>> [Announcer] From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Radio 2018, brought to you by VMware. (upbeat music) >> Hello everyone welcome back, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage here at VMware's Radio 2018, this is their seminal, big-tent event for their top engineers, smartest people come together present their reports, their projects, and come together as a community and share great content and agenda. As Steve Herrod former CTO says, this is like a sales kickoff for engineers, it's motivated and they flex their muscles, technically, stretch their minds. I'm here with Pat Gelsinger, the CEO VMware, great to see you, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Hey thank you very much, it's fun to be here at Radio. >> So this is nerd central, this is >> Absolutely, this is like geek city baby. >> Dave and I always complement you on your business acumen obviously doing great as a CEO, the numbers, business performance, world class organization, check, best place to work, one of the best places to work for, check. But you're kind of a geek at heart, you like to get down and dirty, technical, this is your event. You gettin' down with the folks? >> Yeah it's fun, I was just at our sales, we have a top sales people, our sales club, so we did it in Abu Dhabi this year, so I was just over there a couple of week ago for that so hobnobbing with the sales guys which is super important, right? Their motivation, their creme de la creme of the year, but to me this one is better, right? Just 'cause now the tech guys comin' together 'cause most companies don't do anything like this, right? So it really is a unique piece of the VMware culture where the tech guys get together and they just geek out for a couple of days and to be awarded best of Radio, it's like, oh man you're a god inside of VMware. >> It's like the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, the Oscars, it's a huge accomplishment and knowing people internally. >> Yeah and some of Ray's numbers this morning as he showed in the keynote, I mean it's competitive to get your paper shown here is competitive, right? So there's a set of judges that are picking the papers that are here out of this we already have over 200 invention disclosures that have come out of just the preparation for the conference and we haven't even gotten started yet, and now the keynotes this morning and poster sessions all week long, and letting the engineers just really vibrate off of each others' ideas and challenge them and all of our PEs and fellows roaming around here they're sort of like the big guys on campus, but hey the young Turks are coming up and they're challenging them on ideas it really is a delightful few days. >> I love your perspective, I wanna get your reaction 'cause one, not only do you have a storied history working at Intel, really a great innovative founders of Silicon Valley with HPs of the world, and now you're the chief of VMware a modern era's here, you talk about this all the time publicly about the business context and at the events, but it's different Google had pioneered this notion of 20% of your time you could work on side project, more of an academic culture Google has, I mean I love that it's cool, but VMware has a unique culture and I want you to talk about that dynamic because you have to be versatile now, agile more than ever, you have to be faster time to market, and it's always been hard for companies to crack the code on knocking down the big ideas, solving the hardest problems but yet making it practical at the same time. What's your reaction to how you guys are doing it, >> what's different? Share some color. >> In some ways and I think some of the panel, we had a panel session this morning, Steve did one session, but we had of the original engineers in the company, the five of the original engineers, right were here and they were saying it was sort of like we're doing research in a business who had business objectives, right? Solving problems that had never been solved before, Sort of the VMware culture is if it's not a hard problem, it's not worth it, right? And our objective isn't to be 2x or 10% better, but to be 10x better, right? And when you're doin' those kind of things you can't always put that on a schedule, right? The problem is solved when it's solved, right? And I was just meeting with one of my teams last night and this is, well alright that looked pretty good but I don't think you've met the minimum viable product yet so let's put it in an open beta for six months before we actually call it GA 'cause I don't think you're done >> solving the hard problem yet, right? >> So you're squinting through and looking at the projects from that? >> Yeah right, is it ready? And have we really delivered something that customers can say, "Yeah here's the value proposition you promised, here's what you're delivering me, it is a quality product," right? Which is something that's deep in that history of VMware right in many cases, and I love one of the statistics this morning, they said the early core dumps of ESX, right they found that over 2/3 of them were a result of memory parody errors, not of ESX failures of any sense, so meaning that the hardware was less reliable than the software was, that's all we sort of this magic that we say, we're out to produce world class infrastructure software that's better than the hardware ever could have been and for a hardware guy that's sort >> So that was your problem, originally I think it was on your watch actually the first core dump. Throwback Thursday would they do core dumps from like 10 years ago look at a simpler core, >> look at x say "Hey look at the core dump, Hey look at cool that is." (laughing) >> If I see the Biaz prompt oh my gosh where did that come from? >> Let's get some vinyl records and look at some core dumps from 1992. >> So Pat, now this is important because I think this is a killer point, when you look at innovation VMware has to meet the challenge of being on that next wave and you've said on theCUBE many times, if you're not on that next wave you're driftwood. A lot of companies who try to do R&D end up solving hard problems to attract the top talent, but they end up getting so focused on the problem they end up in a cul-de-sac on the wrong wave, they miss the next wave. >> [Pat] Yeah. >> How do you manage that? 'Cause this is your sticking point is to make sure you don't miss the next wave, you transition properly, how do you avoid that problem of getting so focused on the intoxicating aspect of solving problem and being in a cul-de-sac no market wave missed? >> Yeah and it's hard right? In that sense and I'll say there's, we sort of look at it from three different dimensions, one is, hey you gotta keep this bubbling cauldron of ideas and that's why we're here at Radio, right? Just these people working on ideas, right? You have some really cool stuff and every once in a while you're telling the engineers, "Well that's good but you haven't solved the hardest piece of that problem yet and so on." Then you have to be able to take it from that bubbling cauldron to, I'll say, an incubation product, right? 'Cause VMware yeah we do R&D, we do core research as well, but fundamentally we've been able to create markets based on our products and really scale them, right? The embarrassing truth of any enterprise software company is for every dollar of R&D you spend, you spend two dollars of sales and marketing, so we can't under invest in those products that we've picked that now are scaling into the market, we have to put the >> dedicated sales >> [John] Get the leverage >> out of it >> The SEs et cetera, that's really frightening. When I'm done innovating a new idea maybe I've dumped 10 million or 15 million into the core idea, okay, now I got to go spend twice that amount on >> Good marketing. >> Marketing of it and boy it's expensive to bring things into the enterprise and if the product isn't robust and solid and really compelling, then it might be three or four x, so you're now rewarded with your R&D investment to go spend on sales and marketing now, so yeah we've really taken and we have a very BCG matrix kind of view of how we take products from incubation into early market success and then into scale and finally cash cow and retirement and that process is one you have to be equally disciplined about. The third piece of it is you have to be able to declare failure and for failures, it's how do you harvest technologies and learning, but be able to look at something vCloud Air and say, "Okay we weren't successful" and now go build a multi cloud, an Amazon partnership coming out of it, we have to be able to make those shifts right and be able to declare failure, be able to move our customers forward, and then move on to the next big thing >> [John] I mean the math works >> 'Cause you're not gonna get 'em all right. >> So to your point, the math works when you can abandon quickly >> [Pat] Yeah. >> That's where the winners are 'cause then you can move the probability of success somewhere else. >> Yeah and if you can't declare failure, right, and view that in the positive and proud way. One of the failures of vCloud Air became the success of our hybrid cloud service capability now, right a lot of this ability to move workloads between public clouds was a direct harvesting of our vCloud Air failure, we're able to take that technology forward and that's now one of the pillars of how we're differentiate and our Amazon service, OBH partnership, IBM, are building on those hybrid cloud capabilities. >> Pat we've been watching you that's one of the things I will say that you're really amazing at, you're good at, you're the captain, you've got your hand on the wheel, you gotta know when to say, "Hey, close that hatch, or we're going to sink," you gotta, or I'm not that there, knowing when to make the calls. So I gotta ask you, when you look at the marketplace now, you have the option to build, the option to buy, and you have to kinda also balance those three areas, you've got Ray, you've got Rajiv, and you've got the Corp Dev guys, they have to work together and sometimes, hey let's go buy that hot start up or no I have it internally, and sometimes it might be in a core competency area. Talk about as the CEO, you've got your hand on the wheel, okay, you're steering the ship, you're setting the direction, the team's workin' hard, how do you make those calls buy build, and when it's in the core area as the market's shifting, what's that look like for you? What your view as you look forward? >> Yeah there's clearly and we think about the case let's take two examples of our buy. AirWatch, hey we saw that we had nothing in mobility and if we're gonna be in end-user computing we must have mobility in the family, so we really in some degree, we didn't have a choice, we had to go buy if we're gonna be in that space and it became foundational for us in that area. You might have argued, hey we should have done that five years sooner, but we didn't, we had to make a buy decision and then we went out and shopped, literally MobileIron or AirWatch? We looked at those and bake those off until almost the last day, alright? And I went into that expecting we were gonna buy MobileIron, right? >> [John] Really? What was the tipping point? >> Right, well, I became a Silicon Valley company, I thought their technology was a little bit better, I thought the AirWatch guys were a little bit too much market and focused on winning the early market, I didn't know if the product had the quality of a VMware product, so I really was handicapping the MobileIron one and the team came out unanimously with my agreement that AirWatch was the right thing, right? In the case of Nicira, one of the other foundational acquisitions that we did, we had a lot of the distributive virtual switch technology we had already innovated, but we hadn't put a control plane, a scale control plane against and that's Nicira did, so there it was really bringing those pieces together which really has become, I'll say, a marquee aspect of our acquisition, in many cases we're in the space >> You feel good about that, how much you paid for that. >> Oh yeah, I mean at the time people said, "1.2 billion for less than 10 million of revenue, what are you guys stupid?" Now everybody says, "Wow you're brilliant." >> So they didn't look at the underlying technology. >> Absolutely >> Leverage you were getting. >> Four years of hard work, core technology, right, and boom, we're unquestionably the leader in software defined networking now as a result of making a pretty bold bet at the time. Obviously organic innovation is the best because it sort of fits in your stream, you don't have to go, you know, change gooey practices or test release practices, it's already part of you as well. But sometimes, hey, I get to look over 10 startups and pick the winner. I may not be able to fund 10 startups internally and pick the winner, but I can look out over, you pay a premium, and one of the unique things about VMware is that over the 60 or so 70 acquisitions I think we've done now, as a company we have a highly successful track record. >> Is that because of the architectural decisions? It's not just bolt on a business unit and say stand alone and produce cash you guys are thinking strategically around how it fits architecturally, is that the difference? >> I'd say it boils down to a handful of things. That's absolutely one of 'em. We're looking deep at technology, how does it fit our technology, can we bring it in? Second we look at the culture of the company, right? We've said no to some acquisitions just 'cause we've decided that culture won't fit our culture or we're not gonna be able to mold it into our culture as well. Number three, we protect this thing, we run a process by which, hey if this is the acquired company, right, and here's the CEO of this startup company, he has passion, he is the commander of his universe, and tomorrow some low-level legal person can say, "No you can't do that," right, yesterday he was enjoying (laughing). Do we protect them? Do we turn their passion and get them to believe that their passion, remember, they're, yeah they wanna be successful, but they wanna turn their passion and objective into a big industry-changing event. And is that passion better executed inside of the platform of VMware? So we protect them, that low-level legal person can't say no or that finance person, we run a special board process around 'em to protect 'em. >> You don't want people handcuffed. >> Yeah, absolutely, we want them to be unleashed, that they have more power not less after they become part of this company that the platform for their vision and passion becomes bigger as part of ours so we protect 'em like crazy in that process. >> And you do that here at Radio as well. You wanna unleash the ground swell, get the grass roots movement going, let the sparks of innovation kinda fly out there. >> Yeah and our success rate is close to 90% on acquisitions and the industry average is below 50% so I think we've really mastered organic and inorganic innovation as good as any company has in the industry. >> Yeah I will say that's the totally true. And also Vsam became a project that came out of Radio that's been highly successful. >> [Pat] Yeah totally organic in that one. >> So you guys think strategically, it's not just bolting on revenue, although that could help if you can find it, there's not much out there for you guys. (both men laughing) Let's talk about some of the hot trends here at Radio. One of the things we're seeing, obviously with tie-in of the competitive, but also the comradery, a lot of, it's interesting to see how competitive it is, but also again VMware's got a hard core engineering culture, but also a hardcore community culture that shines through, it's obvious, so props to the folks running Radio and then the process. But when you look at the trends, what's trending up is the blockchain. We talked to some of your folks there you guys are looking at this, this is really strategic aspect, you talked with Dave about it briefly at Dell Technologies World, what's your view on blockchain? Obviously, you look at infrastructure, blockchain jumps out at you, your reaction to the hype and allusions and reality of blockchain crypto currency, not so much the ICO's, I think that's just a funding dynamic, lot of project-based stuff, but really there's some infrastructuring dynamics, your thoughts on blockchain as an infrastructure enabler for future wave? >> Yeah you know a couple of comments and one is, I think blockchain as a algorithmic breakthrough is on par with public private key encryption, alright? It's just sort of opened up the world of general purpose cryptography, and I think this idea of an immutable distributive ledger, right, sort of busts apart the database and I don't have to bring things together now the databases spreads, right, across it, immutability, right, transactability, et cetera, takes a lot of the acid characteristics of core databases and now does it in the fully distributive way, very powerful and I think it's gonna change supply chains, change financial systems, it's gonna have very broad implications so overall we're in, we believe very much in the importance of that. >> Real quick, to interrupt you real quick, >> 'cause I wanna get this thought in because you brought up general purpose, one of the things we've been kind of talking off camera, most of our team members is, blockchain looks a lot like maybe processors, general purpose processors, opening up an PC revolution, in the sense of general purpose computing. Blockchain seems to have that same dynamic, potentially, not as a direct metaphor, but if you can open up a new dynamic, that could explode new business models yet to be foreseen. >> Oh yeah, yeah, yeah absolutely. If we could take the cost of transactions down by an order of magnitude, right? If you could increase the reliability of a supply chain, right? If you could right in fact guarantee the source of origin of any product against the ultimate place of consumption, these are industry-changing type of capabilities, so we do see it quite significantly that way. But then as VMware looks at it, if there's not a hard problem to solve, then we shouldn't be in this space. So our team, one of the core problems of blockchain, right >> [John] Slow. >> Is the exponential compute requirements of higher order blockchains, so our team has solved that problem we've done some algorithmic breakthroughs that we believe allow blockchain to scale, a close to linear scale as opposed to exponential scale, wow that's game-changing for, we're also solving the auditability problem, immutable, anonymous, immutable is great, but a lot of things need to audited, right? So how can you bring some of those core concepts into blockchain? So those are some of the hard problems that we're solving, sort of back to the 10x culture, solve hard problems in fundamental ways and that's what we think that we can bring to the blockchain universe. >> Well Pat, I think it's amazing that you're here at the event, I know that you love, look forward to this as well, but to have the CEO come in at the Radio event and really lead the troops by example is awesome. We've got VMworld coming up around the corner, give us some teasers, what's happening? I know you're gonna get in trouble from Robin Matlock, (Pat laughing) but come on tell us what's coming at VMworld. >> (laughes) Well you know we have, of course we have a lot of key products, updates and other things that are coming out. I hope to broaden at VMworld this year, the view of the cloud, right? And you say, "Broaden the view of the cloud, what are you talking about Pat?" Well you're gonna have to come to VMware to get the full story, but I do think that we've thought about the hybrid cloud world largely in this idea of public and private in the past, right? But we see that the vision that we're pursuing is one much larger than that where, right, it's public, private, telco, and edge, right? And the confluence of those four worlds, we believe is something that VMware is uniquely positioned to be able to bring right to the marketplace and the implications of that so, I'm quite excited as I broaden our general view >> of the cloud as we come up on VMworld. >> And one of the exciting things it's our ninth year at VMworld, we've been every year one since theCUBE's existed and thank you for your support. >> Ah that's great. >> But I gotta say, one of the things we can do is look at the tape as they say, you said in 2011 or 2012, hybrid cloud and I kind of was like, Pat come on, hybrid cloud. >> Now everybody's talking about it. >> I think that's what it is. >> Yeah. >> But 2012? How many years ago was that? >> I think 2012 I think is when we first started to use that word. >> Yeah you put the stake in the ground, >> again, you saw that as a wave and a lot's been changed and you look back since 2012 you make the right calls, you feel good about where you're at? Things you could do over? What would you do given from a progress standpoint? What's changed radically in your mind? 