(lively music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody. We're here at The Aria Hotel covering Veritas Vision. This is day one of our two day coverage. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my cohost, Stu Miniman. Tyler Welch is here, the Director of Communities at Veritas. He's joined by Justine Velcich who runs the VIP program for the VOX community and advocacy. Folks, welcome to theCUBE and thanks so much for coming on. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, Tyler, let's start with you. What is VOX, what does it stand for, what's it all about? >> Yeah, so VOX is Veritas Open Exchange. It is our customer community where our customers, our partners, employees are sharing knowledge and information. VOX in Latin means voice. If you think about Veritas in terms of truth, this is a place where we're being very open. We want people to come, share their knowledge, help each other and learn. >> Yeah, so I see the three bullets: seek answers, share insights, and make informed decisions. So these are practitioners in your community and your ecosystem just sharing ideas and helping each other grow. Is that the basic idea? >> Absolutely. If you think about digital transformation, right? To transform means your going from somewhere to another location and if we're sharing knowledge and information, these individuals are saying, "Hey, there's a lot of complexity right now." Right, we know things are changing in our industries. How we store our data is changing. And in VOX, we've got users that are saying, "Hey, I understand this complexity, I can simplify that, "I can help you, and I'm going to share my experience so "that others can benefit from that." >> Alright, Justine, let's bring you into the conversation. What's your role, what's the VIP program all about? >> My role within the VOX team is I lead the community and advocacy programs for VOX. So the VIP programs, so Veritas Information Professionals is an award program. It's a program essentially rewarding our super users, our top users in the community who are making outstanding contributions within the VOX platform. Some of them log in every single day and jump in to produce content and help out the community answering questions and whatnot. So it's a recognition program just to say thank you. >> I find some people that aren't in IT don't understand the communities that are built. It still amazes me how much people give back. I think back when Dave actually found Wikibon, it was around online communities and we said, "I don't need you full time." One of my favorite stats is if you took .02 percent of the United States television watching in one year, you could create all of Wikipedia. It's like tiny little bits ... Can you give us the size of the community? I heard some people are coming on every day, tell us a little bit to help us get our arms around the voice of your community? >> So VOX actually launched just over a year ago. We actually took a lot of the content from the Veritas technologies that were part of Symantec. We brought them over, we brought those users over and since then we've actually seen an increase of over 10,000 users coming to the site. It's something that we've got a lot of active employees, a lot of partners, a lot of customers that are there asking questions. >> So, coming to the site, they've come, they've registered? Well actually you have information on them already but they've agreed to participate in some way, shape or form? What's the hurdle they have to go through to become a member? >> Well to join VOX just come to the site and hit the join button, pretty easy. Create a user name and start asking questions. Most of our users actually come because they actually have a question. They'll come through Google, right? "Hey, help me do this or I'm trying to figure out this "type of deployment," and they'll land there and they'll realize "Hey, there's a lot of good information here. And there's people here that are actually really knowledgeable and I want to come back because I'm able to get answers to questions. Or I'm able to learn how to actually do things better than maybe I was doing them in the past." >> And the computer community comprises generally IT practitioners, storage admins, data center managers ... >> All of the above. We also have blogs on VOX where our employees at Veritas are actually sharing their perspectives as well. So we actually have a lot of different audiences that run from our executives that are blogging. Will Coleman has a blog. We're talking about what we're doing all the way to storage admin, "Hey I'm looking to do a deployment, "what does this mean? "How do I administer these types of things?" So through VOX, you'll see there's a lot of ways to make different connections with different audiences. >> Justine, what are you seeing as far as some of the content trends? What kinds of things are people producing? Is it sort of forum posts? You mentioned blogs, Tyler, videos, what's the content makeup? >> So from the VIP side of things, in terms of the content, and the types of participation in the program, like I said, it's our super users, it's our very active subject matter experts that are very passionate about sharing a community with like minded individuals that are just like them. They are doing everything from creating blog posts to jumping in answering troubleshooting questions and discussion boards. Actually discussions are probably one of our busiest, high traffic areas. It's quite technical in nature which is what our audience is looking for. So it's everything, all of the above really. >> What's the reward system look like? >> It's not really a reward, it's more of an award for thanking them for the last year of their outstanding contributions. We didn't want it to be a do this, get that type of an economy. It's more of a genuine effort when they can come in and just share their knowledge based on their passion for being part of a community that they get to fuel and grow. >> So their incentive really is that community feel? >> Justine: Absolutely. >> That's the primary motivation for them right? >> It's also reputation around ... You know if you're a partner and