>> That's sort of what I bring, is an ability to catalyze the conversation, and share that knowledge with others in the community. Our philosophy is everybody expert in something, everybody is passionate about something, and has real deep knowledge about that something. What we want to focus in on that area and extract that knowledge and share it with our communities. This is Dave Vellante, thanks for watching theCUBE. (smooth music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment, we have Anna Chu, who is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft and Shona Chee, Product Marketing Manager Diversity and Tech Community Lead. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Happy to be here! >> So, you are dressed very similarly. (laughs) >> Yes, we are. >> Yes, so we're going to get into diversity, because I want to go there, but let me start with you, Anna. So, you are really in charge of the community within the vast ecosystem of Microsoft. That's a big job. So how do you go about it? What's your approach to the Microsoft Community? >> Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. I've been leading the community efforts at Microsoft Ignite for the past two and a half, three years. And ultimately, it's all about the people in the room. These are IT pros, these are developers; people who care about technology. It's also end users as well; people who are business-focused. So we really want to make sure that we're delivering content that is going to help them go back to their communities, go back to their offices and be able to share all that knowledge back into the workplace. >> And Shona, so then you are within a slice of that community. So focusing on diversity and tech. So, what is your, how do you operate? >> So we see diversity as really closely integrated with technology. So we are a community that lives on the tech community. So there's a direct link, AKA dot MS Life Diversity and Tech, but what we're pretty much doing is bringing people together. All the tech communities to talk about important topics of diversity inclusion. So, traditionally, it's always been very HR driven, a lot about talent and acquisition and recruitment, but for us its really about what about the people in career, how do we help them feel like they belong, and they're apart of this ecosystem. So that's where we see the symbiotic relationship. >> And I have to say that it's my first time to the show. I've watched it from afar, I knew lots of people that were Microsoft MVPs over the years, very impressed. Maybe give our audience a little bit about what goes on in the show. You got all the podcasts going, there's meet-ups, there, you know, lots of good flare you're giving out at the show, and everything else like that. So, what's everybody missing that didn't come to this community gathering? >> Gosh, I hope I didn't miss out on anything, really. I really hope that we were as inclusive as possible. But every year we try and make the event more community infused than ever before. In previous years, we just really focused on content that would be live on a stage, such as at a theater or a breakout, but we really want to add a little bit more of the networking side of things too this year. So we've invested in the meetups, which are more formalized ways for the community to find their people. But we've also invested in idea swaps, such as a brand new concept that we've landed here in Microsoft Ignite, where we have group idea swaps where people are putting together topics that they want to meet with others about. And we also want to facilitate more one on one networking because personal relationships are such a critical part to being professionally strong in your career. You can't be successful without other people. So we really want to enable Ignite to be that platform. We've got people from all around the world. Shona's got this amazing pin wall in the Diversity and Tech area that showcases where everyone is coming from. There are people coming from really remote areas, to people all parts of Western Europe and the US, and I think there's a lot to be gained from people being able to find each other through Ignite. >> And what we always tell attendees is everything is live-streamed or recorded in terms of sessions, so the biggest take away here is really people and communities, so we really encourage people to meet-up, build valuable connections, just talk about topics that might be uncomfortable so that we can learn from it. >> Such a great point there. It's funny it is one of those pro tips out there. First of all, when there's a really big convention center, and there's a lot of people, there's certain sessions that you want to be at. Maybe you want to talk to the speaker in due but, when you find time on the plane ride back or spend a little time in that suite, you can go re-watch some of it, the people is really what drives everybody to the event. >> Where else would you meet 25,000 people in one venue, right? So it's really exciting. >> Shona you said talk about topics that are a little uncomfortable, those are the hardest things to talk about, particularly with a group of strangers. So what has been your experience at this conference, what are people saying that might count as that? >> Right, so the recent inclusion has really come front and center in terms of topics that's hot in the IT industry in particular. So traditionally people think about diverse inclusion as gender, right? Men and women. But, we're seeing that it's a lot more multi faceted than that. We're talking really about intersectionality of identities, all of us hold multiple identities, I'm a woman in tech, I'm an IT professional, I'm a millennial. So there's multi areas that we deal with, but we need to address each and every one of them. So for example, this year we have a lot of sessions focused on LGBTQ, and we also have our partners talking about this topic as well, and just really