(digital music) >> Live, from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here at the Orange County Civic Center in Orlando. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by Bev Crair. She is the vice president data center group product development and quality at Lenovo. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks Rebecca, thanks Stu. >> So, Lenovo is a longstanding partner of Microsoft. Why don't you just sent the scene for our viewers, and talk a little bit about the history of the partnership and where you are today. >> So, Lenovo and Microsoft have had a partnership of about 25 years, which is a long time in this industry. And we work really closely together on both innovation, but also making sure that anything that Microsoft is building runs best on Lenovo. >> Great, and what about, here at this conference, what are you hearing, what are you seeing in terms of this partnership? >> We have actually six things that we're really talking about here at the conference, which is a lot if you think about it. But the first is the announcement of our ThinkAgile MX, which is that integrated WSSD system. It's pre-certified, you just buy it as itself. There's four or five different sizes of it, if you will. The second one is our Azure Stack, but also our Azure services. So we're now doing both on prem Azure Stack and Azure services, which is really about customer choice. Because a lot of data center customers are really struggling with how do I build a hybrid cloud infrastructure, and what do I do with that. The third thing that we're doing, oh my gosh, I'm not going to remember them all. The third thing that we're doing is our SQL Server performance. We continue to be the best in performance for all of our SQL Server efforts. Our two-socket systems are best performing. Our four-socket systems are best performing, and so are eight-socket systems are best performing. In addition to that, we have, when we're proud to work with Microsoft on the launch of Windows Server 2019. Again, that's part of that 25 year partnership. It's just something you got to do. And we're really proud of that. The other thing that we've announced here is what we're calling the buy back program. And a lot of companies have buy back programs where you can actually buy back equipment, and you buy back your competitors equipment in order to build your stuff up, but the one thing that's kind of different about what Lenovo's doing is something I call Zillow for systems. So, you actually can go online and put in the systems that you have or the equipment that you have and we give you an automatic, instant quote back. Nobody else is actually doing that. So, it's kind of a Zillowish system where you can see what's my stuff really worth. >> I want to click in a little bit. So, I know the partnership for a long time. I think about PCs, you think about servers, obviously. Lenovo has the gear, Microsoft has the OS and various pieces that go on there. When I look at solutions like WSSD and Azure Stack, Microsoft has a number of partners, maybe help us understand what that partnership means, how Lenovo differentiates from some of the other players out there. >> So, that is one of the things I forgot. One of the things that we've announced today, and that we showed today, and actually Jeff Wosley talked about it in his talk earlier today, is an integration of Microsoft's Windows Admin Center for WSSD, and Lenovo's Xclarity system management system. So, via a single pane of glass from your Windows Admin Center, you can actually not just look at Windows Admin in the Window's infrastructure, but you can actually dig down and really understand what's actually happening with the hardware itself that WSSD is running on. And that's part of that really close partnership and relationship that we have. >> Can you talk a little bit about the approach to the partnership just because we had a Microsoft Executive on here earlier today, and he said that "our partnerships, we have this, we're able to have "a collaborative and collegial partnership "with our competitors." So, it's sort of part of their DNA." How does Lenovo think about when it partners and how it partners with a competitor? >> Well, but Microsoft isn't actually a competitor of ours. Right? And this is the thing I think that Lenovo, as a company, really is focusing on offering to our customers is choice. Right? We have a co-located lab up in Seattle with Microsoft. We have had for years. We do innovation summits with them, we look at where the technology is going and what is it that we can do together in order to make that more effective for our shared customers and how they deliver in the long run. And so it really is a very strong collaboration. We don't build operating systems. We don't build all of the SQL Server. We don't build the Azure Stack, and the Cloud, and all the rest of that. So, the partnership with Lenovo, Microsoft gets to take advantage of all of our supply chain goodness, all of our services goodness, as well as all the platform stuff that we do as well. >> Now, if you look, HCI is one of the things that we've been talking a little bit more about here. Obviously, it makes sense for Lenovo to partner here, but Lenovo also has a number of other solutions. How do you look at it? What are you hearing from customers when it comes to that kind of solution and how Microsoft-- >> It really is about choice. Right, it really is about choice. Customers have different kinds of problems in their environments, and they're seeking partners to help them solve those problems in their environments. And that, and those choices are actually really critical for them. So, when you're working with somebody like Lenovo, where we also offer Vmware, we also offer some of the other solutions that are out there in the market, that, you work with a partner like Lenovo, where we have all of the services and the infrastructure to back that up, plus the long standing relationships that we have with our partners, enables us to offer that kind of choice that allows our end customers to solve their customer's problems. And that's really the core piece that we're looking at. >> Yeah, Microsoft, of course, partners with a lot of companies. I heard in some of the technical key notes, I heard that get mentioned quite a bit. Of course, Rebecca and I were with your team at Lenovo Transform in New York City recently. And maybe for our viewers that might not have caught that show, give us the update, what you're hearing from people about the big partnership -- >> So, we announced a partnership with network compliance, NetApp, at our Transform show last week, I guess it must have been. We've been working on it for awhile, so, just the fact that the announcement happened was really cool. And it's kind of a three-part partnership. The first part is that Lenovo will be branding NetApp's a couple of the sets of systems that NetApp has. And it allows us to fill out our storage infrastructure. Last year, when we launched our largest portfolio of servers, we launched eight all in a single day, and the rest of the Purley platforms followed from my team in the next quarter. This year, with NetApp, we actually launched the largest storage portfolio in the market. And so, this partnership actually allows us to do that very, very collaboratively. Then the second part of the relationship is joint venture that we're starting with NetApp in China. Given the depth of work that Lenovo does in China, it allows NetApp to actually build their market, and their infrastructure. And I think, some of the customers in China are actually really looking for the kinds of solutions that NetApp has available. And then the third is moving forward to build innovative solutions together. Taking the innovation and the 25 years worth of innovation that my team has done over the years, and all of the work we do in performance, all the number one on client satisfaction, all the number one on reliability for the fifth year in a row, and bringing that into our NetApp alliance. >> One of the themes at this conference, and also frankly at Lenovo Transform, is about company culture and about this idea of the importance of collaboration and creativity and teamwork, and inclusivity. Can you describe a little bit for us how you think the Lenovo culture is similar to the Microsoft one that Satya Nadella is a proponent of and also how it's different? >> How is is similar and how is it different? That's a really interesting question. The thing that I have found about the Lenovo culture that I think surprised me the most, one year in, is how committed Lenovo is to really understanding how people think and bringing that in to how we build effective solutions together. It is by far the most diverse organization that I've worked in. In lots of lots of ways, but if you look at the senior leadership level, right? You would expect it, given that the company is actually headquartered in Beijing and the United States, and we're on the Hong Kong stock exchange, you would expect it to be Chinese. But it's not. The leadership team is actually incredibly diverse. Way more diverse than I expected. But even on my team, and further down in the organization, a lot of our engineers have spent multiple years overseas. They've raised their kids overseas. They've gone to school overseas. And so the have a very inclusive perspective on how do we solve problems. And they also understand that the way in which we solve problems, isn't necessarily the best way. So, in our conversations with Microsoft and the culture that we create with them together, it becomes very collaborative. 'Cause we go back to what's the customer problem we're really trying to solve. How are we actually helping our customers in their intelligent transformation? How do we become their trusted partner? And how do we actually help solve humanity's greatest challenges? And that's a together statement, right? With Microsoft and just kind of peeling back the onion on what are the real problems that we need to get to to solve together. >> You mentioned how diverse a company Lenovo is, and that's actually at a time where the technology industry is not known for its diversity. In fact, it's really known for its bro culture. It's the dearth of female leaders. I'm wondering if you could just give me your thoughts on how technology, sort of the state of affairs today is it as bad as the newspaper headlines make it out to be? And (Rebecca and Bev laugh) what we need to do to move forward. >> So, I think in part, there's two answers to that. One of them is that the participants in technology are changing. So, if you look around the room and you watch who's here, what you're seeing is that there's a whole generation of new people coming in who've always had technology at their fingertips. And so they think differently and assume differently about what that technology is supposed to do for them. And so just age diversity starts to come into play. But also the people that buy our stuff, right? 65 to 75% of commercial electronics are bought by women. That's a stunning figure when you really think about it 'cause it's very different from the people that actually create or have in the past created that technology. So when you start to see who's buying and why they're buying, you actually have to start to understand that they're buying for very different reasons than perhaps you were creating the technology for. So, an example of this is the new Hub 500 or the Hub 700. Have you seen this? So, it's a link connected system that sits on the table and you push a button and you're automatically connected with everybody that's going to be in your Lync meeting or everybody that's going to be in your Skype meeting. And we had to do a fair amount of work to really understand how people were going to interact with the system or not interact with the system. And even colors like red and green, and the fact that they mean different things in different cultures, and how are we going to display those colors, right? But that's where the diversity of participation in solving a problem really comes into play. >> Great. Well Bev, it was a pleasure having you on the show. It was really fun talking to you. >> Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from Microsoft Ignite in just a little bit. (upbeat digital music)

