>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020, sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 I'm Lisa Martin. Joining me next is one of our cube alumni. Breton McMillan is back the director of us, federal for AWS. Right. It's great to see you glad that you're safe and well. >>Great. It's great to be back. Uh, I think last year when we did the cube, we were on the convention floor. It feels very different this year here at reinvent, it's gone virtual and yet it's still true to how reinvent always been. It's a learning conference and we're releasing a lot of new products and services for our customers. >>Yes. A lot of content, as you say, the one thing I think I would say about this reinvent, one of the things that's different, it's so quiet around us. Normally we're talking loudly over tens of thousands of people on the showroom floor, but great. That AWS is still able to connect in such an actually an even bigger way with its customers. So during Theresa Carlson's keynote, want to get your opinion on this or some info. She talked about the AWS open data sponsorship program, and that you guys are going to be hosting the national institutes of health, NIH sequence, read archive data, the biologist, and may former gets really excited about that. Talk to us about that because especially during the global health crisis that we're in, that sounds really promising >>Very much is I am so happy that we're working with NIH on this and multiple other initiatives. So the secret greed archive or SRA, essentially what it is, it's a very large data set of sequenced genomic data. And it's a wide variety of judge you gnomic data, and it's got a knowledge human genetic thing, but all life forms or all branches of life, um, is in a SRA to include viruses. And that's really important here during the pandemic. Um, it's one of the largest and oldest, um, gen sequence genomic data sets are out there and yet it's very modern. It has been designed for next generation sequencing. So it's growing, it's modern and it's well used. It's one of the more important ones that it's out there. One of the reasons this is so important is that we know to find cures for what a human ailments and disease and death, but by studying the gem genomic code, we can come up with the answers of these or the scientists can come up with answer for that. And that's what Amazon is doing is we're putting in the hands of the scientists, the tools so that they can help cure heart disease and diabetes and cancer and, um, depression and yes, even, um, uh, viruses that can cause pandemics. >>So making this data, sorry, I'm just going to making this data available to those scientists. Worldwide is incredibly important. Talk to us about that. >>Yeah, it is. And so, um, within NIH, we're working with, um, the, um, NCBI when you're dealing with NIH, there's a lot of acronyms, uh, and uh, at NIH, it's the national center for, um, file type technology information. And so we're working with them to make this available as an open data set. Why, why this is important is it's all about increasing the speed for scientific discovery. I personally think that in the fullness of time, the scientists will come up with cures for just about all of the human ailments that are out there. And it's our job at AWS to put into the hands of the scientists, the tools they need to make things happen quickly or in our lifetime. And I'm really excited to be working with NIH on that. When we start talking about it, there's multiple things. The scientists needs. One is access to these data sets and SRA. >>It's a very large data set. It's 45 petabytes and it's growing. I personally believe that it's going to double every year, year and a half. So it's a very large data set and it's hard to move that data around. It's so much easier if you just go into the cloud, compute against it and do your research there in the cloud. And so it's super important. 45 petabytes, give you an idea if it were all human data, that's equivalent to have a seven and a half million people or put another way 90% of everybody living in New York city. So that's how big this is. But then also what AWS is doing is we're bringing compute. So in the cloud, you can scale up your compute, scale it down, and then kind of the third they're. The third leg of the tool of the stool is giving the scientists easy access to the specialized tool sets they need. >>And we're doing that in a few different ways. One that the people would design these toolsets design a lot of them on AWS, but then we also make them available through something called AWS marketplace. So they can just go into marketplace, get a catalog, go in there and say, I want to launch this resolve work and launches the infrastructure underneath. And it speeds the ability for those scientists to come up with the cures that they need. So SRA is stored in Amazon S3, which is a very popular object store, not just in the scientific community, but virtually every industry uses S3. And by making this available on these public data sets, we're giving the scientists the ability to speed up their research. >>One of the things that Springs jumps out to me too, is it's in addition to enabling them to speed up research, it's also facilitating collaboration globally because now you've got the cloud to drive all of this, which allows researchers and completely different parts of the world to be working together almost in real time. So I can imagine the incredible power that this is going to, to provide to that community. So I have to ask you though, you talked about this being all life forms, including viruses COVID-19, what are some of the things that you think we can see? I expect this to facilitate. Yeah. >>So earlier in the year we took the, um, uh, genetic code or NIH took the genetic code and they, um, put it in an SRA like format and that's now available on AWS and, and here's, what's great about it is that you can now make it so anybody in the world can go to this open data set and start doing their research. One of our goals here is build back to a democratization of research. So it used to be that, um, get, for example, the very first, um, vaccine that came out was a small part. It's a vaccine that was done by our rural country doctor using essentially test tubes in a microscope. It's gotten hard to do that because data sets are so large, you need so much computer by using the power of the cloud. We've really democratized it and now anybody can do it. So for example, um, with the SRE data set that was done by NIH, um, organizations like the university of British Columbia, their, um, cloud innovation center is, um, doing research. And so what they've done is they've scanned, they, um, SRA database think about it. They scanned out 11 million entries for, uh, coronavirus sequencing. And that's really hard to do in a typical on-premise data center. Who's relatively easy to do on AWS. So by making this available, we can have a larger number of scientists working on the problems that we need to have solved. >>Well, and as the, as we all know in the U S operation warp speed, that warp speed alone term really signifies how quickly we all need this to be progressing forward. But this is not the first partnership that AWS has had with the NIH. Talk to me about what you guys, what some of the other things are that you're doing together. >>We've been working with NIH for a very long time. Um, back in 2012, we worked with NIH on, um, which was called the a thousand genome data set. This is another really important, um, data set and it's a large number of, uh, against sequence human genomes. And we moved that into, again, an open dataset on AWS and what's happened in the last eight years is many scientists have been able to compute about on it. And the other, the wonderful power of the cloud is over time. We continue to bring out tools to make it easier for people to work. So what they're not they're computing using our, um, our instance types. We call it elastic cloud computing. whether they're doing that, or they were doing some high performance computing using, um, uh, EMR elastic MapReduce, they can do that. And then we've brought up new things that really take it to the next layer, like level like, uh, Amazon SageMaker. >>And this is a, um, uh, makes it really easy for, um, the scientists to launch machine learning algorithms on AWS. So we've done the thousand genome, uh, dataset. Um, there's a number of other areas within NIH that we've been working on. So for example, um, over at national cancer Institute, we've been providing some expert guidance on best practices to how, how you can architect and work on these COVID related workloads. Um, NIH does things with, um, collaboration with many different universities, um, over 2,500, um, academic institutions. And, um, and they do that through grants. And so we've been working with doc office of director and they run their grant management applications in the RFA on AWS, and that allows it to scale up and to work very efficiently. Um, and then we entered in with, um, uh, NIH into this program called strides strides as a program for knowing NIH, but also all these other institutions that work within NIH to use the power of the cloud use commercial cloud for scientific discovery. And when we started that back in July of 2018, long before COVID happened, it was so great that we had that up and running because now we're able to help them out through the strides program. >>Right. Can you imagine if, uh, let's not even go there? I was going to say, um, but so, okay. So the SRA data is available through the AWS open data sponsorship program. You talked about strides. What are some of the other ways that AWS system? >>Yeah, no. So strides, uh, is, uh, you know, wide ranging through multiple different institutes. So, um, for example, over at, uh, the national heart lung and blood Institute, uh, do di NHL BI. I said, there's a lot of acronyms and I gel BI. Um, they've been working on, um, harmonizing, uh, genomic data. And so working with the university of Michigan, they've been analyzing through a program that they call top of med. Um, we've also been working with a NIH on, um, establishing best practices, making sure everything's secure. So we've been providing, um, AWS professional services that are showing them how to do this. So one portion of strides is getting the right data set and the right compute in the right tools, in the hands of the scientists. The other areas that we've been working on is making sure the scientists know how to use it. And so we've been developing these cloud learning pathways, and we started this quite a while back, and it's been so helpful here during the code. So, um, scientists can now go on and they can do self-paced online courses, which we've been really helping here during the, during the pandemic. And they can learn how to maximize their use of cloud technologies through these pathways that we've developed for them. >>Well, not education is imperative. I mean, there, you think about all of the knowledge that they have with within their scientific discipline and being able to leverage technology in a way that's easy is absolutely imperative to the timing. So, so, um, let's talk about other data sets that are available. So you've got the SRA is available. Uh, what are their data sets are available through this program? >>What about along a wide range of data sets that we're, um, uh, doing open data sets and in general, um, these data sets are, um, improving the human condition or improving the, um, the world in which we live in. And so, um, I've talked about a few things. There's a few more, uh, things. So for example, um, there's the cancer genomic Atlas that we've been working with, um, national cancer Institute, as well as the national human genomic research Institute. And, um, that's a very important data set that being computed against, um, uh, throughout the world, uh, commonly within the scientific community, that data set is called TCGA. Um, then we also have some, uh, uh, datasets are focused on certain groups. So for example, kids first is a data set. That's looking at a lot of the, um, challenges, uh, in diseases that kids get every kind of thing from very rare pediatric cancer as to heart defects, et cetera. >>And so we're working with them, but it's not just in the, um, uh, medical side. We have open data sets, um, with, uh, for example, uh, NOAA national ocean open national oceanic and atmospheric administration, um, to understand what's happening better with climate change and to slow the rate of climate change within the department of interior, they have a Landsat database that is looking at pictures of their birth cell, like pictures of the earth, so we can better understand the MCO world we live in. Uh, similarly, uh, NASA has, um, a lot of data that we put out there and, um, over in the department of energy, uh, there's data sets there, um, that we're researching against, or that the scientists are researching against to make sure that we have better clean, renewable energy sources, but it's not just government agencies that we work with when we find a dataset that's important. >>We also work with, um, nonprofit organizations, nonprofit organizations are also in, they're not flush with cash and they're trying to make every dollar work. And so we've worked with them, um, organizations like the child mind Institute or the Allen Institute for brain science. And these are largely like neuro imaging, um, data. And we made that available, um, via, um, our open data set, um, program. So there's a wide range of things that we're doing. And what's great about it is when we do it, you democratize science and you allowed many, many more science scientists to work on these problems. They're so critical for us. >>The availability is, is incredible, but also the, the breadth and depth of what you just spoke. It's not just government, for example, you've got about 30 seconds left. I'm going to ask you to summarize some of the announcements that you think are really, really critical for federal customers to be paying attention to from reinvent 2020. >>Yeah. So, um, one of the things that these federal government customers have been coming to us on is they've had to have new ways to communicate with their customer, with the public. And so we have a product that we've had for a while called on AWS connect, and it's been used very extensively throughout government customers. And it's used in industry too. We've had a number of, um, of announcements this weekend. Jasmine made multiple announcements on enhancement, say AWS connect or additional services, everything from helping to verify that that's the right person from AWS connect ID to making sure that that customer's gets a good customer experience to connect wisdom or making sure that the managers of these call centers can manage the call centers better. And so I'm really excited that we're putting in the hands of both government and industry, a cloud based solution to make their connections to the public better. >>It's all about connections these days, but I wish we had more time, cause I know we can unpack so much more with you, but thank you for joining me on the queue today, sharing some of the insights, some of the impacts and availability that AWS is enabling the scientific and other federal communities. It's incredibly important. And we appreciate your time. Thank you, Lisa, for Brett McMillan. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's The Cube, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special virtual conference, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from The Cube. I'm John Furey, your host and master of ceremony's got a great topic today, and this session is really the intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic, and this conversation is a cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup, we've Jeff Armstrong is the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. Jeffrey, thanks for jumping on and Bong Gumahad. The second, Director of C4ISR Division, and he's joining us from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition and sustainment of Department of Defense, DOD, and of course Steve Jacques is Executive Director, founder National Security Space Association, and managing partner at Velos. