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

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

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