>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a Global Education Conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE Education. First year of the show, 900 registrants, 20 countries represented, really all the public sectors show, but this one's just focused on education as its own track. A lot of really interesting innovation going on, and as part of the keynote, we saw a really cool concept video about bringing Alexa into the class. The Echo Dot talking, and so, we're excited to have kind of the guy driving this whole project. He's David Hakanson, the CIO of Saint Louis University. First off, what a great keynote you had this morning. >> Thank you, thank you, and we're really excited to announce this today. So, today we announced that we are putting an Amazon Echo Dot in every single residence hall room. So, over 2,300 devices that will be in every room awaiting students for this fall. The device will be essentially their virtual assistant. They can ask questions specific to the university, through our custom skill, or any other question that's normally through the Alexa platform. >> So, the voice of God is talking above us, but that's okay. So, it was interesting when you were starting your presentation earlier today, I'm like, what are the applications going to be? I mean, what are these kids going to do with this? Like, we've got a Dot at home. We ask it to play music all the time, but you really did your homework on trying to think through what are the different use cases, what types of information are going to help the kids get their information a little bit faster, a little easier? >> That's right. We want this to be valuable for our students, and our students are active inside and outside of the classroom. Our university does over a million hours of community service a year, so we attract a very active student. We don't want them to be spending time searching for information. We want them to get that information immediately. Whether it's something simple, such as when is the library closed? Or, what channel is their favorite show going to be on? We want them to be able to get very fast access to information because right now, they have to search through web pages or calendars to find out what's going on on campus or other key information, and that takes time. >> Right. Well, it's funny because there's a lot of conversation about the educational experience, and really trying to develop an engaging experience for the kids in school, for the students, but the question is always, you know, how do you define engagement, what is engagement, and what are the actual things, the physical activities, that are going to drive this? And you guys, amazing stat. You said you went from concept to delivery in three months, and in that process, really explored a lot of interesting concepts. I wonder if you can add a little bit more color to that development process. >> Absolutely. It started with a six week pilot program, where we tested different virtual assistant technology to see what did the students really like, and they chose the Amazon Echo system. And once we made that decision, we were able to go from that concept to completion in three months, which was fantastic for us because we wanted to make sure we were ready for the fall semester. To do that, we worked very closely with AWS and the Alexa for Business team, as well as the partner, the skill development partner, called Empowered. We were able to use the partner ecosystem to allow us to move very quickly, and through that process engaging our students, engaging our stakeholders to make sure that the device was going to meet their needs, not just be something that looked good on their desk. >> Right. So was voice part of the initial design criteria, or did that come when you were looking at different type of interactive devices? Because clearly, the kids today are super adept on their phone, and they can text with their eyes closed with one finger tied behind their back. Voice is still relatively new. At least, maybe it's not as new as I think, so how did you get to the voice as the main UI for kind of this new, cutting edge information system? >> So, we started with voice saying we want a virtual assistant that's voice based because we see that as the future. So, if you're on your smart phone looking for information, you're still having to go to a website or to different data sources to get that, whereas asking a question is much faster, and getting that answer, it's a much faster transaction. So, we started with that saying how can we use voice technology to help our students be more productive, and then, engaged our students in that conversation, and they were very excited about that. >> Right. So, one of the really cool things about Alexa and the Dot is the programmability, which, obviously, you guys took advantage of. So, a little color on kind of how you chose what to program, but I think even more exciting is what kind of opportunities that opens up as an individual student, as a CS project in the class, and as you said, your university has a lot more going on than just incoming students. You've got graduate degrees, medical things going on, so I wonder if you can shed a little light on kind of how you developed what you have for the launch date, but you know, some of the future things that you see down the road. >> That really goes to the Alexa for Business foundation that we chose, and Alexa for Business was the differentiator for us. It was a key area because through that tool and ecosystem, we could manage the devices, and we could group the devices. So, we could group a learning community of engineers, of students studying engineering, and give them specialized skills or allow them to develop a skill and have that only on their devices, not on everyone else's devices. So, the ability to manage these allowed us to really focus on that educational experience, allow students to start creating skills, and then be able to manage and deploy them at scale. >> That's great. I can't wait to come back a year from now and hear kind of what happened. I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of cool surprises, tough surprises, you know, upsides and downsides 'cause you said they're getting installed this week and the kids are showing up in a couple weeks. >> That's correct, that's correct. (laughing) We're