>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jefe Rick here with the Cube. Where? It Oracle Park in San Francisco, on the stork with cubby code. We're excited to be here. They're moving a lot of dirt, I think downstairs. But we're at a very cool event. It's called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. And we're excited. Have our next guest. He's Todd Simms s VP of corporate development from access taught. Great to see you. Great >> to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. So, for people are familiar with access. Give us kind of the company over here. >> We're a global ticketing company. We were launched out of ah global sports and entertainment company called E E G in 2011. And we serve live the live entertainment market and ticketing. Excellent. >> All over the world, >> different types of events. >> E e g. Is a global company with a run venues worldwide. And we serve them as well as third party clients. >> Okay, great. So we're here. It's sports tech, Tokyo. It's a little bit different. Type of an organization. Kind of an incubator. Not really an incubator kind of association, early association, but certainly a community. Why are you guys here. What is this organization mean to you? Why is that important? >> Yeah, it's really important. We We launched our ticketing service in Tokyo last year, and you know, that's a market that we love. It's a vibrant large market with super passionate fans, both on the sports side and on the music side. What it really needs is more of an ecosystem. It can't just be a new, innovative ticketing platform needs all the bells and whistles around it to really innovate the fan experience. And that's what these startups are doing. I >> just I just love this job because, you know, you think of many industries if you're not familiar with them, and they seem really simple on the outside and like everything, once you get under the covers, >> a lot more going on. So >> from the outside, looking in a ticket is a ticket. Yeah, what's the innovation and tickets? What's different about somebody in Japan buying a ticket to watch a baseball game than >> somebody find a ticket to come here to talk >> a little bit about what we're bringing to Tokyo and what we brought to our platform of clients here in the States as well as in Europe, and that's really a digital I. D based ticketing system. So when you walk into the Staples Center at L. A live in Los Angeles, that thing that's getting scanned is not a ticket. It's an identity, it's you. And what's being reviewed is whether you have access to that building on that night or not. So what that allows for is full data around the customer base. Every president of every team wants to know two things. They want to know who's in there building, and they wanna have some control, whether it's economic control or otherwise on the secondary market. Our digital I D ticketing system enables both of that, and that's kind of the innovation that we're bringing to the Tokyo market. >> But I would imagine when you say, you know it's me, you know the opportunities way beyond that because now you know what in my preference is, how often do I come? What kind of beer do I like to drink? It just opens up a whole kind of CR m ah, world of opportunity for this relationship between the team now in that person with that barker, >> absolutely, and that happens today, but what you're missing is every time someone comes in with a paper ticket, you're really not sure who's entering the building. So that eliminates that piece of that. And it gets all these teams with analytic departments to really have a full picture of their fan base. So, you know, they may have been investing in some of this and capturing 60 70% of their who's in the building. Now they have 100% right, >> and I would imagine they've been doing this for a long time, with kind of their season ticket base and knowing they're in the building. But it got a lot of data on their season ticket holders. How is that? You know, changed. What can they apply there to? The casual fan that maybe bought a ticket on the secondary market and his, you know, common is sitting in the bleachers? >> Well, it's huge >> for up sales and establishing that relationship. A lot of teams, if you've you know, just buying a single ticket off a secondary market, you're nowhere in that database now because of our I D based system. Those people are now prospects for either mini pack or a season ticket back. It's right. Just >> curious how the rise of the secondary market really impacted the teams and how they think about their own ticket based. I think the 1st 1 is probably StubHub back in the day for some, and it all happened kind of outside the purveyor of leagues and outside the purveyor of the teams. Likely, they're pretty smart and figured out we need to be a piece of this. So how did that kind of evolution change the way the teams think about their fans? Well, look, I mean, teams >> like music promoters, they Sometimes they like the brokers getting involved because it takes risk off the table. I think teams air realizing, though, that a riel yield management perspective on their ticket inventory to really revenue manage this appropriately. They have to take a holistic approach on their >> tickets, and any time you >> have a segment of your >> ticket base where you really don't have control of pricing distribution, >> all of that, it really hurts and it has an impact on your unsold primaries. So what teams are looking to do is gain more control and manages inventory more holistically to do that you really need to know all the data. And again, the I. D based ticketing system enables secondary sales. But at least you are tracking those sales and, you know, from one person to the next who who sold it, who bought it >> right? I'm curious to get your perspective on on the difference between if you arm or >> entertainment focused. So you know, the Rolling Stones were in town a couple nights ago, and it's really a one