>> Live from Los Angeles, it's theCube covering Open Source Summit North America 2017 brought to you by the Linux Foundation and Red Hat. >> Hey welcome back everyone, live here at Los Angeles, California it's theCUBE's exclusive coverage of the Open Source Summit in North America. I'm John Furrier, your host with my co-host Stu Miniman with Wikibon, and our next two guests, Alan Dickenson who is the program director of the blockchain platform at IBM and Shaun Frankson, who's the co-founder and TED speaker at a company called The Plastic Bank doing some truly amazing things with technology for the betterment of society and communities. We'll get this out in a second. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> So two important things honestly. IBM, well-known in the history books that's being written. Real proponent of Linux, they were one of the early guys in during that movement, with a billion dollars in cash. That's a big number. You guys went all in on Linux, good bet, Linux was successful, it's now the standard so congratulations. Now you have the same thing going on with Blockchain. IBM's got the big bet, the company's best brains at work working on blockchain, kind of reminds me of the Linux move back in the day. Pretty impressive. >> Yeah I mean, there's a lot going on with Blockchain and one of the reasons we're here is that this is a developer event. We really want to help accelerate technology adoption and with our platform we launched two weeks ago, we have a whole suite of capabilities that developers can use that's complimentary, that's free and they can use that to go and try blockchain with a Hyperledger Composer and they can experiment and work on blockchain projects. >> You know I love the IBM marketing department, they always have the best commercials. To me I also love the Smarter Planet and I think Shaun, I would like to give you a chance to talk about your amazing project you have going on. Take a minute to explain, you're up on stage here at the event, pretty compelling, great social good, real value. What's some tech behind it. Take a minute to talk about your work. >> At The Plastic Bank we make plastic waste a currency so in developing countries it can be too valuable to enter the ocean. So the mission to use technology to stop ocean plastic. So we create a recycling ecosystems all around the world where people can go out, recycle the plastic that's abundant in the environment, they can earn enough value to provide for their families, send their kids to school and we have this entire ecosystem where we gather the plastic, we have these incentive programs to sort it, recycle, then we actually sell it back to some of the world's largest corporations who can use that recycled social plastic in their products instead of using new plastic. Which means that every single product tells a story of stopping ocean plastic, reducing global poverty and this really allows just a responsible consumer to make a choice that's helping to stop ocean plastic in the end. >> Well great story I just want to drill down because this highlights couple of big trends we've seen in the Internet business as it got into Big Data. And certainly you guys know a lot about that at IBM. The collective intelligence idea of having these self-forming communities, you think of any problem. Recycling plastic, which is not that hard to do, you go to the placement. How do you get it institutionalized? Is the collective intelligence problem. So you got a clever idea to do this but you also have to support it. There's a lot of cost involved so how did you pull this together? What were some of the nuance to keep the incentives, to keep the motivation, to create the payouts. We all recycle our cans for five cents at some points in our lives, I remember when I was in college it helped me a lot. But it's a whole other scale here. Take a minute to talk about the technology. >> For sure. So we're starting in developing countries that essentially have almost no existing waste management systems so we're really starting from the ground and looking at the way of how do we remove the dangers of the cash-based systems, instead have an asset-backed token that we can safely distribute and create new abilities. So really we're dealing with the unbankable who can now for the first time, save and earn through recycling. So it's not really not looking of how do we go back to you know, what's been done in the past, it's how do we take an area and start with the best technology that exists to safely bring in these new systems. >> When you say unbankable, what does that mean? >> I mean sadly, but most of the world does not qualify for a bank account. They don't have the identity, they don't have the credit history, so it's simple concept of how do you save 200 dollars to send your kid to school. You essentially hide it under a mattress and hope that nothing happens in between. But when you can safely have a digital wallet, it's just instant savings. >> Mobile phone penetration is pretty high in these areas, so they might have mobility but no actual institutional credit bank account, am I getting that right? >> Oh exactly. It's amazing when we think there's countries with no power but who have phones. So that means the education of the mobile payments is still there, it's not a foreign concept, but now you can earn the tokens which can then even be converted