moving very quickly. >> Alright David. Well again, I'm going to give you the last word as you touched on it a little bit, but you know, how working with Amazon and AWS specifically you know, kind of impacted this project and how does that help you, you know deliver your objectives more efficiently and faster? >> Yeah, the only way we could have gone from concept to completion in three months was by working closely with AWS and the partner ecosystem. We could not have done this at any scale or efficient timeframe without them. They were a fantastic partner, helping us all the way from choosing the right partner to develop the skill to helping us on how do we get all these devices to work on our network, to how do we get all these devices working on our network and installed within a couple days, and so, from beginning to end AWS has been instrumental in our success to bring this new innovative technology to our students. >> Okay, well we might have to have a field trip out to Saint Louis and check it out. >> You're welcome to come. >> Alright, he's David, I'm Jeff. We're at AWS in downtown Seattle at AWS IMAGINE. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> On the Amazon Meeting Center. In downtown Seattle. It's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World. A global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS Imagine education conference. It's the first one. Teresa Carlson just kicked off the keynote. About 900 registrants from over 20 countries worldwide. We saw it happen with the public sector before. They went from 50 people to 15 thousand, I think she said in seven years. I'm imagining that Imagine is going to have the same track. Cause education is so, so important. And we're excited our next guest came all the way from the other side of the pond. The other side of the Atlantic. He's Peter O'Rourke, Director of IT for the University of Suffolk. Peter, great to see ya. >> Thanks Jeff for the welcome. Yes it's been fantastic to be here with this exciting crowd. And as Teresa said it would be great to be here in seven years. At a huge event. >> A huge event, it'll probably be in Vegas. They like to have those big ones down in Vegas. So what brings you here? It's a long way, education is clearly super important. Digital transformation and cloud. We see it all over the place. But what's the application that you're looking at, what are you excited about in bringing kind of cloud economics to the University of Suffolk? >> Well Jeff, the key thing in education has got to be about students' experience. And that's the thing we've got to keep driving at all the time. What's exciting about partners like Amazon is the potential that they talk about. It's not what they're doing today. It's what they're talking about and going to do tomorrow and the day after. And as I've just said, this is day one. >> Right. >> This is an exciting journey to engage with. With these partners. >> So how have the student experience kind of expectations morphed over time? As you get kind of digital-native kids coming up into the school now and kind of, you know we've seen it on the business side. The consumerization of IT cause people expect their interactions with their companies, their banks and their retailers to be like it is with their phone and computer. How are you seeing the expectations change from your students on what they want and how they want to interact with all the services that you guys provide them. >> Good question. And again the mobile phone is the key here. People arrive at your organizations, whether they are universities or retail establishments. And they already know how they're going to work with you. And when you can't do that. That's a huge disappointment. So these people are using things in their daily life. To arrange trips, theater tickets, cinema. And when you can't work like that, there's a huge disconnect. >> Right, right. The other big issue that happens I've seen more and more is mobile. And you know, universities. You guys are always limited on space. >> Yeah. >> There's always lots of construction and new buildings and new labs and new academic offices and classrooms. So space is always an issue. How does you know, mobile specifically as you mentioned, enable you to provide a different experience, a better experience, a more varied experience when you've got all these other kind of constraints you're faced with. >> How mobile can help with that. It's about allowing your users to consume their content where and when they want to. It's exactly how they live their daily lives. So you know maybe you can't a lecture today. But why should that really matter? >> Right. >> You should be able to pick this up later. >> Right. And that last piece is the staff. And you know a lot of the teachers weren't necessarily educated in CS. That wasn't kind of why they got into the business. Especially if they are in say, history or philosophy. Or some of maybe the softer sciences. How are you seeing their adoption of technology to be, you know don't be afraid of it. This actually can be a great enabler to help you do your job better. How are you seeing their adoption of some of this technology in some of the softer academic areas? >> Well, again good question. But it's a huge challenge. I think for too long what we've tried to do from a technology perspective. Is to turn absolutely brilliant academic colleagues into technologists. And that's not why they came into education. >> Right. >> What's exciting about what's happening now is that we're able to enable them to use much, much simpler technology tools or interfaces that are actually doing amazing things in the background. And they don't need to understand how it does it. And that's the way it should be. >> Right. So last question. What are you expecting to get out of this conference for a day and a half here in Seattle? Ton of educators, ton of people from your indsutry. First ever event of this type for AWS. What are you hoping to take away? >> I'm hoping to take away a ton of exciting ideas. That are almost impossible to install. But there's going to be one or two gems in there that we can work with people like Amazon going forward. And we're going to come back in a year's time. And we'll want to talk about what we've done. >> Right. >> That's the exciting thing. >> That is the key right, what have you done? >> Yes. >> And now with cloud you can do, they've talked about a project in the keynote that was three months from ideation to actually starting to ship stuff. So we can do it. >> That's what we've got to do. >> Right alright Peter, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your day. And good luck with the rest of the conference. >> Thanks Jeff, thanks for talking to me. >> Alright, Peter, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine Education in Seattle, Washington. