>> Narrator: "theCUBE's" live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (intro music) >> Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to "theCUBE's" day three coverage of MWC23. Lisa Martin here in Spain, Barcelona, Spain with Dave Nicholson. We're going to have a really interesting conversation next. We're going to really dig into MWC, it's history, where it's going, some of the controversy here. Please welcome our guests. We have Jim Harris, International Best Selling Author of "Blindsided." And Carolina Milanese is here, President and Principle Analyst of creative strategies. Welcome to "theCUBE" guys. Thank you. >> Thanks. So great to be here. >> So this is day three. 80,000 people or so. You guys have a a lot of history up at this event. Caroline, I want to start with you. Talk a little bit about that. This obviously the biggest one in, in quite a few years. People are ready to be back, but there's been some, a lot of news here, but some controversy going on. Give us the history, and your perspective on some of the news that's coming out from this week's event. >> It feels like a very different show. I don't know if I would say growing up show, because we are still talking about networks and mobility, but there's so much more now around what the networks actually empower, versus the network themselves. And a little bit of maybe that's where some of the controversy is coming from, carriers still trying to find their identity, right, of, of what their role is in all there is to do with a connected world. I go back a long way. I go back to when Mobile World Congress was called, was actually called GSM, and it was in Khan. So, you know, we went from France to Spain. But just looking at the last full Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, in pre-pandemic to now, very different show. We went from a show that was very much focused on mobility and smartphones, to a show that was all about cars. You know, we had cars everywhere, 'cause we were talking about smart cities and connected cars, to now a show this year that is very much focused on B2B. And so a lot of companies that are here to either work with the carriers, or also talk about sustainability for instance, or enable what is the next future evolution of computing with XR and VR. >> So Jim, talk to us a little bit about your background. You, I was doing a little sleuthing on you. You're really focusing on disruptive innovation. We talk about disruption a lot in different industries. We're seeing a lot of disruption in telco. We're seeing a lot of frenemies going on. Give us your thoughts about what you're seeing at this year's event. >> Well, there's some really exciting things. I listened to the keynote from Orange's CEO, and she was complaining that 55% of the traffic on her network is from five companies. And then the CEO of Deutsche Telecom got up, and he was complaining that 60% of the traffic on his network is from six entities. So do you think they coordinated pre, pre-show? But really what they're saying is, these OTT, you know, Netflix and YouTube, they should be paying us for access. Now, this is killer funny. The front page today of the show, "Daily," the CO-CEO of Netflix says, "Hey, we make less profit than the telcos, "so you should be paying us, "not the other way around." You know, we spend half of the money we make just on developing content. So, this is really interesting. The orange CEO said, "We're not challenging net neutrality. "We don't want more taxes." But boom. So this is disruptive. Huge pressure. 67% of all mobile traffic is video, right? So it's a big hog bandwidth wise. So how are they going to do this? Now, I look at it, and the business model for the, the telcos, is really selling sim cards and smartphones. But for every dollar of revenue there, there's five plus dollars in apps, and consulting and everything else. So really, but look at how they're structured. They can't, you know, take somebody who talks to the public and sells sim cards, and turn 'em in, turn 'em in to an app developer. So how are they going to square this circle? So I see some, they're being disrupted because they're sticking to what they've historically done. >> But it's interesting because at the end of the day, the conversation that we are having right now is the conversation that we had 10 years ago, where carriers don't want to just be a dumb pipe, right? And that's what they are now returning to. They tried to be media as well, but that didn't work out for most carriers, right? It is a little bit better in the US. We've seen, you know, some success there. But, but here has been more difficult. And I think that's the, the concern, that even for the next, you know, evolution, that's the, their role. >> So how do they, how do they balance this dumb pipe idea, with the fact that if you make the toll high enough, being a dumb pipe is actually a pretty good job. You know, sit back, collect check, go to the beach, right? So where, where, where, where does this end up? >> Well, I think what's going to happen is, if you see five to 15 X the revenue on top of a pipe, you know, the hyperscalers are going to start going after the business. The consulting companies like PWC, McKinsey, the app developers, they're... So how do you engage those communities as a telco to get more revenue? I think this is a question that they really need to look at. But we tend to stick within our existing business model. I'll just give you one stat that blows me away. Uber is worth more than every taxi cab company in North America added together. And so the taxi industry owns billions in assets in cars and limousines. Uber doesn't own a single vehicle. So having a widely distributed app, is a huge multiplier on valuation. And I look to a company like Safari in Kenya, which developed M-Pesa, which Pesa means mo, it's mobile money in Swahili. And 25% of the country's GDP is facilitated by M-Pesa. And that's not even on smartphones. They're feature phones, Nokia phones. I call them dumb phones, but Nokia would call them "feature phones." >> Yeah. >> So think about that. Like 25, now transactions are very small, and the cut is tiny. But when you're facilitating 25% of a country's GDP, >> Yeah. >> Tiny, over billions of transactions is huge. But that's not the way telcos have historically thought or worked. And so M-Pesa and Safari shows the way forward. What do you think on that? >> I, I think that the experience, and what they can layer on top from a services perspective, especially in the private sector, is also important. I don't, I never believe that a carrier, given how they operate, is the best media company in the world, right? It is a very different world. But I do think that there's opportunity, first of all, to, to actually tell their story in a different way. If you're thinking about everything that a network actually empowers, there's a, there's a lot there. There's a lot that is good for us as, as society. There's a lot that is good for business. What can they do to start talking about differently about their services, and then layer on top of what they offer? A better way to actually bring together private and public network. It's not all about cellular, wifi and cellular coming together. We're talking a lot about satellite here as well. So, there's definitely more there about quality of service. Is, is there though, almost a biological inevitability that prevents companies from being able to navigate that divide? >> Hmm. >> Look at, look at when, when, when we went from high definition 720P, very exciting, 1080P, 4K. Everybody ran out and got a 4K TV. Well where was the, where was the best 4K content coming from? It wasn't, it wasn't the networks, it wasn't your cable operator, it was YouTube. It was YouTube. If you had suggested that 10 years before, that that would happen, people would think that you were crazy. Is it possible for folks who are now leading their companies, getting up on stage, and daring to say, "This content's coming over, "and I want to charge you more "for using my pipes." It's like, "Really? Is that your vision? "That's the vision that you want to share with us here?" I hear the sound of dead people walking- (laughing) when I hear comments like that. And so, you know, my students at Wharton in the CTO program, who are constantly looking at this concept of disruption, would hear that and go, "Ooh, gee, did the board hear what that person said?" I, you know, am I being too critical of people who could crush me like a bug? (laughing) >> I mean, it's better that they ask the people with money than not consumers to pay, right? 'Cause we've been through a phase where the carriers were actually asking for more money depending on critical things. Like for instance, if you're doing business email, then were going to charge you more than if you were a consumer. Or if you were watching video, they would charge you more for that. Then they understood that a consumer would walk away and go somewhere else. So they stopped doing that. But to your point, I think, and, and very much to what you focus from a disruption perspective, look at what Chat GTP and what Microsoft has been doing. Not much talk about this here at the show, which is interesting, but the idea that now as a consumer, I can ask new Bing to get me the 10 best restaurants in Barcelona, and I no longer go to Yelp, or all the other businesses where I was going to before, to get their recommendation, what happens to them? You're, you're moving away, and you're taking eyeballs away from those websites. And, and I think that, that you know, your point is exactly right. That it's, it's about how, from a revenue perspective, you are spending a lot of money to facilitate somebody else, and what's in it for you? >> Yeah. And to be clear, consumers pay for everything. >> Always. Always. (laughs) >> Taxpayers and consumers always pay for everything. So there is no, "Well, we're going to make them pay, so you don't have to pay." >> And if you are not paying, you are the product. Exactly. >> Yes. (laughing) >> Carolina, talk a little bit about what you're seeing at the event from some of the infrastructure players, the hyperscalers, obviously a lot of enterprise focus here at this event. What are some of the things that you're seeing? Are you impressed with, with their focus in telco, their focus to partner, build an ecosystem? What are you seeing? >> I'm seeing also talk about sustainability, and enabling telco to be more sustainable. You know, there, there's a couple of things that are a little bit different from the US where I live, which is that telcos in Europe, have put money into sustainability through bonds. And so they use the money that they then get from the bonds that they create, to, to supply or to fuel their innovation in sustainability. And so there's a dollar amount on sustainability. There's also an opportunity obviously from a growth perspective. And there's a risk mitigation, right? Especially in Europe, more and more you're going to be evaluated based on how sustainable you are. So there are a lot of companies here, if you're thinking about the Ciscos of the world. Dell, IBM all talking about sustainability and how to help carriers measure, and then obviously be more sustainable with their consumption and, and power. >> Going to be interesting to see where that goes over the years, as we talk to, every company we talk to at whatever show, has an ESG sustainability initiative, and only, well, many of them only want to work with other companies who have the same types of initiative. So a lot of, great that there's focus on sustainability, but hopefully we'll see more action down the road. Wanted to ask you about your book, "Blind," the name is interesting, "Blindsided." >> Well, I just want to tag on to this. >> Sure. >> One of the most exciting things for me is fast charging technology. And Shalmie, cell phone, or a smartphone maker from China, just announced yesterday, a smartphone that charges from 0 to 100% in five minutes. Now this is using GAN FEST technology. And the leader in the market is a company called Navitas. And this has profound implications. You know, it starts with the smartphone, right? But then it moves to the laptops. And then it'll move to EV's. So, as we electrify the $10 trillion a year transportation industry, there's a huge opportunity. People want charging faster. There's also a sustainability story that, to Carolina's point, that it uses less electricity. So, if we electrify the grid in order to support transportation, like the Tesla Semi's coming out, there are huge demands over a period. We need energy efficiency technologies, like this GAN FEST technology. So to me, this is humongous. And it, we only see it here in the show, in Shalmie, saying, "Five minutes." And everybody, the consumers go, "Oh, that's cool." But let's look at the bigger story, which is electrifying transportation globally. And this is going to be big. >> Yeah. And, and to, and to double click on that a little bit, to be clear, when we talk about fast charging today, typically it's taking the battery from a, not a zero state of charge, but a relatively low state of charge to 80%. >> Yep. >> Then it tapers off dramatically. And that translates into less range in an EV, less usable time on any other device, and there's that whole linkage between the power in, and the battery's ability to be charged, and how much is usable. And from a sustainability perspective, we are going to have an avalanche of batteries going into secondary use cases over time. >> They don't get tossed into landfills contrary to what people might think. >> Yep. >> In fact, they are used in a variety of ways after their primary lifespan. But that, that is, that in and of itself is a revolutionary thing. I'm interested in each of your thoughts on the China factor. Glaringly absent here, from my perspective, as sort of an Apple fanboy, where are they? Why aren't they talking about their... They must, they must feel like, "Well we just don't need to." >> We don't need to. We just don't need to. >> Absolutely. >> And then you walk around and you see these, these company names that are often anglicized, and you don't necessarily immediately associate them with China, but it's like, "Wait a minute, "that looks better than what I have, "and I'm not allowed to have access to that thing." What happens in the future there geopolitically? >> It's a pretty big question for- >> Its is. >> For a short little tech show. (Caroline laughs) But what happens as we move forward? When is the entire world going to be able to leverage in a secure way, some of the stuff that's coming out of, if they're not the largest economy in the world yet, they shortly will be. >> What's the story there? >> Well, it's interesting that you mentioned First Apple that has never had a presence at Mobile World Congress. And fun enough, I'm part of the GSMA judges for the GLOMO Awards, and last night I gave out Best Mobile Phone for last year, and it was to the iPhone4 Team Pro. and best disruptive technology, which was for the satellite function feature on, on the new iPhone. So, Apple might not be here, but they are. >> Okay. >> And, and so that's the first thing. And they are as far as being top of mind to every competitor in the smartphone market still. So a lot of the things that, even from a design perspective that you see on some of the Chinese brands, really remind you of, of Apple. What is interesting for me, is how there wouldn't be, with the exception of Samsung and Motorola, there's no one else here that is non-Chinese from a smartphone point of view. So that's in itself, is something that changed dramatically over the years, especially for somebody like me that still remember Nokia being the number one in the market. >> Huh. >> So. >> Guys, we could continue this conversation. We are unfortunately out of time. But thank you so much for joining Dave and me, talking about your perspectives on the event, the industry, the disruptive forces. It's going to be really interesting to see where it goes. 'Cause at the end of the day, it's the consumers that just want to make sure I can connect wherever I am 24 by seven, and it just needs to work. Thank you so much for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Lisa, it's been great. Dave, great. It's a pleasure. >> Our pleasure. For our guests, and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching, "theCUBE," the leader in live and emerging tech coverage coming to you day three of our coverage of MWC 23. Stick around. Our next guest joins us momentarily. (outro music)

>> Hello and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE on theCUBE. We're here in Sundance 2018 at the Intel Tech Lounge for a panel discussion with experts on the topic of The New Creative. We believe a new creative renaissance is coming in application development and also artistry. The role of craft and the role of technology and software coming together at the intersection. You're seeing results in the gaming industry. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality. A new wave is coming and it's really inspiring, but also there's a few thought leaders at the front end of this big wave setting the trends and they're here with us in this special panel for The New Creative. Here with us is Brooks Browne, Global Director of VR at Starbreeze Studios, a lot to share there, welcome to the panel. Lisa Watt, VR Marketing Strategist at Intel, Intel powering a lot of these VR games here. And Winslow Porter, co-founder and director of The New Reality Company. Many submissions at Sundance. Not this year, but a ton of experience talk about the role of Sundance and artistry. And then we have Gary Radburn who's a director of commercial VR and AR from media within Dell, Dell Technologies. Guys, welcome to this panel. Lisa, I want to start off with you at Intel. Obviously the Tech Lounge here, phenomenal location on Main Street in Sundance. Really drawing a massive crowd. Yesterday it was packed. This is a new generation here and you're seeing a younger demographic. You're seeing savvier consumers. They love tech, but interesting Sundance is turning into kind of an artistry tech show and the game is changing, your thoughts on this new creative. >> Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I've been here for, this is my third year coming back with VR experiences. And it's really just been incredible to see. Sundance has been on the leading edge of exploring new technologies for a long time and I think this is, I feel like you know this feels like the break out year really. I mean, it's been successful the last few years, but something about this year feels a little bit different. And I think maybe it's the people are getting more familiar with the technology. I think the artists are getting more comfortable with how to push the boundaries. And then we certainly are getting a lot out of seeing what they're doing and how we can improve our products in the future. >> We were talking yesterday, Lisa, about the dynamic at Sundance. And you were mentioning that you see a few trends popping out. What is the most important story this year for the folks who couldn't make it, who might be watching this video that you see at Sundance? Obviously it's a great day today, it's snowing, it's a white day, it's beautiful powder, greatest snow on Earth. But there's some trends that are emerging. We had a march this morning, the Women's March. You're seeing interesting signals. What's your view? >> I think there's a lot less desire to put up with subpar experiences. I mean I think everyone is really starting to push the boundaries, I mean, we saw a lot of 360 video which we love for a linear narrative. But they're really breaking out and really exploring what does it mean to have autonomy especially in the virtual reality experiences, a lot more social is coming to the forefront. And then a lot more exploration of haptics and the new ways of extending into more 4D effects, etc. So I think it's very very exciting. We're really excited to see all the new innovations. >> Winslow, I want to ask you, if you can comment, you've been an active participant in the community with submissions here at Sundance. This year you're kind of chilling out, hanging out. You've been on the front lines, what is your take on the vibe? What's the sentiment out there? Because you're seeing the wave coming, we're feeling it. It feels early. I don't know how early it is, and the impact to people doing great creative work. What's that take? >> Well yeah, it's kind of like VR years are like dog years, you know. Like a lot can happen in a month in the VR space. So I had a piece here in 2014 called Clouds. It was an interactive documentary about Creative Code, but that was back when there was only two other VR pieces. It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed. Because CCP Games had a piece there. An early version of E Valkyrie. And unfortunately in the last three months, they had to close their VR wing. So, and then Chris Milk also had a Lincoln piece with Beck. Which was a multi camera 360, actually it was a flash video that they recorded to the DK1. And so that was, seeing that everyone was, saw the potential. The technology was still pretty rudimentary or crude even, we should say. Before any tracking cameras. But every year people learned from previous Sundances and other festivals. And we're seeing that Sundance kind of raises the bar every year. It's nice that it's in January because then there's all these other festivals that sort of follow through with either similar content, newer versions of content that's here, or people have just sort of learned from what is here. >> So I got to ask you. You know, obviously Sundance is known for pushing the boundaries. You see a lot of creative range. You see a lot of different stuff. And also you mentioned the VR. We've seen some failures, you've seen some successes, but that's growth. This market has to have some failures. Failures create opportunities to folks who are reiterating in that. What are some of the things that you can point to that are a positive? Things that have happened whether they're failures and/or successes, that folks can learn from? >> Well, I think that this year there's a lot more social VR. We're connecting people. Even though they're in the same space, they're able to be in this new virtual world together. There's something amazing about being able to interact with people in real life. But as soon as you have sort of a hyper reality where people are able to be experiencing a Sufi ritual together. Things that you wouldn't normally... That they're not possible in the real world. And also, I think that there's issues with lines too. Obviously every year, but the more that we can have larger experiences with multiple people, the more people we can get through. And then more impact we can make on the audience. It's really... We were in claim jumper last year. And we could only get one person in every 10 minutes. And that makes things pretty tricky. >> And what are you doing at Sundance this year? You've obviously got some stuff going on with some of the work you've done. What's your focus? >> So yeah we have a company called New Reality Company where we produce Giant and Tree. It's part of a trilogy where Breathe is going to be the third part. We're going to be completing that by the end of this year. And right now, I would say the best thing about Sundance is the projects, but also the people. Being able to come here, check in, meet new people, see partners that we've been working with in the past. Also new collaborations, everywhere you turn, there's amazing possibilities abound. >> I want to talk about empathy and social. I mentioned social's interesting in these trends. I want to go to Brooks Brown, who's got some really interesting work with Starbreeze and the Hero project. You know, being a pioneer, you've got to take a few arrows in your back, you've got to blow peoples' minds. You're doing some pretty amazing work. You're in the front lines as well. What's the experience that you're seeing? Talk about your project and its impact. >> Well for us, we set out with our partner's ink stories, Navid Khonsari, a wonderful creative, and his entire team to try to create that intensely personal experience kind of moving the opposite direction of these very much social things. The goal, ultimately being to try to put a person inside of an event rather than a game style situation where you have objective A, B, or C. Or a film that's a very, very hyper linear narrative. What is that sort of middle ground that VR itself has as unique medium? So we built out our entire piece. Deep 4D effects, everything is actually physically built out so you have that tactility as you walk around. Things react to you. We have smell, temperature, air movement, the audio provided by our partners at DTS is exceptional. And the goal is ultimately to see if we put you in a situation... I'm doing my best not to talk about what that situation is. It's pretty important to that. But to watch people react. And the core concept is would you be a hero? All over the world, every day people are going through horrific stuff. We're fortunate because we're the kind of people who, in order to experience, say a tragedy in Syria, we're fortunate that we have to go to Park City, Utah and go in virtual reality to experience something that is tragic, real, and deeply emotional. And so our goal is to put people through that and come out of it changed. Traumatized actually. So that way you have a little bit more empathy into the real world into the actual experiences they went through. >> And what's the goal? This is interesting because most of the some stuff you see, the sizzle out there is look at the beautiful vistas and the beaches and the peaks and you can almost be there. Now you're taking a different approach of putting people in situations that probe some emotional responses. >> Yeah. It's a big deal to us. The way Navid like to put it, and I'm going to steal this from him, is you see a great deal of people prototyping on hardware and all of these things, and it's great cause we need that. We need to be able to stand on the shoulders of those giants to be able to do these things. But you see very few people really prototyping what is the concept of story as per VR? We've been doing, at Starbreeze, we've been doing location based for some time now and I've been getting thousands upon thousands of pitches. And whenever you get a pitch, you can pretty much identify, oh you come from a film background, you come from a games background. There's very few people who come down that middle line and go, well this is what VR is supposed to be. This is that interesting thing that makes it very deeply unique. >> What's the confluence and what's the trend in your mind as this changes? Cause you mentioned that gamers have affinity towards VR. We were talking about that before we came on the panel. You know, pump someone in mainstream USA or around the world who does email, does work, may not be there, you're seeing this confluence. How is that culture shifting? How do you see that? Cause you're bringing a whole nother dimension. >> We're trying to go back to a little bit, something about this Sundance being a little bit different. I think in general in VR, you're seeing this sort of shift from a few years ago it was all potentiality. And I think a lot of us, the projects were great, but a lot of us who work in VR were like oh I see what they're trying to do. And people like my dad would be like I don't. I don't see what they're trying to do. But that is shifting. And you're seeing a larger shift into that actuality where we're not quite there yet where we can talk about the experiences every day Americans are going to have. What is the real ready player one that we're actually going to have existing. We're not there yet, but we're much closer every time. And we're starting to see a lot of these things that are pushing towards that. Final question before I go to some of the speeds and feeds questions I want to get with Intel and Dell on is what is the biggest impact that you're seeing with your project and VR in general that will have the most important consequences for societal impact? >> Well, we were fortunate yesterday we had a number of people come through Hero. And a number of them simply actually couldn't handle it. Had to come out. We had to pull people out. The moment we took the headset off, they were, tears were streaming down their face. There's a level of emotional impact VR is extremely able to cut through. It's not that you're playing a character. It's not that you're in a separate world. You are you inside of that space. And that is a dangerous but very promising ability of VR. >> Winslow, could you take a stab at that, I'd like to get your reaction to that because people are trying to figure out the societal impact in a positive way and potentially negative. >> Yeah I mean, so with that, whenever you traumatize somebody else or have the ability to possibly re-traumatize somebody... In Giant, we made sure that we gave them a trigger warning because yeah these things can be intensely intimate or personal for somebody who already has that sort of baggage with them or could be living in a similar experience. In Giant, we witnessed the last moments of a family. As they're convincing their daughter that the approaching bomb blast is a giant that actually wants to play with her. And so we put haptics in the chair so the audience was also surprised. But we let them know that it was going to be taking place in a conflict zone. So if that was something that they didn't want to participate in, that they could opt out. But again, like we didn't know... We had to go and buy tissues like right off the bat because people were crying in the headset. And that's kind of a... It's an interesting problem to have for the sake of what are sort of the rules around that? But also it makes it more difficult to get people through the experience in a timely fashion as well. But yeah, but we're seeing that as things become more real then there's also a chance to possibly impact people. It's the... >> So it's social for you? You see it as a social impact? >> Well, I mean if everyone's experiencing the same thing that can be social, but again if it's a one on one experience, it's sort of like up to the filmmaker to make sure that they have the scruples that they are playing by the rules. Cause there's right now most every piece of content is being released through Oculus, Steam, or Viveport. But there will be... It's heavily regulated right now, but as soon as there's other means of distributing the content, it could take a different sort of face. >> Certainly some exciting things to grab on, great stuff. I want to get to the commercial angle. Then we're going to talk more about the craft and the role of artistry in the creating side of it. Gary, you're the commercial VR expert at Dell. You're commercializing this. You're making the faster machines. We want faster everything. I mean everyone... Anyone who's in VR knows that all the graphics cards. They know the speeds and feeds. They're totally hardware nerds. What's going on? Where's the action? >> Okay, that's such a large question. I mean we've had some great stuff here that I also want to comment on as well. But inside the commercial side, then yeah everybody wants bigger, stronger, better, faster. And to Winslow's comment about the dog years, that really puts the pressure on us to continue that innovation and working with partners like Intel to get those faster processors in there. Get faster graphics cards in there so that we can get people more emotionally bought in. We can do better textures, we can get more immersion inside the content itself. We're working a lot around VR in terms of opening peoples' eyes for societal impact. So VR for good for instance. Where we're taking people to far flung corners of the Earth. We work with Nat Geo explorer Mike Libecki to show the plight of polar bears in Greenland and how they're gradually becoming extinct for an edutainment and a learning tool. The boundaries are really being pushed in entertainment and film. That's always been the case. Consumer has always really pushed that technology. Commercial's always been a bit of a lagger. They want stability in what's going on. But the creation that's going on here is absolutely fantastic. It's taken what is essentially a prosumer headset and then taking it into that commercial world and lit it up. 360 video, its very inception, people are using it for training inside of their businesses and so that's now going out into businesses now. We're starting to see advances in 360 video with more compute power needed. Where, to the point about immersion and