(energetic music) >> Announcer: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a Cube Conversation. >> Hi, welcome to our Palo Alto, California studios for another Cube Conversation, where we go in depth with thought leaders about some of the most pressing topics of the day in business and technology. I'm your host Peter Burris. One of the biggest challenges that any company faces is how to get more out of their people, even though we are increasingly distributed, we are increasingly utilizing digital means to interact and work together, and we are increasingly trying to do this with customers and with other third parties that are crucial to making business work, profitable, and grow revenue. A number of things have occurred in the last few years that are actually making it possible to envision how we can be more distributed and yet be more productive. And one of the most important ones is the use of video as a basis for connecting people. How're we going to to do that? Well, to have that conversation, we're here with David Maldow who's the CEO of, Let's Do Video. David, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hey, thanks for having me Peter, appreciate it. >> So, tell us a little bit about, very quickly, about, Let's Do Video, and then let's jump into it. >> Sure. Let's Do Video's, a boutique analyst blog on www.letsdovideo.com. We cover everything having to do with remote technology, anything that allows teams to be more productive whether they're working together or working across the country. >> All right, so in your name is, "video." Let's identify some of the key trends. What really is making it possible to utilize video in this way today where it really was nothing more than a promise made, put forward by a lot of companies 10 years ago. >> I think, well, there's been a lot of factors, but big part of that has been the cloud. A few years ago we had the big cloud software revolution in video conferencing. Before then you had to buy these expensive video appliances to have them at your workplace, and you really needed a team of experts to run them. By running the video in the cloud, all we need is our apps on our phones, and apps in our meeting rooms. And it makes it a lot easier, and it made it a lot more affordable. So, now it's available for everyone, and it was just a matter of whether we were ready for it, and appears that we are. >> So, we're getting the service that we need without having to worry about the technology that's required, the formats that are being employed, the operational complexities associated with video. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, actually there was a long list of reasons we weren't using video. Analyst like myself looked at the video conferencing industry and said, "Guys, you need to fix all of these things "or no one's going to use it. "It needs to be easier, one click to join. "It needs to be more affordable." The stuff was expensive. Needs to be reliable. Balls were dropping. It needs to use less bandwidth. It was taking over our networks. All of these things it needed to be, and they fixed all of that. And we promised if they fixed all of that, people would start to use it. Now we are seeing an absolute explosion in the market of people taking these apps into the workplace and actually using them. >> It seems to me, David, I want to get your take on this. That some of the early suppliers of some of these video related services were treating it largely as a means to an end, and typically that end was, what type of things can we put in the marketplace that's going to increase the amount of network bandwidth that's required so we can sell more networking equipment, or sell more networking services? Let me ask you a question. Because that has been fixed by utilizing the cloud. Does it now mean that we are getting a whole bunch of new technology companies that are stepping into the market place to provide video services as the end itself? And that's leading to better engineering, better innovation, and better customer experience? >> That's exactly what happened. We went from a top-down adoption model, to a ground-up adoption model. And what I mean by that is. It used to be a top-down thing, where these video conferencing companies would go talk to the CEO or CTO of a big company and do an amazing demo in the meeting room, and say, "look at this amazing video quality that you get." And they would show these studies that people like me help write (laughs), showing that if you do use video you'll be more productive. If you do use video you'll have more impact, and if you do use video you'll get all these benefits. So, buy this expensive stuff and then force your people to use them. And that didn't work 'cause they bought the stuff, and they tried to force people to use them. But, like we talked about, it was complicated. it was inconvenient. Now what's happening is, instead of the top-down we're getting the bottom-up. We're getting people walking into the workplace saying, "I'm using this app. I'm using this app. "I need video to talk to my teammates." And the boss CEO has to say, "Okay, okay, we'll accommodate that. "Don't use the consumer apps, though. "Let us find a nice business app that's secure for you." So instead of having, "You should use this "'cause we were sold on it." We're having a great new cloud video industry that's saying, "oh, let's give you what you want." >> So, when adoption happens from a bottom-up stand point, it means that the benefits have to be that much more obvious to everybody, otherwise, you don't get the adoption. So, what are some of the key productivity measures that this rank and file, this ground swell of interest in these technologies, are utilizing to evaluate and to judge how they want to use video within their business lives, workflows, engaging the customers, etc. >> For a long time it was just anecdotal. It just seemed obvious, if you, we all know that when you have a face-to-face meeting you get the work done. If it's a phone call, "oh, I'll explain to them why it's not done." We all know things get done more effectively in meetings. We all know a face-to-face meeting can last 20 minutes and get the work done. While a phone call can go on for hours. But now that we are starting to use it, instead of anecdotal, we're actually getting real data. Companies are reporting that they use to have a... Their web app development team used to take eight weeks before every release. Now they're doing it every six weeks. We're seeing real results. Frost & Sullivan, a big analyst firm in the space recently came out with some statistics. A survey of CEOs, CTOs, and they reported that using video among their team accelerated decision making. 86% of them agreed with that, 83% that agree, that it improves productivity, that's massive. 