>>Hello, and welcome back to the cubes coverage of coop con cloud native con 2021. We're here in person at a real event. I'm John farrier host of the cube, but Dave Nicholson, Michael has got great guests here. Two founders of brand new startup, one week old cable on ASCII and Dave Lawrence, uh, with chain guard, former Google employees, open source community members decided to start a company with five other people on total five total. Congratulations. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for >>Having us. So tell us like a product, you know, we know you don't have a price. So take us through the story because this is one of those rare moments. We got great chance to chat with you guys just a week into the new forms company and the team. What's the focus, what's the vision. >>How far back do you want to go with this story >>And why you left Google? So, you know, we're a gin and tonics. We get a couple of beers I can do that. We can do that. Let's just take over the world. >>Yeah. So we both been at Google, uh, for awhile. Um, the last couple of years we've been really worried about and focused on open-source security risk and supply chain security in general and software. Um, it's been a really interesting time as you probably noticed, uh, to be in that space, but it wasn't that interesting two years ago or even a year and a half ago. Um, so we were doing a bunch of this work at Google and the open source. Nobody really understood it. People kind of looked at us funny at talks and conferences. Um, and then beginning of this year, a bunch of attacks started happening, uh, things in the headlines like solar winds, solar winds attack, like you say, it attack all these different ransomware things happening. Uh, companies and governments are getting hit with supply chain attacks. So overnight people kind of started caring and being really worried about the stuff that we've been doing for a while. So it was a pretty cool thing to be a part of. And it seemed like a good time to start a company and keep your >>Reaction to this startup. How do you honestly feel, I suppose, feeling super excited. Yeah. >>I am really excited. I was in stars before Google. So then I went to Google where there for seven, I guess, Dan, a little bit longer, but I was there for seven years on the product side. And then yeah, we, we, the open source stuff, we were really there for protecting Google and we both came from cloud before that working on enterprise product. So then sorta just saw the opportunity, you know, while these companies trying to scramble and then sort of figure out how to better secure themselves. So it seemed like a perfect, >>The start-up bug and you back in the start up, but it's the timing's perfect. I got to say, this is a big conversation supply chain from whether it's components and software now, huge attack vector, people are taking advantage of it super important. So I'm really glad you're doing it. But first explain to the folks watching what is supply chain software? What's the challenge? What is the, what is the supply chain security challenge or problem? >>Sure. Yeah, it's the metaphor of software supply chain. It's just like physical supply chain. That's where the name came from. And it, it really comes down to how the code gets from your team's keyboard, your team's fingers on those keyboards into your production environment. Um, and that's just the first level of it. Uh, cause nobody writes all of the code. They use themselves. We're here at cloud native con it's hundreds of open source vendors, hundreds of open libraries that people are reusing. So your, your trust, uh, radius and your attack radius extends to not just your own companies, your own developers, but to everyone at this conference. And then everyone that they rely on all the way out. Uh, it's quite terrifying. It's a surface, the surface area explode pretty quickly >>And people are going and the, and the targeting to, because everyone's touching the code, it's open. It's a lot of action going on. How do you solve the problem? What is the approach? What's the mindset? What's the vision on the problems solving solutions? >>Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think like you said, the first step is awareness. Like Dan's been laughing, he's been, he felt like a crazy guy in the corner saying, you know, stop building software underneath your desk and you know, getting companies, >>Hey, we didn't do, why don't you tell them? I was telling him for five years. >>Yeah. But, but I think one of his go-to lines was like, would you pick up a thumb drive off the side of the street and plug it into your computer? Probably not. But when you download, you know, an open source package or something, that's actually can give you more privileges and production environments and it's so it's pretty scary. Um, so I think, you know, for the last few years we've been working on a number of open source projects in this space. And so I think that's where we're going to start is we're going to look at those and then try to grow out the community. And we're, we're watching companies, even like solar winds, trying to piece these parts together, um, and really come up with a better solution for themselves. >>Are there existing community initiatives or open source efforts that are underway that you plan to participate in or you chart? Are you thinking of charting a new >>Path? >>Oh, it's that looks like, uh, Thomas. Yeah, the, the SIG store project we kicked off back in March, if you've covered that or familiar with that at all. But we kicked that off back in March of 2021 kind of officially we'd look at code for awhile before then the idea there was to kind of do what let's encrypted, uh, for browsers and Webster, um, security, but for code signing and open source security. So we've always been able to get code signing certificates, but nobody's really using them because they're expensive. They're complicated, just like less encrypted for CAS. They made a free one that was automated and easy to use for developers. And now people do without thinking about it in six stores, we tried to do the same thing for open source and just because of the headlines that were happening and all of the attacks, the momentum has just been incredible. >>Is it a problem that people just have to just get on board with a certain platform or tool or people have too many tools, they abandoned them there, their focus shifts is there. Why what's the, what's the main problem right now? >>Well, I think, you know, part of the problem is just having the tools easy enough for developers are going to want to use them and it's not going to get in our way. I think that's going to be a core piece of our company is really nailing down the developer experience and these toolings and like the co-sign part of SIG store that he was explaining, like it's literally one command line to sign, um, a package, assign a container and then one line to verify on the other side. And then these organizations can put together sort of policies around who they trust and their system like today it's completely black box. They have no idea what they're running and takes a re >>You have to vape to rethink and redo everything pretty much if they want to do it right. If they just kind of fixing the old Europe's sold next solar with basically. >>Yeah. And that's why we're here at cloud native con when people are, you know, the timing is perfect because people are already rethinking how their software gets built as they move it into containers and as they move it into Kubernetes. So it's a perfect opportunity to not just shift to Kubernetes, but to fix the way you build software from this, >>What'd you say is the most prevalent change mindset change of developers. Now, if you had to kind of, kind of look at it and say, okay, current state-of-the-art mindset of a developer versus say a few years ago, is it just that they're doing things modularly with more people? Or is it more new approaches? Is there a, is there a, >>I think it's just paying attention to your building release process and taking it seriously. This has been a theme for, since I've been in software, but you have these very fancy production data centers with physical security and all these levels of, uh, Preston prevention and making sure you can't get in there, but then you've got a Jenkins machine that's three years old under somebody's desk building the code that goes into there. >>It gets socially engineered. It gets at exactly. >>Yeah. It's like the, it's like the movies where they, uh, instead of breaking into jail, they hide in the food delivery truck. And it's, it's that, that's the metaphor that I like perfectly. The fence doesn't work. If your truck, if you open the door once a week, it doesn't matter how big defenses. Yeah. So that's >>Good Dallas funny. >>And I, I think too, like when I used to be an engineer before I joined Google, just like how easy it is to bring in a third party package or something, you know, you need like an image editing software, like just go find one off the internet. And I think, you know, developers are slowly doing a mind shift. They're like, Hey, if I introduce a new dependency, you know, there's going to be, I'm going to have to maintain this thing and understand >>It's a little bit of a decentralized view too. Also, you got a little bit of that. Hey, if you sign it, you own it. If it tracks back to you, okay, you are, your fingerprints are, if you will, or on that chain of >>Custody and custody. >>Exactly. I was going to say, when I saw chain guard at first of course, I thought that my pant leg riding a bike, but then of course the supply chain things coming in, like on a conveyor belt, conveyor, conveyor belt. But that, that whole question of chain of custody, it isn't, it isn't as simple as a process where someone grabs some code, embeds it in, what's going on, pushes it out somewhere else. That's not the final step typically. Yeah. >>So somebody else grabs that one. And does it again, 35 more times, >>The one, how do you verify that? That's yeah, it seems like an obvious issue that needs to be addressed. And yet, apparently from what you're telling us for quite a while, people thought you were a little bit in that, >>And it's not just me. I mean, not so Ken Thompson of bell labs and he wrote the book >>He wrote, yeah, it was a seatbelt that I grew >>Up on in the eighties. He gave a famous lecture called uh, reflections on trusting trust, where he pranked all of his colleagues at bell labs by putting a back door in a compiler. And that put back doors into every program that compiled. And he was so clever. He even put it in, he made that compiler put a backdoor into the disassembler to hide the back door. So he spent weeks and, you know, people just kind of gave up. And I think at that point they were just like, oh, we can't trust any software ever. And just forgot about it and kept going on and living their lives. So this is a 40 year old problem. We only care about it now. >>It's totally true. A lot of these old sacred cows. So I would have done life cycles, not really that relevant anymore because the workflows are changing. These new Bev changes. It's complete dev ops is taken over. Let's just admit it. Right. So if we have ops is taken over now, cloud native apps are hitting the scene. This is where I think there's a structural industry change, not just the community. So with that in mind, how do you guys vector into that in terms of a market entry? What's just thinking around product. Obviously you got a higher, did you guys raise some capital in process? A little bit of a capital raise five, no problem. Todd market, but product wise, you've got to come in, get the beachhead. >>I mean, we're, we're, we're casting a wide net right now and talking to as many customers like we've met a lot of these, these customer potential customers through the communities, you know, that we've been building and we did a supply chain security con helped with that event, this, this Monday to negative one event and solar winds and Citibank were there and talking about their solutions. Um, and so I think, you know, and then we'll narrow it down to like people that would make good partners to work with and figure out how they think they're solving the problem today. And really >>How do you guys feel good? You feel good? Well, we got Jerry Chen coming off from gray lock next round. He would get a term sheet, Jerry, this guy's got some action on it in >>There. Probably didn't reply to him on LinkedIn. >>He's coming out with Kronos for him. He just invested 200 million at CrossFit. So you guys should have a great time. Congratulations on the leap. I know it's comfortable to beat Google, a lot of things to work on. Um, and student startups are super fun too, but not easy. None of the female or, you know, he has done it before, so. Right. Cool. What do you think about today? Did the event here a little bit smaller, more VIP event? What's your takeaway on this? >>It's good to be back in person. Obviously we're meeting, we've been associating with folks over zoom and Google meets for a while now and meeting them in person as I go, Hey, no hard to recognize behind the mask, but yeah, we're just glad to sort of be back out in a little bit of normalization. >>Yeah. How's everything in Austin, everyone everyone's safe and good over there. >>Yeah. It's been a long, long pandemic. Lots of ups and downs, but yeah. >>Got to get the music scene back. Most of these are comes back in the house. Everything's all back to normal. >>Yeah. My hair doesn't normally look like this. I just haven't gotten a haircut since this also >>You're going to do well in this market. You got a term sheet like that. Keep the hair, just to get the money. I think I saw your LinkedIn profile and I was wondering it's like, which version are we going to get? Well, super relevant. Super great topic. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on. Sharing the story. You're in the queue. Great jumper. Dave Nicholson here on the cube date, one of three days we're back in person of course, hybrid event. Cause the cube.net for all more footage and highlights and remote interviews. So stay tuned more coverage after this short break.