getting people in a room to say help me learn more about this area that I'm not that familiar with, or let's talk about race and culture. What do people in your culture do? What is the norm, what is acceptable? And that's why we also partnered with Tech Women, it's a US department of state initiative where we invite women from developing countries to come share their experience being an IT pro in those countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon. So we really want to give them platform to interact with attendees, but also giving mostly North American and European customers a chance to hear from someone in a completely different cultural setting. >> And just talking about all the various identities that we all encapsulate. Is the workplace the right place to talk about those things? That is another question too, in the sense of we are bringing our full self to work and we are spending so many hours at work. But at the same time, what is the right balance, do you think? >> Yeah, I think that's a great point. On the Monday leadership panel, we actually talk about leadership and building inclusive work cultures. Like you said, we spend so much time in the office, sometimes our coworkers become our family almost, right? How do we create and environment where people feel like they belong, where they feel like they can be genuine and not feel like they have to hide something, because in-authenticity really shows, and we want to encourage people to just feel like they have a safe place to express themselves. >> So in terms of advocating for yourself at work, I know that's another big theme that is in the diversity and tech workshops, what is some advice that you have for women, for underrepresented minorities, for people of various sexual orientations to make sure that they are having there careers that they are capable of having, and not being and not coming up against other biases and challenges. >> So in the Tuesday session, Donna Secaur actually talked about this, which was a great point, she said, you can write your own story, you can't control what people say about you, but you can control what's out there in the media, you can control how you do your social media profiles, and I think it's really encouraging people to take a look at what's online. Brand yourself how you want people to see you, and be proud of it, I think that's one of the biggest points. >> I also think that Microsoft Ignite brings so many people together, but they all have a common mutual passion which is about technology, and if that manages to bridge build bridges between people who may not necessarily get to know each other, so people from different religions or from different ethnic backgrounds, who don't really have that opportunity to get to know each other, and then they find a common passion, or they also face the same challenge on how to govern teams or things like that then suddenly we're doing a lot to help, build bridges and just drive that human connection so we can get beyond some of those challenges that we're facing in 2018. >> One of the ideas that bridges both community and diversity is career paths. I know a lot of the shows they go is how're we taking somebody from a certain world that growth mindset that we hear Sasha talking about how're you looking to address that and how is that discussed in the communities? >> Gosh, we've just launch a completely new Microsoft learned platform as well, one of the things that is really important ab6out learning is actually learning through community too. And if we can enable people to find their own people by helping them share best practices and tips, and we've made huge in roads there. So one of the things we've run as part of Microsoft Ignite, are community socials. So community socials are a way for people to find their people. So we've hosted ones for Microsoft Exchange an6d Outlook and we can make an element of fun out of that too, so there seems to be a certain personality in that community called squeaky lobster, I don't know if you've heard of squeaky lobster. It's some sort of inside joke that even I don't understand, but apparently he's a personality, and he's here to unite the community together, and then people will come together, and they'll talk about Exchange 2019, and they'll talk about how that impacts other parts of Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and then they'll talk about all the different ways that they can connect with each other as well. So it's a very amorphous thing. From a learning perspective, we have a lot of things that we can do to create platforms for learning, which is really awesome, but at the end of the day we have to learn through community because it's just IT professionals and developers are having to learn at a crazy pace, faster than they've ever had before. So that's a really big part. >> And I like that you mentioned career paths, because we just partnered with the MVP community to launch a community mentors program, and that's where we partner with over 700 participants all around the world from 65 countries, and over 800 years of combined industry experience, to have mentors work with mentees from other countries, and do a lot of cross sharing, just sharing expertise and best practices. >> And you have your student ambassadors here too. >> So that's a new thing that we've also rolled out at Ignite this year, we've invited seven student ambassadors from three local colleges here, and we invited them to work with our community reporters to push out some exciting video content. So that helps them to get a flavor of what kind of roles are out there in tech. We want to debunk the myth that you have to learn coding to work in technology and that is not true. There are so many amazing IT pro roles out there that we really want to educate people on. >> So the technology industry at this point in time has a very bad reputation in terms of diversity, there's not enough women, there's