79% said it boosts innovation. So not only people getting more work done, more leading work, getting ahead of the competition, coming up with new things. And this is a huge one, 79%, this is self-reporting, believe that it improved their customer experience. We know, you know, the customer relationship is everything in sales. >> Why? >> Now we're actually measuring the results. >> Why is that, what is it about video that is so important to allowing us to not only accelerate workflows and achieve the outcomes, but also as we take on more complex workflows, even as we distribute work greater, what is it about video that makes the difference? >> There's a lot to it. I think a lot of it is that human connection. It's really hard to focus on a phone call. You lose track, I mean, you know, one of the reasons that my I named my company "Let's Do Video" is 'cause I'd be on the phone with a partner, a colleague, a teammate, and I'm like, "is he or she checking her email? "Did you hear, do I have to repeat what I just said?" We need to get work done, let's do video. And I think teams across all industries are finding that out now. Once they get on video, the work just gets done. >> But it's not just that they're on video, it's that they're utilizing video as a way of connecting with each other. That you can see whether or not somebody's paying attention to you at the most simple level. You can also register whether or not someone is a little bit agitated with what you're saying, even though you may not hear that on the phone. But video is being utilized as a way of adding to how other work gets done. It's not like we're suddenly, you know, putting a whole bunch of presentations up in the video. We're looking at faces, we're listening to people. We're having a connection as we work in other medium. Have I got that right? >> Exactly, yeah. I used to... When video conferencing first hit the scene 20 years ago, we were marketing it as a replacement for travel. Instead of flying across the country for that big meeting, you do it over a video. And what we realized is you still need to travel for that really, really big meeting once or twice a year, you still get on a plane. Video conferencing isn't getting rid of that niche meeting. It's not fixing that one big meeting, It's not cutting your travel costs. It's upgrading the phone call. It's upgrading the text message, the imChat. It's upgrading the e-mail. It's becoming, like you're saying, a part of how we're normally working. And it's changing the way remote workers see their teams. Let's Do Video, my team is completely remote. I've never met one of my teammates in person till we were two or three years in. We met up at an airport and said, "oh my God, I actually get to see you in three dimensions! "It's amazing!" And if we had started this company 10 years ago, I would say, I don't really have a team. I'm a sole guy, it's all me, I have some contractors. I send them an email, and a month later, they send me the result. But with video, I have a team, there's accountability. We're friends, we know what's going on with each other's lives. And there's a lot more motivation there, because instead of just, "Hey, you're my graphics person, "get this graphics for me. "You're my web person, fix the thing on the site." My colleagues, they're part of the team, and they want the company to succeed, 'cause they look at me in the face and they say, "I got this project done!" They feel good about it. It's a lot more of an investment, and it sounds like happy fluffy stuff, but it affects your bottom line. I don't think my... I know my company would not be as successful if I did not regularly meet with my team over video. >> Well, who doesn't want (laughing) a little bit of happy fluffy stuff every now and then? It's nice to bring a smile to your job. Let's pivot a little bit and just talk about the difference between internally to now externally. Because one of the other things that a lot of these video conferencing solutions offered, was they offered the opportunity to connect with video on a single network, your company's network with specialized end points. Now we're talking about trying to find new ways to enhance the experience that sales people have, service people have. Utilizing video to engage customers, to drive new types of experience, to drive new forms of revenue. How is video starting to alter the way we engage not just internally but also externally? >> That's more starting to happen than already happening. I think video in the workplace is becoming just a normal thing. I meet with my team over video. We're still finding ways to engage our externals. But the drive is definitely there, because we're seeing the results from working with our teams, and we know the impact. I think anyone in sales, they'll do anything to get that face-to-face meeting. They'll do anything to get you to come into their office or let you into their office to sit down. If you give a salesperson a choice between face-to-face or a phone call. That salesperson wants to be face-to-face. So, as we're getting the technology to make it easier for customers to get face-to-face with us, and partners, and externals. The demand will be there, and what's great is that the cloud enables that. The real problem is, like you said, they were on our own network. So, if I wanted to talk to a customer or a partner, I had to open a hole in my firewall, and let someone else into my network, and my IT people would go crazy. Now, the call's hosted up on whatever video conferencing company's cloud, it's safe. So, we're ready for that sort of thing. >> Lot of changes, lot of opportunities, tremendous potential. The types of changes we see in five years are going to dwarf the changes we've seen in the last five years. Again, as folks get used to using video internally, they're going to start demanding it as they engage each other externally as well. David Maldow, CEO of, Let's Do Video. Thanks for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks so much, this was fun. >> And once again, I'm Peter Burris. Until next time, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> [Announcer] Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE! Covering E3, 2018. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff right here at theCUBE. We're at the L.A. Convention Center in E3. It's our first time coming to this convention. It's 68,000 people and every single hall and outside, inside hotels. It's pretty crazy--pretty crazy scene. We're happy to be here. Well, we've got our next guest. She's been coming for a while. It's Katie Stone Perez. She's the director of Mixer Interactive. From Mixer, Katie, great to see you. >> Thanks so much for having me! >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, I'd love to get your perspective. You've been in this industry for-- >> 17 years. >> 17 years. I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say close to two decades. >> (Laughing) >> So as you've been in and watched this thing develop, what are your impressions today in 2018 and how it's transformed?