'Cause we're still talking about private cloud, what, I mean obviously service mesh is around the corner other cool stuff's happening. >> Yeah you know, clearly I think when we think about the STBC, hey we called it right, we're executing better than anybody else. So you can sort of say check, right? Virtual storage, check. We talk about what we've done at NuComputing, transformed their workplace, check. We're unquestionably the industry leader in that area. I think this idea of hybrid cloud it's taken us too hard, too long too hard to realize that the multicloud vision, so that's the one I'd say, okay we haven't delivered as rapidly or as effectively as we needed to, it's now really starting to materialize, but it's taken me a couple, three years longer than it should have to get there and we comment on the vCloud Air and a little bit of the miss that we had there and that delayed our schedule, also some of the Amazon aspects sent us sideways a little bit, but hey I think we're on a very good path now but then to broaden it, to what we're doing in telco, what we're doing in edge, okay this gets to be really really powerful. >> Pat, great for you success. Thanks for coming by theCUBE here at Radio 2018 this is where all the R&D, it's where the ideas are booming I'm John Furrier with Pat Gelsinger, here in San Francisco for Radio 2018, we'll be back with more coverage after this break, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's the Cube, covering blockchain unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat Cuban music) >> Hello there, and welcome back to our exclusive coverage. This is the Cube's coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound. We start week of variety of activities here on the island around blockchain, cryptocurrency, the decentralized internet, the future of work, the future of play, the future of society, all here, happening. My next guest is an entrepreneur. Steve Steward is the CEO and co-founder of that's V-E-Z-T. Really changing the game around music, relationship to fans, and using blockchain and tokens to enable that. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much John, it's great to be here. >> Thanks for coming on, so first talk a little bit about what your value proposition, what you guys are doing. Obviously, people who ever downloaded iTunes, and then said, "This sucks, let's go to Spotify." Now are going, "Hey, I'm on Instagram. "I have access to my artist directly." The internet is a response vehicle; one on one. Tell them about your opportunity. >> There's two value props. One for the consumer, right? So, if you're an artist fan, and you love a song. You love an artist. You want to be involved with that artist on a one to one basis, there's no way to do that right now. You can follow somebody on Twitter, you can like their YouTube, that doesn't connect you with them. Our platform let's you buy in, and by buy in I mean ownership. You own a piece of the IP with that artist in their song, so it's on a song by song basis. But if Ariana Grande's my favorite artist, I want to buy a little slice of her song for $10 or $100, I now have the opportunity to put that out there, and I can share in that royalty stream with her. And she and I will connect on a level. If she wants to take my information and send other things to me like concert tickets or backstage passes, that's possible now. So the value prop for the fan, is connection with the artist and ability to say, "I own a piece of that royalty stream. "I own a piece of that song." And on the artist side the value prop is, "I now get to actually share directly with my fans, "build that community directly. "There's no gate keeper like a label "or publishing company in the middle, "and I have the ability to reach out "and monetize directly based on demand and merit. "Then take that and do whatever I want "and build up my brand." >> So this is a great example where artists that have direct relationships, might be undervalued. Also, in a way there doing their own mini ICO, so to speak, with their fans by sharing in the future value of the success with the people that got 'em there. >> They are, we call it an ISO, Initial Song Offering. So just like a ticket on sale, it allows an artist to pick a time and date and say, "At noon on Thursday, I'm putting out 5% of my song "to raise $10,000." They pick the pricing, they pick the amount they want to put up, we admin the actual royalty stream for those people that put money into it, and the artist keeps the rest of it. >> I've seen a lot of pitches, I've seen a lot of stuff online, "Oh yeah, we're going to revolutionize "the new music industry, were going to use tokens." I've seen I feel pitches, but again, if you look at the smart money investors, they're looking at deals and saying, "Is there a network effect? "Is there a protocol of some sort in there?" Obviously you've identified a relationship that has tokenization or token economics built into the business model. Take a minute to explain that key tokenization. Why you're business is set for token economics? Why you, over someone else? >> So my backgrounds in the music business, I used to manage a band called Stone Temple Pilots for 20 years. Actually for 10 years, from 1990 to 2000. I had 20 other artist in that meantime. I understand the pain points from an artists perspective. I also know where the value is in the industry. It's in the publishing. Most of these entertainment businesses, the IP is where the real value is. Film, books, T.V., music, it's all in the underlying content. Not the distribution, not how many times I've downloaded it, but the actual ownership of the content. What we want to do, is put that in a basis so the artist can now take that on a fractional basis. We can use a tokenized product to let the fans buy in. The blockchain helps us track those rights, keep them secure, make them transparent, and allow the ownership to be shared between thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. >> And this also helps build community. I want to get your thoughts on something. I held a panel on Sundance this year, Sundance Film Festival, called The New Creative. What you're seeing emerging is a new artist. The new artists are digital native, their fan base is direct. Things we just talked about. But they're undervalued, because the gatekeepers, either the studios and or labels in your instance, are controlling distribution and they're also controlling the activities. So we all know what Apple's done with some of their artists, and artists have to go on the road and do all this work. Well digital changes all that, so from your perspective as a industry guru in music, how has digital changed that dynamic? And talk about this new artist breed, this new young upcoming digital generation of artists. >> There's two things. First, internet really hasn't delivered what it said it was going to the music community, right? When you had Napster come out, it's great for the fan base. The artist and the creators actually lost out. Music got valued from here to here. It went almost to zero. People were sharing files for free, so at some point we thought-- >> Regulatory tried to solve that legal-- >> Tried and tried, but once you build a generation on free, it's hard to change that. On the fan side it was great. There was a lot more distribution. On the artist and creator side, it wasn't so great. What we're trying to do is bring value back to that. We're going to use digital in a way that lets people share what they believe in, without these gatekeepers like you said; fully demand based. If I'm the small artist who plays banjo in Kentucky, but I've got a 100,000 fans who really love me, and they can show that by buying in, forget the labels. Forget the publishers. Forget the brands. I now have a direct connection. I'm earning a living directly from my fan base, which is how it should be. >> Kind of like we do open source content. We were talking about our business, you are enabling people to self-identify with the artist, letting the artist be open to that, make that handshake or if you will, digital handshake, and have a relationship beyond just being a fan. >> Most of the labels, in fact all the labels: Spotify, YouTube, Pandora. None of those platforms let the artist share directly with the consumer, right? If I say, "Look, I've got 20,000 streams today, "can you tell me who they were, no. "Can you show me where the downloads are, no." Why aren't they letting those people connect. The artist has a natural connection with their fans. >> That's because the tech platforms are optimized for a different business model. Look at Facebook, they're living in their own problem. Their success is almost killing them. They have this centralized data optimization for the wrong incentive. They're optimizing data for advertising, not user experience. In this case, you're saying, "Hey, lets use the infrastructure and crypto "to optimize the fan relationship and expand it." >> The reason artists get on stage, the reason they write a song, is to connect with people, right? We've disembodied that connection to the point where they're out there in the ether and the fans are over here. They're like, "How do we get together?" If we can bring that back, there's a very powerful connection there that we can take advantage of and let people actually make money from their craft. >> Well Steve, great to have you on The Cube because one, you have domain expertise, you're business model solid, and we've been saying yesterday and on The Cube that it's a reverse of the old stack model. The top of the stack is the business model. You nail the business model, the underlying plumbing will sort itself out. With that in mind, how are you guys looking at the plumbing? What are you doing here in Puerto Rico? Are you raising money? Are you doing an ICO? Take a little bit to explain your relationship to the plumbing under the hood, in the blockchain, crypto world. And then what you guys are doing here in Puerto Rico. >> We started building our platform the traditional way. We took traditional VC funding about a year ago. As we were building the platform, we understood the importance of a blockchain, some type of decentralized ledger that allows people to look transparently under the ownership stack. As we were building that, one of our engineers said, "hey, have you guys heard of an ICO?" we had no idea what this was. It was about a year ago. Got educated very quickly, dove deep on it, and realized there's an opportunity, not really for the fact that it's crypto, but to actually capitalize the company in a meaningful way. We want to scale this very quickly. We've got strategic partners in Asia, other parts of the world, that we need to grow very quickly into. We realized it was an opportunity to have. We did a raise close of December 1st; oron exchanges. >> An equity raise or a token raise? >> The token raise. We did a U.S. based PPM SAFT. >> So a security token. >> It's a utility token, but we followed a process that our legal advisors advised us. In the U.S., keep it as a PPM SAFT. If it's offshore, it's offshore. >> So accredited investors? >> Accredited investors only, small cap, try to keep it reasonable, because we don't need 100 billion dollars to build this platform right now. We're looking to get this in a traditional business sense, so we're building a real platform with a real team. We took advantage of that. We got listed on an exchange January 12th. At this point, we're head down in product. We're looking to launch this in 45 days at Coachella. We had an event two nights ago at South by Southwest. We came up here from Austin, so we're going back to California tomorrow. >> John: You're on a plane. >> Yeah, we're on a roadshow. We've got artist brand partners now. We're signing people, two or three artists a week that come in. We've got publishing catalogs that are coming on board realizing that there's a B to be played, because publishers only monetize the top two or 3% of their catalogs. The other 98% get no love. If they can put that on a retail platform like us, and allow consumers to buy directly into it, it's a whole windfall for them. >> Everyone's a media company these days. We've been saying it, and that's the new media model. You got a great formula, good luck. We'd love to keep in touch. >> Absolutely. >> What are you guys looking to do next six months as you get the product out the door? Ecosystem, you got to recruit more artists? What's the plan? >> My goal is 100,000 songs in the platform by the end of summer. Like I said, we're doing a lot of brand activations at music festivals. We see people, you know, exponential growth. Each song comes with an artist fan base. This builds into it. We're also supporting producers, co-writers, performers, the other guys that aren't on the stage. We realize this platforms for them, because the own live ownership in these songs, but have never had a way to monetize it. We're growing this very quickly. >> Steve Steward, CEO/co-founder of that's V-E-Z-T. Check 'em out. If you like music, this is a great way to actually take part in being a fan and owner of the actual property; great business model. We'll keep in touch. Thanks for sharing on The Cube. More live coverage here on The Cube, bringing you all the action, and extracting the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. We'll be right back with more coverage after this break. >> Thanks guys, thanks John. (electronic instrumental music)

(Electronic ambient music) >> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's The Cube! Covering Polycon 18, brought to you by PolyMath. >> We are live here with The Cube's exclusive coverage at Polycon 18. It's a securitized token conference, but really, it's about cryptography, cryptocurrency, blockchain, token economics. The whole community's here, investors, entrepreneurs, and startups. We have two great guests here from CryptoChicks, Nataliya Hearn and Natalia Ameline. Pioneers in the industry doing something really compelling, the first ever blockchain hackathon coming up in April. It's historic, it's the first. Welcome to the Cube, thanks for joining me. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for having us. >> So I love the t-shirts, CryptoChicks, I want one, a few. Can I buy them on the website? Can I get them made? >> Yeah, you can, absolutely >> I want my daughters to have those immediately, so. People in our community know that the Cube's really been... we love women in tech because there are so many smart women out there and it's awesome to showcase. But beyond that, it's this real technology being innovated. Talk about what you guys are doing. You have a really important mission, had great success, with CryptoChicks. This is like a movement inside this community, but it's also happening all around the world. You guys have big plans. Take a minute to explain the group, how you guys are operating, how it's going, and talk about this big event. >> We started this group because we realized that women are underrepresented in the space, and you don't need to go far; look at what's going on at this conference, right? Even though we are pleased towards the increase in turnaround of women, in events like this, but we still have ways to improve. So we started this group CryptoChicks with the sole mission to increase, improve gender balance, and increase participation of women in the community. And we're doing it in a variety of ways, but largely what we try to do is we try to create an environment where women feels safe to learn. It's small classes. Where women come in, they can ask questions, they can feel at ease, and I think it's very important because not every woman feels comfortable getting up in a big crowd and asking questions. And I think what we do is really helpful for a lot of women this way. >> It's very inspiring. Also you guys as co-founders Nataliya we were talking about you were a professor, and education's a big part of it, but also human nature right? So talk about the dynamic and how you guys approached that because there's different styles, both men and women and we got to kind of get it going together, I mean, you guys have got to get critical mass. Now the good news is, people are talking about it, and it's happening, and... >> Absolutely, I think, kind of knowledge. People hear stuff. You know I had kind of interesting... I was talking to a woman who was in tech but her English wasn't great, and all this kind of stuff. So she called it BigCoin, which I love it. (laughs) Because it is kind of a BigCoin you know? Out of all the coins it's the biggest coin. So stuff like this. If you go to meet ups you would have in a room of a hundred, maybe one or two women. And then they'll go, well what's a wallet? What is all this about? Just even the basic, baby-stepping, through the system. And then I think well we're focusing on only one part of it. The other part of it is that we're creating a really new level of democracy. And that element, I think, that's why we need the education. An education probably, while women is great, but we've got to start a little earlier. The interests should come at least in high school level, where you go well, What is debt? What is value? How do you define currency? Actually all the stuff we're doing at the conference here, in terms of securities. Is it a security? Or is it not a security? How do you define? So all of that starts early on. >> I've been having conversations at many levels about this, at Sundance Film Festival we talk about the role of technology. So it used to be, you know, the Boys Club. That's now changing, which is great, but also there's a trend of multidisciplinary things. You mentioned economics and all these things. So the world now is becoming integrated. So math for instance, there's a lot of math geeks out there, male and female. You don't have to be a coder per say, right? There's certainly more coding opportunities, for women, but it's not just one thing. You can do anything. Fifty percent of the population is women. If this is going to change the world, which it is. Fifty percent of it is going to be impacted too. So they have to have a role in what's going on in the community. So it's natural it should happen, I mean... >> Absolutely. And actually one of the reasons the Hackathon, the reason it's first all women Hackathon in Blockchain, and we actually have two streams. And one stream is for hackers, who are into the nitty-gritty of, sort of, the coding part, and we actually have support for them as well, in terms of learning. And then we also have the business track, where if you have an idea, and you think that Blockchain would be a really good avenue to take that idea, so you could pitch your idea during the Hackathon as well. >> And just to clarify, this is the up and coming Hackathon that you guys are doing. All women. What's the date? Share the details. Share the details. >> So it's going to be actually a conference and Hackathon, we're going to run it parallel. Conference will start on the 6th of April and going through the 8th of April, and the Hackathon will happen at the same time. >> And where is the conference going to be attended? >> So the conference is taking place in Toronto, we're partnering with our venue partner MaRS Discovery District. So it's an absolutely amazing venue in Toronto. And also our partner MaRS has a history of, you know, promoting the women in technology. So it's a good partnership for us. And it's going to be, the Hackathon is going to run about thirty hours and hopefully it's going to be a lot of good connections coming out of it. I think one of the things that we want to accomplish in this Hackathon for women is to make it easy for them to get opportunities. So most importantly we want to connect them with employers. And that's a great venue for that, because when we travel, we have a lot of the times owners of the companies will approach us and say you know, we're really looking to diversify our team. Can you help us? Because women just don't apply. I think that's another way we're trying to really infuse more women into the community. >> Open up channels of opportunity, it's not