you're active in the community and you're sharing information you've got that credibility and that's important. Some people, as they're looking at the next phase of their career, these are things I'm doing, this is how I'm contributing to the industry that I participate in. I think, especially with what's going on right now and how this industry is transforming, nobody's just one thing, we all have multiple hats. This is a place where people can expand some of the things they're talking about, they're learning, and they're sharing back. >> Is there a reputation system? Does the community measure itself on the quality of the contributions or the frequency? How does that reputation get translated into ... Or quantified, or does it? >> In terms of ... Again, speaking from the VIP program, our super users, we didn't want to launch the program with a thousand qualified super users. There probably are a thousand super users on the platform but we're really looking for quality content. So we launched actually just last night so that was a big milestone for us. We launched last night with 28 individuals welcomed into the program so we kept it small for a thoughtful reason. They are everywhere from, when you asked the type of people that are part of the community but in terms of the VIP program, they're everywhere from a VP of a medium to large organization to a functional IT from an enterprise organization to a consultant and everything in between. They actually are represented across 13 plus countries and some of these people actually have known each other for decades being parts of other communities where they're talking about the same types of products. So they already have built relationships and that's kind of what makes the community unique. >> Tyler, please if you want to ... >> It's interesting you said rewards because I thought about that. The reality is these individuals are out there sharing their knowledge, we're actually just thanking them for what they're already doing. They're already there. I think that's the purpose of our program is then to give additional access to information, better connection with each other, and allow those connections and those relationships to flourish because it's a community, that's really why we're here is to help make those connections for those individuals. >> Obviously you've launched the VI program here, what else is happening at Vision? You've got the VOX online program, I always see with communities, a lot of times, there's planful things like "Hey, let's get a meetup together "or let's do something." So what's happening around this this week? >> This week at Vision, our VIPs are obviously plugged in to the sessions and they're attending those sessions. We're actually here on the Vision live floor talking to the session attendees talking about VOX. They're coming into the booth, we're showing them the platform. Again we just launched a year ago so we're still relatively new. One of the things we're doing is if you are here at vision and you're watching, come by the booth, we're doing professional head shots. Those can be things that are used in your LinkedIn profile. I don't know about you guys but I think the last time I did my LinkedIn profile, I was on vacation and I got a good light shot and I'm going to use that and I cropped it a bit so we thought, "Hey, we could do a little bit better." >> Better than the selfie. >> We're providing that right now. No selfies. >> We use cube shots. >> That's true. >> So that's one of the things we're doing to actually bring people together and share that experience of what community actually means to them and we've got some interesting responses so far from our audience. >> That's great and maybe when they update their profile they won't have that pixelated photo from like 15 years ago. I saw even there was one customer on the keynote and they blew it up on the screen and it was a little pixelated so stop by the booth and they'd get that. >> Yeah, pixelation's not really in style, I don't know if it was ever in style. I don't know, throwback. >> So you said you launched a year ago? >> Yeah. >> Is that right? >> So talk about network effects, any community like this you want to achieve some kind of scale and you get this sort of flywheel effect. I mean, 10,000 in 12 months is pretty good number. Of course, there's the number and then there's the activity and those are two different sort of dimensions. But do you feel like you're on the steep part of the S-curve or just heading there or have surpassed that? Talk about the network effect. >> Absolutely, so in my experience with launching communities you do have that hockey stick where in the very beginning a lot of people are coming and they're joining. The great news is we're seeing high activity on a monthly basis of people coming back. No surprise in a community in the very beginning you're coming through search, Google, because you're typing a question into that box, where do you land? We want them to land on Veritas Open Exchange so we can be part of that broader conversation around what's going on for information management. At Veritas, we believe that a connected experience across our different platforms. If you think about what we're sharing on social media, what we're sharing in our communities, those users that are logging in to get information out of our different portals, we want to start to blend some of those connections together and we see community as a way to do that. A great example is if you're on a product page and you want to look at information about a particular product, net backup, being able to access blogs, some of the community content's really important because there's a lot of authenticity that comes from a community voice, a user voice, alongside our voice as Veritas as well. >> You talk a little bit about how you seeded it when you had some relationship with the Symantec data but how did you actually get the seedling to not die? What was that secret because that's the hardest part I think or at least one of the hard things about building a community is cultivating it so it doesn't wilt early on. >> Yeah, communities are about the value for those