-- >> Of the show? You know, the whole game industry has so fundamentally transformed over the last 17 years, right? I mean, at that point in time, we didn't even have services like Xbox Live where people were connecting and playing online together. Everything was really sold as a disc-based media. So you walked into a store to purchase your disk. Now we have so many digital purchases happening online. We had no player data. We had no way to actually know how far in the game our players were getting and all of this kind of stuff-- >> [Jeff] That's right. You just shipped the disc out, right? You didn't know. >> And now we have all of this telemetry, right? We have all of these experiences. You have the, you know, free-to-play has made a huge rise. We have mobile, right? Mobile gaming within the space. So the show has so transformed both from the people who are playing within the space, the technologies that people are using, and the growth. I mean, we can also just see-- years ago, it was really much more about a trade show so that the big people who are going to buy the disc can actually come to E3-- >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> Check out our games and place their disc orders. And now it's really much more of a consumer phenomenon as well. >> [Jeff] So I'm curious, we covered a ton of tech shows. Just I've been here before and data and the use of data is a huge part of the digital transformation story. >> Yeah. >> So I'm curious from your point of view from a game developer point of view, how did that change? Because you guys are a little bit ahead of the curve in getting the usage data, getting the tracking data. How did that impact the industry in the way you developed and shipped games? >> It's phenomenal. You know, all of a sudden, you can start to understand who your players are and so if you're gonna do an upsell offer, you know, you can understand, like, "Oh, this person has actually already purchased this type of material." So I'm gonna give him this type of upsell vs this type of upsell. Or, You know, "I see all of my players are really struggling on level three and no one is making it through. What's wrong with level three?" Let's look at changing that up a bit. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So data has actually really informed us in so many ways to re-look at our basic gameplay loops. Our retention mechanics and all of that kind of stuff and, you know, most game companies now have teams of data analysts who are just specifically focusing on those KPIs and just analyzing the data and learning. >> [Jeff] Right. >> But with that too, we've also then had to get more agile in our development and publishing processes because, you know, when you ship a disc and you just let it go, you can get data but then what are you gonna do about it, right? >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> Your next sequel is a couple of years out and so now, too, with the ability to push updates over the air and all of this kind of stuff, It changes it so we can actually take that information, have an immediate impact, and sometimes you can get that data within one or two days. Actually have an impact, you know? >> [Jeff] Right. >> So I actually work on mixer which is a game broadcasting platform so we have a live service. So we can just constantly update and make these changes. >> [Jeff] I'm gonna ask you a philosophical question that I'm always thinking about. In terms of difficulty and the right amount of difficulty, and just kind of generically but engage specifically-- >> Right. >> You want to be difficult enough so people feel challenged and want to continue the journey. >> Yeah. >> But obviously you can't make it so difficult that they just couldn't get through. So I just wondered if you had some-- >> Yeah! >> If there's some best practice or philosophy about what's the right level to the degree of difficulty? >> Yeah, you know funny enough, I gave a talk at GDC in, like, 2005 and it was called Let Me Win and so my background is actually in psychology and it was really as someone who has a psychology background who loves to play games. My issues of playing through so many games in our media because we're a very defeatist mentality. If you think about it, we started as an industry as this coin-op industry where we had to kill you off because we needed you to put another quarter in the machine. But now we carry that trope with us even though we have people put 60 quarters-- $60 worth of quarters in the machine in advance >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> But we're still killing you off in the same way. And so it's kind of crazy to me. And so we really as an industry, I do think, need to think about that more. Now there's certain games like Cuphead is one of my favorite games but it's really brutally hard but that was very much the intention, you know? >> [Jeff] Right. >> These dark souls and the cupheads in those games. Their genre is that they are super hard-- >> [Jeff] Right. >> So people kind of know that going into them. But I do think across our broader audience, we need to think about how we're being more inclusive in our design And that's everything from, you know, still giving people that harder experience but also an educational principal called scaffolding. So, you know, just like when you're teaching a kid to do something, you're not gonna say "Okay, do this and this and this and this and this." Because that's not fun. >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> So instead, if you can be, like, "Here's what the goal is. Here's your tools." And then within the game, we want to help do that. Now with data, actually, we can help scaffold better. Cause we can actually see "Oh, these players didn't do this" Or "This age group of players didn't do this." Or "This type of thing didn't do this." So we can actually use that to inform our decisions and actually do better scaffolding within the game. >> [Jeff] Okay, so before we get to mixer and streaming which is like the latest thing, I want to get to this middle step which was the Cloud. And really opening up the ability to do multi-player games, opening up the ability to go from just that consul out into the universe and play lots of other people. Again, how did that really transform the way you guys thought about designing and delivering games? >> I mean, fundamentally, you know, Xbox Live was a apart of our program. Very early on, Live came into the Xbox business and I think it was actually great because we had that as a Microsoft asset and strength that we can bring over that type of infrastructure. And we've seen it really just connect and bring people together in form community, right? And it's so much fun. There's some element that you get when you're sitting next to someone and playing but not everyone in the world has someone sitting next to them. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So we're doing that over Live by bringing people together and through different platforms and services like Mixer as well where we can bring these communities together. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So it's really, I really think about creating that essence of community. It just makes everything more fun. >> [Jeff] Right. So now we're in 2018 and actually, it's been going on for a little while which is a whole different level of community and that's streaming where someone's playing a game for those that aren't familiar and other people are invited to participate with them. >> Yeah. >> Again, another huge shift in the way that people interacting with the game. And more importantly, kind of the social aspects around their playing with the game. >> Yeah and that's what's so cool. So in traditional game streaming platforms too, there's quite a bit of latency so what the gamer-- the streamer's actually doing at the time, you know, by the time the viewers end up seeing it on a platform, and then, you know, they can comment on it and then the streamer kind of sees it. There's a lot of latency there. So Mixer was actually created by two young kids who actually were huge in the Minecraft community. They had already created a million dollar business actually hosting Minecraft servers and they had all these streamer friends that were Minecraft streamers and they were talking about how frustrating it was because they were streaming and people were like "Put the block over here, put the block over there." But by the time they saw that feedback from their fans, they had already moved on. They had already done something different. So Mixer created low latency streaming. So what we called our faster-than-light technology where we have sub-second latency. So exactly what's happening in the game, that's what people on Mixer are seeing. And then they can comment and the streamer immediately sees those comments and that then paved the way for this richer conversation. And from there, we had interactivity come about. So we have all of our new Mixplay experiences where people can actually come on to Mixer and not just watch. Now they are playing themselves. So you can actually be playing one of our games like Next Up Hero and I can actually choose to help heal you or I can choose to help throw in enemies. Then you'll see my gamer text "Sweets" go right across the screen, right? You can actually see as a gamer who's then broadcasting, you can see what I'm doing on Mixer and how that's having an impact within your game. >> Didn't the streamer kind of like the latency so that they had time to kind of split their attention between playing the game and interacting with the community? >> No because it's all->> streamers for them, It's all about community. Now there are certain competitive sports events and things like that that we do within the e-sports space, and so there might be certain instances in which you don't want to have low latency engaged. But for the most part, streamers want to be having that conversation and are faster- >> than-light technology on Mixer really enables that for them. >> [Jeff] Right. And it just seems like it's almost gonna come full circle so if I'm engaging with the streamer and I'm participating in the game to some degree, at some point, do I just step in and we're playing the game together? >> Yeah. I mean, really now, you can play on Mixer. That's really what we're talking about with our new Mixplay experiences. So we even have games that are playable only on Mixers so these games aren't even-- we were talking about distribution, right? These games aren't even shipping. There's no disc. They're not even shipping on any of these other platforms. They're playable only on Mixer and so you can actually go to mixer.com today and check out several of these game experiences and you can actually look for Mixplay experiences. We have filters and so you can actually find all of that content. >> [Jeff] Alright. So to get your perspective before we let you->> you've been at this for a while. So as storage and compute and networking, it gets infinite in scale and asymptotically approaches zero in cost. As you look forward, where do you see leveraging some of this new horsepower? >> Well, I think again, you know, Microsoft actually just had this amazing acquisition of PlayFab technology and I love seeing what they're doing within this space and bringing that into our portfolio of content as well. Because again, it's about having this data and being able to really respond and change your game instantly to really make sure that you're doing the best things for your business. And so it really just makes developers be informed and be able to be much more agile in their approach. And it's also democratizing that opportunity. Previously years ago, to get some of these insights, you would have had to be one of the largest game companies on the planet. And now with the democratization of these different game engines, and then then the democratization of this type of tooling and online services that are available, with things like Azure and things like PlayFab, it really creates an amazing opportunity for all developers everywhere. >> [Jeff] And to me, the democratization, the thing where you're over and over-- >> Yeah. >> More of data, more of the tools, and more of the ability to do something about it is distributed to a broader audience. Alright Katie, well thank you for-- >> We get more voices with that, right? >> Right, right. >> You get a much broader set of content that ends up like the content that you see here today is much more diverse and much broader. You know, we still have a long way to go as an industry but it's very different than my first E3 17 years ago. >> [Jeff] 17 years ago. Alright Katie, well thanks for taking-- >> Thank you! >> a few minutes out of your day and congrats on all the success. >> Thanks! >> Alright, this is Katie and I'm Jeff. You're watch theCUBE from E3, L.A. Convention Center. Thanks for watching. (upbeat, techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCube, covering CoinAgenda, brought to you by SiliconANGLE. (salsa music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to our special CUBE exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico. I've been here on the island all week, talking to the most important people, entrepreneurs, citizens of Puerto Rico, the entrepreneur, the students, connecting with Blockchain, investors, thought leaders, and the pioneers. I'm John Furrier, the cohost of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, and we're here with Crystal Rose, who is the CEO and co-founder of Sensay, doing something really cutting edge, really relevant, and kind of ahead of its time, but I think it's time to get it out there and get that token program. Crystal