into mobile payment. Again where recycling is the equal opportunity. >> So are you using the blockchain component, IBM blockchain, or are you guys using a derivatives, what's the tech? >> So we use IBM blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric and LinuxOne and you know it's a system designed to scale around the world without any interruptions and just it's a go big go at home and do it right. >> You mentioned LinuxOne and I believe there's some announcements week around how to secure containers even more and we've been trying LinuxOne, Linux on the mainframe for quite a few years. Give us the update on what's new. >> One of the new things that we're announcing at this year's show is Emperor II. It's a new Linux platform and it's the technology that's underpinning The Plastic Bank's blockchain. The other thing that we're announcing is the beta for Secure Services Containers. Around the globe we have a lot of cases where data is stolen and blockchain's another type of data, we don't want it to get stolen even though there's a lot of encryption in blockchain. We still don't want the data stolen and people trying to get at it. So we have this idea of Secure Service Containers that kind of wraps around the application and protects it from malware, protects it from insiders, can't see it, insider credentials get compromised, goes into the main ways, data gets stolen. You have to do it that way. Even if IBM gets a court order for us to reveal your blockchain data, we can't do it. It's protected and encrypted in this area, and only you have the encryption keys. So the beta for that is something we also announced today. And then two weeks ago we announced the blockchain platform, it's kind of a technology that we put in place to accelerate and help people. >> Security is a huge issue, I mean the ICO marker for instance, remind me of the old stagecoach robberies, right. You literally do like a multimillion dollar ICO, completely a secured, when you're getting your wallet getting snatched, you're getting hijacked, is that something that is related to that? Or is that just a point of the security is still an open book? I mean you can have secure transactions on the blockchain but you still got your wallets out there, so you got to have a wallet strategy. >> Most of the Secure Container technology can be used for any Linux application that you run when it's out of beta. Right now it's in beta. So we're looking for users that want to have a very secure application environment, running on Linux and sign then up for our beta. >> Shaun can you tell us, what led you to this solution? I'm sure security has got to be high on your list, the kind of financial transactions that are involved in it, but I have to say a young small company, mainframe is not the initial thing that we think of. >> Again, the only way to solve the global problems is really go on such a scale that we can have hundreds of millions of pounds provided to the world's largest companies. Which just means it's got to be large scale, no interruptions and for us, trust is the biggest thing. Investor trust, client trust, and just even everyone's trust that not only the financial side, but you know we're delivering a promise of social good, environmental justice, that if we get an irrefutable trust that it's just the right system, and to me, blockchain's a trust stamp, IBM's a trust stamp, LinuxOne is a trust stamp that just it's the right way to do it on a global scale. And for us it was global was the only way to go. >> And now of course, the supply chain is a channel that you're dealing with that blockchain is a good fit for. A lot of these early use cases, their supply chain like, well you got to keep track of a lot of moving parts and who's contributing to what. >> You can have a digital token that represents the physical asset and you can kind of track it through that way and blockchain can keep the information safe and documented so that you don't lose track of the value. >> Well we're super excited. As you know, we're looking at blockchain for our audience and our world, so it's interesting, a lot of the blockchain, certainly people see the hype and the scams out there and the ICO stuff, which is natural, they're early market, the underbelly kind of shows itself, we've seen that movie before. But, here's the thing that I've never seen in my career ever. Very often, when you have alpha geeks getting super excited, we're talking CTOs, really strong technical people, and A plus entrepreneurs, they're salivating at the blockchain opportunity because they're the canaries in the coal mines in my opinion on disruption opportunities. You seeing use cases where I can solve that problem, people with passion are going after these new opportunities that were ungettable before because you'd have to roll out this complex software product, all these costs to get started. Same pattern. >> We're seeing a lot of technology people get excited about it. But they understand the technology relatively quickly and they can get it. What seems to be slowing down a lot of blockchain adoption is more the linkages with other organizations because when you're exchanging value, you're passing it between one organization and another, and another and a value chain. And getting that value chain where you can articulate who it is, and codifying the ways that you work with the people in the value