(upbeat electronic music) >> Announcer: From the CUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey welcome back already, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studios today having a Cube conversation. You know nobody can really travel, conference seasons are all kind of on hold, or going to digital, so there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. But thankfully we've got the capability to invite some of our community in. We're really interested in hearing from some of the leaders that we have in the community about what's going on in their world and you know, what they're telling their people. And what can we learn. So we're excited to have a good friend of mine who went to business school together, God it seems like it was over 20 years ago. He's Ben Nelson, the chairman and CEO of the Minerva Project. Ben great to see you and welcome. >> Thanks so much, great to be here. >> Yeah. So, you have always been kind of a trailblazer, I mean way back in the day I think that you've only had like two jobs in all this time, you know. (laughing) You know kind of changing the world of digital photography. >> Yeah three or four, three or four. >> Three or four. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> And after a really long run, you made this move to start something new in education. >> Yeah. >> Education's a big hairy monster. There's a lot of angles. And you started the Minerva Project, and I can't believe I looked before we got on today that that was nine years ago. So tell us about the Minerva Project, how you got started, kind of what's the mission, and then we'll get into it. >> Yeah so Minerva exists and it sounds somewhat lofty for an organization, but we do exist to serve this mission which is to nurture critical wisdom for the sake of the world. We think a wiser world is a better world. We think that really wisdom is the core goal of education and we decided that higher education is the area that is both most in need of transformation and also one that we're most capable of influencing. And so we set about actually creating our own university demonstrating an example of what a university can do. And then, helping tool other institutions to follow in those footsteps. >> Yeah it's a really interesting take. There's often times we're told if a time traveler came here from 1776, right, and walked around and would look at the way we drive, look at the way we communicate, look at the way we transact business. All these things would be so new and novel inventive. If you walked them over to Stanford or Harvard he'd feel right at home, you know. >> Yeah. >> So the education is still kind of locked in to this way that it's always been. So for you to kind of take a new approach, I mean I guess it did take actually starting your own school to be able to execute and leverage some of these new methods and tools, versus trying to move what is a pretty, you know, kind of hard to move institutional base. >> Yeah absolutely. And it's also you know, because we have to remember that universities as an institution started before the printing press. So if you go and talk to pretty much any university president, and ask him or her what is the mission of a university, generically, forget you know your university or what have you. They'll say, "Well generically universities exist "to create and disseminate knowledge." That's why they've been founded 1000 years ago and that's why they exist today. And you know, creation of knowledge I think there's a good argument to be made that the research mission of a university is important for the advancement of society and that it needs to be supported. Certainly directly in that regard. So much of you know the innovation that we benefit from today came from university labs and research. That's an important factor. But the dissemination of knowledge is a bit of an odd thing. I guess before the printing press, sure, yeah, I mean kind of hard to disseminate knowledge except for if you gather a whole bunch of people in a room and talk at them. Maybe they scribble notes very quickly. Well that's a decent way of disseminating knowledge because they can you know, one mouth and many pieces of paper and then they can read it later or study it. I guess that makes sense it's somewhat efficient. But after the printing press and certainly after the internet, the concept of a university needing to disseminate knowledge as it's core mission seems kind of crazy. It can't be that that's what universities are for. But effectively they're still structured in that way. And I don't think any university president when actually challenged in that way would argue the point. They would say, "Oh yes of course, "well what we really need to do is teach people "how to use knowledge or evaluate knowledge "or make sure that we communicate effectively "or understand how that knowledge can interact "with other pieces of knowledge and you know, "create new ways of thinking, et cetera." But that isn't the dissemination of knowledge. And that isn't the way that universities are actually structured. >> But it's funny that you say that. Even before you get to whether they should be still trying to disseminate knowledge, they're not even using the new tools now that they had the printing press that come along. (laughing) To disseminate knowledge. You know it's really interesting as we're going through this time right now with the coronavirus and a lot of things that were kind of traditional are moving in to digital and this new tool called Zoom which never fails to amaze me how many people are having their first Zoom call ever, right. >> Right, right. >> Ever, right I mean how long ago was Skype, how long ago was WebX. These tools have been around for a really interesting time, a long time. But now, you know, kind of a critical mass of technology that anybody can flip their laptop up, or their phone and go. You know you guys just in terms of a pure kind of tools play you know took advantage of the things that are available here in 2020 and 2019. So I wonder if you can share with the folks that don't have experience kind of using remote learning and remote access, you know what are some of the lessons you learned what are some of the best practice. What should people kind of think about what's capable and the things you can do with digital tools that you can't do when you're trying to get everybody in a classroom together at the same time. >> Right, so I think first and foremost, there's kind of the nuts and bolts. The basics. Right. So one of the things that you know, education environments have always been able to get away with is when you've got everyone in a room and you know, you're kind of cutting them off from the rest of life, you sometimes don't realize that you're talking into thin air, right. That maybe speaking students are not listening, they're not absorbing what you're saying. But you know they have to show up, at least in K 12, and higher ed they don't bother showing up and so the 15 people who do wind up showing up from the 100 person lecture I guess you do you say, "Oh at least they're listening." But the reality is that when you're online, you're competing with everything. You're competing with the next tab, you're competing with just not showing up. It's so much easier to just, you know, open up some game or something, some YouTube video. And so you've got to make this engaging. And making it engaging isn't about being entertaining. And that's actually one of the major problems of assessing who is a good professor and who isn't. You know people look at student reviews, right. They say, "Oh, you know such and such "was such a great professor." But when you actually track student reviews of professors to learning outcomes, there's a slight negative correlation. Right which means that the better the students believe the professor is actually that is an indicator that they've learned a little bit less. >> Right. >> That's really bizarre, intuitively. But when you actually think about it deeply, you realize that entertaining students isn't the job of a professor. It's actually teaching them. It's actually getting them to think through the material. And learning is hard, it's not easy. So you have to bring some of those techniques of engagement into online. And you can do that but it requires a lot of interactivity. So that's aspect number one. But really the much bigger idea isn't that you just do what you do offline and then put it online, right. Technology isn't at it's best when it mimics what you do without it, right. Technology didn't build an exact replica of the horse. >> Right, right. >> And said you know, ride that. Right. It doesn't make any sense, right. Instead, what technology should do is things you cannot do offline. One of the things that worked 300, 400 years ago is that you could study a subject matter in full. One professor, one teacher could teach you pretty much everything that people needed to know in a given field. In fact, the fields themselves were collapsed, right. Science, mathematics, you know, ethics were all put under this idea called philosophy. Philosophy was everything. Right. And so there's really we didn't have much to learn. But today, because we have so much information and so many tools to be able to process through that information, what happens is that education gets atomized. And you know you go through a college education you're you know, being taught by 25, 30 some different professors. But one professor really has no idea what you've learned previously. Even when they're in a 101, 102 sequence. How many times have we been in kind of the 102 class where in the first month all the professor did was repeat what happened in the 101 class because they didn't feel comfortable that you actually learned it. Or if the professor before them taught it the way they wanted it taught. >> Right, right. >> And that's because education is done offline with