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine: A Better World, A Global Education Conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington, at the AWS, I think it's called the Meeting Space. There's a lot of AWS buildings around here. It's AWS Imagine: Education, first year of the conference, about 900 registered folks, 22 countries represented. Really excited, this thing is going to grow. We've seen it before with AWS. We saw it with Summit: Reinvent. AWS Public Sector. We're excited to be here for the very first time and our next guest is Dr. Scott Ralls. He is the President of Northern Virginia Community College. Scott, great to see you. >> Thank you, it's good to be here Jeff, appreciate it. >> A lot of mentions of NOVA, and that's you guys. >> That's us, yeah. >> That's not the PBS programming. You guys are kind of out front on some of these initiatives, with 3sa and AWS Public Sector. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the Veterans' Apprenticeship Program, which has been in place for a little while. >> Just a little bit about NOVA, we're a community college just right outside of the Virginia suburbs of D.C. We're the, I'd say, the biggest college that nobody's heard of outside of our region. We have about 100,000 students. >> 100,000? >> 100,000. >> And how many campuses? >> Six campuses. >> For us, our niche is information technology. It's where the internet runs through our region, and so that cloud computing, we have the highest concentration of cloud computing cyber degrees. That's why the AWS partnership is so key for us, because it's about the opportunity for our students. And for AWS, it's about filling those jobs. Also, we have a lot of employers in our region that hire based on AWS credentials. AWS is the backbone for them. That's why for us as a community college, being jobs-focused, filling that gap, that's why it's key for us. >> That's Tyson's corner, right? That's where AOL started-- >> That's right, that's right, that's right. >> and there's a whole history. >> You've got all the cyber right around there. One writer has said that we're the bullseye of the internet. It's a unique place, but it's a unique opportunity for our students. >> Right, and the smart money's on the AWS second headquarter being in that neighborhood, but we don't-- >> Knock on wood. >> Knock on wood. We would love to see that. >> I'm just curious then if you've been educating people to get jobs in this IT sector, how you've seen that evolve over time? Because it used to be there were a lot of sys admin jobs or a lot of jobs that now automation and cloud is taking away. On the other hand, there's a lot of new jobs that the technology's enabling, like happens every time. How are you seeing the landscape change? >> I really think that's the way it has been. 30 years ago, when I was breaking into this workforce and world, that same conversation was going on. Automation was going to take all the jobs. There's been all kinds of new opportunities that emerge and that's the same thing we see, and certainly in Northern Virginia we see that so, for us, as a community college, we're doing it two ways. You asked about the apprenticeship program, that was our first entree with AWS so we are one of their primary training providers, education providers for apprenticeship. Those are the veterans and others that are hired by AWS, they come to our college for the education component, the certifications, the IT skills. The second part for us is the new cloud degree which we introduced in February, which is a two-year, first cloud degree in the country that will help other students who are not those coming through apprenticeship to also break into this important area. >> This is an associate's degree like all the other degrees you guys offer >> That's right. as a two-year program. I'd be just curious, what are some of the curricula? What are some of the core classes that they take that are part of that degree? >> One of the things that we've been doing, we use a lot of data analytics on the workforce side that others do not so part of it's our engagement, talking with the AWS leaders about what's needed. Part of it's also watching what AW, what credentials, what skills AWS is hiring for and then others who use the AWS platform, so you will see certain types of credentials that are built in, security plus, Linux plus, AWS Solutions Architect built in. Also even programming language, it's like Python because of its importance in that regard. We kind of use that as the, using that intelligence, if you will, to be able to build out what the degree should look like. Because we're paying attention to how AWS hires and how the IT users of AWS, how they're hiring and what the skills are that they're looking for. >> How hard is it to get that through at the school, to actually have an associate degree based on cloud? Were they receptive of the idea, did everybody see it coming, was it a hard push? >> We did it within one year, we did it within one year. >> Did it in one year? >> Within one year. >> Everything in the cloud happens fast. >> We moved fast on this. It is built off of our IT degree, so it's a specialization of that degree, so it was really, I think what made it move faster for us was two things. One is AWS has a great program called AWS Educate, which essentially provides a lot of the curriculum content. It's the kind of things if you were starting a degree, you would have to go out and create on your own. Having that rich content. Other partners, like Columbus State, who is also, Santa Monica, others that are working on cloud degrees and we can partner with each other. Then having the apprenticeship as sort of a North Star to tack on with respect to how companies are hiring and what skills are needed. That allowed us to move fast. >> Beyond Educate and the actual materials and curriculum