shot deal for the Rolling Stones in the Bay Area that night versus the Giants game, right where you're hoping that your people come back over and over. Did they think of it differently? Or is it Maur? You know, Jeff, you like music? You went to the Rolling Stones last night. Maybe you'll come and see somebody else tonight. Is that is that well, can't were they? No doubt, sports teams are >> a lot smarter about their fan base. They have loyalty built in. They have got history, you know there's variability. There's night of game. And then there's weather in who's on the mound and all of those factors. But promoters are, ah, lot more in the dark about, you know, Is this an artist that you know? How much credence can they put in the last two? Or they did. It's too been two years. Is that artist still going to sell appropriately or similarly than they did last time again? The secondary market on the music side is made a bigger issue because of that variability, and those promoters are willing to take risk off the table. But the same thing applies in order for them to really manage and revenue manage that tour. They really need to know who's buying and grab some of that secondary economics out of the system. Right? And that's again, what our platform enables, and that's what we're really bringing to the Tokyo market. It's really exciting. That's a great market for >> us. I was gonna say just to close. >> You know what's special about the Tokyo market either? From an opportunity side, we're kind of a unique way which they do things or unique way in which the kind of the fan experiences as you look at that market. >> Well, it's interesting. I mean, in a culture that is so reliant on such interesting technology, these ticketing technology is actually quite old, and so we're excited to bring that. We've got great partners past Revo is our partner there, and they're really selling that through the Yahoo ticketing channel. Uh, they we have we just signed the B league, which is the professional basketball league will be rolling them out in their fall season coming up soon here. But basically, they are looking for the same things. We're looking for more data and Maura capturing of the secondary market, and we can bring that to them. >> All right. Well, Todd, thanks for taking a few minutes. Pull the covers back off ticketing A lot more going on than people think. Thank you very much. All right, He's >> taught. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube. Were Rhetorical Park on the shores of >> McCovey Cove in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>Okay, welcome back everyone. This is the Cube's coverage here. Monaco took a trip all the way out here to cover the Monaco crypto summit. I'm John feer, host of the cube, a lot of action happening presented by digital bits and this ecosystem that's coming together, building on top of digital bits and other blockchains to bring value at the application. These new app, super apps are emerging. Almost every category's gonna be decentralized. This is our opinion and the world believes it. And they're here as well. We've got Oscar ballet CEO co-founder of Agora verse ago is a shopping metaverse coming out soon. We'll get the dates, Oscar. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>We were just talking before you came on camera. You're a young gun, young entrepreneur. You're a gamer. Yeah, a little bit too old to miss the eSports windows. You said, you know, like 25. It's great until that's you missed the window. I wish I was 25 gaming the pandemic with remote work, big tailwind acceleration around the idea of this new digital VI virtual hybrid world. We're living in where people want to have experiences that are similar to physical and virtual. You're doing something really cool around shopping. Yeah. Take a explain. What's going on when the, I know it's not out yet. It's in preview. Yeah. Take a minute to explain. >>Absolutely. So a goers really is a way to create those online storefront environments, virtual environments that are really much inspired by video games in their usage and kind of how the experience goes forward. We want to recreate the brand's theme, aesthetic storytelling or the NFT project as well. All of that created in a virtual setting, which is way more interesting than looking at a traditional webpage. And also you can do some crazy stuff that you can't do in real life, in a real life store, you know, with some crazy effects and lighting and stuff. So it's, it's a whole new frontier that we are trying to cover. And we believe that there is a real use case for shopping centric S experiences and to actually make the S a bit more than a buzzword than that. It is at the moment. >>Okay. So a Agora is the shopping. Metaverse a Agora verse is the company name and product name. You're on the Solona blockchain. Got my notes here, but I gotta ask you, I mean, people are trying to do this right now. We see a lot of high end clients like Microsoft showroom, showroom vibes. Yeah. Not so much. E-commerce per se, but more like the big, I mean it's low hanging fruit. Yeah. How do you guys compare to some other apps out there? Other metaverses? >>I think compared to the bigger companies, we are way more flexible and we can act way more quickly than they can. They still have a lot of ground to cover. And a lot of convincing to do with their communities of users metaverse is not really the most popular topic at the moment. It's still very much kind of looked at as a trend, as something that is just passing and they have to deal with this community interaction that is not really favorable for them. There are other questions about the metaverse that are not being talked about as often, but the ecological costs, for example, of running a metaverse like Facebook envisions it, of running those virtual headsets, running those environments. It's very costy on, on, on the ecological side of things and it's not as often mentioned. And I think that's actually their biggest