just having it be like a job interview. >> Exactly. >> So networking, demonstrating skills, style. Are you guys seeing the formula that works with people, with women? Because we see different conversations around this, you know. Take a certain approach, posture this way, be different. Eventually, I interview a lot of women that are saying, I'm going to be hardcore and some say, I just want to wear high heels and I'm a fashion person, that's who I am and why would I want to change that just because I'm a woman? So there's different views on this. Is there any pattern, or formula that you would suggest or observe? >> You know I think we live in a really fortunate part of the globe where we can actually do what we want to do. There aren't too many places like that in the world. And I think that we've got to be really thankful for that, and then it really is, you know, we are empowered to create opportunities. And in this space, it's a really young space. I mean it's really fundamental. Some people say well we've been in it for ten years. Really, most of the people have been in it for, you know, couple years. So don't think, women shouldn't think that well, there's all these guy and they know what they're doing. They also don't know what they're doing, everything's changing. Every wallet and every structure that is being created today is going to be a little different tomorrow, it's a process. >> If you say you're an expert about something here, then you're really a pretender because everyone's always learning. And the real pros are humble about that. So that's one observation. But the other one is, and I want to get your reaction on this because I go to a lot of events. Especially in tech. Where a lot of male-dominated, you know, enterprise here and there. This community's very mission oriented and I don't see any signs of lack of inclusion. So I think the door is open at least my perspective, and certainly we've been covering a lot in the space, Bitcoins in 2010 and crypto and everything else. But being here I see open doors. I can say the other verticals, not so much. Here, it seems open. Do you guys agree with that? What's good about that if you do agree, how do people walk through those doors? And if it's not, what needs to happen? What's your observation? >> I think it depends on the personalities a lot. I find that some personalities, the door is open, and will just walk in. Some personalities are, you know, I want someone to bring me and introduce me, I think it's like this everywhere. I think in this space I mostly see that it's friendly space, pretty happy with it, but I also think there could be some improvements, because quite frankly sometimes the culture is not necessarily that welcoming. For example, you go to the chatrooms on Facebook as an example. A woman makes a comment and after that you'll see lines of guys responding, what are you doing here? And why did you say that? >> Really? >> Yeah it's very common >> It's IRC culture, really. >> Yeah, so it's you know, some women are perfectly fine with it, right? And for me, it's like okay, you know, everybody's entitled to opinions. But some next time would not comment, right? And I don't know, maybe guys have a little bit thicker skin, and they take some ridicule better, I don't know, but I think there's still ways to make the culture a little bit more open and I guess comforted. >> Nataliya, do you agree with that? What's your take on that? >> I think it really starts with upbringing, again, and how we raise our children. I have 3 sons, so I raise them in the way I'd want to be treated, in an environment. I'm an engineer, so I've worked with men all my life, and this is not unusual for me. I've gone to conferences all my life, thousands of people, twenty women. >> Yeah you've got a thick skin, you guys have thick skin. >> And you know, in a way yeah, it takes guts, like you said before, to wear high heels and a skirt and really stand out when you're already standing out. So you've got to put your head up you know? And you walk into that room. >> Be yourself! Right? But don't be afraid. I guess what you're saying is, you could have whatever posture you want to have, just be proud, keep your chin up, as they say. Alright, so let's talk about, you mentioned, you guys are moms. So like, I have four kids too. Two daughters, David Vellante has four as well, the same. These kids that are born now are growing with digital natives, some are kind of pre, post Facebook, pre Instagram, Snapchat, it ranges in the spectrum. Certainly gaming has been a big part of the culture of the youth. So people who are digital natives, and or have come on with the connected social world that is, they are doing things differently. So I wanted to get your thoughts as parents, I get asked the question a lot: should I let him game? Should I let him code? What should I do? What's good? What's bad? There's no data other than kind of anecdotal or vision. I personally believe in gaming as a good future of work scenario, as long as you don't OD on it, and overdose on too much gaming. I think coding is the same. So I think this is going to be the tooling of the future, what do you guys think as parents about the exposure of technology? How do you do it? Is there a diet? Is there a recipe? I mean, what do you guys think? >> I think personally it's great. I think the younger kids get exposed to technology, the more comfortable they feel with it, and the more likely they are to become the next, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates etcetera. And I think our society, whether some people like it or not, it's moving in a direction where we're becoming more and more technology addicted and dependent on it. Technology is everywhere, we don't even realize, that it's there. You know, you wake up in the morning and you look at the internet. You may like it or not, but that's the lifestyle these days. So I think for me, with kids, we need to give them freedom, and we need to observe. Because at the end of the day, I think kids are intuitive, they know what they're interested in, and we need to help them nurture their interests, so that they grow up, and they don't need to go to a job that they hate. Instead they do what they love. And that's how we're becoming a more productive society. >> And the learning online too is an opportunity to go nonlinear. Learn things at the scale you don't have to wait for the next class or semester. Your thoughts on this, Nataliya? >> Absolutely, I think every child has a gift, and I think it's parents responsibility to discover that gift. Instead of shoving your ideas, or things you didn't achieve in life into your children. >> That's called snowplow parent or helicopter parenting. >> So absolutely, and we are a technology-driven society, and you know, I'm an engineer so I'm a techie, so I've introduced my sons to a lot of things, but you know what? They've introduced me, and actually they kept me in this sector. >> I think the observational thing is really important. Freedom with observation. That's not monitoring, and surveillance, or helicoptering. It's really like, let him play, let him explore, let them have a good time. Understand it, but be mindful of what you're observing. And that's key. >> And yeah, too much of anything is not good. You know, you have to balance your sleep patterns, and all this kind of stuff, all of that has to come into a child's life. >> Yeah, intervention is required at some point, you know, when you see that the kid is shaking. (laughing) >> I always say to women in tech who are moms like, man, you have it so easy now, because you know how hard it is to raise children. Being a parent is super hard, and a lot of people look at that, need to understand that's how hard it is. It's really a wonderful thing. So thanks for sharing. Looking forward to following the CryptoChicks and covering the Hackathon, so let us know how it goes. Are there going to be any live feeds, or twitter handles, or hashtag, what's going on? >> There will be, and we'll let you know. Thank you for the opportunity >> Thank you very much >> Thank you very much for sharing, CryptoChicks here on The Cube, I'm John Furrier. Live coverage continuing, day two, of SiliconANGLE Media's Cube exclusive coverage at Polycon 18. We'll be right back. (Electronic music).

(fast-paced instrumental music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to the special CUBE conversation, here at theCUBE Studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, Co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and host of theCUBE for our special CMO signal series we're launching. Really talkin' to the top thought leaders in marketing, in the industry, really pushing the envelope on a lot of experimentation. And Robson Grieve, Chief Marketing Officer of New Relic, is here. Welcome to this CUBE conversation. >> Thank you, excited to be with you. >> So, New Relic is a very progressive company. You have a founder who's very dynamic, writes code, takes sabbaticals, creates product, he's a musician, is prolific. That kind of sets the tone for your company, and you guys are also state of the art DevOps company. >> Robson: Yes. >> So, pressure's on to be a progressive marketer, you guys are doing that. >> Yeah, I think some of the great things about that DevOps culture are process wise it allows us to experiment with different ways of working. And we've obviously talked a little bit about Agile and the way a different way of thinking about how you actually do the work can change the way you output the kind of things you're willing to make, the way the teams work together. And the degree to which you can integrate marketing and sales, really, around shorter time frames, faster cycle times. And so, we have a great culture around that. We also have a really great culture around experimentation. I think that's one of the biggest things that Lou talks a lot about is, let's try things, let's look for experiments, let's see where we can find something unexpected that could be a big success, and let's not be afraid for something to go wrong. If you can do that, then you have way higher odds of finding the Geo TenX. >> And you guys are also in the analytics, you also look at the signal, so you're very data driven, and I'll give you a prop for that, give you a plug. (Robson laughing) New Relic, a very data driven company. But today we're seeing a Seed Changer, a revolution in the tech industry. Seeing signals like cryptocurrency, blockchain, everyone's goin' crazy for this. They see disruption in that. You've got AI and a bunch of other things, so, and you got the Cloud computing revolution, so all of this is causing a lot of horizontally, scalable change, which is breaking down the silos of existing systems. >> Yeah. >> But, you can't just throw systems away. You have systems in marketing. So, how are you dealing with that dynamic, because we're seeing people going, hey, I just can't throw away my systems, but I got to really be innovative and agile to the real-time nature of the internet now, while having all those analytics available. >> Yeah. >> How do you tackle that, that issue? >> Yeah, there's a couple ways to think about analytics. Number one is, what do you need to know in real-time to make sure things are working and that your systems are up and running and operating effectively? And that runs through everything from upfront in web experiences and trial experiences, that kind of thing. Through to how our leads and customers progressing through a funnel, as they get passed around the various parts of a company. But then the second approach we take to data is, after all that's happened, how can we look backwards on it and what patterns emerge when you look at it over the scale of longer period of time. And so, that's the approach today. You're right, you can't just everything and throw it out and start over again, 'cause some startups stop by with a really cool idea. But, you have to be aggressive about experimentation. I think that's the, back to that big idea that we talked about experimentation. We are trying out a lot of different things all the time. Looking for things that could be really successful. Of course, Intercom is one that we started to experiment with a little bit for in product communications and we've expanded over time as we found it more and more useful. And, so that's not, we haven't taken and just ripped something else out of it, made some giant bet on something brand new. We've tried it, we've gotten to know it, and then we found ways to apply that. We're doing that with a number of different technologies right now. >> Yeah, you're in a very powerful position, you're Chief Marketing Officer, which has to look over a lot of things now, and certainly with IT and Cloud. You're essentially in the middle of the fabric of the organization. Plus, people are knockin' on your door to sell you stuff. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> So, what is-- >> That's happened. (laughing) >> It happens all the time, he's got the big budget. >> What are they saying to you? Who's knockin' on your door, right now? Who's peppering you. Who's tryin' to get on your calendar? Who's bombarding you? Where are you saying, Hey, I'm done with that, or Hey, I'm lookin' for more of that. How do you deal with that tension, 'cause I'm sure it must be heavy. >> Yeah, I think there is definitely a lot of optionality in the market, for sure. I think there's a new wave of martech vendors. Many of whom are sitting right in between sales ops and marketing ops. That's a layer we're really interested in. Systems that can help us better understand the behavior of sale's reps, and how they're using things that we're making, and then systems that you can better understand, indications of prospect intent. >> So, funnel and pipeline, or those kinds of things? >> Yeah, we think about it more from the context of authentic engagement. And so, we don't want to apply too much of a-- >> Structure to it. >> Structure, a sales structure to it. We want to try to follow the customer's intent through the process, 'cause the best prospect is someone who is authentically engaged in trying to find a solution to their problem. And so, if we can avail ourselves to people in a thoughtful, and creative, and authentic way, when they need us, when they're trying to solve that problem, then I think that they can become much more successful prospects. >> I love your angle on agile marketing. I think that's table steaks, not that you got to behave that way, and I'd love to get your thoughts, I'll get your thoughts later on the management style and how you make that happen. But, you mentioned engagement, this is now the new Holy Grail. There's a lot of data behind it, and it could be hidden data, it could be data decentralized all over the place. This is the hottest topic. How do you view engagement as a CMO, and the impact to the organization? What are you lookin' for, what's the key premise for your thesis of getting engagement? >> It's really the number one, two, and three topic we're talking about right now, and we think about it on the content side. How do we get ourselves really producing a constant stream of content that has value to people? That either helps them solve a problem right now, or helps them think about an architectural issue in a different way. We're trying to invest more and more technical resources in people who can produce things that are relevant to all the different kinds of users that we have. DevOps people, SREs, our traditional developer customers. We want to go deep and be super relevant at a content level for them. But then once they start to spend time with us, we want to then have a progressive way to pull them deeper and deeper into our community. And so, the things that we can do, something's in digital for that, but then often there's a pop off line, and we do a lot of workshops, a lot of education. >> Face-to-face? >> Face-to-face, where we're in communities, we look at a map at the start of the year and say, where do we have big user communities, and then we drop events into those places where we take our educators and our product experts and get customers to share with each other. And that becomes a really great platform to put them together and have them help each other, as well as learn more about what our product does. >> So, it sounds like you're blending digital with face-to-face? >> Robson: Yeah, absolutely. >> That's a key part of your strategy? >> Key part is to make sure that we're getting time and attention from the people who are making decisions, and what technologies they're going to buy, but also that we're really investing time in the people who are using it in their everyday lives to do their job better. That's a really-- >> Give some examples of outcomes that you've seen successful from that force. That's a really unique, well unique is pretty obvious if you think about it, but some people think digital is the Holy Grail, let's go digital, let's lower cost. But, face-to-face can be expensive, but you're blending it. What's the formula and what are some of the successes that you've seen as a result. >> Yeah, we tend to try to create events that are good for a very specific audience. So, if you think about a targeting formula that you would use in digital that will make digital really efficient, that same idea works really well for an event. So, if you got a user community that's really good at doing one thing with your product and you feel like if they knew a few more things that they could get better. Then we help them really advance to the next level, and so we run certification programs, where we'll pull together a group of confident users and help them get to the next level. And things like that allow us to make a really targeted event that allows us to reach out to a group and move them to a higher level of competency. To have competency focus is a big deal. Can we help you get better at your job? But then communities, is the other big one. Can we help you connect with people who are doing the same things? Solving the same kinds of problems and are interested in the same topics as you are. >> It sounds like the discovery path of the user, the journey, your potential. >> Yeah, it's important to us for sure. >> And content sounds like it's important too. >> It helps with your engagement. How you dealing with the content? Is that all on your properties? How about off property measurement? How do you get engagement for off property? >> Yeah, we're experimenting a lot in that area, of off property. I think we've had tons of success inside our own website and our blogs, and those kinds of-- >> You guys do pop out a lot of content, so it's content rich. >> Yes, we definitely have a lot, we hopefully, our attitude is, we want to turn our company inside out, so we want to take all of our experts-- >> Explain that, that's important topic, so, you guys are opening up what? >> We have got customer support people, we have technical sales, and technical support engineers, we've got marketing people who are thought leaders in Cloud and other architecture topics. We really want to take all the expertise that they've got and we want to share it with our community. >> John: How do you do that, through forums, through their Twitter handles? >> Through all of the above, really. Through their Twitter handles, through content that they write and produce through videos, through a podcast series that we run. We're really trying to expand as much as possible, but then inside our user help community, anytime somebody solves a problem for one customer, we want to add it to that-- >> Sounds like open-source, software. (laughing) >> From a knowledge perspective, that's really an important idea for us. >> Yeah, that's awesome. You worry about the risk. I like the idea of just opening it up. You're creating building blocks of knowledge, like code. It's almost like an open-source software, but no, it's open knowledge. >> We think if we can help people get really successful at the work they're trying to do, that it's going to do great things for us as a brand. >> What's the rules of the road, because obviously you might have some hay makers out there. Some employee goes rogue, or you guys just trusting everyone, just go out and just do it. >> Well, it's constant effort to distribute publishing rights and allow people to take more and more ownership of it, and to maintain some editorial controls, because I think quality is a big thing. It's probably a bigger concern for us then somebody going rogue. At some level, if that happens to you, you can't stop it. >> So, is this a new initiative or is it