not enough minorities, there's not enough sexual orientation diversity. Coupled with this real bro culture, what's your best advice for technology companies today to be more inclusive, that's one of Satya Nadella's real guiding principles is embracing diversity, different perspectives, and being inclusive. How do you do it? >> I would say the first thing is really, just take the first step. We're all on a journey, this is a really big hairy issue that we're all working to tackle, and we cannot do this alone, and that's something we've heard consistently with all our partners. We are working together to tackle this as an industry, and I can't speak for other companies, but at Microsoft we have a strong culture of empathy, and as you know from Sasha's key note we're all about empowering people to be the best that they can be, and that is why we've developed code of conduct, we make sure people know what's acceptable, what are the boundaries that we can talk with, but still push the limit and say, hey I want to learn more about your culture, I want to know more about the LGBTQ community, I want to know about inclusive design and accessibility, how do I build technology that is accessible for everybody. So I think it's not easy for sure, even for Microsoft, we are still trying a lot of things for the first time. We learn and we grow from it, and we just keep improving it every year, so we hope that in future Ignites it will be even better. >> And having community members, even individually own being a champion for diversity too, whether it be in their own organization, or in their own user groups that they run, we really want to make sure that they are feeling like I can be an ally for diversity, whether you are someone who is the the typical persona in the IT pro world, which is a white male, and I'm really glad to hear a lot of these stories of people saying you know what, I am going to be that person that's going to step in and say something when I don't think things are right. >> And there are topics that everybody can relate to as well like mental health and wellness, that's an issue that's really come in the spotlight with a lot of stress in the industry. So it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, your gender identity, all of us are human beings. We all feel the same pressures and stress, and we just had that lunch session where literally tears were shed because people felt like I now have space to say I'm struggling with this, can you help me? And I think that's a really powerful thing to even just get started. >> It does require a lot of bravery, I think. Because for me even, I like to be able to find other people that I can relate to, who also share some of the same challenges that I have, and so I think that's the first step really, basically opening the doors and letting people express themselves and then other people are also going to feel like they're included. I think that's really one of the first steps. >> And where better to do it than a community. Finding your people in this space so yeah. >> And I want to ask about the buttons you have on so, yours, Anna's says Ringleader, Shona, game changer. >> Networking ninja >> And Networking ninja! I love it. So can you explain what these mean? >> Yeah so this year we want to try to really interactive button wall and we want people to come, and feel like they can share what's there diversity super powers, so all of us play a really important role, we where many hats from a day to day basis, but we want to know, what do people feel like is there ultimate strength, whether you're a mentor, are you an enabler, are you a supporter, what is it? And these were just great conversation topics, so if I saw that Anna's a Ringleader, I might come up to her and be like, oh that's me too, can we talk and schedule and idea slot? So we just want to create a fun way for people to interact, but another important thing we've launched this year is the pronoun buttons, so we want everybody to feel like they can be comfortable telling people what is the pronoun that they prefer rather than what visually people think they are, so that is something that we've launched this year as well. >> Very cool, very cool. Well thank you both so much for coming on theCube, it was really fun talking to you. >> Thank you for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (smooth music)

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE! Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone. This is theCUBE live in Washington, D.C. for AWS, Amazon Web Services, Public Sector Summit. This is the event for Global Public Sector, and I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante; next guest, Salman Al Khalifa, vice CEO of Bahrain, Information and eGovernment Authority, excited to have him on theCUBE, and dying to talk to you for over a year. Welcome to theCUBE; thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. >> So, one of the things we've been covering, and Terese has been really hot on this for over a year, and I think people are starting to figure it out, that the digital nation concept of digitizing and being a digital country is a moonshot kind of thinking, but it's reality for a lot of people. You guys have a story working with AWS, I think is super fascinating, so I want to get into it. How did it all start? What are you guys doing? Take a minute to explain what's going on in Bahrain, in your country. >> How did it start? Basically, every IT guy in government, is like bogged down, day in, day out, buying stuff, building stuff, and it's a constant race to just keep changing things over. We've got a really smart leader, and he has a vision. He said, "We're going to go to the cloud." It caught us off guard. What do you mean, take everything and move it to the cloud? That's crazy, but sitting down, really analyzing what the cloud will do for us, I was excited. I mean, take into consideration, 70% of