no data. If you actually have education in a data rich environment you can actually design cross cutting curriculum. You can shift the professor's role from disseminating knowledge to actually having students or mentoring students and guiding them in how to apply that knowledge. And so, once you have institutional views of curricula, you can use technology to deliver an institution wide education. Not by teaching you a way of thinking or a set of content, but giving you a set of tools that broadly any professor can agree on, and then apply them to whatever context professors want to present. And that creates a much more holistic education, and it's one that only can be done using technology. >> Ben that was a mouthful. You got into all kinds of good stuff there. (laughing) So let's break some of it down. That was fascinating. I mean I think you know the asynchronous versus synchronous opportunity if you will, to as you said kind of atomize education to the creation of content right the distribution of content and more importantly the consumption of content. Because why should I have to change my day if the person I want to hear is only available next Tuesday at noon pacific, right. It makes no sense anymore. And the long tail opportunities for this content that lives out there forever is pretty interesting. But it's a very interesting you know, kind of point of view if you assume that all the knowledge is already out there and now your job as an educator is to help train people to critically think about what's out there. How do I incorporate that, what are the things I should be thinking about when I'm integrating that into my decision. It's a very different way. And as you said, everything is an alt tab away. Literally the whole world is an alt tab away from that webinar. (laughing) Very good stuff. >> Exactly right. >> And the other piece I want to get your take on is really kind of lifetime learning. And I didn't know that you guys were you know kind of applying some of your principles oh my goodness where you actually measure effectiveness of teaching. And measure how long people hang out in the class. And measure whether it's good or not. But you're applying this really now in helping companies do digital transformation. And I think, you know, coming at that approach from a shift in thinking is really a different approach. I was just looking at an Andy Jassy keynote from a couple years ago yesterday, and he talked about the A number one thing in digital transformation is a buy in at senior leadership and a top down priority. So you know, what do you see in some of your engagements, how are you applying some of this principles to help people think about change differently? >> Yeah you know I think recessions are a very telling time for corporate learning. Right. And if you notice, what is the first budget that gets cut when economic times get tough it's the you know employee learning and development. Right. Those budgets just get decimated. Right off the bat. And that's primarily because employees don't see much value out of it, and employers don't really measure the impact of those things. No one's saying, "Oh my God, 'this is such an incredible program. "My employees were able to do x before this program, 'and then they were able to do one point five x afterward." You know, if people had that kind of training program in the traditional system, then they would be multi-billion dollar behemoths in the space. And there really are not. And that's because again, most of education is done in content land. And it's usually very expensive, and the results are not very good. Instead, if you actually think about learning tools as opposed to information, and then applying those tools in your core business, all of a sudden you can actually see transformation. And so when we do executive education programs as an example, you know we ask our learner how much of what you've learned can you apply to your job tomorrow? Right. And we see an overwhelming majority of our students are saying something like more than 80 to 90% of what they learned they can apply immediately. >> Wow, that's impressive. >> That's useful. >> Right. And why do you think is it just kind of institutional stuck in the mud? Is it the wrong incentive structure? I mean why you're talking about very simple stuff right. >> Yeah. >> Why don't you actually measure outcomes and adjust accordingly, you know. Use a data centric methodology to improve things over time, you know. Use digital tools in way that they can get you more than you can do in a physical space. I mean is it just inertia? I mean I really think this is a watershed moment because now everybody is forced into using these tools. Right. And there's a lot of, you know kind of psychology around habits and habit forming. >> Right, exactly. >> And if you do something for a certain amount of time every single day you know it becomes a habit. And if these stay in place orders which in my mind I think we are going to be doing it for a while, kind of change people's behavior and the way they use technology to interact with other folks. You know it could be a real, you know, kind of turning point in everyone's opening eyes that digital is different than physical. It's not exactly the same. There are some things in physical that are just better, but, you know there's a whole realm of things in digital that you cannot do when you're bound by time, location, and space. >> Exactly right. That's right. And I think the reason that it's so difficult to shift the system is because the training of people in the system, and I'm speaking specifically about higher education, really has nothing to do with education. Think about how a university professor becomes a university professor. How do they show up in a classroom? They get a bachelor's degree, where they don't learn anything about how to teach or how the mind works. They get a PhD, in which they learn nothing about how to teach or how the mind works. They do a post-doctoral research fellowship where they research in their field, right. Then they become an associate professor or an assistant professor and non-tenure, right. And in order to get tenure they've got seven years in order to make it on a publishing track, because how they teach is irrelevant. And they don't get any formal training on how to teach or how the brain works, right. Then they become you know, a junior tenured professor. A full tenured professor, right. And then maybe they become an administrator. Right. And so if you think about it, all they know is their field. And I've had conversations with academics which are to me befuddling, in the sense that you know they'll say, "Oh, you know, "everyone should learn how to think "like a historian. "Oh no everybody should learn to think "like an economist. "Everyone should learn to think "like a physicist." And you kind of unpack it, you say, "Well why?" And it's, "Oh well because we deploy pools "that nobody else deploys and it's so great." Right. And so it's OK give me an example. I had this conversation with a university president who was a historian. And that president said, "Look, you know, "what we do is we look at you know, "primary source materials hundreds of years ago "and learn to interpret what they say to us "and ascertain truth from that. "That's an incredibly important skill." I said, "OK, so what you're saying is you "examine evidence and evaluate that evidence "to see what it can actually tell you. "Isn't that what every single scientist, "social scientist, no matter what field they're in does? "Isn't that what a physicist does? "Isn't that what an economist does? "Isn't that what a psychologist does? "Right, isn't that what an English professor does?" Right actually thinking about I remember I took a mini module when I was an undergraduate with Rebecca Bushnell who is a literature professor, eventually became the dean of the college of arts and science at the University of Pennsylvania. And, we basically looked at a text written 400 years before, and tried to figure out what parts of the text were written by the author, what were transcription errors, and what was censored. That's looking at evidence. >> Right, right. >> This was an English professor. It's the exact same process. But because people know about it in their field and they think the only way to get to it is through their field, as opposed to teaching the tool, it can't get out of their own way. >> Yeah. >> And that's why I think education is so stuck right now. >> Yeah. That's crazy. And you know we're all victims of kind of the context in which we look through everything, and the lens in which we apply to everything that we see which is you know one of my things that there isn't really a kind of a truth it's what is your interpretation. And that's really you know, what is in your head. But I want to close it out. And Ben I really appreciate your time today. It's been a great conversation. And really kind of take it back to your mission which is around critical thinking. You know there's a lot of conversation lately, you know, this kind of rush to STEM as the thing. And there's certainly a lot of great job opportunities coming out of school if you're a data scientist and you can write in R. But what I think is a more interesting conversation is to get out of your own way. You know is the critical thinking as you know the AI and RPA and all these other things kind of take over more of these tasks and really this higher order need for people to think through complex problems. >> Right. >> I mean like we're going through today. Thank God people who are qualified and can see ahead and saw an exponential curve potential just really causing serious damage when we're still to head into this thing to take aggressive action. Dr. Sarah Cody here locally here you know, telling the San Jose Sharks you can't play. You know that is not an easy decision. But thankfully they did and they had the