challenge. >>Can you get an example for folks that don't are in the weeds on that? What's the what's what do you mean by that? The cost of build the headsets? Is it the >>Servers? It's more of the servers, really? You need to run a lot of servers, which is really costly on the environment and environmental questions are at the center of public debates. Anyways, and companies have to play that game as well. So they will have to find kind of this balance between, well, building this cool metaverse, but doing it in an ecological friendly manner as well. I think that's their toughest challenge. >>And what's your solution just using the blockchain? Well, an answer to that, cause some people say, Hey, that's not that's, that's not. So eco-friendly either, >>That's part of it. And it's also part of why we're choosing an ecosystem such as Lana as a starter. It's not limited to only Salana, but Salala is, is known as a blockchain. That is very much ecological. Inclined transactions are less polluting. And definitely this problem is, is tackled in the fact that we are offering this product on a case by case scenario brands come to us, we build this environment and we run something that is proper to them. So the scale of it is also way less important that what Facebook is trying to build. >>Yeah. They're trying to build the all encompassing. Yeah. All singing old dancing, as we say system, and then they're not getting a lot of luck. They just got slammed dunked this week on the news, I saw the, you know, FTC moved against them on the acquisition of the exercise app. >>It's it's a tough, it's a tough battle for them. Let's say they >>Still have, they got a headwind. I wouldn't say tailwind. They broke democracy. So they gotta pay for it. Right. Exactly. I always say definitely revenge going on there. I'm not a big fan of what they did. The FTC. I think that's bad move. They shouldn't block acquisitions, but they do buy, they don't really build much. That's well documented. Facebook really hasn't built anything except for Facebook. That's right. Mean what's the one thing Facebook has done besides Facebook. >>I mean, >>It's everything they've tried is failed except for Facebook. Yeah. >>So we'll see what's going on with the Methodist side. >>Well, so successful, not really one trick bony. Yeah. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp, you know, and not really successful. >>That's true. They do have the, the means though, to maybe become successful with something. So >>You're walking out there, John just said, Facebook's not successful. I meant they don't. They have a one product company. They use their money to buy everything. Yeah. And that's some people don't like that, but anyway, the startups like to get bought out. Yeah. Okay. So let's get back to the metaverse it's coming out is the business model to build for others. Are you gonna have a system for users? What's what's the approach? How do you, how are we view viewing this? What's the, the business you're going after? >>So we are very much a B2B type of service where we can create custom kind of tailor made virtual environments for brands, where we dedicate our team to building those environments, which has been what we have been at the start to really kickstart the initiative. But we're also developing the tool that will allow antibody to develop their own shop themselves, using what we give them to do something kind of like the Sims for those that know, building their environment and building their shop, which will they, they, they will then be to put online and for anybody of their user base customers to have a look at. So it's, it's kind of, yeah, the tailor made experience, but also the more broader experience where we want to create this tool, develop this tool, make it accessible to the public with a subscription based model where any individual that has an idea and maybe a product that is interesting for the metaverse be able to create this virtual storefront and upload it directly. >>How long does it take to build an environment? Let's say I was, I wanna do a cube. Yeah. I go to a lot of venues all around the world. Yeah. MOSCON and San Francisco, the San convention center in Las Vegas, we're here in Monaco. How do I replicate these environments? Do I call you up and say, Hey, I need some artists. Do you guys render it? What's the take us through the process. >>Yeah. It's, it's basically a case by case scenario at the moment, very much. We're working with our partners that find brands that are interested in getting into the metaverse and we then design the shops. Well, it depends on the brands. Some have a really clear idea of what they want. Some are a bit more open to it and they're like, well, we have this and this, can you build something? >>I mean, I mean, I can see the apple store saying, Hey, you know, they're pretty standard apple stores. You got cases of iWatches. Yeah. I mean that's easily to, replicateable probably good ROI for them. >>Exactly. It's it's is that what you're thinking? Their team. Exactly. Yeah. It depends. And we, we want to add a layer of something cuz just replicating the store simply. Yeah. It's it's maybe not as interesting, you know, it just, oh, okay. I'm in the store. It's white, everywhere. It's apple. Right. It's like, oh I'm in at the dentist, but we want to add some video game elements to the, to those experiences. But very subtle ones, ones that won't make you feel, oh, I'm playing one of these games, you know? It's yeah. Very supple. >>You can, you can jump into immersive experience as defined by the brand. Yeah. I mean the brand will control the values. So you're say apple and you're at the iWatch table. Yeah. You could have a digital assistant pop in there with an avatar. Exactly. You can jump down a rabbit hole and say, Hey, I want this iWatch. I'm a bike mountain biker. For example, I could get experience of mountain biking with my watch on I fall off, ambulance sticks me up. I mean, all these things that they