>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the cubes coverage of Del Tech World 2020 the virtual del tech world. Of course, the virtual queue with me is Alison Do. She's the CMO and a member of the executive leadership team at Dell Technologies. Hey there, Alison. Good to see you. >>Hi, David. Good to see you too. I'm gonna see you alive, but it's so good to see on the feed. >>Yeah, I miss you, too. You know, it's been it's been tough, but we're getting through it and, you know, it's a least with technology. We're able to meet this way and, you know, for us continue the cube for you to continue del Tech world, reaching out to your to your customers. But, you know, maybe we could start there. It's like I said the other day else into somebody. I feel like everybody I know in the technology industry has also become a covert expert in the last six months. But but, you know, it changed so much. But I'm interested in well, first of all, you're a great communicator. I have met many, many members of your team. They're really motivated group. How did you handle the pandemic? Your communications. Uh, did you increase that? Did you? Did you have to change anything? Or maybe not. Because like I say, you've always been a great communicator with a strong team. What was your first move? >>Eso There's obviously there's many audiences that we serve through communications, but in this instance, the two most important our customers and our team members. So I'll take the customers first. You have likely seen the spoof Real's Going Around the Internet of Here's How Not to Talk to Customers, Right? So you saw early in February and March in April, all of these communications that started with in these troubled times We are here to help you and, you know, we're already in a crisis every single day, all day long. I don't think people needed to be reminded that there was a crisis happening. So you've got this one end where it's over crisis mongering and the other side where it was just ignoring the crisis. And so what we did was we really looked at all of our communications a new So, for example, in our small business space, we were just about I mean days away from launching a campaign that was about celebrating the success of small businesses. It's a beautiful piece of creative. I love it, and we made the very tough decision to put that work on the shelf and not launch it. Why? Because it would have been incredibly tone deaf in a moment where small businesses were going out of business and under incredible struggle to have a campaign that was celebrating their success. It just wouldn't have worked. And what we did very quickly was a new piece of creative that had our own small business advisers, lower production values, them working from home and talking about how they were helping customers. But frankly, even that then has a shelf life, because ultimately you have to get back to your original story. So as we thought about our own communications, my own leadership team and I went through every single piece of creative toe. Look for what's appropriate now what's tone deaf, and that was a very heavy lift and something that we had to continue to do and I'm really proud of the work. We did pivot quickly, then on the employee side. If you'd asked me in January, was Team member Communications the most important thing I was doing? I would have said It's an important thing I'm doing and I care deeply about it, But it's not the most important thing I'm doing. Where there was a period from probably February to June where I would have said it became the most important thing that I was doing because we had 120,000 people pivot over a weekend toe. Working from home, you had all of the demands of home schooling, the chaos that stress whilst also were obviously trying to keep a business running. So this engagement with our employees and connecting the connecting with them through more informal means, like zoom meetings with Michael and his leadership team, where once upon a time we would have had a more high value production became a key piece of what we did. So it sounds so easy, but this increase of the frequency with our own employees, while also being really honest with ourselves about the tone of those communications, so that's what we did and continue to dio >>Well, you've done a good job and you struck a nice balance. I mean, you weren't did see some folks ambulance chasing and it was a real turn off. Or like you said, sometimes tone deaf. And we can all look back over history and see, you know, so many communications disasters like you say, people being tone deaf or ignoring something. It was sloughing it off, and then it really comes back to bite them. Sometimes security breaches air like that. So it seems like Dell has I don't know, there's a methodology. I don't know if you use data or it's just a lot of good good experience. How have you been able to sort of nail it? I guess I would say is it is. >>But there's some secret method that I'm cautiously optimistic. And the superstitious part of me is like, Don't say that, Okay, I'm not gonna would alright eso so that it's it's both it z experience, obviously. And then what? I What I talk a lot about is this intersection of data versus did data and creativity, and you spend a lot of time in marketing circles. Those two things can be sometimes pitched is competing with each other. Oh, it's all about the creativity, or it's all about the data. And I think that's a silly non argument. And it should be both things And this this time like this. This point that I make about ambulance chasing and not re traumatizing people every single day by talking about in these troubled times is actually from a piece of research that we did, if you believe it or not. In 2008 during the middle of the global financial crisis, when we started to research some of our creative, we found that some of the people who have seen our creative were actually less inclined to buy Dell and less positive about Dell. Why? Because we started with those really hackneyed lines of in these troubled times. And then we went on to talk about how we could take out I t costs and were targeted at I T makers, who basically we first played to their fear function and they said, and now we're going to put you out of a job, right? So there's this years of learning around where you get this sweet spot from a messaging perspective to talk about customer outcomes while also talking about what you do is a company, and keeping the institutional knowledge is knowledge of those lessons and building and refining over time. And so that's why I think we've been able to pivot as quickly as we have is because we've been data driven and had a creative voice for a very long time. The other piece that has helped us be fast is that we've spent the last 2.5 3 years working on bringing our own data, our own customer data internally after many, many years of having that with the third party agency. So all the work we had to do to retarget to re pivot based on which verticals were being successful in this time and which were not we were able to now due in a matter of hours, something that would have taken us weeks before. So there's places where it's about the voice of who we are as a brand, and that's a lot of that is creative judgment. And then there's places about institutional knowledge of the data, and then riel getting too real time data analysis where we're on the cusp of doing that. >>Yeah, so I like the way you phrase that it's not just looking at the data and going with some robotic fashion. It reminds me of, you know the book. Michael Lewis, Moneyball, the famous movie, You know, it's like for a while it was it was in baseball, like whoever had the best nerds they thought we were gonna win. But it really is a balance of art and science, and it seems like you're on this journey with your customers together. I mean, how much how much? I mean, I know there's a lot of interaction, but but it seems like you guys are all learning together and evolving together in that regard. >>Absolutely. David, One of the things that has been really interesting to watch is we have had a connected workplace program for 10 years, so we've had flexible work arrangements for a very long time, and one of the things that we have learned from that is a combination of three key factors. The technology, obviously, can you do it? The three culture, and then the process is right. So when you have a the ability to work from home doesn't mean you should work from home 22 out of 24 hours. And that's where culture comes in. And I frankly, that's where this moment of cumulative global stress is so important to realize as a leader and to bring out to the Open and to talk about it. I mean, Michael's talked a lot about this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. We've done a lot of things to support our employees. And so if you think about those three factors and what we've learned, one of the things that we found as we got into the pipe pandemic was on the technology side. Even customers who thought they had business continuity plans in place or thought that they had worked from home infrastructure in place found that they didn't really so there was actually a very quick move to help our customers get the technology that would enable them to keep their businesses running and then on the other two fronts around processes and culture and leadership. We've been ableto have smaller, more intimate conversations with our customers than we would have historically, because frankly, we can bring Michael, Jeff. Other parts of the leadership team me together to have a conversation and one of the benefits of the fact