about Is the community the importance of the community and really said the community is the why really powerful statement And I don't know people. Sometimes I think, think of community 10 gentle They're not really is the purpose for what? You know why you get up in the morning every day and why you do what you do. You have that come about. And how do you make sure that that stays, You know, clearly in focus for everyone. >> It's a really important point, and it's why we exist. And for us, it's a mobile rose and most sisters and the men that we serve. So how do we do it? We have to constantly anchor ourselves back to the point that there are means and means of men out there suffering from this desert diseases that we support. We want to create a better world for them so we can a line around the Y. If everyone in the organization understands why we're doing the work, it helps us deliver some amazing outcomes and again, the context of having people in the room, the community being part of the conversation that you're having gives that really sense of context. And it hasn't been easy. It's taken time to get there and you can't involve. I give an example of 20,000 people responded to a survey. You know, it doesn't have to be huge amounts of data. The voice of one or two people could be enough to provide unique insights. They give you a real sense of purpose and really give you a sense of what you're trying to change >> right? The third piece, he talked about the third leg of the stool, if you will. His culture. Onda geun driving, innovation of culture and your example you gave him the key note was phenomenal, which is when your team, you know, found a problem and asked you for approval on the $500 fixes. And you said, you know, empower your people to find the problem to solve the problems out Me and I think it's such a great message. And you spoken depth about learning about a screw up a failure and really identifying that as a terrific learning opportunity. You know, where did you learn about that kind of cultural approach? How do you keep that up? Because that is really the key to scale. And I think so many people are afraid to trust and afraid to have kind of blameless. Blameless postmortems is another phrase that we've heard so important to enabling your people to actually go out and accept. It's not easy, >> and how do we learn, Like all good things we did on the fly like if you're facing a situation where you've got a major piece of work that's kind of screwed up, and it doesn't do what you think it's gonna do. We had two choices. We could try to fix it, and I just knew we weren't gonna get there. It's a really using it as an opportunity toe positively reinforce what we should be doing that was learning. We had a really narrow opportunity to learn and learn in an in depth way. And how do we develop that culture we had to spend that time? It was really consciously thinking about when you got a team who are not feeling a lot of love there really worried. They actually concerned for their jobs, refocusing their their effort, giving them conference, telling them I've got your back and ultimately it helped us create this coach where people can proactively go out there and solve problems and my example of the business case or a showcase every single time we will go for the showcase, getting people to talk about how they're solving these problems, what is the problem and actually putting a proof of concept in or showing us that an example of what it looks like that's taken a long time to develop that culture, however, it's been absolutely worth it. >> Yeah, that's great. And you gave you gave the audience three challenges. At the end of the day, I was pretty interesting that weren't in there because they kind of encapsulated there kind of your key three themes that was, you know, really understand the problem you're trying to solve. I talked to people in the community. I like that. Don't presume you know what's going on. Talk to people. And then the last thing is encouraged. Three people to start working on the problem. Don't start working on it yourself. But again, you know you're going to have such a good grasp on engaging the team to the benefit of the whole great great messages >> over the year. Or didn't appreciate the homework I gave them to go. Go back to their desks on Monday morning and try these things. But I firmly believe that you know those three challenges and they're only small like this is not about trying to solve world hunger. This is just starting with something small in your business that you can look at. You can get two of your people 23 other people to focus on that validated the problem and look for ways around it. So it doesn't have to be a huge a group of people just getting a stock. And I've already talked to a number papal off to the canine who who really said that really resonated just starting that conversation. Small in that that I did a snowball and eventually growing as part of the organization. Right culture is something which takes a huge amount of time to get right, and I go in starting small one and letting that grow and permeate and do as much as you can do to reinforce that culture within your organization. Really living and breathing that cultures is important. But >> even those starting small your guys goals were huge. I mean, your goals are to cut to cut the prostate and the testicular percent, 50% and drop the suicides by 3/4. So, you know, it's a really interesting approach. Start small, you know, focus on the small, but but you clearly have a really big goal is my >> goal, and we know we can't achieve those goals by ourselves so way collaborate as much as we can with others who have similar missions and trying to band together. And we realized very early on that bringing together the best and brightest minds in the world to solve these problems was absolutely essential. We couldn't do it myself. So forming those network says global networks of experts researching constantly evaluating that research, making sure we're having to cut through and with nests in the process of scale in those programs that have shown great outcomes to reach the lives of means of men. So it's again starting small, proving these ideas out there looking to scour those ideas to reach frankly means in England. >> All right, Byron, we're almost out of time. We've got about 10 weeks until the month. Formally. No, it's November for >> me knowing this. So how do >> people get involved? What should people do? Give us give us some concrete tips for the audio? >> Absolutely, absolutely. So, first of all, you want to go to moveon dot com and you want to sign up, Sign up to be a mobile. Almost Easter, you can either grow a mustache. You can host in the van. You can move for Movember start donating, and it's like any people to die tonight. So grow a mustache and asking me to give you money. That's the 1st 1 to do it. Second tip is what sort of moustache gonna grow. There's so many styles. There's the >> little style guide on the course, But not everyone >> can go. We could, Tash, but, uh, we do have wards for the line, Mark. So some of those >> little lame of the Lane >> Mart I can always always recommend some augmentation of the mustache if you got a few gray hairs and maybe bush it out. A little bit of color lamentation. Something like that. Um, but above all else, it doesn't live. Use one message. It's about getting yourself checked. When things don't feel normal, go to the doctor, have that positive impact on your life. And, of course, Movember dot com is full of really useful tips and great content to help you on that journey. >> All right. Well, Byron, thanks to you very much. And again. Congrats on the keynote. Thank you. Seem really enjoyed the time. Excellent. Thank you. Alright, He's tired. I'm Jeff. You're watching The key were eight of us imagined nonprofit in Seattle, Washington. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time

(stirring music) >> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle, Washington, actually right on the waterfront. It has been a spectacular visit here for the last couple of days. And we're back in Seattle for AWS IMAGINE. We were here a couple weeks ago for AWS IMAGINE Education. This is a different version of the conference, really focused around government and nonprofits, and we're really excited to kick off our day with the guy coming right off the keynote who's running this, he's Dave Levy. He's the vice president for U.S. Government and Nonprofit for AWS. Dave, great to see you, and congrats on the keynote. >> Thank you, thanks for having me, too. We're really excited. >> Absolutely. So as you're talking about mission and purpose, and as I'm doing my homework for some of the topics we're going to cover today, these are big problems. I couldn't help but think of a famous quote from Jeff Hammerbacher from years ago, who said, "The greatest minds of my generation "are thinking about how to make us click ads." And I'm so happy and refreshed to be here with you and your team to be working on much bigger problems. >> Yeah, well thank you. We're very excited, we're thrilled with all the customers here, all the nonprofits, all the nongovernmental organizations, all of our partners. It's just very exciting, and there are a lot of big challenges out there, and we're happy to be a part of it. >> So it's our first time here, but you guys have been doing this show, I believe this is the fourth year. >> Its fourth year, yeah. >> Give us a little background on the nonprofit sector at AWS. How did you get involved, you know, what's your mission, and some of the numbers behind. >> Well, it's one of the most exciting part of our businesses in the worldwide public sector. And we have tens of thousands of customers in the nonprofit sector, and they are doing all sorts of wonderful things in terms of their mission. And we're trying to help them deliver on their mission with our technology. So you see everything from hosting websites, to doing back office functions in the cloud, running research and donor platforms, and so it's just a very exciting time, I think. And nonprofit missions are accelerating, and we're helping them do that. >> Yeah, it's quite a different mission than selling books, or selling services, or selling infrastructure, when you have this real focus. The impact of some of these organizations is huge. We're going to talk to someone involved in human trafficking. 25,000,000 people involved in this problem. So these are really big problems that you guys are helping out with. >> They're huge problems, and at Amazon, we really identify with missionaries. We want our partners and our customers to be able to be empowered to deliver on their mission. We feel like we're missionaries and we're builders at Amazon, so this is a really good fit for us, to work with nonprofits all over the world. >> And how did you get involved? We were here a couple weeks ago, talked to Andrew Ko. He runs EDU, he'd grown up in tech, and then one of his kids had an issue that drove him into the education. What's your mission story? >> Well, on a personal level, I'm just passionate about this space. There's so much opportunity. It's everything from solving challenges around heart disease, to research for cancer, patient care, to human trafficking. So all of those things resonate. It touches all of our lives, and I'm thrilled to be able to contribute, and I've got a fantastic team, and we've got amazing customers. >> Right. It's great. Did a little homework on you, you're a pretty good, interesting guy too. But you referenced something that I thought was really powerful, and somebody interviewing you. You talked about practice. Practice, practice, practice, as a person. And you invoked Amara's Law, which I had never heard for a person, which is we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term, but we underestimate what we can do in the long term. And as these people are focused on these giant missions, the long term impacts can be gargantuan. >> Yeah, I think so. Like you said, we're tackling some huge problems out there. Huge, difficult problems. Migrations, diseases. And, you know, it takes a while to get these things done. And when you look back on a ten year horizon, you can really accomplish a lot. So we like to set big, bold, audacious goals at Amazon. We like to think big. And we want to encourage our customers to think big along with us. And we'll support them to go on this journey. And it may take some time, but I'm confident we can solve a lot of the big problems out there. >> But it's funny, there's a lot of stuff in social now where a lot of people don't think big enough. And you were very specific in your keynote. You had three really significant challenges. Go from big ideas to impact. Learn and be curious, and dive deep. Because like you said, these are not simple problems. These aren't just going to go away. But you really need to spend the time to get into it. And I think what's cool about Amazon, and your fanatical customer focus, to apply that type of a framework, that type of way of go to market into the nonprofit area, really gives you a unique point of view. >> I hope so. And we're doing a lot of really cool things here at the conference. We've got a Working Backwards session. One of the things about working backwards that's really interesting is the customer's at the center of that. And it all starts with the customer. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a meeting at Amazon where somebody has said, wait a second. This is what we heard these customers say, this is what we heard about their mission. And it's all about what customers want. So we're really excited that our customers here and our nonprofits here are going to be going through some of those sessions, and hopefully we can provide a little innovation engine for them by applying Amazon processes to it. >> For the people that aren't familiar, the working backwards, if I'm hearing you right, is the Amazon practice where you actually write the press release for when you're finished, and then work backwards. So you stay focused on those really core objectives. >> Yeah, that's right. It's start with your end state in mind and work backwards from there. And it starts with a press release. And certainly those are fun to write, because you want to know what you're going to be delivering and how you're going to be delivering it, and frankly how your customers and how your stakeholders will be responding. So it's a really great exercise, helps you focus on the mission, and sets up the stage for delivery in the future. >> It's funny, I think one of the greatest and easy simple examples of that is the Amazon Go store. And I've heard lots of stores, I've been it now a couple times up here, in San Francisco, and the story that I've heard, maybe you know if it's true or not, is that when they tried to implement it at first, they had a lot of more departments. And unfortunately it introduced lines not necessarily at checkout, but other places in the store. And with that single focus mission of no lines, cut back the SKUs, cut back the selection, and so when I went in it in San Francisco the other day, and it gave me my little time in the store, the Google search results? It was, I think, a minute and 19 to go in, grab a quick lunch, and then get back on my way. So really laser-focused on a specific objective. >> Yeah, and that's the point of the working backwards process. It's all about what customers want, and you can refine that and continue to refine that, and you get feedback, and you're able to answer those questions and solve those difficult problems. >> That's great. Well, Dave, thanks for inviting us here for the first time again. Congrats on the keynote, and we look forward to a bunch of really important work that your customers and your team are working on, and learning more about those stories. >> Thanks, we're thrilled. Very thrilled. >> All right. He's Dave, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're in Seattle at the AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (light electronic music)

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back, You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube were in Seattle, >> Washington downtown, right next to the convention center for the AWS. Imagine e d. You show. It's a second year of the show found by Andrew Cohen. His crew, part of Theresa's public sector group, really focused on education. Education means everything from K through 12 higher education and community college education, getting out of the military and retraining education. It's ah, it's a really huge category, and it's everything from, you know, getting the colleges to do a better job by being on cloud infrastructure, innovating and really thinking outside the box are really excited to have the man who's doing a lot of the work on the curriculum development in the education is Ken Eisner is the director of worldwide education programs for AWS. Educate can great to see you. Thank you so much for having absolutely nice shot out this morning by Theresa, she said. She just keeps asking you for more. So >> you want to deliver for Theresa? Carl says she is. She is a dynamo and she drives us >> all she does. So let's dive into it a little bit. So, you know, there was, Ah, great line that they played in the keynote with Andy talking about, You know, we cannot be protecting old institutions. We need to think about the kids is a story I hear all the time where somebody came from a time machine from 17 76 and landed here today. It wouldn't recognize how we talk, how we get around, but they would recognize one thing, and unfortunately, that's the school house down at the end of the block. So you guys are trying to change that. You're really trying to revolutionize what's happening in education, give us a little bit of background on some of the specific things that you're working on today. >> Yeah, I I think Andy, one of the things that he mentioned at that time was that education is really in a crisis on. We need to be inventing at a rapid rate. We need to show that invented simplify inside that occassion. Andi, he's incredibly, he's correct. The students are our customers, and we've got to be changing things for them. What we've been really excited to see is that with this giant growth in cloud computing A W S. It was the fastest I T vendor to ever hit $10,000,000,000 a year. The run rate We're now growing at a 42% or 41% year over year growth Ray and $31,000,000,000 a year Lee company. It's creating this giant cloud computing opportunity cloud computing in the number one Lincoln Skill for the past four years in Rome, when we look at that software development to cloud architecture to the data science and artificial intelligence and data analytics and cyber security rules. But we're not preparing kids for this. Market Gallop ran a study that that showed about 11% of business executives thought that students were prepared for their jobs. It's not working, It's gotta change. And the exciting thing that's happening right now is workforce development. Governments are really pushing for change in education, and it's starting to happen >> right? It's pretty amazing were here last year. The team last year was very much round the community college releases and the certification of the associate programs and trial down in Southern California, and this year. I've been surprised. We've had two guests on where it's the state governor has pushed these initiatives not at the district level, the city level, but from the state winning both Louisiana as well as Virginia. That's pretty amazing support to move in such an aggressive direction and really a new area. >> Yeah, I was actually just moderating a panel where we had Virginia, Louisiana, in California, all sitting down talking about that scaling statewide strategy. We had announcements from the entire CUNY and Sunni or City University of New York and State University of New York system to do both two and four year programs in Cloud Computing. And Louisiana announced it with their K 12 system, their community college system and their four year with Governor John Bel Edwards making the announcement two months ago. So right we are seeing this scaling consortium, a play where institutions are collaborating across themselves. They're collaborating vertically with your higher ed and K 12 and yet direct to the workforce because we need to be hiring people at such a rapid ray that we we need to be also putting a lot of skin in the game and that story that happened so again, I agree with Andy said. Education is at a crisis. But now we're starting to see change makers inside of education, making that move right. It's interesting. I wonder, >> you know, is it? Is it? I don't want to say second tier, that's the wrong word, but kind of what I'm thinking, you know, kind of these other institutions that the schools that don't necessarily have the super top in cachet, you know who are forced to be innovative, right? We're number two. We try harder. As they used to say in the in the Hertz commercial. Um, really a lot of creativity coming out of again the community colleges last year in L. A. Which I was, I was blown away, that kind of understand cause that specifically to skill people up to get a job. But now you're hearing it in much more kind of traditional institutions and doing really innovative things like the thing with the the Marines teaching active duty Marines about data science. >> Yeah, who came up with that idea that phenomenal Well, you know, data permeates every threat. It's not just impure data science, jobs and machine learning jobs. There's air brilliantly important, but it's also in marketing jobs and business jobs. And so on. Dad Analytics, that intelligence, security, cybersecurity so important that you think, God, you Northern Virginia Community College in U. S. Marine Corps are working for to make these programs available to their veterans and active military. The other thing is, they're sharing it with the rest of the student by. So that's I think another thing that's happening is this sharing this ability, all of for this cloud degree program that AWS educate is running. All these institutions are sharing their curricula. So the stuff that was done in Los Angeles is being learned in Virginia is the stuff that the U. S Marine Corps is doing is being available to students. Who are you not in military occupations? I think that collaboration mode is is amazing. The thing they say about community colleges and just this new locus of control for education on dhe. Why it's changing community colleges. You're right there. They're moving fast. These institutions have a bias for action. They know they have to. You change the r A. Y right? It's about preventing students for this work for, but they also serve as a flywheel to those four year institutions back to the 12 into the into the workforce and they hit you underserved audience. Is that the rest? So that you were not all picking from the same crew? You cannot keep going to just your lead institutions and recruit. We have to grow that pipeline. So you thank thank these places for moving quick brand operating for their student, right? >> Right, And and And that's where the innovation happens, right? I mean, that's that's, uh, that that's goodness. And the other thing that that was pretty interesting was, um, you know, obviously Skilling people up to get jobs. You need to hire him. That's pretty. That's pretty obvious and simple, but really bringing kind of big data attitude analytics attitude into the universities across into the research departments and the medical schools. And you think at first well, of course, researchers are data centric, right? They've been doing it that way for a long time, but they haven't been doing it and kind of the modern big, big data, real time analytics, you know, streaming data, not sampling data, all the data. So so even bringing that type of point of view, I don't know mindset to the academic institutions outside of what they're doing for the students. >> Absolutely. The machine learning is really changing the game. This notion of big data, the way that costs have gone down in terms of storing and utilizing data and right, it's streaming data. It's non Columbia or down, as opposed to yeah, the old pure sequel set up right that that is a game changer. No longer can you make just can you make a theory and tested out theories air coming streaming by looking at that data and letting it do some work for you, which is kind of machine learning, artificial intelligence path, and it's all becoming democratized. So, yes, researchers need to need learn these new past two to make sense and tow leverage. This with that big data on the medical center site, there are cures that can be discerned again. Some of our most pressing diseases by leveraging data way gonna change. And we, by the way, we gotta change that mindset, not just yeah, the phD level, but actually at the K 12 levels. Are kids learning the right skills to prepare them for you this new big data world once they get into higher ed, right? And then the last piece, which again we've seen >> on the Enterprise. You've kind of seen the movie on the enterprise side in terms of of cloud adoption. What AWS has done is at first it's a better, more efficient way to run your infrastructure. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of good things that come from running a cloud infrastructure, but >> that's not. But that's not the end, right? The answer to the question >> is the innovation right? It's It's the speed of change, of speed development and some of the things that we're seeing here around the competitive nature of higher education, trying to appeal to the younger kids because you're competing for their time and attention in there. And they're dollar really interesting stuff with Alexa and some of these other kind of innovation, which is where the goodness really starts to pay off on a cloud investment. >> Yeah, without a doubt, Alexa Week AWS came up with robo maker and Deep Racer on our last reinvent, and there's there's organizations at the K 12 level like First Robotics and Project lead. The way they're doing really cool stuff by making this this relevant it you education becomes more relevant when kids get to do hands on stuff. A W S lowers the price for failure lowers the ability you can just open a browser and do real world hands on bay hands on stuff robotics, a rvr that all of these things again are game changers inside the classroom. But you also have to connect it to jobs at the end, right? And if your educational institutions can become more relevant to their students in terms of preparing them for jobs like they've done in Santa Monica College and like they're doing in Northern Virginia Community College across the state of Louisiana and by May putting the real world stuff in the hands of their kids, they will then start to attract assumes. We saw this happen in Santa Monica. They opened up one class, a classroom of 35 students that sold out in a day. They opened another co ward of 35 sold out in another day or two. The name went from 70 students. Last year, about 325 they opened up this California cloud workforce project where they now have 825 students of five. These Northern Virginia Community College. They're they're cloud associate degree that they ran into tandem with AWS Educate grew from 30 students at the start of the year to well over 100. Now the's programs will drive students to them, right and students will get a job at the end. >> Right? Right, well and can. And can the school support the demand? I mean, that's That's a problem we see with CS, right? Everyone says, Tell your kids to take CS. They want to take CS. Guess what? There's no sections, hope in C. S. So you know, thinking of it in a different way, a little bit more innovative way providing that infrastructure kind of ready to go in a cloud based way. Now we'll hopefully enable them to get more kids and really fulfill the demand. >> Absolutely. There's another thing with professional development. I think you're hitting on, so we definitely have a shortage in terms of teachers who are capable to teach about software development and cloud architecture and data sciences and cybersecurity. So we're putting AWS educators putting a specific focus on professional development. We also want to bring Amazonian, Tze and our customers and partners into the classroom to help with that, because the work based learning and the focus on subject matter expert experts is also important. But we really need to have programs both from industry as well as government out support new teachers coming into this field and in service training for existing teachers to make sure, because yes, we launch those programs and students will come. We have to make sure that were adequately preparing teachers. It's not it's not. It's not easy, but again, we're seeing whether it's Koda Cole out of yeah out of, uh, Roosevelt High School. Are the people that were working with George Mason University and so on were seeing such an appetite for making change for their students? And so they're putting in those extra hours they're getting that AWS certification, and they're getting stronger, prepared to teach inside the clients. >> That's amazing, cause right. Teachers have so many conflict ing draws on their time, many of which have nothing to do with teaching right whether it's regulations. And there's just so many things the teachers have to deal with. So you know the fact that they're encouraged. The fact that they want t to spend and invest in this is really a good sign and really a nice kind of indicator to you and the team that, you know, you guys were hitting something really, really positive. >> Yeah, I think we've had its this foam oh fear of missing out opportunity. There's the excitement of the cloud. There's the excitement of watching your kids. You're really transformed their lives. And it could be Alfredo Cologne who came over from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You wiped out his economic potential and started taking AWS educate. And you're learning some of these pathways and then landing a job as the Dev Ops engineered. When you see the transformation in your students, no matter what their background is, it is. It is a game changer. This has got to be you. Listen, I love watching that women's team when I win the World Cup, and that the excitement cloud is like the new sport. Robotics is the new sport for these kids. They'll bring them on >> pathways to career, right. We'll take for taking a few minutes in The passion comes through, Andrew Koza big passion guy. And we know Teresa is a CZ Well, so it shines through and keep doing good work. >> Thank you so much for the time. Alright, he's can on Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're in downtown Seattle. A aws. Imagine e d. Thanks for watching. >> We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back. You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine Education event. It's a second year of the event. It's about 800. People were here last year, too, I think was 400 people. So it's growing quickly, like everything at a W s. It's all about education. That's that's public school, private school, university K through 12 community college, everything you can imagine. It's a really comprehensive kind of area that Amazon's focusing on. We're excited. Have our next guest really from the school district emanating from school district? He's Travis Pocky, the senior director Information Service is for Portland Public School. I'm a proud graduate of the Portland public school system. So, Travis, great to see you. Great to see you. Absolutely. So for stop impressions of the show, you said you weren't able to make it this year. I got to sit in the key notes this morning with Theresa and Andrew. A couple sessions just kind of your impressions of being at an event like this, >> you know, it's really fantastic tohave an event that ties together AWS and education. And in that education space. It's a great resource for people that are using AWS within the education community. So this has been fantastic. >> Yeah, it's good because the education is not necessarily touted as the most progressive in his street. Exactly. So the fact that they made this commitment is pretty significant. Exactly. So you had a recent a recent significant event within your kind of I d journey cloud during one of you could tell us what you guys just recently completed. >> Sure. So we recently migrated our peoples off application from our on Prem Data Center to the cloud. And, you know, one of the one of the real challenges we had was there was no extra money to do this work. So we had kind of come across the idea that the hardware was end of life. It was gonna be about a $500,000 replacement cost. In addition to that, we had several on staff positions that really weren't available. It had become such a niche skill set that we really had a lot of trouble trying to get those positions filled. So, in addition to that my boss came around the corner and said, By the way, we have a 10% budget cut. So how do we resolve all of that plus address? This really big problem with the system, not even >> time, was ticking, right? Your hardware time was >> ticking. It it was really bad. I mean, we were at a point where we were getting young 9 12th page refresh times. And, you know, the user community had kind of gotten to the point where our numbers for satisfaction looked really good because we didn't get complaints because the user community had gotten so disillusioned by making those complaints and not getting any results that they just gave up on complaining. So way were out of time, >> year out of time. So, you know, typically, a cloud migration of an old application is not necessarily the easiest place to get started on your cloud journey. Did you already have some experience with powder? Was this really kind of your first foray into this area? >> You know, I had worked at a start up a few years before, and we did our entire infrastructure on eight of us. So that was my my introduction to AWS and HBO Service's. And there was a lot of there's a lot of people that were looking away from that as a solution. It didn't seem like the viable thing to do. And yes, we were advised not to try the e r P first. But that was our use case. And if >> we were gonna do it, we were gonna do it big. So we did. He brought in some consultants. I would assume that helped out. Are you guys doing all in house? >> Actually, what we did was we looked for a managed service provider. So are our use case in that we had many positions that we couldn't get filled was that we needed the virtual infrastructure. But we also needed the people to do some of those tasks for us. So that was That was our partnership, was we work with a manage solution provider called High Street and High Street. Really helped us with that process. >> It So how long did it take? When did you get complete? >> Um, we went from idea to completion in four months. >> Idea to completion in four months. Yes. Wow. >> And that was That was unprecedented. No, nobody expected it to work. Certainly nobody expected it to work that fast. And when you do these migrations Ew, you I understand that it is going to be a high stress situation. And the one of the major things that AWS did for us was it gave us that virtual infrastructure so that we could run in tandem. We could actually continue to run completely as we were in production and run the new systems and run all the tests. So we were able to get cut over in no time with almost no stress. I think we had one problem when we went live. >> So then what did your boss say when he came around the corner? Good job, Travis. Okay, great. So you know, there's there's a whole bunch of components to cloud right that have a lot of benefits security. Like we said, it's actually a lot more secure than a lot of time on your own stuff. There's cost savings, and there's