individuals. The value for us in the very beginning was the content that was there and the content that was created by the community. And so as we set out, and our roadmap was to launch VOX one of the early decisions was we need to make sure we can bring all of the content over with us that's relevant. And that felt like an easy decision at the beginning but it got harder as you started to look at database structures ... >> Dave: Yeah, content migration. >> Yeah, it would be a lot easier to start over. And we stayed true to that. I think we would have launched earlier in the year had it not been for some complexity there. But I think we've been able to continue to grow because we've got good content and I want to stress the fact that that content is coming from our customers, our partners, and our employees. And those are the individuals that are sharing their experience which is so valuable and it's authentic. >> Did you have an existing CMS or did you choose a new one when you started? A content management system? >> We went from one platform provider to another and there were some differences as you would suspect in those database structures. But we realized is we're thinking about a better experience from a mobile device. How do we actually start to connect our community into Veritas.com. Integrated into our support portal, we wanted to have flexibility across some of those touchpoints realizing that our customers and our partners are going to define where they want to go and we want to be able to take that content and make it easier for them to access. >> Well, and Justine, you just launched the VIP program, you may have some new requirements or feature requirements. What are you seeing there? What kinds of things do you envision your VIPs are going to require out of the system? >> Requirements out of the system ... >> Right, you follow me? So it's sort of a new thing, the VIPs, does the system accommodate those? Do you have to add new features? These are challenging problems, right? There's underlying infrastructure that you have to deal with. How do you sort all that out? >> I think in terms of being able to maybe plug in new requirements especially with different types of technology, we're trying to introduce new types of content into the community as well that would hopefully be appealing to newer advocates that would be welcomed into the program in the future. >> Dave: Like what? >> Podcasting is something that we're actually doing. We've paired up with the social team, as well and we're running podcasts here on the Vision Live floor which is really exciting. So we're going to have new content up on the community shortly. Hopefully we'll be able to plug our VIPs into those new types of content and provide different avenues for digesting content. >> Where do you want to see this go? What's the vision? >> Success for us is we make Veritas Open Exchange, VOX, an integrated part of being a customer, a partner, or even an employee of Veritas. There's relevance there. This is a place where I have presence, I'm able to share what I know and participate in a broader conversation. Talk a little bit about roadmap, one of the beautiful things about having a close relationship with a very passionate group of individuals is they want to make things better. They want to make it easier and we see that through requirements that are coming in and questions about how to make VOX better. But also about our products and services at Veritas. There's a rich dialogue that we can have with them as result of that. So we're constantly evaluating, looking at those things, of how do we just actually make things easier. It's so easy to make things complicated these days with features, right? Let's do this, let's do that. We're looking at how do we actually make this simpler, provide a better experience so you can be on your mobile device, you can be on your tablet, you can be at your desk and find the information that you're looking for. >> Great. Alright folks, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> Alright, you're welcome. Keep it right there, everybody, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. As theCUBE, we're live from Veritas Vision 2017. Right back. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It's theCube covering DevNet Create 2018, brought to you by Cisco. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. Live here in Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. We're here for Cisco's DevNet Create. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Lauren Cooney. Our next guest is Sylvain Kalache, who's the co-founder of Holberton School. In the news today for big venture funding. Eight and a half million dollars, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming on, we've had many conversations with some of the folks you work with at your place there. Really great mission, CloudNow Awards have been on Open Source Summit. You guys have a very special mission, certainly recognized with some good funding, congratulations, but take a minute to explain the mission of your school. >> Yes, so the mission of the school is to provide high quality education to the most. I think that's something that is very tough in the US for American people is that there is high quality education and you know, like Ivy League are, like, obviously doing a great job, but the issue with that is that it's, like, limited to an elite. But a fraction of American people can access high quality education, and so when you look at the student debt, you know, 1.4 trillion dollar, like, something is wrong with that, right? >> John: Yeah. >> And so we want to be a part of the solution and that's why we created Holberton School. >> And the interesting thing, too, about it is that what I liked about your mission, too, is that you're very transparent about what you do and... But a lot of the jobs are skills that not a lot of people have, so it's a first time skill. So, you know, as people look to hire, say, a data scientist or someone in AI or someone in machine learning or anything in tech, for instance, no one really has that many years of experience, so there's an opportunity to level up for someone who might