that those of us who've been road warriors for many, many, many years as I know you have a swell suddenly found yourself actually staying in one place. You have time to have that conversation so that we continue to obviously help our customers on the technology front, but also have been able to lean in in a different way on what we've learned over 10 years and what we've learned over this incredibly dramatic eight months, >>you know, and you guys actually have some work from Home Street cred? I think, Del, you're the percentage of folks that were working from home Pre Koven was higher than the norm, significantly higher than normal. Wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of really high profile companies that were mandating come into the office and clear that they were on the wrong side of history? I mean, that surprised me actually on. Do you know what also surprised me? I don't know. I'm just gonna say it is There were two companies run by women, and I would have thought there was more empathy there. Uh, but Dal has always had this culture of Yeah, we were, You know, we could work. We could be productive no matter where. Maybe that's because of the the heritage or your founders. Still still chairman and CEO. I don't know. >>You know those companies and obviously we know who they are. Even at the time, what I thought about them was You don't have a location problem. You have a culture problem and you have a productivity problem and you a trust problem with your employees. And so, yes, I think they are going to be proven to be on the wrong side of history. And I think in those instances they've been on the wrong side of history on many things, sadly, and I hope that will never be us. I don't wanna be mean about that, but but the truth of the matter is one of the other benefits of being more flexible about where and how you work is. It opens up access to different talent pools who may or may not want to live in Austin, Texas, as an example, and that gives you a different way to get a more diverse workforce to get a younger workforce. And I think lots of companies are starting to have that really ization. And, you know, as I said, we've been doing this for 10 years. Even with that context, this is a quantum leap in. Now we're all basically not 100% but mainly all working from home, and we're still learning. So there's an interesting, ongoing lifelong learning that I think is very, very court of the Dell culture. >>I want to ask you about the virtual events you had you had a choice to make. You could have done what many did and said, Okay, we're going to run the event as scheduled, and you would have got a covert Mulligan. I mean, we saw Cem some pretty bad productions, frankly, but that was okay because they had to move fast and they got it done. So in a way, you kind of put more pressure on your yourselves. Andi, I guess you know, we saw this with VM Ware. I guess Was, you know, just recently last >>few >>weeks. Yeah, and so but they kind of raise the bar had great, you know, action with John Legend. So that was really kind of interesting, but, you know, kind of what went into that decision? A Zeiss A. You put more pressure on yourself because now you But you also had compares what? Your thoughts on >>that. So there was a moment in about March where I felt like I was making a multimillion dollar decision every single day. And that was on a personal note, somewhat stressful to kind of wake up and think, What? What? Not just on the events front. But as I said on the creative front, What work that my team has been working on for the last two years? I am I going to destroy today was sort of. I mean, I'm kind of joking, but not entirely how that felt for me personally at the moment. And we had about we made the decision early on to cancel events. We also made the decision quite early on that when we call that, we said we're not going to do any in person events until the end of this calendar year. So I felt good about the definitiveness there. We had about a week where we were still planning to do the virtual world in May and what I did together with my head of communications and head of event is we really sat and looked at the trajectory in the United States, and we thought, this is not gonna be a great moment for the U. S. The week we were supposed to run in May, if you looked at the trajectory of diseases, you would have news be dominated by the fact that we had an increasing spike in number of cases and subsequent deaths. And we just thought that don't just gonna care about our launches. So we had to really, very quickly re pivot that and what I was trying to do was not turn my own organization. So make the decisions start to plan and move on. And at the same time, though, what that then meant is we still have to get product launches out the door. So we did nine virtual launches in nine weeks. That was a big learning learning her for my team. I feel really good about that, and hopefully it helps us. And what I think will be a hybrid future going forward. >>Yeah, so not to generalize, but I've been generalizing about the following. So I've been saying for a while now that a lot >>of the >>marketing people have always wanted to have a greater component of virtual. But, you know, sales guys love the belly. The belly closed the deals, you know? But so where do you land on that? How do you see? You know, the future of events we do, you expect to continue to have ah, strong virtual component. >>I think it's gonna be a hybrid. I think we will never go back to what we did before. I think the same time people do need that human connection. Honestly, I miss seeing the people that I work with face to face. I said at the beginning of this conversation, I would like to be having this discussion with you live and I hate Las Vegas. So I never thought I'd be that interested in, like, let's go to Las Vegas, you know, who knew? But but so I think you'll see a hybrid future going forward. And then we will figure out what those smaller, more direct personal relationship moments are that over the next couple of years you could do more safely and then also frankly give you the opportunity to have those conversations that are more meaningful. So I'm not entirely sure what that looks like. Obviously, we're gonna learn a lot this year with this event, and we're going to continue to build on it. But there's places in the world if you look at what we've done in China for many, many, many years, we have held on over abundance of digital events because of frankly, just the size of the population and the the geographic complexity. And so there are places that even early into this, we could say, Well, we've already done this in China. How do we take that and apply it to the rest of the world? So that's what we're working through now. That's actually really exciting, >>You know, when you look at startups, it's like two things matter the engineering and sales and that's all anything else is a waste of money in their minds when you and and all they talk about is Legion Legion Legion. You don't hear that from a company like Dell because you have so many other channels on ways Thio communicate with your customers and engage with your customers. But of course, legions important demand. Gen. Is important. Do you feel like virtual events can be a Z effective? Maybe it's a longer tail, but can they be as productive as the physical events? >>So one thing that I've always been a little bit cantankerous on within marketing circles is I refuse to talk about it in terms of Brand versus Li Jen, because I think that's a false argument. And the way I've talked about it with my own team is there are things that we do that yield short term business results, maybe even in corridor in half for a year. And there are things that we do that lead to long term business results. First one is demand, and the second one is more traditional brand. But we have to do both. We have to think about our legacy as a known primarily for many, many years as a PC maker. In order for us to be successful in the business businesses that we are in now, we love our PC heritage. I grew up in that business, but we also want to embrace the other parts of their business and educate people about the things that we do that they may not even know, right? So that's a little bit of context in terms of you got to do both. You got to tell your story. You've got to change perceptions and you got to drive demand in quarter. So the interesting things about digital events is we can actually reach more people than we ever could in an in person world. So I think that expands the pie for both the perceptions and long term and short term. And I hope what we are more able to do effectively because of that point that I made about our own internal marketing digital transformation is connect those opportunities to lead and pass them off to sales more effectively. We've done a lot of work on the plumbing on the back end of that for the last couple of years, and I feel really fortunate that we did that because I don't think we'd be able to do what we're doing now. If we hadn't invested there, >>Well, it's interesting. You're right. I mean, Del of course, renowned during the PC era and rode that wave. And then, of course, the AMC acquisition one of the most amazing transformations, if not the most amazing transformation in the history of the computer industry. But when you when you look to the future and of course, we're hearing this week about as a service and you new pricing models, just new mindsets I look at and I wonder if you could comment, I look at Dell's futures, you know, not really a product company. You're becoming a