advertise is what goes >>On. Yeah. And we can recreate these experiences and what they're advertising and into a more immersive experience is what we're trying to our, our goal is to create experiences. We know that, you know, why does someone is someone spend so much at Disneyland? It's like triple the price of whatever, because you know, it's Mickey mouse around you. It's, that's the experience that comes around. And often the experience is more important than the product. Sometimes >>It's hard. It's really hard to get that first class citizen experience with the event or venue physical. Yeah. Which is a big challenge. I know the metaverse are gonna try to solve this. So I gotta ask you what's your vision on solving that? Okay. Cause that's the holy grail. That's what we're talking about here. Yeah. I got a physical event or place. I wanna replicate it in the metaverse but create that just as good first party citizen like experience. >>Yeah. I mean that's the whole event event type of business side of the metaverse is also a huge one. It's one that we are choosing to tackle after the e-commerce one. But it's definitely something that has been asked a lot by the brands where like we want to create, like, we want to release this store for an event that is in real life, but we want to make it accessible to the largest number. That's why we saw with Fortnite as well. All those events, the fashion week in the central land. And >>Sand's a Cub in the Fortnite too. >>There you go. And so the, the event aspect is super important and we want those meta shops to be places where a brand can organize an event. Let's say they want to make the entrance paid. They can do an NFD for that if they want. And then they have to, the user has to connect the NFD to access the event with an idea. Right. But that's definitely possible. And that's how we leverage blockchain as well with those companies and say, you know, you're not familiar with >>This method. You're badging, you know, you're the gaming where we were talking earlier. Yeah. Badging and credentials and access methods. A tech concept can be easily forwarded to NFTs. Yeah, >>Exactly. Exactly. And brands are interested in that. >>Sure. Of course. Yeah. By being the NFT. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I gotta ask you the origination story. Take me through the, the, how this all started. Yeah. Was it a seat of an idea you and your friends get together? Yeah. It was an it scratch. And when you're really into this, what's the origination story and where you're at now. >>So we started off in January really with a, quite a, a different idea. It was called the loft business club. It's an NFT collection on the Salina blockchain. And the whole idea beyond it is that NFT holders would have access to their virtual apartments that we called the lofts. It got very popular. We got a really big following at the start. It was really the trend back in January, February. And we managed to, to sell out successfully the whole collection of 5,000 NFTs. And yeah, we started as a group of friends, really like-minded friends from my hometown in, in, met in France who are today, the co-founders and the associates with different backgrounds. Leo has the marketing side of things. A club has the 3d designing. We had all our different skills coming into it. Obviously my English was quite helpful as well cause French people in English it's, it's not often the best French English. Yeah. And I was, the COO has been doing amazing on the kind of the serious stuff. You know, the taxis lawyers >>Operational to all of trains running on time. >>Exactly >>Sure. People get their jobs done. >>Yeah, exactly. So >>It's well too long of a lunch cuz you know, French would take what, two hour lunches. Yeah. You >>Have to enjoy it. Yeah. >>Coffee and stuff. That's wine, you know about creative, >>But yeah, it's, it's a friend stuff that started as a, as a passion project and got so quick. And today I'm here talking to you in this setting. It's like, >>You're pretty excited. >>I mean it's super excited. It's such a we're you know, we feel like we're building something that's new and our developer team, we're now a team of 15 in total with developers based in Paris, mostly. And everybody is, is feeling like, you know, they're contributing to something new and that's, what's exciting about it. You know, it's something that's not really done or it's trying to be done, but nobody really knows the way >>It's pioneering days. But the, but the pandemic has shifted the culture faster because people like certainly the gen Zs are like, I don't wanna reuse that old stuff. Yeah. And, but they still want to go to like games or events or go to stores. Yeah. But once to go to a store, I mean, I go to apple store all the time where I live in Palo Alto, California. And it's like, yeah, I love that store. And I know it by heart. I don't, I don't have to go there. Yeah. Walking into the genius bar virtually I get the same job done. Yeah, >>Exactly. That's that's what we want to do. And the other pandemic is just it's it's been all about improving, you know, people's condition, life conditions at home, I think. And that's what kind of boosted the whole metaverse conversation and Facebook really grabbing onto it as well. It's just that people were stuck at home and for gamers, that's fine. We used to be stuck at home playing video games all day. Yeah. We survived the pandemic fine. But for other people it was a bit more of a new >>Experience. Well, Oscar, one of the cool things is that you said like mind you and your founding team, always the secret to success. But now you see a lot of old guys like me and gals coming in too, your smart people are like-minded they get it. Especially ones that have seen the ways before, when you have this kind of change, it's a cultural shift and technology shift and business model shift at the same time. Yeah. And to me there's gonna be chaos, but at the end of the day, >>I mean there's fun and >>Chaos. That's opportunity. There's a fun and fun and opportunity. >>It's fun and chaos, you know, and yeah. Likeminded people and the team has really been the driving factor with our company. We are all very much excited about what we're doing and it's been driving us forward. >>Well, keep in touch. Thanks for coming on the cube and sharing, sharing a story with us in the world. We really appreciate we'll keep in touch with you guys. Do love what you do. Oscar ballet here inside the cube Argo verse eCommerce shop. The beginning of this wave is happening. The convergence of physical virtual is a hybrid mode. It's a steady state. It is not gonna go away. It's only gonna get bigger, more cooler, more relevant than ever before. Cube covering it like a blanket here in Monaco, crypto summit. I'm John furrier. We'll be right back after this short break.