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session, we've got an hour of conversation, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So we've got a virtual event here, we've got an hour to have a great conversation, I'd love for you guys to do an opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity and space, Jeff, we'll start with you. >> Well, thanks very much, John, it's great to be on with all of you. On behalf of Cal Poly, welcome everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission at Cal Poly, whether that means traditional undergraduates, masters students, or increasingly, mid-career professionals looking to upskill or re-skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers, ready day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves as lucky to be on California's beautiful central coast, but in recent years, as we've developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, We have discovered that our location is even more advantageous than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than UC Santa Barbara and the base represents the Southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air Force Base have partnered to support regional economic development, to encourage the development of a commercial space port, to advocate for the space command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because both parties stand to benefit. Vandenberg, by securing new streams of revenue, workforce, and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the central coast and the U.S., creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called REACH which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that has facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has as long been an important defense contractor and an important partner to Cal Poly, funding scholarships in facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years, Northrop Grumman has funded scholarships for Cal Poly students. This year, they're funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars Program. Cal Poly scholars support both incoming freshmen and transfer students. These are especially important, 'cause it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented, and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernize the U.S. ICBM armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting... Protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. Cal Poly has partnered with many private companies such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web Services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part, through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cyber Security Institute College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber-ready workforce, by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment side by side with military law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG&E most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry. As a rough approximation, more than 4,500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace or defense as their employment sector on LinkedIn. And it's not just our engineers in computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow panelists not too long ago, speaking to Bong, we learned that Rachel Sims, one of our liberal arts majors is working in his office, so shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates soar to extraordinary heights, such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International Space Station later this year. As I close, all of which is to say that we're deeply committed to workforce development and redevelopment, that we understand the value of public-private partnerships, and that we're eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state and the nation, in our past efforts in space, cyber security and links to our partners at, as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cyber security. Thank you so much, John. >> President Armstrong, thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique, progressive view and want to tip a hat to you guys over there, thank you very much for those comments, appreciate it. Bong, Department of Defense. Exciting, you've got to defend the nation, space is global, your opening statement. >> Yes, sir, thanks John, appreciate that. Thank you everybody, I'm honored to be in this panel along with Preston Armstrong of Cal Poly and my longtime friend and colleague Steve Jacques of the National Security Space Association to discuss a very important topic of a cybersecurity workforce development as President Armstrong alluded to. I'll tell you, both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the NSSA have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them and training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs, as well as our collective national security. Earlier today, during session three, I, along with my colleague, Chris Samson discussed space cyber security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferation of hundreds, if not thousands of satellites, providing a variety of services including communications, allowing for global internet connectivity, as one example. Within DOD, we continued to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you, one of the enabling technologies, is the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used and employed for DOD. Certainly not lost on me is the fact that Cal Poly pioneered CubeSats 28, 27 years ago, and they set a standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the value and benefit gained way ahead of everybody else it seems. And Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I'm especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steven's colleague, the current CIO, Mr. Bill Britton, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's cyber innovation challenge in June, Oops, Cal Poly hosts California middle, and high school students, and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid, unfortunately, the pandemic changed the plan, but I truly look forward to future events such as these, to participate in. Now, I want to recognize my good friend, Steve Jacques, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here, over two decades or so, who was an acknowledged space expert and personally I've truly applaud him for having the foresight a few years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology, but policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operationalizing space. Space, it certainly was fortifying domain, it's not a secret anymore, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains, such as land, air, and sea, obviously all are strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict, they will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts, and in a joint operation, we must succeed in all. So defending space is critical, as critical as to defending our other operational domains. Funny, space is the only sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly as I discussed in a previous session, commercial space is taking the lead in a lot of different areas, including R&D, the so-called new space. So cybersecurity threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. The U.S. considers and futhered access to and freedom to operate in space, vital to advancing security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country, thus making cyberspace an inseparable component of America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space Force a year ago or so as the newest military service. Like the other services, its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect U.S. and allied interest in space and to provide spacecape builders who joined force. Imagine combining that U.S. Space Force with the U.S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of the space and cyberspace operation, strengthen DOD capabilities and integrate and bolster a DOD cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires a trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy, as well as a high technical skill set. Much like we're seeing in STEM, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now, the DOD has recognized the importance to the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage its growth. Back in 2013, the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a DOD Cyberspace Workforce Strategy, to create a comprehensive, well-equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now, this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the DOD and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program, or CITE that it's an exchange program, which is very interesting in which a private sector employee can naturally work for the DOD in a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas, important to the DOD. A key responsibility of the cyber security community is military leaders, unrelated threats, and the cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talked about rapid acquisition, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation, likewise, cyber security must keep up with this challenge. So cyber security needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent, invest in the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity workforce for the future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John, thank you. >> Thank you so much, Bob for those comments and, you know, new challenges or new opportunities and new possibilities and freedom to operate in space is critical, thank you for those comments, looking forward to chatting further. Steve Jacques, Executive Director of NSSA, you're up, opening statement. >> Thank you, John and echoing Bongs, thanks to Cal Poly for pulling this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, on behalf of the association, I'm delighted and honored to be on this panel of President Armstrong, along with my friend and colleague, Bong Gumahad. Something for you all to know about Bong, he spent the first 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve, very few people do that. So Bong, on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your lifelong devotion to service to our nation, we really appreciate that. And I also echo a Bong shout out to that guy, Bill Britton. who's been a long time co-conspirator of ours for a long time, and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly, Bill, keep it up. But Professor Armstrong, keep a close eye on him. (laughter) I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by President Armstrong and Bong. And in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. We all recently reflected again on that tragic 9/11 surprise attack on our homeland and it's an appropriate time we think to take pause. While a percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or were babies then, for the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9/11 has taught us a lot to include, to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open, to include those "eyes and ears from space," making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect, protecting our nation requires we work in a cyber secure environment at all times. But you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see 'em. Now sure, we see space launches, man, there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch they become invisible, so what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine, by Bongs and my good friend, Chuck Beames, Chuck is a space guy, actually had Bongs job a few years in the Pentagon. He's now Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at York Space Systems and in his spare time, he's Chairman of the Small Satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand, so I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article, paraphrase somewhat, so these are Chuck's words. "Let's talk about average Joe and plain Jane. "Before heading to the airport for a business trip "to New York city, Joe checks the weather forecast, "informed by NOAA's weather satellites, "to see what to pack for the trip. "He then calls an Uber, that space app everybody uses, "it matches riders with drivers via GPS, "to take him to the airport. "So Joe has launched in the airport, "unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made "with the help of precision farming "made possible to optimize the irrigation and fertilization "with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS. "On the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, "aided by GPS and NOAA's weather satellites "and Joe makes his meeting on time "to join his New York colleagues in a video call "with a key customer in Singapore, "made possible by telecommunication satellites. "En route to his next meeting, "Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting "to the other side of town. "So he calmly tells Siri to adjust the destination "and his satellite-guided Google maps redirect him "to the new location. "That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite, "report details of meeting among world leaders, "discussing the developing crisis in Syria. "As it turns out various forms of "'remotely sensed information' collected from satellites "indicate that yet another banned chemical weapon "may have been used on its own people. "Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents "and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary "as they cruise across the Atlantic, "made possible again by communication satellites "and Joe's parents can enjoy the call "without even wondering how it happened. "The next morning back home, "Joe's wife, Jane is involved in a car accident. "Her vehicle skids off the road, she's knocked unconscious, "but because of her satellite equipped OnStar system, "the crash is detected immediately, "and first responders show up on the scene in time. "Joe receives the news, books an early trip home, "sends flowers to his wife "as he orders another Uber to the airport. "Over that 24 hours, "Joe and Jane used space system applications "for nearly every part of their day. "Imagine the consequences if at any point "they were somehow denied these services, "whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. "In each of these satellite applications used in this case, "were initially developed for military purposes "and continued to be, but also have remarkable application "on our way of life, just many people just don't know that." So ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to Chuck Beames. Well, the United States has a proud heritage of being the world's leading space-faring nation. Dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, today, we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to "watch and listen," provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation, and timing from our GPS system, much of which you heard in Lieutenant General JT Thomson's earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also to our quality of life. As Chuck told us, we simply no longer can live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing catch up while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2007, China demonstrated its ASAT system by actually shooting down one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counterspace systems to disrupt ours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to be. Well, as a Bong mentioned, the United States have responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and the Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Combined with our intelligence community, today we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space, and that's a very, very good thing. Commensurately on the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association, devoted solely to supporting the National Security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the DC area, but we have arms and legs across the country and we are loaded with extraordinary talent in scores of former government executives. So NSSA is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway, ranging from a number of thought-provoking policy papers, our recurring spacetime webcasts, supporting Congress's space power caucus, and other main serious efforts. Check us out at nssaspace.org. One of our strategic priorities and central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development, just like Cal-Poly. We will work with our U.S. government customers, industry leaders, and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry, and to assist in mentoring and training as their careers progress. On that point, we're delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with them very soon. So students stay tuned, something I can tell you, space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry workforce is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists and mathematicians, but also with a large non-technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets these systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board, from cost estimating, cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal, and many other support tasks that are integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce, tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff and no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. In summary, as Bong had mentioned as well, there's a great deal of exciting challenges ahead. We will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, are in the game, stimulating new ideas and business models. Other private investors and startup companies, space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and micro electronics now allows a potential for a plethora of small sat systems to possibly replace older satellites, the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much and I look forward to the further conversation. >> Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool, it's relevant, but it's important as you pointed out in your awesome story about how it impacts our life every day so I really appreciate that great story I'm glad you took the time to share that. You forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you, but we'll add that to the story later, great stuff. My first question is, let's get into the conversations, because I think this is super important. President Armstrong, I'd like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bong and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation, there are opportunities now with research and grants, and this is a funding of innovation that is highly accelerated, it's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >> Yeah, I really appreciate that and appreciate the comments of my colleagues. And it really boils down to me to partnerships, public-private partnerships, you have mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Space X, JPL, also member of an organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity and space. But those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward. At Cal Poly, as mentioned, we've been involved with CubeSat, we've have some secure work, and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Those partnerships are essential, not only for getting the R&D done, but also the students, the faculty, whether they're master's or undergraduate can be involved with that work, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during COVID or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or industry, and then they're even better equipped to hit the ground running. And of course we'd love to see more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest in all demographics of California and the U.S. into this field, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential and our goal is to grow them just like I know our other colleagues in the CSU and the UC are planning to do. >> You know, just as my age I've seen, I grew up in the eighties and in college and they're in that system's generation and the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives, they were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bong, talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud and Bezos was mentioned, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, you got new ideas coming in from the outside, you have an accelerated clock now in terms of the innovation cycles and so you got to react differently, you guys have programs to go outside of the defense department, how important is this because the workforce that are in schools and/or folks re-skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table, so share your thoughts. >> No, thanks Johnny, thanks for the opportunity to respond to, and that's what, you know, you hit on the nose back in the 80's, R&D and space especially was dominated by government funding, contracts and so on, but things have changed as Steve pointed out, allow these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork, funding R&D so they're taking the lead, so what we can do within the DOD in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done. And since they're, you know, paving the way to new approaches and new way of doing things and I think we can certainly learn from that and leverage off of that, saves us money from an R&D standpoint, while benefiting from the product that they deliver. You know, within DOD, talking about workforce development, you know, we have prioritized and we have policies now to attract and retain the talent we need. I had the folks do some research and it looks like from a cybersecurity or workforce standpoint, a recent study done, I think last year in 2019, found that the cyber security workforce gap in U.S. is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened, getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like Professor Armstrong indicated because we're going to need them to be in place, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so. On top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with STEM students. We can't afford not have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within DoD, not only DoD but the commercial side as well, thank you. >> How's the gap get filled, I mean, this is, again, you've got cybersecurity, I mean, with space it's a whole other kind of surface area if you will, it's not really surface area, but it is an IOT device if you think about it, but it does have the same challenges, that's kind of current and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap get filled, Steve or President Armstrong, I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What are some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >> Steve, go ahead., I'll follow up. >> Okay, thanks, I'll let you correct me. (laughter) It's a really good question, and the way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it upfront and it comes with our teaching, et cetera, across the board. And from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it, we've got to have secure systems in everything we do, and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them is so paramount to the whole cycle. And that's kind of, it really takes a focused attention and we continue to use the word focus from an NSSA perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce, on the government side, but not nearly enough of them and likewise on the industry side, we could use more as well, but when you get down to it, you know, we can connect dots, you know, the aspects that Professor Armstrong talked about earlier to where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that network, that ecosystem if you will, of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power, not just of one or two companies, but of our entire membership thereabout. >> President Armstrong-- >> Yeah, I would also add it again, it's back to the partnerships that I talked about earlier, one of our partners is high schools and schools Fortune, Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of administrations in California across party lines and education, their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly, and visit our learned-by-doing lab. And you've got to get students interested in STEM at an early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid, so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running and that's exacerbated and really stress now with this COVID induced recession. California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation, but that has brought this year for reasons all understand due to COVID. And so our partnerships, our creativity, and making sure that we help those that need the most help financially, that's really key because the gaps are huge. As my colleagues indicated, you know, half a million jobs and I need you to look at the students that are in the pipeline, we've got to enhance that. And the placement rates are amazing once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, placement rates are like 94%. Many of our engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just going to take a key partnerships working together and that continued partnership with government local, of course, our state, the CSU, and partners like we have here today, both Steve and Bong so partnerships is the thing. >> You know, that's a great point-- >> I could add, >> Okay go ahead. >> All right, you know, the collaboration with universities is one that we put on lot of emphasis here, and it may not be well known fact, but just an example of national security, the AUC is a national centers of academic excellence in cyber defense works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate and certify future cyber first responders as an example. So that's vibrant and healthy and something that we ought to take advantage of. >> Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point, 'cause I'd like to define, you know, what is a public-private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped, it's a modern era, things are accelerated, you've got security, so you've got all of these things kind of happenning it's a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business and in the public sector. So what is a modern public-private partnership and what does it look like today because people are learning differently. COVID has pointed out, which is that we're seeing right now, how people, the progressions of knowledge and learning, truth, it's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public-private partnership and some examples and some proof points, can you guys share that? We'll start with you, Professor Armstrong. >> Yeah, as I indicated earlier, we've had, and I could give other examples, but Northrop Grumman, they helped us with a cyber lab many years ago that is maintained directly, the software, the connection outside it's its own unit so the students can learn to hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses and I know that that has already had some considerations of space, but that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public-private partnership has benefits to both entities and the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the talent. The talent that is needed, what we've been working on for years of, you know, the undergraduate or master's or PhD programs, but now it's also spilling into upskilling and reskilling, as jobs, you know, folks who are in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago, but it also spills into other aspects that can expand even more. We're very fortunate we have land, there's opportunities, we have ONE Tech project. We are expanding our tech park, I think we'll see opportunities for that and it'll be adjusted due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before COVID. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important, I want to make sure that I'm driving across a bridge or that satellite's being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training to do that in that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on campus, getting that experience, expanding it as an adult, and we're going to need those public-private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these STEM and engineering fields. >> It's interesting people and technology can work together and these partnerships are the new way. Bongs too with reaction to the modern version of what a public successful private partnership looks like. >> If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically DOD's had a high bar to overcome if you will, in terms of getting rapid... pulling in new companies, miss the fall if you will, and not rely heavily on the usual suspects, of vendors and the like, and I think the DOD has done a good job over the last couple of years of trying to reduce that burden and working with us, you know, the Air Force, I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days, where companies come in, do a two-hour pitch and immediately notified of, you know, of an a award, without having to wait a long time to get feedback on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best to strengthen that partnership with companies outside of the main group of people that we typically use. >> Steve, any reaction, any comment to add? >> Yeah, I would add a couple and these are very excellent thoughts. It's about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone, you know, the world that Bong and I, Bong lives in and I used to live in the past, has been quite structured. It's really about, we know what the threat is, we need to go fix it, we'll design as if as we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Life is so much more complicated than that and so it's really, to me, I mean, you take an example of the pitch days of Bong talks about, I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks and academia, because we are all in this together in a lot of ways. For example, I mean, we just sent a paper to the white house at their request about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective and we hope to embellish on this over time once the initiative matures, but we have a piece of it for example, is a thing we call "clear for success," getting back to president Armstrong's comments so at a collegiate level, you know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program that grabs kids in their underclass years, identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this, get them scholarships, have a job waiting for them that they're contracted for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with an SCI clearance. We believe that can be done, so that's an example of ways in which public-private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on day one. We think those kinds of things can happen, it just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can, like pitch days. >> That's a great point, it's a good segue. Go ahead, President Armstrong. >> I just want to jump in and echo both the Bong and Steve's comments, but Steve that, you know, your point of, you know our graduates, we consider them ready day one, well they need to be ready day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's exciting and needed, very much needed more of it, some of it's happening, but we certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans. >> And that's a great example, a good segue. My next question is kind of re-imagining these workflows is kind of breaking down the old way and bringing in kind of the new way, accelerate all kinds of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue and this is the next topic, how can we employ new creative solutions because let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern, you know, the programs and you'd matriculate through the system. This is multiple disciplines, cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart in math and have a degree in anthropology and be one of the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new, new world, what are some creative approaches that's going to work for you? >> Alright, good job, one of the things, I think that's a challenge to us is, you know, somehow we got me working for, with the government, sexy right? You know, part of the challenge we have is attracting the right level of skill sets and personnel but, you know, we're competing, oftentimes, with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples is a big deal. And those are the same talents we need to support a lot of the programs that we have in DOD. So somehow we have do a better job to Steve's point about making the work within DOD, within the government, something that they would be interested early on. So attract them early, you know, I could not talk about Cal Poly's challenge program that they were going to have in June inviting high school kids really excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security and so on. Those are some of the things that I think we have to do and continue to do over the course of the next several years. >> Awesome, any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be an idea, or just to kind of stoke the ideation out there? Internships, obviously internships are known, but like, there's got to be new ways. >> Alright, I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier, getting students in high school and aligning them sometimes at first internship, not just between the freshman and sophomore year, but before they enter Cal Poly per se and they're involved. So I think that's absolutely key, getting them involved in many other ways. We have an example of upskilling or work redevelopment here in the central coast, PG&E Diablo nuclear plant that is going to decommission in around 2024. And so we have a ongoing partnership to work and reposition those employees for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the upskilling and reskilling, and I think that's where, you know, we were talking about that Purdue University, other California universities have been dealing with online programs before COVID, and