platform. Essentially, for for digital transformation is how I look atyou. Well, how do you see the brand message going forward? >>Absolutely. I think that one of the things that's really interesting about Dell is that we have proven our ability to constantly and consistently reinvent ourselves, and I won't go through the whole thing. But if you look at started as a direct to consumer company, then went into servers then and started to go into small business meeting business a little bit about when private acquired e. M. C. I mean, we are a company who is always moving forward and always thinking about what's next. Oftentimes, people don't even realize the breadth and depth of what we do and who we are now so as even with all of that context in place, the horizon that we're facing into now is, I believe, the most important transformation that we've done, which is, as you see, historical, I t models change and it becomes, yes, about customer choice. We know that many of our customers will continue to want to buy hardware the way they always have. But we also know that we're going to see a very significant change in consumption models. And the way we stay on top of our game going forward is we lean into that huge transformation. And that's what we're announcing this week with Project Apex, which is that commitment to the entire company's transformation around as a service. And that's super exciting for us. >>Well, I was saying Before, you're sort of in lockstep with your customers. Or maybe you could we could. We could close by talking a little bit about Dell's digital transformation and what you guys have going on internally, and maybe some of the cultural impacts that you've seen. >>So you, you you touched on it. It's so easy to make it about just the I t. Work, and in fact, you actually have to make it about the i t. The business process. Change in the culture change. So if you look at what we did with the AMC acquisition and the fact that you know that there's a lot of skepticism about that at the time, they're not gonna be able to absorb that. Keep the business running. And in fact, we have really shown huge strides forward in the business. One of the reasons we've been able to do that is because we've been so thoughtful about all of those things. The technology, the culture and the business process change, and you'll see us continue to do that. As I said in my own organization, just to use the data driven transformation of marketing. Historically, we would have hired a certain type of person who was more of a creative Brett bent. Well, now, increasingly, we're hiring quants who are going to come into a career in marketing, and they never would have seen themselves doing that a couple of years ago. And so my team has to think about okay, these don't look like our historical marketing profile. How do we hire them? How do we do performance evaluations for them. And how do we make sure that we're not putting the parameters of old on a very new type of talent? And so when we talk about diversity, it's not just age, gender, etcetera. It's also of skills. And that's where I think the future of digital transformation is so interesting. There has been so much hype on this topic, and I think now is when we're really starting to see those big leaps forward and peoples in companies. Riel transformation. That's the benefit of this cookie year we got here, Dave. >>Well, I think I do think the culture comes through, especially in conversations like this. I mean, you're obviously a very clear thinker and good communicator, but I think your executive team is in lockstep. It gets down, toe the middle management into the into the field and and, you know, congratulations on how far you've come. And, uh, and and also I'm really impressed that you guys have such a huge ambitions in so many ways. Changing society obviously focused on customers and building great companies. So, Alison, thanks so much for >>thank you, Dave. You virtually I'm very >>great to see it. Hopefully hopefully see Assumes. Hopefully next year we could be together. Until then, virtually you'll >>see virtual, >>huh? Thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Keep it right there. Our coverage of Del Tech World 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube >>with digital coverage of VM World 2020 brought to you by VM Ware and its Ecosystem partners. Welcome back to the Cube. Virtual 2020. Coverage of VM Ware, VM World 2020 Virtual. I'm Sean for your host of the Cube. Join with Dave Alonso. We got a great guest. Carol Carpenter, Who's the chief marketing officer of VM Ware Cube Alumni move from Google Cloud to VM Ware. Carol, great to see you. And thanks for coming on the Cube for VM World 2020. Virtual coverage. Thank you. >>Yeah. Thank you both for having me here. Delighted to be here. >>So we've talked about many times before, but you're very in the cloud. Native space. You know the market pretty well. I gotta ask you what attracted you to come to the end? Where what was the What was the reason? Now you're heading up marketing for VM. Where what was the driving force? >>Well, a few things, you know, Number one. I've always had a passion for this space. I love the cloud. I was involved in an early stage company prior to Google Cloud that really had the promise of helping people get enterprises, get to the cloud faster. Um, and when I, you know, look around and I Look which kind of which companies are shaping the future of technology? VM ware, Certainly one of those companies. Second reason goes without saying the people in the culture, incredible leadership and empowerment all throughout Vienna, where and it's it's quite exceptional. And the third is I really think customers are on a really tough journey. Um, and having been at a hyper scaler, having worked at places where you know, cos air in a more traditional legacy environment, it makes it made me realize like this is a tough journey. And I think the, um where is uniquely positioned to help enterprises with what is a complex journey, and it's a multi cloud world. I'm sure you know that our customers know it. And how do you make all these disparate systems and tools work together to deliver the business results? I believe the M where is uniquely positioned Thio. >>It's interesting. VM Ware is going to a whole nother level. We've been commenting on our analysis segments around the business performance, obviously, and the moves they've made over the years. This is our 11th VM world. Keep started 10 years. 11 years ago. Um, we've been seeing the moves so great. Technology moves, product moves, business performance. The relationship with the clouds is all in place. But then Cove, it hits, okay? And then all that gets accelerate even further because you've got, you know, companies that I have to use this downtime to re modernized. And some people get a tailwind with modern application opportunities. So it's interesting time to be, you know, on this trajectory with VM ware and the clouds, what's your thoughts? Because you join right in the middle of all this and you're in and I of the storm. What's your view on this? Because this is a, uh, forcing function for companies to not only accelerate the transformation, but to move faster. >>Yeah, for sure. You know, it's been an incredibly challenging time, I think for everyone, and I hope everyone who's watching and listening is safe. Um, you know, we talk about decades of progress being made in two weeks, and I guess that's the silver lining. If there is one, which is this ultimate work? Remote work from home that we've enabled and the work anywhere. It's been completely liberating in so many ways. Um, you know, it's an area where I look at, there's how we lead our teams and how do we maintain relationships with customers, which obviously requires a different type of interaction, of different type of outreach? And and then there's what are the solutions at scale And you know, im I pleased to say, like there were absolute big lifts in certain areas of our business, particularly around, you know, remote work and our digital workspace solutions, you know, really enabling companies to get thousands of workers up and running quickly. That, combined with our security solutions and our SD wan solution to really enable all of these remote homes to become thousands of remote offices. So there's all of that, which is incredibly positive. And at the same time, you know, I have to tell you, I joke, but I still haven't figured out where the bathroom is, you know, free three plus months. So that way I miss the human connection. I miss being able to just see people and give people a hug now and then when you want Thio >>e mean, VM. Where? Carol, It's amazing. Company. You mentioned the culture before. It really started as a workstation virtualization company, right? And then so many challenges, you know, and use a computing. You guys do an acquisition bringing Sanjay Poon in all of a sudden, you're the leader there cloud, you know, fumbled a little bit, but all of a sudden, the cloud strategy kicking on all cylinders, we see that, you know, growing like crazy. The networking piece, the storage piece you mentioned security, which is a amazing opportunity. Containers. They're gonna kill kill VM ware. Well, I guess. Guess what? We're embracing them. It seems like culturally vm where it just has this attitude of if there's a wave, you know, we're gonna ride it, we're gonna embrace it and figure out how to deliver value to our customers. What's your thinking on that? >>Yeah. I mean, it's such a VM ware, such an innovative company. And that is another reason that attracted me on disability to look at what customers