getting people emotionally bought in. Then you can start doing volumetric, getting them in there. And then we're also working with people like Dr. Skip Rizzo who was on our panel yesterday where we're starting to go into, okay, we can treat PTSD. Help people with autism, through the medium of VR. So again, that buys into... >> These are disruptive use cases that are legit? >> Yeah. >> These are big time, market moving, helping people... >> Absolutely. And that where it becomes really, really powerful. Yes, we want our companies to embrace it. Companies are embracing it for training. But when you start seeing the healthcare implications and people crying inside of headsets. That's effecting you deeply, emotionally. If you can make that for good, and change somebody's trigger points inside of PTSD, and the autism side of helping somebody in interview techniques to be able to be more self sufficient, it's absolutely awesome. >> This is the new creative. So what's your take on the new creative? What's your definition? Cause you're talking about a big range of use cases beyond just film making and digital artistry. >> Yeah, absolutely so the new creative is like with all the great work that's here, people are looking at film and entertainment. Now the world really is the oyster for all the creatives out there. People are clamoring out for modelers, artists, story tellers, story experiencers to be able to use that inside their commercial environments to make their businesses more effective. But they're not going to have a 360 video production company inside of their commercial organization. And it's then leveraging all of the creative here and all of the great stuff here. Which is really going to help the whole world a lot. >> Lisa, I want to get your thoughts on this cause you guys at Intel here at the Tech Lounge have a variety of demos, but there's a range of pro and entry level tools that can get someone up and running quickly to pro. And so there's a creative range not only just for digital artistry, but also business we're hearing. So what's the... Cause AI's involved in a lot of this too though. It's not just AI, it's a lot of these things. What's the Intel take on this. >> Well I think it's really an interesting time for us at Intel because one of the things that we have that I think probably nobody else has. We have this amazing slate of products that really cover the end to end process. Both from the creation side of the house all the way to the consumption side. And we talk a lot about our processors. We worked on an amazing project, a couple of huge scenes inside of the Sansar environment. Which is a great tool for really democratizing the creation of spaces. It's a cloud hosted service but it utilizes this amazing client-server architecture. We created four huge spaces in a matter of eight weeks to launch at CES. And some of the technologies that Gary was referring to just in pure processing power like two generations old processors were taking three hours to render just a small portion of a model where our newest generation Core i9s with our opting technology took that time to 15 minutes. So when we think about what we can do now, and those technologies are going to be available in even portable laptop form factors. We've got the piece where we were working here SPHERES. They were able to actually make some corrections and some tweaks basically immediately without having to send them off to some render farm. They were able to do those things. And I know Winslow has talked about that as well. What does it mean to you to be able to react real time. And be able to do your creative craft where you are and then be able to share that so readily. And then you know... I just think that's kind of an amazing equalizer. It's really democratizing the creation process. >> Okay the next question that begs for everyone to address is where are we in this progression? Early? What work needs to get done? Where are we holding back? Is it speeds and feeds? Is it the software? Is it the routines, libraries, art? Where's the bottleneck? Why isn't it going faster? Or is it going faster? >> I would, and I'm sure the team would agree here, I would say that one of the key things is the creator tools themselves, right. They are still somewhat cumbersome. We were talking to another filmmaker. He was like I can't even, I have to play the whole piece from the beginning, I can't just go in and edit, you know change control, being able to collaborate on these pieces with other people. I mean, if you can collaborate in a real world space, you should be able to also collaborate in VR and have change control and all those sorts of things that are necessary to the iteration of a project. So we're trying to work with our software partners. They're all doing a really great job of trying to iterate that, but it's going to take some time. I mean I think that's probably the bigger thing that's holding everything back. We're going to be right there with the processing power and the other technologies that we bring to the table. OEM partners are going to be right there with the best devices. I really think it's something we've all got to push for as far as those tools getting better. >> Brooks, comment on anything? You're in the... >> So for me, the thing that's holding back VR in general is actually the art form itself. One of the great challenges, if you look back, at say the history of film... We're at Sundance, so it's probably fairly apropo. Very early on in the early movies, aside from penny arcade machines that you'd actually stare at, they were 10 minute almost like plays that people would go to almost a playhouse and they'd watch this thing. There were not cuts, there were no angles. It was a single wide shot. Great Train Robbery came around and there was this crazy thing they did called an edit. Where they spliced film together. And if you go back and you read, and they did these dolly shots. People will have no idea what they're watching. There's no way people will be able to follow that. Like people were not happy with it at the time. Now it's stuff that children do on their iMacs at home. They do iMacs all the time, they do it on their iPhones, on their Android devices. These are normal languages of film that we have. VR doesn't have that yet. And there's not a great deal of effort being made in that direction. There's people here doing that. So I'm kind of speaking in the middle of the group, but outside of these people, there's only a handful who are really doing that and it's a significant challenge. When people who are the mainstream consumer put on a VR headset, it needs to be more than just a magic trick where they go oh that's cool. And that tends to be the vast majority of experiences. So what is the thing that is going to make someone go oh I get why we have VR as a medium. And we're not there yet. We're in the direction, but that's >> So you mentioned earlier the point where you can tell if someone's from film or gaming or whatever when you talk to them about VR. Who is the future VR developer? Is it a filmmaker? Is it a gamer? Is it a digital artist? What is this evolving? >> It's a kid in his basement who no one knows and is screwing around with it and is going to do something that everyone thinks is stupid. Like, it's going to be that. Basically every major leap in gaming is kind of the same thing. It's when we understand how ludonarrative dissonance works inside of telling how people move around a space. It's about how we do Dutch angle suddenly in film. And these things get invented. It's going to be some kid who's just screwing around who doesn't have the baggage of the language of film. A lot of the people I know in VR have been fortunate to work in film, in games and interactive or web dev. So you come from a lot of places but someone's going to come along who has none of that baggage. And they're going to be... >> Well you guys are pioneers and you're doing it. So for the first person out there that's in their basement, that inspirational soundbite or comment. How can you guys talk to that person or that group? Because this is the democratization, this is what's happening. It's not the gatekeepers. It's real creatives out there that could come from anywhere. YouTube generation, Twitch generation, gaming. What would you say to that person to motivate them and to give them that passion? >> Well it's only going to get easier, faster, cheaper, all these things are happening. But again, yeah I totally agree with what Brooks said. It's really about the culture and about educating the audience and getting them up to speed. There are some VR experiences that as soon as they put on the headset, like somebody who's never done it before, immediately will take it off cause they'll get nauseated. And then there's people, like kids who are like jet fighters. They've seen everything. You could throw like a 30 frames per second experience at them and that doesn't even phase them. They can be, all of a sudden their worlds are changing and they're like bring it because they're ready for that. So I think it's sort of about raising the bar for what the audience is comfortable with, familiar with, educating the community. There's a lot of tools right now, you know with Unreal and Unity that allow people who have very little... They don't need to know C# or C++, they can get started in a lot of like visual. What you see is what you get. Being able to drag things into a virtual room. And the windows headsets that are out. They refer to them as mixed reality, but just even having the ability to flip up the screen and transition from the virtual world to the real world in milliseconds, it allows you to be able to create things more at the speed of thought instead of coming up with an idea, coding it, and making sure it works, and then eventually putting on the headset. The sooner that we can actually be ideating inside this virtual environment is when things will get really interesting. >> So the next question is to take to the next level is what's the playbook? How does someone get involved? How does someone ingratiate into a community? If I'm an artist, I want to get, and I'm proficient with technology, or maybe not, how do they get involved? Is it community driven? Is it social? You guys mentioned seeing social's a big trend here. How do people get involved? What's the track? >> Well yeah you don't just need to go to a grad school or... There's a lot of programs out there that are popping up. Almost every single major state school has like an interactive art program now. And that wasn't the case like two or three years ago. So we're seeing that that's a big shift in the culture. But again, VR is still... It's expensive and it's you know, like VR, I refer to it's in the stage of it's almost like in the neo geo phase, maybe a little before that. But it's the really expensive thing that your friend's neighbor has. Or his older brother or something. You get to play it a little bit, you're like that's great but there's no way in hell I'm going to... You know, I can't afford that or like that just doesn't really work with my lifestyle right now so it needs to incorporate itself into our everyday, our habits. And it needs to be something that... If we're all doing it then it makes sense for us to do it together not just somebody in their basement doing it by themselves. >> Yeah feel free to comment, this is a good topic. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So what we're doing is sort of about democratization and accessibility. So for people to get into the then they're going to need a rig, they're going to need a headset and previously it's actually been quite expensive to actually take that first plunge into it. So now by democratizing and bringing price points down, it makes it more accessible. That helps content creators because there's now more of an audience that can now consume that content. And the people that can then play with the medium and consume it now have a better reason to do it. So we're working on that. We're also working on the education pieces like Key. It's actually going out there to schools and actually letting them experience VR and play with VR. Because it is a whole new different medium. We've seen film directors and filmmakers go into the VR space and things that worked in 2D film like fast pans and whatever else so the points have already been made don't really translate into VR without somebody losing their lunch. So it is going to be somebody who's coming up who hasn't got the baggage of previous skill sets inside of 2D doing it inside of VR. So we're going to see that. And in terms of the technology, everybody's wanting things to progress. That shows the level of excitement out there. And everybody wants to get into it. Everybody wants to see it go further. And I'm reminded of the mobile phone. Mobile phone, 30 years ago? Two suitcases for batteries, a large brick on the ear and a car antennae. Okay, so where we are now, if you had a time machine and you went back in time to talk to the inventor of the mobile phone, well, I'd be a lot richer because I know sports results and all, but that aside, but you go back and talk to them and you said do you know in 30 years time, everybody is going to be carrying that device? Everybody's going to be dependent on that device? They're going to get social anxiety and separation anxiety if they lose it. And they will probably laugh in your face. >> Alright so since you brought up the phone analogy, since I love that example, are we in the Blackberry moment of VR and no one yet has built the iPhone? Because the iPhone was the seminal moment for smartphones. And you see what happened there. Is VR needing that kind of break? Or is it there? >> I think we're on the cusp. Where we are at the moment with technology, we've had the headsets, which I say have been more in the consumer space, they've been designed to hit a certain price point. We had CES the other week where we've had advancements now in the resolutions of headset that are now coming out. One of the issues was well I can't see texts, I can't read texts. So from a working environment, if you're actually using tools that you would normally use on a 2D screen, you can now translate that and read that text. However, in terms of the tools that people use, why are we trying to put 2D screens into a VR headset? We've got a whole new way of interacting with data. We've got a whole new way of doing things that are going to be more intuitive than the mouse and keyboard interaction that we're used to. Why just translate that. Let's push that envelope and those are the developments that we're pushing our partners and our ISVs to really embrace. >> So it's an evoution. >> It's absolutely an evolution. >> You guys have any thoughts on that comment. That we have that inflection point, are we hitting that, will we see it soon, is it here? >> Well I think it's a very interesting symbiotic relationship between multiple factors. So you know, we hear the cost factor, we hear the technology factor, then we have the content factor. You know I saw an interesting evolution at CES we had created this virtual booth experience so that you could still come to the CES Intel booth without actually having to be there. And I met a guy in there and I was like hey where are you? He goes I've been in here like all week. (laughter) And I was like oh yeah, where do you live? He goes oh I'm in my basement in Nebraska. But he had just, this was Friday when I met him. He'd been in there all week, but in 2D mode. And he had gone out the night before and bought a headset just so he could come back and go in VR mode. And I think, yes, all these factors have to kind of line up, but I do think that content, those experiences that are going to keep people coming back for more. Like these guys literally kept coming back to our booth. Right, to see... >> Content gain. >> To see who was there. And to them at that point, it wasn't really a barrier of cost. It was like there is something that I want to consume therefore I am going to go get what I need to consume it. And I use the analogy of HDTV, right. When we kind of moved over that hump where there was enough content people didn't really care how much that television cost. >> Sports was great. Sports really highlighted HD. >> Yeah. >> But this is a good point. This is a good question to ask. Brooks, I'd love to get your thoughts. Content drives experiences, amazing experiences, but we're building the scaffolding of everything at the same time. So where are we, what's your opinion? >> So here on the Starbreeze side, we're fortunate because we have our own headset. We have the StarVR headset we've been building with Acer. 5K all of that stuff and we're upgrading it over the next year. Our focus has been, we skipped the consumer market very much. We went straight to location based and enterprise. And the reason we did that is because there's a promise of VR at a basic, I don't want to say technology stand point, but from an experience perspective, when it comes to that resolution, when it comes to that field of view, when it comes to these things people expect. Average consumers who go to a movie and they see these giant screens. They want that translated. They don't have the understanding like we do of well, LED panels are actually a pain in the ass to build and it takes a little bit and they flip at their own speeds. Time to photon is not a thing my dad will ever see in his life. But there's a reality that people have a need for that. And it is extremely expensive. It's again the reason we went straight to LBE. But for us it's about marrying the two and consistently trying to match what's happening. So when we're talking about, as I mentioned earlier the technology and how we're standing on the shoulders of giants very very quickly, someone who's doing technology is going to see what we're doing content wise and go well I can do that better technology wise. And then we're just going to keep leap frogging. And it's very similar to the phone in the same way that we're not at the final stage of the phone. Like we're at our stage of the phone and no doubt in 30 years people will laugh at us for carrying anything. The same way we laugh about the briefcases and the giant batteries in the cars we had to pull with us. So it's one of those things that's continually transitional. And VR's in an odd, amazing place. >> Well you know, it was a lot of waves that we've all seen. You mentioned the mobile phone, that's a good one to point to. It feels like the PC revolution to me because the same culture of entrepreneurs and pioneers come from a bunch of different backgrounds. So I'd like to get Brooks perspective and Winslow's perspective on this because I think there's an entrepreneurial culture out there right now that's just emerging very fast. It's not like your classic entrepreneur software developer. So in this movement, in this wave, the entrepreneur is the filmmaker, it could be the kid in the basement, could be the gamer. Those entrepreneurs are trying to find a path. >> Yeah, it's a weird mix. VR is at this odd point where not only is it the people who are wanting to be cutting edge in terms of content or technology, but also that first mover strategy from the business side of things. And so everyone wants to be those guys who are charging ahead because in reality, if you look at the financials around all of this, VR is one of those things that you don't want to finance. It's not nearly as safe as say Marvel Avengers or the next Call of Duty. >> You've got to be, you've got to hustle. >> Yeah you've got to hustle. You've got to make... >> What's your advice? >> Start doing it. That's really it. It's the same advice I used to give to game makers when people would be like well I want to learn how to make games. It's like go to YouTube, download a thing and go do it. There's literally no reason why you can't. >> Are there meetups or like the Homebrew Computer Club that spawned the Mac. >> There are, there are infinite groups of VR people who are more than happy to give you all the terrible and wonderful opinions that come with that. There's no shortage of people. There's no shortage and it's an amazingly helpful group. Because everyone wants someone else to figure out something so they can steal that and then figure out something else. >> Winslow, your advice to entrepreneurs out there that are young and/or 14 to 50, what should they do? Jump right in obviously is a good one. >> Well yeah, experiment, break things, that's really the only way to learn. I would say watch as much VR as you can because sometimes bad VR is the best VR. Because you can learn don't do that. And if you learn, if you put all that together, you can really... It's like this lexicon that you can really follow. Also, I think we... As people in tech, we kind of get obsessed with things like resolution, frame rate, and these are very important, but it's also good to remember, or at least for me, I watch some of the best experiences from storytelling when I was a kid, eight years old on a 12 inch screen that was 640 by 480. You know, like scan lines on the VHS. But for me the story still resonated and it's important to think of story first, but obviously it's a dance between the story and the technology. They kind of have to both organically work together. And if they don't, one thing in the story that doesn't work because the tech isn't supporting it, can throw you out of the experience. >> Other concern entrepreneurs might have is financing. How do I get someone to help me build it? And then doing relationships. Finding relationships that could... One plus one equals more than two, right. So how do you? >> You have to get really creative when it comes to funding right now. Unless you're doing location based, which also requires a certain amount of investment to get it up to a bar where you want to be showing it to people with all the haptic effects when it's heat, smell, vibration, stuff like that. You know, it's not cheap to develop. But as far as like working with film foundations, we're fortunate enough to be sponsored by Fledgling Fund and Chicken and Egg. But we also were able to get partnerships with people like Intel and NVidia. And also work with people who come from a traditional film background. There's not one way to successfully fund a project. There's a million. And that's why it's interesting that the technology's innovating, but also the market place is as well. >> One of the things I want to ask is as any new industry gets building, is cultures form early. DNA forms in the entrepreneurs, in the pioneers. And one of the big hottest topics in the creative world is inclusion and diversity. So what's the makeup of the culture of this new generation? Because democratization means everyone can participate, everyone's involved. What's the state of the community vis a vis diversity, inclusion, and the role of the actors in the community. >> Well I think it's important to understand that VR has a profound ability to place you in somebody else's shoes. The trick though is to make sure that those feel like they're your shoes. But I think that we're learning a lot more about story telling techniques and we're able to empower people that their voices you know were previously not heard. The tricky thing is being able to yeah, educate all different groups of people how to use the technology, but once they're enabled and empowered to do it, it's amazing what you can experience inside the headset. >> So VR can be an enabler for education, outreach, a variety of things? >> Yes, I mean the term empathy, empathy machine gets thrown around a lot. You could do a drinking game around it. For panels when people are talking about it. But it's important to know there is a truth to that. And it's, yeah the perspective shift from looking at a screen, a 16 by 9 screen where you can look away, then dissolving the screen and becoming that person. Becoming the director, the actor, the camera person, the editor. When you're in the first person perspective, there's so much more... It feels more personal and that's a really interesting angle that we're going to continue to explore. >> So you could walk in someone's shoes, literally? >> Yes, you literally can. You just have to make sure that you got a... The tracking system's proper or else you'll look like there's... It can be come a horror movie pretty quickly if your leg is behind your head. >> Lisa, your thoughts on this, I know it's important to you. >> Yeah, I mean I think it's fascinating because I've been in tech for a really long time. And seen many, many trends. I mean the first job I had at Intel I was a PC tech and as you can imagine as a female, I think there was one other tech female in the department at the time and I would get funny looks when I would show up with my bag. They were like hi can I help you? I'm like I'm not here to deliver coffee, I'm here to fix your computer, you know. So I've seen a lot of trends and it's super exciting to me to see so much diversity cross culture, cross country, I mean we're having... We had guys come in from all over the world. From even war torn, they've escaped their country just several years ago and they're coming and they're bringing all that creativity to the market. We're seeing very, very strong female contingent from the filmmaker perspective so it's this wonderful, wonderful just primordial soup of people that I think are growing their own voice and their own power. They're breaking molds as far as how you actually get content produced. Distribution is kind of crazy right now. I mean, how do you get it distributed? There's like so many different ways. But all of those things are so important to the evolutionary and biological process of this. Yes, we need to let it go and sometimes we're frustrated. We're like where's the standards? Where's the one ring to rule them all? Where there's not going to be one. And it's good for us that there's not right now. It's frustrating from a business perspective sometimes. You're like, I can't peanut butter myself around all of these places, but I think it's just a very unique time where so many people are... The technology is accessible, that means that so many creators can now bring their fresh voice to this space and it's just going to be fascinating to continue to watch. >> That's awesome. Well two more questions and I'll give you some time to think about the last one which is your perspective on Sundance, what's happening this year, your personal view of what you think's happening, what might happen during this year. But the question I have for you now is to go down the line. We'll start with Brooks here, and talk about the coolest thing that you're involved in right now. >> It actually has to be Hero. We're debuting it here at Sundance. We've been working on it and not talking about it for about nine months. And it's been very difficult. Again it's sacrosanct to the experience that you don't know literally what you're getting in to. And the emotional response has been essentially our goal, trying to find out how far can we take that. You actually being in a space, moving around, having that interactivity, doing what you would do. But it being your story and how deeply we can absolutely effect a human being. And again, watching people come out, it's one of those things, I've been doing game development, I've worked on films, I've done all kinds of stuff. And you usually get a chance when someone experiences something you've made, you walk up to them and you go so what'd you think? And that's not at all what we can do with ours. >> How has it impacted you, that reaction? >> Well, I personally suffer significant PTSD and I've had some traumas in my life. And so it's been incredibly powerful to be able to share these things with people. Share this emotion in a deeply profound, yet amazingly personal way. Which I'm amazingly fortunate to be able to be a part of it. >> Alright thanks for sharing. Coolest thing that's going on with you right now here at Sundance. >> Just the fact that I'm here at all. I mean, it's incredible right? Personally was able to be an advisor on the SPHERES project that is premiering here with Eliza McNitt. She's someone who was an Intel Science Fair winner back in high school and kind of came back to us. So just to see the evolution of an artist really from the beginning to the point where they've been able to come here to Sundance. I'm also very passionate about the work that we're doing with Sansar. I kind of consider myself one of the chief storytellers at Intel around Virtual reality and this new move into social where people are like well what's this game. I'm like, it's not a game. It's you are the game, you are the interactivity. You become the person that makes the space interesting. We're just really setting the scene for you. And there's so many... You know there's a lot of different people kind of chasing this be togetherness. But what we've been able to produce there. And just to be able to explore some of my own personal ideas has just been such a gift. Then to be working with guys like these on the panels and see what they're doing and just be in touch is really just an exciting time. >> John: Awesome. >> Probably what, other than the people on the projects, or the projects that are being shown here, we're working on our new project, which we would have loved to premiere here, but we did... Basically when you get in, you have two months to create a piece, so you have a demo and you have to finish it, so we're taking a little bit more time. This one's going to be about a year development cycle. It's called Breathe where we take you from where Giant left off, where, in Giant, the ceiling collapses on a family. They're in front of you. In this experience, we use a breathing apparatus to basically bring yourself back to life. And then you realize you're trapped under rubble and you remove the... We actually want to have physical objects on top of you that are going to be tracked. So you're moving rubble from you and you realize that you're a six year old girl. You're the survivor from Giant. And you get to witness what it's like to be a future refugee sort of in different key moments of her life that use breath. Whether it's a flirtatious moment, blowing a dandelion, seeing your own breath in snow as a drone shows you a message that your parents pre-recorded on your 18th birthday. This is all in the future, obviously, but every time you walk around an object, you actually grow 10 to 15 years older in the experience. As you get older, the world becomes smaller. And then we witness what's like for her last breath. From being six years old to being 90 years old. But it's a profound personal experience. >> John: That sounds cool, cool. Gary, coolest thing that you're involved in right now at Sundance. >> Wow. I could say it's all cool that would be a bit trite. They say if you enjoy what you do, is it really a job? And I'm lucky enough to be in that position. Because working with all these guys here and like people around the place, they're doing such great things that every day I wake up and I'm astounded of where the industry's going. In terms of what we're doing here at Sundance, then we're really starting to push those envelopes as well. I've been lucky enough to be involved with Dunkirk and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Like last year, so some great pieces there. And moving out into this year, we've got some other developments which I can't mention at this point, but we're showing things like AR and VR mashup. So we haven't talked much about augmented reality here. It's an evolutionary, it's not a replacement. Both can be used and we've started to really start to blend those two technologies now. So you can still see the outside world. Just touching on the commercial side, and health care's very big for me. That's where I think the really cool stuff is happening. Entertainment is great and that's really pushing the envelope and allowing us to then take it for the good of human kind. >> It happens everywhere, it's not just entertainment. >> Yeah absolutely. You start looking at MRI scans inside of VR or AR. Talking a patient through it so they can actually see exactly what you're talking about. You're now no longer pointing at flat things on a screen. You're now actually taking them through it. If you're using AR, you can actually judge the responses of the patient as for how they're reacting to the news. And effectively, inside of the VR, and what's really cool for me is seeing people's reaction to that content and to the entertainment content. >> That's awesome. Okay final question. This is a little bit of self serving because I'd like you to help me do my job at SiliconANGLE. If you were a reporter and you were going to report the most important stories happening this year at Sundance or really kind of what's really happening versus what's kind of being billed to be happening here. What's the story? What is the story this year at Sundance 2018 in your personal perspective? We'll go down the line and share your observations. >> Well, mine here, I'm a Sundance newbie. This is my first year of being here. I'm absolutely astounded by the community spirit that's around. I go to a lot of technical trade shows and technical presentations. People coming here with a willingness to learn. Wanting to learn from other people. It's been touched on already. It's the pool of knowledge that's available inside of Sundance that everybody that comes here can actually tap into to create better content, to learn not what to do as well as learn what to do. And I just think that's brilliant because in that community spirit, that's really going to help enable this industry quickly. >> John: Winslow, you've got some experience, what's your thoughts? >> Obviously, this Intel house, just a little plug for you Lisa. (laughter) Tech Lounge. We got that? Okay good. I mean, yeah, the people that's here. Every year we come here and see where the high water mark is. All these people are... Some of these teams first started with two people and then they grew to six and then by the end of it, there's 100 people working around the clock, pulling all-nighters to be able to give the latest and greatest of what's available with these current tools. So it's amazing because the work itself doesn't really mean anything until people get to experience it. So that's nice that they make a big splash. The people here are very attentive to it. It's a very nice audience and this will continue the momentum for future festivals throughout the year, but also will excite people that have never done VR before. People who have never been to Sundance before. We're seeing that there's a lot of new people. And that will continue to influence many years to come. >> John: So you think VR is the top story here being told? >> As far as like just to generalize, I would say last year kind of the big VR year. This is kind of the big AR year. Next year's going to be the AI year. Then after that we're going to start putting them all together. >> John: Great, great feedback. >> I think it's just exciting for Intel just to be back here. I think Intel hasn't been here in quite some time. Dell coming in here probably one of the breakout years for us to come back and really talk to creators what we're doing from the Intel Studios all the way through to the stuff you can take home and do at home. And I think coming in, we're coming back here with a purpose really, not just to be here to be seen. We're really here with real things and want to have real conversations on how tech can enable what people are doing. Not just from a brand perspective, but from a real hands on point of view. >> John: Yeah, some great demos too, phenomenal tech. >> Really just, yeah everything from the AI stuff we have to the social to the great new pieces that have been submitted here like we mentioned with SPHERES. So I think, yeah, it doesn't feel gratuitous to me you know that Dell or Intel is here this year. We've really come with a purpose. >> You guys are moving the needle, it's really awesome. We need more horsepower. >> Brooks, your thoughts on Sundance this year. Observation, the vibe, what would you tell your friend back home when you get back? >> If, for me, I think it's almost the non-story. It's like the opposite of a story. It's just the deep integration of VR into the normal Sundance flow I think has been interesting. Some people have been here for a few years. And back in the day when it was one or two, it was a lot of oh, you do VR? What's that then? Whereas now, you see a lot more people who are crossing over. Going to see documentaries, then they come to see a VR piece and it's just a part of the normal flow. And the team at New Frontier has done exceptional work to kind of make sure that they have this ridiculous high level of broad content for all kinds of people. All kinds of experiences, all high end things. But it's not that VR's here. Oh good, we have a VR section. It's a lot more of an integrated set up. And it's been really encouraging to see. >> Well you guys have been great. It's been very inspirational. Great information. You guys are reimagining the future and building it at the same time so entrepreneurially and also with content and technology. So thanks so much for sharing on this panel The New Creative. This is SiliconANGLE's coverage of Sundance 2018 here at the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

