>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering PentahoWorld 2017. Brought to you by Hitachi Vantara. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of PentahoWorld, brought to you, of course, by Hitachi Vantara. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, James Kobielus. We have two guests today, we have Michael Becker, a senior chief inspector, and Henry Liebrenz, the police sergeant of the German Federal Police, the Bundespolizei. Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. So do you want to start out by telling us, telling our viewers a little bit about Bundespolizei and what you do there? >> Okay. The Federal German Police employs about 41,000 people, and as part of Federal German Ministry of Interior, we have, the police is responsible for many demanding and varied tasks, like air control or air safety, rail patrol, water control, crime reduction, and patrol the high seas. And besides an internal task, we do many international missions, police missions all over the world and missions in the European Union for neighboring. And our job, our main job is to development specialty police software. You couldn't buy (foreign words) products, and the development was our own framework based on lamp. >> Classical open source systems plus open source databases plus PHP, it's script language, on the top of it's end. And we built our own absolute framework on this, it's exclusively for us and that's our main job, to build applications on this top. >> And besides our name, our main job we are responsible for the data warehouse and responsible for integration, data integration technologies of the Federal Police. >> So you're both within the IT organization of Bundespolizei, okay. >> Yes, we stay in the IT department that belongs to headquarter. In Germany, or in German police, we have one headquarter, we have 11 district offices, about 80 regional offices, and about 160 local offices. >> All over Germany, is it. >> So when you're thinking about your software challenges, you have a lot of different obstacles: safety, operational, security. What are some of the things that you're taking into account when you're implementing software? >> Um, what we take in account? Not so easy to (speaking in foreign language). >> What is your approach? What are the things on your mind that is keeping you up at night? >> We have two different ways. The main way is to build software. And we have in special case. In turn case we build software that bring is on the point for this case. The other way is we have a way to product data in this cases. That's the other way. What can we do with this data? That's the other case around Pentaho. We want to have more benefit with this kind of data. >> What sort of data driven application development do you do or do you oversee for Bundespolizei? Can you describe some of the applications within their specific functions? >> We have one main application is our time planning tool. So all the shifts on the agencies it's possible to plan. In one case that we build on this platform and it's exclusively for us. We have the situation that other polices in Germany ask us about. Hey, that's very a good solution. Maybe we can take it also for us. But because it's a little bit different for normal situations outside and in other companies. Because we have the situation 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year to bring our services. We have a big many rules about this kind of working. The offices get some more money in the night or it's Saturday and something like this it's not so easy to implement with normal software. So we were at the case what we do. Then okay we do it ourself and that's exactly on point. >> You describe the rules, you're describing the rules that are provided from the European Union or from your government in terms of security, privacy, and so forth. Is that what you're describing? How have this whole total set of rules and policies and mandates shaped your data management strategy within your organization? How does the Pentaho set of solutions support those requirements? >> I think with Pentaho I told it yesterday also it was for us definitely the game changer. It's definitely true. Before we don't have the chance to build something like this only was two us. But now we have the big Swiss knife. We get entrance with especially with the Ketel, solution, PDI. >> With Ketel everything is possible. >> It's not possible to build your own. >> That was the entrance to build a strategy about it. Then at this point we had the solution to let the data flow wherever you want. Then we start okay, when can we have data every time at every point. So what can we do with it? What is the benefit for us? We start to come in discussion with our other departments inside what is your problem? What can we do to help you to get more benefit about it? >> How much sharing goes on between departments? >> Henry: The sharing? >> Yes, in terms of as you said, how can I help you? Oh, we are doing something over here. >> I think it's a classic job like other. (speaking in foreign language) We do it inside so we go to the other departments and have this part of discussion. We try to bring it in the right way. >> What degree of this sharing is intergovernmental? Meaning you are reaching out to your peer agencies within the European Union maybe through Interpol to other nations? Is any of that going on and is Pentaho playing a role in terms of helping you in that regard? (speaking in foreign language) >> How we have to say? >> If you don't want to say or can't say. >> Actually I think in German or in European it's not so big. I don't know why, I can't believe it. But it's also to take advantage at Pentaho that you can start at any time. You can start as a community. We work also before, two years with the (voice is muffled). And started this year with enterprise and we have only one day for integration from the community server of the new enterprise server. No problems. I think that is a great benefit. You can almost start with a small problem or data integration. >> In the past the other big companies maybe they had a little bit earlier start. Pentaho, the goal to come along the other players. I think in Europe, especially in Germany at the moment can be good. >> In Germany we have a situation over Pentaho user meeting or Pentaho community meetings but also other agencies come and ask why Pentaho and how did you do it? >> Is there an ongoing program of working with other federal agencies in Germany to share the best practices you've learned from using data at least to manage your agency's requirements? What could they learn from what you've done? >> The progress is starting now so the other come to us. We meet together and they want to take a look directly on our screens and want to see some cases. We play for them live and it's a very interesting situation. When they see eh, you have the same problems as I. It's interesting. >> And very important is also that we learned and we have learned from Pentaho that everything is possible. You need much less time for everything or for every kind of problem. We are very fast. Before we used to have another (foreign word), it's called Excel. It's crazy, it's good for statistics but we have no data quality. >> It's not possible to work with big data. (voice is muffled) >> Our data are actual, daily actual. Before we wait for one month or two months. >> Before we had exactly one day per month. At this day the data was correct only one day. And other other days we had to collect the data for the next month. >> It's a whole new world with Pentaho. Henry and Michael, thank you so much for coming on theCube. It was great having you on here. >> Thank you very much. >> We will have more from theCube's live coverage of PentahoWorld just after this. (upbeat digital music)

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