Rose, thanks for joining me and spending time with me. >> Thank you for having me. >> So one of the things I think that you're doing, and I want you to explain this because it's nuanced, and a lot of the super geeks get it and alpha geeks will get it, but the mainstream people are used to dealing in their silos. I use Facebook, I use LinkedIn, I use Twitter, I use chat, I use Telegram, I use these apps. The world's kind of horizontally being disrupted because of the network affect that Blockchain and Crypto is now the underpinnings of, and there's ICOs out there and other things happening, but it's a disruption at the technology stack with software. You guys are doing something with Sensay in the SENSE token that is changing the equation of how people come together, how people grow and learn, whether it's a nonlinear path of some proficiency or connecting with folks or just learning, whatever it is, it's a discovery mechanism. Take a minute to explain what you guys are doing and why it's so important. >> Well we built Sensay to connect everyone together without any borders or intermediaries, and so really it's as simple as every phone has the capability to have a messenger. We have five billion phones that have SMS on them, and so we wanted to take the most basic messaging system, which is the most important thing that people do, and connect it to any other messenger, so Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Slack, anywhere where people are chatting, we wanted to create a system that is interoperable and can decentralize your contact list, essentially. >> Yeah, so this is important, so like most people when they go to social networks you got to find a friend, you get connected. In some cases I don't want to have to friend someone just to have a chat, I mean I may not want to friend them, or I might want to or it's a hassle, I don't know who to friend. Is that kind of where you guys come in? >> Yeah, that's one really great use case, because things like Facebook max you at five thousand friends, so if you friended everybody that you had a conversation with, if you needed to know something. Let's say that every Google search that you did was actually a conversation, you would cap the number of potential contacts. We have a circle of people around us that extends out with different tiers. But I think some of the most important people in our lives are actually strangers. So instead of building the social graph we wanted to build the stranger graph. Sensay cares more about what you know than who you know. Because if we can connect people together around similar interests and like-mindedness, we're connecting tribes, and that's really the innate human connection that we're all looking for. And it's also when you extend yourself outside of your social graph, you're most likely to educate yourself or to uplift yourself more. So the way to level up is to get somebody who's an eight or a 10 if you're a five or a two, and find someone outside of your current circle. >> And that also eliminates all this group think we've seen on some of these hate threads that have been on, whether it's Facebook or some IRC backchannel or Slack channel, you see the hate just comes in because everyone's just talking to themselves. This is the new way, right? Connecting out? Through the metadata of the chat. >> Exactly, we want people to seek out good connections, helpful connections, and so if you can both contribute what you know you get rewarded. And if you can ask people on the network you also get rewarded. So by asking something, you're receiving a reward. It's a two-way system. So it's not just the person who is helping, so we don't really encourage an economy of experts. We think that everyone is a sensei. A sensei literally means a person who's been there before. So we think of that as somebody who has had that life experience. And I think if we look at the internet, the internet democratized expertise. It gave us the ability for every single person to write what they were thinking, or contribute some kind of content in some way. But for 20 years the internet has been free. It's a really beautiful thing for consumption, and open source is the absolute right methodology for software. When it comes to your own content a reward makes sense, and so we wanted to create SENSE on top of the platform as a value exchange. It was a point system, so kind of like Reddit Karma. And we wanted to let people exchange it out for some value that they could transact in the world. >> So basically you're going to reward folks with a system that says, okay, first ante up some content, that's your SENSE token, and then based upon how you want to work with people in the network, there's a token transaction that could come out of it. Did I get that right? >> Exactly. So the person who contributes on the network gets rewarded for that data, and it can be anything that you've done in the past, too. So if you have a lot historical data on Facebook or on GitHub for instance. Let's say you're a developer and you have a bunch of repos out there that could be analyzed to see what kind of developer you are, or if you've contributed a lot to Reddit, all of that data is out there, and it's been something that defines you and your personality and your skills and who you are, so you can leverage that, and you can get a reward for it just by letting Sensay understand more about you, so the AI runs through it. You get more rewards, though, if you have real conversations. So it's almost like a bounty program on conversation. >> So we have the same mission. We love what you're doing. I'm really so glad you're doing it. I want to get to an example in Puerto Rico where you've reached out with strangers, I know you have. And get that, I want to get to that in a minute, but I want to continue on the Sensay for a second and the SENSE token. As you guys do this, what is the token going to be looking like to the user? Because you have a user who's contributing content and data, and then you have people who are going to transact with the token, it could be a bounty, it could be someone trying to connect. How is the token economics, just so I can get that out there, how does that work? >> Well right now in Sensay the transaction is peer to peer, so both users who are chatting have the ability to tip each other, essentially. They can give each other some coins within the chat. We have the concept that when you're having a conversation it's always a buyer and a seller. It's always a merchant and a consumer, and sometimes those roles flip, too. I'll be selling you something and eventually you're selling me something. But it's a natural way that we chat to transact. So that was the first way that the token could be used. We then realized that the powerful part of the platform is actually everything underlying the application. So the layer underneath really was the most powerful thing. And