our time is spent buying, installing, and re-buying, and re-installing stuff. So, I'm in a constant cycle of buying, tendering, and you know government bureaucracy. You can't pick up the phone and say "Hey, HP, "get us the server; get us this application." No, you need to put it in the public domain; you need to put in tender, evaluate it publicly, and then, write a contract and the contract... But it takes you to buy anything, six months. So, you're constantly, every month, issuing tenders. And, you're losing sight of what's really important. It's building applications that can help the citizen, not helping vendors. And I think the key thing is we need to focus our attention on building applications that serve the citizens. That's the bottom line; that's what we own. We own the business; we own the data, not the hardware. We don't want to keep buying hardware, so what the cloud gave us was the ability to innovate without having to go through all those hoops. And I think that is the real benefit to us as a government by moving to the cloud. >> Alright, so what's the status of the current situation? Amazon's the provider. >> Yep. >> Talk about the relationship with Amazon, and then we'll come into the cool things that are going on in Bahrain. >> Amazon is a strategic partner. They've opened up a region in Bahrain because the government saw this is the right approach. We've always seen where everything is going. In the 1970s, the government had the first satellite in the region. Lebanon, the war came on, and then the banks panicked. Where do they go? And they came where? The only region that was available and was able to take all the international banks at that time? Bahrain. And so, Bahrain was established as a banking sector. Now, we are betting on the cloud, and Amazon being the biggest and the best with more options for us. We're betting big on Amazon. We believe by having Amazon in Bahrain, they will help stimulate and stimulate innovation of our citizens because at the end of the day, we're not an oil-rich country. Our crowned jewel is the citizen, and the people are the innovators. They are going to be our future developers and entrepreneurs. And making them ready for the cloud is going to help us succeed. And that's where we see Amazon. >> What's the mission and vision of the eGovernment Authority and the modernization with digital? Is it to make citizens happy? Of course. Is it to attract business in? So talk about the mission of Bahrain because, obviously, when you stand up the cloud, Amazon regions, it's like a lot of things are going to start happening. You guys looking for more outward migration, inward migration, of talent and business. What are you guys trying to achieve? >> Business can work anywhere. But business wants to work in an environment where it's easy for them to establish. Without the bureaucracies, they can establish themselves in hours, not in weeks, or in months. That's what we want; we want people to come and establish their business in Bahrain and serve the region. That's the ultimate objective. And have a workforce that is competent enough to work in today's technology, not on yesterday's technology. And I think that is where we see it, as an innovative marketplace that is flexible enough to accommodate any international company coming in, and help stimulate local products, and that's the other part. >> So you have to have the infrastructure that attracts those people. >> Exactly. >> That makes them want to come to you. That's almost table stakes. Right now, talk about your journey. We saw this gentleman from the CIA talk about the icebergs today, that the part you see, maybe the software, maybe the licenses, but there's everything else that you talked about, the installation, the planning, the maintenance. How has that been affected or how do you expect that to be affected that below the iceberg that you see? >> So we've built up the below the iceberg. We're actually moving to the new iceberg, but that's the iceberg, is the cloud. So, we already have, there are a lot of smart people that work with us, and they've adapted their architecture and our applications to suit the cloud. And what they've done is they've come up with a master architecture for all the government agencies to follow. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We tell them how to do it; this is how you're going to protect yourselves, and we have the team there to support all the 40 agencies that are moving to the cloud. So that's step one; we've got the right architecture, we've got the right security in place that is open to, that has so many options and flavors that allows them to innovate, as well-- >> You've got a lot of-- >> Down to single stack. >> You've got a lot of flexibility, but also, just to give you guys some credit, you're the first country to adopt a cloud first-- >> Yes. >> Policy. >> In the region. >> Yes. >> In the region; this is historic. What's the impact of that; what's been the feedback? Are people confused, are they happy, are they jumping up and down, what's going on? >> Truth? Panic. (laughing) To start. Like I did. But once they understood what's at stake, oh they're loving it. We can't keep up, some agencies are faster than others, some are slower than others, and for different reasons. Obviously, the different stacks that they have. But in reality, now, fear has changed over to excitement. And I think, that I can see right now. We can't keep up, so we had to work with local partners to help other agencies move to the cloud faster. So, that is the positive side. So, as you already mentioned, you saw us start with the cloud first, but once you do that, they need to be educated, so we've set up sort of a program where we can re-skill the IT guys in government and say, "Here you go, here's the courses. "Go in, no charge. "We're going to help skill you up to the cloud," and they're loving it. Anybody, especially our developers, they're