materials, what does partnering with AWS do for you guys? What has that enabled you to do as part of this program that you couldn't do or it'd be a whole lot harder? >> Not everybody looks at community colleges. Being partnered with AWS, who they are, is key for us, it's important for us. I think it's also they recognize how important it is for them. Not everybody recognizes that. One thing that's unique for us as a community college, we have a lot of students who come to us who already have four-year degrees to get that skills part. It's almost like a graduate school. The apprentices are that way. Most of the apprentices already have four-year degrees in computer science, and we're providing that finishing piece. I think AWS sees in us how to broaden the, to scale, to fill that talent gap. I really think the only way you're going to diversify the talent gap and scale the talent gap is through institutions like ours. >> It's really an interesting statement on the role of community colleges in this whole refactoring of education. One, as you said, a lot of people have four-year degrees, so this concept of ongoing education, continue to get new skills as the opportunities dictate. Have that very specific knowledge and these certifications that are not Intro Philosophy or English Lit 205. These are very specific things that people can apply to their job today. >> The curriculum changes so fast, so we have to be willing to change, our instructors have to be willing to get that new thing. The history curriculum doesn't change that quickly, but the IT curriculum and particularly as it relates to cloud and cyber and other areas. If we're not doing that, then we're out of the ballgame, and when we're out of the ballgame that means our students are out of the ballgame, and that's what it's all about. >> When you come to an event like this, what are you hoping to get out of an event like this? Flew across the country, unfortunately through all the terrible smoke and stuff we have on the west coast. What are some of the things you hope to gain here with some of the other educators? >> One thing that always happens at AWS events is the connections that you make. Part of it is you do hear people, like we heard this morning, that you wouldn't have the opportunity to hear before, on machine learning and other areas. A lot of it's about the connections, so actually tomorrow morning a lot of the community colleges and others who are creating cloud programs will be working together tomorrow. AWS does a great job of maximizing our time, so we're part of the program, but we're also breaking off to really partner and that allows us all to move quicker. When we can build off of each other and then have the resources like AWS makes available to us. >> Sounds like you're moving pretty quick-- >> We're trying, we're trying. >> To get all that done and to get it done in a year. >> We have to keep up with where they're going. >> It's not what academic institutions are generally known for, speed and change. >> We're not your average academic institution. >> There ya go, alright. He's Dr. Scott Ralls,-- >> Thank you, 'preciate it. thanks for taking a few minutes with ya. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS public sector, Imagine, in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching, catch ya next time. (electronic tones)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE! Covering IMAGINE: A Better World, a global education conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington at the AWS IMAGINE education event. First time ever as part of the public sector series. Theresa Carlson kicked it off earlier today. 900 registered people watched this thing grow, like every other Amazon event that we've ever covered. And really, this is all about education. We're excited to be here. Our next guest has been working on this for awhile, He's Lou Pugliese, he's the Senior Innovation Fellow and Managing Director of Technology Innovation at Action Lab, Arizona State. Welcome. >> Thanks for letting me interview here. >> Absolutely. So just before we get started, kind of general impressions of this event? >> You know, it's amazing. I was just saying just a few minutes ago that you go to a lot of conferences, and you know, you go to so many conferences that the goal is to sort of try to meet 80% of the time new people. And you don't ever do that. Here you do, you know. And so there's a lot of people here that I've known for years, that I haven't seen. And there are a lot of new faces here too, so it's great. >> Right. It's really interesting, we cover a lot of conferences and kind of the lifecycle as they grow. But when they're small like this and just getting started you know, it's so intimate. There's so much hall conversations going on, there's so much just genuine sharing of best practices 'cause everybody's still trying to figure it out. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what you're doing here now. >> Absolutely. So, one of the things you're involved in, that caught my eye doing the research for this, is working on research based approach to really understand what works for the student learning experience. So there's all kinds of conversations we can have about higher education. Does it work, does it not work, is it broken? There's a lot of interesting things. Here, you know, it's been really interesting to focus on community colleges specifically and this kind of direct path between skills and getting a job. And it almost feels like the old apprenticeship model, kind of back in the day. You're at a big four year institution and really exploring. What is changing in the education interaction between kids and teachers, kids and curriculum, and how that stuff gets communicated and what's effective? 