so SENSE network evolved as a way for developers who are creating apps or bots to be able to build on top of the network and leverage the access to the humans or to their data, and so now the token can be used to access the network. You get paid if you contribute data or users and vice versa, you can pay to access them. What that's doing is it's taking away the advertising model from being the only entity that's earning a profit on the data. So you, the user, when you're giving your data to Facebook, Facebook earns a lot of money on it, selling it over and over repeatedly to advertisers, and while it's technically yours in the terms you own it, you don't actually have any upside of that profit, and so what we're doing is saying, well why don't we just let a potential business talk to you directly on your consent and give you the money directly for that? So that two or five dollars for one connection would go straight to you. >> This is the new business model. I mean, this is something that, I mean first of all, don't get me started on my ad and tech rant because advertising creates a bad behavior. Okay? You're chasing a business model that's failing, attention and page views, so the content is not optimized the proper way. And you mentioned the Facebook example. Facebook's not optimizing their data for a user experience, they're optimizing for their monetization, which is counter to what users want to do. So I think you kind of are taking it in another direction, which we love 'cause that's what we do, we are open source content, but the role of the data is critical so I got to ask you the hard question. I'm a user, it's my data, how do the developers get access to it? Do they pay me coins or... You want developers because that's going to be a nice piece of the growth so what's the relationship between the developer, who's trying to add value, but also respecting the user's data? >> Exactly, so the developer pays the network and as a user you're a token holder, you own the network, essentially. So there is really no real middle layer since the token will take a small amount out for continuing to power the network, but a nominal amount. Right now the most expensive thing that happens is the gas that's on top of Ethereum because we're an ERC20 token. So we're looking to be polychain. We want to move onto other types of blockchains that have better, faster transactions with no fees and be able to pass that through as well. So we really want to just do a peer-to-peer connection. There's no interest in owning that connection or owning the repository of data. That's why the blockchain's important. We want the data to be distributed, we want it to be owned by the user, and we want it to be accessible by anyone that they want to give access to. So if it's a developer, they're building a bot maybe, or if it's a brand, they're using a developer on their behalf they have to pay the user for that data. So the developer's incentives are completely aligned with the peer-to-peer architecture that you have, users interests, and the technical underpinnings of the plumbing. Is that right? >> Exactly. >> Okay, good, so check. Now I got that. All right, now let's talk about my favorite topic, since we're on this kind of data topic. Who's influential? I mean, what does an influencer mean to you? Is it the most followers (mumbles) it's kind of a canned question, you can hear it coming. I'll just say it. I don't like the influencer model right now because it's all about followers. It's the wrong signal. 'Cause you can have a zillion followers and not be influential. And we know people are buying followers. So there's kind of been that gamification. What should influence really be like in this network? Because sometimes you can be really influential and then discover and go outside your comfort zone into a new area for some reason, whether it's a discovery or progression to some proficiency or connection, you're not an influencer, you're a newbie. So, context is very important. How do you guys look at, how do you look at influencers and how influence is measured? >> I think at the bare bones an influencer is someone who drives action. So it's a person who can elicit an action in another person. And if you can do that at scale, so one to many, then you have more power as an influencer. So that's sort of the traditional thinking. But I think we're missing something there, which is good action. So an influencer to me, a good influencer, is somebody who can encourage positive action. And so if it's one to one and you get one person to do one positive thing, versus one to a thousand and you get a thousand people to do something not so great, like buy a product that's crap because it was advertised to them for the purpose of that influencer making profit, that metric doesn't add up. So I think we live in a world of vanity metrics, where we have tons of numbers all over the place, we have hearts and likes and stars and followers and all of these things that keep adding up, but they have no real value. And so I think it's a really, like you said before, the behavior is being trained in the wrong way. We're encouraged to just get numbers rather than quality, and so what I think a really good influencer is is somebody who has a small group of people who will always take action. It can be any number of people. But let's say a group of followers who will take action based on that person's movements and will follow them in a positive direction. >> And guess what, its a network graph so you can actually measure it. That's interesting... >> Exactly, exactly. >> I can see where you're going with this. Okay, so I got to talk about your role here in Puerto Rico. You mentioned earlier about reaching out to strangers, the stranger graph, which is a way, people's outside of their comfort zones sometimes, reaching out to strangers. You came here in the analog sense, you're in person, but on the digital side as well, kind of blends together. Give an example where you reached out to strangers and how that's impacted your life and their life, because this is the heart of your system, if I can get that right. You're connecting people and creating value, I mean sometimes there might not be value, but you're creating connections, which have the potential for more value. What have you done here in Puerto Rico that's been a stranger outreach that turned into a wow moment. >> Our outreach has been so far an invitation. So we bought a space here that's turned into a community center. Even at the very beginning we had no power as most of the places around that have been sitting for a year or two or since the hurricane, and so we put a call out and said we'd like to get to know the community. We're doing something called Let There Be Light, which is turn the power on, and you know, we put it out to a public group and saw who would show up. So basically it's a community, central building, it's