>> From Seattle, Washington, it's the Cube! Covering AWS Imagine, brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Rick here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference, it's the second year of the conference, we came up last year, I think it was like 400 people, this year's like 800 people, like all the Amazons, it grows and grows and grows. Really again, specifically a carve out from the public sector group, all about education, that's K-12, that's higher education, it's community college education, it's retraining vets, it's a huge thing. We're really excited to have the ring leader this whole event, he's just coming off the keynote, he's Andrew Ko, he's a global education director for AWS, working for Teresa. Andrew, great to see you. >> Thank you very much for having us here. >> What an event! >> Yes! >> And good job on the keynote, you guys covered a lot of different segments. This education opportunity challenge-- >> Yah. >> Is so multifaceted. >> Yes. >> Now how do you kind of organize again, what are the ways that you kind of look at this opportunity? >> Well, that's a great point, we could go on for days and for so many of the important topics, but we've really broken it down into three themes that we've carried on from last year. Really wanted to help and assist when it comes to employability. As we talk about the growth of AWS Cloud, what we're finding is there's a tremendous amount of lack of skilled talent to really fulfill those demands. So workforce is one of those particular areas. Secondly, we're seeing a tremendous growth on machine learning. The way to really predict things, whether it's student success or research. Finally, we also have a third theme that is come around innovation and transformation. Not so much always about the IT, but how are people moving along quickly on their Cloud journey? And really enabling a lot of their stakeholders, like researchers, medical centers, as well as students, to really adopt and learn technology but also embrace it in very very new innovative ways. >> Right. It's it's funny, there was a video showed in the keynote with Andy and I just want to pull the quote where you said it's not about protecting today, the infrastructure-- >> Yup. >> And we've joked many times on air about if when the time machine and you pulled somebody from 1760 and they came here-- >> Andrew: Yah. >> The only thing they'd recognize is the schoolhouse, right? >> Andrew: Right. >> But you guys are really working to change that. Everything from really, Cloud as an infrastructure efficiency play-- >> Andrew: Right. >> All the way through Cloud as an enabler for innovation, doing some really crazy things with Alexa and some of the other projects that are underway. >> Absolutely. And and we always start with our customers first. They're really the ones that have that vision and want to ensure that it's improved, and so we're excited to be a part of that journey. And as just a couple examples on how that is starting to change, is through this adaptive way of looking at information and data, and as an example as I mentioned that we're going to have an incredible panel sessions of many of our speakers, and one of which I like to call out is with the California Community College. They have over 2.1 million students at any given year, and now with the technology, they can start to try to look at patterns of success for students, patterns of challenges, and really start to make education more interactive, which is a one-way like what you were mentioning maybe it was a hundred years ago. >> Right, with the chalkboard. (chuckles) >> So it's so funny with, we talk about ML and AI-- >> Yup. >> You know, everyone's talks in the paper about, you know, the machines are going to take all of our jobs, but if you go to the back pages of the paper, I don't know if they have that anymore-- >> Yah. (chuckles) >> There's a whole lot of open recs, right? >> Yup. >> People can't hire fast enough for these jobs-- >> Right. >> So it's actually that's a much bigger problem than them taking jobs away right now, so this re-skilling is really really significant. >> Absolutely. And we always say that there's not necessarily always a jobs gap, but it's really a skills gap that are going unfulfilled. So there is a change in a lot of the talents that are required, but that's why it's so important for us representing education. That's not just about the infrastructure but how do we better prepare not just the learners of today that need some re-skilling, but also the learners for tomorrow, and provide them a pathway in a way to be interested in it, but also more importantly, getting jobs. >> Jeff: Right. >> The end of day, it's not just about a learning thing, it's about an economic thing. And so we're finding all those announcements as you heard earlier, such as Brazil. With SENAI, they're going to now announce that this curriculum is going to be available for 2.5 million education learners across the entire country, working with 740 universities so we're really excited to be behind that, and we would love to take the credit but really it's our customers, it's our leaders, it's those individuals that are really cutting edge and making those things happen. >> Jeff: Right. So again, last year was a lot about the community college and the certification of those programs, the accreditation. This year you're introducing bachelor programs, and-- >> Yes. >> Really amazing statement in the keynote about the governor of the state of Louisiana-- >> Yes. >> Basically dictating the importance of having a four-year degree based on Cloud skills. That's pretty significant. >> It's exciting. I mean, and I would say, as living in Virginia we're excited to see Northern Virginia alongside with Santa Monica Community College and Columbus Day Community College jointly together created, it wasn't us that created it, it was actually the faculty members and we got together created it, and the governor of Louisiana just took it to the next level. He really, alongside with his leadership team, of the individual leaders of the