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, we are wrapping up day three of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. CUBE's live coverage, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with Stu Miniman, my esteemed cohost for these past three days, it's been fun working with you, Stu. >> Rebecca, it's been a great show, real excited. Our first time at a Microsoft show and it's a big one. I mean, the crowds are phenomenal. Great energy at the show and yeah, it's been great breaking down this ecosystem with you. >> So, three days, what do we know, what did you learn, what is your big takeaway, what are you going to to go back to Boston with? >> You know, it's interesting, we've been all talking and people that I know that have been here a couple of years, I've talked to people that have been at this show for decades, this is a different show. There's actually a friend of mine said, he's like, "Well look, Windows pays the bills for a lot of companies." There's a lot of people that all the Windows components, that's their job. I mean, I think back through my career when I was on the vendor side, how many rollouts of Exchange and SharePoint and all these things we've done over the years. Office 365 been a massive wave that we watched. So Microsoft has a broad portfolio and they've got three anchor shows. I was talking with one of the partners here and he's like, "You know, there's not a lot of channel people "at this event, at VMworld there's a lot of channel people." I'm like, "Well yeah because there's a separate show "that Microsoft has for them." You and I were talking at an earlier analytics session with Patrick Moorhead and he said, "You know when I look at the buy versus build, "a lot of these people are buying and I don't "feel I have as many builders." Oh wait, what's that other show that they have in the Spring, it's called Microsoft Build. A lot of the developers have moved there so it's a big ecosystem, Microsoft has a lot of products. Everything from, my son's excited about a lot of the Xbox stuff that they have here. Heck, a bunch of our crew was pickin' up Xbox sweatshirts while they're here. But a lot has changed, as Tim Crawford said, this is a very, it feels like a different Microsoft, than it even was 12 or 24 months ago. They're innovating, so look at how fast Microsoft moves and some of these things. There's good energy, people are happy and it's still trying to, you know. It's interesting, I definitely learned a lot at this show even though it wasn't the most sparkly or shiny but that's not necessarily a bad thing. >> Right, I mean, I think as you made a great point about just how integral Microsoft is to all of our lives as consumers, as enterprise, the Xbox, the Windows, the data storage, there's just so much that Microsoft does that if we were to take away Microsoft, I can't even imagine what life would be like. What have been your favorite guests? I mean, we've had so many really, really interesting people. Customers, we've had partners, we're going to have a VC. What are some of the most exciting things you've heard? >> Yeah, it's interesting, we've had Jeffrey Snover on the program a couple of years ago and obviously a very smart person here. But at this show, in his ecosystem, I mean, he created PowerShell. And so many people is like, I built my career off of what he did and this product that he launched back in 2001. But we talked a little bit about PowerShell with him but then we were talking about Edge and the Edge Boxes and AI and all those things, it's like this is really awesome stuff. And help connecting the dots to where we hid. So obviously, big name guest star, always, and I always love talking to the customers. The thing I've been looking at the last couple of years is how all of these players fit into a multicloud world. And Microsoft, if you talk about digital transformation, and you talk about who will customers turn to to help them in this multicloud world. Well, I don't think there's any company that is closer to companies applications across the spectrum of options. Office 365 and other options in SaaS, all the private cloud things, you start with Windows Server, you've got Windows on the desktop, Windows on the server. Virtualization, they're starting to do hyperconversion everything, even deeper. As well as all the public cloud with Azure and developers. I talked to the Azure functions team while I was here. Such breadth and depth of offering that Microsoft is uniquely positioned to play in a lot of those areas even if, as I said, certain areas if the latest in data there might be some other company, Google, Amazon, well positioned there. We had a good discussion Bernard Golden, who's with Capital One, gave us some good commentary on where Alibaba fits in the global scheme. So, nice broad ecosystem, and I learned a lot and I know resonated with both of us, the "you want to be a learn it all, not a know it all." And I think people that are in that mindset, this was a great show for them. >> Well, you bring up the mindset, and that is something that Satya Nadella is really such a proponent of. He says that we need to have a growth mindset. This is off of the Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth research that talks about how important that is, how important continual learning is for success. And that is success in life and success on the job and organization success and I think that that is something that we are also really picked up on. This is the vibe of Microsoft, this is a company, Satya Nadella's leadership, talking to so many of the employees, and these are employees who've been there for decades, these are people who are really making their career, and they said, "Yeah, I been here 20 years, if I had my way, "I'll be here another 30." But the point is that people have really recommitted to Microsoft, I feel. And that's really something interesting to see, especially in the tech industry where people, millennials especially, stay a couple years and then move on to the next shiny, new thing. >> Yeah, there was one of our first guests on for Microsoft said that, "Been there 20 years and what is different about "the Satya Nadella Microsoft to the others is "we're closer and listening even more to our customers." We talk about co-creation, talk about how do we engage. Microsoft is focusing even deeper on industries. So that's really interesting. An area that I wanted to learn a little bit more about is we've been talking about Azure Stack for a number of years, we've been talking about how people are modernizing their data center. I actually had something click with me this week because when I look at Azure Stack, it reminds me of solutions I helped build with converged infrastructure and I was a big proponent of the hyper-converged infrastructure wave. And what you heard over and over again, especially from Microsoft people, is I shouldn't think of Azure Stack in that continuum. Really, Azure Stack is not from the modernization out but really from the cloud in. This is the operating model of Azure. And of course it's in the name, it's Azure, but when I looked at it and said, "Oh, well I've got partners like "Lenovo and Dell and HPE and Sysco." Building this isn't this just the next generation of platform there? But really, it's the Azure model, it's the Azure operating stack, and that is what it has. And it's more, WSSD is their solution for the converged and then what they're doing with Windows Server 2019 is the hyper-converged. Those the models that we just simplify what was happening in the data center and it's similar but a little bit different when we go to things like Azure and Azure Stack and leads to something that I wanted to get your feedback on. You talk business productivity because when we talk to companies like Nutanix, we talk to companies like Cohesity who we really appreciate their support bringing us here, giving us this great thing right in the center of it, they talk about giving people back their nights and weekends, giving them back time, because they're an easy button for a lot of things, they help make the infrastructure invisible and allow that. Microsoft says we're going to try to give you five to ten percent back of your business productivity, going to allow you to focus on things like AI and your data rather than all the kind of underlying spaghetti underneath. What's your take on the business productivity piece of things? >> I mean, I'm in favor of it; it is a laudable goal. If I can have five to ten percent of my day back of just sort of not doing the boring admin stuff, I would love that. Is it going to work, I don't know. I mean, the fact of the matter is I really applaud what Cohesity said and the customers and the fact that people are getting, yes, time back in their day to focus on the more creative projects, the more stimulating challenges that they face, but also just time back in their lives to spend with their children and their spouse and doing whatever they want to do. So those are really critical things, and those are critical things to employee satisfaction. We know, a vast body of research shows, how much work life balance is important to employees coming to their office or working remotely and doing their best work. They need time to recharge and rest and so if Microsoft can pull that off, wow, more power to them. >> And the other thing I'll add to that is if you, say, if you want that work life balance and you want to be fulfilled in your job, a lot of times what we're getting rid of is some of those underlying, those menial tasks the stuff that you didn't love doing in the first place. And what you're going to have more time to do, and every end user that we talked to says, "By the way, I'm not getting put out of a job, "I've got plenty of other tasks I could do." And those new tasks are really tying back to what the business needs. Because business and IT, they need to tie together, they need to work together, it is a partnership there. Because if IT can't deliver what the business needs, there's other alternatives, that's what Stealth IT was and the public cloud could be. And Microsoft really positions things as we're going to help you work through that transition and get there to work on these environments. >> I want to bring up another priority of Microsoft's and that is diversity. So that is another track here, there's a lot of participants who are learning about diversity in tech. It's not a good place right now, we know that. The tech industry is way too male, way too white. And Satya Nadella, along with a lot of other tech industry leaders, has said we need more underrepresented minorities, we need more women, not only as employees but also in leadership positions. Bev Crair, who was on here yesterday, she's from Lenovo. She said that things are starting to change because women are buying a lot of the tech and so that is going to force changes. What do you think, do you buy it? >> And I do, and here's where I'd say companies like Lenovo and Microsoft, when you talk about who makes decisions and how are decisions made, these are global companies. Big difference between a multi-national company or a company that's headquartered in Silicon Valley or Seattle or anything versus a global company. You look at both of those companies, they have, they are working not just to localize but have development around the world, have their teams that are listening to requirements, understand what is needed in those environments. Going back to what we talked about before, different industries, different geographies, and different cultures, we need to be able to fit and work and have products that work in those environments, everything. I think it was Bev that talked about, even when we think about what color lights. Well, you know, oh well default will use green and red. Well, in different cultures, those have different meanings. So yeah, it is, it's something that definitely I've heard the last five to ten years of my career that people understand that, it's not just, in the United States, it can't just be the US or Silicon Valley creating great technology and delivering that device all the way around the world. It needs to be something that is globally developed, that co-creation, and more, and hopefully we're making progress on the diversity front. We definitely try to do all we can to bring in diverse voices. I was glad we had a gentleman from Italy shouting back to his daughters that were watching it. We had a number of diverse guests from a geography, from a gender, from ethnicity, on the program and always trying to give those various viewpoints on theCUBE. >> I want to ask you about the show itself: the 30,000 people from 5,000 different organizations around the globe have convened here at the Orange County Convention Center, what do you think? >> Yeah, so it was impressive. We go to a lot of shows, I've been to bigger shows. Amazon Reinvent was almost 50,000 last year. I've been to Oracle OpenWorld, it's like takes over San Francisco, 60 or 70,000. This convention center is so sprawling, it's not my favorite convention center, but at least the humidity is to make sure I don't get dried out like Las Vegas. But logistics have run really well, the food has not been a complaint, it's been good, the show floor has been bustling and sessions are going well. I was talking to a guy at breakfast this morning that was like, "Oh yeah, I'm a speaker, "I'm doing a session 12 times." I'm like, "You're not speaking on the same thing 12 times?" He's like, "No, no it's a demo and hands on lab." I'm like, "Oh, of course." So they make sure that you have lots of different times to be able to do what you want. There is so much that people want to see. The good news is that they can go watch the replays of almost all of them online. Even the demos are usually something that they're cloud enabled and they get on live. And of course we help to bring a lot of this back to them to give them a taste of what's there. All of our stuff's always available on the website of thecube.net. This one, actually, this interview goes up on a podcast we call theCUBE Insights. So please, our audience, we ask you, whether it's iTunes or your favorite podcast reader, go to Spotify, theCUBE Insights. You can get a key analysis from every show that we do, we put that up there and that's kind of a tease to let you go to thecube.net and see the hundreds and thousands of interviews that we do across all of our shows. >> Great, and I want to give a final, second shout out to Cohesity, it's been so fun having them, being in the Cohesity booth, and having a lot of great Cohesity people around. >> Yeah, absolutely, I mean, so much I wish we could spend a little more time even. AI, if we go back to the keynote analysis then, but you can watch that, I can talk about the research we've done, and said how the end user information that Microsoft can get access to to help people when you talk about what they have, the TouchPoint to Microsoft Office. And even things like Xbox, down to the consumer side, to understand, have a position in the marketplace that really is unparalleled if you look at kind of the breadth and depth that Microsoft has. So yeah, big thanks to Cohesity, our other sponsors of the program that help allow us to bring this great content out to our community, and big shout out I have to give out to the community too. First time we've done this show, I reached out to all my connections and the community reached back, helped bring us a lot of great guests. I learned a lot: Cosmos DB, all the SQL stuff, all the Office and Microsoft 365, so much. My brain's full leaving this show and it's been a real pleasure. >> Great, I agree, Stu, and thank you so much to Microsoft, thank you to the crew, this has been a really fun time. We will have more coming up from the Orange County Civic Center, Microsoft Ignite. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, we will see you in just a little bit. (digital music)

>> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in San Francisco at the Professional Business Women of California Conference, the 28th year, I think Hillary must be in the neighborhood because everyone is streaming up to the keynote rooms. It's getting towards the end of the day. But we're excited to have Adam Smiley on. He's the author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough. Welcome Adam. >> Great to be here, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. So you gave a talk a little bit earlier on, I assume the theme of kind of your general thing. Would you just, Quarter-Life Breakthrough, what is Quarter-Life Breakthrough? >> So this is a book about how to empower the next generation. How young people can find meaning in their careers and their lives. So the subtitle of the book is Invent Your Own Path, Find Meaningful Work, and Build a Life That Matters. So everyone talks about millennials, you hear them in the news, "Oh they're the lazy generation," >> Right, right. >> "The entitled generation." The Me, Me, Me generation. I actually think that couldn't be further from the truth. So the truth is that actually 50% of millennials would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values. 90% want to use their skills for good. So my book is a guide for people to find purpose in their careers and really help them find meaning at the workplace and help companies empower that generation at work. >> So from being the older guy, so then is it really incumbent, you know, because before people didn't work for good, they worked for paycheck, right. They went, they punched in, they got paid, they went home. So is it really incumbent then on the employers now to find purposeful work? And how much of it has to be purposeful? I mean, unfortunately, there's always some of that, that grimy stuff that you just have to do. So what's the balance? >> Yeah and it's not to say that millennials don't want a paycheck, everyone wants money. I obviously want to make more money than less money. But it's also that this generation is really looking for meaning in the workplace. And one of the main things, if you look at all the studies, whether it's the Deloitte Millennial Study or the IBM Study, this is a generation that wants to move the needle forward on social issues at work. Not just after work or on the weekends, but at the workplace. And I think it's incumbent upon companies to really think about how they're providing those opportunities for purpose. Both in the mission of the company, what someone's doing every day, and opportunities outside of work, whether it's service projects, paid sabbaticals for people to do purpose-driven projects, really thinking about how someone is inspired to do mission during work every day. >> Right, it's interesting, Bev Crair at the keynote talked about, the question I think was, do you have to separate, kind of your personal views from your professional views and your social life? And she made a very powerful statement, she's like, "I'm comfortable enough with my employer that I can say what I feel and if there's ever a question they can ask me about it. But I don't gait what I say based on my employer as long as I'm being honest and truthful." So you know it's an interesting twist on an old theme. Where before you kind of had your separate worlds. You know, you had your work life and your home life, but now between email and text and social media, there is no kind of they're there for work and it's really invaded into the personal. So is that why the personal has to kind of invade back into the work? >> And when it comes to millennials, one word that always comes up is authenticity. People do not want to separate who they are at home from who they are at work. They want to be their whole person. Now obviously there's a line you don't cross. I'm not going to tell someone exactly what I think of them or tell the boss to go screw themselves or insult somebody or put on social media something that's secret that we're doing at the company. But I think that people want to feel that they get to show up who they are, have their beliefs echoed at the workplace, be able to be their full self, their full values, their mission, their goals, have that reflected in what they do, and have people at the company actually acknowledge that. You're not just an employee, I actually know what's going on in your life. I know what your dreams are, I know what your family's going through. I care about where you're headed, not just today or while you work here, but when you leave the company. Because that's the other thing, is that we're accepting that most of the people entering the workforce now or starting a new job, they're going to be there on average two to three years, maybe four, five, or six years. They're not going to be there ten, fifteen, twenty years like they used to be. So how do you actually empower someone to make an impact while they're there. And help them find the next lily pad, as they call it. The next opportunity. Because they're going to have a lot of those lily pads as they go throughout their career. >> It's interesting. We interviewed a gal named Marcia Conrad at an IBM event many years ago. She just made a really funny observation, she's like, "You know, people come in and you interview them and they're these really cool people and that's why you hire them, because they've got all these personality traits and habits and hobbies and things that they do, and energy." And then they come into the company, and then the old-school, you drop the employee, you know manual on top of them, basically saying stop being you. Stop being the person that we just hired. So that's completely flipped up on its head. >> Right, one of the things I talked about in the session today was this idea of stay interviews versus exit interviews. Normally when we do performance managements, kind of like, okay, you're leaving, what did you think? Why are you doing that when someone leaves? Do it to be like, what would make you stay? What do you want to accomplish while you're here? And you're not being graded against what everyone else is being graded on, what do you want to be graded on? What are your goals? What are your metrics for success? Performance achievement versus just performance measurement. I think is very important for this generation, because otherwise it's like, well why am I being judged on the standards that were written in 1986? This is what I'm trying to do here. >> It's interesting, even Jeff Immelt at GE, they've thrown out the annual review because it's a silly thing. You kind of collect your data two weeks before and the other fifty weeks everybody is just working. I have another hypothesis I want to run by you though. On this kind of purpose-driven. Today so many more things are as a service, transportation as a service, you know there seems to be less emphasis on things and more emphasis on experiences. It also feels like it's easier to see your impact whether it's writing a line of code, or doing something in social media. And you know there was an interesting campaign, Casey Neistat did, participated a couple weeks ago, right. They raised $2 million and basically got Turkish Airlines to fly in a couple hundred thousand metric tons of food to Somalia. And my question is, is it just because you can do those things so much easier and see an impact? Is that why, kind of this, increased purposefulness, I'm struggling on the word. >> I think the tools are certainly more available for people to take action. I think the connection is there. People are seeing what's going on in the world in a way that they've never been exposed to before with social media, with communication technology. It's up front and center. I think also that as technology takes over our lives, you see this with kind of statistics around depression and anxiety, people are starved for that in-person connection. They're starved for that meaning, that actual conversation. We're always doing this, but really a lot of data shows that people experience true joy, true fulfillment, true connection, true experience is what you're talking about, when they're in a room with someone. So people want that. So it's kind of a return back to that purpose-driven life, that purpose-driven tribe, village experience because the rest of the time we're on our phones. And yeah, it's cool, but something's missing. So people are starting to go back to work and be like, "I want that inspiration" that other generations may have gotten from church or from outside of work, or from their community, or from their village, or from the elders, or from a youth group or something. They're like, "I want that in the workplace. I want that everyday." >> Well so this is more top-down right? I mean I just think again, kind of the classic, back in the day, you were kind of compelled to give x percentage of your pay to United Way or whatever. And that was like this big aggregation mechanism that would roll up the money and distribute it to God-knows-where. Completely different model than, and you can see, because of social media and ubiquitous cell phones all over the place, you can actually see who that kid is, that's getting your thing on the other side. >> And it's empowering someone to say, "Okay this is what's important to me. These are the causes that I'd like to support. This is where I want my money to go and here's why." >> So what do you think's the biggest misunderstanding of millennials from old people like me or even older hopefully? >> Well one thing that I do think that millennials don't get right is the importance of patience. I think a lot of times people say, you know, "oh millennials, they want things to happen too quickly." I think that that's true. I think that my generation, I'm going to be the first to admit and say that we need to do a better job of being patient, being persistent. You can't expect things to happen overnight. You can't expect to start a job and in two months get promoted or to feel like you're with the Board of Directors. Things take time. At the same time, it's incumbent upon older generations to listen to these young people, to make them feel like they have a voice, to make them feel like they're heard and that their ideas matter, even if they don't have the final say, to make them feel like they actually matter. Because I think sometimes people assume that they don't know anything. They don't know everything, but they have some really brilliant ideas and if you listen to those ideas they might actually be really good for the company both in terms of profit and purpose. So that's one thing I would say. >> Okay, just, so first time with this show, just get your impressions of the show. >> Oh it's great. This is a great show. You all are doing a great job, a great interview. >> No not our show. The PBWC, I mean of course we're doing a good job, we have you on. I mean the PBWC. >> It's a great, you know for me, it's real exciting to be at the end of an event where I'm one of the only male speakers. Because usually, I've been doing the speaking circuit thing now for a year or two. And I go to these events, I go to panels, I go to conferences, keynotes, and it's mostly male speakers, which is a huge problem. There's far far far fewer women and people of color speaking at these events than men. And one of the things I'm really trying to change is that but also pay equity around speaking, because I talked to some of my female colleagues about what they were paid for a specific event, and they'll say, "Well they covered my transportation, they covered my lift and a salad, or my hotel maybe." I'm like, well I got paid $5000. That's messed up. We did the same amount of work. We did the same panel or doing the same keynote, similar experience levels. That's messed up. And so I'm trying to change that by doing this thing called the Women Speaker Initiative. Which is a mentorship program to empower more women and people of color to be speakers and then to make sure that they're paid fairly when compared to men. >> So how do people get involved with that? >> They should just got to my website, smileyposwolsky.com and check out Women Speaker Initiative. >> Alright, well Adam, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. Great great topic and I'm sure, look forward to catching up again later. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Alright. He's Adam, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. We're at the Professional Business Women of California conference, twenty eighth year. Thanks for watching.

>> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. It's the 28th year, Jackie Speier started it a long time ago and now it's grown to 6,000 people. It's a pretty amazing conference, it crosses all indrustries and actually a lot more than California as well. And we're excited to actually have somebody to come talk to us about the conference itself. It's Deepti Srivastava, she's a Project Manager of Google Cloud from Google. Great to see you again, last we saw you, I looked it up was 2014 >> I know. >> at Topcoder Open. >> Indeed. >> And you were doing great work then, you were on a panel with a bunch of high school girls. I remember they'd bust in a couple of busloads of high school girls and you and a couple other mainly young professional women talkin' to 'em about the life of an engineer. So you're still doin' good things. >> I hope so. (laughs) >> Absolutely. >> I hope so, yeah, it's a passion of mine and I'm really happy to bring it to something like PBWC where I'm on the board. And we do a bunch of work across industries and across all levels. PBWC's mission is to work for gender equity and equal pay for women across all industries and in all professional settings. >> Right. >> That includes young professionals, as well as the pipeline of professionals coming in. >> That's terrific. So we could talk about your day job all day long. (Deepti laughs) Google Cloud's kickin' tail, you guys had your big conference a couple weeks back-- >> Here in fact. (chuckles) >> Here in Moscone West, right? >> Yeah. >> But in terms of what you're doing here with PBWC, give us a little bit of the history. So we know it was started by Jackie Speier, I think you said 1988. >> Yeah. >> That's just amazing. >> I know. >> Obviously it's much more than California. >> Yeah. >> But what is the top-level mission and how has the conference evolved over the last several years? >> So Professional BusinessWomen of California, as you said was started by Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Judy Bloom, who's a co-founder. And we still exist and we've been doing this for so long and we really care about our mission, which is to work for basically gender equity and equal pay as I said, for all professional settings for women. And in this particular case, this conference we are talking about inclusion. And we chose this theme because we really think it's pertinent to what's going on right now in the world and in our country. And we, PBWC, believe that the things that unite us, the potentials and aspirations that unite us are greater than our differences and things like that. So we want to make a statement and really address the inclusion work that we do, and the inclusion work that's required for all of us to really move forward as a country and as a people. And if you look at our lineup of speakers today, we really do walk the talk that we're talking about. We have amazing speakers today with Rosario Dawson to Taraji P. Henson and all the way to Secretary Clinton who's closing out our day today, we are so excited to have her. And there's nobody better to represent breaking the glass ceiling than she has so we're very excited to hear. >> And what a get, I think I heard that it's her first public speaking engagement post the election. >> Yeah, I know. And it's very exciting because again, I think we're all about coming together and rallying and being a force for good. The conferences, that's our aim ultimately as an organization. And having her here to give her speech, first public appearance after the election last year, very exciting I think. >> Right, right. >> And we're very excited to hear from her. I'm already inspired by the thought that she's going to be here. >> And really a big part of the theme was kind of the strategy work is done, everybody knows it's good. Now it's really time for the rubber to hit the road. It's about execution and about taking steps and measuring. And a lot of the real concrete, nuts-and-bolts activities that need to happen to really move this thing down the road. >> You mean like gender equity and-- >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been a topic for awhile and I think, exactly, we need to have the rubber hit the road, we have to get together, we have to have actionable plans and that's what a bunch of our seminars today talk about. How to address those things in your, we really want to empower women and actually people of all backgrounds and ages and all sorts of people to take charge of their own lives. And especially, we are a professional women conference so that's kind of where we focus our messaging. But really we want women to take control of their own lives and we want to give them the tools, the networking opportunities, the inspirations to meet their aspirations in those fields. And so we want them to take charge and move forward by themselves, take away from here and go back to your job, to your work, to your home, to really bring your messaging forward. Take inspiration from here and bring it back to your life. >> Right, and I think Bev Crair, in the keynotes said, "Fill your well today." >> Yeah. >> 'Cause as soon as you leave here it's back to the grind and you're going to need that energy. So while you're here surrounded by this energy and your peers, take it all in and load up. >> Absolutely. And I also want to say that we started out as a conference, an annual conference, and that's definitely our marquee thing that we do every year. But we actually have a lot more offerings that people can continue to engage over the year. So we have webinars and seminars that people can attend, there's community events that happen here. And you can go to the PBWC website and see what all offerings we have. But we want people to engage and we want to be able to provide them with the means to engage throughout the year, not just here but take this, everything you get today and then take it along the rest of the year and recharge yourself. >> It's kind of this whole 365 concept which we talk about on theCUBE a lot too, 'cause we go to so many shows. And there's a huge investment of time and energy and money on those two or three days, but how do you extend that out beyond the show? How do you build the excitement leading into the show so it's not just a one time kind of a shot, then everything goes back to normal? >> Yeah exactly, I think that's exactly the point, that this is not just a one day, you go there, you get inspired and then what next, right? >> Right. >> There's something you can go back to with our various offerings and continue your learning journey if that's what you want, or networking journey if that's what you want to do. Wherever you are in your career, we actually have a Young Women's Professional Summit that I have the honor of chairing, that we have every year and it's meant to help young professional women navigate their way from being in college and high school and those entering a professional life so as I said, we want to cater to all levels and all ages and all sorts of challenges that people face as they're going through their professional careers. >> So that's a separate event? >> It is, it is an annual conference. >> And when is that? Give a plug. Or do you have a date? (Deepti chuckles) >> Yeah, we don't have a date yet but it's going to be in the summer. >> In the summer, okay great. Well I think when we met last, I thought that was such an important piece of that Topcoder Open because it wasn't the Sheryl Sandbergs or the Hillary Clintons or these super mega top-of-the-pyramid people. It was a bunch of young professionals, one of the gals was still in school, hadn't finished graduating, to make it so much real for those high schoolers. They didn't have to look so far to say, "I could see myself, I kind of look like that person, "I kind of see things touch." >> And I think that's very important, Jeff. Exactly. It's very important and that's what we try to do here at PBWC as well. We want to go from catering to the Millennials and how we interact with them and all the way up to C-suite, we had a Senior Leadership Summit yesterday leading up to the conference today where we have a bunch of C-suites and CDOs, Chief Diversity Officers, come together and talk about trending topics and how to solve them. So we really are trying to move the needle forward on many fronts here, but our aim is all of that to culminate into moving women and people of all backgrounds forward. >> Right. And then there's this whole entrepreneurial bit which you can't see behind the camera, but there's booths all over for Intel and LinkedIn and Microsoft and the names that you would expect, Google of course, but there's also all the little boutiques, clothing stores and jewelry stores and crafty things. There's even of course women-focused snacks with the Luna Bars and I forget the other one. (chuckles) So it's kind of a cool entrepreneurial spirit kind of on top of everything else. >> Absolutely. And you know Jackie Speier, Congresswoman, started this conference to help women who were in the SMB, sort of SME market, basically women who ran small businesses. And we want to continue to do that as well but now of course the world is changing and we have a much more of a corporate presence and we want to help there too. But yeah, we pay homage to that by having women who are women entrepreneurs running women-focused businesses, and we have them here in the expo area if you can get a shot of that later. >> Right. >> The energy is palpable, the excitement is there and it's so great to be here and harness that, and take it back, I mean the first time I was here many years ago when I was not even on the board, I was just like, oh my gosh, there's so many women here who are like me or who are, they're people I could look up to all the way up to the C-suite who are making their presence felt here. And also all the people around me and like-minded, like me. So it's a really inspiring event. And I've been here for many years but I'm still inspired by it. So I'm so excited that we do this and continue to do this. >> So, little harder to question. So, and you've been doing this for awhile, what surprises you on the negative that still you know, you're still fighting that battle that you wouldn't have expected to still be doing? And then conversely what has surprised you on the positive, in terms of what's moved maybe further than you might've thought or faster than you might've thought? >> That's a good question. I think you already nailed it, right. The fact that we are still here talking about this is interesting to me, and as I got more involved in this kind of work I realized that people have been doing this for a long time. Congresswoman herself has been doing this for so long and a fearless advocate for women's rights and equal pay and diversity and inclusion. And the fact that we are still here, it is indicative of the fact that we need to have a groundswell movement in order to change policy. We can talk about it all we want but unless there's actionable things you can take away and really have that grassroots-level work to push the envelope forward, it's not going to happen. I think the positive is, as I've seen this conference over the years, it's grown. And it's gotten a lot more young people involved and it's not just the senior leadership that is trying to pull people forward, it's the people starting out early in their careers or mid-level in their careers that are looking at taking charge of their own destiny and pushing their agenda forward in this sense. They want, they're asking for equal pay. They're really engaged and aware. And conferences like PBWC actually help with that, getting those minds together and making things move forward. So I think from a positive side I'm really excited to see so many more people engaged in this fight. And the more people we have, the more we can actually make real progress and real inroads. >> And if you look back, as someone who's never been here and then they see this interview and they say, "This looks awesome, I'm going to sign up," what do you think the biggest surprise when they come for the first-timer? >> I'll tell you what I was surprised by, is seeing so many women together across industries, across ages, across backgrounds. Everybody together, really wanting to move forward. They're really wanting to engage, to connect with each other and to actually make a difference. People are here to make a difference, right? >> Right, right. >> And that's, to say that 6,000 people come together and really all of them have that same sort of mentality of like yes, I'm empowered to make a difference, is electrifying. >> Deepti, I love the energy. >> (laughs) Thank you. >> I love the energy, absolutely. >> It's all these people. >> It is. >> Trust me, I'm sleep deprived (Jeff laughs) with my very young son. So yeah, this is all the energy that I need to feed off of. >> No, it's good. And there is something special here. >> Mm-hmm. >> And you can feel it. 