data. But really just your kind of thoughts on why you prioritize on critical thinking and you know can what you see with your students when they get out into the real world applying critical thinking not necessarily equations. >> Yeah look I think there's no better demonstration of how important critical thinking is than when you look at the kinds of advances that STEM is trying to make. Right. What happens any time we get a demonstration of the power of artificial intelligence, right. You remember a few years ago when Microsoft released it's AI engine. Right. Smartest engineers working on it, and all of a sudden it you know spat back misogynist racist types of perspectives. Why? The training set was garbage. It wasn't that the technology was bad, actually it was amazing technology. But the people who were writing it couldn't think. They didn't know how to think two steps ahead and say, "Wait a second, if we train "the information, kind of the random comments "we see on the internet, you know, "who bothers to write anonymomys comments?" Trolls, right. And so if we train it on a troll data set, it'll become an artificial intelligent troll. Right. It doesn't take a lot of critical thinking to actually realize that, but it takes some. >> Right. >> Right. And when you focus merely on those technical skills what you wind up doing is wasting it. Right. And so if you ground people in critical thinking, and we see this with our graduate. You know we graduated our very first class in May. And we had what as far as I can tell is the best graduate school placement of any graduating class in the country. As far as the quality of offers they got. We had a 94% placement rate in jobs in graduate positions. Which I think is tied with the very best ivy league institutions. And the kinds of jobs that the students are getting and six months into them the kinds of reviews that their employers are giving us looks nothing like a recent undergraduate. These are oftentimes types of jobs that are unavailable to recent undergraduates. And you know we had one student recently actually just told me, fresh in my mind, even though he was the youngest person in his company, when the CEO of his company has a strategic question he comes to him. And when he's in a meeting, full of PhDs, everybody looks to him to run the meeting and set the agenda. He's six months out of undergrad, right. And you know I can give you story after story after story about each and every one of these graduate. And it's not because they were born with it. They actually had a wise education. >> Yeah. Ben well that's a great story. And we'll leave it there. Congratulations again to you and the team at Minerva and what you've built and your first graduating class. Great accomplishment and really great to catch up, it's been too long. And when this is all over we'll have to get together and have an adult beverage. >> That would be wonderful. >> All right Ben thanks a lot. >> Thanks so much Jeff. >> All right. You've been watching theCUBE. Great check in with Ben Nelson. Thanks for watching. Everybody stay safe and we'll see you next time. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hey welcome back here writer jeff rick here with the cube we're in our Palo Alto studios you know kind of continuing our leadership coverage reaching out to the community for people that we've got in our community to get their take on you know how they're dealing with the Kovach crisis how they're helping to contribute back to the community to to bring their resources to bear and you know just some general good tips and tricks of getting through these kind of challenging times and we're really excited to have one of my favorite guests he's being used to come on all the time we haven't had them on for three years which I can't believe it sabi Mehta the CEO of true SATA founder to say to obby I checked the record I can't believe it's been three years since we last that down great to see you Jeff there's well first of all it's always a pleasure and I think the only person to blame for that is you Jeff well I will make sure that it doesn't happen again so in just a check-in how's things going with the family the company thank you for asking you know family is great we have I've got two young kids who have become video conferencing experts and they don't teach me the tricks for it which I'm sure is happening a lot of families around the world and the team is great we vent remote at this point almost almost two months ago down and can't complain I think their intellectual property business like you are so it's been a little easier for us to go remote compared to a lot of other businesses in the world and in America but no complaints it'll be very fortunate we are glad that we have a business and a company that can withstand the the economic uncertainty and the family's great I hope the same for the queue family I haven't seen Dave and John and it's good to see you again and I hope all of you guys are helped happy and healthy great I think in we're good so thank you for asking so let's jump into it you know one of the things that I've always loved about you is you know really your sense of culture and this kind of constant reinforcing of culture in your social media posts and the company blog post at true SATA you know celebrating your interns and and you really have a good pulse for that and you know I just I think we may even talked about it before about you know kind of the CEOs and leadership and and social media those that do and that and those that don't and you know I think it's it's probably from any kind of a risk reward trade-off you know I could say something group it versus what am I getting at it but really it's super important and in these times with the distributed workforce that the the importance and value of communicating and culture and touching your people frequently across a lot of different mediums and topic areas is is more important than ever before share with us kind of your strategy why did you figure this out early how have you you know kind of adjusted you know your method of keeping your team up and communicating absolutely like I guess I owe you guys a little bit of gratitude for it which is we launched our company and you know I'm showing a member on the cube it was a social media launch you know if you say that say it like that I think there are two or three things that are very important Jeff and you hit on all of them one is the emphasis on information sharing it becomes more important than times like these and we as as a society value the ability to share a positive conversation of positive perspective and a positive outlook more but since day zero at the seder we've had this philosophy that there are no secrets it is important to be open and transparent both inside and outside the company and that our legacy is going to be defined by what we do for the community and not just what we do for our shareholders and by its very nature the fact that you know I grew up in a different continent now live and call America now a different continent my home I guess I was it's very important for me to stay connected to my roots it is a good memory or reminder that the world is very interconnected unfortunately the pandemic is the is the best or worst example of it in a really weird way but I think it's also a very important point Jeff that I believe we learned early and I hope coming out from this is something that we don't lose the point you made about kindness social media and social networking has a massively in my opinion massively positive binding force for the world at the same time there were certain business models it tried to capitalize on the negative aspects of it you know whether they are the the commercialized versions of slam books or not so nice business models that capitalize on the ability for people to complain I hope that people society and us humans coming out of it learn from people like yourself or you know the small voice that I have on social media or the messages we share and we are kinda in what we do online because the ability to have networks that are viral and can propagate or self propagate is a very positive unifying force and I hope out of this pandemic we all realize the positive nature's of it more than the negative nature's of it because unfortunately as you know that our business models built on the negative forces of social media and I really really hope they're coming out of this are positive voices drown out the negative voices that's great point and and it's a great I want to highlight a quote from one of your blog's again I think you're just a phenomenal communicator and in relationship to what's going on with kovat and and I quote we are fighting fear pain and anxiety as much as we are fighting the virus this is our humble attempt to we'll get into what you guys did to help the thousands of first responders clerks rockstars but I just really want to stick with that kindness theme you know I used to or I still joke right that the greatest smile in technology today is our G from signal FX the guys are gonna throw up a picture of him he's a great guy he looks like everybody's favorite I love that guy but therefore signal effects and actually it's funny signal FX also launched on the cube at big data a big data show I used to say the greatest smile intact is avi Mehta I mean how can I go wrong and and what I when I reached out to you I I do I consciously thought what what more important time do we have than to see people like you with a big smile with the great positive attitude focusing on on the positives and and I just think it's so important and it segues nicely into what we used to talk about it the strata shows and the big data shows all the time everyone wanted to talk about Hadoop and big data you always stress is never about the technology it's about the application of the technology and you focus your company on that very where that laser