not have gone to a fancy school. >> Exactly, so today there is more than half a million unfilled jobs that require tech skills in the US, right. And according to the previous white house CTO, it's going to grow to 1.4 million in the next decade, right. And universities are only going to train 400,000. So, there is a gap of a million skilled people within the next 10 years for software engineering type of job, right. So, my co-founder, with Julie and Bobby, we used to be head of marketing and community and I used to work for LinkedIn, would, you know, interview a lot of people who wanted to, you know, work for Docker and LinkedIn and one of the issue we saw is that a lot of out of colleges candidates will not be ready to take on a job. They were not ready. You could see they were smarter than you think but you would need to train them for six months or a year to get them ready to take on a job. >> What makes you different, what are you guys doing that's working? Can you explain the model? >> Yeah so in regular education, we bring you the knowledge right, through a lecture to share, we lecture you right. And two weeks down the road, we give you the exam to see if you memorized, you know, like the solution kind of, right? At Holberton, we've flipped the education. We give students the exam through a project, and they have to go, acquire the knowledge, learn the tool that they need to solve the thing, right. Which is very much what we do in the workplace, right. My manager at LinkedIn would coach me and say hey Sylvain you need to build this, you need to fix that, right. And then I'm paid to like find the best solution, right. So we train our students the same way. And our students come from all walks of life. Right out of high school, some started college didn't finish, some used to be barista, poker player, guitar player, artist, teacher, and some other place, right. They come with no software engineering knowledge, and we train them from zero. For two things, first one to learn a craft that's in demand in today's software engineering. So that they can find a job you know after graduation. And second to earn or to learn, to develop problem solving skills, critical thinking. So that they can continue to grow even after graduation and continue to learn after that, right. >> Is there a requirement? >> The requirement is that you have to be over 18 years old. That's it. >> John: That's it. >> That's it. >> And what does it cost? >> So the cost is none, until you find a job, right. >> Lauren: Until you find a job. And then what happens? >> So what happens, if you find a job that is over 40,000 dollar per year, then you contribute back to the school with a percentage of your salary. So we align the school success with student success. And the final contribution that students make to the school is used to finance the next generation of students. >> Lauren: Great. >> So that, you know, an organic circle where, the more students are successful through them, the more we can train other students. >> And you're investing in the outcome of the students. >> Exactly. We are investing in our students worthy of this school. But obviously we're are like investing in their success. >> Lauren: That's great >> That's the only way for us to succeed. >> Well you're certainly optimized for success. Because you're motivated to do it right. Right, so. This is interesting. >> We are, and when we say we, it's like the Holberton staff, but also the Holberton community. Which is composed of more than 150 mentors. Who are professionals in the tech industry. And they are here for two things. To guide students to enter the tech industry. They come to the school, share their experiences. What it's like to work for a startup. What it's like to work for a big company. What it's like to be a woman in tech, right. And also, they guide us on the curriculum, right. To make sure that what is being taught, like is always relevant. And that's where students find jobs in several companies including Tesla, Apple, NASA, LinkedIn, you name it. So they're competing with Ivy League type of talent. >> John: Yeah, yeah. >> But they are definitely in the type of demographic that you really want... >> And they actually might win too, because they have the street smarts. And they get the hands on skills. Okay, so quick question, so. Is it the for-profit? Or non-profit? >> Sylvain: It's for-profit. >> Okay, so it's for-profit. But it's got a mission driven initiative. >> Sylvain: Yes. >> Tied to a profit objective. So you just raise some funding. How did that go? Is that use of funds to expand the scope? Or student body? I'm sure there's some constraints, in terms of, how much you can handle in terms of student body. Locations around the world. What is there an expansion strategy? Obviously you got some funding. >> Sylvain: Yes. >> What are you going to do with it? >> Yeah, so, we are a San Francisco based crew. We started three years ago with our first cohort of solid students. And with the location we had, we could train 100 students a year. Right. That's good but, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot. >> John: It's a prototype. >> It's a prototype. Exactly. So now that we have the students working for EnVideo, Dropbox, Apple, and like you know, the Google of the world. Alright, okay. Now we need to scale up and we move to a new location, that's seven times bigger. Where we'll be able to train 500 students per year, which... Because it's a two year program, we'd be a campus of 1000 students. Right. And to give you an idea of the scale, the largest University for software students, in the US is training 700 students a year. So we are like quickly coming up, as one of the largest trainer of 20,000 students. >> That's phenomenal. What's the curriculum? Is it mostly computer science? Is it mostly tech? I mean obviously you have the... I see any of you come in. But you do have women in tech. And you have a under represented minority kind of component, which is great. But it's open to anyone. >> It's open to anyone over 18. The application process is blind and fully automated. So there is no, human selection. >> John: No discrimination of any kind. >> No