progression? >> It's been ongoing for awhile. It's progression of an effort we started probably 18 months ago, and it's a wonderful way for an engineering team, and a product management team, and a marketing team to get together around a really unified mission as well. So our content project is just one of those things that I think really pulls us together inside the company in a really fun way as well. >> It's interesting, you seeing more and more what social peers want to talk to each other and not the marketing guy, and say, Hey, get the Kool-Aid, I like the product, I want to talk to someone to solve my problem. >> Want to have a real conversation about it, and I think that's our job, is to not think of it as marketing, but to think of it as just facilitating a real conversation about how our product works for somebody. >> I'd love to talk about leadership as the Chief Marketer for New Relic in the culture that you're in, which is very cool to be in on the front-end, in the front lines doing cool things. What do you do? How do you manage yourself, how do you manage your time? What do you do, how do you organize the troops, how do you motivate them? What's your management style for this marketing in the modern era? >> I think, number one, we're trying to create an organization that is full of opportunities for people, so it's something that we've done. I've been there for about two and a half years, and we've really looked hard for people who have tons of potential and finding great things to work on. On new projects, and then let them try out ideas that they've got. So, if they can own an idea, give it a shot, and even if it doesn't work, they'll learn a bunch from the process of trying. >> What are the craziest ideas you've heard from some of your staff? (laughing) >> Oh boy, you know a lot of them involve video. There's always a great idea for a video that's risky. And we've made-- >> So the Burger King one with Net Neutrality going around the web is the funniest video I've seen all week. >> Robson: Yeah, yeah. >> Could be risky, could be also a double-edged sword, right? >> Yeah, video is one of those places where you have to check yourself a little bit, 'cause it could be a great idea, and so sometimes you have to actually make it and look at it, and say, would we publish this or not? And, yeah, so that's definitely the place to be. >> So common sense is kind of like your. >> Yeah, you start with common sense, for sure. And, I think we want to be a part of it being culturally responsible in Silicon Valley right now, is really making sure that we're attentive to making sure that we're putting in the right kind of workplace environment for people. And so, our content and the way we go to market has to reflect that as well, so there's a bunch of filters that you put on it, but you have to take risks and try to make things, and if they work great, and if they don't then the cost of that is less than. The cost of failure is so low in some of these things, so you just have to try. >> Well, you know, we're into video here at theCUBE. I have to ask you, do you see video more and more in the marketing mix and if so, how does that compare to old methods? We've seen the media business change and journalism, certainly on the analyst community. Who reads white papers? Maybe the do, maybe they don't. Or, how do they engage? What content formally do you see as state of the art engagement? Is is video, is it a mix, how do you view that? >> It's a mix, really. I think video's really powerful. And it can be great to tree topics and short form in a really powerful way. I think we can stretch it out a little bit in terms of how to and teaching and education also. But, there are times when other things like a white paper are still relevant. >> Yeah, they got to do their homework and get ready for the big test. >> Yes. >> How to install. (laughing) >> Exactly, yeah. >> Okay, big surprises for you in the industry, if you could look back and talk to yourself a few years ago and say, Wow, I didn't know that was going to happen, or I kind of knew this was going to be a trend we would be on. Where is the tailwinds, where's the headwinds in the industry as a marketer to be innovated, to be on the cutting edge, to deliver the value you need to do for your customers and for the company? >> Yeah, I think there's a bunch of great tailwinds organizationally and in the approach to work. And you talked about Agile. I think it's been a great thing to see people jump in and try to work in a different way. That's created tons of scale for a department like ours, where we're tryin' to go to more countries, and more places constantly. Having a better way to work, where we waste less effort, where we find problems and fix things way faster, has given us the chance to build leverage. And I think that's just that integration of engineering, attitudes, with marketing processes has been a, is an awesome thing. Everybody in our marketing department, or at least a lot of people have read the DevOps handbook, and we've got a lot of readers, so the devotes of that thought process that don't suit an engineering jobs. >> DevOps, Ethos, I think is going to be looked at as one of those things, that's a moment in history that has changed so much. I was just at Sundance Film Festival, and DevOps, Ethos is going to filmmaking. >> Robson: Yeah. >> And artistry with a craft and how that waterfall for the Elite Studios is opening up an amateur market in the Indy, so their Agile filmmakers and artists now doing cool stuff. So, it's going to happen. And of course, we love the infrastructures code. We'll talk about that all day long We love DevOps. (Robson laughing) So I got to ask you the marketing question. It will be a theme of my program of the CMO is, if I say marketing is code, infrastructure is code, enabled a lot of automation, some abstracted a way horizontally scaled, and new opportunities, created a lot of leverage, a lot of value, infrastructures code, created the Cloud. Is there a marketing as code Ethos, and what would that look like? If I would say, apply DevOps to marketing. If you could look at that, and you could say, magic wand. Give me some DevOps marketing, marketing as code. What would you have automated in a way that would be available to you? What would the APIs look like? What's your vision for that? >> What about the APIs, that's a good question. >> John: I don't think they exist yet, but we're fantasizing about it. (laughing) >> Yeah, I think the things that tend to slow marketing departments down really are old school, things like approvals. And how hard it is to get humans to agree on things that should be really easy. So, if the first thing you-- >> Provisioning an order. (laughing) >> The first thing you could do is just automate that system of agreeing that something's ready to go and send it out that I think you'd create so much efficiency in side marketing departments all over the world. Now that involves having a really great, and API's a great thought in that, because the expectations have to get matched up of what's being communicated on both sides, so we can have a channel on which to agree on something. That to me is-- >> Analytics are probably huge too. You want to have instant analytics. I don't care which database it came from. >> Yes, exactly. And that's the sense of DevOps and can use. But then you got some feedback on, did it work, was it the right thing to do, should we do more of it, should we fix it in some specific way? Yeah, I think that's-- >> I think that's an interesting angle, and the face-to-face thing that I find really interesting, because what you're doing is creating that face-to-face resource, that value is so intimate, and it's the best engagement data you can get is face-to-face. >> Yeah, I think it also allows us to build relationships to the point where we are getting invited into slack channels to help companies in real-time sometimes. I think there's a real-- >> So humanizing the company and the employees is critical. >> Yeah. >> You can't just be digital. >> Yes, it's a big deal. >> Awesome. Robson, thank so much for coming on theCUBE. The special CMO series. Is there a DevOps, can we automate away, what's going to automate, where's the value going to be in marketing? Super exciting, again, martech. Some are sayin' it's changing rapidly with the Cloud, AI, and all these awesome new technologies. What's going to change, that's what we're going to be exploring here on the CMO CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat instrumental music)

(click) >> Well welcome to the special Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier with The Cube. We're here at Sundance Film Festival, Sundance, 2018, special coverage. All the top stories are obviously in the Intel Tech Lounge. All week's been our home base. We've been out on the streets getting the best stories, but one of the most biggest, compelling tech stories is the VR revolution is here. And the impact artist, the new creative. My next guest here is Michael Smit, who is the Chief Commercial Officer of Ziva. Welcome, to The Cube conversation. >> Thanks John, thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. >> You guys have a very impressive company. You're here at the Intel Tech Lounge. You're displaying Ziva. I saw a demo over there. You guys are bringing, I mean, really studio grade quality of animation, and integrated into storytelling. And this is not new for you. But one of the themes of democratization. So, you guys are a key tell sign in my opinion of where the developer, the creative developer market's going. Talk about what you guys are doing. And some of the big things you've done. I know you had some big films. Share a little bit about Ziva, and then we can have a conversation. >> Sure, sure. You know, we like to say, I mean, truly we believe in characters. And at the heart of our technology is character simulation technology. So, here at Sundance, you know, and Intel, we've been working with Intel for a while. They gave us an opportunity to be here. You know, when you think about stories. Stories kind of are driven by characters. And great characters make great stories. So, in our world, great characters are characters that are simulated through physics, and anatomical simulation to achieve levels of plausibility and reality. That previously maybe was only accessible to the very top, you know, budgeted productions. Or the very top VFX studios of the world. >> And what have you worked on? Just share some of the films that you've worked on. And some of the tech. >> Yeah, I'll give a background of the, where I guess the previous kind of, legacy of the technology comes from. But it's actually my partners, who are here with me, have a story record. They actually co-authored the software. You know, 10 years ago or so, that drove characters in titles like, Avatar, and Apes, and the Hobbit. James and Simon, I think they're on a, floating around back there. They've also got a Sci-Tek at home for the engineering work. And the vision here is that, you know, they did that work, and they were really motivated and enthused to do amazing work, amazing results, provide amazing results. They want to enable that same, and provide that same kind of functionality to small studios, big studios, game studios, independents, anyone who wants to tell a great story. >> And there's a huge tsunami. We've been talking at The Cube for the folks watching. Know that, I've been on this narrative around a renaissance in software development. Now we're seeing a renaissance in creative development. And we call that the new creative. Because an organic trend is brewing pretty fast. And used to be, not just Indie filmmakers, we're talking about kids, adults, creatives who are doing filmmaking things, in like virtual reality. And some of the successes that we're seeing, like Baobab Studios is one. They're having the hits around the characters. So, there's a thirst and a demand for technology for characters, but it's hard to build. This is an opportunity for you guys. What's your view on, on that trend? Are you guys going to be a supplier? Can I just use your technology to get characters? And where does this fit into the evolution of say, VR? >> Sure, I mean I touch on that concept of the new creative, because those who want to build and create amazing characters, to tell rich stories, tell immersive experiences. They don't want be, you know, like anything else in our life these days, like anything else that Intel is powering in our life these days. Automation of the simpler tasks should be a given. You don't want creatives to get hung up on, you know, trying to make your cheek look exactly the way it needs to look over 500 frames. When you want them to be making, bringing the story to life. So, our software basically automates a lot of the nuance of organic characters and properties. And the things that make us realistic. And I think it empowers and enables those creatives to tell the stories. >> And how can they tap into Ziva? Because I believe that you guys are on the cusp of something really big. A big trend that no-one's really talking about. And we come at it from a tech angle. So, we can see historically what happened with open source software. I mean 10% of the notional property in most big breakthroughs is the unique IP. 90% of it is reused software. >> Yeah. >> So, you can almost see these dots connecting in this new creative world. You guys seem to be at the forefront of that. Is that part of how people can engage with you? Is that a role you guys see yourselves playing? And, you know, how does someone get a hold of your technology? Do they buy it? Do you license it? How does it work? >> Great question, I mean yeah, we focus on software to make characters. And that's what our customers license from us. We license to studios, we license to Indies. We license to academics. We license to people who want to try it out for free. So, if there's a plug opportunity the url for the website is zivadynamics.com you'll learn a lot more about the company, about some of the work-- >> How expensive is it? I mean, just give a, can you talk about the number? Is it expensive, is it affordable? How does someone who's experimenting, might have their art and their storytelling vision coming to life, and might not have a big budget. >> Yeah so, the Indie licenses basically work out to about 50 bucks a month, per user to leverage the software. Which when you think about previous, maybe less robust implementations of this kind of thinking. We're limited, and we're at the tail end of multi-million dollar investments by huge studios. So, we think that's a pretty good value equation. >> Where are you guys located? Talk about your company, and culture. And what drives you guys. >> Yeah, we're located in Vancouver. You know, we're in one of the epicenters of a lot of creative work, and a lot of filmmaking. In fact, I mean, within a short radius of our studio, the number of game, and visual effects studios, it's amazing. So, you know, but our team's international, in fact, one of our team members is kind of mostly based in Wellington. Another one is actually working in Norway these days. We've got somebody in Los Angeles. So, we're kind of all over the place. And our customer footprint, we've got users in every continent, but Antarctica. >> I wish you could have come on the panel. But we were kind of sold out, we've got a small footprint here at the Intel Tech Lounge in Sundance. And the real theme is, new creative. So, I've got to ask you, in your view what is the new creative mean to you? >> The new creative is somebody who's curious, and they're not scared. They're not concerned with necessarily what it is that they're going to be making, or the media format they're going to be making. They're curious about what story they're going to be telling. And they're going to pursue anything. And they're not going to be shackled by artificial constraints. They're not going to be shackled by budgets that stop them. That make them take creative ideas off the table. They're going to pursue what they can do themselves. They're going to leverage technology in unique ways. And we're going to see some pretty amazing stuff happening. >> Yeah, and it's always, give them more time to work on their art, not worry about the scaffolding in the software to do it. >> That's exactly it. >> What's your take on Sundance this year? Obviously the theme, obviously VR here in the studio. But AI has been the Intel theme as well. We see AI as a critical part of automation. The role of automation in software to assist and augment, and give more opportunities for developers. >> Yeah, yeah I think it, again, it's people that have developed expertise. And we shouldn't look at AI and automation as something to be concerned about. We need to look at it as a tool. And it's to say well, how do I do the last mile? How do I the last 10% of what I do really good, and have all the other stuff kind of taken care of for me. >> Michael what's the hallway conversation, as you know, there's no hallway here in Sundance, it's more of this sidewalk. When you're out at dinner, when you're done here at Intel. When you're out on the streets with your peers, and colleagues, and meeting new people. What's the conversation like this year at Sundance 2018? >> The conversation at Sundance, I mean, it's a conversation that to me, just goes beyond where Sundance has been before. In that, and I think we heard it in some of the panels. But some of the emerging technology used to be like, the additive thing, like now let's go see what's next. Now it's just a part of the big story. And certainly the filmmaking has legacy. Has more experience. Has a lot of amazing stuff. There's so many amazing filmmakers. And amazing content coming out of this place this year. But it's just the variety, the diversity of everything that's happening is just blowing me away. >> Michael Smit with zivadynamics.com check out the website. I think this is a trend that you guys are on. I think the sooner we get to ease of use of the creative developer. Whether it's a filmmaker, VR, and, or, content and digital. They need characters. I want my avatars (laughs) >> That's right. >> Thanks for spending the time, appreciate it. >> Thanks John. >> I'm John Furrier here for The Cube conversation, Sundance Film Festival 2018. We are covering it on the streets. And also here, ground zero for us is the Intel Tech Lounge. It's been buzzing all week with immersive media, not just VR, really showing creative developers a new way to reimagine storytelling. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Hello and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE on theCUBE. We're here in Sundance 2018 at the Intel Tech Lounge for a panel discussion with experts on the topic of The New Creative. We believe a new creative renaissance is coming in application development and also artistry. The role of craft and the role of technology and software coming together at the intersection. You're seeing results in the gaming industry. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality. A new wave is coming and it's really inspiring, but also there's a few thought leaders at the front end of this big wave setting the trends and they're here with us in this special panel for The New Creative. Here with us is Brooks Browne, Global Director of VR at Starbreeze Studios, a lot to share there, welcome to the panel. Lisa Watt, VR Marketing Strategist at Intel, Intel powering a lot of these VR games here. And Winslow Porter, co-founder and director of The New Reality Company. Many submissions at Sundance. Not this year, but a ton of experience talk about the role of Sundance and artistry. And then we have Gary Radburn who's a director of commercial VR and AR from media within Dell, Dell Technologies. Guys, welcome to this panel. Lisa, I want to start off with you at Intel. Obviously the Tech Lounge here, phenomenal location on Main Street in Sundance. Really drawing a massive crowd. Yesterday it was packed. This is a new generation here and you're seeing a younger demographic. You're seeing savvier consumers. They love tech, but interesting Sundance is turning into kind of an artistry tech show and the game is changing, your thoughts on this new creative. >> Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I've been here for, this is my third year coming back with VR experiences. And it's really just been incredible to see. Sundance has been on the leading edge of exploring new technologies for a long time and I think this is, I feel like you know this feels like the break out year really. I mean, it's been successful the last few years, but something about this year feels a little bit different. And I think maybe it's the people are getting more familiar with the technology. I think the artists are getting more comfortable with how to push the boundaries. And then we certainly are getting a lot out of seeing what they're doing and how we can improve our products in the future. >> We were talking yesterday, Lisa, about the dynamic at Sundance. And you were mentioning that you see a few trends popping out. What is the most important story this year for the folks who couldn't make it, who might be watching this video that you see at Sundance? Obviously it's a great day today, it's snowing, it's a white day, it's beautiful powder, greatest snow on Earth. But there's some trends that are emerging. We had a march this morning, the Women's March. You're seeing interesting signals. What's your view? >> I think there's a lot less desire to put up with subpar experiences. I mean I think everyone is really starting to push the boundaries, I mean, we saw a lot of 360 video which we love for a linear narrative. But they're really breaking out and really exploring what does it mean to have autonomy especially in the virtual reality experiences, a lot more social is coming to the forefront. And then a lot more exploration of haptics and the new ways of extending into more 4D effects, etc. So I think it's very very exciting. We're really excited to see all the new innovations. >> Winslow, I want to ask you, if you can comment, you've been an active participant in the community with submissions here at Sundance. This year you're kind of chilling out, hanging out. You've been on the front lines, what is your take on the vibe? What's the sentiment out there? Because you're seeing the wave coming, we're feeling it. It feels early. I don't know how early it is, and the impact to people doing great creative work. What's that take? >> Well yeah, it's kind of like VR years are like dog years, you know. Like a lot can happen in a month in the VR space. So I had a piece here in 2014 called Clouds. It was an interactive documentary about Creative Code, but that was back when there was only two other VR pieces. It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed. Because CCP Games had a piece there. An early version of E Valkyrie. And unfortunately in the last three months, they had to close their VR wing. So, and then Chris Milk also had a Lincoln piece with Beck. Which was a multi camera 360, actually it was a flash video that they recorded to the DK1. And so that was, seeing that everyone was, saw the potential. The technology was still pretty rudimentary or crude even, we should say. Before any tracking cameras. But every year people learned from previous Sundances and other festivals. And we're seeing that Sundance kind of raises the bar every year. It's nice that it's in January because then there's all these other festivals that sort of follow through with either similar content, newer versions of content that's here, or people have just sort of learned from what is here. >> So I got to ask you. You know, obviously Sundance is known for pushing the boundaries. You see a lot of creative range. You see a lot of different stuff. And also you mentioned the VR. We've seen some failures, you've seen some successes, but that's growth. This market has to have some failures. Failures create opportunities to folks who are reiterating in that. What are some of the things that you can point to that are a positive? Things that have happened whether they're failures and/or successes, that folks can learn from? >> Well, I think that this year there's a lot more social VR. We're connecting people. Even though they're in the same space, they're able to be in this new virtual world together. There's something amazing about being able to interact with people in real life. But as soon as you have sort of a hyper reality where people are able to be experiencing a Sufi ritual together. Things that you wouldn't normally... That they're not possible in the real world. And also, I think that there's issues with lines too. Obviously every year, but the more that we can have larger experiences with multiple people, the more people we can get through. And then more impact we can make on the audience. It's really... We were in claim jumper last year. And we could only get one person in every 10 minutes. And that makes things pretty tricky. >> And what are you doing at Sundance this year? You've obviously got some stuff going on with some of the work you've done. What's your focus? >> So yeah we have a company called New Reality Company where we produce Giant and Tree. It's part of a trilogy where Breathe is going to be the third part. We're going to be completing that by the end of this year. And right now, I would say the best thing about Sundance is the projects, but also the people. Being able to come here, check in, meet new people, see partners that we've been working with in the past. Also new collaborations, everywhere you turn, there's amazing possibilities abound. >> I want to talk about empathy and social. I mentioned social's interesting in these trends. I want to go to Brooks Brown, who's got some really interesting work with Starbreeze and the Hero project. You know, being a pioneer, you've got to take a few arrows in your back, you've got to blow peoples' minds. You're doing some pretty amazing work. You're in the front lines as well. What's the experience that you're seeing? Talk about your project and its impact. >> Well for us, we set out with our partner's ink stories, Navid Khonsari, a wonderful creative, and his entire team to try to create that intensely personal experience kind of moving the opposite direction of these very much social things. The goal, ultimately being to try to put a person inside of an event rather than a game style situation where you have objective A, B, or C. Or a film that's a very, very hyper linear narrative. What is that sort of middle ground that VR itself has as unique medium? So we built out our entire piece. Deep 4D effects, everything is actually physically built out so you have that tactility as you walk around. Things react to you. We have smell, temperature, air movement, the audio provided by our partners at DTS is exceptional. And the goal is ultimately to see if we put you in a situation... I'm doing my best not to talk about what that situation is. It's pretty important to that. But to watch people react. And the core concept is would you be a hero? All over the world, every day people are going through horrific stuff. We're fortunate because we're the kind of people who, in order to experience, say a tragedy in Syria, we're fortunate that we have to go to Park City, Utah and go in virtual reality to experience something that is tragic, real, and deeply emotional. And so our goal is to put people through that and come out of it changed. Traumatized actually. So that way you have a little bit more empathy into the real world into the actual experiences they went through. >> And what's the goal? This is interesting because most of the some stuff you see, the sizzle out there is look at the beautiful vistas and the beaches and the peaks and you can almost be there. Now you're taking a different approach of putting people in situations that probe some emotional responses. >> Yeah. It's a big deal to us. The way Navid like to put it, and I'm going to steal this from him, is you see a great deal of people prototyping on hardware and all of these things, and it's great cause we need that. We need to be able to stand on the shoulders of those giants to be able to do these things. But you see very few people really prototyping what is the concept of story as per VR? We've been doing, at Starbreeze, we've been doing location based for some time now and I've been getting thousands upon thousands of pitches. And whenever you get a pitch, you can pretty much identify, oh you come from a film background, you come from a games background. There's very few people who come down that middle line and go, well this is what VR is supposed to be. This is that interesting thing that makes it very deeply unique. >> What's the confluence and what's the trend in your mind as this changes? Cause you mentioned that gamers have affinity towards VR. We were talking about that before we came on the panel. You know, pump someone in mainstream USA or around the world who does email, does work, may not be there, you're seeing this confluence. How is that culture shifting? How do you see that? Cause you're bringing a whole nother dimension. >> We're trying to go back to a little bit, something about this Sundance being a little bit different. I think in general in VR, you're seeing this sort of shift from a few years ago it was all potentiality. And I think a lot of us, the projects were great, but a lot of us who work in VR were like oh I see what they're trying to do. And people like my dad would be like I don't. I don't see what they're trying to do. But that is shifting. And you're seeing a larger shift into that actuality where we're not quite there yet where we can talk about the experiences every day Americans are going to have. What is the real ready player one that we're actually going to have existing. We're not there yet, but we're much closer every time. And we're starting to see a lot of these things that are pushing towards that. Final question before I go to some of the speeds and feeds questions I want to get with Intel and Dell on is what is the biggest impact that you're seeing with your project and VR in general that will have the most important consequences for societal impact? >> Well, we were fortunate yesterday we had a number of people come through Hero. And a number of them simply actually couldn't handle it. Had to come out. We had to pull people out. The moment we took the headset off, they were, tears were streaming down their face. There's a level of emotional impact VR is extremely able to cut through. It's not that you're playing a character. It's not that you're in a separate world. You are you inside of that space. And that is a dangerous but very promising ability of VR. >> Winslow, could you take a stab at that, I'd like to get your reaction to that because people are trying to figure out the societal impact in a positive way and potentially negative. >> Yeah I mean, so with that, whenever you traumatize somebody else or have the ability to possibly re-traumatize somebody... In Giant, we made sure that we gave them a trigger warning because yeah these things can be intensely intimate or personal for somebody who already has that sort of baggage with them or could be living in a similar experience. In Giant, we witnessed the last moments of a family. As they're convincing their daughter that the approaching bomb blast is a giant that actually wants to play with her. And so we put haptics in the chair so the audience was also surprised. But we let them know that it was going to be taking place in a conflict zone. So if that was something that they didn't want to participate in, that they could opt out. But again, like we didn't know... We had to go and buy tissues like right off the bat because people were crying in the headset. And that's kind of a... It's an interesting problem to have for the sake of what are sort of the rules around that? But also it makes it more difficult to get people through the experience in a timely fashion as well. But yeah, but we're seeing that as things become more real then there's also a chance to possibly impact people. It's the... >> So it's social for you? You see it as a social impact? >> Well, I mean if everyone's experiencing the same thing that can be social, but again if it's a one on one experience, it's sort of like up to the filmmaker to make sure that they have the scruples that they are playing by the rules. Cause there's right now most every piece of content is being released through Oculus, Steam, or Viveport. But there will be... It's heavily regulated right now, but as soon as there's other means of distributing the content, it could take a different sort of face. >> Certainly some exciting things to grab on, great stuff. I want to get to the commercial angle. Then we're going to talk more about the craft and the role of artistry in the creating side of it. Gary, you're the commercial VR expert at Dell. You're commercializing this. You're making the faster machines. We want faster everything. I mean everyone... Anyone who's in VR knows that all the graphics cards. They know the speeds and feeds. They're totally hardware nerds. What's going on? Where's the action? >> Okay, that's such a large question. I mean we've had some great stuff here that I also want to comment on as well. But inside the commercial side, then yeah everybody wants bigger, stronger, better, faster. And to Winslow's comment about the dog years, that really puts the pressure on us to continue that innovation and working with partners like Intel to get those faster processors in there. Get faster graphics cards in there so that we can get people more emotionally bought in. We can do better textures, we can get more immersion inside the content itself. We're working a lot around VR in terms of opening peoples' eyes for societal impact. So VR for good for instance. Where we're taking people to far flung corners of the Earth. We work with Nat Geo explorer Mike Libecki to show the plight of polar bears in Greenland and how they're gradually becoming extinct for an edutainment and a learning tool. The boundaries are really being pushed in entertainment and film. That's always been the case. Consumer has always really pushed that technology. Commercial's always been a bit of a lagger. They want stability in what's going on. But the creation that's going on here is absolutely fantastic. It's taken what is essentially a prosumer headset and then taking it into that commercial world and lit it up. 360 video, its very inception, people are using it for training inside of their businesses and so that's now going out into businesses now. We're starting to see advances in 360 video with more compute power needed. Where, to the point about immersion and getting people emotionally bought in. Then you can start doing volumetric, getting them in there. And then we're also working with people like Dr. Skip Rizzo who was on our panel yesterday where we're starting to go into, okay, we can treat PTSD. Help people with autism, through the medium of VR. So again, that buys into... >> These are disruptive use cases that are legit? >> Yeah. >> These are big time, market moving, helping people... >> Absolutely. And that where it becomes really, really powerful. Yes, we want our companies to embrace it. Companies are embracing it for training. But when you start seeing the healthcare implications and people crying inside of headsets. That's effecting you deeply, emotionally. If you can make that for good, and change somebody's trigger points inside of PTSD, and the autism side of helping somebody in interview techniques to be able to be more self sufficient, it's absolutely awesome. >> This is the new creative. So what's your take on the new creative? What's your definition? Cause you're talking about a big range of use cases beyond just film making and digital artistry. >> Yeah, absolutely so the new creative is like with all the great work that's here, people are looking at film and entertainment. Now the world really is the oyster for all the creatives out there. People are clamoring out for modelers, artists, story tellers, story experiencers to be able to use that inside their commercial environments to make their businesses more effective. But they're not going to have a 360 video production company inside of their commercial organization. And it's then leveraging all of the creative here and all of the great stuff here. Which is really going to help the whole world a lot. >> Lisa, I want to get your thoughts on this cause you guys at Intel here at the Tech Lounge have a variety of demos, but there's a range of pro and entry level tools that can get someone up and running quickly to pro. And so there's a creative range not only just for digital artistry, but also business we're hearing. So what's the... Cause AI's involved in a lot of this too though. It's not just AI, it's a lot of these things. What's the Intel take on this. >> Well I think it's really an interesting time for us at Intel because one of the things that we have that I think probably nobody else has. We have this amazing slate of products that really cover the end to end process. Both from the creation side of the house all the way to the consumption side. And we talk a lot about our processors. We worked on an amazing project, a couple of huge scenes inside of the Sansar environment. Which is a great tool for really democratizing the creation of spaces. It's a cloud hosted service but it utilizes this amazing client-server architecture. We created four huge spaces in a matter of eight weeks to launch at CES. And some of the technologies that Gary was referring to just in pure processing power like two generations old processors were taking three hours to render just a small portion of a model where our newest generation Core i9s with our opting technology took that time to 15 minutes. So when we think about what we can do now, and those technologies are going to be available in even portable laptop form factors. We've got the piece where we were working here SPHERES. They were able to actually make some corrections and some tweaks basically immediately without having to send them off to some render farm. They were able to do those things. And I know Winslow has talked about that as well. What does it mean to you to be able to react real time. And be able to do your creative craft where you are and then be able to share that so readily. And then you know... I just think that's kind of an amazing equalizer. It's really democratizing the creation process. >> Okay the next question that begs for everyone to address is where are we in this progression? Early? What work needs to get done? Where are we holding back? Is it speeds and feeds? Is it the software? Is it the routines, libraries, art? Where's the bottleneck? Why isn't it going faster? Or is it going faster? >> I would, and I'm sure the team would agree here, I would say that one of the key things is the creator tools themselves, right. They are still somewhat cumbersome. We were talking to another filmmaker. He was like I can't even, I have to play the whole piece from the beginning, I can't just go in and edit, you know change control, being able to collaborate on these pieces with other people. I mean, if you can collaborate in a real world space, you should be able to also collaborate in VR and have change control and all those sorts of things that are necessary to the iteration of a project. So we're trying to work with our software partners. They're all doing a really great job of trying to iterate that, but it's going to take some time. I mean I think that's probably the bigger thing that's holding everything back. We're going to be right there with the processing power and the other technologies that we bring to the table. OEM partners are going to be right there with the best devices. I really think it's something we've all got to push for as far as those tools getting better. >> Brooks, comment on anything? You're in the... >> So for me, the thing that's holding back VR in general is actually the art form itself. One of the great challenges, if you look back, at say the history of film... We're at Sundance, so it's probably fairly apropo. Very early on in the early movies, aside from penny arcade machines that you'd actually stare at, they were 10 minute almost like plays that people would go to almost a playhouse and they'd watch this thing. There were not cuts, there were no angles. It was a single wide shot. Great Train Robbery came around and there was this crazy thing they did called an edit. Where they spliced film together. And if you go back and you read, and they did these dolly shots. People will have no idea what they're watching. There's no way people will be able to follow that. Like people were not happy with it at the time. Now it's stuff that children do on their iMacs at home. They do iMacs all the time, they do it on their iPhones, on their Android devices. These are normal languages of film that we have. VR doesn't have that yet. And there's not a great deal of effort being made in that direction. There's people here doing that. So I'm kind of speaking in the middle of the group, but