focus from day one now it's so great to see is we think you know the bad news about kovat a lot of bad news but one of the good news is is you know there's never been as much technology compute horsepower big data analytics smart people like yourself to bring a whole different set of tools to the battle than just building Liberty ships or building playing planes or tanks so you guys have a very aggressive thing that you're doing tell us a little bit about is the kovat active transmission the coat if you will tell us about what that is how did it come to be and what are you hoping to accomplish of course so first of all you're too kind you know thank you so much I think you also were the first people to give me a hard time about my new or Twitter picture I put on and he said what are you doing RV you know you have a good smile come on give me the smile die so thank you you're very kind Jeff I think as I as we as you know and I know I think you've a lot to be thankful for in life and there's no reason why we should not smile no matter what the circumstance we have so much to be thankful for and also I am remiss happy Earth Day you know I'm rocking my green for Earth Day as well as Ramadan Kareem today is the first day of Ramadan and you know I I wish everybody in the world Ramadan Kareem and on that friend right on that trend of how does do we as a community come together when faced with crisis so Court was a very simple thing you know it's I'm thank you for recognizing the hard work of the team that led it it was an idea I came up with it you know in the shower I'm like there are two kinds of people or to your you can we have we as humans have a choice when history is being made which I do believe I do believe history is being made right whether you look at it economically and a economic shock and that we have not felt as humanity since the depression so you look at it socially and again something we haven't seen sin the Spanish blue history is being made in in these times and I think we as humans have a choice we can either be witnesses to it or play our part in helping shape it and coat was our humble tiny attempt to when we look back when history was being made we chose to not just sit on the sidelines but be a part of trying to be part of the solution so all riddled with code was take a small idea I had team gets the entire credit read they ran with it and the idea was there was a lot of data being open sourced around co-ed a lot of work being done around reporting what is happening but nothing was being done around reporting or thinking through using the data to predict what could happen with it and that was code with code we try to make the first code wonder oh that came out almost two weeks ago now when you first contacted us was predicting the spread and the idea around breaking the spread wasn't just saying here is the number of cases a number of deaths and know what to be very off we wanted to provide like you know how firefighters do can we predict where it may go to next at a county by county level so we could create a little bit of a firewall to help it from stop you know have the spread of it to be slower in no ways are we claiming that if you did port you can stop it but if he could create firewalls around it and distribute tests not just in areas and cities and counties where it is you know spiking but look at the areas and counties where it's about to go to so we use a inner inner in-house Network algorithm we call that Orion and we were able to start predicting where the virus is gonna go to we also then quickly realize that this could be an interesting where an extra you know arrow and the quiver in our fight we should also think about where are there green shoots around where can recovery be be helped so before you know the the president email announced this it was surrender serendipitous before the the president came and said I want to start finding the green shoes to open the country we then did quote $2 which we announced a week ago with the green shoots around a true sailor recovery index and the recovery index is looking at its car like a meta algorithm we're looking at the rates of change of the rates of change so if you're seeing the change of the rates of change you know the meta part we're declining we're saying there are early shoots that we if as we plan to reopen our economy in our country these are the counties to look at first that was the second attempt of code and the third attempt we have done is we calling it the odd are we there yet index it got announced yesterday and now - you're the first public announcement of it and the are we there yet index is using the government's definition of the phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 and we are making a prediction on where which are the counties that are ready to be open up and there's good news everywhere in the country but we we are predicting there are 73 different counties that ask for the government's definition of ready to open are ready to open that's all you know we were able to launch the app in five days it is free for all first responders all hospital chains all not-for-profit organizations trying to help the country through this pandemic and poor profit operations who want to use the data to get tests out to get antibodies out and to get you know the clinical trials out so we have made a commitment that we will not charge for code through - for any of those organizations to have the country open are very very small attempt to add another dimension to the fight you know it's data its analytics I'm not a first responder this makes me sleep well at night that I'm at least we're trying to help you know right well just for the true heroes right the true heroes this is our our humble attempt to help them and recognize that their effort should not go to its hobby that that's great because you know there is data and there is analytics and there is you know algorithms and the things that we've developed to help people you know pick they're better next purchase at Amazon or where they gonna watch next on Netflix and it's such a great application no it's funny I just finished a book called ghost Bob and is a story of the cholera epidemic in London in like 1850 something or other about four but what's really interesting at that point in time is they didn't know about waterborne diseases they thought everything kind of went through the air and and it was really a couple of individuals in using data in a new and more importantly mapping different types of datasets on top of it and now this is it's as this map that were they basically figured out where the the pump was that was polluting everybody but it was a great story and you know kind of changing the narrative by using data in a new novel and creative way to get to an answer that they couldn't and you know they're there's so much data out there but then they're so short a date I'm just curious from a data science point of view you know um you know there there aren't enough tests for you know antibodies who's got it there aren't enough tests for just are you sick and then you know we're slowly getting the data on the desk which is changing all the time you know recently announced that the first Bay Area deaths were actually a month were they before they thought they were so as you look at what you're trying to accomplish what are some of the great datasets out there and how are you working around some of the the lack of data in things like you know test results are you kind of organizing pulling that together what would you like to see more of that's why I like talking to you so I missed you you are these good questions of me excellent point I think there are three things I would like to highlight number one it doesn't take your point that you made with the with the plethora of technical advances and this S curve shift that these first spoke at the cube almost eleven years ago to the date now or ten years ago just the idea of you know population level or modeling that cluster computing is finally democratized so everybody can run complicated tests and a unique segment or one and this is the beauty of what we should be doing in the pandemic I'm coming I'm coming I'm quite surprised actually and given the fact we've had this S curve shift where the world calls a combination of cloud computing so on-demand IO and technical resources for processing data and then the on-demand ability to store and run algorithms at massive scale we haven't really combined our forces to predict more you know that the point you made about the the the waterborne pandemic in the eighteen eighteen hundreds we have an ability as humanity right now to actually see history play out rather than write a book about it you know it has a past tense and it's important to do are as follows number one luckily for you and I the cost of computing an algorithm to predict is manageable so I am surprised why the large cloud players haven't come out and said you know what anybody who wants to distribute anything around predictions lay to the pandemic should get cloud resources for free I we are running quote on all three cloud platforms and I'm paying for all of it right that doesn't really make sense but I'm surprised that they haven't really you know joined the debate or contribute to it and said in a way to say let's make compute free for anybody who would like to add a new dimension to our fight against the pandemic number one but the good news is it's available number two there is luckily for us an open data movement you know that was started on the Obama administration and hasn't stopped because you can't stop open movements allows people companies like ours to go leverage know whether it's John Hancock Carnegie Mellon or the new data coming out of you know California universities a lot of those people are opening up the data not every single piece is at the level we would like to see you know it's not zip plus 