need. Like, this is an incredibly were an incredibly customer centric company, listening to customers, understanding their needs and providing a bridge to where they need to go while also providing them the resiliency and needs they have today. That is what thrills me. And I think we have such an incredible opportunity to continue to drive that future innovation while also being that bridge. Um, I have to tell you, you know, I've known VM Ware for a long time, and what appealed to me is this broader portfolio and this opportunity to actually tell a broader business value story to be able to actually tell that story about not just digital transformation but business transformation. So that's what that's. That's the journey we're on and it's it's happening. It's really I mean, you look at all the customers, whether it's, you know, JPMorgan Chase to, um, a nonprofit like feeding America to, you know, large companies like Nike. It's really incredible the impact and value we could bring. And I feel that my job and the marketing team's job is, I tell them like they're all these diamonds in the backyard. It's just some of them are a little dirty, and some are they're just not fully revealed, and it's our job, todo and you know, dust them off and tell the story to help customers and prospects understand the value we could bring. >>That's how should we be thinking? How should we be thinking about that? That business value, transformation, business transformation? You you? Certainly when you think of an application's company that there's easily connect the dots. But how should we be thinking about VM Ware in that value chain? You an enabler for that transformation? Can you provide some color there? >>Yeah, let me give you some specific examples like Look at, um, so the addition of Tan Xue to the portfolio is what enables us to have these discussions that, let's face it, the only reason people need or want infrastructure is because they want to deploy an application. They want to write an application. They want to move an application. And Tan Xue, which is our container based, kubernetes based orchestration solution and lots more to it. That's what how it is in simple terms that gives us the ability to work with companies, lines of business as well as developers around riel. Business transformation. So two quick examples one. I can't say the name quite yet, but I think very large pharmaceutical company who wants to launch and have a mobile app to help patients. People who are taking Cove in 19 tests get the results, understand the results, ask questions about the results and have one place to go that's really powerful. And to be able to develop an app that is scale built for scale, built for enterprise, built to be resilient when patients are trying to get information. Um, in four weeks, I mean, that's pretty. That's quite incredible. Another example is, you know, very large e commerce company that, you know, you mentioned Cove it and some of the challenges we know retail has certainly been kind of, ah, tale of two cities, right? Some companies with lots of lift and others with real struggle in the physical world. But anyway, large retailer who had to within weeks flip to curbside pickup, Um, being able to look customers being able to look at inventory on demand, those kinds of capabilities required ah, wholesale rewrite of many of their e commerce applications. Again, that's a place where we can go in and we can talk to them about that. And by the way, as you know, the challenge is it's one thing to write and deploy an app, and then it's another to actually run it at scale, which then requires the networking, scalability and flexibility it requires. The virtual, um, storage. It requires all the other elements that we bring to the table. So I think that is the That's kind of the landing spot. But it's not the ending spot when we talk to customers. >>Carol talk about the challenge of VM World 2020 this year. It's not in person. It's one of them. It's an industry event. It's been one every year. It's a place where there's deep community, deep technical demos, beep deep discussions. Ah, lot of face to face hallway conversations. That's not happening. It's virtual. Um, you came right in the middle of all this. You guys pulled it together. Um, got a You got keynote sessions and thanks for including the Cube. We really appreciate that as well. But you have all this content. How did you handle that? And how's that going and and share some, uh, color on what it took to pull it off. And what's your expectation? >>Yeah, So you know. Yes. VM world is considered the gold standard when it comes to industry events. I mean, from the outside in this is the canonical I t event. And so I feel, really, you know, honored that this franchise is now in my hands and have an incredible team of people who obviously have been working on it for prior to my joining. So I just feel honored to be part of it. Um, this is going to be the world's largest VM world. And on the one hand, miss the energy in the room, Miss seeing people, everything you talked about, the serendipitous interactions that the food line or coffee bar. Um, but going virtual has so many benefits. Some of the things we were talking about earlier, the ability to reach many, many more people. This event is going to be 5 to 6 times larger than our physical event. And that's not even including the VM world that we're running in Asia in China. And the other thing that makes me super happy is that over 65% of our registrants and of the attendees here are actually first time VM world attendees. So this ability to broad in our tent and make it easier I mean, let's face it. You know, being able to fly, whether it was Vegas or San Francisco is originally planned. Stay in these expensive hotels and take that time it was. It's a big ask. So by going virtual, we actually have expanded our audience tremendously. Three other thing I am really excited about is we have 800 plus content sessions. We are following the sun. We have live Q and A after every session. We have really the best mobile app for any events, so I encourage you to take a look at that which does enable the chat interaction as well as you know, path funding through the many channels we have of contact. Its's Look, we're learning, and I'd love to follow up with you later to hear what you've learned because I know you've also been doing a lot. Virtually, I think the world is going to move to something that's more hybrid, some combination of virtual and small group, you know, in person, some local events of some sort. Um, but this one I'm super excited about, we we really have seen high engagement, and I just think, Well, I look forward to hearing everyone's feedback. E >>I think one of the things that we've been hearing is is that I can now go to the M world. I can participate now virtually it's it's kind of I would call First Generation writes me the Web early days. But you're right. I think it's gonna open up the eyes to a bigger community, access a bigger pool of data, bigger pool of interactions and community. And when they do come back face to face, people be ableto fly and meet people they met online. So we think this is gonna be a real trend where it's like the r A. Y of this virtual space is tremendous. You could do demos. You conserve yourselves, you could consume a demo, but then meet people face to face. >>And by the way, we have, you know, a tremendous number of fun activities. Hopefully you've taken part in some of them. Everything from puppy therapy Thio magic shows to yoga Thio Um you know John Legend legend performing. So I agree. I think the level personalization and ability to self serve is going to be out of this world. So yeah, it's just the best. >>Your event, just some key things that we can share with the audience. Cloud City has over 60 solution Demos Uh, there's a VM World challenge That's fun. There's also an ex Ask the expert section where you got Joe Beta and Ragu and other luminaries there to ask the questions of the That's the top talent in the company all online. And of course, you get the CTO Innovation keynote with Greg Lavender. So you know you're bringing the big guns out on display on it. Z free access. Um, it's awesome. Congratulations. We're looking forward Toa see, with the day that looks like after, So what's the story line for you? If you had to summarize out the VM World 2020 this year, what's coming out from the data? What are you hearing? Is the key themes, Actually, the tagline. You know, uh, you know, possible together, Digital foundation, unpredictable world. But what are you hearing, uh, in the virtual hallways? >>Well, a few things, but I'd say the top take away is that VM where has spread its wings, has embraced mawr of the different ICTY audiences and is driving business transformation for companies in new and pretty unique ways. What and then obviously like slew of announcements, new partnerships, new capabilities, everything around multi cloud we have. As you know, every single cloud provider is a partner on the security front, intrinsic security built in throughout the entire stack. The the other part that I I think it's super exciting are these partnerships were announcing everything from what we're doing with and video to make a i mawr accessible for enterprises in production to what we're doing around sassy, secure access Service Edge. Being able to provide a holistic, secure, distributed environment so that every worker, no matter where they are, every endpoint, every remote office could be fully secured. >>You know, in VM where is the gold standard of Of of the Ecosystem and VM world? Of course, they're all in the