chain and create a smart contract around that, that's what we see slowing down the progress of blockchain. >> We had Brian Behlendorf on yesterday, he runs the SmartLedger project for the group and we talked about decentralizations versus distributive, we all know what distributive computing is, we've seen that. But now with decentralizations, he had a good quote, he said, minimum viable decentralization and 'cause if people think that you have to have a completely decentralized environment which I thought was a really good observation. >> I agree, I heard him say that and it reminded me of one of the steps we see in blockchain progression is we have to get a minimum viable ecosystem together. We see people sometimes biting off too big of a problem and one thing I like about The Plastic Bank's approach is that they try to get it working right somewhere first and then scale from there. And then the same thing with blockchain. You have to get your ecosystem defined, you have to get that working and then expand from there. And that's one of the things that we've designed into our blockchain platform, is the ability to govern a group of folks that are trying to exchange value and then also how to operate a blockchain once it's exchanging value with a group of folks. Things like, lets say you have a new version of Hyperledger Fabric, you want to take down your blockchain that's operating while you install the new version, but we've made sure that you can do that in a smooth way that keeps on running. >> You know Alan, that is a super smart observation. I hundred percent agree with you. I've always said this, and Stu and I and Dave, we talked about this. Blockchain is a community win. The community could win this together as the community participants increase in that kind of philosophy, the value increases. If it's a winner take all, it doesn't work, clearly. So what do you guys with the ecosystem? That's a good question. Are you guys investing in the ecosystem? Can you give some examples. Obviously you're supporting great projects. >> We've built a lot of technology but one of the things that is unique about IBM's approach to blockchain is the governance tools that we've created to help manage the ecosystem. We're the only blockchain partner out there right now that has these kind of ecosystem partner tools that can kind of speed the creation of bringing multi parties together and helping them think through how they should govern the creation and then also the operation of the blockchain. What if you want to add a few more members after your blockchain is running? That's a technology problem, but it's also a business problem. And will your blockchain keep running? >> Well we'll keep in touch, we definitely want to do a lot more coverage on what you guys are doing. I think it's instrumental, we're doing a lot of coverage as well on the ICO side, tracking that business side of it, but down on the enterprise it's a lot of activity coming and I think Accenture is going to do very well. Shaun, get back to you for a second. Want to ask you a quick question. On a personal note, what has been a learning from your process? You're doing, what seems to be probably an exciting and intoxicating job where you're making social good happen, using some tech. I mean, it's a cool project. Assuming there's been some bumps along the road like any other entrepreneurial venture. What are some of the learnings you've taken away from where you are today, where you've come from and what you achieved? What are some personal learnings? >> I think really the two biggest things is one, especially coming from just a entrepreneurial nature, it's not what you know, it's what you can figure out. There's always a how. And for us, when it was when you come up with such a giant idea and you just know where it's going and where it can go past there. Mentally just becoming the person capable of achieving what you are trying to achieve as compared to getting caught up on all the things you don't know, I mean the more you know, the more you know how much you don't know and it's really just getting inspired by the fact that whatever the next answer, whatever the next hiccup, whatever the next how, we'll figure it out. I might now know the answer, but I'm committed to figuring it out and committed to becoming the person capable of figuring it out. And you know it's a journey and process and an inspiring journey to be on. >> You got to dream the future to create it. What you're saying is it's a growth mindset, I love that growth mindset, say hey we're going to go after it, we're going to see some things and have to figure it out, that's a great mindset. Versus nervousness and insecurity. Good job, well done. Well congratulations on your success and thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate it. Alan, we look forward to chatting with you in the future and talking blockchain. IBM here on theCUBE with the great projects they're doing on blockchain and also they had an announcement a couple weeks ago around some really cutting edge value around food distribution and value chain so again, Smarter Planet, I know you guys do a lot of investments early on but congratulations, and continued success Shaun. Live coverage here from the Open Source Summit in Los Angeles, California. It's theCube, I'm John Furrier, Stu Minniman, be right back with more after this short break.