'Cause we go to a lot of shows, you go to a lot of shows. And again, it's not an exclusive tech show which is kind of nice 'cause we cross a lot of industries. But there's definitely, there's an energy, there's a vibe that comes from the little entrepreneurial outlets, it just comes from the, that room was packed. The keynote room was... >> I know. >> Was not fire marshal friendly. (Deepti laughs) Hopefully the fire marshal was not close by-- >> Yes, we had some discussion on that too. But to your point, this is one of the conferences that I've seen where we really, perhaps the only conference I've seen where we really cut across all industries. Because there's tech-focused, there's business-focused, there's all sorts of focused conferences trying to do either their professional work on technology or whatnot, or they're trying to solve the problem on the gender and diversity and inclusion piece in their own silos. And we try to cut across so that we can actually have a coming together of all of these various industries and their leaders, thought leaders, sharing ideas and sharing best practices so that we can actually all move forward together, I think that's again our Senior Leadership Summit which happened last night and the VIP reception which happened last night is all about getting those thought leaders together and getting them to share their best practices and ideas so that again, they can take it back to their companies and really move forward with DNI initiatives. >> It's action right, it's all about the action. >> Absolutely. >> So I promise next time that we talk, we'll talk about Google Cloud. >> Oh, sure. >> 'Cause that's hoppin'. (Deepti laughs) But it was great to see you and congratulations on all your work with the board and with your event >> Thank you. >> in the summer. People should go to the website, keep an eye out. >> Absolutely. >> It'll be comin' out. >> Yeah. >> So thank you. >> Thank you so much, it was great to see you too, Jeff. >> Absolutely. Alright she's Deepti, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at the Professional BusinessWomen of California Conference. The 28th year, pretty amazing, 6,000 people. Here at Moscone West, thanks for watchin'. (upbeat techno music)

(clicking) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. It looks like they're letting the general session out. We're here at the Professional Business Women of California Conference; 6,000 women, about 5% men really talking about, it's amazing, the 28th year. I've never been to this show about how women can get more inclusive and diversity and taking, executing on steps to actually make it happen as somebody said in the key note. It's not a strategy problem, it's an execution problem. So, we've got a great story here and we're really excited to have CUBE alumni, Andrea Ward. She's now the CMO of Magento Commerce. Welcome back, Andrea. >> Thank you so much, it's great to be here and great to be at this conference. The buzz is amazing and I was here two years ago and it's grown so much, just in the two years. >> How many people were there, they say it's 6,000, now. >> I mean, it looks like it's about doubled. I don't know what the numbers were two years ago but the participation is amazing and it's such a great opportunity for local businesses to bring employees from their companies, have them have a chance just to talk and learn from such powerful women. So, it's been a really great conference. >> And, it's also a cross of so many kind of verticals if you will, because you know we go to a lot of tech conferences. This is more kind of a cross industry with banking and insurance and, you know, United Airlines we talked to earlier. And so, it's a much more diverse kind of set. >> Absolutely, I mean the women on the panels this morning spanned legal professions, government, entertainment, business, really diverse issue and it's fantastic that women are coming together to support each other to help make a difference. >> So last we saw you, I think we were on the street on Howard Street a couple years back which was pretty exciting as well, but now your new company, Magento Commerce. So, for people who aren't familiar with the company, give them kind of the four-one-one. >> Yeah great, well Magento Commerce is a leading commerce technology platform for mid-size businesses. We have recently separated from Ebay about 15 months ago and are now a privately held company and we power about a third of the world's commerce, believe it or not. >> That is amazing. Yeah. >> A third of the world's eCommerce. >> That's right. So, it's a fantastic company. We're growing and a part of that growth is absolutely growing a more diverse workforce and we've been putting into place some initiatives since last year. >> Yeah, part of the key note conversations were, obviously, that you need to put goals down on paper and you need to measure them and I think it was Bev Crair from Intel talked about, you know, doing it across all the pay grades. It's not just in engineering or just on the board or just the executive ranks, but really all the way across and it sounds like you guys are executing that to really help you just grow the company generically. >> Well, we're in a very lucky position in that we're experiencing growth and so that gives us room to really go out and look for amazing talent across the board. And so, we put a focus on diversity and inclusion and by doing that, we've increased the percentage of women in all roles across the company by 50% and that's since last June. So I think, you know, really just what you said earlier about execution and putting some numbers and goals against that can really make a difference. >> Right, and if you hadn't had those, that execution detail you probably couldn't have grown that fast because let's face it, it's hard to get good talent. If you're not including a broader base of talent, you're not going to be able to achieve your goals. >> Well, that's right and I think that some of that is, I don't know if you want to call it unconscious bias or unintentional, we're used to hiring people that look like us, have experience like us. And so, by encouraging that diversity, it really has made us expand the pool of applicants, make sure that we're not going for the easiest choice or the simplest choice but really considering a wide range of candidates to fill those positions. >> You know, I don't the birds of a feather conversation comes up enough, it's just easy to go with what you're familiar with. So whether it's unconscious or not, it's just easy, people are busy, you want to check the box and get off to your next task. So, you have to take a step back and consciously do the extra work, take the extra effort. >> Well, in the industry we support, the industries we support are going through digital transformation, I mean, commerce is key and central to digital transformation. And, transformation and change means that you have to consider other perspectives. You need to learn from new ideas and I think, you know, diversity plays a big part in that as well. So, I think bringing that into our own company because we're supporting that broader industry has been very important. >> Right. So, I want to take that opportunity to pivot on what you just said about in terms of the changing role of commerce. You know, I often think of like banks because in a bank, you know, your relationship was with your local branch; maybe you knew the banker, maybe you knew a couple of the tellers whatever, but you had a personal connection. Now, most people's engagement with the brands they interact with is electronic and via their phone and it's interesting that you say that. And, it's the commerce around those engagements, that the commerce is becoming the central point of gravity if you will and the relationship is spawning all from that. >> Well, I mean, personal connections are still very important and commerce I feel is like the moment where a conversation really turns into a relationship. So, it's important that those digital experiences, the customer experiences really make up the right connection with the brand. And so, that seamless interaction between what happens at the branch, for example in the financial example, on what you can do at home, that needs to be very cohesive. It needs to be trustworthy, it needs to be authentic and that means businesses need to create individual experiences that really reflect their brand. And, our company specifically has really helped businesses create those experiences, seamless experiences and translated them from digital to in-store or in the branch. I think the biggest change now is how that's starting to impact business-to-business relationships, I think. >> In what way? In the consumer world, we're used to that now right? We're all doing that in our everyday experiences. Now, we're starting to see that also come into a business-to-business relationship. So, just like the seamless conveniences that you have online in your day to day life, people want to see that in the workplace, too. And so, we're seeing the biggest change now in those types of business models. >> They're rocking in the background, if you can't hear them. >> Yeah! We are here. >> Yeah! You know, it's funny, I just saw, something come across the feed talking about that annoying business-to-business add in Instagram, but then aren't you glad you saw it? >> Yeah. >> So, it's interesting how, you know, the B to C norms, you know, continue to help define what's going on in the B to B space and we've seen it in Enterprise Software Applications and Cloud and the flexibility and speed of innovation. It just continues to really drive the business-to-business relationship. >> Yeah, and I think just like in the business-to-consumer world, it has started with content in business-to-business. But, now people want to move from just learning and knowledge to actually transacting which means that companies need to enable specialized price list, account management, things like that and that's starting to surface in the commerce world as well. So, we're really excited about that and we're going to be sharing some of that at our conference next week; Imagine, in Las Vegas. >> Okay yeah, it's amazing how fast. It was not that long ago, we were just trying to get the 360 view. Right? We were just trying to pull from all the various desperate systems to know who that customer was for a given system. Now, it's a segmentation to want, a very different challenge. >> Right, I mean it's that change from thinking about trying to attract your customer to come to your business to really bringing the business to the customer. I mean, I think that's what some of this digital technology is allowing us to do. We're going to them rather than trying to draw them in to come to us, if that makes sense. This idea of commerce coming to you, right? >> And, it's got to come to you with something that's relevant, that's topical, that's timely. >> That's easy to execute, that can mirror a real experience. I mean, you hear a lot of things about, things like virtual reality, artificial intelligence. I mean, all of that's just gimmicks unless you can actually think about how you make that real for your brand. So, for example, we have a customer in Mexico City who is selling eyewear, right. And so, everybody when they buy glasses, they want to try them on, so we need to help them give their customers that virtual experience. If they can't come into the store and try them on, we want to be able to let them try them on at home. So, that's a natural extension of the brand and a way to use virtual reality and I think businesses are still trying to figure that out. But, if those customers didn't have that experience, it'd be less likely that they actually would buy or, you know, make a commerce transaction. >> But, if I'm hearing you, instead of it really kind of being in a marketing effort that then it's completed with a transaction, you're kind of coming at that which you just described from the transaction first and this is really a supporting or an enabling activity. >> That's right, it all starts with the customer understanding what is going to help them make their decisions. Giving them experiences that feel seamless, giving them options. So, if they want to come in-store but see what's maybe available at another store for pick-up or if they want to come in-store and order online or if they want to order from home and then go into the store and pick it up. It's really about giving the customer the right options for them. >> Right. >> Another great story we had is, I mean, how many of us travel, I know you travel a lot. >> Right. >> I travel a ton. >> Especially, to Vegas. (chuckling) >> Especially, to Vegas! And, you know, my kids are always expecting something when I come home but who has time? So, you know, one of our partners worked with the Frankfurt Airport and created an application where on the way to the airport, you can go shopping at all of their stores in the airport and have your package waiting for you at the gate on the way to the plane. So now, you know, they've figured out what their customers want to do first by creating this great shopping experience at the airport. Now, they know people are running through the airport, how can we extend that shopping experience for them while they're sitting in the taxi (chuckling) on the way, have it waiting for them at the gate? And so, for me personally, working for a company that's helping customers to do those kinds of things has really been fun. >> Right, because they always have the liquor for ya ready to go at the gate but never the kids', you know, t-shirts or a little tchotchke or, I can remember running through Heathrow time and time again trying to find something quickly. >> Yeah, and now with two kids and a husband that all want something different, (laughing) you know, it makes it much easier for me. >> Alright, Andrea, well you've been doing this marketing thing for a long time. I'll give you the last word both on the conference and kind of, you know, as a marketer to see where we're going with A.I. and really the ability to actually segment to one. You know, how exciting is that for you? >> Yeah, I mean, it's fantastic. I think, you know, marketers want to create relationships with their brand and all of these tools are giving us better access, better chance to create that fantastic experience. So, it's a great time to be a marketer. (chuckling) And, it's a great time to be at this conference, too so. >> Alright. Thanks very much. >> Thanks for stopping by, Andrea Ward. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from the Professional Business Women's Conference in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>>Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the cube covering EMC world 2015. Brought to you by EMC, Brocade and VCE. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas with the cube at EMC real 2015. I'm John ferry, the founder of Silicon Ang. I'm joined with two special guests. Stella Lowe. Who's the global communications at EMC runs, global communications and Amy Posey, neuro facilitator at peak teams. Welcome to the cube. >>So >>You had a session women of the world. We did it last year, but great cube session last year. Um, so I want to get a couple of quick questions. What's going on with women of the world, what you guys just came from there and you guys were on the panel and then what is a neuro facilitator? And then let's get into it. Let's talk about men and women, how we work together. >>Okay, great. So let's start with women of world. So, um, so last year we talked about the challenges that we face and how we reframe them into opportunities that we had some fantastic panelists, but this year I was really interested in the science behind men and women. So it's clear that we're different and we're all bled for success, but, but we're wired differently. And we kind of knew that already. I know we talked about it before John, but we now have the science behind it. We can look at brain scans and we can see that we, Oh, we have different brain patterns. We think differently, uh, different parts of the brain fire fire up when, in times of motivation and stress and people like Amy here, who've done lots of work into this, have having the stages. It was great to have her on the panel to discuss it. >>I'm going to give you a plug because EMC does all kinds of things with formula one cars, motorcycles, getting the data and understanding the race. But now you're dealing with people. So what is going on? Tell us what's up neuro facilitator and let's >>So a neuro facilitator is maybe the best made up job title in the world that I gave myself. So essentially what I do is I look at information about the brain and I curate the research that's out there. So there's a lot of new technology to actually read and look inside our heads. We all have a brain, but we don't necessarily all know how it works. So there's a lot more research and, and tools to read our brains and take a look inside. So what I do is I take that research and, and work with, um, neuroscientists and neurobiologist at Stanford, Columbia, UCLA, and, and reach out and figure out how do we take that information and make it easier, still attain. And I do it in the scope of leadership at organizations like EMC and other technology companies to figure out how do we work better? What information is out there? You know, soft skills and sort of relationship skills. I've always been sort of squishy, right? So now there's a lot more science and information about our brains that are informing it. The, the data's out there, what I do and what my job is, is to pull the data and figure out how do we make it into practical, useful applications for us at work at home, wherever we are. So that's essentially, I'm doing so you >>Guys discussed and how men and women are different. Actually look at the data. We have to give a lot of qualitative data. I mean, it keeps counselors in business. You know, the grant in the workforce, uh, balance is important, but we have a lot of that data, but what's the numbers. What is your findings? So >>What's interesting is looking at men and women's brains. What's fascinating is that we are more alike than dissimilar in looking at a brain. If you looked at a brain scan, one of a man and woman, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two, but they're now finding and looking at different parts of the brain in different functions. So for instance, men have approximately 6% more gray matter than women. So in terms of the gray matter, that's the thinking brain essentially, and women have more white matter than gray. Matter about 9% more than men. And the white matter is what connects the brain and communicate both front and back and side to side. And so you can make some extrapolation of that information and say, you know, men may focus more on issues, solutions, problems, whereas women sort of think more broadly or wider. >>So, I mean, there are generalities, but a lot of the sciences is fascinating. There's also some interesting science about the hippocampus, which is, um, sort of deep. If this is your brain, it's deep inside the brain and the hippocampus is the memory center. And it's what they're finding is that for women, they tend to store emotional memories more effectively. So happy, sad, fearful those types of emotions get stored more effectively in the hippocampus. Whereas men oftentimes during stress, the hippocampus actually has a challenge in making connections. So that's where, again, some of the, the focus and determination and silo viewed sometimes that men have in situations or problems comes into play. Um, there's one other piece, the anterior cingulate cortex, which is sort of within the brain and that's the brains error detector. And it turns out it's a little bit bigger in women. So women sort of tend to look for, uh, issues CA you know, problems, um, maybe less solution focused, especially under times of stress and, and a lot of this, data's interesting. >>It, it causes you to make some generalities, you know, not everybody is going to operate in that way. Your mileage may theory, but it's, it's good because it helps us inform some of the quirky behavior that we deal with at work and figuring out why, why don't you do that? Why do you do that and installed that women being better or women using more of the brain or less of the brain it's, it's, it's simply about we, we, if all brains away from differently, we both bring different things to the table. And how do you take both of those benefits and bring them forward into a better outcomes? >>Always great to talk about because in the workforce, people are different. And so differences is a term that we use, like, you know, with kids learn differently, some have evolved differently and men and women have had differences. So the data shows that that's clear. Um, I want to share a quote that my wife shared on Facebook. It says mother, um, well, a worried mother does better research than the FBI. So, um, I bring that up, you know, it's instinctual. So a lot of it's also biological and also environmental talk about the dynamics around that, that wiring, because you're wired by your upbringing too, that affects you. And what's the, what's the data show in the biology. >>So it's interesting because the, the key piece is that it's not just the biological brain differences. It's, it's a whole host of factors that leave a footprint on us, in our behavior. So it's our education, it's our, uh, you know, where we, where we grew up, our culture is part of that. It's also gender stereotypes that play a role in how we operate. And I think all of those things leave a footprint on a, an and lead us to different behaviors. And so you can't just say it's the, the, the information that's on our brains. It's a whole host of factors that influence. So my study of looking at how the brains are a little bit different and what the research is coming, it's, it's blended in with research around leadership and things like confidence and motivation in the workplace bias in the workplace. And they're, they're showing very different things. >>So for instance, if you think about confidence, we did an interesting exercise in the event at women of world. And I asked, you know, there's, there's a lot about confidence and confidence is essentially the will or motivation to act. So how many women in the room, uh, would raise the, you know, go up for a job that they were really interested in and fascinated by, but maybe weren't a hundred percent qualified for, like, how many of you have maybe turned down that job or decided not to apply because it wasn't the right time. Like you, you're pretty competent, but not a hundred percent confident in it. And it was funny because the majority, all the women's hands went up in the room. So then I asked him, I flipped the question in the room and I asked the men in the room. I said, okay, if you were only about 50% confident for a job that you were going up for, would you, of course, right. Like, yes, I >>Fabricate some stuff on their resume and you make >>Them look bigger. So, exactly. So what's interesting is testosterone plays a role in confidence and motivation at work. And it turns out men have 10 times the amount of testosterone as women do. So part of that is that aggression, but we both have it, but that, that aggressive factor, that idea to go after something, to be more confident, um, women are behind the curve in that, from the research that I've seen. So it takes more effort to, to, to be able to have the confidence, to go for it and to sort of break down those barriers that exist for women to, to go after those jobs that they want, even if it's not a hundred percent. And so we did a, an exercise in boosting confidence in testosterone called power posing. And Amy Cuddy out of Harvard does a, a whole Ted talk on it, which is fascinating. >>But the idea is that you, you know, you, you put your chest back, you put your hands on your hips and it helps boost your testosterone up to about 20%. And it reduces cortisol, which is a stress hormone. So it's a, it's a quick way. You don't do it in front of people. You do it sort of on the sly or else you kind of, you don't look very nice to others, but you, you boost your confidence doing that. And it's just a small sort of brain hack that you can do to give yourself an upper hand, knowing that knowing the science behind it. So it's a behavior changing type of research that's coming out, which I think is really, >>That's really interesting, but now it translates into leadership and execution in the workforce. So people are different than men and women are different that changes the dynamic around what good is, because if your point about women not asking for that job or having confidence to the field, like I'm not going to go for it, like a man bravado, whatever testosterone that's what mean that that's the benchmark of what drive means. So this came up with Microsoft CEO at the Anita board conferences, which we had a cube there. And, and this is a big issue. So how do HR, how do the managers, how do people recognize the differences and what does the data show, and, and can you share your thoughts on that? >>Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes down to bias and bias is essentially a shortcut that we use in our brains to take less energy. And it's not a bad thing. It's, it's something we all do. And it's conscious and it's unconscious. So bias, I think is a key piece of that. And the research on bias is fascinating. It's very, it's, it's very popular topic these days, because I think being able to do a couple of things, be aware that there are hundreds of biases and they're both conscious and unconscious, uh, acknowledge that it exists, but not legitimize it not make that. Okay. The third piece is to, to counter it and, and being able to counter bias by making sure that people have opportunities. And even though you may have re removed hypothetical barriers explicitly stating that you want people, men, or women to apply for promotions, be this type of leader, not just assume that because there are no barriers that it's okay, but really be explicit in