state community colleges as well as the universities said not only are we going to adopt the two-year across the state but we're going to have it articulate, allowing for students to get credit at the four-year. >> Jeff: Right. >> And why that's important, Jeff, is that we want to make sure that the pathway has on-ramps of how and where you can intersect and to get re-skilled, but also off-ramps. Some of them may get jobs right away at community college, some of them want to go to a four-year and go have more deeper learning and a different experience so-- >> Jeff: Right. >> All those options are now open. >> Right. >> And having that governor just indicates that it's important at a massive massive scale. >> Jeff: Yah. So another thing, we we have to talk about Alexa right? I forget how many millions of units you said are sold-- >> Hundred million devices last time I checked, yah. 70,000 skills. >> Lots and lots of skills, right, the skills. So it's pretty interesting in terms of really kind of helping the universities, beside just be more efficient with the Cloud infrastructure but actually appeal to their customers' students-- [Andrew] Yah. >> In a very very different way. And a pretty creative way to use Alexa and what's what's fascinating to me is I don't think we've barely scratched the surface-- >> Andrew: That's correct. >> Of voice, as a UI. >> Andrew: Yah. >> We won't. We're old, we have thumbs. (chuckles) >> But the kids coming up, right? Eventually that's going to flip-- >> Andrew: Right. >> And it's going to be more voice than keyboards so you guys took an interesting tack from the beginning, opening up the API to let people program it, versus just learning-- >> Absolutely. >> Another method. So some exciting skills, what are some of the ones that that surprise you as you go around-- >> Well-- >> To visit these customers? >> There's so many of them, it's hard to announce and discuss all of them but I would definitely say yes, this next generation, not the old fuddy-duddies like me, learn very differently now. And they're expecting to learn very differently and I think voice and natural user interface is going to be the big thing that people are going to be comfortable to talk to things and have responses back, and some of the things that we announced with our partners, well actually a few weeks ago that we mentioned in the keynote, like Kahoot!, one of the larger interactive ways of young students learning from gamification. Now they can actually speak to it, and engage in much different ways rather than just typing on a keyboard or or coding or typing things in phones, so that's exciting. Or ACT. As you just mentioned earlier, you have a young rising sophomore in a university. They probably had to, she or he had to probably study in order to get into college. Well, what if there was a voice-enabled advisor of how to take the test and the examination and that's what ACT launched. >> Jeff: Right. >> Just some small examples, and now we want to extend that excitement by encouraging other education technology companies to enroll their application by South by Southwest that we're going to announce the winners there-- >> Jeff: Right. >> Next year. So to have a lot of energy, have the educators, and just build on that incredible momentum. >> Alright Andrew, so before I let you go, I know that you got a couple thousand people here waiting to talk to you. (chuckles) The other thing is you guys have gone outside the classroom, right? >> Mm-hmm. >> Really interesting conversation about helping active-duty marines learn how to use data. Really interesting conversations about bringing the big data revolution more heavily into research and more heavily into medical and more heavily into those types of activities that happen at top-tier universities. >> Andrew: Yah. >> Really different way to again apply this revolution that's been happening on the commercial side, the enterprise side into which we play, and and helping people adapt and and evolve and really embrace big data as a tool in solving these other problems. >> Absolutely. And I think you mentioned some very important points there. Number one for us, we always think of learners as individuals that are just growing up through the educational system. But we also have learners that are lifelong learners, that have changing careers or alternating changing, so we're excited to be a part of the announcement with Northern Virginia Community College where they created a special program for Marine Corps, so they can come out and learn data intelligence, that would be applied for all, but also focused with the Marine Corps individuals there to really learn another skill set and apply it to a new occupation. >> Jeff: In their active duty. This is not for when they come out-- >> Absolutely. >> For for re-train. This is in while they're in their >> Very important. >> In their existing job. >> Absolutely. And that so that when they come out they have now applied skills in addition to the skills that they've learned being in the Marine Corps, so that they can also become really productive right after their enlistment there. >> Jeff: Right. >> And then you mentioned about research, I mean that is also an exciting thing that people so often also forget, that education also extends out there, and so like UCLA, they've created a new department blending medicine as well as engineering to tackle very important research like cancer and genomics, and so those complicated facets are now no longer is IT a separate conversation, but it's an infused way where much more high-performance computing can handle some interesting research to accelerate the outcomes. >> Right. Well Andrew, well thanks for inviting us to be here for the ride. We've we've been along the AWS ride (chuckles) >> For a while, from summits in 2012 and reinvents so we know it's going to grow, we're excited to watch it, and we'll see you next year. >> Jeff, thank you very much, and the ride is just beginning. >> Alright. He's Andrew, I'm Jeff, you're watching the Cube, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)