'Cause it's a new world, it's not the old world. >> No, it is. And you know, at ASU, what's interesting is is that there's a significant digital presence. You know, 35 thousand students very historically, back to 2009. So with that comes a significant amount of footsteps, digital footsteps, that students have taken. And so now you have the ability to be able to analyze that at a much higher level. And so now what we can do, and the part of what we're doing at the Action Lab is: looking specifically at the efficacy of these digital programs, finding out what course design elements do work, and what needs to be changed. And that gives us the ability to sort of feed that information back into the instructional design process, and continue to iterate on that improvement. The unique thing about the lab is that, it's a persistent lab. Most universities are sort of stop and start research initiatives, and they learn a lot and they publish a lot of papers. We've been around for three years, and we'll be around for 10 more, and it's a persistent examination of what we're doing at a digital environment, and we're taking it one step further, we're trying to understand how students behave in a digital environment. We know a lot about how students behave in a classroom or traditional learning setting, but we don't know how they how they learn in a digital environment. >> Right. I love, you said digital footprints, not digital exhaust, (both laugh) and it kind of reminds me of kind of these older you know, long term longitudinal studies, because it's still pretty early days in trying to figure out how these educational tools and mobile and stuff are impacting the way these kids learn. But we know they spend so much time on them, that is their interface to the world. It's almost like your remote control to life is actually this little thing that you carry around in your hand. So I'm curious, what are some of the things you've discovered that are working? What are some of the things that maybe that were kind of surprising that didn't work? What's some of the early findings that's coming out of that research? >> Sure, so in the early studies, we looked specifically at how demographic populations succeed or don't succeed in an environment. And what we found out is: there are certain demographics of students that flourish in an online environment, and consistently perform well. There are some that don't. The second thing we learned specifically is: what types of design features within a course, like the interaction within students, or exposing learning objectives, or getting students to really understand what rubrics of measurement, how content is being used and paced throughout our curriculum. A lot of really detailed information that faculty need to reorient and redesign their instruction, and so we can see a direct predictive value of improvement based on those changes. >> Right. So are you getting stuff out now that's impacting curriculum development? Or are you still kind of pulling the data together and there has not been enough time to really implement it? >> We are doing that, absolutely. One of the elements that we're introducing into the research now is: this notion of, it sounds like a fancy term, non cognitive or social and emotional learning; things that are a predispositions of learning about a student in their, you know, sort of soft skills world. Grit, determination, goal orientation, a variety of different soft skills, and their disposition, and how that impacts how they learn, and how they succeed in a classroom. >> And how important is that? I would imagine it's got to be super important. >> It's a field that is just still early in its science, but we're learning a lot. Not necessarily just about how students will succeed in a course environment, but those types of social/emotional learning skills that are required for them to be successful in a workplace environment. >> Right, right. And then the other factors that were discussed earlier in the key note are some of the, you know, what's happening at home? You know, there's all these other factors that are in a student's life that aren't directly tied to their education, but it can have a significant impact on their ability to learn, either temporarily, or-- >> They're all predispositions, yeah absolutely, yeah. >> Yeah, or full time. That's great. So, as you look forward now, and I think it came up too in the keynote, there's no shortage of data (chuckles) in this education environment. It's really been the time to grab it, analyze it, and put it to work. So, how are, you know, your engagement with Amazon kind of helping you to move your objectives forward? >> Well the Amazon engagement allows us to sort of off load all of the technological constraints, and gives us ultimate possibilities of not necessarily focusing on the tough stuff; the hardware, the integration, the specific tool sets that are required to extract data and analyze data, and focusing specifically on the research. So ultimately, it allows us to redirect our focus in what's really important in our world, because it's not necessarily about the technology, it's how the technology can point and draw a direct line between what the data says and how we create an intervention with students. >> Right. So I'm just curious to get your perspective. You said before we turned on the cameras, you've been involved in this field for a long time, trying to figure out how people can learn, how they can learn better, more effectively. Are there some big, kind of macro themes, that maybe people don't think about enough, that you've seen repeated time and time again, that people should be thinking about when they think about effective education and how to get kids to actually learn what we're trying to teach them? >> Sure, so a couple things. I mean, what we're focused on is not necessarily what we call big data, what we typically know big data as, it's really more about small data, which shows us causality. So for instance, one of the things that we are learning is that peer-to-peer engagement is really, really important in many courses in engaging in asynchronous and synchronous organizations within the course to learn from peers. Also avenues specifically to faculty, so faculty can actually look at the map of the entire classroom and understand who's achieving and focus just only on those people. >> Interesting. Well, good stuff, and, I'm sure, as you get more and more of the digital footprints, the insights will only increase by leaps and bounds. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, Lou, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your time >> Thank you. and we'll look forward to catching up next year and getting some new information. >> Thanks. >> He's Lou, I'm Jeff, thanks for watchin', we're in Seattle, signing off from AWS IMAGINE educate, See ya next time. (upbeat techno music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center, in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine a Better World, a global education conference, sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine Education. About 900 people from 20 countries really coming together for the first ever AWS summit from public sector group, really focused just on education. We've got a little bit of a twist here, our next guest really coming from more of the artsy side of the house, which is always great to hear from. We've got Linda Drew, she's the Vice Chancellor, and Andy Cook, the Chief Operations Officer, both from Ravensbourne University in London. Welcome. >> We're really pleased >> Thank you. to be here, really excited. >> For the people that aren't familiar with Ravensbourne, give us a little overview of the school. >> We're in the center of London in Greenwich, which is right by the river. We have about two-and-a-half-thousand students and about 250 faculty. We specialize in design, media, and technology, and the interaction, and all that kind of stuff. >> Pretty fun space to be right now. >> Absolutely gorgeous place to be. >> There's so much talk about IT and the tech and IT in operations, but there's so much neat stuff happening really more on the creative side and in the arts. Leveraging technology in all different, new ways. >> Absolutely, it's kind of hand and glove, really. All the innovation that's happening is happening with the way that tech is disrupting what's happening in the creative workspace, and vice versa really. The two things are effecting each other. >> The channels of distribution now, being so open, there's no greater time to be an artist, a creator, because your path to publishing, your path to your audience is really, really short and direct, assuming you can get their attention. >> Absolutely, I think we recognize there's a huge opportunity there for us in terms of developing a competitive advantage in the sector using new, emerging technologies to forge a new path for the institution and help educate and bridge the skills gap for industry. >> What are the things you guys do, one of the classes is broadcast production, and we were talking to all of our guys behind the cameras that nobody can see, and that again is an evolving space and you guys, it's kind of an interesting play, on one hand you're talking about Shakespearian plays, on the other hand you're looking at the newest, latest, greatest way to get that out to consumers, to viewers, to schools, while training the people in the middle with the latest and greatest tools. You guys have started a AWS Elemental Experiment. I wonder if you can give us a little bit of color on that project. >> I can start, and I'll tell you about the impact that it has, and Andy might be able to follow up on some of the technical stuff. We've had a project going with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, and it's one of their education programs where what we do is a three-way relationship between them, their plays being shot in Stratford-upon-Avon or in London, and one aspect of what happens is that what we do is host the live program that is shot in our TV production studio and jointly the recorded program and the live action is streamed to schools, several hundred schools at a time. Some of our recent shows have been reaching upwards of 85,000 school students at a time. >> 85,000? >> Absolutely. >> That is great reach. We'd been using the more traditional technology before and that was having some issues with school teachers and others that were saying they weren't getting a great service out of the live stream, and our students were a bit frustrated with what they were learning about the streaming technologies. Since having moved to AWS Elemental, that's really increased the satisfaction both of what our students are learning but also in what they're delivering in terms of the live streamed program and because they're streaming more than one thing, because we know that they're also streaming not just the content but also the British sign language. They're also streaming signed content as well. >> Great, great. Andy, you're on the hook for actually getting these systems up and working, right? >> (laughs) Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think Linda said it all, I think the previous stack of technology that we were using in this area were not reliable, we were getting a lot of jump outs with the streams, lots of complaints from our schools. This shift to Elemental has been transformational. Lots of really complimentary feedback from the schools that are taking part in this exercise. It's been really good. >> That's good, the story over and over with cloud basically anything is that the amount of scale and resources and expertise and hardware and software that Amazon can bring to bear on your behalf compared to what you can do on you own, it's just not the same and you're a relatively small school. It's that same scale delta whether it's a medium-size company, a big company, or multi-national. These guys have that massive scale across so many customers, and you get that delivered to your doorstep. >> As you well know, there's a massive shift taking place in the broadcast industry away from the, towards IP-driven technologies, so we see this as a real opportunity to develop our curriculum, add cloud technologies in to our existing courses and go on that journey away from the more traditional technologies to a cloud-based approach. >> I'm just curious if you've adopted cloud stuff in more your standard IT practices, or where are you on that journey? Or was the client satisfaction issue on these broadcasts what accelerated that adoption faster than your normal stuff? >> I think it's been quite closely related, in some ways. It's a bit kind of chicken and egg. We were already looking at ways of enhancing our infrastructure and this kind of stuff came along at the same time, so we just say how quickly can we get to move some of this stuff for our standard operational focus. >> I think most universities are in some sort of hybrid state running on premise services with some, putting their feet gently into the water of cloud technologies, but I think we're looking at really accelerating that journey towards AWS now for our infrastructure. >> I'm curious, were you here for the keynote this morning? >> Yeah, definitely. >> Did