showcase and it was hard fought. I mean, it took a long time to get there, and you know, the challenges of building that. And now you mentioned in video. You see all these new tail winds coming in and and then I've seen companies launch at VM World. And so you know that ecosystem is, as I say, it is very difficult to build. But then becomes a huge asset because this just gives you so much leverage. A zone organization, your company's your partners, your customers. >>Thank you, Dave. Yeah, we're super excited. And I should say that like the partner and the ecosystem here is unparalleled. And our challenge is how do we provide? And you know, this Like, how do we provide the strategic vision and that practitioner level content? So we're gonna you know, that's what we're committed. Teoh is making sure that our practitioners get everything they need in every every area of expertise, as well as making sure we're conveying our business story. >>Carol, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate the inside one final question for you as we get through this crisis soon hybrid comes back for events, certainly. But as the CMO the next gen story, you now have a chief customer officer. We interviewed him. Well, the n words go to the next level. What's your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And you've got a lot of things going on. Certainly a big story to tell. A lot of ingredients. Toe kinda cook a great, great story here. What's your goals? See him over the next year. >>You know, my goal is to help drive the business transformation and you've heard it from Submit. You've heard it from others at this point. But really, you know, the company is going We're going through a dramatic transformation from being, you know, ah, license on Prem Company to being a multi cloud, modern SAS company. So my goal is to support that. And that means modernizing the way we do marketing which, you know, you say, Well, what does that mean? It means customer focus, customer lifecycle marketing. It means agility, being able to actually use data to drive how we interact with customers and users so that they have those great experiences and they continue to use the product and Dr Adoption and Growth. And the other part of it is, um, b two b marketing, as you may or may not have noticed, is incredibly boring and dull. And I know I'm guilty of this, too. We get caught up in a lot of but jargon and the language, and I am on a mission that we're going to do great B two B marketing that helps customers understand what we do and where we express the value simply clearly and in in differentiated way. >>That's awesome. >>Yeah, Why should the consumer guys have all the fun? Right? >>Right, Well, and that's part of being, by the way a SAS or subscription company is. Everything we do needs to be consumer simple at scale and with the secure ability and the reliability of what an enterprise means. >>Well, I got to tell you that the irony of all this virtual ization of the world with Covic virtual events e one of the big surprise is we're gonna be looking back at is how much it's opened up Thio Mawr audiences and new ways of modernizing and taking advantage of that. Certainly with content in community, you guys are well positioned. Congratulations for a great event. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insights, and we'll keep in touch. We'll try. We'll try to make it exciting, Mister Cube. Thank you. Appreciate >>it. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, John. >>I'm Jennifer David. Lot Cube. Coverage of the M 2020 Virtual. This is the Virtual Cube. Have now virtual sets everywhere. All around the world. It's global. Thanks for watching

(soft music) >> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020. This is a virtual conferences as theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Stu Miniman,Dave Vellante. We are in theCUBE virtual studios in Palo Alto, California, as well as in the Boston area. Stu, Dave in 2010 was our first VMworld. This is now 2020. What an unpredictable world. In fact, day one summary here for VMworld. This is the theme, a digital foundation for an unpredictable world, What a run? And again let's do a quick summary of day one security multicloud AI machine learning, hybrid cloud, modern apps, and networking is the theme. Dave, your reaction to day one. >> Well, you know, as usual, VMware has a bunch of announcements at its big show. And I guess I would say that one of the top jobs of a CEO is time expansion. And if you look at these announcements, I mean, Pat Gelsinger said, you got to ride the waves or you going to be driftwood. And they have done a phenomenal job of translating engineering into new opportunities and delivering customer value around that. And if you look at networking, the acquisition of NYSERDA and the early part of last decade, you know, multi-cloud is a huge opportunity for them. They're clearly a big player in that space security with the acquisition of carbon black, they've made Kubernetes security, acquisitions and others, there are app defenses in there. So they're going after security. They haven't, you know, made the Mark that they want to make yet, you know, modern apps. It's all about, you know, keeping VMware relevant, you know, project Monterey in hybrid cloud. They're obviously going to be a leader in hybrid cloud. And then the partnership with Nvidia and machine learning AI, it's kind of a checkbox, but VMware is such a huge install base. Everybody wants to do business with them and everybody wants to do business with Nvidia. So to me again, excellent job of time expansion and delivering customer value. >> And Stu, I want to talk about the VM world, you know, with a part of the experience of being there in person this year, there is no VMworld it's virtual. Normally you have the hang space. Do you have the two cube sets here, we have a link to the cube assets. All of our interviews that we normally do at the two sets, go check out the main link but everything is laid out on the webpage. You got cloud city more than 60 solution demos. There's a ton of content So it's kind of an asynchronous, but trying to pick up but a big gap there for normally, which is a real robust expo floor hang space. It's all virtual. Now they got to ask the experts, some other things with Ragu and Joe Beta among other experts, but a different field this year Stu. >> Yeah, definitely. John. I mean, this is one of those must see shows for just a huge ecosystem. We've seen that collision of ecosystem for the last few years. Of course, the epic partnership of VMware and AWS really has dominated a lot of the discussion in the last few years in this ecosystem. So everybody's going to the cloud. We've seen big adoption of the VMware cloud not just on AWS, but Dave touched on some of the announcements here, like with Anjou it's GA with AWS, they're expanding with not only Microsoft Azure but even Oracle OCI. And John. One of the things we look at is, you know, who's driving that innovation change. We've seen a big push by VMware to go deep into cloud native and who's leading that? you know, Joe beta who've we known from the early days of Kubernetes. So much of theCUBE ecosystem is now part of VMware, Greg lavender, the CTO. He was most recently in industry helping transformation of some large companies. And that's the challenge that VMware has going from their dominant position in the data center to live in these cloud environments. We know from a technology standpoint. A VM container bare metal, you can use whatever makes sense, build your applications, go faster, go faster. So, a big change there and the community John, it is greatly distributed and in highly diverse, lots of pockets of interesting conversations, always you're right. So, you know, how do we replicate the hallway track? There's some good things we've seen this week and we're all learning here in the 2020 environment. >> Yeah, we normally we'd be like yelling over the bands and people trampling to see the concert. John legend is going to be playing really quickly in the next few minutes. Dave final word here because the innovation strategy of VMware has to be on full display in this unpredictable world, multicloud AI. It's crazy right now, huge opportunity, big tailwinds cloud native with the snowflake IPO and just ongoing surge. Your thoughts. >> Well, I'll just, tease some of the conversation we're going to have in our deeper analysis on the cube and the cube.net is really that hybrid that Stu talked about. And we're seeing VMware cloud on AWS, really rocket, and we're seeing VMware cloud foundation and the other foundational elements of VMware cloud it's showing up with the data is really having some traction. So that's something that I'm watching very closely. >> Guys. Thanks so much. I know we're part of a virtual program. Thank the VMworld for including us in the virtual program, thanks to the community for all the support of the past 10 years, 2010 was our first Cuba VMworld. Now it's 2020. Thanks for watching.

>> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, co-host of theCUBE. We're here at Sundance Film Festival, the Intel Tech Lounge for a one on one conversation with Kane Lee, who's the head of content at Baobab Studios in California. Thanks for joining me here at the Intel Tech Lounge. >> Really excited to be here. >> You know we just had a panel on the new creative here, and Intel is showing some great technology. Things like volumetric, all kinds of really hardcore tech. Really powering some of the VR, AR, mixed reality, all the trends that are happening around user experience. But, a new creative artist is out there. A new storyteller. It could be a 12 year old to a 50 year old. You're in the middle of it. You're an award winning producer. So you're building the stories, you're building the content. What's the biggest thing happening here at Sundance? >> I think it's really interesting, because content has always been my passion. Good storytelling. And growing up, it was always books and films, and all these traditional mediums that inspired me to sort of dream, and right here in Sundance, we're in the middle of a great sea change going on, because technology and art are coming together in such a fast pace, to really usher in the new generation of storytelling, and we're all very fortunate to be in the middle of that. This is a very unique period in our history as humans, and our culture, to challenge what storytelling really means, because VR, for us at Baobab, is the next great medium. And Sundance recognizes that. Technology companies like Intel recognize that. So we're all coming together at the film festival, and working together to define what that will mean. >> Kane, you're an Emmy award winning producer. Baobab's doing some cutting edge work. Take a minute to talk about what Baobab is doing, and why is it so relevant? We know it's cool. We've interviewed the CEO and Founder before. Share with the audience, what is Baobab doing? Why is it so relevant? >> So, we formed a couple years ago, and at the time, VR was, and it still is, in its very nascent stage. One thing that we recognized, was an opportunity to try to create content that would appeal for people from the ages of five to 105. There was a lot of documentaries, there was a lot of experiential art house type of material. And there was a lot of gaming type of content for VR. For us, we're big lovers of animation and how that unites families, kids, grandparents, teenagers, and we saw an opportunity to try to create content that could appeal to all of these different types of people through animation. So that's sort of our mission, is to inspire your childlike sense of wonder, using two mediums that are so meant for each other, which are animation and VR. >> I'd like to talk about some of the work you got going on a little bit later, but I want to talk about that 12 year old in his room, or the 16 year old that's got a full rig, tricked out with the keyboard, they're laying down music, they're building music, they're gaming, they might be creating art. They are a living, breathing creative. And, they're self learning. They're jumping on Youtube. They're jumping into VR meetups and groups. They're self learning. >> Kane: Absolutely. >> How do you connect to them? What do they do? What's the playbook? How do these people go to the next level? What's the industry doing around this? >> I think, one example I'll give is, I was at Annecy Film Festival, and that's one of the biggest animation focused film festivals in the world, and I was showcasing our very first piece, it was called Invasion, starring Ethan Hawke, where you're actually in the body of a bunny rabbit, and you meet another bunny rabbit. You create a bond. And together you thwart an alien invasion on Earth. What was so interesting to me, was I had never seen that sort of, that demo, that teenage demo, where young boys and girls would actually bring their parents back to the experience, and say this is what I want to study in college. This is what I want to do in art school. So, I think that they, growing up with all this new technology, really sort of get the idea of being in realtime, and having storytelling in realtime. And seeing that level of interest from that age group was very sort of affirming to us that we're on the right track, in terms of the next generation of storytelling. >> Well you guys are definitely on the right track, I can say that. But I think what your point confirms, and connects the dots for people that might not be in the industry is that the old tech world was, the geeks did it, software was an art and you had to be in that CS club. The democratization is a big trend here, and what you're talking about is, people are humanizing, they can see real emotional, practical examples. So the young guns, the young kids, they don't have baggage. They look at it with a clean slate and going, I want that. I can see myself using this. I can self actualize with this. So really kind of tips the scales, and proves the point. >> Absolutely. We world premiered Asteroids, our second VR experience, starring Elizabeth Banks, and one of the biggest millennial stars, Ingrid Nilson, last year at Sundance. Even had the first red carpet VR premiere in Sundance history. And watching the younger generation, it was our first piece where we actually used the controllers that had just come out in that past year. And watching them go in with no preconceived notions on what using controllers could be, to be a character in the experience, it was just fascinating, because they picked it up faster than anyone, and learned the language of being a character, and having hand controllers as a robot, so you could play fetch with an alien dog, or you could mirror their actions, or they might mirror yours, and creating these bonds and these experiences. So, that sort of fresh perspective is really exciting. >> Talk about the role of these experiences, and how they connect people, because one of the big trends also online today, in today's, I would say, yeah the peg the evolution is, you're really getting into the immersive experience, I believe that. But, content creates bonds between people, and good experiences creates glue between relationships, and forges new ones, maybe enhances existing ones. This is a big part of the media. >> Absolutely. For us, emotional connection is the key to getting people to put on headsets, and to come back to our experiences. And that emotional connection for us, is what we've witnessed, in terms of people forming bonds with our characters. So, everyone knows that VR can bring you to brand new worlds, and exciting places, and immerse you in places that you can never go. But, the one thing that I think we learned in our experience with VR, is that if you can create a bond between the user and other characters in the experience that they believe is real, and we use psychology, technology, and storytelling to do that, then they want to come back again and again. So, one of the trickiest parts of VR is trying to get people to have repeat views. And the feedback we've gotten from a lot of the technology platforms is people come back time and time again, and it seems to be because they actually believe these characters are real, and that they're friends. >> So talk about your journey, because you're at the front end of this wave, and you're participating, you're creating art, you're creating work product. You're building technology with the Baobab Studios. What would you do if you were 16? If you were a sophomore in high school, knowing what you know, and you could go back in time, or you could be today what you know at 16, what would you do? >> When I was 16, I had no idea what I was going to do. When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I was going to do. But what I will say is, VR is really unique because it's so interdisciplinary. So, it actually invites people from all different fabrics of society, and different types of education. The most, I would encourage 16 year olds to just be who they are, and to play. And if I talked to my 16 year old self, I would have just encouraged myself to follow my interest and pursuits more, because many years later, actually VR has brought me back to a lot of my roots, and different things that I studied growing up, and was fascinated by. >> So it ignited your passion. >> Absolutely. >> Or things that you were really into, that you might have forgotten. Is that- >> Yeah, I studied something called symbolic systems at Stanford University, and I had no idea what I was doing. It combined computer science, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. And the first thing I did after college was pursue potentially a career as a lawyer. But now it all makes sense. VR makes, brings everything together. >> What could have been, you know? >> Absolutely. >> Well, a lot of neural network, symbolic systems, this is the underpinnings of this complex fabric that is powering this content market. So I'd love to get your thoughts. Is there a success formula that you're seeing emerging, I know there's no silver bullet yet. A lot of experimentation. A lot of new things happening. But as this technology, and the scaffolding around it is being built, while also original content is being built, it's still evolving. What's the success formula, and what's the pitfall? What to stay away from? >> I think it's about, it's really about good storytelling. And I think it's a time to be courageous and brave, and put forward stories that wouldn't have otherwise been told in the more traditional mediums. Our latest project in production that I'm so personally excited about, is called Legend of Crow. It stars John Legend as a beautiful bird with the most beautiful feathers, and the most gorgeous voice, who during dark and cold times, must go on a heroes journey to bring light back to the world. Something I feel like in this day and age, a lot of people can relate to. But, on top of this story being based upon a beautiful Native American legend that hasn't really been exposed to the world, we've taken the opportunity to take the themes of diversity and self sacrifice, and self acceptance, to create an all star cast of minorities and women, and that's something I feel the younger generations can really relate