how you give people opportunities and let them know that they're out there. I think that's really key. >>Yeah. That brings up the point around work life balance, because, you know, I have a family of four, four kids it's stressful just in and of itself to have four kids, but then I go to the workforce and the same with women too. So there's also a home dynamic with leadership and biases and roles. Um, what's your take on any data on the how of that shifting persona realities, if you will, um, shapes the data. >>It's interesting because it's, it's something that we even talked about in the session that it's a struggle and, and, um, Bev career from Intel was talking about that. There's a period of time that actually is really tough to keep women in the workforce. And it's that time where you're growing your family, you're growing your career. And oftentimes things sort of struggle. And I, I read something recently around women in STEM careers, over a 10-year period, 42% of women drop out of the workforce in comparison to 17% of men. And so I think there's a lot, a ways to go in terms of being able to set up environments where working life is integrated, because it's, it's not even balanced anymore. It's integration. And how do you set up structures so that people can do that through how they work through how they connect with others. And, and to me, that's a big piece is how do you keep people in the workforce and still contributing in that critical point in time? And, you know, Intel hasn't figured it out. It's a tough challenge, >>Stamina. We're a big fans of women in tech, obviously because we love tech athletes. We'd love to promote people who are rock stars and technology, whether it's developers to leaders. And I also have a daughter, two daughters. And so two questions. One is women in tech, anything you could share that the data can talk to, to either inspire or give some insight and to, for the young women out there that might not have that cultural baggage, that my generation, at least our worse than older than me have from the previous bias. So motivating young daughters out there, and then how you deal with the career advice for existing women. >>So the motivating young women to get into tech, um, Bev shared a really absolutely fascinating statistic that between the ages of 12 and 18, it's incredibly important to have a male support model for young girls to get into STEM careers, that it was absolutely critical for their success. And it's funny because the question came up like, why can't that be a woman too? And what's interesting. And what we find is oftentimes we give men the short shrift when they try and support women, and we don't want to do that. We want to support men supporting women because when that happens, we all win. Um, and so I think that's a big piece of it is starting young and starting with male support as well as female support. So many women who, who cite men as, as he had mental was in that gray, you know, or in their daily life. And it's pretty important that they can feel that they can do that. >>And this goes back down the wiring data that you have the data on how we're were wired. It's okay, guys, to understand that it's not an apples to apples. So to speak, men are from Mars. Women are from beans, whatever that phrase is, but that's really what the data is. >>And being explicit to men to say, we want you to support women instead of having men take a back seat feeling like maybe this isn't my battle to fight. It's, it's really important to then encourage men to speak up to in those, those situations to, to think about sort of women in tech. One of, uh, a really interesting piece of research that I've seen is about team intelligence and what happens on teams and Anita Willy from Carnegie Mellon produced this really fascinating piece of research on the three things that a team needs to be more intelligent. It's not just getting the smartest people in the room with the highest IQ. That's a part of it. You want table stakes, you want to start with smart people, but she found that having women, more women on a team actually improved the team's overall intelligence, the collective intelligence and success of a team. So more women was the first one. The second was there's this ability and women tend to be better at it, but the ability to read someone's thoughts and emotions just by looking at their eyes. So it's called breeding in the mind's eye. So just taking a look and being able to sense behavior, um, and, and what someone's thinking and feeling, and then being able to adjust to that and pivot on that, not just focusing on the task at hand, but the cohesion of a team with that skill made a difference. >>It's like if it's a total team sport, now that's what you're saying in terms of how use sport analogy, but women now you see women's sports is booming. This brings up my, my, your, uh, awesome research that you just did for the folks out there. Stella was leading this information generation study and the diversity of use cases now with tech, which is why we love tech so much. It's not just the geeky programmer, traditional nail role. You mentioned team, you've got UX design. You have, um, real time agile. So you have more of a, whether it's a rowing analogy or whatever sport or music, collaboration, collaboration is key. And there's so many new disciplines. I mean, I'll share data that I have on the cube looking at all the six years and then even women and men, the pattern that's coming up is women love the visualization. It's weird. I don't know if that's just so it's in the data, but like data scientists that render into reporting and visualization, not like just making slides like in the data. Yeah. So, but they're not writing, maybe not Python code. So what do you guys see similar patterns in terms of, uh, information generation, it's sexy to have an iWatch. It's >>Cool. So like a cry from Intel on the panel, she gave a great statistic that actually, uh, it's more it's women that are more likely to make a decision on consumer tech than men. And yet a lot of the focus is about trying to build tech for men, uh, on the, you know, if consumer tech companies want to get this right, they need to start thinking about what are women looking for, uh, because, uh, they're the ones that are out there making these decisions, the majority of those decisions. >>Yeah. I mean, it's an old thing back in the day when I was in co, um, right out of college and doing my first startup was the wife test. Yeah. Everything goes by the wife because you want to have collaborative decision-making and that's kind of been seen as a negative bias or reinforcement bias, but I think what guys mean is like, they want to get their partner involved. Yeah. So how do, how do we change the biases? And you know, where I've talked to a guy who said, the word geek is reinforcing a bias or nerd where like, I use that term all the time, um, with science, is there, I mean, we had the, the lawsuit with Kleiner Perkins around the gender discrimination. She wasn't included. I mean, what's your take on all of this? I mean, how does someone practically take the data and put it into practice? >>I think the big thing is, you know, like I said, acknowledging that it exists, right? It's out there. We've been, I feel like our brains haven't necessarily adapted to the modern workplace and the challenges that we've dealt with because the modern workplace is something that was invented in the 1960s and our brains have evolved over a long time. So being able to handle some of the challenges that we have, especially on how men and women operate differently at the workplace, I think is key, but calling it out and making it okay to acknowledge it, but then counter where it needs to be countered where it's not right. And being explicit and having the conversations I think is the big piece. And that's what struck me with the Kleiner Perkins deal was let's have the conversation it's out there. A lot of times people are reticent to, to have the conversation because it's awkward and I need to be PC. And I'm worried about things. It's the elephant in the room, right. But it actually is. Dialogue is far better than leaving it. >>People are afraid. I mean, guys are afraid. Women are afraid. So it's a negative cycle. If it's not an out in the open, that's what I'm saying. >>And the idea is it's, what can we do collectively better to, to be more positive, to, to frame it more positively, because I think that makes a bigger difference in terms, in terms of talking about, Oh, we're different. How are we the same? How can we work together? What is the, the connection point that you bring, you bring, we all bring different skills and talents to the table. I think it's really taking a look at that and talking about it and calling it out and say, I'm not great at this. You're great at this. Let's, let's work together on what we can do, uh, more effectively, >>Okay. Team sports is great. And the diversity of workforce and tech is an issue. That's awesome. So I'd ask you to kind of a different question for both of you guys. What's the biggest surprise in the data and it could be what reinforced the belief or insight into something new share, uh, a surprise. Um, it could be pleasant or creepy or share it. >>Price to me is intuition. So we always talk about women having intuitions. I've had men say, you know, well, my wife is so intuitive. She kind of, she kinda gets that and I've had that in the workplace as well. And I think the biggest surprise for me was that we can now see, we've now proved the intuition. Intuition is a thing that women have, and it's about this kind of web thinking and connecting the dots. Yeah. So we sort of store these memories deep, deep inside. And then when we see something similar, we then make that connection. We call it intuition, but it's actually something it's a kind of a, you know, super recall if you like, and, and, and replaying that situation. But that I think was the biggest surprise to me, Amy. So I would think that the thing that, that always astonishes me is the workplace environment and how we set up environments sometimes to shoot ourselves in the foot. >>So, so often we'll set up, uh, a competitive environment, whatever it is, let's let's and it's internal competition. Well, it turns out that the way that the brain chemicals work in women is that competition actually froze us into, to stress or threat cycle much more easily than it does to men, but men need it to be able to get to optimal arousal. There's a lot of interesting research from Amy Ernest in, at Yale and, and that piece of how you can manipulate your environment to be more successful together to me is absolutely key. And being able to pull out elements of competition, but also elements of collaboration, you kind of knew it, but the science validates it and you go, this is why we need to make sure there's a balance between the two. So everyone's successful. So to me, that's the aha. I could listen to Amy all day and how we apply it to the workplace. That's the next big step. Yeah. >>Yeah. You guys are awesome. And thanks so much for sharing and I wish we could go long. We're getting the hook here on time, but is there any links and locations websites we can, people can go to to get more information on the studies, the science. So I, a lot of my day curating >>And looking for more research. So peak teams.com/blog is where I do a lot of my writing and suggestions. Um, it's peak teams, P E K T E M s.com. And so I run our blog and kind of put my musings every once in a while up there so that people can see what I'm working on. Um, but they can reach out at any time. And I'm on Twitter at, at peak teams geek. Speaking of geeks, I embraced the geek mentality, right? >>Well, we have, I think geeks comment personally, but, um, final point, I'll give you the last word, Amy, if you could have a magic wand to take the science and change the preferred vision of the future with respect to men and women, you know, working cohesively together, understanding that we're different decoupled in science. Now, what would you want to see for the environment work force, life balance? What would be the magic wand that you would change? >>I think being able to make women more confident by helping reduce bias with everybody. So being more keyed in to those biases that we have in those automatic things we do to shortcut and to be more aware of them and work on them together and not see them as bad, but see them as human. So I think that's my big takeaway is remove, remove more bias. >>Fantastic. Stella Lowe, and Amy Posey here inside the cube. Thanks so much. Congratulations on your great work. Great panel. We'll continue. Of course, we have a special channel on SiliconANGLE's dot TV for women in tech. Go to SiliconANGLE dot DV. We've got a lot of cube alumni. We had another one here today with Amy. Thank you for joining us. This is the cube. We'll be right back day three, bringing it to a close here inside the cube live in Las Vegas. I'm John Forney. We'll be right back after this short break.