infrastructure leverage that you can get, but more importantly, and we've heard a lot of the stories here is it opens up on opportunity for innovation, opens up an opportunity to try any things to move fast. So I wonder if, if you know that kind of unintended consequence of this process or do you think you've kind of sold the house people that you know? Look, it worked. We did it fast. Assume it's close to budget or close two timing. And now, you know, sit here for two days and listen to all the crazy, cool, innovative things that people are doing with X, right, etcetera. So where do you go? Where do you go next? >> You know, one of the one of the unintended consequences of it was was granting us a D R process. So we had a We had a very basic deal, our system in place and by moving to the cloud, Not only do we make it insulated from any events that might happen in our primary building, which is also our primary data center, but it gave us that ability due to fail over and persist through through a significant event. One of the other things that's done those it's given our develop access to tools that they just didn't have access to before. So, one of the places where were expended experimenting pretty heavily. Yoon is is Lambda. So server lis functions trying to get to the point where we can enhance our existing software by making calls out to our Amazon vpc and data that exists out there without having to make hard core modifications to the internal systems right way were actually able to do a demo of that within 30 minutes. So that's that normal process would take about two weeks to >> write. So it was there, Is there new stuff on the horizon is just our use, like a kid in a candy store, like now, you know, look at the power flexibility that we have it. We just didn't have the kind of strapped payroll data center before. >> Absolutely, Right now we're trying. I think the biggest struggle is trying to figure out what we tackle next. There's a lot of things out there, you know. We have ah, data interchange platform. It would be great if we could replace that with AWS functions and lame duck calls. >> Um, it >> I think that's probably going to be our next biggest tackle. Is is that after that, we'd really like to start rewriting some of our in house written APS completely in AWS service is and I think that's gonna be a huge win for the district. >> Okay. And then do you guys purchase a lot of these other softer applications? Is a lot of companies here That blackboard is just the one that always comes into my head not to pick on them specifically, but you guys have a ton of those types of applications and installed as well. >> Way definitely tend to leverage bought first. Okay, But some of them likes women have been fantastic partners for us. And that's one of the ones that we've really leaned on because of how intricate some of our policies are school meant as the capability to implement that for us, >> right? Right. Well, sounds pretty exciting, but that's but the question is, when does the grand opening of the of Grant? That's what I wanted. I need the date. So afterwards you could wait a little. They just finished a beautiful remote. I don't even know how many millions and millions of dollars are spent, but a lot. Very yes, a lot. All right. Well, Travis, congratulations. Four months. The AARP move. I don't know. Throw that as a challenge. Maybe somebody else could beat it. That's pretty good. Absolutely. Alright. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you. Alright, He's Travis. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. Where? Aws. Imagine education in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From Seattle, Washington it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Imagine. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine, it's a show all about education. That's whether it's university, K to 12, community college, post-military service. Amazon is very, very committed to education market. It's part of the public sector group underneath Teresa Carlson. This is the second year of the conference. We're excited to be back, and really some interesting conversations about how does education move forward. 'Cause it doesn't necessarily have the best reputation for being the most progressive industry out there. So we're excited to have our next guest all the way from London, she's Dr. Amanda Broderick, the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of East London. Welcome. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, very nice to meet you. >> Absolutely, so first off before we get into it, just kind of your impressions of this event, and kind of what Amazon is doing. Teresa did the keynote today, which is not insignificant. She's a super busy lady, and kind of what does this ecosystem, these resources, this kind of focus, do for you as an educator? >> The main reason that we're working with AWS in such a significant way is actually because of our genuine values alignment. Institutionally, those core priorities are really where we want to go as an organization. And for me this conference, this summit, has been an opportunity to share best practice, to innovate, to truly explore the opportunity to disrupt for ultimately, the end goal. Which is about the education, the development of our next generation, and the support of talent development for the future. >> But unfortunately, a lot of times it feels like institutions put the institution first, and we're seeing a lot of conversations here in the US about these ridiculously crazy, large endowments that sit in piles of money. And is the investment getting back to the students? Are we keeping our eye on the ball? That it's the students that need the investment, not all the other stuff, all the other distractions, that get involved in the higher education. >> I suppose that is where the University of East London is fundamentally different. Core to our mission is driving social mobility, and as such we have to be absolutely clear what those learner outcomes are, and they are about being able to access and accelerate in their careers, and indeed in their lifelong learning to enable them to progress in portfolio careers. >> Right, so it's interesting ahead the three topics for this shows is tomorrow's workforce, which we've talked a lot about the education. The role of ML, which I think is interesting that it got its own bullet. Just because machine learning is so pervasive, and software, and doing lots of things. And the one that that struck me is the effort to have higher predictability on the success of the student, and to really make sure that you're catching problems early, if there is a problem. You're actually using a lot of science to better improve the odds of that student success. A lot of conversation here about that topic. >> Absolutely, absolutely, and that machine learning approach is one of the key dimensions in our relationship with AWS. And this is not just about the student outcomes around continuation, engagement, progression, student success, but actually for the University of East London, it's also been about the identification of students at risk. So we fundamentally believe that health gain is a precondition of learning gain. Particularly important for an institution like ours that is so socially inclusive, and therefore what we're doing, we're actually one of ten institutions that have been funded by the government and working in partnership with AWS as a pilot to share best practice across the UK as a whole, is to identify the proxies. For example, mental health issues, to be able to signpost and traffic light the sign posting to areas of support and to be able to direct prevention, intervention and postvention strategies to those students at risk. And that project is actually a key area of our partnership development with AWS. >> And how long has that been going on? We talked it a little bit about it before we turn the cameras on, and it just seems so foundational to me that without putting in that infrastructure for these kids, regardless of their age, their probability of success on top of that, without a good foundation is so much less. So when did this become a priority? How are you prioritizing it? What are some of the really key measures that you're using to make sure that you're making progress against this goal? >> Absolutely, so the university has made good progress in terms of the fundamental issues of identifying where the correlations and the causations are between both physical and mental health and well-being, and outcomes. What we haven't been able to do at this point is the scalability of this issue, and that's really where this pilot project, which has literally been announced in the last couple of weeks, that we're working very closely with AWS in order to convert that core foundational research and development into scalable solutions. Not just for my own university, but actually for the sector as a whole. >> Right, so we talked about academic institutions, maybe not necessarily have the best reputation for innovation, especially kind of old storied ones with old ivy plants growing up old old brick walls. Is this a new kind of realization of the importance of this? Is this coming from maybe some of the more vocational kind of schools, or is it coming from the top? Do they realize that there's more to this than just making sure people study, and they know what they're doing when they turn in their test and get their paper in on time? >> It's both a top-down and bottom-up approach. It's fundamental to the University of East London. It's new ten year strategy vision 2028. Health gain is that precondition of learning gain. It's fundamental to the realization of our learner's success. But also it's come from a groundswell of the research and development outcomes over a number of years. So it's absolutely been the priority for the institution from September 2018, and we've been able to accelerate this over the last few months. >> So important. Such important work. Flipping the point a little bit on to something a little lighter, a little bit more fun, it's really innovation on the engagement with the students around things like mobile. We've had a lot of conversations here about integrating Alexa, and voice, and competing with online, and competing with other institutions, and being a little bit more proactive in engaging with the customer as your students. I wonder if you can share some thoughts as to how that has evolved over time. Again, you've been in the business for a while, and really starting to cater and be innovative on that front end, versus the back end, to be more engaging and help students learn in different ways. Where they are in little micro segments. It's a very different kind of approach. >> It absolutely is and one of our four major facilitating transformation projects, it's called our digital verse project, and that is across all of our activities of an institution, in terms of business transformation, our particular priority is prospect engagement, and how we actually convert our potential learners in more effective ways. Secondly, enhancing deeper learning, and how we then produce better learner outcomes. Thirdly, how we develop access to new ways of educational provision, 24/7 global access. And fourthly, how do we connect with employers in partnership to make sure that we get those challenges around pre-selection recruitment strategies, and we're unable to get the students, our learners, into careers post graduation. >> Right, and then what's the kind of feedback from the teachers and the professors? They have so much on their plate. Right, they've got their core academic research that they're doing, they're teaching their students, they've got a passion around that area. I always tell people it's like driving in the car in the snow at night with your headlights on, right. Just like all types of new regs that are coming in and requirements and law, and this that and the other. Now we're coming in with this whole four point digital transformation. Are they excited, are they overwhelmed, are they like finally, we're getting to do something different? I mean what's the take within the academics, specifically in your school? >> I think the answer to that is all of the above. >> All of the above. >> It really reflects the classic adoption curve. So you do have the innovators, you have the early adopters, and then you also have the laggards at the other end. And an often actually, the most traditional academics that have been doing things for many, many years, who are very set in their ways, if you expose them to new opportunities, new experiences, and actually provide them with the tools to innovate, they could be some of the best advocates for the transformation and we've certainly found that to be the case. >> Good, well Amanda, thanks for taking a few minutes of your time, it sounds like they're going to start the dancing here behind us soon. So I think we'll have to leave it there, but I look forward to seeing you sometime in London. >> Thank you very much. >> Alright, she's Dr. Amanda Broderick, I'm Jeff Rick, you're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine in Seattle. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeffrey here with the Cube were in Seattle, >> Washington downtown, right next to the convention center for the AWS. Imagine e d. You show. It's a second year of the show found by Andrew Cohen. His crew, part of Theresa's public sector group, really focused on education. Education means everything from K through 12 higher education, community college education, getting out of the military and retraining education. It's ah, it's a really huge category, and it's everything from, you know, getting the colleges to do a better job by being on cloud infrastructure, innovating and really thinking outside the box are really excited to have the man who's doing a lot of the work on the curriculum development in the education is Ken Eisner is the director of worldwide education programs for AWS. Educate can Great to see you. Thank you so much for having absolutely nice shot out this morning by Theresa, she said. She just keeps asking you for more. So >> you want to deliver for Theresa. Carl says she is. She is a dynamo, and she drives us >> all she does, so just dive into it a little bit. So, you know, there was, Ah, great line that they played in the keynote with Andy talking about, You know, we cannot be protecting old institutions. We need to think about the kids is a story I hear all the time where somebody came from a time machine from 17 76 and landed here today. It wouldn't recognize how we talk, how we get around, but they would recognize one thing, and unfortunately, that's the school house down at the end of the block. So you guys are trying to change that. You're really trying to revolutionize what's happening in education, give us a little bit of background on some of the specific things that you're working on today. >> Yeah, I think Andy, one of the things that he mentioned at that time was that education is really in a crisis on. We need to be inventing at a rapid rate. We need to show that invented, simple, fine inside education, and he's incredibly, he's correct. The students are our customers and we've got to be changing things for them. What we've been really excited to see is that with this giant growth in cloud computing a W. S. It was the fastest I T vendor to ever a $10,000,000,000 a year. The run rate. We're now growing at a 42% or 41% year over year growth Ray and $31,000,000,000 a year Lee company. It's creating this giant cloud computing opportunity, cloud computing in the number one linked in skill for the past four years in Rome. When we look at that software development to cloud architecture to the data science and artificial intelligence and data analytics and cyber security rules. But we're not preparing kids for this. Market Gallop ran a study that that showed about 11% of business executives thought that students were prepared for their jobs. It's not working, It's gotta change. And the exciting thing that's happening right now is workforce development. Governments are really pushing for change in education, and it's starting to happen right? It's pretty amazing were here last year. >> The team last year was very much round the community college releases and the certification of the associate programs and trial down in Southern California, and this year I've been surprised. We've had two guests on where it's the state governor has pushed these initiatives not at the district level, the city level, but from the state winning both Louisiana as well as Virginia. That's pretty amazing support to move in such an aggressive direction and really a new area. >> Yeah, I was actually just moderating a panel where we had Virginia, Louisiana, in California, all sitting down talking about that scaling statewide strategy. We had announcements from the entire CUNY and Sunni or City University of New York and State University of New York system to do both to end four year programs in Cloud Computing. And Louisiana announced it with their K 12 system, their community college system and their four year with Governor John Bel Edwards making the announcement two months ago. So right, we are seeing this scaling consortium, a play where institutions are collaborating across themselves. They're collaborating vertically with your higher ed and K 12 and yet direct to the workforce because we need to be hiring people at such a rapid ray that we we need to be also putting a lot of skin in the game. And that story that happened So again, I agree with Andy said. Education is at a crisis. But now we're starting to see change makers inside of education, making that move right. It's interesting. I wonder, >> you know, is it is it? I don't want to say second tier, that's the wrong word, but kind of what I'm thinking, you know, kind of these other institutions that the schools that don't necessarily have the super top in cachet, you know who are forced to be innovative, right? We're number two. We try harder. As they used to say in the in the Hertz commercial. Um, really a lot of creativity coming out of again the community colleges last year in L. A. Which I was, I was blown away, that kind of understand cause that specifically to skill people up to get a job. But now you're hearing it in much more kind of traditional institutions and doing really innovative things like the thing with the the Marines teaching active duty Marines about data science. >> Yeah, who came up with that idea that phenomenal Well, you know, data permeates every threat. It's not just impure data science, jobs and machine learning jobs. There's air brilliantly important, but it's also in marketing jobs and business jobs. And so on. Dad Analytics that intelligence, security, cybersecurity so important that you think, God, you Northern Virginia Community College in U. S. Marine Corps are working for to make these programs available to their veterans and active military. The other thing is, they're sharing it with the rest of the student by. So that's I think another thing that's happening is this. Sharing this ability all of for this cloud degree program that AWS educate is running. All these institutions are sharing their curricula. So the stuff that was done in Los Angeles is being learned in Virginia's stuff the U. S. Marine Corps is doing is being available to students. Who are you not in military occupations? I think that collaboration mode is is amazing, the thing they say about community colleges and just this new locus of control for education on dhe. Why it's changing community colleges. You're right there. They're moving fast. These institutions have a bias for action. They know they have to. You change the r A. Y right. It's about preventing students for this work for, but they also serve as a flywheel to those four year institutions back to the 12 into the into the workforce and they hit you underserved audience is that the rest is so that you were not all picking from the same crew. You cannot keep going to just share lead institutions and recruit. We have to grow that pipeline. So you thank thank these places for moving quick and operating for their student, right? >> Right, And and And that's where the innovation happens, right? I mean, that's that's, ah, that that's goodness. And the other thing that that was pretty interesting was obviously Skilling people up to get jobs, you need to hire him. That's pretty. That's pretty obvious and simple, but really bringing kind of big data attitude analytics attitude into the universities across into the research departments and the medical schools. And you think at first, of course, researchers are data centric, right? They've been doing it that way for a long time, but they haven't been doing it in kind of the modern big, big data. Real time analytics, you know, streaming data, not sampling data, all the data. So so even bringing that type of point of view, I don't know, mindset to the academic institutions outside of what they're doing for the students. >> Absolutely. The machine learning is really changing the game. This notion of big data, the way that costs have gone down in terms of storing and utilizing data and right, it's streaming data. It's non Columbia or down, as opposed to yeah, the old pure sequel set up right that that is a game changer. No longer can you make just can you make a theory and tested out theories air coming streaming by looking at that data and letting it do some work for you, which is kind of machine learning, artificial intelligence path, and it's all becoming democratized. So, yes, researchers need to need learn these new past two to make sense and tow leverage. This with that big data on the medical center site, there are cures that could be discerned again some of our most pressing diseases by leveraging data, way gonna change. And we, by the way, we gotta change that mindset, not just yeah, the phD level, but actually at the K 12 levels. Are kids learning the right skills to prepare them for you? This new big data world once they get into higher ed, right? And then the last piece, which again we've seen >> on the Enterprise. You've kind of seen the movie on the enterprise side in terms of of cloud adoption. What AWS has done is at first it's a better, more efficient way to run your infrastructure. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of good things that come from running a cloud infrastructure, but >> that's not. But that's not the end, right? The answer to the question >> is the innovation right? It's It's the speed of change, of speed, a development and some of the things that we're seeing here around the competitive nature of higher education, trying to appeal to the younger kids because you're competing for their time and attention in there. And they're dollar really interesting stuff with Alexa and some of these other kind of innovation, which is where the goodness really starts to pay off on a cloud investment. >> Yeah, without a doubt, Alexa Week AWS came up with robo maker and Deep Racer on our last reinvent, and there's there's organizations at the K 12 level like First Robotics and project lead the way they're doing really cool stuff by making this this relevant you education becomes more relevant when kids get to do hands on stuff. A W S lowers the price for failure lowers the ability you can just open a browser and do real world hands on bay hands on stuff. Robotics, A R V R. That all of these things again are game changers inside the classroom. But you also have to connect it to jobs at the end, right? And if your educational institutions can become more relevant to their students in terms of preparing them for jobs like they've done in Santa Monica College and like they're doing in Northern Virginia Community College across the state of Louisiana and by May putting the real world stuff in the hands of their kids, they will then start to attract assumes. We saw this happen in Santa Monica. They opened up one class, a classroom of 35 students that sold out in a day. They opened another co ward of 35 sold out in another day or two. The name went from 70 students. Last year, about 325 they opened up this California Cloud Workforce Project, where they now have 825 students of five. These Northern Virginia Community College. They're they're cloud associate degree that they ran in tandem with AWS Educate grew from 30 students at the start of the year to well over 100. Now these programs will drive students to them right and students will get a job at the end. >> Right? Right, well in Ken. And can the schools sports a demand? That's that's a problem we see with CS, right? Everyone says, Tell your kids to take CS. They want to take CS. Guess what? There's no sections, hope in C. S. So you know, thinking of it in a different way, a little bit more innovative way providing that infrastructure kind of ready to go in a cloud based way. Now we'll hopefully enable them to get more kids and really fulfill the demand. >> Absolutely. There's another thing with professional development. I think you're hitting on, so we definitely have a shortage in terms of teachers who are capable to teach about software development and cloud architecture and data sciences and cybersecurity. So we're putting a W. C. Educate is putting a specific focus on professional development. We also want to bring Amazonian, Tze and our customers and partners into the classroom to help with that, because the work based learning and the focus on subject matter expert experts is also important. But we really need to have programs both from industry as well as government out support new teachers coming into this field and in service training for existing teachers to make sure, because yes, we launch those programs and students will come. We have to make sure that were adequately preparing teachers. It's not, it's not. It's not easy, but again, we're seeing whether it's Koda Cole out of out of, uh Roosevelt High School. Are the people that were working with George Mason University and so on were seeing such an appetite >> for >> making change for their students? And so they're putting in those extra hours they're getting that AWS certification, and they're getting stronger, prepared to teach inside the class. That's >> amazing, cause right. Teachers have so many conflict ing draws on their time, many of which have nothing to do with teaching right whether it's regulations and there's just so many things the teachers have to deal with. So you know the fact that they're encouraged the fact that they want t to spend and invest in this is really a good sign and really a nice kind of indicator to you and the team that, you know, you guys were hitting something really, really positive. >> Yeah, I think we've had its this foam oh fear of missing out opportunity. There's the excitement of the cloud. There's the excitement of watching your kids. You're really transformed their lives. And it could be Alfredo Cologne who came over from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You wiped out his economic potential and started taking AWS educate and you're learning some of these pathways and then landing a job has the Dev ops engineer to Michael Brown, who went through that Santa Monica problem and >> landed an >> internship with Annika. When you see the transformation in your students, no matter what their background is, it is. It is a game changer. This has got to be you. Listen, I love watching that women's team when I win the World Cup, and that the excitement cloud is like the new sport. Robotics is the new sport for these kids. They'll bring them on >> pathways to career, right, well, take for taking a few minutes in The passion comes through Andrew Koza, Big passion guy. And we know Teresa is as well. So it shines through and keep doing good work. >> Thank you so much for the time. Alright, He's Can I'm Jeff, You're watching the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle. A aws. Imagine E d. Thanks for >> watching. We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back. You're writing Jeffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown >> Seattle. It aws Imagine. Edie you. It's a brand new show. Actually, this is the second year were here last year to really is part of public sector on Really addressing education and education is K through 12. It's higher education. It's community college. It's that and so much border. We're really excited to have our next guest. The company's been in the space for a long time, are really driving a lot of digital transformation internally as well as with their customers. And we have Andrew Gilfillan. He is the VP of product management for Pearson. Andrew, great to see you. >> Great to be here. Thanks for having me. >> All right. So give us the kind of quick over on Pearson for people who aren't familiar with the country. >> S O Pearson's a global education company operating in 70 countries around the world. And our mission is really to help people progress their lives through learning. >> Now things are changing up. Change it up a little bit. You're here he had a big announcement earlier today during the keynote Yes, about a new product called Rebel Pearson Rebel Pearson Rebels been around for a little while, so give us the background and what's changed now, >> right? So Rebel first launched in 2014. So it's now been around for a little more than five years on. And really, it's at the forefront of our transformation to digital course materials. Revels intended. Thio replaced the traditional tax book and give students the opportunity to have a fully digital interactive learning experience where they can read practice, study anywhere, >> anytime. So it's basically an app that integrates all the different types of material that they're going to use in their kind of day to day. In the actual engagement with that class. >> Eso it incorporates all of their course materials, so their readings, their assignments, they can access it through their computer or through mobile app, which is which is great because it enables them to learn anywhere. We know that students are on the go lots of priorities they're squeezing in their course, you know, their course work while there juggling jobs, families, activity is everything else. So it's pretty >> interesting because you talk about it being pretty mobile, heavy, mobile centric because that's one of the big attributes of mobile. Right? We check our phones were in line at the grocery store and you get a couple of minutes here in a couple minutes here, as opposed to when used to sit down at the computer. And I've kind of dedicated attention span. So you're seeing that on the education side with the kids in the way they actually engage with their with their curricula? >> Absolutely. I mean, we have to meet students where they are way have to bring learning to them so they can learn on their terms >> and is a workout. I mean, old school people like me, like Come on, you guys, let's sit down and concentrate for 20 minutes. 30 minutes on a particular topic. Yeah, it works for >> that. It does. And actually, what we know from research is that students actually learn better. When material is broken down into smaller chunks, the rebel is able to break the material down into smaller pieces. I'm really optimize the learning, provide immediate feedback for them, and soon can kind of stop pick up where they left off later down the road. You know, if they were studying during a break at their job right now and they're gonna pick back up when they get home, they can do that. >> Interesting. Okay, So that what is the Lexx? I have to do this. What's the opportunity? How did this come about in the first place? And then you guys do >> s so we're super excited to be able to partner with Amazon again. Our goal is Thio really make learning more engaging and more convenient for more learners. And the partnership with Amazon to bring the rebel skill for Alexa is another step in that direction. Eso, Alexa really enable students too engaged in their learning on their own terms. We had one student who tested the skill for us while it was in development who was juggling a family taking a full course load and had a full time job. And she used Alexa toe listen to her reading while she was preparing meals for her, for her family on it was a great way to really show that Alexa made possible her to fit her course. Bergin, when she had time to do it. >> So it's really just connecting her Alexa device at home in tow. Her her her revel account. >> Yeah, So the link your rebel account with your with your Alexa with your Amazon Alexa a count, and it allows you to stay up to date on when your assignments or do it allows. You listen to the tax. You can change devices and pick up where you left off on a new device >> in a different location at a different time. So how many different kind of actions will do >> so their number of commands? It's really focused on audio playback on understanding when your assignments are due being able to play sort of, you know what, you what the current assignment is or to know when the next assignment is due. Right? So it's still really focused on sort of the key activities that a student's gonna participate in when they're engaging with their with their rebel product. >> Okay, And do you see just isn't open up your product manager, you know, kind of a whole new host of of potential capabilities. Using voice is an interface versus >> yeah, eso eso I mean, we know that students air mobile. We know that the sort of current generation of students what we call the eye Jen's grew up in a world where Internets always been a thing. And so we really want to take advantage of all of the tools that are out there to deliver more engaging experiences, right, and and to really be able to reach Maur learners in really positive ways, >> right? And then who's your customer? Your customer usually like the school, the school entity, >> So that's a great question. Eso Historically, our customer really was The student is the end user. The educator ultimately chose what, uh, what they used or what they expected this student to use. Increasingly, Pierson's transforming and really looking at institutions as customers as well. And so we have tears of customers. It's It's the institution. It's Theo educator, and it's the student, and we have to meet the needs of all three of those things. One of the great things about Revel is not only do we believe that it drives better outcomes for the student, but it allows us to deliver a better product at a more affordable price, >> right? Do you find that the engagement with the application because it still basically the same application under the cover significantly is significantly different with a voice interaction around. If you have enough data yet, yeah, I think I >> think it's too early to tell. I mean, certainly were optimistic about the promise of voice being a part of the experience. It's not going to be the whole experience but will be an important part of the experience. And it will really enable more flexibility for students to use the tool in a variety of ways. >> It's just interesting to me with the whole voice thing that you get e mails old people like us get e mails telling you what you should ask your voice. You should ask Alexei, Have you thought about asking like something more than just turn on the radio with the weather? It's only a joke, >> you know, it's it's amazing. I think when you watch students interact with these tools, it's so natural and so intuitive for them. They've grown up with mobile devices. They've grown up with the Internet, they've grown up sort of with a new paradigm, and they expect that they're learning experiences, air gonna adapt in those ways and in sort of the ways that they're adopting, >> right? So last question. Here we're here. It it Just imagine, obviously, Theresa's super passionate about this area. Andrews super passionate about this area. What's it meant for you guys? How's Amazon been? Our AWS is a partner, you know, still kind of early days for them in this type of area. But clearly there's a lot of resource is being put behind. >> Yes, eso Amazon has been a great partner and Alexa the rebel skill for Alexis, sort of our new launch. But we've partnered with Amazon. Andi used Amazon Web service is underpinning Ah, lot of a lot of our product experiences, including Revel So they've been a great partner. And I think this is an example of just extending that one more step. And we look forward to be ableto, you know, look even further to see how we can work together to improve learning for students. >> I love a 200 year old company using voice. That's right. All right, Andrew. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your way and congratulations. And look forward, Thio toe watching it progressively get more data coming out of that thing. Thank you. All right. He's an drum. Jeff, you're watching the key. Where eight of us. Imagine, in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the cue, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine, Edie, you event. It's a small conference. It's a second year, but it'll crow like a weed like everything else does the of us. And it's all about Amazon and a degree. As for education, and that's everything from K through 12 community college, higher education, retraining vets coming out of the service. It's a really big area. And we're really excited to have fresh off his keynote presentations where he changed his title on me from what it was >> this morning tow. It was the senator duties >> David Raymond, the director of what was the Virginia Cyber Range and now is the U. S. Cyber range. Virginia Tech. David, Great to see you. >> Yeah, Thank you. Thanks. So the Virginia cyber age actually will continue to exist in its current form. Okay, Well, it'll still serve faculty and students in the in the Commonwealth of Virginia, funded by the state of Virginia. Now the U. S. Cyber Angel fund will provide service to folks outside over, >> so we jumped ahead. So? So it's back up. A step ladder is the Virginia, >> So the Virginia Cyber Range provides courseware and infrastructure so students could do hands on cyber security, educational activities in Virginia, high schools and colleges so funded by the state of Virginia and, um provides this service at no charge to the schools >> and even in high school, >> even in high school. Yes, so now that there are now cybersecurity courses in the Virginia Department of Education course catalogue as of two years ago, and I mean they've grown like wildfire, >> I'm just so a ton of talk here about skills gap. And there's tremendous skills gap. Even the machine's gonna take everybody's job. There's a whole lot of jobs are filled, but what's interesting? I mean, it's the high school angle is really weird. I mean, how do you Most high school kids haven't even kind of clued in tow, privacy and security, opting in and opting out. It's gotta be a really interesting conversation when now you bring security into that a potential career into that and directly reflects on all those things that you do on your phone. >> Well, I would argue that that's exactly the problem. Students are not exposed to cyber security, you know. They don't want the curia potentials are they really don't understand what it is we talked about. We talked about teenagers being digital natives. Really? They know how to use smartphones. They know how to use computers, but they don't understand how they work. And they don't understand the security aspects that go along with using all this technology. And I would argue that by the time a student gets into college they have a plan, right? So I have a student in college. He's he's gonna be a doctor. He knows what a doctor is. He heard of that his whole life. And in high school, he was able to get certified as a nursing assistant. We need cyber security in that same realm, right? If we start students in high school and we and we expose them to cybersecurity courses, they're all elective courses. Some of the students will latch onto it, and I'll say, Hey, this is what I want to be when I grew up. And in Virginia, we have we have this dearth of cyber security expertise and this is true across the country. In Virginia, right now, we have over 30,000 cyber security jobs that are unfilled. That's about 1/3 of the cyber security jobs in this state. And I mean, that's a serious problem, not only in Virginia but nationwide. And one of the ways to fix that is to get high school students exposed to cybersecurity classes, give them some real hands on opportunities. So they're really doing it, not just learning the words and passing the test, and I mean really again in Virginia, this is this is grown like wildfire and really thinks revolutionized cybersecurity education in the state. >> And what are some of the topics that say, a high school level, where you know you're kind of getting versed on the vocabulary and the terminology vs when they go into into college and start to take those types, of course, is >> yeah, so in Virginia, there's actually cybersecurity courses across the C T E career pathways. And so SETI is the career and technical education curricula. And so there are courses like cyber security and health care, where students learn about personal health data and how to secure that specific specific kinds of data, they learn about the regulations behind that data. There's healthcare in manufacturing, where students learn about industrial control systems and you know how those things need to be secured and how they're different from a laptop or a phone. And the way those air secured and what feeds into all of those courses is an introductory course. Cyber security fundamentals, where students learn some of the very basics they learn the terminology. They learn things like the C I. A. Triad right, confidentiality, integrity and availability of the three basic components of security that you try to maintain for any system. So they start out learning the basics. But still they're doing that hands on. So they're so they're in a network environment where they see that you know that later on in the course during Capstone exercises, they might see someone trying to attack a computer that they're that they're tasked to defend and a defender of what does that look like? What are the things that I'm going to do? That computer? You know, I might install anti virus. I might have a firewall on the computer. And how do I set that up and etcetera etcetera. So high school start with the basics. As as students progressed through their high school years, there are opportunities to take further more advanced classes in the high schools. And then when they get to college, some of those students are gonna have latched onto cyber security as a potential career field. Now, now we've got him right way, get him into the right into the right majors and into the right courses. And our hope is that that's gonna sort of kick start this pipeline of students in Virginia colleges, >> right? And then I wonder if you could >> talk a little bit about the support at the state level. And it's pretty interesting that you had him from the state level we heard earlier today about supported the state level. And it was Louisiana for for another big initiative. So you know that the fact that the governor and the Legislature are basically branding this at the state level, not the individual school district level, is a pretty strong statement of the prioritization that they're putting on this >> that has been critical to our success. If we didn't have state level support, significant state level support, there's no way we could be where we are. So the previous governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, he latched on to cyber security education as one of his signature initiatives. In fact, he was the president of the State Governors Association, and in that role he cybersecurity was one of his condition. So so he felt strongly about educating K 12 education college students feeding that cybersecurity pipeline Onda Cyberangels one of one of a handful of different initiatives. So they were veterans scholarships, and there were some community college scholarships and other other initiatives. Some of those are still ongoing so far are not. But but Cyber Range has been very successful. Funded by the state provides a service at no cost to high schools and colleges on Dad's Been >> critically, I can't help. We're at our say earlier this year, and I'm just thinking of all the CEOs that I was sitting with over the course of a couple of days that are probably looking for your phone number right now. Make introduction. But I'm curious. Are are the company's security companies. I mean, Arcee is a huge show. Amazon just had their first ever security conference means a lot of money being invested in this space. Are they behind it? Have you have you looked for in a kind of private company participation to help? Because they desperately need these employees? >> Definitely. So we've just started down that road, Really? I mean, our state funding has kept us strong to this point in our state funding is gonna continue into the foreseeable future. But you're right. There are definitely opportunities to work with industry. Certainly a DBS has been a very strong partner of our since the very beginning. They really I mean, without without the help of some, some of their cloud architects and other technical folks way could not have built what we built in the eight of us. Cloud. We've also been talking to Palo Alto about using some of their virtual appliances in our network environments. So yeah, so we're definitely going down the road of industry partners and that will continue to grow, I'm sure >> So then fast forward today to the keynote and your your announcement that now you taking it beyond just Virginia. So now it's the U. S. Cyber range. Have that come apart? Come about. What does that mean? >> Yes, So we've been We've been sharing the story of the Virginia cyber range for the last couple of years, and I goto national conferences and talk about it. And, um, just to just sort of inform other states, other other school systems what Virginia's doing. How could you? How could you potentially match what we're doing and what The question that I keep getting is I don't want to reinvent the wheel. How can I buy what you have? And that's been sort of a constant drumbeat over the last couple of years. So we decided fairly early on that we might want to try to expand beyond Virginia, and it just sort of the conditions were right about six months ago. So we set a mark on the wall, he said. In Summer of 2019 we're gonna make this available to folks outside of Virginia. And so, so again, the Virginia Cyberangels still exist. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U. S cyber range is still part of Virginia Tech. So within Virginia Tech, but we will have to we will have to essentially recoup our costs so we'll have to spend money on cloud infrastructure and We'll have to spend salary money on folks who support this effort. And so we'll recoup costs from folks that are outside of Virginia using our service. But, um, we think the costs are gonna be very competitive compared to similar efforts. And we're looking forward to some successes here. >> And do you think you're you're kind of breakthrough will be at the high school level, the You know, that underground level, you know, where do you kind of see the opportunities? You've got the whole thing covered with state support in Virginia. How does that get started in California? How's that get started here? Yeah, that's a Washington state. >> That's a great question. So really, when we started this, I thought we were building a thing for higher ed. That's my experience. I've been teaching cyber security and higher ed for several years, and I knew I knew what I would want if I was using it, and I do use it. So I teach classes at Virginia Tech Graduate program. So I I used the Virginia side in my class, and, um, what has happened is that the high schools have latched onto this as I mentioned, and Most of our users are high schools. In Virginia, we have 180. Virginia High School is using the Virgin Cyber. That's almost >> 188 1 >> 180. That's almost half the high schools in the state using the Virginia cyber age. So we think. And if you think about, you know, higher. Ed has been teaching cybersecurity classes that the faculty members who have been teaching them a lot of them have set up their own network infrastructure. They have it set up the way they want it, and it ties into their existing courseware, and you know they're going to use that, At least for now. What we provide is is something that makes it so that a high school or a community college doesn't have to figure out how to fund or figure out how to actually put this network architecture together. They just come to us. They have the flexibility of the flexibility to use, just are very basic plug and play network environments, or they have flexibility to, um, make modifications depending on how sophisticated they themselves are with with, you know, manipulating systems and many playing the network so so Our expectation is that the biggest growth is going to be in the high school market, >> right? That's great, because when you say cyber range God, finally, Donna me use it like a target range. It's like a place to go practice >> where the name comes from, right? >> Absolutely. If I finally like okay, I get it. So because it's not only the curriculum and the course where and everything else but it's actually an environment, it depends on the stage things and do things exactly >> So students could d'oh offensive, offensive and defensive cybersecurity activities. And so early on, when we were teaching students howto hack essentially in colleges, you know, there were people who were concerned about that on the military case we make for that is you can't teach somebody how to defend unless they understand how they're gonna be attacked. The same is true in this case. So all of our all of our course, where has lots of ethics and no other legal and other other discussions embedded throughout. So students understand the implications of what their actions would be if they do it somewhere else. And, um, right, these are all isolated network environments their places where students can get hands on in a place where they can essentially do whatever they want without causing trouble on the school network or on the Internet. And it's very much akin to a rifle range, >> right? Like you said, you can have different scenarios. And I would imagine there's probably gonna be competitions of you think. Fact. You know what's going on in the robotics world for lots of all these things, right? Like white hat, black hat hacker. Well, very, very exciting. David, Congratulations. And it sounds like you're well on your way. Thanks. Great. Alright, >> He's David. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were at Washington State Convention Centre just across the street at a W s. Imagine. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. >> Thanks.

>> from Seattle Washington It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back there, buddy Geoffrey here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle Day Ws Imagine Edie, you event. It's their education event and every education Everything from K through 12. The higher education community College Retraining after service is a really great show. It's a second year. We're happy to be here. We've got somebody has come all the way from Spain to talk about his very special company. It's Ignasi. Nuclear is he is >> the CEO of click dot edu. Yeah, nice. You see? Welcome. >> Thank you are way really pleased to be with you. >> Great. So tell us, kind of what is clicky? Do you What? What is kind of your core value? >> It's ah, platform that makes all the things that the school needs seeing atleast in Spain. So it's a miss system also on elements also the communication with the family that Petra is Ah Wei Tau financial the school and also a lot of things that they are related on >> right? And you've been around for a while. So when did the company started? How was kind of some basic numbers on how many customers do you have? Could you operate in a lot of countries? A lot of schools? >> The as we have schools working with us already in all of Spain, Also in Chile, Colombia, Arneson, UK. On also in a little country in Europe that is called Andorra. So we're really happy because you have more than 1,000,000 off users working with us. >> 1,000,000. Congratulations. And is it mainly do you specialize between, say, K through 12 or higher education? Or we're kind of all over the place? >> Yes, we're focusing K 12 schools. So the one off the important parts are the communication with parents on dhe to follow all the things that the student. That's >> right. So you guys have a very special thing that you're announcing here at the show is really focusing on Alexa for K through 12 which nobody else is doing. That's really something unique that you guys, How did you get in that? What did you see in voice communication and Alexa that you couldn't do in the platform before that? You really saw the opportunity? >> Yes. All the people say is that >> the future or the present Now is the voice on all we will communicate by boys in the future over Internet. You see a lot off young guys doing all the things my boys know, right? Texting, etcetera. So we thought that it could be a nice idea that the communication between parents and also for a students to the school and be on in the other way, could be could be by boys. So we imagine how to do >> it on. We did it. It's really knew. >> When did you start it? When did you start that project? >> This project we began three months ago, >> three months ago. So, >> yeah, it's really, really knew the boy's idea, right? It was in >> a show that I have seen. Ah ah, law. A lot of people were talking about that, but there were, at least in Spain, in the Spanish. Nothing about so with it, we can be the first. So >> we leave. That's >> great. So before we turn the >> cameras on, we're talking about some of the issues that you have in one of the ones is integration to all these systems because, you know, I have kids. I might have multiple kids in a couple different grades. You have kids and a fine looking for access on their homework or their test scores. You know he's got integrate with all those different back ends to keep things private. But you're kind of in a good spot because your system is the one that's on the back end, right? Yeah, so that worked pretty well. And then the other piece, he talked about his two way voice. I don't think a lot of people think in voice communication, yet it's still more of an ask and get a reply asking and get a reply. But you guys are actually pushing notice vacations from the school, out to the families using voice. How's that working out? You know what are some of the use cases? Yeah, >> it's like it's like the parent can ask Toe elixir, for example, What's a home or for tomorrow for one of your son or daughter on DA on The Echo tell you about that. So it's really impressive, because in that moment the system goes to the school system to get that information on our system. Yeah, on Alexa translating voice So it's It's It's funny >> I just think it's funny that I get e mails from all my digital assistants telling me, suggesting things that I should ask them because it's really not native yet as as an interface to work with these machines. But, well, he's mentioned that the young people voices much more natural. So I wonder if there's been some surprises or some things you didn't expect in terms of people comfort level with voice as a way to communicate with me. >> Say, I think it's, ah most natural way also for us that we are not not if but off course. So we communicate better by boys and writing or texting. So, so off course. It's the future because it's another away. So the use off that systems goes up because off that. So I think it's the most the most thing that for for causes more surprising, >> right? And so will you guys supply the Alexa? It's for people's homes. Or is it something they can tap into their existing Alexa Yeah, >> uh, usually, ah, the case for using that is in your home or else on your phone so you can install licks on your phone and you can ask them. I'll see if the UK fun ankle, >> but handle it. But how do I look? How do I hook my existing echo? Yeah, yes, I bought into the school system. >> Yes, because sometimes some universities are They pulled their A coin. I don't know in the university, or but you can use your echo that you are using it for other things. Listen, music me Listen, missing music or whatever >> and you >> can use the >> same. Yeah, you can. You >> only have to, like, download an >> app for >> your phone. There >> is more less is the same us Alexa to >> install, click in the Web or a skill that it's cow. It's called right, and then you >> have it. So what's next? What's on the road? Map on the voice specifically, Where do you see this kind of evolving over the next little while? >> Yes, our our next goal in the parties that they can use the teachers in the school. The boy systems also so for doing what they do every day in ah Maur writing or whatever, we can do it by voice. For example, interview with the parents, a transcript or, for example, to say that somebody hasn't come to the school or toe tell to the Transportacion that something is company. These kind of things is what we are. Imagine it's in our next things that we will do it with voice. >> It'll be Lexa in the classroom, hoping, thinking, Yeah, right. What about privacy? I would imagine knows funny. In the early days of Cloud, security was a was was not good of the show stopper. People were concerned about 10 years later. Now security is a strength of cloud, right? It's probably more secure than most people's data centers or disgruntled employees. I would imagine privacy and security. This is probably pretty top of mind in the school district as well as a lot of personal information. Are they comfortable? Do they kind of get the security of cloud and cloud infrastructure, or is that still sticking point? >> You know that in Europe there are really strict low of our protection off that right, so we are really concerned about that. So we are talking with the school's what kindof systems. They will be comfortable because you want to use it, so we'll have to find >> the clue to do that. But It's really >> important, I think, all over the world, but in the stage or in Europe who are really concerned about that. So we'll see how to find it. But we can create a private skill, right? Yes, because there are birds shown off, Alexa, that is for business. So you can create your provide things on. You don't have to be for that. Somebody's listening. You >> right? All right. So the last last question here at the conference and you come last year? >> No. So what do >> you know? Just your impressions of the conference Has it nice to be with a bunch of like minded, you know, kind of forward thinking educators because because education doesn't always get the best reputation being kind of forward looking. But here you're surrounded. So I just wonder you could share some of your thoughts of the of the event so far. Yeah, >> I think this guy no five ins give you more motivation on you. Increase your you're way t to see that there are a lot of people that is pushing to innovate and do the things different. So really, really interesting to goto some machine learning. Ah, suppose is shown about California. What? They are doing that right? So I'm really interested. >> Good. Get all right. Look Nazi. Thanks for taking a few minutes. And, uh, congratulations on that project. That's really crazy. Thank >> you for your interest in. >> All right, >> Jeff, you're watching the Cube. Where it aws Imagine in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.