outside of these people, there's only a handful who are really doing that and it's a significant challenge. When people who are the mainstream consumer put on a VR headset, it needs to be more than just a magic trick where they go oh that's cool. And that tends to be the vast majority of experiences. So what is the thing that is going to make someone go oh I get why we have VR as a medium. And we're not there yet. We're in the direction, but that's >> So you mentioned earlier the point where you can tell if someone's from film or gaming or whatever when you talk to them about VR. Who is the future VR developer? Is it a filmmaker? Is it a gamer? Is it a digital artist? What is this evolving? >> It's a kid in his basement who no one knows and is screwing around with it and is going to do something that everyone thinks is stupid. Like, it's going to be that. Basically every major leap in gaming is kind of the same thing. It's when we understand how ludonarrative dissonance works inside of telling how people move around a space. It's about how we do Dutch angle suddenly in film. And these things get invented. It's going to be some kid who's just screwing around who doesn't have the baggage of the language of film. A lot of the people I know in VR have been fortunate to work in film, in games and interactive or web dev. So you come from a lot of places but someone's going to come along who has none of that baggage. And they're going to be... >> Well you guys are pioneers and you're doing it. So for the first person out there that's in their basement, that inspirational soundbite or comment. How can you guys talk to that person or that group? Because this is the democratization, this is what's happening. It's not the gatekeepers. It's real creatives out there that could come from anywhere. YouTube generation, Twitch generation, gaming. What would you say to that person to motivate them and to give them that passion? >> Well it's only going to get easier, faster, cheaper, all these things are happening. But again, yeah I totally agree with what Brooks said. It's really about the culture and about educating the audience and getting them up to speed. There are some VR experiences that as soon as they put on the headset, like somebody who's never done it before, immediately will take it off cause they'll get nauseated. And then there's people, like kids who are like jet fighters. They've seen everything. You could throw like a 30 frames per second experience at them and that doesn't even phase them. They can be, all of a sudden their worlds are changing and they're like bring it because they're ready for that. So I think it's sort of about raising the bar for what the audience is comfortable with, familiar with, educating the community. There's a lot of tools right now, you know with Unreal and Unity that allow people who have very little... They don't need to know C# or C++, they can get started in a lot of like visual. What you see is what you get. Being able to drag things into a virtual room. And the windows headsets that are out. They refer to them as mixed reality, but just even having the ability to flip up the screen and transition from the virtual world to the real world in milliseconds, it allows you to be able to create things more at the speed of thought instead of coming up with an idea, coding it, and making sure it works, and then eventually putting on the headset. The sooner that we can actually be ideating inside this virtual environment is when things will get really interesting. >> So the next question is to take to the next level is what's the playbook? How does someone get involved? How does someone ingratiate into a community? If I'm an artist, I want to get, and I'm proficient with technology, or maybe not, how do they get involved? Is it community driven? Is it social? You guys mentioned seeing social's a big trend here. How do people get involved? What's the track? >> Well yeah you don't just need to go to a grad school or... There's a lot of programs out there that are popping up. Almost every single major state school has like an interactive art program now. And that wasn't the case like two or three years ago. So we're seeing that that's a big shift in the culture. But again, VR is still... It's expensive and it's you know, like VR, I refer to it's in the stage of it's almost like in the neo geo phase, maybe a little before that. But it's the really expensive thing that your friend's neighbor has. Or his older brother or something. You get to play it a little bit, you're like that's great but there's no way in hell I'm going to... You know, I can't afford that or like that just doesn't really work with my lifestyle right now so it needs to incorporate itself into our everyday, our habits. And it needs to be something that... If we're all doing it then it makes sense for us to do it together not just somebody in their basement doing it by themselves. >> Yeah feel free to comment, this is a good topic. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So what we're doing is sort of about democratization and accessibility. So for people to get into the then they're going to need a rig, they're going to need a headset and previously it's actually been quite expensive to actually take that first plunge into it. So now by democratizing and bringing price points down, it makes it more accessible. That helps content creators because there's now more of an audience that can now consume that content. And the people that can then play with the medium and consume it now have a better reason to do it. So we're working on that. We're also working on the education pieces like Key. It's actually going out there to schools and actually letting them experience VR and play with VR. Because it is a whole new different medium. We've seen film directors and filmmakers go into the VR space and things that worked in 2D film like fast pans and whatever else so the points have already been made don't really translate into VR without somebody losing their lunch. So it is going to be somebody who's coming up who hasn't got the baggage of previous skill sets inside of 2D doing it inside of VR. So we're going to see that. And in terms of the technology, everybody's wanting things to progress. That shows the level of excitement out there. And everybody wants to get into it. Everybody wants to see it go further. And I'm reminded of the mobile phone. Mobile phone, 30 years ago? Two suitcases for batteries, a large brick on the ear and a car antennae. Okay, so where we are now, if you had a time machine and you went back in time to talk to the inventor of the mobile phone, well, I'd be a lot richer because I know sports results and all, but that aside, but you go back and talk to them and you said do you know in 30 years time, everybody is going to be carrying that device? Everybody's going to be dependent on that device? They're going to get social anxiety and separation anxiety if they lose it. And they will probably laugh in your face. >> Alright so since you brought up the phone analogy, since I love that example, are we in the Blackberry moment of VR and no one yet has built the iPhone? Because the iPhone was the seminal moment for smartphones. And you see what happened there. Is VR needing that kind of break? Or is it there? >> I think we're on the cusp. Where we are at the moment with technology, we've had the headsets, which I say have been more in the consumer space, they've been designed to hit a certain price point. We had CES the other week where we've had advancements now in the resolutions of headset that are now coming out. One of the issues was well I can't see texts, I can't read texts. So from a working environment, if you're actually using tools that you would normally use on a 2D screen, you can now translate that and read that text. However, in terms of the tools that people use, why are we trying to put 2D screens into a VR headset? We've got a whole new way of interacting with data. We've got a whole new way of doing things that are going to be more intuitive than the mouse and keyboard interaction that we're used to. Why just translate that. Let's push that envelope and those are the developments that we're pushing our partners and our ISVs to really embrace. >> So it's an evoution. >> It's absolutely an evolution. >> You guys have any thoughts on that comment. That we have that inflection point, are we hitting that, will we see it soon, is it here? >> Well I think it's a very interesting symbiotic relationship between multiple factors. So you know, we hear the cost factor, we hear the technology factor, then we have the content factor. You know I saw an interesting evolution at CES we had created this virtual booth experience so that you could still come to the CES Intel booth without actually having to be there. And I met a guy in there and I was like hey where are you? He goes I've been in here like all week. (laughter) And I was like oh yeah, where do you live? He goes oh I'm in my basement in Nebraska. But he had just, this was Friday when I met him. He'd been in there all week, but in 2D mode. And he had gone out the night before and bought a headset just so he could come back and go in VR mode. And I think, yes, all these factors have to kind of line up, but I do think that content, those experiences that are going to keep people coming back for more. Like these guys literally kept coming back to our booth. Right, to see... >> Content gain. >> To see who was there. And to them at that point, it wasn't really a barrier of cost. It was like there is something that I want to consume therefore I am going to go get what I need to consume it. And I use the analogy of HDTV, right. When we kind of moved over that hump where there was enough content people didn't really care how much that television cost. >> Sports was great. Sports really highlighted HD. >> Yeah. >> But this is a good point. This is a good question to ask. Brooks, I'd love to get your thoughts. Content drives experiences, amazing experiences, but we're building the scaffolding of everything at the same time. So where are we, what's your opinion? >> So here on the Starbreeze side, we're fortunate because we have our own headset. We have the StarVR headset we've been building with Acer. 5K all of that stuff and we're upgrading it over the next year. Our focus has been, we skipped the consumer market very much. We went straight to location based and enterprise. And the reason we did that is because there's a promise of VR at a basic, I don't want to say technology stand point, but from an experience perspective, when it comes to that resolution, when it comes to that field of view, when it comes to these things people expect. Average consumers who go to a movie and they see these giant screens. They want that translated. They don't have the understanding like we do of well, LED panels are actually a pain in the ass to build and it takes a little bit and they flip at their own speeds. Time to photon is not a thing my dad will ever see in his life. But there's a reality that people have a need for that. And it is extremely expensive. It's again the reason we went straight to LBE. But for us it's about marrying the two and consistently trying to match what's happening. So when we're talking about, as I mentioned earlier the technology and how we're standing on the shoulders of giants very very quickly, someone who's doing technology is going to see what we're doing content wise and go well I can do that better technology wise. And then we're just going to keep leap frogging. And it's very similar to the phone in the same way that we're not at the final stage of the phone. Like we're at our stage of the phone and no doubt in 30 years people will laugh at us for carrying anything. The same way we laugh about the briefcases and the giant batteries in the cars we had to pull with us. So it's one of those things that's continually transitional. And VR's in an odd, amazing place. >> Well you know, it was a lot of waves that we've all seen. You mentioned the mobile phone, that's a good one to point to. It feels like the PC revolution to me because the same culture of entrepreneurs and pioneers come from a bunch of different backgrounds. So I'd like to get Brooks perspective and Winslow's perspective on this because I think there's an entrepreneurial culture out there right now that's just emerging very fast. It's not like your classic entrepreneur software developer. So in this movement, in this wave, the entrepreneur is the filmmaker, it could be the kid in the basement, could be the gamer. Those entrepreneurs are trying to find a path. >> Yeah, it's a weird mix. VR is at this odd point where not only is it the people who are wanting to be cutting edge in terms of content or technology, but also that first mover strategy from the business side of things. And so everyone wants to be those guys who are charging ahead because in reality, if you look at the financials around all of this, VR is one of those things that you don't want to finance. It's not nearly as safe as say Marvel Avengers or the next Call of Duty. >> You've got to be, you've got to hustle. >> Yeah you've got to hustle. You've got to make... >> What's your advice? >> Start doing it. That's really it. It's the same advice I used to give to game makers when people would be like well I want to learn how to make games. It's like go to YouTube, download a thing and go do it. There's literally no reason why you can't. >> Are there meetups or like the Homebrew Computer Club that spawned the Mac. >> There are, there are infinite groups of VR people who are more than happy to give you all the terrible and wonderful opinions that come with that. There's no shortage of people. There's no shortage and it's an amazingly helpful group. Because everyone wants someone else to figure out something so they can steal that and then figure out something else. >> Winslow, your advice to entrepreneurs out there that are young and/or 14 to 50, what should they do? Jump right in obviously is a good one. >> Well yeah, experiment, break things, that's really the only way to learn. I would say watch as much VR as you can because sometimes bad VR is the best VR. Because you can learn don't do that. And if you learn, if you put all that together, you can really... It's like this lexicon that you can really follow. Also, I think we... As people in tech, we kind of get obsessed with things like resolution, frame rate, and these are very important, but it's also good to remember, or at least for me, I watch some of the best experiences from storytelling when I was a kid, eight years old on a 12 inch screen that was 640 by 480. You know, like scan lines on the VHS. But for me the story still resonated and it's important to think of story first, but obviously it's a dance between the story and the technology. They kind of have to both organically work together. And if they don't, one thing in the story that doesn't work because the tech isn't supporting it, can throw you out of the experience. >> Other concern entrepreneurs might have is financing. How do I get someone to help me build it? And then doing relationships. Finding relationships that could... One plus one equals more than two, right. So how do you? >> You have to get really creative when it comes to funding right now. Unless you're doing location based, which also requires a certain amount of investment to get it up to a bar where you want to be showing it to people with all the haptic effects when it's heat, smell, vibration, stuff like that. You know, it's not cheap to develop. But as far as like working with film foundations, we're fortunate enough to be sponsored by Fledgling Fund and Chicken and Egg. But we also were able to get partnerships with people like Intel and NVidia. And also work with people who come from a traditional film background. There's not one way to successfully fund a project. There's a million. And that's why it's interesting that the technology's innovating, but also the market place is as well. >> One of the things I want to ask is as any new industry gets building, is cultures form early. DNA forms in the entrepreneurs, in the pioneers. And one of the big hottest topics in the creative world is inclusion and diversity. So what's the makeup of the culture of this new generation? Because democratization means everyone can participate, everyone's involved. What's the state of the community vis a vis diversity, inclusion, and the role of the actors in the community. >> Well I think it's important to understand that VR has a profound ability to place you in somebody else's shoes. The trick though is to make sure that those feel like they're your shoes. But I think that we're learning a lot more about story telling techniques and we're able to empower people that their voices you know were previously not heard. The tricky thing is being able to yeah, educate all different groups of people how to use the technology, but once they're enabled and empowered to do it, it's amazing what you can experience inside the headset. >> So VR can be an enabler for education, outreach, a variety of things? >> Yes, I mean the term empathy, empathy machine gets thrown around a lot. You could do a drinking game around it. For panels when people are talking about it. But it's important to know there is a truth to that. And it's, yeah the perspective shift from looking at a screen, a 16 by 9 screen where you can look away, then dissolving the screen and becoming that person. Becoming the director, the actor, the camera person, the editor. When you're in the first person perspective, there's so much more... It feels more personal and that's a really interesting angle that we're going to continue to explore. >> So you could walk in someone's shoes, literally? >> Yes, you literally can. You just have to make sure that you got a... The tracking system's proper or else you'll look like there's... It can be come a horror movie pretty quickly if your leg is behind your head. >> Lisa, your thoughts on this, I know it's important to you. >> Yeah, I mean I think it's fascinating because I've been in tech for a really long time. And seen many, many trends. I mean the first job I had at Intel I was a PC tech and as you can imagine as a female, I think there was one other tech female in the department at the time and I would get funny looks when I would show up with my bag. They were like hi can I help you? I'm like I'm not here to deliver coffee, I'm here to fix your computer, you know. So I've seen a lot of trends and it's super exciting to me to see so much diversity cross culture, cross country, I mean we're having... We had guys come in from all over the world. From even war torn, they've escaped their country just several years ago and they're coming and they're bringing all that creativity to the market. We're seeing very, very strong female contingent from the filmmaker perspective so it's this wonderful, wonderful just primordial soup of people that I think are growing their own voice and their own power. They're breaking molds as far as how you actually get content produced. Distribution is kind of crazy right now. I mean, how do you get it distributed? There's like so many different ways. But all of those things are so important to the evolutionary and biological process of this. Yes, we need to let it go and sometimes we're frustrated. We're like where's the standards? Where's the one ring to rule them all? Where there's not going to be one. And it's good for us that there's not right now. It's frustrating from a business perspective sometimes. You're like, I can't peanut butter myself around all of these places, but I think it's just a very unique time where so many people are... The technology is accessible, that means that so many creators can now bring their fresh voice to this space and it's just going to be fascinating to continue to watch. >> That's awesome. Well two more questions and I'll give you some time to think about the last one which is your perspective on Sundance, what's happening this year, your personal view of what you think's happening, what might happen during this year. But the question I have for you now is to go down the line. We'll start with Brooks here, and talk about the coolest thing that you're involved in right now. >> It actually has to be Hero. We're debuting it here at Sundance. We've been working on it and not talking about it for about nine months. And it's been very difficult. Again it's sacrosanct to the experience that you don't know literally what you're getting in to. And the emotional response has been essentially our goal, trying to