you see the Alexa movie with the kids in the dorm room? >> Yeah. >> Really exciting. Very exciting. >> I think one of the slides really sums up our journey and thoughts around working with Amazon. It's the IT transformation piece, then there's a adoption of machine learning in terms of improving the student experience, and then there's adopting cloud courses into our curriculum, so those three areas are really where we're looking to build a relationship with Amazon. >> It's interesting to see what defines this new education experience, because the kids have different expectations, they've all grown up with apps and mobile. To your point on the attention, if something's not working, they're used to flipping to another channel, switching to another input, so if it doesn't work, you only have their attention for a short period of time. I think it is really interesting to rethink what are the actual activities that define this new engagement and this new student experience while they're in your institution, and I thought that was a really pretty slick demo. >> That was a great example, really good demo. Some of the really exciting things that have come out of us adopting this technology thus far includes some students coming to us with ideas of setting up our very own television channel that we can broadcast on campus using this technology and a way of streaming it to students' phones and tablets so that they've got content about the university and it's activities on a regular basis. >> The ROI calculation for you to execute that when it's cloud-based is very, very different, right? >> Absolutely, yes >> It's pretty simple. (all laughing) Just buy a new rack of servers and the whole to-do. I'll give you the last word, what are you hoping to get out of these couple days here, what have you seen so far, any hallway conversations that are really getting your attention? >> Hopefully, not just a deeper relationship with AWS, but the traction to help us work towards innovating on creativity and technology into the future. >> Great. >> Brilliant. >> Andy goes I'm going to go with the Chancellor, smart man. (all laughing) >> Absolutely. >> Linda and Andy, thanks again for taking a few minutes-- >> Thank you very much. >> Absolute pleasure. and hope you enjoy the rest of your time here. >> Thank you. >> (mumbles) thank you. >> She's Linda, he's Andy, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine Education in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching. (electronic tones)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering: Imagine A Better World, A Global Education Conference. Sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS IMAGINE education event, first time ever, 900 people registered, over 20 countries represented, Teresa gave the keynote, a lot of exciting stuff. And one of the big announcements is some of the work that's happening down in Los Angeles with all the community colleges there. We're excited to have, right off the keynote stage, he's Bill Allen, the CEO of the LA Economic Development Corporation, who's been instrumental in getting this thing off the ground. Bill, good to see you. >> Jeff, it's great to be with you today. This is an exciting moment for us, rolling out this very successful pilot program to all 19 colleges that are part of the LA Regional Consortium. >> So let's jump in, it's called the CA Cloud Workforce Project. >> Yeah, the California Cloud Workforce Project. We have obviously millions of businesses in California, in our own region 250,000 business with employees that are looking to convert to the cloud, take advantage of the exciting tools and resources available to them in the cloud, but they need the skilled workers in these firms to help migrate this transition and that's what our community colleges are stepping up to provide with the help of Amazon Web Services and AWS Educate. >> So it's really interesting cause you know it's a special role that community colleges play within the whole education system, and we could have a whole long debate over adult beverages on a Friday about the state of the education system but specifically here, there is a huge gap and people think technology's taking jobs away. They're taking some jobs away, but they're opening up a ton of new jobs and go no further than looking at the jobs open recs, there's lots and lots and lots of jobs to fill. So how did it come to be to tie that back directly to real skills, that you can actually have real kids take real jobs? >> Well we see these transitions happening all across the industry sectors in Los Angeles and we have a broad array: aerospace, entertainment, digital media, life sciences, transportation logistics. >> It's the little technology, right. >> Advanced transportation. they're all undergoing significant changes and they're all becoming more technology enabled, more technology dependent. And the opportunity exists to train workers for these technology enabled jobs that provide good wages and good benefits, and help our businesses compete globally and take advantage, fully leverage all these advances and innovations. We formed a center for a competitive workforce with all of our 19 colleges, using their labeled market researcher economists and our own economists in the institute for applied economics at the LAEDC, to study the evolving demand for labor and skills in the various occupations in these industry sectors and compare that against the supply side of our labor market. >> Right, right. >> To enhance our talent development pipeline, and its led to new programs such as this. This was one of the clear areas of opportunity was cloud computing skills. The first program we launched at Santa Monica College, had two sections they rapidly sold out, we had to expand it to seven sections. More than 300 students participated in the first year of courses. 