4 is mostly county level it's available the third innovation is what we have done with code but not it's not an innovation for the world right which is the give get model so we have said we will curate everything is available lie and boo cost anybody is used but they're for purposes and computations you want to enrich it every organization who gives code data will get more out of it so we have enabled a data exchange keep our far-off purple form and the open up the rail exchange that my clients use but you know we've opened up our data exchange part of our software platform and we have open source for this particular case a give get model but the more you give to it the more you get out of there and our first installations this was the first week that we have users of the platform you know the state of Nevada is using it there are no our state in North Carolina is using it already and we're trying to see the first asks for the gift get model to be used but that's the three ways you're trying to address the that's great and and and and so important you know in this again when this whole thing started I couldn't help but think of the Ford plant making airplanes and and Keiser making Liberty ships in in World War two but you know now this is a different battle but we have different tools and to your point luckily we have a lot of the things in place right and we have mobile phones and you know we can do zoom and well you know we can we can talk as we're talking now so I want to shift gears a little bit and just talk about digital transformation right we've been talking about this for ad nauseam and then and then suddenly right there's this light switch moment for people got to go home and work and people got to communicate via via online tools and you know kind of this talk and this slow movement of getting people to work from home kind of a little bit and digital transformation a little bit and data-driven decision making a little bit but now it's a light switch moment and you guys are involved in some really critical industries like healthcare like financial services when you kind of look at this not from a you know kind of business opportunity peer but really more of an opportunity for people to get over the hump and stop you can't push back anymore you have to jump in what are you kind of seeing in the marketplace Howard you know some of your customers dealing with this good bad and ugly there are two towers to start my response to you with using two of my favorite sayings that you know come to mind as we started the pandemic one is you know someone very smart said and I don't know who's been attributed to but a crisis is a terrible thing to waste so I do believe this move to restoring the world back to a natural state where there's not much fossil fuels being burnt and humans are not careful about their footprint but even if it's forced is letting us enjoy the earth in its glory which is interesting and I hope you don't waste an opportunity number one number two Warren Buffett came out and said that it's only when the tide goes out you realize who's swimming naked and this is a culmination of both those phenomenal phrases you know which is one this is the moment I do believe this is something that is deep both in the ability for us to realize the virtuosity of humanity as a society as social species as well as a reality check on what a business model looks like visa vie a presentation that you can put some fancy words on even what has been an 11-year boom cycle and blitzscale your way to disaster you know I have said publicly that this the peak of the cycle was when mr. Hoffman mr. Reid Hoffman wrote the book bit scaling so we should give him a lot of credit for calling the peak in the cycle so what we are seeing is a kind of coming together of those two of those two big trends crises is going to force industry as you've heard me say many for many years now do not just modernize what we have seen happen chef in the last few years or decades is modernization not transformation and they are different is the big difference as you know transformation is taking a business model pulling it apart understanding the economics that drive it and then not even reassembling it recreating how you can either recapture that value or recreate that value completely differently or by the way blow up the value create even more value that hasn't happened yet digital transformation you know data and analytics AI cloud have been modernizing trends for the last ten years not transformative trends in fact I've also gone and said publicly that today the very definition of technology transformation is run a sequel engine in the cloud and you get a big check off as a technology organization saying I'm good I've transformed how I look at data analytics I'm doing what I was doing on Prem in the cloud there's still sequel in the cloud you know there's a big a very successful company it has made a businessman out of it you don't need to talk about the company today but I think this becomes that moment where those business models truly truly get a chance to transform number one number two I think there's going to be less on the industry side on the new company side I think the the error of anointing winners by saying grow at all cost economics don't matter is fundamentally over I believe that the peak of that was the book let's called blitzscaling you know the markets always follow the peaks you know little later but you and I in our lifetimes will see the return to fundamentals fundamentals as you know never go out of fashion Jeff whether it's good conversations whether it's human values or its economic models if you do not have a par to being a profitable contributing member of society whether that is running a good balance sheet individually and not driven by debt or running a good balance sheet as a company you know we call it financial jurisprudence financial jurisprudence never goes out of fashion and the fact that even men we became the mythical animal which is not the point that we became a unicorn we were a profitable company three years ago and two years ago and four years ago and today and will end this year as a profitable company I think it's a very very nice moment for the world to realize that within the realm of digital transformation even the new companies that can leverage and push that trend forward can build profitable business models from it and if you don't it doesn't matter if you have a billion users as my economic professor told me selling a watermelon that you buy for a dollar or fifty cents even if you sell that a billion times you cannot make it up in volume I think those are two things that will fundamentally change the trend from modernization the transformation it is coming and this will be the moment when we look back and when you write a book about it that people say you know what now Jeff called it and now and the cry and the pandemic is what drove the economic jurisprudence as much as the social jurisprudence obvious on so many things here we can we're gonna be we're gonna go Joe Rogan we're gonna be here for four hours so hopefully hopefully you're in a comfortable chair but uh-huh but I don't I don't sit anymore I love standing on a DD the stand-up desk but I do the start of my version of your watermelon story was you know I dad a couple of you know kind of high-growth spend a lot of money raised a lot of money startups back in the day and I just know finally we were working so hard I'm Michael why don't we just go up to the street and sell dollars for 90 cents with a card table and a comfy chair maybe some iced tea and we'll drive revenue like there's nobody's business and lose less money than we're losing now not have to work so hard I mean it's so interesting I think you said everyone's kind of Punt you know kind of this pump the brakes moment as well growth at the ethic at the cost of everything else right there used to be a great concept called triple-line accounting right which is not just shareholder value to this to the sacrifice of everything else but also your customers and your employees and-and-and your community and being a good steward and a good participant in what's going on and I think that a lot of that got lost another you know to your point about pumping the brakes and the in the environment I mean we've been kind of entertaining on the oil side watching an unprecedented supply shock followed literally within days by an unprecedented demand shock but but the fact now that when everyone's not driving to work at 9:00 in the morning we actually have a lot more infrastructure than we thought and and you know kind of goes back to the old mob capacity planning issue but why are all these technology workers driving to work every morning at nine o'clock it means one thing if you're a service provider or you got to go work at a restaurant or you're you're carrying a truck full of tools but for people that just go sit on a laptop all day makes absolutely no sense and and I'd love your point that people are now you know seeing things a little bit slowed down you know that you can hear birds chirp you're not just stuck in traffic and into your point on the digital transformation right I mean there's been revolution and evolution and revolution people get killed and you know the fact that digital is not the same as physical but it's different had Ben Nelson on talking about the changes in education he had a great quote I've been using it for weeks now right that a car is not a is not a mechanical horse right it's really an opportunity to rethink the you know rethink the objective and design a new solution so it is a really historical moment I think it is it's real interesting that we're all going through it together as well right it's not like there quake in 89 or I was in Mount st. Helens and that blew up in in 1980 where you had kind of a population that was involved in the event now it's a global thing where