hello welcome everyone to thecube's coverage here in monaco i'm john furrier host of thecube the monaco crypto summit is happening we're here for the full day and tonight at the yacht club for special presentations crypto team is here digital bits and the industry's gathering and we get some great guests lined up throughout the day our first guest is michael gord co-founder and ceo of gda capital michael welcome to thecube cube great lunch on so we're kicking off the day here we got a lot of a lot of commentary around crypto and also we're in monaco so kind of a special inaugural event why this event why are people gathering here in monaco monaco has traditionally been a top financial jurisdiction but and there has been crypto events here before but never with participation from from prince albert so this being the first event first blockchain focus event in monaco that has participation from prince albert has brought a has brought a global audience and the fact that digital bets is intending to there's a a lot of excitement and and what uh what digital bits is going to be coming to market with yeah and i think i talked to alberto the founder and ceo of digitalbits um i've known him for many years he's a tech guy by heart but he's been in the trenches doing a lot of work over the years in crypto and one of the things i think digital bits has nailed this first the name's amazing but they got real deals i saw our announcement a couple days ago less than 48 hours roma soccer team has a new player they brought the big roll out digitalbits is on the uniform on the front of it huge crowd great visibility so this is a real trend where the the assets of physical and digital coming together there's certainly a lot of hype and a lot of kind of like cleaning up right now in the market but this train is definition is happening training has left the station there's been a lot of over the past decade a lot of startups building in the on blockchains and some of those startups have become big companies but big traditional enterprises have been slow to adopt digital assets and uh digitalbits is really well positioned to bring a lot of those and bring a lot of enterprise participation to the blockchain yeah i mean we met a couple days ago and we were talking in um at the hotel um you're you've been at this for a while you got some great successes talk about your firm what are you guys doing gda what are some of the things you're working on uh you're doing some investment what are some of the angles you're taking bets you've made things you're looking at yeah so i'm a serial entrepreneur and investor i've been focused on the mainstream adoption digital assets for the last decade went about that in in various different ways as i have as i've matured but the way our business looks now is uh is focused on bridging the gap between institutional capital markets and the blockchain and helping institutional capital participate in the market um so we help digital assets with their with their public offering we've gotten into traditional public markets through uh the blockchain moon acquisition corp spac that one of my co-founders is director of we have a brokerage business that does a few hundred million dollars about the transaction volume collateralized lending business we just started some some funds principal investments and then we incubate our own companies internally in category new categories like the metaverse nfts and um other things like that so pretty diversified across the boxing cabinet market at this point and in general looking to create solutions to um help the traditional capital market and the boxing cabinet market get get deeper exposure here you know it's interesting i hear you're speaking about the um how you guys are handling your your view of the landscape multiple moving parts on the investment thesis a lot of integration of instruments and vehicles it's a new creative structural change i mean if you look at just the money how crypto and the future of money this this cultural shift it's also some structural change on how to invest how to manage the investments how to bring on like incubation into most capital public private at the same time on the other side of the coin you have the entrepreneurial energy of um a lot of entrepreneurial ideas you see a lot of creative artists the creator culture has emerged in the past year and a half as a massive wave but to me that's just an application on top of the new infrastructure if you look at all the big investment houses that are pouring billions of whether it's industrial horowitz or other big vcs moving and shifting it's all the same game it's the infrastructure platform applications and it's but it's different it's not what we used to see because it decentralized how do you react to that what's your view on that concept you see it the same way yeah i think that there's everything with blockchains is novel but almost all of it we've seen before so um we've had games before now with the blockchain we have the ability to earn income by playing games we've had exchanges before but they've always been a centralized organization that everything that is now built on blockchains exists in the traditional internet or capital market or game industry or or whatever uh that you know there has been art for generations there's been uh now the ability to have art on the blockchain with provable nft like every everything is innovative because of the decentralization aspect but it's not it's not the first thing the first time that we've seen any of this stuff it's almost interesting you're seeing it recycling all the same concepts on the old web kind of come in the new web and there's also a gen z angle especially the metaverse metaverse the constant theme i'm seeing is hey you want to watch sports you can watch in the metaverse and do it differently and not have to attend so you know the whole pandemic has shown us that hybrid virtual and hybrid is coming together and so i see a huge tsunami of innovation coming from just the tailwind post pandemic i think still massive value in a real event like this us being able to sit in front of each other as real people is uh not replicatable in the metaverse but to be in monaco is not possible for everyone because uh visa reasons because they have something you know it's just you have to be here today is not possible for a hundred percent of the world or for a sports game or for a concert or for a music premiere movie premiere really anything that's happening in the real world is not the metaverse is not gonna replace the real world but it is gonna create a massive additional audience to anything that's happening in the real world that anyone around the world can participate and how amazing would it be for uh for someone from zimbabwe someone from sydney and someone from brazil to all be interested in what digital bits is doing in monaco and what prince albert is you know how how how how the monarchical crypto summit is looking to position monaco in the future of cryptocurrency the kind of theme of this event and they have the amazing fortune to meet in the metaverse it doesn't replace well i mean i think i mean i think this is a great point this to me is going to be the holy grail in my opinion i agree if you look at the notion of presence we're face to face we're here there's people here so we peace we see each other in the lobby maybe he's out sightseeing at dinners so when you have that face to face that's the scarce resource right that's going to be the intimacy sometimes it's not even just to learn about what the pro what's going on but if we're present here how do we create that same experience when you have presence not just some icon chatting but like just movement knowing that you're there connected to people first party is going to be no one's really done it well i think the metaverse is to me is showing the path to being a first-class citizen digitally with a real-time event it's new so it is possible to communicate in the metaverse through through a microphone so if if you're beside someone then similar to the real world you can say you know hey how's it going what do you think about the presentation or or whatever you want and if you're speaking in a conversational way then the person beside you will hear what the person down the hall might might not um it's also that i've i've seen new features in certain like experiences that are coming to market that kind of take the google hangout or skype yeah like video infrastructure and put that in so we could choose to have our cameras on which is it's getting better but it of course doesn't replace real presence there's no doubt in my mind that in near future soon sooner or later there's gonna be a guest sitting right next to you that's not here okay there will be a hologram model where people will be interviewed will have capability to visualize that person they'll be in a metaverse they'll be queuing up for interviews this is a game this is a mind-blowing thing i mean if you just think about that concept that we could have participation in real time here with expressions with their with their digital expression their icon whatever whatever their nfts are so i think this is going to be the blending of how communities gather and i think ultimately how truth and and journalism and news is going to change so to me yeah we're super excited we're here obviously because we want to get the stories and you know we love what digital bits is doing prince albert certainly a relevant figure on the global stage um i think this is a signal for a lot of things to come indeed indeed all right so final question before we move on what's your hottest thing you got going on what are you looking at what are you most excited about um well just just this conference um we've got quite a lot of of companies we have exposure in that are that are presenting and a lot of them are coining new new new niches of the market so um we have uh um we've spoken about a lot about the metaverse we have you know i'm and i think the metaverse is probably the the thing that i'm overall most excited about i think it's the next multi-trillion dollar market that feels like bitcoins in but in addition to that we have the first regenerative finance platform that is that is presenting here that's using decentralized finance and and blockchain technology to create a model that people can earn income while mining carbon credits essentially with an objective of having first boxing all blocking protocols but eventually creating a leader board of carbon positive businesses where businesses will challenge their competitors to be more carbon positive in a way that actually earns them earn some income outside of the potential value what's the name of that company that's kyoto protocol uh we have the first entertained to earn a company that is is presenting here it's playgood um the first uh e-commerce metaverse platform so integrated directly into e-commerce without needing to i think the future of the metaverse is is social links you have you know finest in the metaverse and you have all of the all the logos of metaverses that you have experiences in which is cool yeah that that's uh but then you're you're going out of the native website instead of having a um instead of you know native to the to the website having a metabolism experience so they're doing that um yeah really cool awesome final question one more final question i got for you because you made me think of it so metaverse obviously hot is there going to be an open metaverse you start to see walled gardens and you got facebook they got slam dunk by the u.s uh in terms of monopolistic move for buying a exercise act which you know i can i i don't think that was a good move by the u.s i think i let him do that but but there they're they're kind of the wall garden model the old facebook i mean decentralized about open yeah historically if we go back in time there's always open and closed infrastructure in the internet um there was there is companies building open infrastructure companies building closed infrastructure and we could have been talking in 1992 about whether the private intranet will create mass adoption or the open internet will create mass adoption and not that the the intranet is probably is even today still a multi-billion dollar per year business but it's not a multi-trillion dollar per year per year you know infrastructure like the public internet same with the blockchain in 2012 2013 um private blockchains were all the rage by banking raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build up private boxing infrastructure and private blockchains are generating probably today still multi-billion dollars of revenue annually but they haven't accrued multi-trillion dollars like the public watching has i think the same thing will be in the metaverse there will be open and closed infrastructure um but event and there already is close you know fortnight and and games are are essentially closed metaverses just without ownable land um i always look at the i'm old school i look at aol they had they monopolized dial up internet like where the hell did that go you know history so again yeah we don't know it's going to be maybe a connection a connection point between these open metaverses we'll see maybe i'm investment update michael thanks for coming on thecube appreciate you kicking off the event here monaco crypto summit powered by digital bits presented by digital bits uh the company really and behind all the innovation here and the companies i'm john furrier with more coverage after this short break thanks john [Music] you

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome back to the Cookie Conundrum, A Recipe For Success an industry conference and summit from Quancast on the demise of third-party cookies. We've got a great industry panel here to break it down. Chris Guenther, senior vice president global head of Programmatic at News Corp. Chris, thanks for coming on. Xiao Lin, managing director solutions at Xaxis, and Somer Simpson, vice president of product at Quancast stellar panel. Looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for coming on and chatting about the cookie conundrum. >> Thank you for having us. >> So, Chris, we'll start with you at News Corp obviously major publisher. Deprecation of third-party cookies affects everyone. You guys have a ton of traffic, ton of audience across multiple formats. Tell us about the impact to you guys and the reliance you guys had on them. And what are you going to do to prepare for this next level change? >> Sure. I mean, I think like everyone in this industry there is a, you know, a significant reliance and I think it's something that a lot talk about audience targeting, but obviously they realize that third party cookies pervasive across the whole ad tech ecosystem, MarTech stack. And so, you know, we have to think about, you know how that impact, you know, our vendor the vendors we work with, what it means in terms of our use cases across marketing, across advertising across site experience. So, you know, without a doubt, it's significant. But you know, we look at it as listen. It's disruptive in disruption and change is always a little scary, but overall it's a it's a long overdue reset. I mean, I think that, you know, our perspective is that the the cookies, as we all know, is it was a crutch, right? It's sort of a technology being used in way it shouldn't. And so, as we look at what's going to happen presumably after Jan 2022, then it's a good way to kind of fix on some bad practices practices that lead to data, leakage, practice sort of devalued for our perspective. Some of the, you know, we offered as, as publishers. And I think that this is a key thing is that we're not just looking to as we look through post gen world, not just kind of recreating the prior world. Because the prior world was flawed or I guess I could say the current world since it hasn't changed yet. But the current world is flawed. Let's not just replicate that. You know, let's make sure that third party cookies goes away other work around like fingerprinting and things like that, you know, also go away. So, you know, philosophically that's where our head's at. And so, you know, as we look at how we are preparing you look at sort of what are the core building blocks of preparing for this world. Obviously one of the key ones is privacy compliance. Like how do we treat our users with consent? You know, obviously are we aligned with the regulatory environments? You know, in some ways we're not looking just to Jan 2022 but Jan 2023, where there's going to be the majority of our audiences, we covered by regulation. And so I think from regulation up to data gathering, to data activation, all built around an internal identifier that we've developed that allows us to have a a consistent look at our user is whether they're logged in or obviously, anonymous. So it's really looking across all those components, across all our sites, and all in a privacy compliant way. So a lot of work to be done, a lot of work in progress but you know, we're excited about what's going on. >> I like how you framed it, you know, old world or next gen kind of the current situation is kind of flawed. And as you think about Programmatic, the concept is mind blowing and what needs to be done. So we'll come back to that because I think that original content view is certainly relevant. It's a huge investment, and you've got great content and audience consuming it. Xiao, from a major media standpoint get your perspective on the impact because you've got clients who want to get their message out in front of the audience at the right time, at the right place and the right context. Right? So yeah, privacy, you got consent and all of these things kind of boiling up how do you help clients prepare? Because now they can go direct to the consumer. You know, everyone, everyone has a megaphone now everyone's you know, everyone's here, everyone's connected. So how are you impacted by this new notion? >> You know, if the cookieless future was a tik tok dance, we'd be dancing right now and at least until the next year. This has been top of mind for us and our clients for quite some time. But I think as each day passes the picture becomes clearer and more in focus. The end of the third party cookie does not mean the end of Programmatic. So clients work with us in transforming their investments into real business outcomes based on our expertise and based on our tech. So we continue to be in a great position to lead, to educate, to partner, and to grow with them along this cookieless future. The impact will be all encompassing in changing the ways we do things now and also accelerating the things that we've already been building on. So we take it from the top. Planning will have a huge impact because it's going to start becoming more strategic around real business outcomes. We're omni-channel. So clients wants to drive outcomes through multiple touch points of a consumer's journey. Whether that's programmatic, whether that's as a cookie free environment like connected TV, out of home, audio, gaming, and so forth. So we're going to see more of these strategic holistic plans. Creative will have a lot of impact. It will start becoming more important with Creative testing, Creative insights, you know, Creative in itself is cookieless. So there will be more focus on how to drive a brand dialogue, to connect to consumers with less targeting, with less cookies. With the cohesiveness of holistic planning, Creative can align through multiple channels. And lastly, the role of AI will become increasingly important. You know, we've always looked to build our tech, our products, to compliment new and existing technology as well as the client's own data and tech stack to deliver these outcomes for them. And AI in its core is just taking inputted data and having an output of your desired outcomes. So input data could be DSP data beyond cookies such as browser, such as location, such as contextual, a publisher taking client's first party data, first party CRM data like store visitation sales site activity. And using that to optimize in real time regardless of what vendor or what channel we're on. So as we're learning more about this cookieless dance, we're helping our clients on the steps of it, and also introducing our own moves. >> That's awesome. Data is going to be a key value proposition, you know connecting in with content real time. Great stuff. Somer, with your background in journalism and you're the tech VP of product at Quancast. You have the keys to the kingdom over there. It's interesting, journalism is about truth you know, good content, original content. But now you have a data challenge, problem, opportunity on both sides, brands and publishers coming together. This is a data problem in a way. It's a tech stack, not so much just, you know getting the right ads to show up at the right place, the right time. It's really bigger than that now. What's your take on this? >> You know, I, so first I think that consumers already sort of accept that there is a reasonable value exchange, you know, for their data, in order to access free content. Right? And that's a critical piece for us to all kind of understand. Over the past. Yeah, probably two years, since even before the GDPR, we've been doing a ton of discovery with customers, both publishers and marketers. And so, you know, we kind of known this this cookie going away thing is, has been coming and you know, Google's announcement just kind of confirmed it. And it's been really really interesting since Google's announcement how the conversations have changed with our customers and other folks that we talk to. And I've almost gone from being like a product manager to a therapist because there's such an emotional response. From the marketer perspective, there's real fear there. There's like, Oh my God, how you know, it's not just about delivering ads. It's about how do I control frequency? How do I measure, you know, success? You know, because the technology has grown so much over the years to really give marketers the ability to deliver personalized, you know, advertising good content to consumers and be able to monitor it and control it so that it's not too, too intrusive. On the publisher perspective side, we see a slightly different response. It's more of a yes. Right? You know, we're taking back control and we're going to stop the data leakage. We're going to get the value back for our inventory. Both things are a good thing. But if it's not managed, it's going to be like ships passing in the night. Right? In terms of, you know, them coming together. Right? And that's the critical pieces that they have to come together. They have to get closer. You got to cut out a lot of like that LUMAscape in the middle so that they can talk to each other and understand what's the value exchange happening between marketers and publishers and how do we do that without cookies? >> Yeah. It's a fascinating, I love your insight there. I think it's so relevant. And it's got broader implications because, you know, if you look at how data is impacting some of these big structural changes and refactoring of industries look at cybersecurity, you know no one wants to share their data but now if they share, they get more insight more machine learning, benefit, more AI benefit. So now we have the sharing notion but that goes against counter the big guys that want a walled garden. They want to hoard all the data and control that to provide their own personalization. So you have this confluence of, hey I want to hoard the data and then now I want to share the data. So Chris and Homer, in the wheelhouse you've got original content and there's other providers out there. So is there the sharing model coming? with privacy and these kinds of services is the open come back again? How do you guys see this? The confluence of open versus walled gardens. Because you need the data to make machine learning good. >> I'll start off. I mean, listen, I think you have to give credit to the walled gardens I've created. And I think as we look as publishers, what are we offering to our clients? What are we offering to the buy-side? We need to be compelling. We shouldn't just be, obviously, as journalists I think that there is a case of, you know the importance of funding journalism. But ultimately we need to make sure we're meeting the the KPIs and the business needs of the buy-side. And I think around that, it is, you know there's sort of three core pillars to that. It's ease of access, it's scope of activation and targeting, and finally, measurable results. So as I think, as us, as an individual publisher of so we have multiple publications so we do have scale, but then in partnership with other publishers perhaps organizations like Prebid, you know I think we can, we're trying to address that. And I think we can offer something that's compelling and transparent in terms of what these results are. But obviously, you know, I want to make sure it's clear that transparent terms of results, but obviously where there's privacy in terms of the data. And I I think we've all heard about like data clean rooms, a lot of them out there flogging those wares. And I think there's something valuable, but you know I think it's who is sort of the right partner or partners, and ultimately who allows us to get as close as possible to the buy side. And so that we can share that data for targeting shared for perhaps for measurement, but obviously all in a privacy compliant way. >> Somer, what's your take on this? Because you talk about the future of the open internet democratization. The network effect that we're seeing in virality and across multiple omni-channels as Xiao pointed out, it's happening. That's the distribution now. So that's almost an open garden model. So it's like >> Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's, you know back in the day, you know, Nightrider who was the first group that I, that I worked for, you know each of those individual properties were not hugely valuable on their own from a digital perspective. but together as a unit, they became valuable. Right. And got a scale for advertisers. Now we're in a place where, you know, I kind of think that each of those big networks are going to have to come together and work together to compare in size to the, to the walled gardens. And yeah, this is something that we've talked about before, an open garden. I think that's the definitely the right route to take. And I agree with Chris. It's about publishers getting as close to the marketers as possible, working with the tech companies that enable them to do that, and doing so in a very privacy centric way. >> Xiao how do we bring the brands and agencies together to get ready for third-party cookies? Because there is a therapist moment here of it's going to be okay, the parachute will open. The future is not going to be as grim. It's a real opportunity, but if managed properly. What's your take on this? Is it just more first party data strategy? And what's your assessment of this? >> So we're collaborating right now with ball grants on how to distill very complex cookieless future you know, what's going to happen in the future. To six steps that we can take right now and marketers should take. The first step is gather Intel on what's working on your current campaign analyzing the data sets across cookie free environment. So you can translate those tactics eventually when the cookies do go away. So we have to look at things like temporal or time analysis. We can look at log level data. We can look at site analytics data. We can look at brand measurement tools and how Creative really impacts the campaign success. The second thing we can look at is geo-targeting strategies. The geo-targeting strategy has been underrated because the granularity and DL data could go down all the way to the local level, even beyond zip code. So for example, the census block data. And this is especially important for CPG brands. So we're working closely with the client teams to understand not only the online data, but the