to, because having worked a lot in Hollywood as a producer in traditional TV and film, things take a while, and there's a certain way of casting and doing things that follow an older model, and I think younger audiences are excited to have a character like Moth in our experience who speaks both Spanish and English, because that's the way the world is today. >> So I got to ask you a quick, you brought up diversity and inclusion kind of in your comment. I got to bring this up, because you guys do hit a nice demographic that I think is super relevant and important, the younger generation. So I talk to a lot of young people all the time. I say things like, you don't need to be a computer scientist to get into this game. You can be super smart. You don't need to learn how to code hardcore coding to get into this. And they respond to that. And that's one kind of, I would say, narrative that conventional wisdom might not be right. And the other one is the diversity. So my son, 16 year old, says, "Dad, your generation is so politically correct. All this nonsense." So, the younger generation is not living what we're living in, in these dark times, I would say, certainly with diversity, but how does VR really equalize? And will the storm pass? Diversity, inclusion, all that great stuff that are core issues, certainly are being worked on. But, do we see hope here? >> Absolutely. I think disruption in the form of a new technology and a new medium is, while scary to some people, is actually the most exciting and fertile time to equalize. Our CEO, Maureen Fan, who is a college classmate of mine, always wanted to work in animation. And she finally saw the right opportunity when VR came, and we put on headsets for the first time, and saw how there could be a new wave of exciting animators, through this disruptive technology. Because everyone else in more traditional animation is so focused on the old model, and the old ways of doing things, of getting things off the ground, of financing, of creating certain kinds of content that have been proven over time, in the old sort of studio model. >> What were some of those things that were instrumental in this breakout, to forge this new ground? >> I think a lot of it is the technology finally being ready. Our CTO, Larry Cutler, actually studied virtual reality at Stanford a decade before Maureen and I were there, and he had always been waiting for the right time to go into VR. >> Does he preach down, hey kids, I used to walk in the snow with bare feet to you guys, or has he, what's his role, how's he doing? >> He's amazing. He was the head of global character tech for all of Dreamworks animation, and like I said, I think one thing that distinguishes us from some of the other people in VR is that we're so focused on characters, so focused on them making eye contact with you, or with their facial features reacting in realtime, and being very believable, and forging that bond between you and that character. So, for us, that character technology, and having the top people in that space work with us, is the long term thing that is going to differentiate us from the crowd. >> I'd like to get your reaction to my comment about the computer science, and that's mainly, mostly a Silicon Valley thing, living in Palo Alto, so, but people are struggling when they go to college. What should I major in? And there's a narrative right now, oh you got to learn how to code, you got to be a computer science major. You don't. You don't have to be a CS major. Some of the most creative and technical brilliance can also come from other disciplines. What's your reaction to that, and what's your advice? >> I think people should just follow their effort. Because, if you follow what naturally comes to you, what you're good at, and that also has meaning and interest to you, and something that you can get feedback along the way, which is the great thing about being in a growing space, you are going to just spend your, you're going to spend a lot of late nights doing that stuff, and you can always bring it into your career path when that happens. And I think, we're in a very DIY time in VR. No one knows anything. We're constantly making mistakes, but then learning from them. And that's the most exciting process of being where we are. So, to people who are of college age, I would just tell them follow your effort. If you're interested in VR, it's an exciting time to just do it yourself. Learn from your mistakes. And then, and try to create something new. >> What does the new creative mean to you. When you hear that, new creative, what does that mean to you? >> You know, it's interesting being at these talks and panels, and at all these festivals, because I feel like a lot of people are looking for that new innovator who comes out of nowhere, and sort of just redefines the industry. And that could very well happen. But I actually think what's really exciting about right now is, it's more about having, understanding the bridge between all the different mediums and disciplines. I think new things are created when you combine areas that have not been traditionally aligned. So for example, Orson Welles arguably created one of the first great cinematic masterpieces in Citizen Kane, but he was able to do so by bringing values from theater, and from radio, and areas where he sort of learned the art of storytelling. And he was able to combine them in new and interesting ways that people hadn't seen before. So, for me it's less about looking for that silver bullet of a creative person who comes out of nowhere, but these younger generations who understand these different mediums, combining them and creating connections with them in an exciting way. >> Brooks Brown from Starbury Studios said on the panel, the next breakout star is going to be the kid in the basement that no one's ever heard of. >> Very possibly, but that kid in the basement, he needs to be passionate about a lot of different disciplines. So, what we've tried to emulate in doing so, is bringing the best people in gaming, bringing the best people from traditional film, bringing people who had interests in a lot of different areas, different art forms, and letting them kind of play together and learn from each other. Argue with each other, you know? And then come up with something that no one's seen before. >> We're going to have to come up with a camera, so that could be like an experiment. Like it's just a reality show in and of itself. All that talent, multi discipline together. >> Absolutely. >> John: It's like dynamite ready to explode. >> It's the challenge, it's the blessing, it's the curse and the blessing of our medium right now, because there's so much more to discover, but if people come in and have an open mind, and are willing ... If the people from Hollywood are willing to learn from the people who do gaming in Silicon Valley, who are open to learning from the people in New York who grew up on live theater, I feel those, finding that intersection, finding those beautiful intersections are where we're going to thrive. >> Well you guys highlight that multi disciplinary thing, but also highlights why diversity is so important. Diversity brings the most perspectives to the table, the most data, most contribution. It might be a little bit longer to work through the arguments, right? You got to be patient. >> Absolutely you have to be patient. We're really lucky to be working with John Legend on our VR piece. He had actually been looking for several years to find, wanting to play in this space, but not wanting to do it with the wrong partner at the wrong time. So, it's, there's an art to timing in everything that we do right now, and when we presented to him the story we're doing with the Legend of Crow, it felt like the perfect sort of match. >> Legend of Crow coming out. Head of Content, Kane Lee here, Baobab Studios. Thanks for spending the time here on the Cube Conversation. What's the timing of the release of the program? >> Probably late spring, but we're going to be announcing some news around that soon, and we have some more exciting updates about it that I can't wait to share. >> Alright, we are here at the Intel Tech Lounge as the Cube's Conversation at Sundance Film Festival, part of our coverage of Sundance 2018. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida it's the Cube, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference, here at the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Maureen Fan. She is the CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studio, which is the industry's leading VR animation studio, so, welcome Maureen. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> It's excited to talk to you, because you just won an Emmy. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> You just won an Emmy for "Invasion", so, tell us a little bit about invasion. >> It was our first piece ever and it was just an experiment to see if we could even create VR and it's a story about these adorable little bunnies and you are actually a bunny too, you look down, you have a furry, little bunny body and these aliens that come to try to take over the Earth, with their advanced technology and you and your bunny friend end up saving the entire Earth and it's starring Ethan Hawk and it just came out last year. And we're really excited, because it became the number one top downloaded VR experience across all the headsets and it's getting turned into a Hollywood Feature Film. >> Very cool, very cool >> Thank you. >> And you have another film coming out too and this is "Rainbow Crow" >> Yes. >> Tell our viewers a little bit about "Rainbow". >> So, "Rainbow Crow" is based off of a Native American legend about how the crow used to have beautiful rainbow feathers and a beautiful singing voice and it's John Legend, in our piece and how he decides to sacrifice himself, by flying into the sun to bring warmth and fire back to the Earth and in the process, loses all his beautiful feathers, becomes black and burnt and his voice becomes like the crow's voice, but it's about how beauty is within and there's also, huge themes about diversity and how if you learn to accept yourself and your differences, that's when you can accept others and that's why we specifically cast minorities and women, so, we have John Legend, Constance Wu, from "Fresh off the Boat" as a skunk character, Diego Luna, from "Rogue One", for the moth character, as well as Randy Edmunds, as a Native American elder, narrator, and we have a whole bunch of other stars to announce, soon-- >> Well we cannot wait to hear. That's already an amazing line-up. >> Thank you. >> So, when you're thinking about "Rainbow Crow" and particularly, because it's VR, which is relatively new, still experimental, I mean, the messages of diversity, does it lend itself to VR, better than, say, a standard animation film? >> Absolutely, because if you think about stories that you just watch passively, the reason why we need stories and humanity, in general is to experience characters and stories beyond those we can experience in our real lives and we think, "Oh, how would I feel if I was in the "position of that character or what would I do?" but in VR, because you are actually playing a character in a role, you actually have to decide at that point, "what would I do?" so, it's not just a experience that I just see, it's one where I'm actively experiencing it, so, I create a memory and remember afterwards and there's all these research studies at Stanford by Jeremy Bailenson, who is head of the Stanford VR lab, that shows if you are made a homeless person, inside a VR experience and you have to go through a day in the life of a homeless person or you would look in the mirror and see that you are a black woman, that you, when you get out of the headset, you act completely differently. You have so much more empathy for these people than you would normally and so, it gets you to care about these characters, in a way that you don't normally and in VR, because you're doing it in a real-time game engine, these characters can act and react to what you do, so you can turn that empathy into action and actually act upon your caring, which we call compassion, so, it really changes you in a way, that normal, traditional story-telling doesn't, so, I think that having voices and characters that are different, in front of the screen, and also, behind the screen are really important to create role models and different perspectives for all the people out in the world. >> And these are movies that are targeted at kids, children, but do you see a future in which, where there is more targeted at adults, for VR? >> Absolutely. The funny thing is, in the beginning, the VR distributors didn't think that people would want our VR animation, because they're like, "Oh, it's just going to be these hardcore boys "that just love to play games. "Are they going to want this animation?" and VR is targeted towards adults, that's why they were surprised and we were surprised when "Invasion" became the number one downloaded VR experience. It shows that the audience for our content is from little kids to grandmas and everyone in between and that's probably why it became the top downloaded experience, is because it's universally appealing and has themes that are appealing to just, every single generation, so, absolutely, but for VR to become mainstream, there needs to be more universally appealing content. Right now, the content tends to be for games, like parkour games, as well as documentaries, which are two amazing pieces of content for this medium, but for it to become mainstream, we need more universally appealing content and I'm excited about, right now, it's a new industry. This is when minorities and women in particular, can enter the space and help shape the voices and the direction of the industry. >> That is exactly where I wanted to go next. So, let's talk a little bit about Baobab Studio. It's not that old and VR is not that old and so, why are there more opportunities, would you say, for women, and minorities? >> Well, if you look at traditional animation in the traditional entertainment fields that's a very mature industry and to break into that industry, you have to either have lots and lots of money or unfair distribution advantage, but VR, there's technological disruption, which means nobody has an advantage at all, means it's a level playing field and everybody can come in and start something, so, this is a perfect opportunity, when there's low barriers to entry of coming in, for women and minorities, anyone who wants their voice heard, to start companies or to make experiences and we can set the groundwork, because there's no one telling us what we can and can't do, because no one actually knows what we can and can't do yet. >> Right, right, but yet you are still of a female, asian figurehead of a studio, that will hopefully, someday be a major studio. You're working on it, but do you find that people take you as seriously in Hollywood? I mean, what are you coming up against? >> Well, it's really interesting, because I heard for even fundraising is one of the hardest parts of starting a company and there was a Stanford Research Study that showed that if you took a deck, a pitch deck for a company and you had a male voice-over versus a female voice-over the male voice-over was, I don't remember what, it was like 50% more likely to get funded than the woman with the same exact pitch deck, so I knew from that and they also show that if you are married and wear a ring you're taken more seriously, or if you're less attractive, also, you're taken more seriously and my hypothesis and some of the hypotheses out there, is it takes away the whole entire female attraction thing, like what does it mean to be an attractive female, so, I had to go into the meetings, knowing this. I even considered wearing a ring. I considered wearing a paper bag over my head. >> A bag over you head. Exactly, exactly. >> But at the same time I felt that I need to be myself and the best thing to, there's a correlation between the perceived leadership and confidence, that I needed to just go in there and be confident in myself so, I knew that, that could work against me, but I just needed to be myself, but I had to make sure that I was really confident and really believed in what I said and honestly, besides being confident and aggressive, I also, felt comfortable, because a lot of the people I talked to, I knew from my network and I had many of my male friends and female friends who knew these VC's, do the initial introduction, so I felt more comfortable going in, for them already knowing that I had somebody else saying that I was awesome. >> Yeah, and you've had many mentors and sponsors along the way too. >> Absolutely, I would say it's one of the most important things, for my career from the very beginning. When I graduated from business school, I actually emailed my mentors and said, "Here are the things I care about for finding a job." I didn't have to go find any jobs. They actually found all these jobs. for me, set up informational interviews, for me and I just went in and did it, all the informational interviews, got the offers and just choose one of them that I wanted to be in but, even for starting my company, my co-founder, Eric Darnell was a write and director of all four "Madagascar" films and I got introduced to him, through my mentor, Glen Entis who is the co-founder of PDI Dreamworks Animation and he was my mentor through Zynga and then, Gen Entis introduced me to Alvy Ray Smith, who is the co-founder of Pixar, who also became our advisor, Alvy Ray Smith, then introduced us to Glen Keane, who is the animator for "Little Mermaid", "Alaadin". >> The power of networks. >> It was all through the network and through my mentors that I found, a lot of the opportunities that I have and they also helped my through my personal life and how to navigate being entrepreneur and I rely on them so much. >> So, beyond finding the right mentor and sponsor what else would you give, your parting words to the young Maureen fans out there? >> I think there's a tendency for society to pressure you to conform, to money, fame, beauty and you don't need to listen to that and you don't need to be bucketed. I designed my own major at Stanford and with an eBay, I took four different roles. I just kept on creating my own roles and refusing to be bucketed as a creative or a suit and you can be who you are and create a category onto yourself and so, don't feel pressured to listen to what society is telling you. The other thing, is if you are faced with pushed back for being promoted and you feel like it's maybe because you're a woman, we have a tendency as women to start blaming ourselves and thinking there's something wrong with us, versus research shows men are most likely to blame the system, don't let it affect you and bring you down, because you need to actually be confident and believe in yourself in order to rise above. >> Great. Great advice. Maureen, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> And best of luck to you. >> Thank you, so much. >> Hope you win another Emmy. >> Thank you. >> Come back and talk to us again. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from Grace Hopper, just after this. (techno music)