230 are signed up for this Fall 2018. And it's an extraordinarily successful program, but now the other 18 community college presidents have all stepped up and said we're going to roll this out on our campuses beginning this August at East Los Angeles college and historic East LA, part of our community which, speaks to the diversity opportunities. >> Right. >> We have a very diverse population in Los Angeles and many of our communities have been underrepresented historically in the technology fields. They are really interested in accessing the skills and opportunities, and they are really taking up these courses with enthusiasm from our local high schools to our community colleges. And I think it's going to help us in Los Angeles really diversity our technology workforce, and that helps our companies expand globally. >> Right, so I'm just curious, what are some of the skills when you did the research that popped up in terms of specific types of jobs? Because we've all see the pictures of data centers, they are usually pretty clean, there's not a lot of people walking around. But there are people that really need to make it go. So what were some of those kind of job titles and job skills that leapt out that have such demand, and field demand. >> There's so much need for data scientist, there's so much need for machine learning capabilities, there's so much need for basic cloud computing, cyber security, really all of these advanced technologies that are data dependent, data analytic, data science, really are emerging as important components of each and every industry sector that I mentioned earlier that exists in our community and throughout the world. And so our job is to try and share that knowledge with our community colleges, our state universities, our four year public and private institutions, and even our k-12 institutions so they can begin to adjust their curriculum to ensure that they're creating pathways of learning at the earliest ages, and then specific coursework in these emerging opportunities throughout the career ladder, throughout the career development pipeline in the LA area. >> So I want to touch base on the k-12 because I think an interesting component of this program is each community college is paired up with at least one, I don't know if there's more than one high school in their area. And it's always been kind of interesting to me that it's been so hard to get kind of CS baked into kind of the standard high school curriculum. You've got kind of the standard math track with trig and Calc, and Algebra I and Algebra II, you've got kind of the standard science track with Physics, and Bio, and Chem. But it's been really hard to wedge CS into that. So are you finding with programs like this, kind of the adoption or the embracing of the CS curriculum at these lower, lower levels is finally getting some steam? >> We are, interestingly our students have often been ahead of our institutions in understanding the demand and the opportunity, and they've been clamoring for these kinds of opportunities. And our industries are becoming more aware of the roll that they can play in helping our schools develop the curriculum, purchase, acquire, maintain the equipment associated with this. Whether it's hardware, or software. And these partnerships that are emerging originally around some theme based academies in our schools, both charter schools and traditional public schools have been helping the broader school districts engage more deeply in the development of curriculum to prepare a more technologically literate workforce for the future. >> Right, now what if you could speak a little to the public private partnership. You're with the economic development corporation, you mentioned LA chamber of commerce's involved and now you've got a big company like AWS, there's a lot of resources to bring to bare and also a lot of open job recs. How does that work, and how have they helped you partner with Amazon AWS kind of move your initiative forward? >> So Amazon and the AWS platform have been terrific partners and specifically the AWS education initiative, have been terrific partners and are really shining the way, lighting the path for other major employers in our region. The students who graduate with this program will not only be valuable to Amazon itself but so many of its customers who are migrating to the cloud platform. But we have companies like Northrop Grumman who are partnering with community colleges to develop talent for their joint strike fighter program in the North end of our county, and hiring people for well paying jobs. Amazon has premier partners in their AWS educate partner program like Anaca who are providing internships for the graduates of this program. So the public and private sector are working closely together, that's why the LAEDC and the LA chamber were asked to get involved in this so we can bring employers to the table, who are really forward looking in their approaches to developing their future talent pipeline. And really desirous of developing the more diverse talent base that is in Los Angeles to fill the needs as so many of the workers in these industries are aging out of the workforce. We need a significant number of newly skilled young people in our communities to take on the future of each of these industries. >> Right, so we're both big fans of Teresa Carlson she kicked things off today. If we come back a year from today, which I assume we will, what are we going to be talking about? How do you see kind of the next year? What are your kind of short term goals and more medium term goals? I won't even ask you about long term goals. >> As I mentioned we had a few hundred students sign up for this so much so that we had to expand the sections from two to seven, I think you're going to see thousands of students taking advantage of this across our region. We have 300,000 students in our community colleges in this LA regional consortium. >> 300 thousand? >> 300 thousand students. >> Make a big impact. >> And I think a significant number of them are going to want to avail themselves of these types of opportunities. We're projecting through our center for competitive workforce, thousands of job openings in this area and so we have a ways to go of scaling this up to the thousands of students who should be taking these courses, and preparing themselves for the well paying jobs in these careers in Los Angeles and the broader Southern California mega region for which our community colleges train such a healthy percentage of our workforce. >> Alright Bill, well sounds like you're off and running, and wish you nothing but the best. >> Jeff, thanks so much, great talking to you. >> Alright, he's Bill, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE! We're at AWS Imagine education in Seattle. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)