now with COVID so many more Faculty were pushed into that area, there's going to be a much more going and talk about workforce development in upskilling and reskilling, the amount of training and education of our faculty across the country in virtual and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >> I want to get your guys' thoughts on one final question as we end the segment, and we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where, you know, SAS business model subscription, and that's on the business side, but one of the things that's clear in this trend is technology and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at a world now, we're living in COVID, and Cal Poly, you guys have remote learning right now, it's at the infancy, it's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity enable new ways to encollaborate, So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed, how these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery, hire, develop the workforce, these are opportunities, how do you guys view this new digital transformation? >> Well, I think there's huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium, we're filming this on Monday and it's going to stream live and then the three of us, the four of us can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing and I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this symposium. I think there's more and more that we can do. From a Cal Poly perspective, with our pedagogy so, you know, linked to learn by doing in-person will always be important to us, but we see virtual, we see partnerships like this, can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in-person time, decrease the time to degree, enhance graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps for students that don't have the same advantages. So I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the upskilling and reskilling, where employees are all over, they can re be reached virtually, and then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. So I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's going to be different with every university, with every partnership. It's one size does not fit all, There's so many possibilities, Bong, I can almost imagine that social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, and have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the DOD possibly in the future. But these are the kind of crazy ideas that are needed, your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross-pollination. >> I think technology is going to be revolutionary here, John, you know, we're focusing lately on what we call visual engineering to quicken the pace of the delivery capability to warfighter as an example, I think AI, Machine Language, all that's going to have a major play in how we operate in the future. We're embracing 5G technologies, and the ability for zero latency, more IOT, more automation of the supply chain, that sort of thing, I think the future ahead of us is very encouraging, I think it's going to do a lot for national defense, and certainly the security of the country. >> Steve, your final thoughts, space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people, your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity. >> Such a great question and such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Echoing my colleagues sentiments, I would add to it, you know, a lot of this has, I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. You know, we're not attuned to doing things fast, but the dramatic, you know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now, I think it ties back to, hoping to convince some of our senior leaders and what I call both sides of the Potomac river, that it's worth taking this gamble, we do need to take some of these things you know, in a very proactive way. And I'm very confident and excited and comfortable that this is going to be a great time ahead and all for the better. >> You know, I always think of myself when I talk about DC 'cause I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies than in Congress and Senate, so (laughter)I always get in trouble when I say that. Sorry, President Armstrong, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, just one other point and Steve's alluded to this and Bong did as well, I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships, that doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And also, as you talk about technology, I have to reflect on something that happened and you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing traditional data, a data warehouse, data storage, data center and we partnered with AWS and thank goodness, we had that in progress and it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before COVID hit, and with this partnership with the digital transformation hub, so there's a great example where we had that going. That's not something we could have started, "Oh COVID hit, let's flip that switch." And so we have to be proactive and we also have to not be risk-averse and do some things differently. That has really salvaged the experience for our students right now, as things are flowing well. We only have about 12% of our courses in person, those essential courses and I'm just grateful for those partnerships that I have talked about today. >> And it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these are themes that expand the space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing your insights, I know Bong, you're going to go into the defense side of space in your other sessions. Thank you gentlemen, for your time, for a great session, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you all. I'm John Furey with The Cube here in Palo Alto, California covering and hosting with Cal Poly, the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, thanks for watching. (bright atmospheric music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome to the AWS Public Sector Awards Program. This year, AWS partnered with "theCUBE" to interview a selection of the award winners and their clients. My name is Jeff Frick. I'm the GM and host of "theCUBE" and to share more on the award program and this year's winners, I'd like to introduce Sandy Carter, joining us from Seattle. She is the VP Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs for AWS. Sandy, great to see you. >> So great to see you too, Jeff. Everything's going well. >> Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? So you're in Seattle, you're sheltering in place, but you're getting through and business moves on and you guys are doing a lot of exciting things based on some of the challenges that have come from COVID. >> Absolutely. And we're even making our logo signs out of Legos to support our home offices. So we're having a blast and we're really helping a lot of our customers and our partners through this time as they are helping us as well. >> Right. So let's jump into it. So you run Partners and Programs. Share with everyone why partners are so important to Amazon and AWS specifically and public sector specifically? >> Yeah, Jeff, the partner business, of course, is critical to public sector. For us, partners represent that overall customer experience. They're often subject matter experts at raising awareness, helping customers evaluate AWS and some of the workloads. They help accelerate procurement, deploy services, and most important, our partners support our customer missions. And mission is almost everything in public sector. Now for us, public sector is not just government, but it's also education, nonprofits, healthcare, depending upon where you are in the world, it could also be travel and transportation or oil and gas. It's a really big mission that our partners go on every day with us in the field and the real world. >> Right, so one of the things that comes up all the time, if anyone's spent any time listening to Amazon content, whether it's Bezos or Andy, talks about customer obsession and this constant drive around customer obsession. Now, I noticed you've got 18 awards and people can see all the awards later today or they can go to the website, but I noticed like a third of your awards are customer obsession. So you've really kind of taken that customer obsession theme, if you will, and pushed it in and through all these awards and award categories. So talk about customer obsession in the context of these awards. >> Well, customer obsession for us is everything. Everything that we do starts with the customer and then works backwards. So if you think about what's been happening during these COVID times, like call center wait times are astronomical, too long. Customers are waiting too long. We've been helping States and local governments and countries really implement artificial intelligence and have that ability to answer calls quickly. That's one example of working backwards from a customer. Another example might be having limited access to data. So Jeff, we've always said, and I know "theCUBE's" always said that data is queen or king, but during COVID, data became so essential. So working backwards from our customers, leaders needed to make emergency decisions and did not have immediate access to data. So we had a lot of partners who said, "Hey, I can help you with that. "I can build a data lake. "I can use analytics to help you get to that data." So those were just some examples of how our partners did some extraordinary things, working backwards from their customer. >> Right, well, the other thing obviously is COVID, we've been at this now since mid-March and there was a lot of challenges that came out of COVID. But the other thing that came out of it is this light switch moment for digital transformation and initiatives that were potentially running or thought about running or moving slow. Suddenly digital transformation came to the top of everybody's priorities because of COVID and they had no other choice. And I noticed you've got a couple of COVID-19 specific winners in your list. I wonder if you can speak to some of the challenges that arose that they responded to, to earn some of these COVID awards. >> Yeah, it was funny, Jeff, I'm sure you saw it too on social media. There was a slide that said, "Who drove your digital transformation? "Was it your CEO, your CIO, your chief marketing officer, "or was it COVID?" And, of course, everybody picked COVID. So some of the areas that our partners focused in on was the failure of some legacy systems that occurred, decade old mission critical systems and websites, failed under the stress because they couldn't go up for the demand like the cloud can. We also saw limited remote access. You and I were chatting before, how do you do remote work? How does that work? So employees had limited access to systems, to tools, to data that they needed. And so our customers were really, again, really in want of a solution for remote work. And we had a lot of partners who really stepped up. And then of course, looking at the tech skills that existed, I'm sure you had people call you. I had people call me saying, "I don't really know how to get on Zoom or WebEx or Chime. "Can you help me?" And our customers experience the same thing. Employees don't have the same level of technical skills. And so we saw partners step up with training systems, for example. I was really impressed with the scrappiness of our partners and the way that they always started with the customer, working backwards. But they pivoted because COVID really did create some of these new opportunities in the marketplace. >> Right. So we've got a full program running at the conclusion of this conversation which people will get to see the winners and see some of the solution providers. And we've got three tracks, like you said, the government, nonprofit and education, and there's 18 award winners. And I wouldn't ask you to pick your favorite kid, but I'm going to ask you to share a couple of favorites amongst these award winners that really jumped out to you. >> Okay, I will but first I'll just say, Jeff, that we did have 18 winners and amongst them, they had over 45 customer references. They averaged over six years of experience with AWS and they spread across every single geo. So I thought that was pretty amazing. They also spanned across a couple of different areas, a set of technical capabilities like AI-ML, migration, you know, having a skill for Amazon Connect, which is our call center. They spread a cost missions that you talked about for education, healthcare, DOD. And then they also had a lot of special focus on migration. This was one of Andy's really big, big themes at re:Invent. And so we wanted to reinforce that as well with our partners. So a couple of highlights. So I'm going to start with migration because that was a really big one for Andy at re:Invent, as well as Teresa, our head of public sector. So one of our award winners is around migration is the Navy and SAP NS2. They were asked to migrate 26 ERPs across 50 landscapes with 60,000 users accessing the data from around the globe or another one of my favorites was the Accenture Award where they help the government of Canada and they help them through some of the employment and social development areas that they need to focus in on, really launching a 2,600 person contact center to help deal with some of the spikes in call volumes and other areas. And then let me see. I would also call out Maxar. Maxar set up a high performance computing or HPC environment for a number of weather prediction areas for NOAA, which was also very essential because it wasn't just COVID. Right now, we're in the midst of hurricane season. And how can you optimize that performance and cost even more? Or my last one I'll do, I promise, Jeff, is mission-based, which is Tyler Technologies and they help the city of Alvin in Texas and their municipal courts. Like how do you continue to do court systems? How do you implement a virtual court? And that's exactly what Tyler technology helped to have happen in Texas. So those are just some of the favorite ones that I have today, Jeff. >> (laughs) That's great. And again, everybody can watch interviews with the selection of these people. They'll be running, starting at the bottom of the hour and really get to meet the solution providers as well as the customers that put some of these things in. I've been fortunate to cover a couple of the AWS IMAGINE shows, which are really small public sector shows around nonprofits and education. And it's pretty amazing, once you get out of the commercial space, some of the things that are being enabled by cloud generally and AWS specifically around things that people aren't thinking, missing children, community colleges and education for quick employment. And there's just so many really meaningful, you said mission type of activities going on out there that you guys support. So that's really exciting to keep up with. So before we close out and let everybody watch the award winners, your priorities for 2020? We're kind of halfway through, it's a very strange year. I'm sure every plan that was written and approved in January got ripped up to shreds (Sandy laughs) by April. So Sandy, what are some of your priorities for what you're working on with partners and programs and public sector for the balance of the year? >> Yeah, I would start out by reemphasizing migration. I think migration is really crucial, taking something that's on premises and moving it to the cloud. And the reason that's so important, moving forward, is that the discussion we just had, Jeff, around digital transformation, the cloud provides you so much on-demand capacity. You can just scale and do so many more things. We're also seeing a big focus on cyber security. A lot of our customers across the globe now need to secure remote education, their call centers, their portals, their elections. So cyber security will continue to be really important. As well as our Amazon Connect area. So Amazon Connect, this amazing call center that we've integrated with salesforce, one of our other award winners continues to grow rapidly as we see more and more demand for that as well. And Jeff, I would be remiss to also not call out the mission areas. So whether that's helping with public safety or whether that is assisting in healthcare or our new telemedicine, just providing that, not just the technology, but the mission help too, really understanding what's required and delivering that will be really important. And Jeff, we can't end the key without talking about #techforgood either, right? >> Right, right. Something that's close to both our hearts. >> (chuckles) So we did have some really cool award winners that I think one, because of that #techforgood. So Axial3D, for instance, really helped out Belfast Hospital. And they won an award for AI-ML because of the way that they help surgeons save lives. And this is, your intro here was really important to me. It's not just about your super power for profit. That's important because you have to stay in business, but that super power for purpose is equally as important. We didn't do an award this time for startups, but we have also been working with Hello Alice who set up an entire, saying a website is too small, but they've used AI and ML through SageMaker to tag stories and help for small businesses and other startups that are diverse either through gender or race or be in veteran-owned. They're doing an amazing thing. So we continue, at Amazon to focus on #techforgood, as I know, you guys do at "theCUBE" as well. >> Right, right. Well, we used to call it a word and the triple line accounting. So it's not only just for profitability, but also for your employees and your constituents, which include your customers and your partners, but also the broader community and doing well for the broader community. And I do think, the younger people today that are entering the workforce have really forced that conversation and raised the status of mission-based activities. And really trying to think beyond just the bottom line, you still need to make money cause you got to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but that shouldn't be the only thing. And it shouldn't be really at the expense of everything else. So that's great to hear. And again, I think that the tech for good angle is a really, really important one. It probably doesn't get enough pub compared to some of the other stuff that we see in the news. So Sandy, congratulations to you and the team for weeding through all the applicants, selecting these 18 lucky winners. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview a few of them and share their stories on "theCUBE" and on this program. And, that's what we love, love to do since we can't be together in person as we have been so many times in the past. >> Yeah, so Jeff, if we could just show that slide real quick as we end. As we end, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of these partners who were here. All 18, you're going to get to hear most of them. I don't want to take away from their thunder, but I know that "theCUBE" has been doing interviews with them and their customers, see and hear the amazing stories that they have and how they really have helped customers beyond what we can normally even expect because they are award winners. So Jeff, thank you and "theCUBE" for helping us to find a way to get their stories out. Because it's not normal times, we didn't have our public conference, but this is a great way to celebrate each and every one of these 18. So I want to say, thank you, congratulations. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all the great work that you're doing. And to the rest of our partners, I hope that I see you on this list in our next award ceremony. >> Alright, well, thank you Sandy, for those kind words. And without further ado, we will end this segment, this kickoff and people can jump into the award-winner segments and learn lots. And hopefully, it won't be too long, Sandy, till we can actually meet again in-person. So thank you for watching this portion and enjoy the rest of the show. (calm music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome to the AWS Public Sector Awards Program. This year, AWS partnered with "theCUBE" to interview a selection of the award winners and their clients. My name is Jeff Frick. I'm the GM and host of "theCUBE" and to share more on the award program and this year's winners, I'd like to introduce Sandy Carter, joining us from Seattle. She is the VP Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs for AWS. Sandy, great to see you. >> So great to see you too, Jeff. Everything's going well. >> Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? So you're in Seattle, you're sheltering in place, but you're getting through and business moves on and you guys are doing a lot of exciting things based on some of the challenges that have come from COVID. >> Absolutely. And we're even making our logo signs out of Legos to support our home offices. So we're having a blast and we're really helping a lot of our customers and our partners through this time as they are helping us as well. >> Right. So let's jump into it. So you run Partners and Programs. Share with everyone why partners are so important to Amazon and AWS specifically and public sector specifically? >> Yeah, Jeff, the partner business, of course, is critical to public sector. For us, partners represent that overall customer experience. They're often subject matter experts at raising awareness, helping customers evaluate AWS and some of the workloads. They help accelerate procurement, deploy services, and most important, our partners support our customer missions. And mission is almost everything in public sector. Now for us, public sector is not just government, but it's also education, nonprofits, healthcare, depending upon where you are in the world, it could also be travel and transportation or oil and gas. It's a really big mission that our partners go on every day with us in the field and the real world. >> Right, so one of the things that comes up all the time, if anyone's spent any time listening to Amazon content, whether it's Bezos or Andy, talks about customer obsession and this constant drive around customer obsession. Now, I noticed you've got 18 awards and people can see all the awards later today or they can go to the website, but I noticed like a third of your awards are customer obsession. So you've really kind of taken that customer obsession theme, if you will, and pushed it in and through all these awards and award categories. So talk about customer obsession in the context of these awards. >> Well, customer obsession for us is everything. Everything that we do starts with the customer and then works backwards. So if you think about what's been happening during these COVID times, like call center wait times are astronomical, too long. Customers are waiting too long. We've been helping States and local governments and countries really implement artificial intelligence and have that ability to answer calls quickly. That's one example of working backwards from a customer. Another example might be having limited access to data. So Jeff, we've always said, and I know "theCUBE's" always said that data is queen or king, but during COVID, data became so essential. So working backwards from our customers, leaders needed to make emergency decisions and did not have immediate access to data. So we had a lot of partners who said, "Hey, I can help you with that. "I can build a data lake. "I can use analytics to help you get to that data." So those were just some examples of how our partners did some extraordinary things, working backwards from their customer. >> Right, well, the other thing obviously is COVID, we've been at this now since mid-March and there was a lot of challenges that came out of COVID. But the other thing that came out of it is this light switch moment for digital transformation and initiatives that were potentially running or thought about running or moving slow. Suddenly digital transformation came to the top of everybody's priorities because of COVID and they had no other choice. And I noticed you've got a couple of COVID-19 specific winners in your list. I wonder if you can speak to some of the challenges that arose that they responded to, to earn some of these COVID awards. >> Yeah, it was funny, Jeff, I'm sure you saw it too on social media. There was a slide that said, "Who drove your digital transformation? "Was it your CEO, your CIO, your chief marketing officer, "or was it COVID?" And, of course, everybody picked COVID. So some of the areas that our partners focused in on was the failure of some legacy systems that occurred, decade old mission critical systems and websites, failed under the stress because they couldn't go up for the demand like the cloud can. We also saw limited remote access. You and I were chatting before, how do you do remote work? How does that work? So employees had limited access to systems, to tools, to data that they needed. And so our customers were really, again, really in want of a solution for remote work. And we had a lot of partners who really stepped up. And then of course, looking at the tech skills that existed, I'm sure you had people call you. I had people call me saying, "I don't really know how to get on Zoom or WebEx or Chime. "Can you help me?" And our customers experience the same thing. Employees don't have the same level of technical skills. And so we saw partners step up with training systems, for example. I was really impressed with the scrappiness of our partners and the way that they always started with the customer, working backwards. But they pivoted because COVID really did create some of these new opportunities in the marketplace. >> Right. So we've got a full program running at the conclusion of this conversation which people will get to see the winners and see some of the solution providers. And we've got three tracks, like you said, the government, nonprofit and education, and there's 18 award winners. And I wouldn't ask you to pick your favorite kid, but I'm going to ask you to share a couple of favorites amongst these award winners that really jumped out to you. >> Okay, I will but first I'll just say, Jeff, that we did have 18 winners and amongst them, they had over 45 customer references. They averaged over six years of experience with AWS and they spread across every single geo. So I thought that was pretty amazing. They also spanned across a couple of different areas, a set of technical capabilities like AI-ML, migration, you know, having a skill for Amazon Connect, which is our call center. They spread a cost missions that you talked about for education, healthcare, DOD. And then they also had a lot of special focus on migration. This was one of Andy's really big, big themes at re:Invent. And so we wanted to reinforce that as well with our partners. So a couple of highlights. So I'm going to start with migration because that was a really big one for Andy at re:Invent, as well as Teresa, our head of public sector. So one of our award winners is around migration is the Navy and SAP NS2. They were asked to migrate 26 ERPs across 50 landscapes with 60,000 users accessing the data from around the globe or another one of my favorites was the Accenture Award where they help the government of Canada and they help them through some of the employment and social development areas that they need to focus in on, really launching a 2,600 person contact center to help deal with some of the spikes in call volumes and other areas. And then let me see. I would also call out Maxar. Maxar set up a high performance computing or HPC environment for a number of weather prediction areas for NOAA, which was also very essential because it wasn't just COVID. Right now, we're in the midst of hurricane season. And how can you optimize that performance and cost even more? Or my last one I'll do, I promise, Jeff, is mission-based, which is Tyler Technologies and they help the city of Alvin in Texas and their municipal courts. Like how do you continue to do court systems? How do you implement a virtual court? And that's exactly what Tyler technology helped to have happen in Texas. So those are just some of the favorite ones that I have today, Jeff. >> (laughs) That's great. And again, everybody can watch interviews with the selection of these people. They'll be running, starting at the bottom of the hour and really get to meet the solution providers as well as the customers that put some of these things in. I've been fortunate to cover a couple of the AWS IMAGINE shows, which are really small public sector shows around nonprofits and education. And it's pretty amazing, once you get out of the commercial space, some of the things that are being enabled by cloud generally and AWS specifically around things that people aren't thinking, missing children, community colleges and education for quick employment. And there's just so many really meaningful, you said mission type of activities going on out there that you guys support. So that's really exciting to keep up with. So before we close out and let everybody watch the award winners, your priorities for 2020? We're kind of halfway through, it's a very strange year. I'm sure every plan that was written and approved in January got ripped up to shreds (Sandy laughs) by April. So Sandy, what are some of your priorities for what you're working on with partners and programs and public sector for the balance of the year? >> Yeah, I would start out by reemphasizing migration. I think migration is really crucial, taking something that's on premises and moving it to the cloud. And the reason that's so important, moving forward, is that the discussion we just had, Jeff, around digital transformation, the cloud provides you so much on-demand capacity. You can just scale and do so many more things. We're also seeing a big focus on cyber security. A lot of our customers across the globe now need to secure remote education, their call centers, their portals, their elections. So cyber security will continue to be really important. As well as our Amazon Connect area. So Amazon Connect, this amazing call center that we've integrated with salesforce, one of our other award winners continues to grow rapidly as we see more and more demand for that as well. And Jeff, I would be remiss to also not call out the mission areas. So whether that's helping with public safety or whether that is assisting in healthcare or our new telemedicine, just providing that, not just the technology, but the mission help too, really understanding what's required and delivering that will be really important. And Jeff, we can't end the key without talking about #techforgood either, right? >> Right, right. Something that's close to both our hearts. >> (chuckles) So we did have some really cool award winners that I think one, because of that #techforgood. So Axial3D, for instance, really helped out Belfast Hospital. And they won an award for AI-ML because of the way that they help surgeons save lives. And this is, your intro here was really important to me. It's not just about your super power for profit. That's important because you have to stay in business, but that super power for purpose is equally as important. We didn't do an award this time for startups, but we have also been working with Hello Alice who set up an entire, saying a website is too small, but they've used AI and ML through SageMaker to tag stories and help for small businesses and other startups that are diverse either through gender or race or be in veteran-owned. They're doing an amazing thing. So we continue, at Amazon to focus on #techforgood, as I know, you guys do at "theCUBE" as well. >> Right, right. Well, we used to call it a word and the triple line accounting. So it's not only just for profitability, but also for your employees and your constituents, which include your customers and your partners, but also the broader community and doing well for the broader community. And I do think, the younger people today that are entering the workforce have really forced that conversation and raised the status of mission-based activities. And really trying to think beyond just the bottom line, you still need to make money cause you got to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but that shouldn't be the only thing. And it shouldn't be really at the expense of everything else. So that's great to hear. And again, I think that the tech for good angle is a really, really important one. It probably doesn't get enough pub compared to some of the other stuff that we see in the news. So Sandy, congratulations to you and the team for weeding through all the applicants, selecting these 18 lucky winners. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview a few of them and share their stories on "theCUBE" and on this program. And, that's what we love, love to do since we can't be together in person as we have been so many times in the past. >> Yeah, so Jeff, if we could just show that slide real quick as we end. As we end, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of these partners who were here. All 18, you're going to get to hear most of them. I don't want to take away from their thunder, but I know that "theCUBE" has been doing interviews with them and their customers, see and hear the amazing stories that they have and how they really have helped customers beyond what we can normally even expect because they are award winners. So Jeff, thank you and "theCUBE" for helping us to find a way to get their stories out. Because it's not normal times, we didn't have our public conference, but this is a great way to celebrate each and every one of these 18. So I want to say, thank you, congratulations. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all the great work that you're doing. And to the rest of our partners, I hope that I see you on this list in our next award ceremony. >> Alright, well, thank you Sandy, for those kind words. And without further ado, we will end this segment, this kickoff and people can jump into the award-winner segments and learn lots. And hopefully, it won't be too long, Sandy, till we can actually meet again in-person. So thank you for watching this portion and enjoy the rest of the show. (calm music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its ecosystem partners. >> Well, welcome back here on theCUBE. We're at AWS re:Invent 2019. And every once in a while, we have one of these fascinating interviews that really reaches beyond the technological prowess that's available today into almost the human fascination of work, and that's what we have here. >> Big story. >> Dave Vellante, John Walls. We're joined by Sebastien De Halleux, who is the CEO, oh, COO, rather, of a company called Saildrone, and what they feature is wind-powered flying robots, and they've undertaken a project called Seabed 2030 that will encompass mapping the world's oceans. 85% of the oceans, we know nothing about. >> That's right. >> And, yeah, they're going to combine this tremendous technology with 100 of these flying drones. So, Sebastien, we're really excited to have you here. Thanks for joining us, and wow, what a project! So, just paint the high-level view, I mean, not to have a pun here, but just to share with folks at home a little bit about the motivation of this and what gap you're going to fill. Then we'll get into the technology. >> So I think, you know, the first question is to realize the role of oceans and how they affect you on land and all of us. Half the air you breathe, half the oxygen you breathe, comes from the ocean. They cover 70% of the planet and drive global weather, they drive all the precipitation. They also drive sea-level rise, which affects coastal communities. They provide 20% of the protein, all the fish that we all eat. So, you know, it's a very, very important survival system for all of us on land. The problem is, it's also a very hostile environment, very dangerous, and so, we know very little about it. Because we study it with a few ships and buoys, but that's really a few hundred data points to cover 70% of the planet, whereas on land, we have billions of data points that are connected. So, that's why we're trying to fundamentally address, is deploying sensors in the ocean using autonomous surface vehicles, what we call Saildrones, which are essentially, think of them as autonomous sailboats, seven meters, 23 feet, long, bright orange thing with a five-meter-tall sail, which is harnessing wind power for propulsion and solar power for the onboard electronics. >> And then you've got sonar attached to that, that is what's going to do the-- >> The mapping itself. >> The underwater mapping, right, so you can look for marine life, you can look for geographical or topographical anomalies and whatever, and so, it's a multidimensional look using this sonar that, I think, is powered down to seven kilometers, right? >> That's right. >> So that's how far down, 20,000, 30,000 feet. >> That's right. >> So you're going to be able to derive information from it. >> You essentially describe it as, you're painting the ocean with sound. >> That's absolutely right, whereas if you wanted to take a picture of land, you could fly an airplane or satellite and take a photograph, light does not travel through water that well. And so, we use sound instead of light, but the same principle, which is that we send those pulses of sound down, and the echo we listen to from the seabed, or from fish or critters in the water column. And so, yes, we paint the ocean with sound, and then we use machine learning to transform this data into biomass, statistical biomass distribution, for example, or a 3-D surface of the seabed, after processing the sound data. >> And you have to discern between different objects, right? I mean, you (laughs) showed one picture of a seal sunbathing on one of these drones, right? Or is there a boat on the horizon? How do you do that? >> It's an extremely hard problem, because if a human is at sea looking through binoculars at things on the horizon, you're going to become seasick, right? So imagine the state of the algorithm trying to process this in a frame where every pixel is moving all the time, unlike on land, where you have at least a static frame of reference. So it's a very hard problem, and one of the first problems is training data. Where do you get all this training data? So our drones, hundreds of drones, take millions of pictures of the ocean, and then we train the algorithm using either labeled datasets or other source of data, and we teach them what is a boat on the horizon, what does that look like, and what's a bird, what's a seal. And then, in some hard cases, when you have a whale under the Saildrone or a seal lying on it, we have a lot of fun pushing it on our blog and asking the experts to really classify it. (Dave and John laugh) You know, what are we looking at? Well, you see a fin, is it a shark? Is it a dolphin? Is it a whale? It can get quite heated. >> I hope it's a dolphin, I hope it's a dolphin. (Sebastien laughs) All right, so, I want to get into the technology, but I'm just thinking about the practical operation of this. They're wind-powered. >> Sebastien: Yes. >> But they just can't go on forever, right? I mean, they have to touch down at some point somehow, right? They're going to hit water. How do you keep this operational when you've got weather situations, you've got some days maybe where wind doesn't exist or there's not enough there to keep it upright, keep it operational, I mean. >> It's a very good question. I mean, the ocean is often described as one of the toughest environments in the universe, because you have corrosive force, you have pounding waves, you have things you can hit, marine mammals, whales who can breach on you, so it's a very hard problem. They leave the dock on their own, and they sail around the world for up to a year, and then they come back to the same dock on their own. And they harvest all of their energy from the environment. So, wind for propulsion, and there's always wind on the ocean. As soon as you have a bit of pressure differential, you have wind. And then, sunlight and hydrogeneration for electrical power, which powers the onboard computers, the sensors, and the satellite link that tells it to get back to shore. >> It's all solar-powered. >> Exactly, so, no fuel, no engine, no carbon emission, so, a very environmentally friendly solution. >> So, what is actually on them, well, first of all, you couldn't really do this without the cloud, right? >> That's right. >> And maybe you could describe why that is. And I'm also interested in, I mean, it's the classic edge use case. >> Sure, the ultimate edge. >> I mean, if you haven't seen Sebastien's keynote, you got to. There's just so many keynotes here, but it should be on your top 10 list, so Google Saildrone keynote AWS re:Invent 2019 and watch it. It was really outstanding. >> Sebastien: Thank you. >> But help us understand, what's going on in the cloud and what's going on on the drone? >> So it is really an AWS-powered solution, because the drones themselves have a low level of autonomy. All they know how to do is to go from Point A to Point B and take wave, current, and wind into consideration. All the intelligence happens shoreside. So, shoreside, we crunch huge amounts of datasets, numerical models that describe pressure field and wind and wave and current and sea ice and all kinds of different parameters, we crunch this, we optimize the route, and we send those instructions via satellite to the vehicle, who then follow the mission plan. And then, the vehicle collects data, one data point every second, from about 25 different sensors, and sends this data back via satellite to the cloud, where it's crunched into products that include weather forecasts. So you and I can download the Saildrone Forecast app and look at a very beautiful picture of the entire Earth, and look at, where is it going to rain? Where is it going to wind? Should I have my barbecue outside? Or, is a hurricane coming down towards my region? So, this entire chain, from the drone to the transmission to the compute to the packaging to the delivery in near real time into your hand, is all done using AWS cloud. >> Yeah, so, I mean, a lot of people use autonomous vehicles as the example and say, "Oh, yeah, that could never be done in the cloud," but I think we forget sometimes, there are thousands of use cases where you don't need, necessarily, that real-time adjustment like you do in an autonomous vehicle. So, your developers are essentially interacting with the cloud and enabling this, right? >> Absolutely, so we are, as I said, really, the foundation for our data infrastructure is AWS, and not just for the data storage, we're talking about petabytes and petabytes of data if you think about mapping 70% of the world, right, but also on the compute side. So, running weather models, for example, requires supercomputers, and this is how it's traditionally done, so our team has taken those supercomputing jobs and brought them into AWS using all the new instances like C3 and C5 and P3, and all this high-performance computing, you can now move from old legacy supercomputers into the cloud, and so, that really is an amazing new capability that did not exist even five years ago. >> Sebastien, did you ever foresee the day where you might actually have some compute locally, or even some persistent-- >> So on the small Saildrones, which is the majority of our fleet, which is going to number a thousand Saildrones at scale, there is very little compute, because the amount of electrical power available is quite low. >> Is not available, yeah. >> However, on the larger Saildrone, which we announced here, which is called the Surveyor-- >> How big, 72 feet, yeah. >> Which is a 72-foot machine, so this has a significant amount of compute, and it has onboard machine learning and onboard AI that processes all the sonar data to send the finished product back to shore. Because, you know, no matter how fast satellite connectivity's evolving, it's always a small pipe, so you cannot send all the raw data for processing on shore. >> I just want to make a comment. So people often ask Andy Jassy, "You say you're misunderstood. "What are you most misunderstood about?" I think this is one of the most misunderstood things about AWS. The edge is going to be won by developers, and Amazon is basically taking its platform and allowing it to go to the edge, and it's going to be a programmable edge, and that's why I really love the strategy. But please, yeah. >> Yeah, no, we talked about this project, you know, Seabed 2030, but you talked about weather forecasts, and whatever. Your client base already, NASA, NOAA, research universities, you've got an international portfolio. So, you've got a whole (laughs) business operation going. I don't want to give people at home the idea that this is the only thing you have going on. You have ongoing data collection and distribution going on, so you're meeting needs currently, right? >> That's right, we supply governments around the world, from the U.S. government, of course, to Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, the European Union, well, you name it. If you've got a coastline, you've got a data problem. And no government has ever come and told us, "We have enough ships or enough data on the oceans." And so, we are really servicing a global user base by using this infrastructure that can provide you a thousand times more data and a whole lot of new insights that can be derived from that data. >> And what's your governance structure? Are you a commercial enterprise, or are you going-- >> We are a commercial enterprise, yes, we're based in San Francisco. We're backed by long-term impact venture capital. We've been revenue-generating since day one, and we just offer a tremendous amount of value for a much cheaper cost. >> You used the word impact. There's a lot of impact funds that are sort of emerging now. At the macro, talk about the global impact that you guys hope to have, and the outcome that you'd like to see. >> Yeah, you know, our planetary data is all about understanding things that impact humanity, right? Right now, here at home, you might have a decent weather forecast, but if you go to another continent, would that still be the case? Is there an excuse for us to not address this disparity of information and data? And so, by running global weather model and getting global datasets, you can really deliver an impact at very low marginal cost for the entire global population with the same level of quality that we enjoy here at home. That's really an amazing kind of impact, because, you know, rich and developed nations can afford very sophisticated infrastructure to count your fish and establish fishing quarters, but other countries cannot. Now, they can, and this is part of delivering the impact, it's leveraging this amazing infrastructure and putting it in the hands, with a simple product, of someone whether they live on the islands of Tuvalu or in Chicago. >> You know, it's part of our mission to share stories like this, that's how we have impact, so thank you so much for-- >> I mean, we-- >> The work that you're doing and coming on theCUBE. >> This is cool. We talk about data lakes, this is data oceans. (Dave laughs) This is big-time stuff, like, serious storage. All right, Sebastien, thank you. Again, great story, and we wish you all the best and look forward to following this for the next 10 years or so. Seabed 2030, check it out. Back with more here from AWS re:Invent 2019. You're watching us live, right here on theCUBE. (upbeat pop music)

>> Live, from Washington DC, it's theCube, covering the AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. (techno music) >> Welcome back everyone it's theCube's exclusive coverage here, day two of the Amazon Web Sources public sector summit. This is the public sector across the globe. This is their reinvent, this is their big event. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, and also David Vellante's been here doing interviews. Our next guest is, we got Doug Van Dyke, he's the director of U.S. Federal Civilian and Non Profit Sectors of the group, welcome to theCube, good to see you. >> John, thank you very much for having me. >> So you've been in the federal, kind of game, and public sector for a while. You've known, worked with Theresa, at Microsoft before she came to Reinvent. >> 15 years now. >> How is she doing? >> She's doing great, we saw her on main stage yesterday. Force of nature, love working with her, love working for her. This is, like you were saying, this is our re-invent here in D.C. and 14,000 plus, 15,000 registrations, she's on the top of her game. >> What I'm really impressed with her and your team as well, is the focus on growth, but innovation, right? it's not just about, knock down the numbers and compete. Certainly you're competing against people who are playing all kinds of tricks. You got Oracle out there, you got IBM, we've beaten at the CIA. It's a street battle out there in this area in D.C. You guys are innovative, in that you're doing stuff with non-profits, you got mission driven, you're doing the educate stuff, so it's not just a one trick pony here. Take us through some of the where you guys heads are at now, because you're successful, everyone's watching you, you're not small anymore. What's the story? >> So, I think the differentiator for us is our focus on the customers. You know, we've got a great innovation story at the Department of Veterans Affairs with vets.gov. So five years ago if a veteran went out to get the services that the government was going to provide them, they've have to pick from 200 websites. It just wasn't to navigate through 200 websites. So, the innovation group at Veteran's Affairs, the digital services team, figured out, let's pull this all together under a single portal with vets.gov. It's running on AWS, and now veterans have a single interface into all the services they want. >> Doug, one of the things I've been impressed, my first year coming to this. I've been to many other AWS shows, but you've got all these kind of overlapping communities. Of course, the federal government, plus state and local, education. You've got this civilian agencies, so give us a little bit of flavor about that experience here at the show. What trends your hearing from those customers. >> So what's great for me is I've been here almost six and a half years, and I've seen the evolution. And you know, there were the early customers who were just the pioneers like Tom Soderstrom, from JPL, who was on main stage. And then we saw the next wave where there were programs that needed a course correction, like Center for Medicare Medicaid with Healthcare.gov. Where Amazon Web Services came in, took over, helped them with the MarketPlace, you know, get that going. And now we're doing some great innovative things at CMS, aggregating data from all 50 states, about 75 terabytes, so they can do research on fraud, waste, and abuse that they couldn't do before. So we're helping our customers innovate on the cloud, and in the cloud, and it's been a great opportunity. >> Oh my God, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Soderstrom two years ago. >> Okay. >> Everybody gets real excited when you talk about space. It's easy to talk about innovation there, but you know, talk about innovation throughout the customers, because some people will look at it, and be like, oh come on, government and their bureaucracy, and they're behind. What kind of innovation are you hearing from your customers? >> So there's an exciting with Department of Energy. They, you know there's a limited amount of resources that you have on premise. Well, they're doing research on the large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland. And they needed to double the amount of capacity that they had on premise. So, went to the AWS cloud, fired up 50,000 cores, brought the data down, and they could do research on it. And so, we're making things possible that couldn't be done previously. >> What are some of the examples that government entities and organizations are doing to create innovation in the private sector? Cause the private sector's been the leader to the public sector, and know you're seeing people starting to integrate it. I mean, half the people behind us, that are exhibiting here, are from the commercial side doing business in the public sector. And public sector doing, enabling action in the private sector. Talk about that dynamic, cause it's not just public sector. >> Right. >> Can you just share your? >> These public, private. Great example with NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. They have a new program called NEXRAD. It's the next generation of doppler radar. They have 160 stations across the world, collecting moisture, air pressure, all of the indicators that help predict the weather. They partner with us at AWS to put this data out, and through our open data program. And then organizations like the Weather Bug can grab that information, government information, and use it to build the application that you have on your I-Phone that predicts the weather. So you know whether to bring an umbrella to work tomorrow. >> So you're enabling the data from, or stuff from the public, for private, entrepreneurial activity? >> Absolutely. >> Talk about the non-profits. What's going on there? Obviously, we heard som stuff on stage with Teresa. The work she's showcasing, a lot of the non-profit. A lot of mission driven entrepreneurships happening. Here in D.C, it's almost a Silicon Valley like dynamic, where stuff that was never funded before is getting funded because they can do Cloud. They can stand it up pretty quickly and get it going. So, you're seeing kind of a resurgence of mission driven entrepreneurships. What is the nonprofit piece of it look now for AWS? How do you talk about that? >> Sure. Well again, one of the areas that I'm really passionate about being here, and being one of the people who helped start our nonprofit vertical inside of AWS, we now have over 12, I'm sorry, 22,000 nonprofits using AWS to keep going. And the mission of our nonprofit vertical is just to make sure that no nonprofit would ever fail for lack of infrastructure. So we partnered with Tech Soup, which is an organization that helps vet and coordinate our Cloud credits. So nonprofits, small nonprofit organizations can go out through Tech Soup, get access to credits, so they don't have to worry about their infrastructure. And you know we.. >> Free credits? >> Those credits, with the Tech Soup membership, they get those, yeah, and using the word credit, it's more like a grant of AWS cloud. >> You guys are enabling almost grants. >> Yes, cloud grants. Not cash grants, but cloud grants. >> Yeah, yeah great. So, how is that converting for you, in your mind? Can you share some examples of some nonprofits that are successful? >> Sure. A great presentation, and I think it was your last interview. A game changer. Where these smaller nonprofits can have a really large impact. And, but then we're also working with some of the larger nonprofits too. The American Heart Association, that built their precision medicine platform to match genotype, phenotype information, so we can further cardiovascular research. They have this great mission statement, they want to reduce cardiovascular disease by 20 percent by 2020. And we're going to help them do that. >> You guys are doing a great job, I got to say. It's been fun to watch, and now, we've been covering you guys for the past two years now, here at the event. A lot more coming on, in D.C. The CIA went in a few years ago. Certainly a shot heard around the cloud. That's been well documented. The Department of Defense looking good off these certain indicators. But, what's going on in the trends in the civilian agencies? Can you take a minute to give an update on that? >> Yeah, so I started earlier saying I've seen the full spectrum. I saw the very beginning, and then I've seen all the way to the end. Where, I think it was three years ago at this event, I talked to Joe Piva, who is the former CIO for the Department of Commerce ITA, the International Trade Association. He had data center contracts coming up for renewal. And he made a really brave decision to cancel those contracts. So he had 18 months to migrate the entire infrastructure for ITA over on to AWS. And you know, there's nothing like an impending date to move. So, we've got agencies that are going all in on AWS, and I think that's just a sign of the times. >> Data centers, I mean anyone who were startup nine years into it, we've never had a data center. I think most startups don't.. >> Born in the cloud. >> Born in the cloud. Thanks so much Dave, for coming on. Appreciate the time. Congratulations on your success. AWS public sector doing great, global public sector. You guys are doing great. Building nations, we had Baharain on as well. Good luck, and the ecosystems looks good. You guys did a good job. So, congratulations. >> John, Stu, thank you very much for having me here today. >> Live coverage here, we are in Washington D.C. For Cube. Coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. We'll be back with more. Stay with us, we've got some more interviews after this short break. (techno 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. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE. We are live in Washington, D.C. at Amazon Web Services, AWS Public Sector Summit. This is their big event, this is their reinvent for the public sector, but it's technically a summit. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Craig Atkinson who is the CEO of JHC Technologies, small business partner doing huge deals. Great to have you on, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, you guys have a lot of experience working on the front lines with some really big deployments, implementations with cloud, working with some agencies. So, first question right out of the gate is, is this really happening, this cloud thing? >> Yeah absolutely, you know, we started the company in 2010 and one of my partners and I worked on recovery.gov as a cloud engineer and it was just something that, at the time, no one knew what the cloud was and we really looked at it as an opportunity when we started the business. This is where things are going to go. We didn't realize when we started the company, though, as a small business, you can't just get started and say, yeah, we know the cloud and can help you do these things. You have to have past performance, you have to have relationships. And so, it's taken so long for the government to get around to the point where they're really just starting now to put a lot of larger production workloads into the cloud. And it's been a long journey where you've had, it's like Groundhog Day, you have the same conversation over and over again with different people and different organizations about security, about compliance, about a variety of issues, how you procure it and everyone has the same questions, has the same problems and it's so much about education. >> Yeah, and saving time and there's a lot of upfront medicine you got to take. Like you said, if you're new, it's like a jungle, oh, wait a minute, I thought it was going to be easier. What was the key motivational point, how did you keep going, what was the driving force? Was it Amazon tailwind for you, was it more of... >> Our relationship with Amazon Web Services has been great. They've been a tremendous supporter of us. And, as a small business, you know, they really relied on their partners to be a force multiplier for them in the public sector space, And that's been tremendous for us. They've really allowed us to play... >> And that's true, that's actually, they're doing that. >> Absolutely, and not necessarily the case as much on the commercial side where they're more apt to deal directly with the customers. But, they really relied on the partner network, partner ecosystem, on the public sector space to really help them drive things forward. So, for us, to have that relationship has been tremendous value for us. But also, we do things and allow those to broaden the group and what we have from a vehicles perspective, small business set of size that allow us to do business with organizations that AWS can't. >> Well I think I'm going to explain what you guys do, great commentary on the cloud and your opportunity. What do you guys do for services, what kind of services are you providing, and can you take a minute to talk about the company. >> Sure, we started the company in 2010, really it was my two partners and I, we'd been consultants in the IT industry, and worked in the beltway, and felt like we should do a company that was different than everyone else, more of a commercial style focused entity, where it's about the technology and how do you bring that disruptive technology to government and business so that they can take advantage of it as opposed to being overwhelmed by it, and the cloud is really that underlying core technology that really affects, it's really a paradigm shift for how organizations do business. So for us, that's the area we wanted to get into, and we did a lot around mobility, a lot around collaboration, virtualization, virtual apps, virtual desktops, but really at the end of the day, the cloud-- >> Are you guys writing software, are you an integrator? >> Well, we're really, it was about building a company that technologists, who are in this area, there's some great smart people who work in the D.C. area, people will, in the Beltway, you'll sit at a desk, doing a job, for five years, your company will lose that contract to some other company, you'll stay in the same seat, you'll go work for a different company for the next five years. Somebody else will win the contract and you'll stay in that same seat. So, you're really working for the agency and not really working for the company that you're employed by, and we really wanted to build something that was more commercial-esque where it was about what do you bring to me as an organization, how do I put you in a position that you're challenged by the workload that's in front of you that you get to do different things and that you're more upwardly mobile as opposed to just being a butt in a seat, as with a lot of, what work they call it. >> So this morning, Theresa showed a slide, I think I counted 60 consulting partners. Now you guys have achieved a premier consulting partners status, you're not like a everyday name, like some of the big guys that are on there, so how did you achieve that, how do you differentiate, in that sea of really world-class consultants, and how do you achieve that premier status with AWS? >> It's been a lot of work for us. There are some organizations that have gotten it just based off their size. AWS needs to have those larger partners. But we, I think we really did earn it, we've met every requirement to get to that status and for us, it's a huge badge of honor that we've achieved that, and it's a lot of hard work for a small company. We're coming up on 70 employees, so we're not 10,000, 20,000 employee environment, so for us to achieve that and have the level of sales that we do in the space, it's certainly not easy, it's really being singularly focused on the vision of how we want to run the company and sticking to that, even though the market may try to push you other directions, and even your customers say we're not ready for cloud, you have to really stick to it and be focused on that being your core business. >> You talked about moving production workloads to the cloud earlier. I wonder if you could help us sort of squint through that because when you talk to what Andy Jassy calls the Old Guard, John, right, they all say, people aren't moving production workloads to the cloud. When you talk to AWS, you just referenced, production workloads are going into the cloud. I like to talk to consultants that are at least quasi-independent. What's really happening there? What kind of production workloads are going into the cloud? >> I think we're just now hitting that part of the market, where we're starting to see more of the large scale production workloads being moved to the cloud. We moved our first organization, 2500 user environment, that we moved to the cloud three, four years ago, so for us, being able to do that kind of workload to be all in on the cloud, isn't something that we shied away from. But when you started to deal with a lot of these organizations, we have prime contracts with NOAA, which has massive data, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and working with the USGS, some of these agencies have massive data, they're just weren't really built as an organization to be able to adopt that cloud technology, so we really looked at it a couple years ago, and made a bit of a conscious effort to help to push them as an organization to help them understand the structure of how they need to really build their organization. We're very much an I till shop, how you build an IT process, but even with that, it doesn't really take in innovative technology. The speed at which AWS innovates and produces new technology, new features, is something that I don't think that anyone has seen before in an IT realm, so, building an organization that's able to understand that, to be able to implement that technology and be in a compliant manner to make it available to their application owners and their users is something that you really have to have the right organizational structure to be able to achieve. >> And why is that not a problem for AWS customers, your customers, because if a legacy IT vendor, first of all, they can't innovate that fast, but if they were to innovate that fast, they tend to move at a much slower speed, the IT organizations that buy from them. Why is that pace of innovation not problematic for your customers? >> I think it is, and again I think, our challenge has been to help them to build the type of an organization that can respond to that, knowing that there's one constant in IT technology today, which is change. Whatever's here today is going to be different tomorrow. There's going to be new features, and you have to be able to build an organization that isn't just we're going to build a data center, build a bunch of firewalls around it, put our data there and we're going to be safe. Today's IT landscape moves too quickly. You really have to build, look to the way it's done in the commercial enterprises, the way a Netflix builds really to be destructive and how they build their technology, knowing it's going to fail, and look to do that same type of implementation, help build your security within a federal organization. >> You're going to change the culture and process, everything all at once with new tech, so I want to ask you the question that's in everyone's mind, mine included, what's your observation of the current state of affairs with respect to the cloud native and cloud because you've got people who might jump on it, say I love this, some'll be fearful, you're there, what's the new aha