were you in March 20 20 and we've all gone through this indeed together so hopefully it is a little bit of a more of a unifying factor in kind of the final thought since we're referencing great books and authors and quotes right as you've all know Harare and sapiens talked about what is culture right cultures is basically it's it's a narrative that we all have bought into it I find it so ironic that in the year 2020 that we always joke is 20/20 hindsight we quickly found out that everything we thought was suddenly wasn't and the fact that the global narrative changed literally within days you know really a lot of spearhead is right here in Santa Clara County with with dr. Sarah Cody shutting down groups of more than 150 people which is about four days before they went to the full shutdown it is a really interesting time but as you said you know if you're fortunate enough as we are to you know have a few bucks in the bank and have a business that can be digital which you can if you're in the sports business or the travel business the hotel business and restaurant business a lot of a lot of a lot of not not good stuff happening there but for those of us that can it is an opportunity to do this nice you know kind of a reset and use the powers that we've developed for recommendation engines for really a much more power but good for good and you're doing a lot more stuff too right with banking and in in healthcare telemedicine is one of my favorite things right we've been talking about telemedicine and electronic medicine for now well guess what now you have to cuz the hospitals are over are overflowing Jeff to your point three stories and you know then at some point I know you have you I will let you go you can let me go I can talk to you for four hours I can talk to you for but days my friend you know the three stories that there have been very relevant to me through this crisis I know one is first I think I guess in a way all are personal but the first one you know that I always like to remind people on there were business models built around allowing people to complain online and then using that as almost like a a stick to find a way to commercialize it and I look at that all of our friends I'm sure you have friends have lots of friend the restaurant is big and how much they are struggling right they are honest working the hardest thing to do in life as I've been told and I've witnessed through my friends is to run a restaurant the hours the effort you put into it making sure that what you produce this is not just edible but it's good quality is enjoyed by people is sanitary is the hard thing to do and there was yet there were all of these people you know who would not find in their heart and their minds for two seconds to go post a review if something wasn't right and be brutal in those reviews and if they were the same people were to look back now and think about how they assort the same souls then anything to be supportive for our restaurant workers you know it's easy to go and slam them online but this is our chance to let a part of the industry that we all depend on food right critical to humanity's success what have we done to support them as easy as it was for us to complain about them what have we done to support them and I truly hope and I believe they're coming out of it those business models don't work anymore and before we are ready to go on and online on our phones and complain about well it took time for the bread to come to my table we think twice how hard are they working right number one that's my first story I really hope you do tell me about that my second story is to your have you chained to baby with Mark my kids I'm sure as your kids get up every morning get dressed and launch you know their online version of a classroom do you think when they enter the workforce or when they go to college you and me are going to try and convince them to get in a oil burning combustion engine but by the way can't have current crash and breakdown and impact your health impact the environment and show up to work and they'll say what do you talk about are you talking about I can be effective I can learn virtually why can't I contribute virtually so I think there'll be a generation of the next class of you know contribute to society who are now raised to live in an environment where the choice of making sure we preserve the planet and yet contribute towards the growth of it is no longer a binary choice both can be done so I completely agree with you we have fundamentally changed how our kids when they grew up will go to work and contribute right my third story is the thing you said about how many industries are suffering we have clients you know in the we have health care customers we have banking customers you know we have whoever paying the bills like we are are doing everything they can to do right by society and then we have customers in the industry of travel hospitality and one of my most humbling moments Jeff there's one of the no sea level executives sent us an email early in this in this crisis and said this is a moment where a strong David can help AV Goliath and just reading that email had me very emotional because they're not very many moments that we get as corporations as businesses where we can be there for our customers when they ask us to be their father and if we as companies and help our customers our clients who area today are flying people are feeding people are taking care of their health and they're well if V in this moment and be there for them we we don't forget those moments you know those as humans have long-term memories right that was one of the kindest gentlest reminders to me that what was more important to me my co-founder Richard you know my leadership team every single person at Reseda that have tried very hard to build automations because as an automation company to automate complex human process so we can make humans do higher order activities in the moment when our customers asked us to contribute and be there for them I said yes they said yes you said yes and I hope I hope people don't forget that that unicorns aren't important there are mythical animals there's nothing all about profits there's nothing mythical about fortress balance sheet and there's nothing mythical about a strong business model that is built for sustainable growth not good at all cost and those are my three stories that you know bring me a lot of lot of calm in this tremendous moment of strife and and in the piece that wraps up all those is ultimately it's about relationships right people don't do business I mean companies don't do business with companies people do business with people and it's those relationships and and in strong relationships through the bad times which really set us up for when things start to come back I me as always it's I'm not gonna let it be three years to the next time I hear me pounding on your door great to catch up you know love to love to watch really your your culture building and your community engagement good luck I mean great success on the company but really that's one thing I think you really do a phenomenal job of just keeping this positive drumbeat you always have you always will and really appreciate you taking some time on a Friday to sit down with us well first of all thank you I wish I could tell you I just up to you but we celebrate formal Fridays that to Seder and that's what this is all so I want to end on a good on a positive bit of news I was gonna give you a demo of it but if you want to go to our website and look at what everything we're doing we have a survival kit around a data survival kit around kovat how am I using buzzwords you know a is let's not use that buzzword right now but in your in your lovely state but on my favorite places on the planet when we ran the algorithm on who is ready as per the government definition of opening up we have five counties that are ready to be open you know between Santa Clara to LA Sacramento Kern and San Francisco the metrics today the data today with our algorithm there are meta algorithm is saying that those five counties those five regions look like I've done a lot of positive activities if the country was to open under all the right circumstances those five look you know the first as we were men at on cream happy Earth Day a pleasure to see you so good to know your family is doing well and I hope we see we talk to each other soon thanks AVI great conversation with avi Mehta terrific guy thanks for watching everybody stay safe have a good weekend Jeff Rick checking out from the cube [Music]