>> 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: Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2018, brought to you by Cisco, Veen and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. (upbeat electronic music) >> Hey, welcome back, everyone, to our live coverage from theCUBE here in Barcelona, Spain, for exclusive coverage of Cisco Live 2018 in Europe. I'm John Furrier, cofounder and cohost of theCUBE, with my cohost this week, Stu Miniman. Been to many events also, senior analyst at wikibon.com. Stu and I have been breaking down all the action here in the DevNet zone. And we have with us here as our guest, Ashley Roach, who is a principal engineer and evangelist with Cisco. DevNet himself, has full view of what's going on. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. >> Good to see you again. We covered DevNet Create, which was really our first foray into what DevNet was doing outside of the Cisco ecosystem, bringing that cloud-native developer into the Cisco fold. Here, it's the Cisco show where all the Cisco ecosystem and your customers are growing into the cloud and programming with DevNet. So congratulations, it's been phenomenal. It's been one of the top stories we've been covering as DevNet has just been explosive. >> Oh, thanks a lot. It's been a lot of hard work. >> People have been learning, they're coding, they're being inspired, and they're connecting, It's a very sharing culture. Props to you guys and the team. Well done. >> Ashley: Appreciate it. >> So what is DevNet? I mean, this is a cultural shift. We've been reporting on theCUBE all year and last year. But really this year, end of last year, we started really putting the stake in the ground saying we are going to see a renaissance in software development. Linux foundations, reporting that there's going to be exponential growth in code and open-source. You seeing that you can create intellectual property with only 10% of the energy codewise, 90% using open-source. They call that the code sandwich. Again, this is just data that they're sharing, but it points to the bigger trend. Developers are becoming the important part of the equation, and the integration of the stack from network to application, are working together. And again, proof point's there, things like Kubernetes, containers, have obviously been out there for a long time. You're starting to see the visibility for developers. >> Right. >> John: You're at Cisco, you're in the middle of all this. You're seeing one side of the camp and the other. >> Ashley: Yeah. >> What's your view? >> Yeah, I think that's a good, it captures a lot of the dynamics that are going on right now in the environments. And I mean, for me, I come at this from an application developer standpoint. I actually, when I joined Cisco, I was not a hardware guy at all (laughs) Frankly, I'm not even now. I'm much more oriented towards software, and so when we've seen, though, sort of the power of the underlying infrastructure that gets married up to some of these overlay systems like Kubernetes and containers, more and more of the infrastructure on one hand is getting abstracted, which you might think, oh, uh oh. Like, that's a problem. But in reality, the infrastructure still needs to be there, right? You can't run your serverless function out of thin air. >> John: Yeah. >> At least not yet. >> John: It's truly not serverless. There's servers somewhere. >> Yeah, exactly. So, you know, those are the funny jokes that we like to have in the industry, right? But at the same time, you want to think like, okay, well I'm writing my application, I'm a developer. I don't want to know about infrastructure. My whole job is I don't care about that. But there is information and utility in the data that you can get from the infrastructure because at some point, your application will fail. You may have some bugs, and yeah, Kubernetes may kill your container and bring up another one. But you still need to de-bug that issue, and so yeah, you can get tracking, you can get analytics. But also, you can get that stuff from that infrastructure that's underlying it. And so, like one of the presentations I'm doing tomorrow, I wrote just kind of a proof of concept sample app where it's a Spring Boot app that has a built-in health check capability. It ties into APIC-EM and or DNA Center and uses that information that's available about the network. So maybe it's your, from your firewall to your application, you can run a path trace and just have that happen every five minutes or something like that, or check the health of an entire environment every, you know, so often. And then your application can resolve issues or have just data about it so that we can keep moving. >> Yeah, actually, you know, I love that comment you talked, you know, you're not a hardware person, and that's okay. >> Ashley: Right. >> And there's lots of people here at the Cisco show that aren't. That's a change from just a few years ago. How is that dynamic changing? You know, I remember for a few years I was arguing like every networking person needs to become a coder and there's, you know, push back and people are scared and