offline data and how we can utilize that in the future. We want to optimize investments around markets that are working, so strong markets, and then test in underperforming markets. The third thing we can look at is contextual. So contextual by itself is cookie free. We could build on small-scale usage to test and learn various keywords and content categories based sets, working closely with partners to find ways to leverage their data, to mimic audiences that you are trying to target right now with cookies. The fourth one is publisher data or publisher targeting. So working with your publishers that you have strong relationships with who can curate similar audiences using their own first party data and conducting RFIs to understand the scale and reach against your audience and your future roadmap. So work with your top publishers based on historical data to try to recreate your best strategies. The fifth thing, and I think this is very important, is first party data. That's going to matter more than ever in the cookieless future. Brands will need to think about how to access and develop the first party data starting with the consumer, seeing of value in exchange for the information it's a goldmine and understanding your consumer their intent, their journey. And you need a really great data sciences team to extract insights out of that data, which will be crucial. So partner with strategic onboarding vendors and vet their ability to accept first party data into a clean room environment for targeting, for modeling, for insights. And lastly, the sixth thing that we can do is begin inform prospecting by dedicating test budget to start gaining learnings about cookieless. One, one place that we can start, and it is under invested right now, is Safari and Firefox. They have been cookieless for quite some time. So you can start here and begin testing here. Work with your data scientist team to understand the right mixes to target and start exploring other channels outside of just programmatic cookies. Like CTV, digit auto home, radio, gaming, and so forth. So those are the six steps that we're taking right now with our clients to prepare and plan for the cookieless future. >> So, Chris, let's go back to you. What's the solution here? Is there one, is there multiple solutions? What's the future look like for a cookieless future? >> I think the one certain answer is there definitely is not just one solution. As we all know right now, there seems to be endless solutions, a lot of ideas out there, proposals when the W3C, work happening within other industry bodies, you know, private company solutions being offered. And you know, it's a little bit, it's enough to make everyone's head spin and to try to track it to understand it and understand the impact. And as a publisher, we're obviously, you know, a lot of people are knocking on our door, you know they're saying, hey, our solution is one that it's going to bring in lots of money. You know, all the buy-side is going to use it. This is the one like unlock all the spend. And it's our experience so far is that none of these solutions are, cause I think everyone's still testing and learning. No one on the buy side from our, from our knowledge is really committed to one or a few. It's all about a testing stage. I think that, you know, putting aside all that noise I think what matters the most to us as publishers, actually something Somer mentioned before. It's about control. You know, if we're going to work with a, you know, again outside of our sort of independent internal identifier work that we're doing, if we're going to work with an outside party or an outside approach, does it give us control >> As a publisher to ensure that it is, you know we control the, the data from our users, you know there isn't that data leakage, it's privacy compliant. You know, what information gets shared out there? What is it what's released within, you know within the bitstream? If it is something that's attached to a, someone, a declared user, a registered user that if that then is not somehow amplified or leverage off in another site in a way that is leveraging bit stream data or fingerprinting and going again. And so I think that the spirit of what we're trying to do in a post third party cookie world. And so those controls are critical. And I think to have those controls as publisher we have to be collectively be disciplined. And you know, what solutions that we sort of we test out and what we eventually adopt. But even when that adoption point arrives it definitely will not be one. There will be multiple because there's just too many cases to address. >> Great, great insight there from you guys at News Corp. Somer, let's get back to you. I want to get your thoughts. You've been in many waves of innovation, ups and downs. We're on a new one now. We talked about the open internet and democratization. Journalism is under a lot of pressure now but there's now a wave of quality people, really leaning in towards fighting misinformation, understanding truth and community and data is at the heart of it. What do you see as the new future for journalists to reward journalism? Is there a way, is there a path forward? >> So there's what I hope is going to happen. And then I'm just going to ignore what could, right. You know, there's a trend in market right now at a number of fronts, right? So there are marketers who are leaning in to wanting to spend their marketing dollars with quality journalists, focusing on BiPAC owned and operated, really leaning into supporting those businesses that have been and those publishers that have been ignored for years. I really hope that this trend continues. We are leaning into helping marketers curate that supply, right. And, and really, you know, speak with their dollars about the things that they support and value in market. So I'm hoping that that trend continues. And it's not just sort of like a marketing blip but we will do everything possible to kind of encourage that behavior and give people the information that they need to find. You know, truly high quality journalism. >> That's awesome. Chris, Xiao, Somer, thanks for coming on and sharing your insight on this panel on the cookieless future. Before we go, just quick summary, each of you if you don't mind just giving a quick sound bite or bumper sticker of what we can expect. If you had to throw a prediction for what's going to happen in the next 24 months. Chris, we'll start with you. >> It's going to be quite a ride. I think that's an understatement. I think that there, I wouldn't be surprised if if Google delays the change to the Chrome by a couple months. And may give the industry some much needed time. But no one knows, I guess, I guess I'm not except for someone somewhere, we are deep within Chrome. So I think we all have to operate in a way that changes that happen, changes that happen quickly. And it's going to cover across all facets of the industry, all facets of, you know, from advertising and marketing. So just be prepared. >> Okay. Xiao. Along those same lines, be prepared. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. You know, we're all dancing in this together. I think for us, it's planning and preparing and also building on what we've already been working on. So omni-channel, AI, Creative, and I think clients will lean more into those different channels. >> Awesome. Somer, take us home. Last words. >> I think we're in the throwing spaghetti against the wall stage, right? So this is a time of discovery of leaning and trying everything out learning and iterating as fast as we possibly can. >> Awesome. And I love the cat in the background over your shoulder. I can't stop staring at your wonderful cat. Somer, thanks for coming on. Xiao, Chris, thanks for coming on this awesome panel industry breakdown of the Cookie Conundrum, a Recipe for Success data AI open the future is here. It's coming. It's coming fast. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP. Discover Virtual Experience Brought to you by HP >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover Virtual experience. This is the Cube. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're here in the Palo Alto studio with remote interviews. We have a great innovation story here with Disney and HBO. ET Al is tailor vice president of content innovation with studio lab Disney. And so men do suck. Sarkar, distinguished technologist, director of AI at HP. Thanks for coming on, Alice. Someone do. Thank you for taking the time. >>It's great to be here. Hi, >>I love this story. I think it's the innovation story, and I think it's going to be one that will experience in our life going forward. That is media, video and experiences and this innovation in AI. It's a lot to do with the collaboration between Disney Studio Labs Alice that you're running and it's super super important and fun as well. Very relevant. Cool. So first, before we get started, Alice, >>take a minute >>to explain a little about yourself and how Studio Lab came about. Yeah, >>McGuinness Studio lab is just over in its second year of operation. It was an idea that was had by our CTO. I'm going to say, three years ago and at the time, just previously before that I had a start up company that came through the Disney accelerators. So I was already inside the building and, um, the team there said Felicity on the said, You know, we need to start up an innovation lab that will investigate storytelling through emerging technology, and that's basically being the majority of my background. So I said Yes on then. Since then, we'll be going a team. We opened the lab in May of 2018 and here we are in the middle of Pandemic. But it has grown like crazy. Its just a wonderful place to be and to operate. And we've been doing some amazing projects with some amazing partners, >>and it's not unusual that an entrepreneur has this kind of role to think outside the box. We'll get some of that talk about your experiences, and I wonder how you got into this position because you came in as an entrepreneur. You're doing some creative things. Tell us that story real quick. >>Yeah, Okay, well, so as you could sell on British. My actual background started. My whole career started in technology in the mid nineties. A Xai started as a training video editor but then switched very quickly and 95 building websites. And from there on, it was Internet all the way. But I've always focused on storytelling. And, you know, much of my background is working for broadcasters and media and content creators. So those five years of the BBC in there already department and, um actually out here is VP of digital media for them and then Channel four as well. And throughout the whole process, I was always interested in how to tell stories with new technology and the new mediums as they emerged. So yep, flights side story and doing a startup which was actually in toys and video games, but again, big digital storytelling environments for Children. And then I came round. Robin, if you like into Disney and here we are still looking at how to you make films and episodic content. Even Mawr. You name it faster, better, more exciting. Using the best and greatest in emerging tech as we find it, >>and the lab that you're doing is it's an accelerant, almost four new technologies. Your job is to what? Look out over the horizon next 10 years or so to figure out what's next. It's >>not a structure. I think you have >>some rain to be creative and experiment >>Well, yeah, I mean, in fact. So it's a studio live at the studios. We'll Disney has eight studios at the moment, and what we do is we look at actually the whole breath of storytelling. So right from the moment when a creative has an idea through to how our guests and fans might be receiving the end product out in the world and we segregate those that that whole breadth from into three categories i d. Eight. When you know the process of generating the idea and building it, make how we make it where we make it, what we make it with on that experience, how we experience it out in the world. So we have a whole SNU of projects. The studio level so works with some of the best technology companies in the world, and we call those are innovation partners on. We sign these partnerships really to bring what we like to call superpowers to the system we like to think. But the combination of those companies and what comes out of these projects is going to give our filmmakers superpowers, but also that combinatorial effect of Disney. You know, in this case, for instance, working with HP like produces something that Disney couldn't necessarily do on its own or the HP. He couldn't necessarily do it on his own, either. So, yeah, it's a huge remit, and we tend to look, we don't look quite so far out. Generally speaking as 10 years, it's more like three to now. We don't do day to day operational work, but we try to pick something up a couple of years before it's going to be operationally ready and really investigated then and get a bit of a head start. >>Well, it's great. Have HBs partner and And having that bench of technology software people is just a nice power source for you as well. Someone to talk about the relation HP relationship with Disney because, um, you got a lot of deep technical from the lab standpoint to resilient technology. How are you involved? What's your role? You guys sitting around you riff and put a white board together and say, Hey, we're gonna solve these big problems. Here is the future of consumption. That is the future of video. What goes on? Tell us your the relationship between you guys. >>Yeah, it's a good question at HP. We don't really make the service, but what we also do is we work quite a lot on optimizing some of the artificial intelligence solutions and algorithms on the DP use and scale it across servers. So So you don't have this opportunity came up from Disney, where this thing came up with a very innovative solution where they were solving the video quality problem. As as, you know, there are a lot of blemishes and in the video that can come up and didn't want to fix all of them. And they have great algorithm. But what happens is, but with better guards comes a huge amount of computational complexity, which needs a little bit of heterogeneous compute input in parallel processing and in sequential processing. So we thought that it's a perfect on, and it's a combination off the skill sets to make this video quality software execute at speed switch needed for production. Disney. >>So it's good to have a data center whenever you need it to. You guys have a great technology. We hear a lot more from the execs at HB on our reporting else. Want to get your thoughts? We're covering some of this new edge technologies. We're talking about new experiences. I gave a talk at Sundance a few years ago, called The New Creative Class, and it's really about this next wave of art and filmmakers who are using the tools of the trade, which is a cell phone and and really set of Asti studios and use the technology. Can you give us some examples of how Studio Lab collaborates with filmmakers and execs to push the push, the art and technology of storytelling to be fresh? Because the sign of the times, our instagram, tic tac, this is just very elementary. The quality and the storytelling is pretty basic dopamine in, but you can almost imagine the range of quality that's going to come so access to more people, certainly more equipment, cameras, etcetera. What's next? How do you guys see? What's some examples can you share? >>It's an amazing question. I mean, we're working on films and episodic. It's rather than very short form content, obviously, but you're absolutely right. There's a lot of consumer grade technology that is entering the production pipeline in many ways and in many areas, whether it's phones or iPads first using certain bits of software. One of the things that we're building at the moment is the ability Teoh generate vertical metric models, capturing with consumer drones or even iPhones, and then use it getting that data into a three D model as soon as possible. There's a really big theme. What we want to do is like make the process more efficient so that our creatives and the folks working on productions aren't having to slog through something that's slow and tedious. They want to get to the story, telling the art in the act of storytelling as much as possible. And so waiting for a model to render or waiting for their QC process toe finished is what we want to kind of get rid of so they can really get to the meat of the problem much, much faster and just going back to what Mandy was saying about the AI project here I mean, it was about finding the dead pixels on screen when we do our finished prints, which would you believe we do with humans? Humans at their best historically have been the best of finding dead pixels. But what a job I have to do at the end of the process to go through quality control and then have to go and manually find the little dead pixels in each frame of our print. Right? Nobody actually wants to be doing that job. So the algorithm goes and looks follows automatically. And then HP came in and spread that whole process up by nine X. So now it actually runs fast enough to be used on our final prince. >>You know, it's interesting in the tech trend for the past 10 15 years that I've been covering cloud technology. Even in the early days, it was kind of on the fringe them because mainstream. But all the trends were more agility, faster taking with ah, heavy lifting so that the focus on the job at hand when it's creative writing software. This is kind of a success formula, and you're kind of applying it to film and creation, which is still like software is kind of same thing, almost so you know, when you see these new technologies that love to get both your reactions of this. One of the big misses that people kind of miss is the best stuff is often misunderstood until it's understood. And we're kind of seeing that now. A covert our ones. From a way, I could have seen this. No, no one predicted. So what's >>an >>example of something that people might be misunderstanding that super relevant, that that might become super important very quickly? Any thoughts? >>That's great. Well, I can give an example of something that has come and gone and then coming, potentially gone. Except it hasn't it's VR. So it came, you know, whenever it was 20 years ago, and then 10 years ago, and everybody was saying VR is going to change the world And then it reappeared again six years ago again, everybody said it's going to change the world, and in terms of film production, it really has. But that's slightly gone unnoticed, I think, because out in the market everyone is expecting VR to have being a huge consumer success, and I suspect it still will be one day a huge consumer success. But meanwhile, in the background, we're using VR on a daily basis in film production. Virtual production is one of the biggest, um, emerging processes that is happening If you've seen anything to do with, um Jungle Book Line King Man DeLorean. Anything the industrial like magic work on. You're really looking at a lot of virtual production techniques that have ended up on screen, and it is now a technology that we can't do without. I'm gonna have to think two seconds for something that's emerging. Ai and Ml is a huge area, obviously were scratching it. I don't think anyone is going to say that it's going to come and go in this one. This is huge, but we're only just beginning to see where and how we can apply Ai and Ml and you did you wanna jump in on that one? So >>let me take it from the technology standpoint, I think it was also very cool trends. Now what happens is that your ML spaces people have come up with creative ideas. But one of the biggest challenge is how do you take those ideas for commercial, use it on and make and make it work at the speed, as Alice was mentioning, It makes it feasible in production. So accelerating your ML on making it in a form which is visible is super important. And the other aspect of it is just the first video quality that it was mentioning. That picture is one types, and I know the business is working on certain other video qualities to fix the blemishes. But there's a whole variety of these vanishes on with human operators. It's kind of impossible to scale up the production on to find all these different artifacts like, you know, especially now. As you can see, the video is disseminated in your forms in your ipads from like, you know, in that streaming. So this is a problem of scale on do stuff. This is also like, you know, a lot of compute on a very like I said, a lot of collaboration with complimentary skill sets that make it real. >>I was talking with a friend who was an early Apple employees, now retired good friend, and we're talking about all the Dev ops agile go fast scale up, and he made a comment I want to get your reaction to, he said. You know what we're missing is craft and software. You speak crafts game. So when you have speed, you lose craft, and we see that certainly with cloud and agility and then iterating. Then you get to a good product over time. But I think one of the things that's interesting and you guys are kind of teasing out is you can kind of get craft with the help from some of these technologies where you can kind of build crafting into it. Alice, what's your reaction to that? >>One of our favorite anecdotes from The Lion King is so Jon Favreau, the director, built out the virtual production system himself, Teoh with his team to make the film, and it allowed for a smaller production team acting on a smaller footprint. What they didn't do was shortened the time to make the film. What the whole system enabled was more content created within that same amount of time, so effectively John had more takes and more material to make his final film with, and that that's what we want people to have. We want them to have to know ever to have to say I missed my perfect shot because of I don't know what you know. We run out of time so we couldn't get the perfect shot. That's it. That's a terrible thing. We never want that to happen. So where technology can help gather as much material is possible in the most efficient way. Basically, at the end of the day, for our for our creatives, that means more ability to tell a story. >>So someone do. This is an example of the pixel innovation. The Video QC. It's really a burden if you have to go get it and chase it. You can automate that respect from the tech trends. Will automation action in there? >>Yeah, absolutely. And as Chris was mentioning, If you can bridge the gap between imagination and realization, then you have solved the problem that the people who are creative can think on implement something in a very short time, gone back for like, you know, some of these I'm just coming. >>Well, it's a very impressed that I'm looking forward to coming down and visiting studio labs when the world gets back to work. You guys are in the heart of Burbank and all the action and the Euro little incubates really kind of R and D meets commercial commercially. Really cool. But I have to ask you, with covert 19 going on, how are you guys handling? The situation certainly impacted people coming to work. How is your team? Have been impacted. And how are you guys continuing the mission? >>Well, yeah, The lab itself is obviously a physical place on the lot. It's in the old animation building, but it's also this program of innovation that we have with our partners. To be honest, we didn't slow down at all. The team carried on the next day from home, and in fact, we have expanded even because new projects came rolling in as folks who were stuck at home suddenly had needs. So we had editors needing to work work remotely. You know, you name it folks with that home connections, wondering if we had some five G phones hanging around that kind of thing. And so everything really expanded a bit. We are hoping to get back into physical co location as soon as possible, not least to be able to shoot movies again. But I think that there will be an element of this remote working that's baked in forever from here on in not least, cause it was just around. This kind of what this has done has accelerated things like the beginning of cloud adoption properly in the beginning of remote teller work and remote telepresence and then also ideas coming out of that. So ah, you know, again, the other day I heard holograms coming up. Like, Can we have holograms yet? So we don't do it That's going to cover out again. Yeah, but you know what? The team have all been amazing, would. But we'll miss each other. You know, there's something about real life that can't be replaced by technology >>has been a great leader in in accumulating. All HP employees work from removed and in the process. But we're also discovered is we have also, you know, maybe so. We discovered innovative ways where we can still work together. Like so we increase the volume of our virtual collaborations on. I worked with Erica from Disney is a tremendous facilitator and the technologists of mining one. You have this close collaboration going. Andi almost missed nothing, but yes, if you would like to, you know, on the field each other on to be in close proximity. Look at each app in each other's eyes are probably that's only missing thing, but rest off it, You know, we created an environment perfect, clever and work pretty well. And actually, at this point in the process, we also discovered a lot of things which can be done in remote, considering the community of Silicon Valley. >>You know, the final question I want to get your thoughts on is your favorite technology that you're excited about. But someone doing you know, we're talking amongst us nerds and geeks here in Silicon Valley around you know what virtualization server virtualization has done? An HP knows a lot about server virtualization. You're in the server business that created cloud because with virtualization, you could create one server and great many servers. But I think this covert 19 and future beyond it virtualization of life, Immersion of digital is going to bring and change a lot of things. You guys highlight a few of them. Um, this virtualization of life society experiences playing work. It's not just work. It's experiences so Internet of things devices how I'm consuming how I'm producing. It's really going to have an impact. I'd love to get your both of your thoughts on this kind of virtualization of life because certainly impact studio lab, because you think about these things. Alice and HP has to invent that the tech to get scaling up. So final question. What do think about virtualization of life and what technologies do you see that you're excited about to help make our lives better? >>Well, goodness, may, I think we're only beginning to understand the impact that things like video conferencing has on folks. You know, I don't know whether you've seen all of the articles flying around about how it's a lot more work to do video conferencing that you don't have the same subtle cues as you have in real life. And again, you know, virtual technologies like we are on day similar and not going to solve that immediately. So what we'll have to happen is that humans themselves will adapt to the systems. I think, though fundamentally we're about to enter a radical period. We basically have already a radical period of innovation because as folks understand what's at their fingertips. And then what's missing? We're going to see all sorts of startups and new ideas come rushing out as people understand this new paradigm and what they could do to solve for the new pains that come out of it. I mean, just from my perspective, I have back to back nine hours of BTC a day. And by the end of the day, I could barely walk Way gonna do about that. I think we're gonna see holograms like that. We're gonna see home exercise equipment combined. You know, really good ones. Like you've seen politicians shares going crazy. There's tons of that. So I'm just really excited at the kind of three years or so. I think that we're going to see of radical innovation, the likes of which we have always usually being held back by, um other reasons, maybe not enough money or not enough permission. Whereas now people are like we have to fix this problem. >>Well, you've got a great job. I want to come to quit. My job income joined studio left. Sounds like it's a playground of fun. There great stuff. Someone do close us out here. What? Are you excited about as we virtualized you're in the in the labs, creating new technology. You're distinct, technologist and director of AI. When you're on the cutting edge, you're riding the wave two. What's your take on this? >>Virtually? Yeah, you know the experience. What it has done is it has pushed the age to the home. So now if you really see home is one of the principal connectivity to the outside world restaurants. Professional goes on and on with that, What I also offers is like a better experience. Right now. We're all gather about Zoom being able to do a video conferencing. But as this was pointing out there is that here in that we are now consider combining the augmented reality and and the way that we do your conference and all the other innovations that we could begin in the East so that the interactions becomes much more really. And that is like, you know, I'd say that the world is moving to >>l Cool. Thank you very much for that comment and insight really enjoyed. Congratulations on studio lab. You've got a great mission and very cool and very relevant. And someone do. Thank you very much for sharing the insights on HP's role in that. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Okay, this is the Cube. Virtual covering HP Discover virtual experience. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube. Stay tuned for more coverage from HP Discover experience after this break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld Inspire brought to you by Pegasystems. Everybody welcome back to PegaWorld Inspired 2020 this is theCUBE and I'm Dave Vellante, we're here with Adam Field who is the head of innovation and experience at Pegasystems. Adam thanks for coming on, how are you doing man? >> It's my pleasure Dave, I'm doing well how are you? >> Good thank you, I'm excited we're talking innovation, we're talking to innovation hub but to start with your role I love the title, what do you do? Give us the background story. >> Yeah I get that question quite a bit so, I've been with Pega a little over 15 years now and I've held many roles, but currently as head of innovation and experience we have a team I like to call them Creative Misfits, if you will, we sort of bridge that gap between technology and creative, we do research on emerging tech and try to understand how our clients might use it, how it's going to change the future of work, that's the innovation side, on the experience side, we do things like for these PegaWorld events, we match we where art meets tech and we build these experiential things that people come and see at our events, we build all the demos and all the production that you see on the main stage, so we kind of touch a lot of different things around the future of where technology is going. >> Well, I can see, obviously you're innovative, you've got the awesome set up there, the great mic and sound, (laughing) fantastic you look good So and now you've been involved in previous PegaWorld both from behind the scenes and out front speaking obviously this is completely different, how did you prep differently for PegaWorld 2020 virtual versus what you normally do? >> Yeah right so this will be my well 16th I guess PegaWorld and obviously this one stands out as the most different normally we'd be in Boston today, we would have been, you know, working on our stage production and on a floor that's 170,000 square feet big with dozens of booths and hundreds of demos, and obviously this was completely different, but as far as prep goes, I remember the day we learned that early March, this was going virtual and after a few moments of sadness, the team really came together, and I remember the first thing we talked about is we're not going to take a three day event and try to put it all online. Let's--we know people's time is valuable, let's figure out how to take just what's important and get it out to people so that they're inspired to move forward and engage with Pega, so I think that's really been the biggest change in how we've prepped. >> Well, I think that's a great point because obviously theCUBE has been very much involved in these virtual events and. >> Right. >> People send out the note, hey we've made the tough decision to go virtual that's easy decision you really had no choice. >> That's right. >> The tough decision is what do you want to preserve from the physical and understanding that you can't just pop physical into virtual and you got to create a whole new content program, I think Robert Scoble wrote a post on, if you saw it he talks about, hey you better go out and hire Beyonce, oh you can't afford to be for Beyonce? well you better make your content interesting. So to me Adam, that's the tough part, help us understand how you thought that through and what the outcome actually is. >> Yeah, that's right. We didn't have Beyonce, but we did have the Dropkick Murphys, so that was pretty cool and they did a concert for us, so that's been great. But again a lot of people talk about all this free time that they have and I know I have two young kids who are schooling at home now, a job that's busier than it's ever been. I've tried to join a lot of these virtual events and frankly I have gotten overwhelmed, so we took two days and we boiled it down in a two and a half hours, and what we decided to do is we looked at all the areas which we go to market and how people design and deliver their apps, and some of the tech like Pega cloud that they use. And we went to our, I went to my extended team and I said, normally you have 75 booths, we're going to boil that down to 25, let's work together to figure that out. Normally your demos might be 20 minutes when someone walks up, we want to make them seven. But I think the biggest thing that we did, we said what we don't want to lose is that interactivity, and so we had online dozens of Pega experts we could ask questions live, Alan was online doing answering questions live. We made sure that we included live components, our host, Don Sherman was live from his house. We didn't just pre-record everything because then, why would anyone come join when they could just go watch it, 30 minutes later on your YouTube channel? >> See that's innovation to me is having that combination of live. Obviously, you've got to do some stuff a prerecorded, but having a live component adds a dimension, it's challenging, but that's pushing the envelope and I love it. The other thing is, Adam is roles. The roles are different in a virtual event, are they? You're not doing site inspections Like you said, you're not dealing with 170,000 square feet. How did you guys rethink the roles for virtual? >> Yeah so, there were some teams whose world was completely upended. You know, when this all went virtual, the people that do exactly what you were just talking about, dealing with hotels and vendors and things like that, and I got to tell you, one of the most events called PegaWorld Inspire and not to sound too cheesy about it, but one of the things that was really inspiring was to see how everyone stepped up and said, truly, how can I help? And what was really neat about it is we saw different skill sets come out of people that, maybe they hadn't had the opportunity to flex before where they might've worked on one thing that was no longer needed because of the change in the format, and they jumped into become copywriters or liaisons between cause now we have new vendors in this tech world that we didn't have that we turned around in just a matter of weeks. We had people like on my team who normally last year, build this massive physical exhibit containing mirrors and lights, that became video producers, to produce some of these live videos that we did. And one of the things was really impressive, you asked earlier about how did we prep differently and what changed? We looked in the marketplace for different tech and how to bring our CEO and our host and our head of product and everyone together live in split screen, and when you're a big studio you know, and you have that equipment ready to go, that's easy, but when you're just getting average people in their homes and you want to put all that together, we're finding some of the tech in the marketplace just wasn't there. My team built some new video chat technologies that they actually use to produce this in real time, so that was really impressive to me how we turn that around and really innovated not only the things that everyone sees, but all the stuff behind the scenes to. >> See again I think this is what's amazing to me is as I learned more and more about Pega interview Alan earlier. >> Sure. >> Pega is all about being able to adapt to these changes. So a lot of the processes we are using in virtual events, they're unknown. In normally software right through the history of software is okay, here's how the software works. Figure out how to fit your process into it, very rigid. >> That's right. >> Today you know, the last three months with this lockdown in this coronavirus have been completely unknown, and so that's sort of one of the hallmarks of your company, isn't it? >> That's right and we've had the tagline Build For Change for really long time, and I will tell you, I remember in that first meeting again, when we learned this was going virtual and someone stood up and they said, guys we're about to live our tagline. And people really do believe in that, 'cause we go to our clients every single day and say, change is what's going to make you special changes is what's going to make you different, now's your opportunity, seize that change and run with it. And so we said, look, we can't change the world right now, we know we got to go virtual, all we can do is change the type of event that we do, we're not going to do the standard event that we think every one else is going to do, let's do it differently and today was a pretty good example, I think we achieved that. >> I think a couple of things from a challenge standpoint, you mentioned the chat, how do you get people to engage? You had to sort of invent something. >> Yeah. >> And then really think it through for virtual. And I think the other is tech people come to these events, they want to touch the tech. And so you've got you know the innovation hub, it's where people get to play with the technology. You got to take us through how you thought through that and. >> Right. >> What the outcome is. >> Yeah, so that is the toughest part, and I got to tell you, you know all of this being said, I'm looking forward to someday being able to get back and meeting my clients in person, and I'm the type, when I see you on the floor of the innovation hub, I run by a booth and high five you for all the great weeks of hard work, you know? And I love to see people's faces, they see the demos and that's tough not being able to see them smile and get that moment of wow. But what was interesting was it really helped us hone our messages. I think we really realized when I went to everybody and said you don't have 20 minutes, you have seven minutes, here's a template, to follow, to be able to tell your story better, and people started thinking in that mode of storytelling, and what was interesting was lot of people came back to me and said, actually you know what? I can tell that story in a much more crisp way and really show people what they need to see in a in a much faster timeframe. And what it really allowed us to do was find those bits that we thought were most important, find those demos that we think are most important and just, you know bubble those up. One of the things we also did too, we took the opportunity to say you know what, we're going to be online, I watch my kids. My kids are avid gamers whether I like it or not, and they. >> Yeah. >> Watch these Twitch streams, and we thought well, we should be able to do that with even corporate software. So we had these live build sessions where we took some of our developers and I said you're going to be put on the hot seat for 15 minutes on script and we're going to let people just guide and direct you. And they were a little nervous at first, but they went off great, and it was a new format we had never tried before. So if we keep doing these types of different things and we just embrace the moment that we're in I think people will really really come to it and get some value out of it. >> I mean that's awesome, you've got to keep your audience engaged, and so you do lose, you don't have a captive audience, so you lose some time in terms of how much you can you know? how much Kool-Aid injection you can give him. I mean take 20 minutes down to seven minutes. But so you do lose some of that, but what do you gain with virtual? >> Well, I think one of the things that you obviously gain is you can be more widespread, so yeah, you know this event reached tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries. I did an event first week of April, so you can imagine you know, we had two weeks to turn on and I was supposed to be in London and Amsterdam presenting in soccer stadiums. And instead we made that a one hour virtual event and we thought, well, we're just going to get people from the London market and from the Netherlands market, and it turned out, we got people from all over the world to join. So one of the benefits to this is the reach, so we're able to reach a lot more people. I'd say one of the other just things that we realized after tours we're creating a lot of content, we filmed all of this as we were rehearsing, and we're going to put it up online later, so now we have all this great content that anyone can use and go view later, so that was sort of you know, unexpected outcome as well. >> Right yeah, you lose the airline miles, but you gain. (laughing) as I want to going to say you gian the post. >> I don't mind not traveling as well. >> Yeah I here you but, but you do gain that post and I think with physical events, people always at the end of it, it's like, I've never given birth, but I've witnessed that many times. but people feel like, okay, I got to just chill out now for a couple of weeks, and then when they come back, now they're swamped, they've got to catch up. And I think people are realizing, wow, there's a real opportunity maximize the post event here, post nurturing peep streaming out content and continue that engagement, that is a plus of these virtual event. >> Oh, for sure, and you know we started early on deciding how are we going to do, what are we going to do is follow ups you know? That European event that I talked about once again instead of taking all these different markets and trying to replicate it, we did one one hour event. But then because we were in the early days of COVID and some of our clients weren't able to get recorded and speak, we did subsequent webinars in the weeks following them, and the attendance was fantastic. So it allowed us to plan ahead and you know, have a lot of followup activities that we're starting to launch right now as soon as the event ended. >> How do you feel about the outcome for Pega? Do you think it was better, worse, the same or just different? >> I'm going to go with different you know, like I said I get energy I love being up on stage in front of 5,000 people, I love meeting my clients in person, I love the energy of being with my colleagues, but you know it is what it is, We had to do it, and I think what we really embraced it, so I'll say it's just a different way of doing things, but you know I do look forward to the day that I'm able to go meet my clients again and get back on stage and produce some really great things and once again being able to physically see our attendees go oh, when they actually see the software in person, that's the most rewarding thing for me. >> It's going to be interesting as we come out of this I mean, very clearly things are going to be different probably going to have hybrid for some time. Maybe even indefinitely but I'm interested in some of the learnings, some of the things that you think will be permanent, some of the advice. And one of the things I always say to people is don't start with what software are we going to use in there? Your software platform, think about the experience that you want to work backwards from there but what are other advice would you give for given your experiences? >> Right. >> You're so right about that point, I remember interviewing a lot of vendors that we were going to use to bring this online and we were telling them what we wanted to do, and some of them said no one's ever asked about that before we can't do that, so you're a hundred percent right about that. The advice I will say, and the thing I do worry about a little bit is, at first people were a little bit more accepting if maybe the video quality wasn't as good, or you know the content was like any old webinar. As months ago on expectations are going to be higher, people are going to have attended a lot of these things so you're going to have to keep upping the game. And I think the advice I would give is try to take what's great about an in person event and put it online but don't try to replicate the event and put it online. And some of the best things about in person events are just the live nature of it, take the risks, do some live stuff. People will really appreciate that, you'll get a lot of credit for that. The interactivity is what's important about a live event, so as best you can, figure out how to make sure there's some interactivity. Now in the early days I think it's going to be some live Q and A as we move on, it'll be real private rooms with experts that you're able to have one-on-one chats and go through and bounce around and be able to talk to people you know, just like you would accept, between two cameras instead of in person. So I think everyone is months go on. they just going to have to up their game. I think that's great advice, you're absolutely right up your game, up your brand, get a good camera, get good sound, and it's going to just, help your personal brand and your company's brand. Adam. >> We learned what it was like to try to ship microphone and camera equipment around the world (laughing) overnight so we're experts at that, if you you've got any questions. >> Well, I mean what a difference it made, so Adam, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your experiences. You guys, have one of the best that we've seen at the Virtual Event Platform so congratulations on that and really appreciate your contribution (mumbles). >> Thanks it's my pleasure, great to talk to you today (mumbles). All right, keep it right there buddy, this is theCUBES coverage of PegaWorld Inspire 2020 the virtual event, will be right back after a short break. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Adobe. >> Welcome back everyone, live CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019 I'm John Furrier. With Jeff Frick. Our next guest is Jeff Allen, Senior Director Product Marketing, Adobe. Jeff, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Nice to be here. >> So day one is kind of winding down, big, great keynote, laid out the platform product's working together, lot of data, lots of data conversations. >> Yeah, exciting day. Excited to have Adobe Analytics in the mix with that, you saw the four clouds we talked about, Analytics Cloud is one of them and really kind of core to everything we do at Adobe, right? In fact, even in the Creative Cloud side, Document Cloud side, our customers have to be able to measure what they're doing and so, data is obviously key to that. >> Tapping the data across the different applications and now clouds - It's interesting - it's a whole new grail, people have been trying to do for how many years? >> Forever, from the beginning. >> And it's always been that holy grail, where is it? Now some visibility is starting to get to see into the benefits of horizontal scale, diverse data, contextual workloads, >> Absolutely, yeah. >> This is a big deal. >> It is a big deal. >> Explain why it's impacting. >> It's funny. Our culture now expects data right? We measure everything. Our kids are taught to measure things, even something as simple as likes on, my kids, they argue about whether the picture mom posted of them or the other one got more likes, right? So we kind of have hardwired our society around measurement, and now of course, marketing has always been a measurement-heavy discipline, and so, it's just absolutely core to what we're doing. >> And we had a historic moment, we've been doing theCUBE, it's our 10th season, a lot of events. >> Congratulations. >> And we had a guest come on here, that we've never had before, the title was Marketing CIO, it was one of your customers at MetLife >> Interesting, yeah. >> But this brings the question of, of the confluence of you know, the factions coming together. IT, creative, marketing, where the tech, measurement, data. >> Yeah, totally. >> Data processing, information systems, kind of an IT concept now being driven and married in with the business side. >> Absolutely. >> This is really the fundamental thing. >> I started my career marketing to CIOs, in fact, I've spent most of my career marketing to the CIO organization, right, and about 7 years ago, I came over to Adobe to market to marketing, right? And I used to say, "You know I kind of like marketing to this guy, I understand him better," right? Because I know how marketers think a lot better than CIOs, I had to go learn how they thought. But it's amazing how the tech explosion has happened in MarTech and AdTech, all of these vendors here at this event, this is just a piece of our industry, right? There's thousands of companies serving marketing organizations, and so, all of a sudden, the tech stack looks more crazy than even what many CIOs manage, and so it doesn't surprise me at all that organizations, you're talking to organizations that have a CIO/CMO hybrid role. >> Jeff, I'm curious how the landscape is changing, because all the talk here is about experiences, right? And the transaction is part of the experience, but it's not the end game, in fact, it's just a marker on a journey that hopefully lasts a long time. How does that change kind of the way that you look at data, the way customers are looking at data, you know, how the KPIs are changing, and what they're measuring, and the value of the different buckets of data as it's no longer about getting to that transaction, boom, ship the product, and we're done. >> Yeah, so I look after Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Analytics was the first component we acquired in this business, right? Experience Cloud, started with the acquisition of a company called Omniture back in 2009, was an analytics company, primarily web and mobile app analytics, and it has grown since then, to measure many more things. And we've seen our category with analytics that we've addressed move from web analytics to a broader view of digital analytics, right? The digital parts of marketing to all of marketing, the rest of marketing said, "Hey, we need measurements too. We need tools." And then it clicked out another broader click to this idea of experience, right? Because everybody has a stake in experience, and experience is all wrapped around people and how people move through experiences with your brand, so that's where we sit today, is really helping organizations measure experiences, and that spans every person in the organization. >> Talk about the dynamic between how the old way of thinking was shifting to this new way, and specifically, the old way was "I'm a database guy. I've got operational databases and analytical databases," you know, and that was it. You know, relational, unstructured, you know, kind of quadrants. Now, it's kind of, you have (laughs) it's not about databases, it's about data. So you have operational data, which is the analytical data now >> Yeah. >> So you have now, this new dynamic, it's not about the databases anymore >> Absolutely. >> It's about the data itself. >> It's not about, I would say, it's not about the stores of data, right? It's about really getting the insights out of the data, and you know, for the longest time, in my career, uh, you went to CIO, the CIO organization and there was a BI team there, and you would ask them for data, and they could go to the main frame, they could go to these big IT systems, and you know, in 30 days, they could email you back a .csv file, or even before that meeting, give you a .zip file or something with the .csv file on it. And then you got to go see if you could even get it to open on your laptop and get it into Excel and start to manipulate it. And those days don't work. >> And then you go get your root canal right after. It's a painful process. >> What if the data - today that data is trying to understand, "Hey I got a guy that just checked into the hotel. He's standing in front of me, I need to know if he had a bad experience the last time he checked in with us, so I know if I need to give him an upgrade. And you can't go down to I.T. real quick and ask them to take 30 days to get that data and then crunch the data all to find out. Customers need to know, and in the experience business, immediately this person just walked into the hotel and we need to give them a good experience, we blew it last time for them. That's what the experience business wants out of data. >> One of the questions we had with Anjul, who runs engineering on the platform side, was around the rise of prominence of streaming data, how is that impacting the analytics piece, because, you know, if you want the flow, this is a key part of probably your side of the business. Can you comment, what's your reaction to that - streaming trend? >> We've been talking about streaming for a while. CIO, this isn't a new thing, we were streaming applications, right, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but really in the story I just shared, right? The idea of going down and waiting in this asynchronous process with data, the experience business can't handle that, so streaming data is really implying that, as it's coming in, we're processing it, and learning from it, and getting that out into the systems and the people that can take action, instantaneously. >> Talk about the dynamic that customers have around, traditional silos within their organization, you know, that guy runs the database and data for that department, that person runs the data over there, and if this vision is to be, is to be, is to come true, you have to address all the data, you got to know what's out there you got to have data about the data, you got to know in real time, and these are important concepts. How does a company get through that struggle, to break down those kind of existing organizational structures? >> It's a cultural shift, I mean, who has a desktop publishing team anymore in their organization, right? Everyone does desktop publishing, that is how data is too. Everyone's got to be comfortable with data, they have to be conversing around data, and everyone needs access to data. So, that's, you know, that's what is happening in our industry, the analytics industry, is that we're democratizing that data, and getting it everybody's hands, but it's not enough to give them charts and graphs, they have to be able to manipulate that and make it apply to their part of the business, so they can make a decision, and go, and so, that shift in how people think about data, as it's not part of your - it's part of everyone's job, as opposed to being a specialized, siloed job. >> I'm just curious to get your take, a lot of conversations here about you know, Adobe, using their own products, eating your own dog food, drinking your own champagne, whatever analogy (laughs) you like to use. And when you see the DDOM, right, the Data-Driven Operating Model, on the screen, in the keynote, with the CEO, and he says, "Basically everyone at this company is running their business off of these dashboards, that's got to be pretty, pretty, uh, profound for a guy like you who is helping feed those things. >> It's cool. I like to talk about what I call the modern measurement team. The modern measurement team is no longer that centralized data team, right, or that centralized BI team, but every single function, right, under CIO. Every one of the CEO's directs, has their own data team. You go look around and you see that in every single function, there is a sophisticated data team. They have the best tools in the industry, they have the smartest people they can find, they have PhDs on staff, and that's not enough. So, these teams now have to get that out to every constituent in their organization. And that's what we're trying to do at Adobe, that's what we're seeing our best customers do as well, is trying to inform every decision anybody makes. >> And that's where machine learning really shines. You get high quality data on the front end, with the semantic data pipeline capability, get that into the machine learning, help advance, automate, that seems to be the trend. >> Yeah. Yeah, look the insights that you can get from the data, the ability to predict with rich data, it sounds - prediction sounds like - invention used to sound like this novel thing, right, and then you realize, we're inventing things all the time, that's not so - that's just creativity. Well, the same thing is happening with AI and ML, is we're able to predict things with good statistical modeling, with pretty strong, uh, reliability around those models. >> The keynote had great content, I liked how you guys did a lot things really well, you had the architectural slides, platform was a home run, how you guys evolved as a business, see you laid that out nicely, but one of the things I liked, not that obvious, unless you go to a lot of events like we do, everyone says "The journey of the customer", I mean, it's a, it's become a cliche, you guys actually mapped specific things to the journey piece that fit directly into the Adobe set of products and technologies, and the platform. It's interesting, so the word journey has become, actually something you can look at, see some product, see some - a pathway to get some value. >> There's definitely a risk if the word journey, becomes like "Big Data" and all these cliche terms, you know, that means everything, so it comes to mean nothing. But for us, journey, and as marketers especially, journey is just naturally understanding where did I interact with this person, and what did that lead to along the way, right? And so, customer journey, is absolutely core to data analytics. >> All the hype markets, cloud washing, until Amazon shows them how it's done, everyone else kind of follows, you guys are doing it here with journey, one of the things that came out was a journey IQ. I didn't really catch that. Can you take a minute to explain? >> So we have a couple of things. We have something called Segment IQ, Attribution IQ, and now we have even introduced Journey IQ. And when you see that IQ moniker on one of our, kind of our super umbrella features - that means that we're applying AI and ML, right, and Sensei is involved. So we're using powerful data techniques, and we're also wrapping it with a really simple user experience. So Journey IQ starts to break down the customer journey in terms that a normal person, without a PhD, without knowing statistical methods, or advanced mathematics, can leverage those techniques to get really powerful insights. And that's specifically around the customer journey. >> So the IQ is a marker that you guys use to indicate some extra intelligence coming out of the Adobe, from the platform. >> Yeah, yeah, if we're going to democratize data, right, we have to democratize data science as well, right? And so, a big part of what we're doing at Adobe Analytics is really simplifying the user experience, right? So I don't say, Do you want to run a regression model against this to answer your question? We just say Click this button to analyze. Right? So it's a simple user experience, behind the scenes, we can run these powerful models for the customer, and give them back valuable insights. So, Journey IQ is specifically taking things like cohorts, and introducing cohort analysis into the experience, making it simple to do powerful things with cohorts. >> What's the pitch to a customer when you go to one and talk about all this complicated tech and kind of new, operationalized business models around the way you guys are rolling it out, when they just want to ask you, "Hey Jeff, I care about customer experiences." So, bottom line me. What's the pitch? >> How can you possibly address your customer's needs if you don't know what they think. Right? What they need? So, at the end of the day, the great thing about working with customers, like most businesses do, is customers are happy to tell you where you're getting it right, and where you're getting it wrong, right? And that's all over the data. So all you have to do is develop a culture of using data to make decisions, and 9 times out of 10, if you have the right data, and people are using the data to make decisions, they are going to make the right calls and get it right for your customer. And when they don't, they're using opinions and they're going to get it wrong all the time. >> Or, bad data, could be hearsay. >> Or you course correct, or that wasn't - you know, make an adjustment. Right? Again, based on the data. >> Exactly, yeah. >> You're in product marketing, which is a unique position, because you have to look back into the engineering organization, and look out to the customers, so you're, you're in a unique position. What's the customer trend look like right now? What are some of the things you're hearing from the market basket of customers that you talk to? Generally, their orientation towards data? Where are they on the progress bar? What is the state of the market on the landscape of the customer, what patterns are you seeing? >> Good question. So there's a lot of - there's a lot of, um, anxiety around where do I have pockets of data that I'm not able to leverage, and how do I bring that together, so when we tell a platform story, like you heard us tell today, customers are really excited about that, because they know, they've known forever. I mean, this isn't a new problem, like, data silos have been around as long as data has. So, the idea of being able to bring this data into a central place, and do powerful things with it, that's a big point of stress for our customers. And they know, like, "Hey, I have dark spots in my customer experience, that I lose the customer." For example, if I'm heavily oriented around digital, let's say, um, I'm a retailer, and I see a customer, I acquire them through advertising channels, they come through an experience on my website, and they buy the product. Success. I ship the product to them, and then they return it in the retail store. The digital team might not see that return. >> So they might think it was successful. >> They think it was successful. So what do they do? They go take more money and spend it in the ad channel, where that person originated. When in reality, if they could look at the data over time, and incorporate this other channel data, of in-store returns, the picture might look very different. >> So basically, basically. >> It's those dark spots that customers are really needing. >> So getting access to more diverse data, gives you better visibility into what's happening contextually, to open up those blind spots. >> Exactly. Yup. It's just that, adding resolution to a photo. >> Love this conversation, obviously we're data-driven as well on theCUBE, we're sharing the data out there. This interview is data as well. >> Fantastic. >> Jeff, final question for you - for the folks that couldn't make it here, what's the - how would you summarize the show this year, what's the vibe, what's the top story here, what's the big story that needs to be told from Adobe Summit? >> We're just a day in, there a lot, there's a lot to do still, right? We still have two more solid days of this show. But you know, the big themes are going to be around data, they are going to be optimizing the experience for your customers, and what's really amazing is how many customers are here, telling their stories. That's the thing, I wish everybody in your audience could experience by coming here, because there is 300 breakout sessions that feature our customers talking. All of our sessions on main stage, we bring customers out, and we learn from them. That's the best part of my job, is seeing how customers do that. >> Some of the best marketing, you let the customers do the talking, and they're doing innovative things. They're not just your standard, typical, testimonials, they're actually doing - I mean, Best Buy, what a great example that was. >> Cool brand - we work with some of the coolest brands in the world, so, fascinating, brilliant people. >> Marketing, at scale, with data. Good job, Jeff, thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Jeff Allen, here inside theCUBE with Adobe. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick. Stay with us for more Day 1 coverage after this short break. Stay with us.