discrimination, and... >> How do you cut people off? Is it random? >> It's not random. >> And not random. I mean like, if you have like 500 spots. >> Yah. >> And you have 1000 applicants. >> Yah. >> So do you sort it? Is it like... >> Right. >> You get the lottery? I mean, is it... >> No, so there is only three percent of student who start the application process who make it. >> Okay, got it. >> And... >> So there's a selection criteria. >> There is a selection criteria. It's hard to get in. It's mostly based on motivation and talent. And by talent we mean, this ability to strive in this type of environment. Where you learn by doing and you learn by collaborating with your peers. Which is something that not everybody, you know, can do. >> So you identify success criteria, with what you think might be aligned with the culture of the curriculum. >> Yah, we believe that grit, is you know, a big element in people's success. And I think there is a lot of American people with grit. But they're born in the wrong zip code. They didn't have the right family, you know, who could support them. And to us, we don't want to select people because of their past. We want to select people because of who they are. Ultimately the application process is doing this for us. In terms of numbers, so far it's brought 35 percent woman. 50 percent of our students aren't white. And the age goes from anywhere from 17 to 56. So it's like very diverse crowd of students. That makes this community really amazing. >> Lauren: Yah. Coming from someone who paid for their own college, and then had to pay it all back... (laughing) I would have loved to have this around when I was going to school.6 >> John: And you still pay the pack. It's like you wanted it upfront for free. So what percentage of the salary is it? I mean, can you talk about numbers or... >> Yah. >> Cause I mean, cause that's always some people want to know the math in advance. >> Absolutely, absolutely. So it's a 17 percent of your income, for the first three years of employment, if you find a job that's over 40,000. So if you don't find a job then, you don't pay anything. >> John: And direct deposit probably, mostly. Do they have to be obligated to pay you? Do they usually do... direct deposit? >> Sylvain: Yah. We partner with third parties that's taking care of this. And it's basically like a monthly, you know, deposit. >> So it's automated for this candidates, for the students. >> Sylvain: It's automated, yah. >> Lauren: And do you do partnerships in any way? So like, you know, woman that are re-entering the work force. Or, you know... things along those lines. There's a lot of different programs out there that support. You know... >> Sylvain: Absolutely. So we are partnering with a lot of organizations. >> Lauren: Okay. >> We want to inspire... And the represented, you know like, demographic to, believe that they can become software engineer. They can be part of that, right. And so we partner... One of them is a clan now, with Justine Mitchell. >> Lauren: I won an award, yah. (Lauren laughing) >> And she was on theCube... >> Lauren: Yah. She's great. >> John: We cover their events. >> So with Justine we worked on fundraising, for women, for living state. And from Google extension... And Schelling, and yeah, we are going to help more students to get in the program. And also, one thing that we are doing is that we have a wall of trustees, where actually, Justine is sitting. We also have the singer, grammy award winner, Neyo. Who help's us to make sure we are doing everything we can, to communicate to this minority, right. And as you say, like the kid in the hood will come up with a different set of problems, and different set of ideas on how to build product and solve issues. And not only having a diverse work force is socially good. But it also makes sense business wise. Because your customer base is diverse by definition, right. >> John: Yah, I mean you need to have the algorithms. So the algorithms are being written by only a small percentage of the population. >> Sylvain: Yah, yah. They're inherently bias. >> Sylvain: They are. >> So we need to have that diversity, and plus diversity brings more unique perspectives. It might slow things down a bit. But you're going to get a much more broader representation. >> Sylvain: It is, and... >> And we heard with that in front with Mark Zuckerberg in front of senate yesterday. (Sylvain laughing) Questions like, you know... There's biases in there. Who's writing the algorithms? >> Yah, it's became even worse with AIM mission learning. If you feed this intelligence, that I've said is bias or discriminative, then AI will behave, like, with discrimination. >> And they're hidden bias so people might not even know that their biases is builtin. >> So it's terrible. I've arranged a number of money to take in the industry. In the valley's, 12 percent. So we really... and it's also bad for, like you know, authenticity. But also, I would say, none visual diversity, right. Like, what zip code? What background? What academic background do you come from? >> Yah. I mean it's a group thinking, mentality. "Oh we went to Harvard", "Oh you're instantly funded." >> Exactly. >> I mean that was the old way. The new way is the new generation. You do amazing work, we applaud your mission and success. We think this is the model, in fact, I'm even more aggressive, that you should get tax-deductions for contributing your time to the school. And the students should get a tax-deduction off the payment. This is a very skilled model. Congratulations. You should propose that. Get Mark Zuckerberg's in and Washington, DC. >> You should send to us. (laughing) >> Send some text messages, while you're there change some regulations. Hey, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you >> Holbertonschool.com. Check it out. Great mission, changing the education paradigm. Bringing a new paradigm for learning. Really filling the gap in the jobs front, across the world. It's theCube of course doing our part. Sharing it with you. Back with more live coverage here at Cisco DevNet Create, at the Computer History Museum. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)