find out how far can we take that. You actually being in a space, moving around, having that interactivity, doing what you would do. But it being your story and how deeply we can absolutely effect a human being. And again, watching people come out, it's one of those things, I've been doing game development, I've worked on films, I've done all kinds of stuff. And you usually get a chance when someone experiences something you've made, you walk up to them and you go so what'd you think? And that's not at all what we can do with ours. >> How has it impacted you, that reaction? >> Well, I personally suffer significant PTSD and I've had some traumas in my life. And so it's been incredibly powerful to be able to share these things with people. Share this emotion in a deeply profound, yet amazingly personal way. Which I'm amazingly fortunate to be able to be a part of it. >> Alright thanks for sharing. Coolest thing that's going on with you right now here at Sundance. >> Just the fact that I'm here at all. I mean, it's incredible right? Personally was able to be an advisor on the SPHERES project that is premiering here with Eliza McNitt. She's someone who was an Intel Science Fair winner back in high school and kind of came back to us. So just to see the evolution of an artist really from the beginning to the point where they've been able to come here to Sundance. I'm also very passionate about the work that we're doing with Sansar. I kind of consider myself one of the chief storytellers at Intel around Virtual reality and this new move into social where people are like well what's this game. I'm like, it's not a game. It's you are the game, you are the interactivity. You become the person that makes the space interesting. We're just really setting the scene for you. And there's so many... You know there's a lot of different people kind of chasing this be togetherness. But what we've been able to produce there. And just to be able to explore some of my own personal ideas has just been such a gift. Then to be working with guys like these on the panels and see what they're doing and just be in touch is really just an exciting time. >> John: Awesome. >> Probably what, other than the people on the projects, or the projects that are being shown here, we're working on our new project, which we would have loved to premiere here, but we did... Basically when you get in, you have two months to create a piece, so you have a demo and you have to finish it, so we're taking a little bit more time. This one's going to be about a year development cycle. It's called Breathe where we take you from where Giant left off, where, in Giant, the ceiling collapses on a family. They're in front of you. In this experience, we use a breathing apparatus to basically bring yourself back to life. And then you realize you're trapped under rubble and you remove the... We actually want to have physical objects on top of you that are going to be tracked. So you're moving rubble from you and you realize that you're a six year old girl. You're the survivor from Giant. And you get to witness what it's like to be a future refugee sort of in different key moments of her life that use breath. Whether it's a flirtatious moment, blowing a dandelion, seeing your own breath in snow as a drone shows you a message that your parents pre-recorded on your 18th birthday. This is all in the future, obviously, but every time you walk around an object, you actually grow 10 to 15 years older in the experience. As you get older, the world becomes smaller. And then we witness what's like for her last breath. From being six years old to being 90 years old. But it's a profound personal experience. >> John: That sounds cool, cool. Gary, coolest thing that you're involved in right now at Sundance. >> Wow. I could say it's all cool that would be a bit trite. They say if you enjoy what you do, is it really a job? And I'm lucky enough to be in that position. Because working with all these guys here and like people around the place, they're doing such great things that every day I wake up and I'm astounded of where the industry's going. In terms of what we're doing here at Sundance, then we're really starting to push those envelopes as well. I've been lucky enough to be involved with Dunkirk and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Like last year, so some great pieces there. And moving out into this year, we've got some other developments which I can't mention at this point, but we're showing things like AR and VR mashup. So we haven't talked much about augmented reality here. It's an evolutionary, it's not a replacement. Both can be used and we've started to really start to blend those two technologies now. So you can still see the outside world. Just touching on the commercial side, and health care's very big for me. That's where I think the really cool stuff is happening. Entertainment is great and that's really pushing the envelope and allowing us to then take it for the good of human kind. >> It happens everywhere, it's not just entertainment. >> Yeah absolutely. You start looking at MRI scans inside of VR or AR. Talking a patient through it so they can actually see exactly what you're talking about. You're now no longer pointing at flat things on a screen. You're now actually taking them through it. If you're using AR, you can actually judge the responses of the patient as for how they're reacting to the news. And effectively, inside of the VR, and what's really cool for me is seeing people's reaction to that content and to the entertainment content. >> That's awesome. Okay final question. This is a little bit of self serving because I'd like you to help me do my job at SiliconANGLE. If you were a reporter and you were going to report the most important stories happening this year at Sundance or really kind of what's really happening versus what's kind of being billed to be happening here. What's the story? What is the story this year at Sundance 2018 in your personal perspective? We'll go down the line and share your observations. >> Well, mine here, I'm a Sundance newbie. This is my first year of being here. I'm absolutely astounded by the community spirit that's around. I go to a lot of technical trade shows and technical presentations. People coming here with a willingness to learn. Wanting to learn from other people. It's been touched on already. It's the pool of knowledge that's available inside of Sundance that everybody that comes here can actually tap into to create better content, to learn not what to do as well as learn what to do. And I just think that's brilliant because in that community spirit, that's really going to help enable this industry quickly. >> John: Winslow, you've got some experience, what's your thoughts? >> Obviously, this Intel house, just a little plug for you Lisa. (laughter) Tech Lounge. We got that? Okay good. I mean, yeah, the people that's here. Every year we come here and see where the high water mark is. All these people are... Some of these teams first started with two people and then they grew to six and then by the end of it, there's 100 people working around the clock, pulling all-nighters to be able to give the latest and greatest of what's available with these current tools. So it's amazing because the work itself doesn't really mean anything until people get to experience it. So that's nice that they make a big splash. The people here are very attentive to it. It's a very nice audience and this will continue the momentum for future festivals throughout the year, but also will excite people that have never done VR before. People who have never been to Sundance before. We're seeing that there's a lot of new people. And that will continue to influence many years to come. >> John: So you think VR is the top story here being told? >> As far as like just to generalize, I would say last year kind of the big VR year. This is kind of the big AR year. Next year's going to be the AI year. Then after that we're going to start putting them all together. >> John: Great, great feedback. >> I think it's just exciting for Intel just to be back here. I think Intel hasn't been here in quite some time. Dell coming in here probably one of the breakout years for us to come back and really talk to creators what we're doing from the Intel Studios all the way through to the stuff you can take home and do at home. And I think coming in, we're coming back here with a purpose really, not just to be here to be seen. We're really here with real things and want to have real conversations on how tech can enable what people are doing. Not just from a brand perspective, but from a real hands on point of view. >> John: Yeah, some great demos too, phenomenal tech. >> Really just, yeah everything from the AI stuff we have to the social to the great new pieces that have been submitted here like we mentioned with SPHERES. So I think, yeah, it doesn't feel gratuitous to me you know that Dell or Intel is here this year. We've really come with a purpose. >> You guys are moving the needle, it's really awesome. We need more horsepower. >> Brooks, your thoughts on Sundance this year. Observation, the vibe, what would you tell your friend back home when you get back? >> If, for me, I think it's almost the non-story. It's like the opposite of a story. It's just the deep integration of VR into the normal Sundance flow I think has been interesting. Some people have been here for a few years. And back in the day when it was one or two, it was a lot of oh, you do VR? What's that then? Whereas now, you see a lot more people who are crossing over. Going to see documentaries, then they come to see a VR piece and it's just a part of the normal flow. And the team at New Frontier has done exceptional work to kind of make sure that they have this ridiculous high level of broad content for all kinds of people. All kinds of experiences, all high end things. But it's not that VR's here. Oh good, we have a VR section. It's a lot more of an integrated set up. And it's been really encouraging to see. >> Well you guys have been great. It's been very inspirational. Great information. You guys are reimagining the future and building it at the same time so entrepreneurially and also with content and technology. So thanks so much for sharing on this panel The New Creative. This is SiliconANGLE's coverage of Sundance 2018 here at the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(click) >> Welcome this special Cube conversation in the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier with The Cube. We are here with Ari Kuschnir, who is the founder and managing partner of Missing Pieces. Doing some really amazing work on the future of filmmaking. He's got a great entrepreneurial spirit. And creative desire to deliver great product. Welcome! >> Thank you, thank you. >> So, tell them about Missing Pieces and what's going on in your world. So, there's context. Take a minute to explain what you are working on. >> Well, the premise is to be at this intersection of storytelling technology. And to make stuff people actually want to watch. And VR and AR are parts of it. But not the whole. So, I know some of the conversation focus is on, is on VR, and we're just as excited about where storytelling is headed. In terms of what technology allows us to do. But the key for me is. I'm just passionate about, a new thing comes out. And I want to figure out how to make something really great. But meaningful, and powerful with that. >> We were talking before you came out about filmmaking, obviously trained in the discipline, obviously a variety of other things. But I want to get your perspective, we're on top of this new generation, what does that mean to you? When you hear that new generation, a new creative is coming? What does that mean to you? >> Yeah, I feel like I've ridden the wave of the thing as it's happened. And I mean, the company has too. So, I went to film school in the late 90s. And it was the first time you could buy like, first Final Cut, and the first wave of that. So you could make art little movies on the weekend, you no longer needed even to go to the school itself to borrow the equipment. That was revolutionary in 1999. And then 2005, when we started thinking about the company. You know, your Vimeo, YouTube, video i-Pod all come out within five months of each other. Towards the later part of the year. And it's a revolution. It's clear that with distribution, now not only can we make it and edit it in our laptops. But we can put it out, and millions of people could watch it. And that was the first time that was possible. And it was revolutionary. And I think it still is, to some degree. So, we've just, you know, as it evolves what I see is that, it's not, I've always felt like it's not enough to make the sausage as they say. You know, the directors, the talent that I sign now. Like the project we have now here at Sundance, young Jake. Jake is a great example of a creative who you can't fit in a box. He's an Internet artist, he's a rapper. He's an interactive video maker. He did an app called Emoji.Ink. And he does celebrity emoji portraits. He has a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. So, he can command his own audience. So, when a brand, or an agency comes to him. It's a very different approach than when they come for a very straight up work for hire, director's commercial kind of thing. That is the future, I mean. The future is about having a passionate audience, making things for that audience, understanding it. And being able to communicate with them on a daily basis, or a weekly basis in a powerful way, right? Through story. >> Yeah, I mean, you're riding the wave. And the waves are getting bigger. One of the things we do, we do a lot of tech coverage. And we see this in Cloud computing where software changed from Waterfall to Agile. And now the craft's coming back on the software side. But still now, software is eating the creative world. Because now a new wave is coming. So, speak to that, because you're, this is, you can almost look at the old ways. You mentioned the commercials and films. Almost like the Waterfall. You know, crafts, craft it up and you ship it. And you hope it works well. >> Ari: Yeah. >> But now, you have this new model of iteration. Where it's more Agile creative. How do you do Agile, like your artist, and not lose the craft? >> Yeah, well it's a challenge. Look, I've had so many opportunities in our 10 plus year career to kind of go in that direction of just like quantity over quality. And we could just never do it. I mean we're just not cut out for it. But at the same time, I'm not, I never ignore, how to optimize the content based on data, and based on what the landscape is looking like. So, an important thing for example that we consider in every project is context. Like what, how is this project going to be released? Oh, it turns out that, it's really a big social media push. It's not a TV thing. Or it turns out specifically it's Facebook versus Instagram. And that's a very different type of edit. And a very different type of way you start the video. 'Cause you've got a certain, even a different format, and a different way of looking at the content. So, you start to get into, and then you start to iterate, and look at the different ways in which you can repurpose, and rerelease the content, but customize it for each thing. So, you get into this really interesting place where the data is driving the story. And the feedback is driving the story. >> And the audience is part of the journey. >> Yes. And the comments, and the way in which people are taking the thing that you've made and re-interpreting it, is really interesting. And part of the story. >> You trigger a lot of emotion with me, when we're talking, because, you know, as an entrepreneur, I started media businesses turning into, and no-one has even seen this kind of media business before. But I have no media training of any kind. I did a science major. So, there's certain, and I've observed that there's dogma in the journalism business. And there's, but you know, how dare I challenge that, or others. You're doing the same thing. >> I love that by the way. >> So, I want to ask you. What is the dogma with the old world, 'cause the naysayers are usually the ones with the dogma. "Oh, it will never work!" >> Ari: Yeah. >> So, you're on the front end of this new trend. But you're going to have a visibility into what they're thinking, what is that? >> The dogma is, you know, the whole like, there's only big name directors, and you know, it's a certain caliber of work. And that craft is the ultimate thing. And that you just have to make the thing great. And it'll do the thing that is needs to do. Without any thinking in terms of context, or media buyer. How it can actually become a social, socially engaged piece. So, the thing that we're always fighting is some version of that. And then because we came from a scrappy place, but we're now, you know, a pretty legit thing, I think people, some people will still be like, well that's the kind of like, the problem solving sometimes gets interpreted as scrappy. Which is a word I really don't like. And I think-- >> It's a compliment on one hand. >> Yeah. >> But some people look at it as an insult. "Oh, he's just scrappy!" >> Well-- >> "He's not legit!" >> You never want to be the cheap solution. You want to be the solution that people call because nobody else can solve this problem for you. I think we, there's a strand of the company that's like, the kind of like, pick up the phone and we'll figure it out. And, the impossible project that nobody else can do. And then there's another strand where it's just like, you just want to make stuff people actually want to watch. How hard it that? The thing where you could just buy the media, and expect the results is trickier and trickier. >> I mean you could be different, and innovative, but that might not be good. But if you're good doing it, you're differentiated and you're innovating. >> Ari: That's right. >> What's the filmmaking track on that line. Because certainly there's a lot of innovation. And with innovation comes failure. But people are trying to be different. And being different actually is a good thing. What are some of the trends that you're seeing where people are having some success. And where people are stumbling. >> Yeah, that's a good. I mean what I see is, the things that do well take cultural context into account, and again speak to the people in that way. So, it's like a feedback loop that it's creating with its own audience. And we almost always, there's almost always a time in the process when we're dealing with an agency, or a brand where things start to go a little bit like, too, too much, and in that direction that you don't want it to take. Somebody, usually me, or someone will say, "Look, if we make these changes. "Or if we go in this direction. "We won't want to share it. "And if we don't want to share it, "nobody's going to want to share it." So, that becomes a key thing. Whereas before you could sort of away with some of that, now it's like, well, it has to pass this sort of, kind of litmus test in terms of like, are you comfortable with sharing this thing, because it speaks to you or not. >> So, I want to ask you the hard question, we're here at the Intel Tech Lounge, obviously Intel is doing a lot of tech things. They're trying to get all this new tech. And I see it on, whether you watch the NFL playoffs, with, you know, with the camera angles, the games, on basketball games. You see them using the power of technology-- >> We're actually working on an Intel Olympics VR related project that got a little tease ad, CES. So, I can just say that. >> Yeah I know, so what's the tech? What's the cool new game changer in your mind. As a tool that you need to be more successful, and other artists could use? >> Hmmm, well, you tend to, yeah I mean, I think we-- >> John: More horsepower, more compute, more-- >> No, I mean it's really the, What happened with the AR was really interesting, which was, everyone realized, oh, the phone's already in our pocket. While the headset needs to be something that really needs to be standalone. It needs to be $200. You know, like, you sort of, there's different kinds of headsets, of course. They do different kinds of things. But that's an extra hardware. The phone we already have in our pockets. So, everyone's started taking AR seriously. Including the big players. And what that allowed was a, a rethinking of what the possibilities with story would be. So, in some ways this last year has been a readjustment, and a rethinking of, well, what can you do with the