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you >> by Adobe. >> Well, Brian, welcome to the Cube Lives Conversations here. Recovering Adobe summat twenty nineteen in Las Vegas. I'm tougher with Jeff Frick co hosting for the next two days wall to wall coverage around Adobe Summit, a company that is transformed from some making software to being a full blown cloud and data provider. Changing the user experience That's our Kino revue. Jeff, this morning was the keynote. The CEO Sean Tom knew no. Ryan took over in two thousand seven. Bruce Chizen Cube alumni, right. What a transformation. They actually did it. They kind of kept down low. But over those years absolutely changed the face of Adobe. We're seeing it now with a slew of acquisitions. Now seventeen thousand people attending this conference. This is kind of interesting story, your thoughts >> a lot of interesting stuff going on here, John and I think fundamentally they they took the risk right. They change your business from a by a news buying new license every year for eight hundred bucks. Nine hundred bucks, whatever used to be for Creative Cloud to go to an online model. And I think what was interesting about what Johnson, who said, is when you are when you're collecting money monthly, you have to deliver value monthly. And it completely changed the way that they paste their company the way they deliver products the way their product development works. And they moved to as we talked about all the time, instead of a sample of data that's old and making decisions. Now you can make decisions based on real time data in the way people are actually using the product. And so they've driven that transformation. And then now, by putting your whole sweet and with these gargantuan acquisitions of Mar Keto, now they're helping their customers really make that transition to a really time dynamic, digitally driven, data driven enterprise to drive this customer experience. >> It's interesting. Adobes, transformations, realist, legit It happened. It's happening. It's interesting, Jeff, you and I both live in Palo Alto, and I was looking through my Lincoln and my Facebook. There's literally dozens of friends and your colleagues over the years that I've interfaced with that all work at Adobe but feed all the acquisitions. They've built quite a huge company, and they brought a different set of experiences, and this is the to be the big story. That hasn't been told yet. Adobe again. This our first time covering Adobe Summit and excited to be here and continue to cover this. But here's what's going on That's really important. They transformed and are continuing Transformer. They did it in a way that was clever, smart and very predictive in their mind. They took a slow, slow approach to getting it right, and we heard the CEO talk about this. They had an old software model that was too slow. They want to attract the next generation of users, and they wanted to reimagine their product and the ecosystem changed their business model and change their engagement with customers. Very targeted in its approach, very specific to their business model. And their goals were innovate faster, moved to the cloud moved to a subscription based business model. But that's not it. Here the story is, the data equation was some kind of nuances in the keynote, like we didn't get the data right. Initially, we got cloud right, but data is super important, and then they got it right, and that's the big story. Here is the data driven and this is the playbook. I mean, you can almost substitute Adobe for your company. If someone's looking to do Tracy, pick your spots, execute, don't just talk about >> it, right? Right? Yeah. They call it the DDO in the data driven operating model, and he pulled up the dash board with some fake data talked about The management team runs off of this data, and when you know it's everything from marketing spend and direct campaigns and where people are sampling, there was a large conversation, too, about the buyer journey. But to me, the most important part is the buying act is not the end of the story, right. You want to continue to engage with that customer wherever and however, and whenever they want you. There was an interesting stat that came out during the keynote, where you know the more platforms your customer engages with you, the much higher the likelihood that they're goingto that they're going to renew, that they're going to retain so to me. I think you know, we talk a lot about community and engagement and this experience concept where the product is a piece of the puzzle, but it's not. It's not the most important piece that might be the piece Well, what she experiences built around, but it's It's just a simple piece. I think the guy from Best Buy was phenomenal. The story, the transformation, that company. But they want to be your trusted. A provider of all these services of two hundred dollars a year. They'LL come take care of everything in your home so you know they don't just want to ship a box. Say, say goodbye. They want to stay. >> Well, let's talk. Let's talk about that use case. I think the best bike Kino Best Buy was on the Kino with CEO. But I think that what I what? I was teasing out of that interview and you just brought it up. I want to expand on that They actually had massive competition from Amazon. So you think, Oh my God, they're going to be out of business? No, they match the price. They took price off the table so they don't lose their customers who want to buy it on Amazon. You can still come in the story of experience, right? They shifted the game to their advantage where they said, we're not going to be a product sales company. We're going to sell whatever the client want customers want and match Amazons pricing and then provide that level of personalization. That then brought up the keys CEOs personalization piece, which I'd like to get your thoughts on because you made a stat around their emails, right, he said, Quote personalization at scale, Right? That's what they're >> that's that they're doing right? And he talked about, you know, they used to do an e mail blast and it was an email blast. Now they have forty million versions of that e mail that go out forty million version. So it is this kind of personalization at scale. And you know, the three sixty view of the customer has been thrown around. We could go in the archives. We've been talking about that forever. But it seems that now you know the technology is finally getting to where, where needs to be. The cloud based architectures allow people to engage in this Army Channel way that they could never do it before. And you're seeing As you said, the most important thing is a data architecture that can pull from disparate sources they talked about in the Kenya. The show does they actually built their customer profile as the person was engaging with the website as they gave more information so that they can customize all this stuff for that person. Of course, then they always mentioned, But don't be creepy about it. I >> don't have too >> far so really delivering this mask mask, personalization at scale. >> I think one of the lessons that's coming out a lot of our interviews in the Cube is Get the cloud equation right first, then the data one. And I think Adobe validates that here in my mind when it continue investigating, report that dynamic the hard news. Jeff The show was Adobe Cloud experiences generally available, and I thought that was pretty interesting. They have a multiple clouds because a member they bought Magenta and Marquette on a variety of other acquisitions. So they have a full on advertising cloud analytics, cloud marketing cloud and a commerce cloud. And underneath those key cloud elements, they have Adobe, sensi and Adobe Experience platform, and we have a couple of night coming on to talk about that, and that's making up. They're kind of the new new platform. Cloud platforms experience Cloud. They're calling it, but the CEO at Incheon quote. I want to get your reaction to that. This, he said, quote people by experiences, not products. That's why they're calling it the experience cloud. I hear you in the office all the time talking about this, Jeff. So it's about to experience the product anymore, >> right? It is the passion that you can build around a community in that experience. My favorite examples from the old days is Harley Davidson. How many people would give you know they're left pinkie toe, have their customers tattoo their brand on their body? Right in The Harley Davidson brand is a very special, a special connotation, and the people that associate with that really feel like a part of a community. The other piece of it is the ecosystem. They talk about ecosystem of developers and open source. If you can get other people building their business on the back of your platform again, it's just deepens the hook of engagements that opens up your innovation cycle. And I think it's such a winning formula, John, that we see over and over again. Nobody can do by themselves. Nobody's got all the smartest people in the room, so get unengaged community. Get unengaged, developer ecosystem, more talk of developers and really open it up and let the creativity of your whole community drive the engagement and the experience. >> We will be following the personalization of scale Cube alumni former keep alumni who is not at the show. I wanted to get opinion. Satya Krishna Swami. He's head of persuasion. Adobe had pinned them on linked him. We'LL get him on the Cuban studio so keep on, we're going to follow that story. I think that's huge. This notion of personalization of scale is key, and that brings us to the next big news. The next big news was from our friend former CEO of Marquette. Oh, Steve Lucas. Keep alumni. They launched a account based experience initiative with Adobe, Microsoft and Lincoln, and I find that very interesting. And I'd start with Ron Miller TechCrunch on Twitter about this. Lincoln's involved, but they're keeping in Lincoln again. The problem of data is you have these silos, but you have to figure out how to make it work. So I'm really curious to see how that works, so that brings up that. But I think Steve Lucas it was it was very aggressive on stage, but he brought up a point that I want to get your thoughts on, He said. Were B to B company, but we're doing B to seeing metrics the numbers that they were doing at Marquette. Oh, we're in the B to see rain. So is this notion of B to B B to see kind of blurring? I mean, everyone is a B to C company these days. If everything's direct to consumer, which essentially what cloud is, it's a B to see. >> Yeah, well, it's interesting records. We've talked about the consumer ization of again. Check the tapes for years and years and years, and the expectations of our engagement with applications is driven by how we interact with Amazon. How we interact with Facebook, how we interact with these big platforms. And so you're seeing it more and more. The thing that we talked about in studio the other day with Guy is that now, too, you have all these connected devices, so no longer is distribution. This this buffer between the manufacturing, the ultimate consumer, their products. Now they're all connected. Now they phone home. Now the Tesla's says, Hey, people are breaking in the back window. Let's reconfigure the software tohave a security system that we didn't have yesterday that wasn't on our road map. But people want, and now we have it today. So I think Steve's perception is right on. The other thing is that you know, there's so much information out there. So how do you add value when that person finally visits you in their journey? And let's face it, most of the time, a predominant portion of their engagement is going to be Elektronik, right? They're going to fill out a form. They're going to explore things. How are you collecting that data? How are you magic? How are you moving them along? Not only to the purchase but again, is that it was like to say, is never the orders, the reorder in this ongoing engagement. >> And that's their journey. They want to have this whole life cycle of customer experience. But the thing that that got that caught me off guard by McKeen against first time I went satin Aquino for an adobe on event was with me. All these parts coming together with the platform. This is a cloud show. Let's plain and simple. This is Cloud Technologies, the data show we've gone to all the cloud shows Amazon, Google, Microsoft, you name it CNC Athletics Foundation. This is a show about the application of being creative in a variety of use cases. But the underpinnings of the conversations are all cloud >> right, And they had, you know, to show their their commitments of data and the data message right? They had another cube alumni on Jewell of police have rounded to dupe some it all the time, and she talked about the data architecture and again, some really interesting facts goes right to cloud, she said. You know, most people, if you don't have cloud's been too much time baby sitting your architecture, baby sitting your infrastructure Get out of the way Let the cloud babe sit your infrastructure and talk. And she talked about a modern big data pipe, and she's been involved with Duke. She's been involved with Spark has been involved in all this progression, and she said, You know, every engagement creates more data. So how are you collecting that data? How are you analyzing that data and how are you doing it in real time with new real time so you could actually act on it. So it's It's very much kind of pulling together many of the scenes that we've uncovered >> in the last two parts of a Kino wass. You had a CEO discussion between Cynthia Stoddard and >> Atticus Atticus, other kind. Both of them >> run into it again. Both big Amazon customs, by the way, who have been very successful with the cloud. Then you had and you're talking engineering, that's all. They're my takeaway from the CEO. One chef I want to get your thoughts on because it can be long in the tooth, sometimes the CEO conversation. But they highlighted that cloud journey is is there for Adobe Inn into it? But the data is has to be integrated, totally felt like data. Variables come out the commonality of date, and she mentioned three or four other things. And then they made a point and said, quote data architectures are valuable for the experience and the workload. This is critical with hearing us over and over again. The date is not about which cloud you're using. It's about what the workload, right, right? The workloads are determining cloud selection, so if you need one cloud. That's good. You need to write. It's all depending on the workload, not some predetermined risk management. Multi cloud procurement decision. This is a big shift. This is going to change the game in the landscape because that changes how people buy and that is going to be radical. And I think they're they're adobes right on the right wave. Here they're focusing on the user experience, customer experience, building the platform for the needs of the experience. I think it's very clever. I think it's a brilliant architecture. >> Yeah, she said that the data archive data strategy lagged. Right? The reporting lag. They're trying to do this ddo m >> um, >> they didn't have commonality of data. They didn't have really a date. Architecture's so again. You can't build the house unless you put in the rebar. You build the foundation, you get some cement. But once you get that, that enabled you to build something big and something beautiful, and you've got to pay attention. But really, we talk about data driven. We talk about real time data, they're executing it and really forcing themselves by moving into the subscription business model. >> Alright, Final question I want to get one more thought from you before I weigh in on my my answer to my question, which is What do you mean your opinion? What was the most important story that came out of the keynote one or two >> or well or again? You know, John, I was in the TV business for years and years before getting into tech, and I know the best buy story on what came before them and what came before them and what came before them. So what really impressed me was the digital transformation story that the CEO shared first, to basically try to get even with their number one competitors with which was Amazon in terms of pricing and delivery. And then really rethink who they are Is a company around using technology to improve people's lives. They happen to play in laundry. They play in kitchen, they play in home entertainment. They play in computers and education, so they have a broad footprint and to really refocus. And as he said, To be successful, you need to align your corporate strategy and mission with people's strategy and mission. Sounds like they've been very successful in that and they continue to change the company. >> I agree. And I would just kind of level it up and say the top story, in my opinion, wass the fact that Adobe is winning their innovating. If you look at who's on stage like best buy into it, the people around them are actually executing with Cloud with Dae that at a whole another level that they've gone the next level. I think the big story here is Adobe has transferred, has transformed and continues to do transformation. And they just had a whole nother level. And I think the story is Oracle will be eating their dust because I think they're going to tow. You know, I think sales force should be watching Adobe. This is a big move. I think Oracle is gonna be twisting in the wind from adobes success. >> Well, like he said, you know, they tie the whole thing together from the creativity, which is what creative cloud is to the delivery to them, the monetization in the measuring. So now they you know, they put those pieces together, so it's a pretty complete suite. So now you can tie back. How has my conversion based on What type of creative How is my conversion based on what type of campaigns? And again the forty million email number just blows me away. It's not the same game anymore. You have to do this and you can't do by yourself. You gotta have automation. You got have good analytics and you got a date infrastructure that will support your ability to do that. >> So just a little report card in adobe old suffer model that's over. They have the new model, and it's growing revenues supporting it. They are attracting new generation of users. You look at the demographics here, Jeff. This is not, you know, a bunch of forty something pluses here. This is a young generation new creative model and the products on the customer testimonials standing on this stage represent, in my opinion, a modern architecture, a modern practice, modern cloud kind of capabilities. So, you know, Adobe Certainly looking good from this keynote. I'm impressed, you know. Okay, >> good. Line up all the >> days of live cube coverage here in Las Vegas for Doby summit. I'm John for Jeff. Rick, Thanks for watching. We'll be back with a short break

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to Palo Altos Cube Studios for CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. We're with Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, CUBE Alumni. He's been on before. Building one of the most compelling companies that's disrupting and changing the game in Comms, advertising, PR, with Cloud technologies. Kevin, great to see you again, thanks for coming in. >> Likewise John, It's really good to be back. >> So, we haven't chatted in two years. You've been busy. Our last conversation was the beginning of 2017. Cision's done a lot of interesting things. You've got a lot of M and A under your belt. You're putting this portfolio together with Cloud technologies. Really been interesting. I really got to say I think you cracked the code on I think a new reality, a new economic reality. Also new capabilities for comms folks. Congratulations. >> Thank you, it's been a fun ride. >> So give us the update. So two years since we talked, how many deals, companies have you bought? What's the headcount, what's the revenue? Give us an update. >> In the four years, 12 acquisitions, seven of which have happened since I've been here. Up to 4,500 employees in over 40 countries. Customer count has grown to over 50,000 customers globally. Revenue's kind of gone from 500s to just shy of 800 million. A lot of leadership changes, and as you just mentioned, pretty seismic change, finally. We've certainly been the catalyst and the cattle prod for that seismic change around tech, data, measurement and analytics finally becoming mature and adopted inside this line of business like the Chief Communication Officer, the earn media folks. To say that they were not tech savvy a few years ago would be an understatement. So, a lot's been going on. >> Yeah, and certainly the trend is your friend, in my opinion, for you. But I think the reality is not yet upon people's general mindset. It's coming quickly, so if you look at some of the big trends out there. Look at fake news, look at Facebook, look at the Google effect. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Big Tech, Amazon. Cloud computing, in that time period that you were, prior to just going to Cision, you had Oracle Cloud, done a lot of great things on the Marketing Cloud side. But the timing of Cloud computing, the timing of how media has changed. There's not many journalists anymore. We had Andy Cunningham, a legendary industry veteran, formerly of Cunningham Communications. He did the PR for Steve Jobs. You said, there's no more journalists, a few left, but you got to tell your story direct to the consumer. >> You do. >> This is now a new marketing phenomenon. This is a tailwind for you at Cision because you guys, although put these cubbies together, have a unique vision around bringing brand value advertising at PR economics. >> Yeah, that's a good way to put it. >> Tell us the vision of Cision and specifically the shift that's happening. Why are you guys important? What wave are you riding? >> So, there's a couple shifts, John. You and I have talked about this in previous programs There's this shift of the line of business, having to work in a whole bunch of non-integrated point solutions. The CFO used to live in 17 different applications from 17 vendors. That's all squished together. Now I buy from one Cloud platform, right, from Oracle or SAP. Same thing happened in Human Capital Management. 22 things squished into the Cloud, one from Workday, right. Same thing happened, you had 25 different things for sales and service. That all squished together, into one CRM in the Cloud, I buy from Salesforce, right. And our last rodeo, the early part of this stack, it was me and Adobe battling it out for the right to go squish the entire the LUMAscape into a marketing cloud, right, so there could be one ring to rule them all for the CMO. So, it happens in every single category. It just hasn't had over here, happened on the earned media side and the Chief Communications Officer. So, bringing the tech stack so that now we are for the CCO what Adobe is for the CMO what Salesforce is for the CRO, Workday is for the CHRO. That has to happen. You can't do, you can't manage it this way without sophisticated tech, without automation, without integration, you can't do it. The second thing that had to happen, especially in marketing and advertising, they all figured out how to get revenue credit. Advertising was a slow single-digit CAGR industry for 50 years. And then something happened. After 5% CAGR for 50 years, and then something happened over the next 10 years. Digital paid went from like 15 billion to 150 billion. And what happened is that old, I know half my advertising is wasted on this one half. That went bye-bye. Now I know immediately, down to the page, down the ad unit, down to this, exactly what worked, right. When I was able to put Pixels on ads, John, you'd go to that page, Pixel would go on you, It would follow you around If you ended up putting something in the e-commerce shop that ad got credit. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's how the entire-- >> But that's how the infrastructure would let you, allowed you, it enabled you to do that. Then again, paid advertising, paid search, paid advertising, that thing has created massive value in here. >> Massive value. But my buyer, right, so the person that does the little ad on the most regional tech page got credit. My buyer that got Bob Evans, the Cloud King, to write an article about why Microsoft is going to beat AWS, he's a credible third party influencer, writing objectively. That article's worth triple platinum and has more credibility than 20,000 Microsoft sales reps. We've never, until Cision, well let's Pixel that, let's go figure out how many of those are the target audience. Let's ride that all the way down to the lead form that's right. Basically it's super simple. Nobody's ever tracked the press releases, the articles or any of the earned media content, the way people have tracked banner ads or e-commerce emails. Therefore this line of business never get revenue credit. It stayed over here in the OpEx pile where things like commerce and advertising got dumped onto the revenue pile. Well, you saw the crazy investment shift. So, that's really the more important one, is Comms is finally getting quantified ROI and business's attribution like their commerce and advertising peers for the first time ever in 2018 via what Cision's rolled out. That's the exciting piece. >> I think, I mean, I guess what I hear you saying is that for the first time, the PR actually can be measured, similar to how advertising >> You got it. >> Couldn't be measured then be measured. Now PR or communications can be measured. >> They get measured the same way. And then one other thing. That ad, that press release, down to the business event. This one had $2 million dollars of ad spend, this one had no ad spend. When it goes to convert, in CRM or it goes to convert on a website, this one came from banner ad, this one came from credible third party content. Guess which one, not only had zero ad spend instead of $2 million in ad spend. Guess which one from which source actually converts better. It's the guy that chose to read credible third-party article. He's going to convert in the marketing system way better that somebody who just clicked on the ad. >> Well certainly, I'm biased-- >> So all the way down the funnel, we're talking about real financial impact based on capturing earned media ID, which is pretty exciting. >> Well, I think the more exciting thing is that you're basically taking a value that is unfunded quote by the advertising firm, has no budget basically, or thin budgets, trying to hit an organic, credible outlet which is converting in progression to a buyer, an outcome. That progression is now tracked. But let's just talk about the economics because you're talking about $2 million in spend, it could be $20 million. The ratio between ad spend and conversion to this new element you mentioned is different. You're essentially talking about the big mega trend, which is organic content. Meaning connecting to sources. >> That's right. >> That flow. Of course, we believe and we, at the Cube, everyone's been seeing that with our business. Let's talk about that dynamic because this is not a funded operationalized piece yet, so we've been seeing, in the industry, PR and comms becoming more powerful. So, the Chief Communication Officer isn't just rolling out press releases, although they have to do that to communicate. You've got medium posts now, you've got multiple channels. A lot of places to put the story. So the Chief Communication Officer really is the Chief Storyteller Officer, Not necessarily the CMO. >> Emphatically. >> The Martech Stack kind of tracking. So talk about that dynamic. How is the Chief Communication Officer role change or changing? Why is that important and what should people be thinking about, if they are a Chief Communication Officer? >> You know, it's interesting. There's a, I'm just going to call it an actual contradiction on this front. When you and I were getting out of our undergrad, 7 out of 10 times that CCO, the Chief Communication Officer, worked for the CEO and 30% of time other. Yet the role was materially narrow. The role has exploded. You just said it pretty eloquently. This role has really exploded and widened its aperture. Right now though 7 out of 10 of them actually do work for the CMO, which is a pretty interesting contradiction. And only 30% of them work for the CEO. Despite the fact that from an organizational stand point, that kind of counter intuitive org move has been made. It doesn't really matter because, so much of what you just said too, you was in marketing's purview or around brand or around reputation or around telling the story or around even owning the key assets. Key assets isn't that beautiful Budweiser frog commercial they played on Super Bowl anymore. The key assets are what's getting done over in the communications, in part. So, from a storytelling standpoint, from an ownership of the narrative, from a, not just a product or a service or promotion, but the whole company, the whole brand reputation, the goodwill, all of that is comms. Therefore you're seeing comms take the widest amount of real estate around the boardroom table than they've ever had. Despite the fact that they don't sit in the chair as much. I mentioned that just because I find it very interesting. Comms has never been more empowered, never had a wider aperture. >> But budget wise, they're not really that loaded up with funding. >> And to my earlier point, it's because they couldn't show. Super strategic. Showing ROI. >> So, showing ROI is critical. >> Not the quality of clippings. >> It was the Maslow of Hierarchy of Needs if you can just show me that I put a quarter in and I got a dollar out. Like the ads and the e-commerce folks do. It simply drives the drives me. >> So take us through some of those analytics because people who know about comms, the old school comms people who are doing this, they should really be thinking about what their operation is because, can I get an article in the Wall Street Journal? Can Silicon Angle write about us? I've got to get more clippings. That tend to be the thing. Did we get the press release out on time? They're not really tied into some of the key marketing mix pieces. They tend to be kind of a narrow scope. Those metrics were pretty clear. What are the new metrics? What's the new operational playbook.? >> Yeah, we call those Vanity Metrics. I cared about theoretical reach. Hey, Yahoo tells me I reached 222 billion people, so I plug in 222 billion people. I reached more people than there are on the planet with this PR campaign. I needed to get to the basic stuff like how many people did I actually reach, number one. But they don't, they do theoretical reach. They work in things like sentiment. Well, I'm going to come up with, 100 reporters wrote about me. I'm going to come up with, how many of them I thought were positive, negative, neutral. Sentiment analysis, they measure number of reporters or hits versus their competitors and say, Proctor and Gamble rolled out this diaper product, how did I do this five days? How much did Proctor and Gamble diapers get written about versus Craft diapers versus Unilever's. Share a voice. Not irrelevant metrics. But not metrics the CEO and the CFO are going to invest in. >> Conversion to brand or sales, those kind of things? >> They never just never existed. Those never existed. Now when we can introduce the same exact metrics that the commerce and the ad folks do and say, I can tell you exactly how many people. I can tell you exactly who they were, demographic, firmographic, lifestyle, you name it. I can tell you who the audience is you're reaching. I can tell you exactly what they do. When those kind of people read those kind of articles or those kind of people read those kind of press releases, they go to these destinations, they take these behaviors. And because I can track that all the way down to whatever that success metric is, which could be a lead form if I'm B2B for pipe. It could be a e-commerce store from B2C. It could be a rating or review or a user generation content gourd. It could be a sign up and register, if I'm trying to get database names. Whatever the business metric is. That's what the commerce and the ad people do all day every day. That's why they are more funded than ever. The fact that press releases, articles, tweets, blogs, the fact that the earned media stuff has never been able to do those things is why they just continue to suffer and have had a real lack of investment prices going on for the last 20 year. >> Talk about the trend around-- >> It's simple stuff. >> I know, if you improve the ROI, you get more budget. >> It really is that simple. >> That's been the challenge. I think PR is certainly becoming, comms is becoming more powerful. People know I talk about it all the time. I think comms is the new CMO I think command and control and organic content work together in the organic. We've seen it first hand in our business. But, it's an issue of tech savviness and also vision. A lot of people just are uncomfortable shifting to the new realities. >> That's for sure. >> What are some of the people tech savvy look at when they look at say revamping comms platform or strategy versus say old school? >> I'll give you two answers on that, John. Here is one thing that is good for us, that 7 out of 10 to the CCOs work for the CMO. Because when I was in this seat starting to light that fire under the CMO for the first time, which was not that long ago, and they were not tech savvy, and they were not sophisticated. They didn't know how to do this stuff either. That was a good 10 year journey to get the CMO from not sophisticated to very sophisticated. Now they're one of the more sophisticated lines of business in the world. But that was a slog. >> So are we going to see a Comms Stack? Like Martech, ComTech. >> ComTech is the decision communication Cloud, is ComTech. So we did it. We've built the Cloud stack. Again like I said, just like Adobe has the tech stack for marketing, Cision has the tech stack for comms, and we've replicated that. But because the CCO works for the CMO and the CMO's already been through this. Been through this with Ad Techs, been through this with MarTech, been through this with eCommerce, been through this with Web. You know, I've got a three or four year sophistication path this time just because >> The learnings are there >> The company's already done it everywhere else. The boss has already done it everywhere else. >> So the learnings are there from the MarTech so it's a pretty easy leap to take? >> That's exactly right. >> It's just-- >> How CommTech works is shocking. Incredibly similar to how MarTech and AdTech work. A lot of it is the same technology, just being applied different. >> That's good news >> So, the adoption curve for us is a fantastic thing. It's a really good thing for us that 70% of them work for CMOs because the CMO is the most impatient person on the planet, to get this over because the CMO is sick of doing customer journeys or omni channel across just paid and owned. They recognize that the most influential thing to influence you, it's not their emails, it's not their push notifications, It's not their ads. It's recognizing which credible third-party content you read, getting them into that, so that they're influencing you. >> It's kind of like Google PageRank in the old days. This source is more relevant than that one, give it more weight. >> And now all of a sudden if I have my Cision ID, I can plug in the more weight stuff under your profile. I want to let him go across paid and owned too, I materially improve the performance of the paid and owned because I'm putting in the really important signal versus what's sitting over there in the DMP or the CDP, which is kind of garbage. That's really important. >> I really think. >> I thinks you've got a home run here. I think you've really cracked the code on this. I