what's going to happen to my job and can I learn that skill set? >> Ashley: Right. >> The bar for entry seems pretty low these days but how do we translate some of those languages? >> Yeah, I think that perception of say, an ops person becoming a programmer, it's not really the right mindset. >> Right. >> There's a couple mindsets, though, that are important. So one of the things we're trying to do is foster the DevOps culture somewhat. And to do that, an ops person has to understand and have empathy for the problems that exist on the application side and vice versa. So for us, we're just trying to education people in that vein. >> John: Yeah. >> But all of the infrastructure is now also automatable and you don't have to automate at low level. You can automate it with things like Ansible, which is a bit more accessible for people that haven't been programming for a long time. So, you know, I think those are the things that we see and that we're trying to encourage within our community and just broadly speaking, I would say, in the industry. >> You brought up empathy, interesting. Because this is a cultural shift, right? So this mindset, this cultural DNA, you have to have empathy. But it's kind of like the Venn diagram. Empathy is one circle. >> Ashley: Mhm. >> Feasibility is another and viability is the other, right? >> Ashley: Mhm. >> So it's always in context to what you can get done, right? So you guys at DevNet have a good view of the development environment. What are some of the challenges and what are the opportunities for folks in the Cisco ecosystem to get their hands dirty, get down and dirty with the tech-- >> Ashley: Oh, yeah. >> Where they can do feasible, viable projects that are possible. Well, seeing Python certainly is one approach. Great for data wrangling, but you know, you got Node.js out there, has been a great language. >> Ashley: Yep. >> App guys are doing Node.js because of JavaScript in server-side. >> Ashley: Yep. >> You got a lot of IO that sounds like a network service mindset. Is there things that you see going on around that what's possible and what's kind of moonshot like projects and where should people start? >> Well, I think, again, kind of going to this historical point of view, it used to be you had one programming book and you're sitting there, you know, late at night copying code from that. And maybe it came with a CD and you could download, you know, your sample code onto your hard drive. And then, you know, you'd be sitting there flipping back and forth and then you hit an issue. You're like, I don't know what to do. Maybe you're trying to teach yourself. I don't have any friends that are programmers. I mean, today, with, I built the vast amount of resources that are available online. You know, like, we have our DevNet Learning Labs. And so that's the set of tutorials that we've provided, but that's not the only thing out there. You've got Code School, Codeacademy. You've got the loops out there. I mean, shoot, MIT, Stanford, they're all putting their courseware in open-source. So the universe of educational material for people to understand this stuff and get started is really, really awesome now. And then also, it's easier than ever, I think,. to actually code because you're, again, like code is becoming more and more abstract at higher level languages. So Python, Node.js, those are still kind of low level, but there are packages on top of those, you know, middleware and Node.js, to build a web server. You get Express or sales or whatever, and then you're kind of off to the races. Like Spring Boot is crazy. It used to be Spring was a bit of a pain in the butt with, you know-- >> Yeah. >> Ashley: All the dependency, injection and everything. But with Spring Boot, now you just add, you know, a dependency, and you've got an entire web framework or an authorization framework or whatever. And that was like, I was pretty blown away when I started seeing-- >> So it's a lot easier. >> It's, yeah, it's just a lot easier. Things are more curated. You have certain stacks. You know, it used to be LAMP stack, now you got ELK stack for data things, you got, you know, and so on. So the universe is wide open for a lot of people to program today. >> So Ashley, love the training angles that you talked about there. But what I bring to mind, a little bit orthogonal to what we've been talking about here-- >> Ashley: Ooh, good programmer buzzword there. >> But one that John and I have been asking about, you mentioned open-source. >> Yes. >> So obviously, things like Spring, lot of things you mentioned are open-source. >> Yes. >> But what about Cisco's, you know, involvement in the community, giving back to open-source. What's the philosophical, you know, viewpoint-- >> Yeah. >> From Cisco's standpoint? >> Yeah, we're active in open-source. We're big contributors to OpenStack, for example. You know, we've got some of, we've created like a CNI module for Kubernetes called Contiv. And so that's in open-source. We, you know, in DevNet, we publish tons of things in open-source, just code samples and you know, example projects and so on. Cisco's actually a big contributor to the Linux kernel, so it's a long legacy of open-source at Cisco. So it's part of our culture. >> So there's no restrictions on everybody going on GitHub, throwing their stuff in, being part of the communities-- >> There's certainly restrictions. Yeah, we have processes that we're supposed to follow. I mean, we got to protect the intellectual property when we need to. I mean, it's the way it is for working at a company. But at the same time, you know, there is viable processes if it makes business sense to open-source things. >> I mean, the line John's used, you know, for the last year or so, is GitHub, that's people's resumes these days. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So we want to make sure, what I'm saying is it sounds like the ecosystem at Cisco, friendly for the developers to come in, participate. You got a business to run, obviously. Legal keeps their eye on stuff, but you know, Cisco's out there. We saw it in the container ecosystem, OpenStack-- >> Ashley: Yes. >> Stu: Kubernetes, Linux, absolutely-- >> Yeah. >> Stu: Not just even in networking but beyond that. See a lot of Cisco out there, so-- >> Yeah, great. >> So my question for you, personal question. If you could talk to your 22 year old self right now-- >> Ashley: Oh, wow, yeah. >> You're high school, actually, you're college or college graduate, what would you say to yourself knowing what you know now? 'Cause this is a really interesting point. I mean, at my age, we used to build stuff straight up from the bottom of the stack to the top, and it was a lot of heavy lifting. Now you're really kind of getting into some engineering here and then some composite Lego block kind of thinking where these frameworks could just snap together. Sometimes (mumbles) But it's a lot cooler now. I mean, I wish I was 22. What would you say to your 22 year old self out there? What would you advise yourself? What would you say to yourself? >> Where's my smoking jacket? (John laughs) Yeah, so, I mean, I was a liberal arts undergrad and I did take computer programming classes. So I did a couple courses in C toward the end of my time in university, and that's because I've always been interested in technical, you know, in programming and stuff. But I think probably I would have maybe stayed another year to try to maybe get an actual CS degree. So that might be one thing, I think the other-- >> John: What would you jump on today if you saw all of this awesome code, open-source? I mean, like, it's like open bar in the coding party. I mean-- >> Yeah, it's overwhelming. >> It's so many things to jump on and-- >> You know, obviously, joking, I should say blockchain and machine learning and AI, right? But actually, I would say the machine learning and AI stuff is probably a good, interesting, you know, wave of technology, yeah. >> I just want to, you know, we're talking about your 22 year old self. How about your kids? >> Ashley: Yeah. >> You're working with your kids, checking out your GitHub on there. So, you know, maybe share, you know, younger people. You know, how do they get involved? In the keynote yesterday, it was, you know, jobs of the future. >> Right, well, yeah. For my kids, I have two daughters. And so, I try to encourage them to at least be familiar with coding. I've tried to teach them Linux some, but we've done programming classes, but it's kind of hard sometimes to get them interested in something like programming, to be honest. So some of it's trying to be creative problem solvers, trying to craft that sort of attitude, you know. So that then, when they do get the opportunity to do some programming, that they'll be interested about it. >> I mean, the young kids love gaming. Gaming's a good way to get people in. >> Yep. >> VR is now an interesting-- >> I mean, Minecraft and Sims, those are the two that my oldest daughter loves. I mean, the thing I remember that's the funniest was when you know, of course, this was when we all got computers back in the day and we did keyboards, right, in order to do stuff. So I got the first iPad when it came out and I brought it home and my daughter, who was, I think, six or eight at the time, she's like, "Cool, I understand this." Like automatically understood it. But then, she went to the TV and it had icons on it. So she walked up to the TV and tried to do that, and I was like, "Oh, that's funny." Like her mental model is this. >> Yeah. >> Where our mental model was that and so on earlier on. >> My oldest son says, "Dad, search engine is so your generation," (Ashley laughs) Not even email, like search, Google search. >> Yeah, the digital, it's like the digital native thing. On the other hand, we actually are fairly restrictive about like cell phone and mobile because it's a lot. That sort of thing. They really, really are going to face some interesting, I don't know, social, you know, the social things that you have in high school and middle school now multiplied and amplified through all that. We're sort of cautious, too, as parents, you know. >> Lot of societal issues to deal with. Alright, now getting back to DevNet here, I want to get your thoughts because we had a big setup here. One of the things that the folks people can't see on camera is we're in the DevNet zone. You see behind us, but there's everywhere else around. It's really the big story at Cisco Live and has been for awhile. Every year it gets bigger. It's like, it keeps growing in interest. What do you guys show here? What's the purpose? Give a little quick, take a minute to explain the DevNet approach this year-- >> Okay. >> John: And how it's different-- >> Yeah. >> John: And how you guys take this going forward. >> So the DevNet zone, philosophically, we tried to have the experiential. We don't want people to come in here and get death by PowerPoint of hey, check out this awesome new product that we created. You know, that kind of thing. >> Yeah. >> Instead, we want people to come in and have the opportunity to sit down, either by themselves or with a friend or, you know, with one of us to be able to work through sort of tutorials so that we have this area of the Learning Labs or learn about the DevNet sandbox. That's another area that we have where that is a sort of try it out, live, always-on, cloud service that we provide for anyone. We also have, of course, examples of example use cases. So we have some IOT and collaboration use cases that we're demonstrating in the new APIs that have come out of those products that you wouldn't think may be necessarily, oh, collaboration and IOT really are connected. But in fact, you know, ultimately you need to get a human involved when you have exceptions. And in a lot of cases like for edge compute scenarios, it's exception oriented. So when we, the example that we have here is we have a truck that's sitting on a handcrafted scale that's like