loving it. Anything away from operations, they're loving it. They don't need to deal with the operations guys. Because we've already started to establish a dev-ops, and with this dev-ops, the agility of moving, seamlessly, the application faster to the cloud becomes much smoother. >> Talk about startups in the region, the startup mentality. When John first told me about Bahrain, we were so excited to have you on. He's like, "Dave, this country "is like the startup mentality country." Talk about startups, cloud, and that mentality. >> In the region, previously, there's not much startups historically. But with the cloud, that is the ultimate catalyst for any startup. If you had an idea, and you wanted to develop it, you used to have to invest a lot of money into infrastructure, security, but with the cloud, with serverless, with all the tools that you've got, it's going to cost you nothing to establish an application. You have enough tools to compete against the big establishments out there. So we've got Careem, for example, which is basically a local taxi hire company, like Uber of the world. And it's doing incredibly well, shockingly well. And they are like the Cinderella Story of the region. And now, everybody's into it. Everybody's building applications. Last application that I heard was a guy who links up all the fishermen in the ports, and they can sell their fish to the locals without the middleman. And that's what you're going to see, some small guys coming up and girls coming up with applications that will innovate the way they do business, and we will see a lot more of it with the cloud. >> That's a motivational factor. People are seeing real advantages coming off this what was once a scary prospect of cloud to innovation actually happening. Okay, how do you continue it? What's the plan? How're you going to keep the train rolling, keep the momentum going? What's the focus, what's your plan? >> So we've got the economic development board, and the economic development board will handle that sector. Basically, their focus is stimulate the market regionally and locally and help innovators and entrepreneurs establish themselves on the cloud in Bahrain. And they are giving them every kind of support you can imagine: capacity building, capacity on the cloud, even accounting, business advice, all of that is free. And that is amazing. So as a startup, you know the tech, you know the problem. But you don't know how to establish that from the cloud. Alright, go to these guys, and they say, "Okay, "Here's enough credit through another organization. "Take it to the cloud. "You want to market your product? "Here's another company." And that is all embedded, and free of charge. That will, I believe, really help stimulate the small, but innovative companies and help them grow. >> So thoughts on the AWS partnership. Obviously, they chose to put a region in the region in your country. That's got to be huge, but what's the relationship like with AWS? Where do you want to see it go? >> Alright, so we're at the lift and shift stage of that. We just started, as you guys are aware. But already, in the pipeline, we're looking at innovations on the cloud. So, healthcare is a big deal for us, and we believe that the healthcare in the region has a lot of opportunities to improve. And by moving the healthcare system to the cloud and leveraging artificial intelligence, and helping things like oncology departments identify cancer better, treat cancer better, using technology, I think is the next frontier for us. I think that is an opportunity. I believe we'll see a lot of more innovation and simplifying government processes through mobile apps that are becoming much better. But I think we'll be more efficient. We will be able to continuously improve government services, for example, in the cloud at a faster rate. It used to take us two years for a change, now it's going to take us weeks for a change. That's the degree of flexibility and rapid response that we can give to our citizens, to our guests that come into the country, to satisfy their demands. >> And your developers. >> Yes, our developers love it. >> It's a huge economic opportunity to grow a new generation of citizens that are tech-savvy, and they don't have to be total nerds. Anyone can be programming, anyone can be developing big data. It should open up, I think, really good commerce for you guys, as well. I think that's a great opportunity. The question is, when is theCUBE going to come to Bahrain? When are we going to see theCUBE? >> We're getting you on the plane right now. (laughing) >> Salman, thanks for spending the time. Great to see you, final question: For the folks watching back at home and around the world, AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, D.C., what's your impression, the vibe? What's the content? For the people who aren't here, take a minute to share your color commentary on what's happening here. >> I think it's very difficult to express the enthusiasm. It's in the air, you can smell it, you can feel it, the way people are talking. It's not only the private sectors that are talking about moving to the cloud, it's government. And you feel it here. It's not a pipe dream; it's a reality. And I think coming here to really show people that the world is changing, and if they're not on the cloud, they're going to be left behind. That is my impression. >> It's a big opportunity. >> Absolutely. >> Salman, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate it, great to see you on theCUBE. It's theCUBE, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante bringing you all the action, most important stories happening here at AWS Public Sector Summit. Bahrain, cloud first policy, really going to pay off, a real investment in the future of their citizens. An example of being cloud first, creating value. Stay with us. More live coverage here in Washington after this short break. (techno music)