think you are absolutely right on the money with comms and CommsTech. I see it all the time. In my years of experiences, it's so obvious. Then again, the tailwind is that they've been through the MarTech. The question I have for you is cultural shift. That's a big one. So, I'm out evangelizing all the time about the CUBE Cloud and some of the things we're doing. I run into the deer in the headlights on one side, what do you mean? And then people like, I believe, I totally understand. The believers and the non believers. What's the cultural shift? Because some chief comms op, they're very savvy, progressive, we've got to make the shift. How do they get the ship to turn? What are some of the cultural challenges? >> And boy is that right. I felt the same thing, getting more doing it with the CMO. A lot of people kept their head in the sand until they got obsoleted. They didn't know. Could they not see the train coming? They didn't want to see the train coming. Now you go look at the top 100 CMOs in the world today. Pretty different bunch than who those top 100 CMOs were 10 years ago. Really different bunch. History's repeating itself over here too. You've got the extremely innovative CCOs that are driving that change and transformation. You've got the deer in the headlight, okay, I know I need to do this, but I'm not sure how, and you do have your typical, you know, nope, I've got my do not disturb sign and police tape over my office. I won't even let you in my door. I don't want to hear about it. You've got all flavors. The good news is we are well past the half point where the innovators are starting actually to deploy and show results, the deer in the headlights are starting to innovate, and these folks are at least opening up the door and taking down some tape. >> Is there pressure on the agency side now? A lot of agencies charge a lot of monthly billings for these clients, the old school thing. Some are trying to be progressive and do more services. Have you seen, with the Cision Cloud and things that you're doing, that you're enabling, those agencies seem to be more productive? >> Yes. >> Are the client's putting pressure on those agencies so they see more value? Talk about the agency dynamic. >> That's also a virtuous cycle too, right? That cycle goes from, it's a Bell Curve. At the beginning of the bell curve, customers have no clue about the communications. They go to their agencies for advice. So, you have to educate the agencies on how to say nice things about you. By the time you're at the Bell Curve, the client's know about the tech or they've adopted the tech, and the agencies realize, oh, I can monetize the hell out of this. They need strategy and services and content and creative and campaign. This is yet another good old fashioned >> High gross profit. >> A buck for the tech means six bucks for me as the service agency. At the bottom, over here, I'll never forget this when we did our modern marketing experiences, Erik, the CMO of Clorox said, hey, to all you agencies out there, now that we're mature, you know, we choose our our agency based on their fluency around our tech stack. So it goes that violently and therefore, the agencies really do need to try to get fluent. The ones that do, really reap rewards because there is a blatant amount of need as the line of business customer tries to get from here to here. And the agency is the is the very first place that that customer is going to go to. >> So, basically the agency-- >> The customer has first right of refusal to go provide these services and monetize them. >> So, the agency has to keep up. >> They certainly do. >> Because, if the game gets changed by speed, it's accelerated >> If they keep up, yup. >> Value is created. If they don't have their running shoes on, they're out. >> If they keep up and they stay fluent, then they're going to be great. The last thing back in the things. We've kind of hit this. This is one of those magic points I've been talking about for 20 years. When the CFO or the CEO or the CMO walk down to the CCOs office and say, where are we on this, 'cause it's out in the wild now, there are over 1200 big brands doing this measurement, Cision ID, CommsTech stuff. It's getting written about by good old fashioned media. Customer says, wow, I couldn't do this for 50 years, now I am, and look what I just did to my Comms program. That gets read. The world's the same place as it always has been. You and I read that. We go down to our comms department and say, wow, I didn't know that was possible, where are we on this? So the Where Are We On This wave is coming to communications, which is an accelerant. >> It's an accountability-- >> Now it's accountability, and therefore, the urgency to get fluent and changed. So now they're hiring up quantums and operations and statisticians and database people just like the marketers did. The anatomy of a communications department is starting to like half science half art, just like happened in marketing. Whereas before that, it was 95% art and 5% science. But it's getting to be 50/50. >> Do you have any competition? >> We have, just like always. >> You guys pretty much have PR Newswire, a lot of big elements there. >> We do. >> You've got a good foothold. >> This is just an example. Even though Marketo is part of Adobe, giant. And Eloqua is part of Oracle, giant and Pardot is part of Salesforce. You've got three goliaths in marketing automation. Hubspot's still sticking around. PeerPlay, marketing Automation. You can just picture it. CRM giants, Microsoft and Salesforce have eaten the world Zendesk's still kicking around. It's a little PeerPlay. That equivalent exists. I have nobody that's even one fifth as big as I am, or as global or complete. But I do have some small, point specific solution providers. They're still hanging out there. >> The thing is, one, first you're a great leader. You've seen the moving on the marking tech side. You've got waves of experience under your belt. But I think what's interesting is that like the Web 1.0, having websites and webpages, Web 2.0 and social networks. That was about the first generation. Serve information, create Affiliate programs, all kind of coded tracking. You mentioned all that. I over-simplified it, but you get the idea. Now, every company needs a new capability. They need to stand up media infra structure. What does that mean? They're going to throw a podcast, they're going to take their content, put them into multiple channels. That's a comms function. Now comms is becoming the new CMO-like capability in this earned channel. So, your Cloud becomes that provisioning entity for companies to stand up capabilities without waiting. Is that the vision? >> You've nailed it. And that is one of the key reasons why you have to have a tech stack. That's a spot on one, another one. Early in my career, the 20 influences that mattered, they were all newspaper reporters or TV folks. There was only 20 of them. I had a Rolodex. so I could take each one of them out for a three Martini lunch, they'd write something good about me. >> Wish is was that easy now. >> Now, you have thousands of influencers across 52 channels, and they change in real time, and they're global in nature. It's another example of where, well, if you don't automate that with tech and by the way. >> You're left behind. >> If you send out digital content they talk back to you in real time. You have to actually not only do influencer identification, outreach and curation, you've got to do real time engagement. >> There's no agility. >> There's none. >> Zero agility. >> None, exactly. >> There's no like Dev Ops mindset in there at all. >> Then the speed with which, it's no longer okay for comms to call the agency and say, give me a ClipBook, I've got to get it to my CEO by Friday. That whole start the ClipBook on Tuesday, I've got to have the ClipBook, the physical ClipBook on the CEO as an example. Nope, if I'm not basically streaming my senior executives in real time, curated and analyzed as to what's important and what it means, I can't do that without a tech stack. >> Well, Andy Cunningham was on the Cube. >> This whole thing has been forced to get modernized by cloud technology and transformation >> Andy Cunningham, a legend in the comms business who did all Steve Jobs comms, legend. She basically said on The Cube, it's not about waiting for the clips to create the ClipBook, create your own ClipBook and get it out there. Then evaluate and engage. This is the new command and control with digital assets. >> Now, it's become the real-time, curated feed that never stops. It sure as hell better not. Because comms is in trouble if it does. >> Well this is a great topic. But let's have you in this, I can go deep on this. I think this is a really important shift, and you guys are the only ones that are on it at this level. I don't think the Salesforce and the Adobe yet, I don't think they're nimble enough to go after this wave. I think they're stuck on their wave and they're making a lot of money. >> You know John, paid media and owned media. The Google Marketing Cloud, that SAP Marketing Cloud, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce Marketing Clouds. They don't do anything in earned. Nothing. This is one of the reasons I jumped because I knew this needed to happen. But, you know, they're also chasing much bigger pots of money. Marketing and Advertising is still a lot more money. We're working on it to grow the pie for comms. But, bottom line is, they're chasing the big markets as I was at Oracle. And they're still pretty much in a violent arms race against each other. Salesforce is still way more focused on what Adobe's doing. >> You're just on a different wave. >> So, we're just over here doing this, building a billion dollar cloud leader, that is mission critical to everyone of their customers. They're going to end up being some pretty import partners to us, because they've been too focused on the big arms race against each other, in paid and owned and have not had the luxury to even go here. >> Well I think this wave that you're on is going to be really big. I think they don't see it, in my opinion, or can't get there. With the right surfboard, to use a surfing analogy, there's going to be a big wave. Thanks for sharing your insights. >> Absolutely. >> While you're here, get the plug in for Cision. What's going on, what's next? What's the big momentum? Get the plug in for the company. What are you guys still going to do? >> Plugin for the company. The company has acquired a couple of companies in January. You might see, one of which is Falcon. Basically Falcon is one of the big four in the land of Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Spredfast. Cloud companies do this. Adobe has Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Parking Cloud. Salesforce has Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud. Cision has just become a multi cloud company. We now have the Cision Social Cloud and the Cision Communications Cloud. And we're going to go grab a couple hundred million dollars of stuff away from Sprinklr, Hootsuite and collapse social into this. Most of social is earned as well. So, look for a wing spread, into another adjacent market. I think that's number one. Then look for publishing of the data. That's probably going to be the most exciting thing because we just talked about, again our metrics and capabilities you can buy But, little teaser. If we can say, in two months here's the average click through on a Google ad, YouTube ad, a banner ad, I'll show it to you on a Blog, a press release, an article. Apples to apples. Here is the conversion rate. If I can start becoming almost like an eMarketer or publisher on what happens when people read earned, there's going to be some unbelievable stats and they're going to be incredibly telling, and it's going to drive where are we on that. So this is going to be the year. >> It's a new digital advertising format. It's a new format. >> That's exactly right. >> It's a new digital advertising format. >> And its one when the CEO understands that he or she can have it for earned now, the way he's had it for marketing and advertising, that little conversation walking down the hall. In thousands of companies where the CCO or the VP of PR looks up and the CEO is going where are we on that? That's the year that that can flip switches, which I'm excited about. >> Every silo function is now horizontally connected with data, now measured, fully instrumented. The value will be there and whoever can bring the value gets the budget. That's the new model. Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, changing the game in the shift around the Chief Communications Officer and how that is becoming more tech savvy. Really disrupting the business by measuring earned media. A big wave that's coming. Of course, it's early, but it's going to be a big one. Kevin, thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure, John, thank you. >> So, CUBE conversation here in Palo Alto Thanks for watching. >> Thanks John. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. (lively music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back to The Cube. We're here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. It's where all the action's happening. Third day of three days, wall to wall coverage, I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube, we have two great guests here, Paul Papas, Global Leader of Digital Strategy at IBM's iX, new digital agency, and his cohort Matt Candy, European leader of IBM iX, a new agency within IBM specifically developed for expanding the digital services to their customers, to create the best experiences, using technology, data, and other analog and digital capabilities. Wimbledon and among others. Guys, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, thank you, and thanks for that great introduction. >> So Paul, so take a minute, this is a novel concept. When I think of agency I think ad agency, buy some keywords, PR firms, you know, more of an adjunct to a core organization, kind of a service provider. >> Yeah. >> You guys have it a little bit different agency focus, more like management consultants meets World Economic Forum, meets, you know, UX UI design, because you are building this company. Take a minute to explain what iX is, and what's different about it in context what people might think it is. >> Sure, and thanks, a great set up in there it's like you melded a lot in there of what we do. So you can think of us as a combination of strategy consultancy, digital agency, consulting systems integrator. So we do three things with our clients, we help them design, well we help them define, their digital strategies, really their business strategy in a digital world. We help them design world-class customer experiences. Experiences that are going to be personalized, and have an impact. And then lastly we help them implement the technology. Implement the customer platforms that they use to engage with their customers in a personalized, meaningful, omni-channel way, all of those things that we do help drive a measurable business impact so nothing we do is hypothetical, everything we do is real and drives a real business impact for our clients. So, where if you might look at an agency a lot of people think of agency as marketing communications agencies, and the world has changed so fast around digital, >> Or ad agencies. >> Or advertising agencies, you know, in that vein, we're on the more transformational side. In fact we consider ourselves a business design partner. So what we're trying to do with our clients around the world is help them redefine, redesign their businesses, so that they're fit for purpose, so that they can survive and thrive in this modern world. >> Yeah, I want to get your thoughts on this, because you know looking back as a historian if you will of evolution, technology used to be slower, so agencies added value on something complex, ad agencies would create ad campaigns and some glam, glamour around something. And we even saw it in some of the lead gen side of the business, where this beautiful micro-site and the graphics are amazing, it looked great but actually didn't scale there's no tech behind it. Now fast forward, you have the requirement for cool, relevant, and glamorous, but actually having tech involved. Cloud computing has really enabled this, and the role of data has really enabled it, so this is now the new normal, the new normal for these higher-end functionalities is actually having a tech stack, technology stack, combined with business engineering logic, >> Paul: Yeah. >> And real business outcome, like profit, money outcome objectives that people might want. How do you guys explain that story because, you know, I would just call a consultant up in the past, are you guys combining it to make it easier? What's the purpose that customers call you guys in for? What are they asking for from you guys? >> So I'll start off and then Matt, you can add color commentaries, so, the way we describe what you just, what you just brought to life there, was, we have multi-disciplinary teams, so we have a combination of business strategists right, so when our clients are engaging us, they could be working with a business strategist who's really comfortable showing up for work and wearing a suit and tie, and he could be sitting next to, in our studio, sitting next to one of our creative designers who's tattooed from his wrist to his neck. >> The hoodie guy building everything. >> The hoodie guy, right, sitting there building there, next to one of our data scientists who's popping open his Lenovo laptop, it's got the latest chip in it, and he's so pumped 'cause he's going to run some crazy data analytics on it, applying AI on top of it. And all of these people work together using Design Thinking so we have an approach we call IBM Design Thinking, they've all been trained, we've trained over 16 thousand people on Design Thinking, and they all work together and come together to solve our clients' ploblems. They work in a studio environment, and we've opened up 38 studios around the world. Studios are places where we co-create with our clients, or we invite our clients in to ideate, innovate and co-create >> So it's agile on the format, on the projects, not like Waterfall, hey now you pass the ball to the other guy, it's all integrated team. >> Yes, and what you end up having is, you end up having the view of understanding the business and the client's business challenge, which is where we start when we define the strategy, when we do the design work, it's underpinned with an understanding of the technology that's going to bring this to life. So we like to say that we don't do creative for creative's sake or creative just for the beauty of the art, we do creative that can actually be made real. >> Yeah, you guys put a relevant package together. So I got to ask you now, the beauty of cloud computing was, is that you don't have to provision a data center if you don't need it. Now you see people needing a data center for privacy reasons they store their data, hence the hybrid cloud strategy, et cetera et cetera, but if I want to do something like what you guys are doing, it's going to cost me money to build it out. One, where are the people? Skills of the people, salaries of the people, tools for the people, all that is expensive to build out. So it's natural to go to someone who's already got it. So I want you guys to talk about that dynamic, of buy versus build, what stays in-house that's core competency, and what's the scale leverage that the clients get from working with you guys, 'cause you have that advantage. >> Yeah, and actually what I like to tee up is, this cost effective approach that we use to help our clients jumpstart the work that they're doing, we call it an innovation garage, and Matt and the team in the UK and in Europe have really been champions of this approach. Why don't you share some of the work we do around innovation garages. >> Yeah, so, I mean, one example is our client BP who we've been working with in this space, and helping them drive a lot of the digital reinvention of their business. And so, teams of data scientists, designers, developers, working hand in hand with product owners from the client side but ideating, finding new different digital products and services that help improve advocacy of customers drive loyalty, drive new revenue streams but very quickly taking those ideas and turning them into prototypes right, paper prototypes, actual MVPs, minimum viable products, launching them into market right, choosing some target markets, but putting very measurable KPIs around each of those things >> What's the timetable on that roughly, ballpark? >> Probably getting those MVPs out at eight to 10 weeks right >> So, fast. >> Oh yeah, fast. >> It's not months, not eight months. >> No, no, there's no Waterfall. And so a radically different approach to getting things out there, in the hands of real users. And then testing and learning, iterating, and then based on the data, actual fact and data backed against those KPIs and measurements then starting taking the decision around whether we're going to scale that into a global product. >> Yeah before we go to drill down on that, what's the alternative to doing that? How many months would it take if I want to do it from scratch in-house? >> Spinning up large transformation programs right, and >> John: A year. >> Yeah, at least, multi-years >> John: At minimum. >> Multi-years, and I think the other thing John, that's kind of key about this way of working, is that you're starting to infuse new ways of working and new ways of thinking into the client's organization right, and so Design Thinking: lean, agile, dev ops, right all of these approaches to get things done in a more rapid way and so, you're kind of driving change and transformation through making and creating and doing, not through some big change management program. And so we've been, if I took BP for example, training and certifying their people in IBM Design Thinking, certifying them as product owners and so, through the act of making and creating these services, it's changing their culture and changing how they get stuff done and it's a bit like a fire, kind of a little fire that burns and spreads within the organization as people see what's going on and want to become part of it. >> And one of the ways we do that we actually co-locate in these innovation garages. So you take a company like BP, if you go to our South Bank office, we have a dedicated floor where you have a hundred BP people with the IBM iX team, working in this innovation garage model, >> So they're learning too with you it's not like you're doing all the work and they're integrating in. No, no, we're learning together and they're building new skills and we're building new skills, and we're coming up with new ideas and innovations we're doing it in a cost-effective way, to your point before, in the past companies would spend a lot of money to try to go down a big path and try to in essence, boil an ocean sometimes. >> Yeah and your one guy quits, you got to replace, skill gaps, massive challenges. >> But also I find that from the client's perspective the thing that they're most proud of, some of the things they're most proud of, is the bin, what they call the bin. And so it's all of those ideas that we've killed as far to the left as possible right, and taking an idea that traditionally may have turned into some big program, multi-millions spent on doing it to find that it actually didn't deliver the outcome for the end consumer. >> So Matt, talk about the example with Wimbledon 'cause obviously everyone kind of can recognize that brand, you guys have been working at Wimbledon, you have a relationship with them so they've known IBM for years. What's the current state of the art with Wimbledon? What are some of the things you're doing for those guys and how is iX team, your integrated design team, working with those guys? >> So we've been partnering with Wimbledon now for about 28 years, so relationship goes back to 1990, I mean Wimbledon's been around back since the 1870s, you know, the home of kind of tennis, tennis in an English garden, so complete with rain and drizzle and gray clouds and everything else. And so, probably over the last seven years we've been working with them to drive their digital transformation, and so, how they engage with fans, and so how they use data and analytics to drive insights to put very personalized experiences in the hands of fans. So if you think about an event like Wimbledon, runs for 13 days, and about 500 thousand people get to physically experience Wimbledon in the grounds. And so their whole strategy from a digital perspective is taking the beauty of the grounds and the experience, and how they can manifest that digitally to millions of people around the world. >> And that's more than live streaming that's more than highlights, that's replicating the vibe the buzz, the experience of being there. >> Completely, so if you look at the web channel right when you go to that website, you don't actually see tennis players and stuff on there. What you might see is a beautiful flower just wafting in the breeze right, so a lot of the technology and the experience that we put together is trying to bring to life the beauty of the grounds right, through those digital mediums. And also being very thoughtful and purposeful about the different channels, so when you think about the mobile app right people use that to get snack access to data they're on the move, they want to understand the scores, alerts, iPad, people tend to use that sat on the sofa in front of the telly, you know, second screen experience so there's a different set of use cases and demands. We launched the first Apple TV app for grand slam tennis tournaments. So again, people tend to be using that for catch up and replays and so, being very thoughtful and purposeful about the... >> And you got to keep track of the digital culture 'cause it's like fashion, you got to know what's state of the art, what's going to sell VR, AR, whole new creatives coming out >> You do but you also have to do it in a way that's authentic to the product. >> Tech fashion. (laughter) The latest and greatest. >> Hashtag new hashtag tech fashion But you also have to do it, what I was going to say, you have to do it in a way that's authentic to the brand that you're representing. >> John: And relevant. >> Correct, so we're expressing the brand of Wimbledon online through digital channels and mobile channels, it has to be consistent with the brand, the brand values, the brand purpose, the brand mission. >> And that goes in to the design side of it 'cause they're going to tell you look if we go off the brand, we're not... >> The beauty, the elegance, the elegance of the sport, the elegance of the All England Tennis Club, you have to capture all of that and represent it in a way that's genuine. >> Alright so this is where the melting pot between agency, creative, ad agency, where it's much more about experience, less about the tech, and tech come together. So I wanted to ask you, I did a panel this year at Sundance called the New Creative, with Intel and it was all about the emerging new creative artists that have tech behind it, and here's what we talked about, I want to get your reaction to it. Agile, which killed Waterfall development, made things less risky, the old days was, you build something, a lot of craftsmanship goes into it, but you ship it, you don't know if it's going to work, and you hope it works and sells. Then Agile de-risked that, but you're shipping code every day. But what we lost with Agile that's now coming back, and I think this is where you guys are hitting the mark, the idea of craftsmanship in the product is coming back. So you got Agile, that's good, but it felt boring, it felt, the products didn't feel great. Yeah, certainly they were successful and they used data to be agile and always be iterating, fail fast, et cetera, but now the users want craftsmanship, they want art, they want more experience in the tech product What's your reaction to that, what's your vision? Do you agree and, if you do, what's your opinion? >> Well I agree on the recommitment to craft, and the approach that we take to that is really starting with Design Thinking, and we view this a couple different ways. One, we think Design Thinking is a way to actually solve business problems in the modern world. Now design, we view as a craft. So we have very specific craftspeople that are pure designers, that's what they do every day for a living. Everyone in our organization practices Design Thinking. So I believe that the use of Design Thinking coupled with our design community and the world-class talent that we have there, has enabled to really get an underlying need, right. So when you're doing a design, you have to have the understanding of the underlying need of the customers that you're trying to serve. And that's what we really get at, so the craftsmanship that comes in through applying Design Thinking, applying your design principles to creating something that can then be made real and have an impact. If you ask our designers, in our 38 studios around the world what they love about being part of IBM iX and being part of IBM, it's the impact that they can have. That they can see their design scale, they can see it brought to life in a way that is far beyond anything they could've done at any agency >> Can't fake design, it's like security, you can't fake it, it either works or it doesn't. >> And the way we think about design right is about almost design with a capital D. And so it's not just about how things look and feel, it's about how they work, and so how you can apply design to help solve problems in a very different way right. And how you apply design to strategy because designers are problem solvers. And so actually having people apply a designer's mindset to problem solving, you end up with very different outcomes right, you end up with a lot more innovation driving into what you're building, and I think you end up with products and services that actually help make somebody's life a little bit easier right, you're taking friction out of their life you're delivering something meaningful and of value to them. >> You're doing empathy mapping, you're doing customer journey mapping, you're doing a persona development. I want to build on what Matt said though that designers are problem solvers. When we look at Design Thinking, we have a method called IBM Design Thinking, and the logo that we use for Design Thinking is actually an infinity loop. So what we do is we combine Design Thinking with Agile and I think of IBM Design Thinking as a 3-D printing of a solution to a problem. We're designing it, we're getting at an underlying need, we're prototyping something fitting a proof of concept, we're learning, we're now doing another iteration of Design Thinking and learning more about the underlying need, testing something, and as we keep testing and learning, we add more texture to the solution of the problem and it starts coming into focus for us. >> Yeah, and the key word's problem. I interviewed a Stanford professor on the cutting edge of innovation, design she said, "Don't fall in love with your product. Fall in love with solving problems." And I think that's kind of what you guys believe. >> And I think John, to the point that you raised, about Agile, you know, we see many organizations driving kind of Agile transformation and shifting, and you know, I think our perspective is very much is you need this combination of design, of Agile and dev-ops together, because Agile allows you to pivot quickly, dev-ops allows you to kind of learn and get rapid feedback from production and putting things out there, and you've got to have this kind of design-led approach to doing stuff, because you've got to make sure that what you're building and putting out there serves a purpose and a real outcome for the end user. >> That's perfect, and most people think oh, we're Agile, check. No, whoa, hold on, stop, yeah it's not a silver bullet. >> You brought up a great point from a business leadership perspective that don't fall in love with your products, fall in love with the problems that you're solving, We are seeing that across every industry we work in, and I think this new digital age, with all these emerging technologies going mainstream so fast, AI, AR, VR, blockchain, it's allowing companies to, in some ways, reimagine their purpose, but in some ways, revisit their original purpose. So if you look at, Ford as an example, they've declared that they're going from pure car manufacturing, to mobility services. If you look at our clients in the life sciences industry, years ago they would've declared themselves as pharmaceutical manufacturers right? But now they would look at themselves as partners in health and partners in the health ecosystem. And every industry we're operating in, there's that re-imagining or revisit of the core mission. >> I think this is the only interview I haven't asked about blockchain, but I was just talking to Jesse Lund about blockchain and we talked about digital currencies, digital, and we observed, and we were talking about things are happening faster. So what's happening on digital it's a speed gain, across the board, with currency there's no clearing, it's digital, it moves instantly. So his banking side, that's his thesis, but here, your customers are challenged with looking down the barrel and being scared when, damn, this is going to be fast, what if I screw this up? I mean this is kind of how I see it happening, like it's accelerated in all aspects. >> And this is where I think, in terms of the business that we're in how we're different, and you've kind of raised the traditional agencies and stuff earlier, John. I think the difference for us is, you know when you think about the world of advertising, and companies driving their message out through shouting loudly and campaigns and building micro-sites, actually, our perspective very much is that these, most organizations need to look at how they digitally reinvent, right. And so therefore the scale of change needed as they look to reinvent their businesses, the business models, the skill pools within the organization, how they're going to use data and insights to drive different experiences you start to move to a very different level of change and transformation right, and one where these technology platforms, and becoming a platform business in these organizations, right, need a partner fundamentally who can help them scale and drive that change. >> And the data's critical, using data, using cloud, dev-ops, Agile, design, all rolled into a highly accelerated process, that's hard. >> It is hard but, >> You guys are doing it though. >> Well yeah, that's what we do for a living. It's what our clients are faced with right now. It's kind of a like a Dickensian-like challenge, right, it's A Tale of Two Cities. With all the emerging tech that we were talking about before there's never been a better time to create new innovations. To be innovative in some of the things that we're doing with BP was a great example of that. And some of the bigger things we're doing with some clients that are trying to reinvent their organization around a renewed purpose. But at the same time, there's never been a bigger threat to existing companies, in terms of there's never been more opportunity to be disrupted. So between these two poles of never been a better time to be in business, never been a tougher time to be disrupted, that's where our clients are operating. And this juxtaposition of core and new where our clients have mostly been in business for more than a few years. They have a core business that they need to grow and optimize, while they also need to expand into the new. And they can't do one or the other, they have to do both at the same time. >> And you know the customers I talk to in the industry, around this area, really look down, they look at three choices. Go for it, that's scary, need a partner to do that you guys are there for that. Don't do anything, put your head in the sand. Or three, create blockers and ban stuff. So you're seeing, you kind of walk in and you kind of figure out who's doing what. You see the blockers with all these excuses, no well we've got this other... And then the head, well we should be, they don't do anything, they're not moving. And then people who move. >> Yeah. >> I mean that's the reality right now. >> You know, what we see, we just published this research you know, a C-suite study, so we interviewed 12,000 C-suite executives, over 2,500 CEOs, and the title of this study's The Incumbents Strike Back, and that's what we're seeing now, so we're not seeing folks kind of sitting or putting their heads in the sand, they're looking at their legacy business, and the competitive advantage they have because of all the knowledge and incumbent advantage that they have, and now applying that. >> Well Paul and Matt, we don't have enough time to go into the impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offering's impact, to the token economics of how your business will change but we'll do that another time. >> Fantastic. >> Alright thanks for joining The Cube. I'm John Furrier here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. A lot of great conversations here in The Cube number one live tech coverage, extracting the signal from the noise. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico it's theCUBE! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (Latin music) >> Welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE, exclusive coverage of Puerto Rico covering Blockchain Unbound's global conference where token economics meets the real world global society, Blockchain decentralized applications, and of course, cryptocurrency all kind of coming together. You got investors, you got developers, you got billionaires and millionaires, and you got the capital markets all rolled up into one. My next guest is Andrew Prell, founder and CEO of Convergence, entrepreneur, visionary, experienced entrepreneur, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much for having me! >> So you're doing some really radical, not radical, progressive, I mean radical sounds (mumbles) Awesome things, you're re-imagining gaming. >> Andrew: Correct. >> Got a great team of people who have seen that movie before, literally, seen the entertainment side of gaming, the pro gaming side to the tactical gaming side, take a minute to explain what you guys are doin' that's super fascinating, how it works in this new era. >> So, we're re-imagining the entire game space, when I say that I'm talking the consumer side, that's cell phones all the way through consoles and PCs, out to the out-of-home entertainment side, which is arcades, location-based entertainment and full-blown theme parks, and marrying them all together with one backbone platform that allows all of the devices to interact with each other in the same game space. So you can be in a $300,000 simulator at Disneyland, workin' with guys on cell phones against guys in their head-mounted displays. Any of that, they all work together in one game space. >> So basically the world is the device, every device. >> Yes. >> On the network, IP connection or global, player, console, screen, and you're connecting them all together. Hence Convergence. >> Right, we're giving every device in the eco-system it's proper place and it's proper prestige. 'Cause if you've got a $5,000 gaming rig, you don't think a guy with a $800 cell phone should be at the exact same level, but maybe 10 other cell phones could be a equal match to you. >> Take me through a use case of how you're going to converge this all together. So you talk to some purists out there, "I've got a 4K monitor, I don't want this cell phone guy "comin' in here, he's got lag, "I got all kinds of gaming issues." Does that go away, how does it all work? >> What we're havin' to do is contextual-based interfaces, meaning that your roles and responsibilities in the game space is dependent on the devices that you bring in. Because virtual reality is not just the head-mounted display, it's all the new gear coming out with the tactile feedback, the bodysuits, the gloves, the boots, the treadmills, all of that. All of that, your roles and responsibilities in each game space is dependent on the device that you enter with. >> So I was at Sundance this year and I had a theme, I did a panel I put together called The New Creative. And if you look at all the new artists out there, they want to break down the elite gatekeepers, right? I mean the virtual-reality and augmented-reality world is colliding with film, filmmakers. You got YouTubers out there with a million, 10 million subscribers, built-in audiences, this new technology coming out. A lot of people are bringing storytelling, filmmaking, and it's just really in the early stages right now. People love the characters, but you start to see the new kind of format. Does this play into your world? I can imagine that, if you're thinking to be disruptive in the way you're thinking, new games're going to emerge so it's not thinking about the old games, it's thinking about potentially new games. >> Andrew: Correct. >> How do you view that, is that somethin' that you see? What's your reaction to that trend of this new, multifaceted VR, AR. >> We see that everybody is going to get to play together, cross every device, the developers are going to get rewarded for creating content, people are going to be rewarded for creating things inside of the games, and the players are going to get rewarded for doing all the top things, and getting to the top levels of all the games, and we're going to reward them through our cryptocurrency. >> We're in Puerto Rico obviously, this world's goin' to another level, Brock Pierce, his community, the Blockchain community, they're comin' to Puerto Rico, tax incentives, the government's here opening up their arms, But you're starting to see it go to the next level. These early industries you got the entrepreneurs and the promoters. The promoters promote the entrepreneurs, there's a lot of love goin' back and forth. But then they hit that threshold, the capital markets come in, you know, you start to see the opportunities, but the money start flowing in. It's kind of happening now, so it's goin' the next level. In your opinion, token economics; now that there's so much money flowin' in, now that people see that Blockchain's legit, now that people see that this is actually a new model, not everybody, but majority-a' people in the industry are all noddin' their heads, "Okay, Blockchain's "got some potential, token economics is a legit thing, "it's disrupting capital structures, "it's disrupting funding." How is it disrupting the gaming business? Can you share your opinion on that? >> People don't understand the overall impact. We didn't understand the overall impact. A lot of the investors coming in still don't fully understand the overall impact. I was in a discussion the other day, I'd written some articles in Medium about token economics, and about the virtuous circle of a token-based investment fund. Meaning everything that it invests, all the fees, everything coming out of it, is all based on a token inside of an ecosystem. We're about to head to GDC, Game Developers Conference, just like Kevin Bachus did for the Xbox, we're going out there to license and buy up all the content that we can through our tokens. Now the cool thing here, the thing that just makes the investment, the cash funds dead, is a dollar bill can not change in value other than go down over time slightly. So we'll just say the dollar bill doesn't change in value. If I was Kevin Bachus back when the Xbox was coming out, and I went and invested a million dollars in a hundred companies in crypto, say the Xbox is crypto, and you could only get to those games through the token, which is what we're doing, and I found Halo, which, a hundred-million people bought the Xbox just because of Halo, then what that does for a cash fund is everybody pats each other on the back because you've got one game that's goin' to exit and that's kind of cool, but that's it. Doesn't affect the rest of the economy other than a nice network effect. Halo gets a hundred million users, the next guy might get five million of those or 10 million of those, that's a nice small impact. When you do it with crypto, and you start out with a penny token, that you put a million dollars into a hundred companies, and you find that Halo, and it explodes, your penny token might go to 10 cents. So what you just did was you just 10-exed what you invested into Halo. >> It's a futures contract on gaming. >> Well. >> Kind of. >> I'm not going to talk to that point. (laughs) We're going to just talk about this example, is you 10-exed, you went from a million to 10 million in Halo, but you also 10-exed every single investment you just did, and you 10-exed every person in that ecosystem that's involved in it, that's getting paid in it. Your suppliers, your publishers, your media. >> John: Everyone gets paid. >> Everybody get 10-exed because you found Halo. So that makes this whole ubiquitous ecosystem involved with everybody else, meaning I get rewarded if you get rewarded, so everybody helps everybody else. >> That is exactly the model of token economics. >> Exactly, it explodes because it's so powerful. >> This is interesting, the inefficiencies of the process that you pointed out, the old way, is eliminated by the new model. Hence, the people who pick up the game are the participants who shorten that efficiencies. >> I had a guy the other guy ask me, "you're not asking for enough money with your ICO, "'cause you've got to go invest in all these companies." And I was like, "you don't understand token economics!". All I have to do is unlock the power of my token and invest with that, and I've already proven, back in 2015 we proved that a lot of the game developers would take our token without it even having a secondary market. >> You haven't even gone to a whole 'nother dimension that you don't even have to go to now, but that's future, is the role of consensus in these communities really also do the filtering at many levels. >> Andrew: 100%! >> If you look at what Activision got their ass handed to them, all you got to do is look at the Reddit threads. The whole gaming thing is, no one wants to see games go corporate. Because they had to force a business model, this is a huge issue, people are losing their shirts. "Oh, great creative studio, they sold out, game's over". The audience flocks away, why? 'Cause they have no incentive. Do you agree? >> I agree a 100%, but there's a lot of professional investors that don't. So we broke up the sum of our funds that we're investing into all these startups, we broke it up into 10 funds, and we're going to turn it into a game. We're going to give one of the funds purely to our token holders, and do a consensus model, and let them vote on what they think we should, what should be in our network. And they're going to go up against nine other investors. I threw down the gauntlet. Whoever gets best wins the extra bonuses. >> So are you raising money now or did you raise the token sale already? >> We're closing out our private presale, and because of Blockchain Unbound I doubt we'll actually hit the open market with the ICO, so people will have to go to our developers that we invest in, and get the tokens through them somehow. >> Good success year, huh? Blockchain Unbound been a good success for you? >> Oh yeah, Brock Pierce is on board, been pushin' behind us since Cayman. Him and Crystal both fully supported us and we're havin' awesome. >> What's your advice to people out there, scratchin' their heads, "Andrew, give me "the 101 on token economics, what's the bottom line, "what do I need to know about, where do I get started, "what do I do?". >> Once you get your token actually, say, authenticated, realized, everything's transparent, and it gets on that secondary market, it's better to use that to invest in anything you need to invest in. Get everybody incentivized around your token. All your employees, all your vendors, everybody incentivized around that token, it's a 1000% more powerful than a dollar, 'cause a dollar doesn't go up in value. Your token can go up and down, but trends up, and as soon as you find just one spark that blows up, everybody, all boats rise equally. It's awesome. >> All right, Andrew Prell, CEO, reimagining gaming. Token economics is a disruptive force. There's math involved, every company will need a a chief economic officer, that'll be a new title, we'll be certainly seein' that out. Thanks for comin' on theCUBE, 'preciate it. I'm John Furrier, you're watchin theCUBE. Exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound. Part of our two-day wall-to-wall coverage, thanks for watchin', we'll be back with more after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's the Cube, covering blockchain unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat Cuban music) >> Hello there, and welcome back to our exclusive coverage. This is the Cube's coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound. We start week of variety of activities here on the island around blockchain, cryptocurrency, the decentralized internet, the future of work, the future of play, the future of society, all here, happening. My next guest is an entrepreneur. Steve Steward is the CEO and co-founder of that's V-E-Z-T. Really changing the game around music, relationship to fans, and using blockchain and tokens to enable that. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much John, it's great to be here. >> Thanks for coming on, so first talk a little bit about what your value proposition, what you guys are doing. Obviously, people who ever downloaded iTunes, and then said, "This sucks, let's go to Spotify." Now are going, "Hey, I'm on Instagram. "I have access to my artist directly." The internet is a response vehicle; one on one. Tell them about your opportunity. >> There's two value props. One for the consumer, right? So, if you're an artist fan, and you love a song. You love an artist. You want to be involved with that artist on a one to one basis, there's no way to do that right now. You can follow somebody on Twitter, you can like their YouTube, that doesn't connect you with them. Our platform let's you buy in, and by buy in I mean ownership. You own a piece of the IP with that artist in their song, so it's on a song by song basis. But if Ariana Grande's my favorite artist, I want to buy a little slice of her song for $10 or $100, I now have the opportunity to put that out there, and I can share in that royalty stream with her. And she and I will connect on a level. If she wants to take my information and send other things to me like concert tickets or backstage passes, that's possible now. So the value prop for the fan, is connection with the artist and ability to say, "I own a piece of that royalty stream. "I own a piece of that song." And on the artist side the value prop is, "I now get to actually share directly with my fans, "build that community directly. "There's no gate keeper like a label "or publishing company in the middle, "and I have the ability to reach out "and monetize directly based on demand and merit. "Then take that and do whatever I want "and build up my brand." >> So this is a great example where artists that have direct relationships, might be undervalued. Also, in a way there doing their own mini ICO, so to speak, with their fans by sharing in the future value of the success with the people that got 'em there. >> They are, we call it an ISO, Initial Song Offering. So just like a ticket on sale, it allows an artist to pick a time and date and say, "At noon on Thursday, I'm putting out 5% of my song "to raise $10,000." They pick the pricing, they pick the amount they want to put up, we admin the actual royalty stream for those people that put money into it, and the artist keeps the rest of it. >> I've seen a lot of pitches, I've seen a lot of stuff online, "Oh yeah, we're going to revolutionize "the new music industry, were going to use tokens." I've seen I feel pitches, but again, if you look at the smart money investors, they're looking at deals and saying, "Is there a network effect? "Is there a protocol of some sort in there?" Obviously you've identified a relationship that has tokenization or token economics built into the business model. Take a minute to explain that key tokenization. Why you're business is set for token economics? Why you, over someone else? >> So my backgrounds in the music business, I used to manage a band called Stone Temple Pilots for 20 years. Actually for 10 years, from 1990 to 2000. I had 20 other artist in that meantime. I understand the pain points from an artists perspective. I also know where the value is in the industry. It's in the publishing. Most of these entertainment businesses, the IP is where the real value is. Film, books, T.V., music, it's all in the underlying content. Not the distribution, not how many times I've downloaded it, but the actual ownership of the content. What we want to do, is put that in a basis so the artist can now take that on a fractional basis. We can use a tokenized product to let the fans buy in. The blockchain helps us track those rights, keep them secure, make them transparent, and allow the ownership to be shared between thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. >> And this also helps build community. I want to get your thoughts on something. I held a panel on Sundance this year, Sundance Film Festival, called The New Creative. What you're seeing emerging is a new artist. The new artists are digital native, their fan base is direct. Things we just talked about. But they're undervalued, because the gatekeepers, either the studios and or labels in your instance, are controlling distribution and they're also controlling the activities. So we all know what Apple's done with some of their artists, and artists have to go on the road and do all this work. Well digital changes all that, so from your perspective as a industry guru in music, how has digital changed that dynamic? And talk about this new artist breed, this new young upcoming digital generation of artists. >> There's two things. First, internet really hasn't delivered what it said it was going to the music community, right? When you had Napster come out, it's great for the fan base. The artist and the creators actually lost out. Music got valued from here to here. It went almost to zero. People were sharing files for free, so at some point we thought-- >> Regulatory tried to solve that legal-- >> Tried and tried, but once you build a generation on free, it's hard to change that. On the fan side it was great. There was a lot more distribution. On the artist and creator side, it wasn't so great. What we're trying to do is bring value back to that. We're going to use digital in a way that lets people share what they believe in, without these gatekeepers like you said; fully demand based. If I'm the small artist who plays banjo in Kentucky, but I've got a 100,000 fans who really love me, and they can show that by buying in, forget the labels. Forget the publishers. Forget the brands. I now have a direct connection. I'm earning a living directly from my fan base, which is how it should be. >> Kind of like we do open source content. We were talking about our business, you are enabling people to self-identify with the artist, letting the artist be open to that, make that handshake or if you will, digital handshake, and have a relationship beyond just being a fan. >> Most of the labels, in fact all the labels: Spotify, YouTube, Pandora. None of those platforms let the artist share directly with the consumer, right? If I say, "Look, I've got 20,000 streams today, "can you tell me who they were, no. "Can you show me where the downloads are, no." Why aren't they letting those people connect. The artist has a natural connection with their fans. >> That's because the tech platforms are optimized for a different business model. Look at Facebook, they're living in their own problem. Their success is almost killing them. They have this centralized data optimization for the wrong incentive. They're optimizing data for advertising, not user experience. In this case, you're saying, "Hey, lets use the infrastructure and crypto "to optimize the fan relationship and expand it." >> The reason artists get on stage, the reason they write a song, is to connect with people, right? We've disembodied that connection to the point where they're out there in the ether and the fans are over here. They're like, "How do we get together?" If we can bring that back, there's a very powerful connection there that we can take advantage of and let people actually make money from their craft. >> Well Steve, great to have you on The Cube because one, you have domain expertise, you're business model solid, and we've been saying yesterday and on The Cube that it's a reverse of the old stack model. The top of the stack is the business model. You nail the business model, the underlying plumbing will sort itself out. With that in mind, how are you guys looking at the plumbing? What are you doing here in Puerto Rico? Are you raising money? Are you doing an ICO? Take a little bit to explain your relationship to the plumbing under the hood, in the blockchain, crypto world. And then what you guys are doing here in Puerto Rico. >> We started building our platform the traditional way. We took traditional VC funding about a year ago. As we were building the platform, we understood the importance of a blockchain, some type of decentralized ledger that allows people to look transparently under the ownership stack. As we were building that, one of our engineers said, "hey, have you guys heard of an ICO?" we had no idea what this was. It was about a year ago. Got educated very quickly, dove deep on it, and realized there's an opportunity, not really for the fact that it's crypto, but to actually capitalize the company in a meaningful way. We want to scale this very quickly. We've got strategic partners in Asia, other parts of the world, that we need to grow very quickly into. We realized it was an opportunity to have. We did a raise close of December 1st; oron exchanges. >> An equity raise or a token raise? >> The token raise. We did a U.S. based PPM SAFT. >> So a security token. >> It's a utility token, but we followed a process that our legal advisors advised us. In the U.S., keep it as a PPM SAFT. If it's offshore, it's offshore. >> So accredited investors? >> Accredited investors only, small cap, try to keep it reasonable, because we don't need 100 billion dollars to build this platform right now. We're looking to get this in a traditional business sense, so we're building a real platform with a real team. We took advantage of that. We got listed on an exchange January 12th. At this point, we're head down in product. We're looking to launch this in 45 days at Coachella. We had an event two nights ago at South by Southwest. We came up here from Austin, so we're going back to California tomorrow. >> John: You're on a plane. >> Yeah, we're on a roadshow. We've got artist brand partners now. We're signing people, two or three artists a week that come in. We've got publishing catalogs that are coming on board realizing that there's a B to be played, because publishers only monetize the top two or 3% of their catalogs. The other 98% get no love. If they can put that on a retail platform like us, and allow consumers to buy directly into it, it's a whole windfall for them. >> Everyone's a media company these days. We've been saying it, and that's the new media model. You got a great formula, good luck. We'd love to keep in touch. >> Absolutely. >> What are you guys looking to do next six months as you get the product out the door? Ecosystem, you got to recruit more artists? What's the plan? >> My goal is 100,000 songs in the platform by the end of summer. Like I said, we're doing a lot of brand activations at music festivals. We see people, you know, exponential growth. Each song comes with an artist fan base. This builds into it. We're also supporting producers, co-writers, performers, the other guys that aren't on the stage. We realize this platforms for them, because the own live ownership in these songs, but have never had a way to monetize it. We're growing this very quickly. >> Steve Steward, CEO/co-founder of that's V-E-Z-T. Check 'em out. If you like music, this is a great way to actually take part in being a fan and owner of the actual property; great business model. We'll keep in touch. Thanks for sharing on The Cube. More live coverage here on The Cube, bringing you all the action, and extracting the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. We'll be right back with more coverage after this break. >> Thanks guys, thanks John. (electronic instrumental music)

>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jefe Rick here with the Cube Were its roar subscribed in San Francisco. David, Jeez. Here. Last we saw you, David, I think was January when this was all building up. Now you said you have 1,500 of people passionate about subscriptions right here in downtown San Francisco. Congratulations. >> Thank you. It's great to be here, and it's great to be on Graham and on site. Like, last time we talked, we were at your office. Is you're getting ready to move? >> That's right. You have to come see the new spaces, like, way bigger >> we're looking forward to it would be great. >> So great selection of customer stories up here today. We love the customer stories and, you know, you think of classic subscriptions like Adobe Creative Cloud or you think of spotify and these things were used to You don't think about caterpillar. You don't necessarily think about Ford. So to see those guys up on stage with you and team this morning was pretty impressive. >> Yeah, So we're very excited about how the description economy is really expanded into the mainstream and large infrastructure companies who are changing the way people interact has really taken hold. I mean, a couple of examples. You mentioned So caterpillar here today, and they're showcasing today. They have all of this machinery out in the field, spin out terabytes and petabytes off telemetry data, and they're able to monetize those. They have autonomous vehicles, virtual reality drones over job sites. All of that is available now as a subscription. We have Ford here today who are talking about the next generation off the company, moving from a car and all my bill company to a transportation company. A meeting that customers where they need to be meeting met where, whether it's Van Services here in San Francisco, like chariot on bicycles and knowing their customer from the moment they pick up their vehicle from they call it from bed to bed from waking up in the morning till the lasting negative at night and having the whole transportation structure around them, enabling them to do some things like that. It's over exciting. >> I thought it was funny. Todd Buckler, who was up on stage from caterpillars, explicitly said, We're not going to be a software company. We like making big iron things, but man, oh man, listen to the description of the services that they're delivering to their customers that benefit the customers, get the benefits they get. As you said, with all the telemetry data, it's very different than just building a unit, shipping it to the dealer. The dealer sense. Tow the farmer, the construction worker. And maybe you get some data back when it comes in for maintenance down, then totally changing >> it totally changes. And what it does, is it. It helps predict downtime that helps predict offline activity, which could be in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. In the case of aircraft engines with G We who we had, I stayed well today when those things go down in an unpredictable fashion that causes enormous impact from a revenue, profitability and forecasting standpoint, so that telemetry data can understand their stresses and strains based on environmental factors in Miami does it? I'm gonna call whether acclimate I'm a jet engine, doing short hops versus long harps that provides enormous insight and sophistication for a customer to enable them to plan. And it's all based on this data, which in turn is delivered this part of the subscription >> right and then take it to the next level. Right? This whole theme around democratization of data, democratization of the tools to the data. Yeah, obviously a plane operating in Alaska is going to have different characteristics and one operating in the desert. But what about pilot characteristics? You know, you could just you can You can leverage the power of all the people in your company to start developing hypothesis, testing those hypothesis and driving innovation around a much broader kind of front, if you will. >> Absolutely. And what we're seeing is that the senses air going into everything. So we think about senses and engines. But the aircraft frames themselves of now increasingly having sex, right? How many stresses and strains, we know how many takeoffs and landings. But are they short hop of a long? Are they going over the pole of the growing of the Atlanta They're going over the United States as an example? All of those have different implications for the service and the support, longevity and also the economics. And that data telemetry has intrinsic value that is now being monetized in ways that we've never seen before. >> So the other interesting thing to me that I don't think it's enough talk. David is, is thinking of your customers is either in a club or as a member with this recurring membership, as opposed to transactional customer we had in speech in sporadic on You know, they have a club we had, sir. Fair on. You know you're a member. It's a very different way to think about the people that are your customers. And because you have this ongoing repeat revenue process with them, you know you have to keep delivering value. You have to keep them subscribed, if you will, because it's a very different way to build a relationship on engagement. >> Yes, so we see that is this evolution of from ownership to being a subscriber. Whether it is a second vacation home is a great example. In the case of in Speranza Oh, they've gone from 0 0 to 15,000 members in just a few short years, and they're offering this highly curated, personalized luxury vacation experience that is very individual, very individual and curated. That's a whole new market place, and it's disrupting high end hotels. It's disrupting whether you want a second vacation home, but you always have to go back to write, but also on the show floor. Here we have companies like 11 James. So if you're a watch fanatic and you have a fancy watch, guess what? When you have one fancy watch you pretty one another one right instead of owning them and putting those assets in the safe or in the drawing for months at a time, once you have a new one sent you every single month or every quarter and just change them out for variety. So we see that time and time again as we move from ownership to subscription, you see it in cause you said an asset. Music is part of the case that most people are familiar with. You've gone from your case full of CDs, your case full of DVDs to your streaming services and you're seeing with entertainment. >> Right? Is interesting. Teen in the Kino talked about being free of the shackles of time ownership obsolescence. So when you do consume these things as a service, it really changes the week consume because as we all know, once you get stuff and they get a garage full of stuff, stuff all breaks, it gets out of date, so it's a really an interesting way to think of it. Now. It's supports this whole kind of experience based economy. I want to share a funny story waiting with Esperanza. Oh, is that they see your commitment to subscribing. To there Club is really a demonstrated commitment to your family that you now have put on the dotted line. You're going to take quality vacation time with your family, and if you could afford it, you're probably pretty busy person, so really interesting twist on what their value proposition is. A wide support of their members. >> And actually what they said this morning was really interesting. And you think about a vacation club on a you know, a luxury curated experience. Maybe that's a week or two weeks a year. They're also filling in the gaps for the other 50 weeks a year with all kinds of local events as well. I'm building this lifestyle so it's fascinating, you know, physical experience off this description economy, and they're very sophisticated how they look at the data and looking who their subscribers, their customers are on this subscribes and customs. By definition, I suspect very demanding, >> right. So you've been doing the emcee job did a great job this morning. I'm just curious as you're walking around the show now that the keynotes air done and you can kind of walk around the exhibit hall and bumping into people any surprising stories. What are you hearing? What kind of the buzz that you that you're hearing a lot of hard work? A lot of teams. >> So So first, what? We have an amazing group here and we're so proud of of the work that we do bring the subscription economy to a physical life. You know, we had this vision some months ago when you and I talked about having a showcase and having our customers tell their stories. And you can see from the energy that we have on the show floor today there are hundreds. We have 1,500 people here this week who are experiencing lots and lots of different customers and companies. Subscription economy experiences. Tomorrow we'll hear from Andy Mooney, who is the CEO of Fender Guitar. So you think about you walk into a store, you buy a fender guitar, they're fabulous. The shadow casters and you leave. They never hear from you again. They want to turn that into a life long music experience and really change the way from learning how to play an instrument to being part of a community and having a long term relationship first is just walking out the store with a guitar >> I love. I love the fender story because again, you know it's easy to think of spotify and digital assets that you're subscribing to and deliver digitally. But they're really redefine your relationship with your customer and then to get the lifetime value. The benefits of that. Because they claim or they buy more sheet music, they buy another guitar. You know, they hang out at the store and becomes a hobby and part of a community engagement. What a brilliant, brilliant move >> exactly. And I would say if if I leave you with one final closing thought, you know the other bigger heart is that there is a looming financial accounting change that's coming where the way subscription economy cos any company with recurring revenue is going to have to change the way they account for their revenue and their expenses. It's something called 606 If you're in the financial community. You're having sleepless nights right now because it's as important as socks. Sarbanes Oxley White. Okay, right on. That's an accounting standard that's coming down the line. We'll be mandatory in December 17 or December 18. Dependent, whether you're a private or a public company. And we just acquired a company that is the market leader in automated revenue recognition. So educating the market in what is a very compelling value proposition on a compelling event that's going to hit almost everybody, >> right? All right, we'll leave that there. We'll pick it up next time, and we'll have a little bit more accounting talk. >> Sounds great. >> All right, well, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day. And again, congratulations on to prevent >> we appreciate you coming. Thanks for having us. >> Absolutely. Alright. He's David GM Jefe Rick. You're watching the cue from Zor subscribed 2017 in San Francisco. Thanks for watching