moment that people are having, can you share some insight into (laughs) what's going on in the mind and the actual implementations, what's changed, what's the most important story that we should be telling? >> We're right now at that point. I think I've heard reports less than 7% of the data center workloads have been moved to infrastructures of service. I think that's probably even on the high side, 7%, but you're now starting to get all of the work that we've done, a lot of these organizations is they've been pilots, proof of concepts, really dipping their toe, large organizations just dipping their toe in the water. We're getting to the point now where these organizations are approaching their primary applications for their organization saying we're ready to move that too. For us it's a lot, it's been so much education so much work to try to help get them there, so for us we're just excited to actually see it come to fruition. >> In 2010, around the time you started your company, I remember, John, VM Ware, at the time Paul Moritz was saying any app, any workload will run on VM Ware, and there were a lot of skeptics, and they've largely achieved that, remember they used to talk about the software mainframe. You know with the cloud, similar kind of narrative. Now it's a little different now, let's take the example of Oracle in particular, you're seeing Oracle use for example its pricing power to really try to force people to use its own cloud jacking up prices if they want to use it on Amazon. What do you tell customers that are basically reliant on that Oracle database? Should they move that into the cloud, should they try to figure out okay let's go to Aurora or Redshift, or some other better, what's the right strategy? >> So I mean we're a technology agnostic, generally speaking-- >> Right that's why I can trust your answer here. >> But we really do lean to where what we call best in breed technologies. So AWS has been something that we've been all in on AWS since 2011, 2012. We made that a conscious effort and they've really done some things I think as part of their business model that we really appreciate as a partner, and as a customer. We've always had our infrastructure from day one on AWS. Also our infrastructure on Office 365. We understand where to focus those efforts. When it comes to an organization like an Oracle, I don't want to necessarily disparage them, but they're not necessarily focused on bringing the best value to their customers. A lot of times it seems that it's about what's right for the bottom line of their stockholders and what drives up the price of their stock as opposed to what's the best solution I could put forward to really be great at database. I think if you look at it, AWS has already built a roadmap to where you can get 70-80% of your database applications to be migrated to an open software database model, and you can massively reduce, so many of these large organizations, a large portion of their IT spend is on those Oracle and those specialty applications. >> It's the licenses too. >> So if you can drop that cost by 60, 70%. What we always tell those organizations, don't just throw that money away, take those savings, roll that into making a better application. Use that 60, 70% savings and fix how you deliver. Make your data more mobile, make it more available to your userbase. >> Invest in analytics. >> Invest back in how you're doing, using Redshift or whatever other analytics, to get better results. >> Awesome, Craig, great insight, congratulations on your success at JHC Technologies, you're the founder and CEO of, congratulations on all the hard work, you got to just, I don't want to say do your time, I've heard that quoted in the government sector, you got to do your time, time's shrinking with the cloud, so you've got a great opportunity. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, for having me. >> You're watching theCUBE here live in Washington, D.C. I'm John Furrier, stay with us, day one here is continuing, be right back. (synth music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Orlando, Florida I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co host Jeff Frick. We're joined by Megan Smith. We're very excited to have you on the show. >> It's good to be here >> She is the third US CTO and also the CEO of a new company, Shift7.co, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, it's great to be here. It's so fun to be at Hopper, >> Rebecca: It is, it is! >> It's cool, it's the Grace Hopper celebration, because we're trying to celebrate women in computing, and we're what, at 18 thousand people now, >> The biggest ever, >> Plus I think, 6 thousand people joining on the livestream, which is great. >> Before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about your role as the 3rd US CTO, and just talking about getting more technology into government to help leaders work together, and move faster. Tell us a little about this initiative. >> What's so great, is it's not partisan, fixing the government and making it work better, so all the work that we were doing continues. What we were able to put in place, during the Obama administration, and continues to Trump, were things like, the CT office. Having technical people, so I worked at Google, people work at Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, these companies who have that background, to join in on policy conversations, one, to join in on capacity building the government, so data sciences and tech and, let's have our services be as great as Amazon, or as Twitter, or Oracle, and not be sort of retro, really serve the American people. And then also, helping the American people in general, with capacity building, things like computer science for all. So that was an initiative that continues to get all of our children to have coding at school. That all children, you couldn't graduate from high school without having had some experience on learning of coding Coding is a 21st century fluency, it's a skill we all need, Like freshman biology. You want to know some biology, you want to know some coding, you want to know how to write, so making sure they have is tech-up, which was a program we started to help train Americans, there's six hundred thousand jobs open, in the United States, and they pay 50% more than the average American salary. The companies are starving. How do we rapidly get more Americans into these jobs? It turns out that people have, of course, created these fabulous code boot camps, you can train in three months for these jobs, some of them are paid, some times they pay you, all different kinds, some are online, some are offline, they're all over the country. So we're able to get more people to consider, a job like that, culturally they think, Well I don't, why would I, I don't know how to do that. Well you can, this is a fun and interesting and exciting career, you can do digital marketing, you can do user interface design. You can get involved in front end or back end coding, product management, all those things, sales. And so, how do you pull lots more Americans in, get our companies fueled so we have really the economic opportunity, and they're all over the country. Location wise, and topic wise. So we did tech hour now, and a tech jobs tour, which is not what we did in government, but we continue some of that work. >> This weird dichotomy, because on one end, people are worried about tech taking jobs, on the other hand, there's a ton of open tech jobs. And there's this transition period, that's difficult, obviously for people that didn't grow up, but one of the keynote speakers today, told a really heartening story, that she didn't get into it until the day she had to leave her abusive husband, and now she is a coder >> That's Doctor Sue Black, who was just given the Order of the British Empire, I mean, she is an incredible computer scientist. Yes, she escaped an abusive marriage with three small children, in her early 20s, I think. Ended up moving into public housing, and dealing with three children only being the school from 9 until 3, and eventually getting her PhD in computer science, and really, she started Techmoms now, she continues to do research in other things, but she's really trying to use her story, and her organizing capacity, to have more people realize this isn't hard like figuring out gravity waves that won the Nobel prize. This is hard like writing a hard essay, so we all can learn to write an essay. It takes some mastery work, you don't learn it in kindergarten but by the time you're in 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th grade, you can do it. >> It's not rocket science. >> Right, so coding is like that. >> The other piece you said that's very interesting, is the consumerization of IT. We've seen it at enterprise, a huge trend. But, now I expect everything that's on my phone, when I interact with Facebook or Amazon, or whatever, to be in all the applications, so, as you said, that's influencing government, and the way they have to deliver services, and I would imagine, too, with kind of the next wave of kids coming in, graduating, going into public service, they certainly have that expectation, right? They've been working on their phone forever of course it should be on the phone. >> And so we want everybody in our country fluent in computer science and coding at a basic level, like again, like freshman biology or takin' chemistry in high school, or taking writing. So that everyone could realize this is not rocket science we could have these kinds of capabilities as part of our services, from Housing and Urban Development, from the Department of Education. You know, a lot of us use our phones to get places, you know, on our maps, and so that's actually data coming from the US Geological survey, if you're looking at the weather, you're looking at NOAA's satellites, this is open government data. We were able to open over two hundred thousand data sets, from all over government, not private data, but public data, that you could make an entire app store, or Google play set of products on top of that. Government wouldn't have to pay for that, it just packages up the API as well. A really good example of that, is the US census team. There's nothing more big data than census, they have all of our information from a data perspective, and so they did opportunity.census.gov, and they said to various agencies, let us help you bridge these data sets into something that someone could build on top of, like we're seeing from the courses sector, we saw wonderful things like, Housing and Urban Development said, okay, our challenges are housing affordability, mobility, these are the challenges instead of having HUD make an app for Americans to come to, they just can explain what their problem is, what data sets, and then engage extraordinary companies, like airbnb, Redfins, Zillow, these fabulous tech companies, who can make instead a product for 100% of the Americans, rather than only wealthy or middle class Americans, and so they did things like, opportunity score, and airbnb helping you figuring out, if I rent a room in my house I can make my rent more affordable, very creative apps, that we can see, same thing for the Department of Ed or Department of Labor, and as the data gets out there, and as apps come, also the opportunity for data science and machine learning. What if, as much as we serve ads to ourselves, in these algorithms, what if we use the algorithms to help Americans find a job that they would love? You know, job matching, and these kinds of opportunities. of the problems in the world, and helping government get more fluent at that. And the way to do that is not so much, jam the government You have to do this, but find terrific talent like we see at Hopper, and have them cycle into the government, to be co-leaders just like a surgeon general would come. >> Are you facing recruitment challenges in that same way though? In the sense that technology is having a hard enough time recruiting and retaining women, but the government, too, is that seen as enough of an employer of choice for young talented, bright ambitious, young women? >> I'm not in government now, but when we were in there, we found a very interesting thing. Alex Mcgovern, who had been the general counsel of Twitter who was Stephanie's CTO with me and led a lot of our tech quals we called TQ like tech IQ in policy, together with economists and lawyers and others have if we're going to decide net neutrality, let's include everyone, including computer scientists, and we're going to sue bridge and open source, So we talked about that, and on the way going in Mcgovern, he said, wouldn't it be cool if, just like when you look at a lawyer's resume, you might see that they clerk and they served their county through clerking and through the judicial system, as well as being a private lawyer, they were a public defender, that's a pretty normal thing to see on a legal resume. If you looked at medical, you might see them going into NIH or doing some research, if you looked at a scientist, they might have gone to, done some NSF work or others. But for the tech crew, there is of course amazing technical people in NASA, NAH and the Department of Energy, and there's great IT teams, but there's not this thing that the Silicon Valley crew resume would say, oh, yeah, I served my country. So that's why, under President Obama, we were able to create these incredible programs. The Presidential Innovation Fellows, which was a one year term of service, The United States Digital Service, which is a three months to a two year term of service in the VA. What's more amazing if you build Amazon, than to go as a second act and help our veterans? It's an incredible honor, to the point of, will they come? Yes, that's what we were hoping, could we have that be a normal thing, and yes it's become a normal thing. And the Trump administration continues it. The 18F team is in the general services administration, they're on 18th and F so they have a code name. But that particular team is located around the country, not only in DC but in San Francisco, in Chicago, and others. So you see this tech sector flowing now into the government on a regular basis, and we welcome more peoples. The government is who shows up to help, so we need the tech sector to show up cause we've got a lot of money as a country, but if we're not effectively using it we're not serving the American people and foster children, veterans, elders, others need the services that they deserve and we have the money, so let's make it happen the way the tech sector is delivering Amazon packages or searches. >> What is your feeling, this is not your first Grace Hopper obviously, but what is your feeling about this conference, and advice that you would give to young women who are here, maybe for their first or second time, in terms of getting the most their time here? >> You know, I think the main thing is, it's a celebration, that's fun and you can walk up to anyone, so just talk to everyone. I've been talking to a million people on the floor, fabulous. Students are here, more senior technical leaders are here. We've been running speed mentoring, we're running a program called the Tech Jobs Tour, it's at Techjobstour.com, it's a #Americanshiring, and we've been going to 50 different cities and so we're running a version of that, and we do speed mentoring, so come to the speed mentoring sessions, it's a five minute pop, talk to someone about what you're tryin' to do. Lot's of programs like that, get into the sessions, come to the keynotes which are so inspiring, and Melinda Gates was amazing today, Dr. Fefe Lee was incredible, just across aboard, Dr Sue Black was here, I thought it was great today, actually, just to reflect on Melinda's keynote, I think this might have been the first time, I was talking to her, that she's really talked about her own technical experience >> That struck me, too! As a coder, starting in computer science. I didn't really understand that she had really started very early, with Apple 3 and the story of her dad >> And her love of her Apple 3, right! and really high school coding, which is so important for young people in high school and middle school, even younger. The Muscogee Creek Tribe, in Oklahoma, is teaching robotics in head start, so we can start in preschool. Just make it fun, and interesting. They're funny, they don't do battle bots, because you don't really want to teach 3 and 4 year olds to fight, so instead they have collaborative robots. >> Robots who work together Age appropriate. >> Well Megan Smith, this has been so fun talking to you, thanks so much for coming on our show. >> Thanks for having me. >> We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference just after this, I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick (music)