a historical building, so a lot of people know it. There's a lot of curiosity, so it was just a call, it was a call for help. It was really, I think the biggest thing people love is when you're asking them for help, and then you give gratitude in return for that help and you create a connection around it. So that's why we built Sensay the way that we did, and I think there's a lot of possibilities for how it could be used, but having that encouragement of the community to come and share, we've done that now this whole week, so this is restart week, and one of the other things that we've done is help all of the conferences come together, collaborate rather than compete, so go into the same week, and put all of these satellite groups around it. And then we blanketed a week around it so that we had one place for people to go and look for all of the events, and also for them to understand a movement. So we since then have done a dinner every single night, and it's been an open invitation. It's basically whoever comes in first, and we've had drinks every night as well, open. So it's really been an invitation. It's been an open invitation. >> Well congratulations. I really love what you're doing. You guys are doing great work down here. The event this week has been great. We've got great content. We have some amazing people and it's working, so congratulations on that. As you guys look forward, one of the things I've observed in my many years of history, is that there are a lot of waves, I've seen all the waves, this wave's the biggest. But what jumps out at me is the mission-driven aspect of it. So I mean I can geek out on what's the decentralize and the stacks and all the tech stuff happening, but what's most impressive is the mission oriented, the impact kind of thinking. This is now, society is now software driven. This is a new major thinking. Used to be philanthropy was a waterfall model. Yeah, donate, it either goes or doesn't go. Go to the next one, go to the next one. Now you have this integrated model where it's not just philanthropy, it's action, there's money behind it, there's coding, there's community. This is now a new era of societal entrepreneurship, societal missions. Let's talk about your vision on this mission and impact culture that's part of this ethos. >> I think impact is the important word there. So we think about, we think about bringing capital, like you said with normal philanthropy, you can bring capital and you can continuously pump capital into something, but if the model is wrong it's just going to drain, and it's going to go to inefficient systems, and in the end maybe do some help, but a very small percentage of the capacity of what it could do. So what we have the concept of is bringing funds here. We have a fund that was just launched called Restart Ventures, and the idea is instead of compounding interests, we want to make compounding impact, and so it's a social good focused fund, but at the same time all of the proceeds generated from the fund recycle back into other things that are making more impact. So we're measuring based on how much impact can be created with different projects. It could be a charity or it could be an entrepreneur. And if we're getting a multiple, most of that money is going back. So a very small percentage goes to the actual fund and to the fund managers, and the lion's share of the fund is going back into Puerto Rico. So I think if we look at how we can help in a way that is constantly regenerative, sustainable is good, regenerative is better. We want to at least elevate ourselves and get to the point of sustainability, but we're not improving at that point. We're still just fixing problems. We want regenerative. So if we can keep planting things that regrow themselves, if we can make it so that we're setting up the ecosystem to constantly mend itself, it's like a self-healing system of software, this is the right way to do it. So I think that's the new model. >> You built in some nurturing into the algorithm, I like that. 'Cause you're not going to do the classic venture capital carry, you're going to rotate in, but still pay some operators to run it, so they got to get paid. So I noticed in the announcement there was some money for managing directors to do it. So they get paid, and the rest goes into the compounding impact. >> Right. >> Okay, so I got to ask you what your view is these days on something that's really been important in open source software, which again, when I started it was a tier 2 citizen, at best, now it's running the world, tier 1. Open source ethoses are sprinkled throughout these new, awesome opportunities, but community made it happen. What is your current view on the role of the community, communities in general, to make this new compounding impact, whether it's software development, innovation, impact giving, regenerative growth. What's your view on community? >> If community operates with a mentality of giving or contribution over consumption we do a lot better. So when you have an open source network, if a community comes and they contribute to it more, that's something that regenerates. It keeps adding value. But if a community comes and they just keep consuming, then you have to continue to have more and more people giving. I think a really good example of this is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of people who constantly contribute, and the only reward that they've ever gotten for that is a banner ad that says please donate because we don't do ads. So it's a broken model, because you want it to be free and you want it to continue to have the same ethos and you want it to have no advertising, yet the people who contribute most of the time also contribute most of the funding to keep it alive because they love it and care about it so much. So how could we change that model so that the community could give contributions while also receiving a way to make sure that they're able to keep doing that. And a reward system works, and maybe that's not the only solution, but we have to think about how we can keep creating more and more. >> Well I think transparency is one thing I've always loved. The thing that I always hear, especially with women in tech and these new important areas like underserved minorities, and also the bad behavior that goes on in other groups, is to shine the light on things. Having the data being open, changes everything. That is a huge thing. So community and open data. Your thoughts? I'm sure you agree? Open data and the importance of having the data exposed. >> One hundred percent. So our platform also has a layer of anonymity on the user by default, and part of the idea of being able to understand whether or not data is good. Because think of human data, we have to figure out quality. In the past there would be a validation system that is actually other humans telling you whether or not you're good