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're in our Palo Alto studio today, the COVID thing is continuing to go, and one of the huge impacts, right, is obviously in the conference business, our world. Those things have all been canceled or made virtual, and everyone's still trying to figure out, what does a virtual event look like, what are the characteristics of it, and we're really excited to have one of our favorite CUBE alumni, guest host extraordinaire, Keith Townsend. You know him as the CTO advisor joining us, Keith jumped in with both feet, right when this thing went down, and said "I'm going to have my own CTO Advisor "virtual conference," so first off, Keith, I miss you, great to see you, we haven't run into each other at the Sands in an awfully long time, so great to see you, how are you doing? >> Good to see you, if it's only virtual, good to see you too, Jeff. >> So tell us about your decision to jump in with both feet, and go ahead and test the waters on this virtual conference concept. >> So I talked about this a little bit on a random, just a YouTube update, but roughly 30, 35% of my revenue comes from in-person events. And plus my brand, The CTO Advisor, is tied to people seeing me on theCUBE, seeing me at the shows, creating the content, kind of on the ground, guerrilla style, kind of like how John started out early on. So we needed a practical solution for most things, one, we feed off the energy of the community, so we need to be on the ground as much as possible, so that we can create content and get you guys the stories and the data that you need to make purchasing decisions, and two, we needed the practical problem of solving our own revenue problems, so we jumped in, head in, to say "Let's do a virtual event." I don't know if I would've done it if I wasn't as naive as I was back then, but we jumped in. >> So before we jump into the processes, make sure, give us a full-on plug, when is it, where should people go, registration I assume is still open, want to just get that out there for the folks. >> So even if you see this after registration closes, quote unquote closes, it's April 21st, >> 10: 30 AM central to 3:30 PM central, that's US time. You can register at CTOAdvisorVirtualConference.com. >> Excellent, so let's talk about some of the interesting things about virtual. One of the things as you said in a physical event, you've got people, you've got time and space and geography that we all come together in that space, and there's a lot of advantages to everybody being at the same place at the same time. A virtual event, almost by definition, is now you've broken up the segments of content capture, if you will, and creation, which can or cannot be on that date. The actual display, or the publishing of that content, if you will, and then the consumption of that content, which may or may not happen on the 21st. How have you worked with this expanded palette, if you will, to be able to work in an asynchronous world, and how are you finding it in terms of actually day to day execution? >> So you guys have done plenty of remote content at this point. When you're in theCUBE studio, you have commercial internet, it's fairly reliable when you're on premises, maybe a little bit less reliable from the sense that it's conference-centered, but it's still enterprise class internet access, so you can do real-time video on theCUBE fine. We can go to Cube.tv, Cube.net, and see what you guys are doing real-time, and it's pretty much without blip. In the virtual conference world, what we're dealing with where I'm coming in, remote to you, while my video and audio looks fine now, it may blip. So we embrace two things. We embrace the fact that this is a virtual event, so in a background, you'll see that we're in Keith Townsend's basement, the other thing that you'll see is that we won't produce live content, because there's not much value in it being live, if I can't interact with you. One of the great things about theCUBE, is that it's live, but there's this element that people are on the ground, they're watching it live, they're interacting with it live, we're tweeting about it, so how do you reproduce, if not that exact feeling of it being live and you're being part of it, but the conversation around the content, and that's what we focused on, creating high quality video content, that you can consume, kind of as a watch party, so on Twitter, in the platform that we're using, we're having conversations real-time, so that you can enjoy the community, and the speakers who are presenting, you can interact with them because they're not presenting real-time, they're in the chat room, they're on Twitter, they're running as their session is running, and they're able to interact with you, so we've embraced the medium, and then after the fact of course we can do all kinds of things to run asynchronous content after the fact, 'cause the majority of people will watch it after the video's done. >> All right, and I'm just curious, how many sessions are you going to have, approximately? >> So we have I think 21 sessions, in a five hour period, so we're running three separate tracks, two super techy, geeky tracks, then a sponsored track is kind of by itself, and we're not expecting everyone to consume it all at one time. >> Right, you know it's just so interesting to me, talking about your tracks. If you were to go rent a venue, that had the capacity to run 21 tracks over five hours, it'd be a pretty decent-sized venue, it'd be expensive, and then you would have to pick your sessions and your tracks based on the limitations of the budget that you had and the window that you had of rooms that you could put these people in, and who could do it now, when, there, the other thing, and so it's really interesting that now this opens up the amount of sessions, is really a function of what you can manage, or what the community can kind of self-organize, you're not really limited by how many rooms are in the Sands Convention Center, and the other thing that you brought up, which I think people completely miss is that if the content is recorded in advance and puts in the can, to your point, the presenter can actually participate in the conversation while the session is happening, which they can't do in a physical event, because they're actually presenting, so, we had a guy in the other day, Ben Nelson, he talked about a car is not a mechanical horse, it's not the same, digital's not the same as physical, and there are some things that aren't as cool, but there's a whole lot of things that you can do in the digital space that you can't do in the physical space. >> Yeah, a lot of my presenters were kind of put off by the idea of, "Wait, hold on, I'm not going to present live? "How will I interact with webinars now?" And I think this is the other end of the spectrum, Jeff, I think you guys have probably found this too, it's not a in-person event, and it's also not a webinar, so don't treat it as a webinar. You don't have to have these canned, phony questions that some people have behind the scenes, it is a real, authentic thing. Oddly enough, I discovered this as part of helping my church put on their worship service. I was watching the service, I'll look off the screen a little bit to the left, I was watching the service, and the minister's delivering his sermon, and in the Zoom meeting, there he is, playing with his little two year old daughter, while he's giving the talk, and I just opened chat at him, and next thing I know there's an explosion of conversation around just life and the topic at hand, so it is a really unique experience. >> Yeah, I think that's a really important point, it's not only what is a digital event, but what is it not, and it can't be a webinar, and when we were first going through this kind of shake-up, and we were really trying to identify some of those things, and we specifically did not want a digital event to be a webinar, 'cause what's a webinar, it's generally a one way communication of information for the vast majority of the session that you're sitting there, and they only open it up to Q&A at the very end, and it's only a moderated Q&A that very few people get a chance to get their question in, and you don't know how they're picking, and it only goes to the hosts, so, really having an open, live engagement around an engaged group of people, with a piece of content as kind of the coalescing of those people, really, it's not a webinar, it's a very different kind of experience, and sounds like you're really embracing that. >> Yeah, it'll never replace a live event, live has, again we talked about the energy, the, people are like "Do you really "want to smell the Sands, Keith?" You know what, it's all part of the energy, it's instant reminders to "Oh, I remember when I interviewed Pat Gelsinger here," and you have these instant cues that we as humans love, we don't get that, but I think it is something that's going to be with us to stay and it'll augment, I'd love to hear how you guys are thinking about how being able to have this capability will augment theCUBE once we return to physical events. >> Yeah, I mean I think this behavior that we're now been forced to engage in, in terms of increased working from home, and kind of increased use of videoconferencing, and that is a different communication mode, I think those behaviors are going to stick quite a bit, actually, I think if you look at what a conference is, there's a couple different tracks, as you said, there's the expression going around, kind of the rally moment, right, the keynote, we want, we have a strong message, the CEO wants to get something out, and I think that's of tremendous value, but then you look at all the breakout sessions and the information flow and the community engagement, those quite frankly can be done online much more efficiently and with much less cost, so will the new conference be kind of this, the celebration and basically a customer appreciation event, they want to have a party, but really that, I don't think it will be quite the information flow, 'cause why should product group A wait until the conference date, if they're ready to release their information, and wait for product group B or C or D, so this kind of forced aggregation of the communication into this very small window of three days in Vegas, I don't think it makes any sense, you know, it's Waterfall versus DevOps, and if this group's got stuff and they're ready to go, again, why hold the information back, it really doesn't make sense, and decouple the customer celebration, the rally moment, if you will, and the education, they don't necessarily have to be this contiguous big unit for three days in Vegas. >> Yeah, I'm looking forward to first quarter 2021, usually January, February, first half of March, really slow news channel product teams release stuff and they really want some big stage to release it, I think this will really make the dissemination of information coming from product teams super interesting as folks like theCUBE, The CTO Advisor, we're able to put on independent events virtually that have a sense of gravitas to it, that our partners will come and embrace. >> Yeah, the other thing, Keith, and I wonder, as you've been collecting your content for your show next week