a raspberry pie thing that one of our evangelists, Casey Bleeker, made. And it's putting, you know, analog data into our container that's running on an edge device. And when an exception occurs when the scale has this truck on it with too many stones in the back, then it triggers an alert. It creates a team room for people to come and escalate and discuss. It'll make a phone call automatically to the truck driver and pull people together to deal with that situation. But then, additionally, we have a new room capabilities with like, our telepresence systems. And that has face identification, not like from identifying the user standpoint, but it knows it can count how many people are in the room, for example. So if you combine that sort of IOT capability with this collaboration unit that's going to already be there, you're getting kind of a win-win of that infrastructure in the rooms. >> Ashley, talked about there's so many different things going on there, what's exciting you the most? Where are you seeing the most people, you know, gravitating around? >> Yeah, in the DevNet zone in general? >> Well, it can be here or in general, yeah. >> Well, I think one thing in the DevNet zone, we also have a white hat black hat challenge. So that's been very, very popular. What we're doing is demonstrating using, you know, off the shelf hacker tools, how vulnerable some IOT devices are to give people. It's kind of a you've heard about it, now experience it and do it yourself to see how easy it really is. And then see, of course, how our solutions can help you mitigate those problems. So that's, you know, IOT security is a big concern, I think, in general, and so I think that's an exciting spot for people-- >> So hands-on learning, very people-oriented, very open-- >> Yes, yep. >> The motto I love, I'm reading on the thing there, learn code, inspire, connect. So learn, toe in the water, connect-- >> Ashley: Yes. >> Share. >> Yeah. >> Mentor, collaborate. >> The other thing that we're sort of soft launching, I guess, is we have a new application developer site on DevNet, and so-- >> John: What's the URL? >> It is developer.cisco.com/site/app-dev. >> John: Okay, that's good. Memorize that, quiz later. >> Yeah. >> That's long, just search. >> Yeah, right, right. >> Hey, Alexa. >> Right, so, but with that, we're trying to make it easier for people to understand the use cases for what kinds of applications they can build using our technology. So indoor location, using kind of doing maps and heat maps and building that kind of scenario, for example. >> Awesome. >> Ashley: Through T-Mobile and video and such. >> As you are evangelizing your engine on the engineering side, what's the plans going forward? Post-event, obviously, you've got Cisco Live in Orlando this year, it's in 2018. >> Ashley: Yeah, we have-- >> But you guys got a lot of these going on, you got a lot of digital content. What's the outreach plan? Where should people expect to see you guys? Share the going forward plan. >> Yeah, I wish I knew where everyone was going to be. So thankfully, on the website-- >> They're on the internet! >> We have an events calendar, so I would definitely encourage you to look there if you're interested in connecting with one of us. We have the Cisco Live in Melbourne then Orlando. We also have DevNet Create in April and that's in Mountain View, I think, Bay Area. So would love to have people come out to that, and kind of the theme of that last year, which was the inaugural one, continues this year, which is where apps need infrastructure. So we want to kind of continue this conversation about DevOps, how, you know, applications and infrastructure-- >> John: Yeah. >> Can benefit each other. >> And just for the folks watching, theCUBE was at the inaugural DevNet Create. We'll be there again, we'll also be in Orlando. And again, this is important, we'll end on this point. I'd like you to take a minute to explain the difference between DevNet and DevNet Create because this is really interesting. I like the way you guys are doing this. It's really open, but it's pretty transparent. So share the difference between DevNet and DevNet Create. >> Yeah, so DevNet is our developer program, and so that's a website-- >> Before Cisco and-- >> It's Cisco, it's oriented towards those things. DevNet Create is more about forming a community to solve these problems about applications and infrastructure. So that intersection, whether you call it DevOps, whether you call it I don't know what, potatoes and you know, something. Something in there, you know, there is this fluid spot where applications are looking more like infrastructure, infrastructure is starting to look more like applications. So what does that mean and how do we explore that together to, you know-- >> We call it cloud-native. >> Ashley: Yeah. >> It's a set of developers who just, like you, don't really want to get involved in network but love it to be more magical. >> Right. >> Right? And Cisco folks love Cisco because they're in that world, right? So-- >> Yes. >> To me, it's really interesting you guys do that. Congratulations. >> Yeah, thanks. And it's not just for Cisco people, right? So Cisco Live and DevNet Zone is that. For Create, it's actually the inverse. We encourage people from the community to come and check it out as opposed to the-- >> John: Props to you guys, great stuff. Cisco, DevNet Zone is where theCUBE is. Of course DevNet Create is going to be outside of the Cisco ecosystem. Connecting the two is really the key. We're living in a world, global connected devices, connected people, that's the mission of Cisco. Love that vision, but of course, we're theCUBE, bringing you the live content here in Barcelona. All, of course, is available online, youtube.com/siliconangle. Of course, thecube.net is our new site. Check it out. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. More live coverage coming from Barcelona with theCUBE after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)