and giving you some accreditation, some verification. This is our concept of experts on things. Now we would rather take consensus. So let's just crowdsource this validation and use a consensus mechanism that would see whether or not other humans think the data is good. If we're using a system like that, we have to have open data, it has to be transparent and it has to be able to be viewed in order to be voted on. So on our platform on just the first application on Sensay, we expose this consensus mechanism in a feature called Peek. So Peek basically lets you peek inside of conversations happening on the network. You can watch all the conversations that happen, the AI pulls out the good ones, and then you vote on them. >> It's kind of like when you walk into a nightclub, do I want to kind of hang out here? >> Yeah, you're kind of a voyeur but you get rewarded for doing it. It's a way for us to help classify, it's a way for us to help train the AI, and also it's a way for people to have passive ability to interact without having to have a conversation with an actual human. >> Well you're exposing the conversation to folks, but also you get signaling data. Who jumps in, who kind of walks away. I mean it's a gesture data, but it's a data point. >> Right, and it's completely private. So the beauty of the transparency is there's actually privacy baked in. And that's what I love about blockchain is it has all of the good things. >> Crystal, I got to ask you a final question. I know you're very busy, and thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me today here on theCUBE here in Puerto Rico. This week you've been super busy, you look great. I'm sure you've been up, burning the midnight oil, as they say. What is the, I won't say craziest thing because I've seen a lot of cool, crazy things going on here, it's been fun, what is some highlights for you? Conversations, meeting new people, can you just share a couple anecdotal highlights from restart week that have moved you or surprised you or just in general might be worth noting. >> I've been overall extremely surprised but the sheer number of people who showed up. I feel like a few months ago there was a small group of us sitting around wondering what it would be like if we could encourage our friends to come here and share the space. So just to see the thousands of people who have come here to support these several conferences has been amazing. My most surprising thing, though, is the amount of people that have told me that they bought a one-way ticket and have no intention of going home. So to make Puerto Rico your home I think is a really amazing first step, and I just did a panel earlier today with the person in government who had instituted Act 20 and 22, and that was the initial incentive-- >> Just take a minute to explain what that is for the folks that don't know what it is. >> Sure. So Act 20 and 22 are for the company and the individual respectively. They are a way for you to get a tax incentive for moving here as a resident or domiciling your company here. So you get 0% taxes. I think companies range up to 4% or something like that, and that incentive was created to bring more brilliant minds and entrepreneurs and different types of people with different vocations to the island. So basically, give them a tax incentive and encourage the stimulation of economy. So that has brought this wave of people in who have an idea that no taxes are great. At the same time they fall in love with the island. It's amazing because to me Puerto Rico is a combination of LA's weather, San Francisco's open-mindedness, and Barcelona's deep European history. It's just a really beautiful place. >> And it's US territory, so it's a short hop and a jump to the States if you need to, or Europe. >> Yeah exactly. And no customs and you have your driver's license to get here. Also it's a US dollar. And I say that because most people in America mainland don't realize that Puerto Rico is an American territory, and so they sort of think they're going to a foreign country because it's treated that way by our government. But what I've been really shocked about, though, is the sheer amount of innovation already here. The forward thinking ways of people and the embracing of things like open source and blockchain technology, because their minds are already in a mode of community, a mode of sharing, a mode of giving. >> We interviewed Michael Angelo from Edublock.ido, Edublock, they're connecting all the universities with blockchain. We also interviewed Damaris Rivera, with Puerto Rico Advantage. They'll move you down here. You can press a button, it's instant move. So folks in Silicon Valley who are watching who know us and around the world know theCUBE, there's a group of like-minded people here that have tech chops, there's capital flowing. There's capital people I know have moved here, setting up shop, as well as the Caymans and everywhere else, but it's nice. So it's kind of like LA. >> There is a lot of capital. I have just witnessed a couple hundred million dollars of funds that were established in the last couple of months. And this is around all different types of technology sectors. You don't have to be a blockchain company. You can be innovating in any way possible. One of my favorite projects is a machine that turns plastic bottles into diesel fuel. So one of the problems here is that the generators on the island, when we were here last time we met a guy that was working at a bar in a restaurant, and he was like, "Hey I saw you guys in New York Times "and I think you're like the Crypto people." And he had a conversation, and he said, "I was wondering if you could help my grandmother "who is stuck with no power, and it's been months, "and she's in her 90s, and she needs a generator to run "a machine that keeps her life supported." and so a couple of people went out to bring more fuel, bring a generator to donate. They started understanding that there are so many areas that still need this level of help, that there's a lot that we can do. So when I see projects like that, that's something I want to back. >> Yeah, it's entrepreneurial action taking impact. Crystal, thanks so much for coming out. Crystal Rose, CEO, co-founder of Sensay, real innovative company, pioneer here in the Puerto Rico movement. It's a movement, a lot of tech, entrepreneurs, capital, investors, and the pioneers in the blockchain, decentralized internet are all here. This is like the Silicon Valley of Crypto, right? >> I think they're calling it Crypto Island. >> Crypto Island, yes. It sounds like a TV show. We should be on it. It's not lost, it's Crypto Island. >> Exactly. >> Thanks so much for spending the time on theCUBE. >> Thanks John. >> John: I appreciate it. >> I appreciate it so much. Thanks for making sense of me. >> I'm John Furrier here on theCUBE here in Puerto Rico. Our coverage continues after this short break.