is that, the pressure on the quality of the content has escalated dramatically, right? If you're stuck in a huge conference hall, surrounded by 10,000 people, in the middle of a keynote that's not that exciting, it's kind of hard to get up and walk out. But if you're sitting at your desk with the entire world an alt-tab away, not to mention pesky things like email and Slack and everything else that we have as a distraction, it's really going to come in on the content provider and the engaged community to deliver, or else you're going to lose the audience, and I think it's going to be really interesting, people that overly have relied on the 100 foot video screen and the electronic violin music in the morning, and some of these tips and tricks, aren't going to carry the weight, because if it's just you sitting in front of a screen and you got to deliver the message, it's got to be crisp, it's got to be powerful, and it's got to be engaging, or people are just going to step away. >> And more importantly, how do you bring people back? So, you know how, when I take a break at a conference, I'm kind of captured. Eventually I'm going to walk back to the conference center, I might go back out to take a call, et cetera, but getting people to come back, even if the content has been awesome and engaging and great, how do you get 'em to come back, they don't have to come back that day, or even real time, but they have to come back to the portal, so we're working on kind of the next 30 days after the event, this is the thing that's really funny about putting on a virtual event, there's kind of the exhale after the day of the event, a virtual event, you know what, you've got a third of your audience that first day, a third of the audience the next week, and then the rest of the audience creeps in over the next three or four weeks, and how do you engage them, how do you get them to come back, and ultimately consume your content and your message? It's something that I haven't, I don't know if I've cracked the formula for it yet, but it is going to be a very interesting challenge. >> Yeah, but I think we have, right, in the way, how do you consume video today, how do you find information, right, you go to YouTube or to Google and you search, right, and right now the biggest phenom in pop media is the Tiger King, right, so when do people watch the Tiger King, how do they hear about the Tiger King, when do they actually sit down and watch it, has nothing to do with when you watch it unless we decide to trade messages, I say "Hey, Keith, have you seen the new episode?" So when you look at consumption patterns, to me it's really interesting, it's kind of bifurcated, you either binge watch, and just really get into something that you're into, and you just go go go for hours and hours and hours, or you're getting snippets, you're getting little quick hits, quick hits, quick hits, and I think it's this kind of ugly middle, where you don't have enough content or richness or engagement to have people hang, but you're a little bit longer than a quick hit just to get your message out, and I think it's really going to kind of bifurcate, and the beauty of digital is you can consume it in lots of different ways, and piece parts, and you don't have to necessarily kind of sit through kind of a straight row consumption as a captive audience, I think the opportunity's really really good, if the content is up to snuff, properly tagged, search terms, all those types of things of course as well. >> So yeah, John talks about the value of community a lot, and one of our co-hosts on theCUBE, and also a CUBE alum is Corey Quinn, and he does a really great job of this with curating content after it's been consumed live. He'll to his audience say "You know what, I'm going to live tweet this session "from three months ago," and that refreshes the conversation, it's not about when the content was created, it's about the conversation, as long as it's relevant, and finding mediums to help amplify that message. >> Yeah, I think it's just a great opportunity, you know, we used to do some work with Live Nation in another lifetime, right, and Live Nation around concerts, they had that particular event when you go to the show, and a lot of their efforts on the marketing side were what they call extending the glow, right, extending the glow after, and also kind of building the excitement before, and moving that window of that event to more than just the night that the show played, and I think we've got the same opportunity here, that's why again if you get good quality content, it's not speeds and feeds, but it's evergreen themes that have legs, you can go back to that well and you can stir that thing up, and you can get it back out there again, and then again hopefully people stumble upon it, whether it's via community or whatever. The other thing I think that's really interesting is you talked about community, and you talked about QuinnyPig, @QuinnyPig I think is his Twitter handle, is this whole idea of collaboration, and I think that's another thing that we can take from the internet, I know you do a lot of that, so working with other influencers if you will, or other people in the communities, and introducing each other's community to one another, I think it's a really big part of what makes a lot of the big YouTubers famous is that they do things together and they kind of cross-pollinate their communities, and if there's some overlap there then they both have kind of a win-win, and again I think in digital, where you don't have destruction, you don't have single use, you can use stuff more than once, it really opens up this opportunity for much more win-win, let's work together, and build community together, cross leverage, versus it's either yours or mine, and it's really more of a competitive thing. >> And I've been collaborating a lot with some of my European peers, and you bring up a really interesting concept. Our friends at VMware's going to be putting on VMworld in the next few months, and they usually had a US conference and a European conference, were both pretty sizable conferences. It's basically going to run concurrently as one conference. So if it's going to run as one conference, why do I have to limit the live experience to the US timezone? Why can't I cater this, and why is it just a fixed hour, I don't know if it will be, but it shouldn't just be a fixed hour event, it's going to be a all-out hour event that's going to happen across Asia, Europe, and the US, and tailoring the content to each continent and time zone, and cross-pollinating, so that content that I would not have typically have gotten at the US event, or in the Europe event, I can now get that experience and cross-cultural flavor as a natural part of digital, so there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot to miss about in-person events, but I think there's opportunities that are just massively untapped. >> Yeah, yeah, and I'm just going to get one more concept, which I don't think is getting enough action, get your take on it, but if you think of the value to the company, let's just stick with VMware for a minute, we're great fans of Pat and Sanjay, there is a information transfer when Pat gets up and does his keynote as from one to many tens of thousands, and there's value there, and again we talked about this rallying moment, but think of turning that on its head, which is really what digital provides, now there's an opportunity for Pat and Sanjay and the entire VMware senior team and junior team and product managers to now flip that information flow. So if you think of the user experience from the attendees' point of view, is it better for Sanjay to talk to 10,000 people in an audience, or would Sanjay rather hear from 10,000 people, and have that flow of information going back in? So if you think of it as a community event versus a one way communication of here's our exciting news, I think the value to the sponsor goes up dramatically, 'cause there's so much institutional knowledge and tribal knowledge and experience within all those people that are just sitting passively listening to that keynote. If this is a way to better suck that information back into the company, I don't think they'll ever go back to the other way it was. >> Yeah, two points, two data points on that. One, again, from the worship side of the house, at our Easter service, our church enabled every member who cared to to kind of do a five, eight second "Hey, this is the Townsend family, "happy Easter," and then 15 minutes before the live church service started, they just ran a video of family after family after family that I recognize, saying "Hi, happy Easter," so you have that moment, and how do you capture that online? VMware's social media team already does this well, they amplify end user content, there was a guy that did a video on how to install VMware Cloud Foundation in three hours, went viral. You have these opportunities, again, to hear from sources and have conversations that's really not practical from a typical conference perspective. I think I heard it best the other day, one of my attendees and presenters said "You know what, Keith, the virtual conference "is such a democratizing event because "it enables me, whether I could not afford "to go to a conference before, "or I couldn't travel, or whatever reasons "I could not attend a conference before," the virtual conference gives opportunities for collaborations that could not have taken place otherwise. >> Yeah, it's great, so again, Keith, thank you for spending a few minutes with us and sharing your thoughts, and again, for everybody, April 21st 2020, next week, >> 10: 30 AM central time, join the CTO virtual conference. Keith, always great to catch up, man. >> You too, Jeff, thanks a lot. >> All right, take care. He's Keith, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, thanks for watching, I'll see you next time. (calm music)