phone that you've already got in your pocket. In terms of expanding the storytelling. Or placing a story in the middle of your living room, you know. A layer, using the phone as a window and a layer. But I'm equally as excited about what's coming in VR, interactive VR, room-scale VR, you know. The project that we have here is an interactive 360 project with a phone. >> What's that called? >> It's called On My Way. And the artist is young Jake. And the original conceit of it, is, it's Jake, there's four Jakes in a car. And every time you move the phone to a different Jake, it changes the Jake. So, as soon as it passes the quadrants. So, the four quadrant it kind of swaps the Jake. And that creates a really fun, and interesting thing. And he actually designed it for the phone, vertical. Because that's the way most people are going to experience it. >> John: That's awesome. >> But it's playing on a headset as well. >> Oh you're definitely a new creative. Love chatting with you. >> Thank you. >> Final, well, I have two questions, first one is, Sundance, what's the story this year? What's your report? If you had to go back and your friend asked you to give him a report, "Hey, what happened Ari, "what's going on at Sundance this year?" >> A combination of really interesting high-end VR projects. Some of them leaning into this kind of like more psychedelic less narrative driven stuff. Which I really like. Kind of like really embracing the fact that it's another world, and taking you there. And then the AR stuff. There's a thing called Tender, Ten Day R. Or Tendar. Which is a play on Tinder, by Tinder Claus. Which is, uses augmented reality, and emotion, and machine learning, everything that you could hope for in a really interesting way. So, that's kind of showing you where it's going. So, I think those two things. >> Psychedelic's interesting. I always, I mean this kind of tangent. But in, I've been seeing on The Cube interviews, I think we're going to have a digital hippy revolution. >> Ari: Definitely! >> And it's coming. I mean you can feel it. It's a different culture. >> When I was looking a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people are scared to, I mean, VR is a really great consciousness expanding way to go to get into other worlds. Without, you know-- >> And will all the crap going on in the world today you can almost look at this as a Sixties like movement in this modern era. Where it could be a major catalyst for massive change. >> Yeah, and there's a piece about, you know, this female shaman that grows through the tribe in Ecuador. And became the first ever female shaman for her tribe. And there's a piece called Chorus that, within it. Which is just super weird and trippy. And almost has no plot, but is amazing. >> All right Ari, you've got to run. Quick soundbite. What are you working on, what's exciting you these days? Share a little bit about what's happening. >> A variety of, again it's the full spectrum of storytelling, so it's not one thing. It's really pushing, experiential pushing, branded content pushing, original content that we're getting a lot more into that game. Long form series. VR series. Really, that's kind of the next wave for the company is to set foot, much stronger in the original space, and create our own original IP. Our own original content. >> Awesome, Ari Kuschnir managing partner and founder of Missing Pieces, check them out. Lot of great work. And again, it's a whole new game changing, from storytelling to the tech. The collision between technology and artistry, and creative, and it's happening. It's here at Sundance, at the Intel Tech Lounge. I'm John Furrier with The Cube conversation here at Sundance, which is part of our coverage. Was to look at the angle of Sundance 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, co-host of theCUBE. We're here at Sundance Film Festival, the Intel Tech Lounge for a one on one conversation with Kane Lee, who's the head of content at Baobab Studios in California. Thanks for joining me here at the Intel Tech Lounge. >> Really excited to be here. >> You know we just had a panel on the new creative here, and Intel is showing some great technology. Things like volumetric, all kinds of really hardcore tech. Really powering some of the VR, AR, mixed reality, all the trends that are happening around user experience. But, a new creative artist is out there. A new storyteller. It could be a 12 year old to a 50 year old. You're in the middle of it. You're an award winning producer. So you're building the stories, you're building the content. What's the biggest thing happening here at Sundance? >> I think it's really interesting, because content has always been my passion. Good storytelling. And growing up, it was always books and films, and all these traditional mediums that inspired me to sort of dream, and right here in Sundance, we're in the middle of a great sea change going on, because technology and art are coming together in such a fast pace, to really usher in the new generation of storytelling, and we're all very fortunate to be in the middle of that. This is a very unique period in our history as humans, and our culture, to challenge what storytelling really means, because VR, for us at Baobab, is the next great medium. And Sundance recognizes that. Technology companies like Intel recognize that. So we're all coming together at the film festival, and working together to define what that will mean. >> Kane, you're an Emmy award winning producer. Baobab's doing some cutting edge work. Take a minute to talk about what Baobab is doing, and why is it so relevant? We know it's cool. We've interviewed the CEO and Founder before. Share with the audience, what is Baobab doing? Why is it so relevant? >> So, we formed a couple years ago, and at the time, VR was, and it still is, in its very nascent stage. One thing that we recognized, was an opportunity to try to create content that would appeal for people from the ages of five to 105. There was a lot of documentaries, there was a lot of experiential art house type of material. And there was a lot of gaming type of content for VR. For us, we're big lovers of animation and how that unites families, kids, grandparents, teenagers, and we saw an opportunity to try to create content that could appeal to all of these different types of people through animation. So that's sort of our mission, is to inspire your childlike sense of wonder, using two mediums that are so meant for each other, which are animation and VR. >> I'd like to talk about some of the work you got going on a little bit later, but I want to talk about that 12 year old in his room, or the 16 year old that's got a full rig, tricked out with the keyboard, they're laying down music, they're building music, they're gaming, they might be creating art. They are a living, breathing creative. And, they're self learning. They're jumping on Youtube. They're jumping into VR meetups and groups. They're self learning. >> Kane: Absolutely. >> How do you connect to them? What do they do? What's the playbook? How do these people go to the next level? What's the industry doing around this? >> I think, one example I'll give is, I was at Annecy Film Festival, and that's one of the biggest animation focused film festivals in the world, and I was showcasing our very first piece, it was called Invasion, starring Ethan Hawke, where you're actually in the body of a bunny rabbit, and you meet another bunny rabbit. You create a bond. And together you thwart an alien invasion on Earth. What was so interesting to me, was I had never seen that sort of, that demo, that teenage demo, where young boys and girls would actually bring their parents back to the experience, and say this is what I want to study in college. This is what I want to do in art school. So, I think that they, growing up with all this new technology, really sort of get the idea of being in realtime, and having storytelling in realtime. And seeing that level of interest from that age group was very sort of affirming to us that we're on the right track, in terms of the next generation of storytelling. >> Well you guys are definitely on the right track, I can say that. But I think what your point confirms, and connects the dots for people that might not be in the industry is that the old tech world was, the geeks did it, software was an art and you had to be in that CS club. The democratization is a big trend here, and what you're talking about is, people are humanizing, they can see real emotional, practical examples. So the young guns, the young kids, they don't have baggage. They look at it with a clean slate and going, I want that. I can see myself using this. I can self actualize with this. So really kind of tips the scales, and proves the point. >> Absolutely. We world premiered Asteroids, our second VR experience, starring Elizabeth Banks, and one of the biggest millennial stars, Ingrid Nilson, last year at Sundance. Even had the first red carpet VR premiere in Sundance history. And watching the younger generation, it was our first piece where we actually used the controllers that had just come out in that past year. And watching them go in with no preconceived notions on what using controllers could be, to be a character in the experience, it was just fascinating, because they picked it up faster than anyone, and learned the language of being a character, and having hand controllers as a robot, so you could play fetch with an alien dog, or you could mirror their actions, or they might mirror yours, and creating these bonds and these experiences. So, that sort of fresh perspective is really exciting. >> Talk about the role of these experiences, and how they connect people, because one of the big trends also online today, in today's, I would say, yeah the peg the evolution is, you're really getting into the immersive experience, I believe that. But, content creates bonds between people, and good experiences creates glue between relationships, and forges new ones, maybe enhances existing ones. This is a big part of the media. >> Absolutely. For us, emotional connection is the key to getting people to put on headsets, and to come back to our experiences. And that emotional connection for us, is what we've witnessed, in terms of people forming bonds with our characters. So, everyone knows that VR can bring you to brand new worlds, and exciting places, and immerse you in places that you can never go. But, the one thing that I think we learned in our experience with VR, is that if you can create a bond between the user and other characters in the experience that they believe is real, and we use psychology, technology, and storytelling to do that, then they want to come back again and again. So, one of the trickiest parts of VR is trying to get people to have repeat views. And the feedback we've gotten from a lot of the technology platforms is people come back time and time again, and it seems to be because they actually believe these characters are real, and that they're friends. >> So talk about your journey, because you're at the front end of this wave, and you're participating, you're creating art, you're creating work product. You're building technology with the Baobab Studios. What would you do if you were 16? If you were a sophomore in high school, knowing what you know, and you could go back in time, or you could be today what you know at 16, what would you do? >> When I was 16, I had no idea what I was going to do. When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I was going to do. But what I will say is, VR is really unique because it's so interdisciplinary. So, it actually invites people from all different fabrics of society, and different types of education. The most, I would encourage 16 year olds to just be who they are, and to play. And if I talked to my 16 year old self, I would have just encouraged myself to follow my interest and pursuits more, because many years later, actually VR has brought me back to a lot of my roots, and different things that I studied growing up, and was fascinated by. >> So it ignited your passion. >> Absolutely. >> Or things that you were really into, that you might have forgotten. Is that- >> Yeah, I studied something called symbolic systems at Stanford University, and I had no idea what I was doing. It combined computer science, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. And the first thing I did after college was pursue potentially a career as a lawyer. But now it all makes sense. VR makes, brings everything together. >> What could have been, you know? >> Absolutely. >> Well, a lot of neural network, symbolic systems, this is the underpinnings of this complex fabric that is powering this content market. So I'd love to get your thoughts. Is there a success formula that you're seeing emerging, I know there's no silver bullet yet. A lot of experimentation. A lot of new things happening. But as this technology, and the scaffolding around it is being built, while also original content is being built, it's still evolving. What's the success formula, and what's the pitfall? What to stay away from? >> I think it's about, it's really about good storytelling. And I think it's a time to be courageous and brave, and put forward stories that wouldn't have otherwise been told in the more traditional mediums. Our latest project in production that I'm so personally excited about, is called Legend of Crow. It stars John Legend as a beautiful bird with the most beautiful feathers, and the most gorgeous voice, who during dark and cold times, must go on a heroes journey to bring light back to the world. Something I feel like in this day and age, a lot of people can relate to. But, on top of this story being based upon a beautiful Native American legend that hasn't really been exposed to the world, we've taken the opportunity to take the themes of diversity and self sacrifice, and self acceptance, to create an all star cast of minorities and women, and that's something I feel the younger generations can really relate to, because having worked a lot in Hollywood as a producer in traditional TV and film, things take a while, and there's a certain way of casting and doing things that follow an older model, and I think younger audiences are excited to have a character like Moth in our experience who speaks both Spanish and English, because that's the way the world is today. >> So I got to ask you a quick, you brought up diversity and inclusion kind of in your comment. I got to bring this up, because you guys do hit a nice demographic that I think is super relevant and important, the younger generation. So I talk to a lot of young people all the time. I say things like, you don't need to be a computer scientist to get into this game. You can be super smart. You don't need to learn how to code hardcore coding to get into this. And they respond to that. And that's one kind of, I would say, narrative that conventional wisdom might not be right. And the other one is the diversity. So my son, 16 year old, says, "Dad, your generation is so politically correct. All this nonsense." So, the younger generation is not living what we're living in, in these dark times, I would say, certainly with diversity, but how does VR really equalize? And will the storm pass? Diversity, inclusion, all that great stuff that are core issues, certainly are being worked on. But, do we see hope here? >> Absolutely. I think disruption in the form of a new technology and a new medium is, while scary to some people, is actually the most exciting and fertile time to equalize. Our CEO, Maureen Fan, who is a college classmate of mine, always wanted to work in animation. And she finally saw the right opportunity when VR came, and we put on headsets for the first time, and saw how there could be a new wave of exciting animators, through this disruptive technology. Because everyone else in more traditional animation is so focused on the old model, and the old ways of doing things, of getting things off the ground, of financing, of creating certain kinds of content that have been proven over time, in the old sort of studio model. >> What were some of those things that were instrumental in this breakout, to forge this new ground? >> I think a lot of it is the technology finally being ready. Our CTO, Larry Cutler, actually studied virtual reality at Stanford a decade before Maureen and I were there, and he had always been waiting for the right time to go into VR. >> Does he preach down, hey kids, I used to walk in the snow with bare feet to you guys, or has he, what's his role, how's he doing? >> He's amazing. He was the head of global character tech for all of Dreamworks animation, and like I said, I think one thing that distinguishes us from some of the other people in VR is that we're so focused on characters, so focused on them making eye contact with you, or with their facial features reacting in realtime, and being very believable, and forging that bond between you and that character. So, for us, that character technology, and having the top people in that space work with us, is the long term thing that is going to differentiate us from the crowd. >> I'd like to get your reaction to my comment about the computer science, and that's mainly, mostly a Silicon Valley thing, living in Palo Alto, so, but people are struggling when they go to college. What should I major in? And there's a narrative right now, oh you got to learn how to code, you got to be a computer science major. You don't. You don't have to be a CS major. Some of the most creative and technical brilliance can also come from other disciplines. What's your reaction to that, and what's your advice? >> I think people should just follow their effort. Because, if you follow what naturally comes to you, what you're good at, and that also has meaning and interest to you, and something that you can get feedback along the way, which is the great thing about being in a growing space, you are going to just spend your, you're going to spend a lot of late nights doing that stuff, and you can always bring it into your career path when that happens. And I think, we're in a very DIY time in VR. No one knows anything. We're constantly making mistakes, but then learning from them. And that's the most exciting process of being where we are. So, to people who are of college age, I would just tell them follow your effort. If you're interested in VR, it's an exciting time to just do it yourself. Learn from your mistakes. And then, and try to create something new. >> What does the new creative mean to you. When you hear that, new creative, what does that mean to you? >> You know, it's interesting being at these talks and panels, and at all these festivals, because I feel like a lot of people are looking for that new innovator who comes out of nowhere, and sort of just redefines the industry. And that could very well happen. But I actually think what's really exciting about right now is, it's more about having, understanding the bridge between all the different mediums and disciplines. I think new things are created when you combine areas that have not been traditionally aligned. So for example, Orson Welles arguably created one of the first great cinematic masterpieces in Citizen Kane, but he was able to do so by bringing values from theater, and from radio, and areas where he sort of learned the art of storytelling. And he was able to combine them in new and interesting ways that people hadn't seen before. So, for me it's less about looking for that silver bullet of a creative person who comes out of nowhere, but these younger generations who understand these different mediums, combining them and creating connections with them in an exciting way. >> Brooks Brown from Starbury Studios said on the panel, the next breakout star is going to be the kid in the basement that no one's ever heard of. >> Very possibly, but that kid in the basement, he needs to be passionate about a lot of different disciplines. So, what we've tried to emulate in doing so, is bringing the best people in gaming, bringing the best people from traditional film, bringing people who had interests in a lot of different areas, different art forms, and letting them kind of play together and learn from each other. Argue with each other, you know? And then come up with something that no one's seen before. >> We're going to have to come up with a camera, so that could be like an experiment. Like it's just a reality show in and of itself. All that talent, multi discipline together. >> Absolutely. >> John: It's like dynamite ready to explode. >> It's the challenge, it's the blessing, it's the curse and the blessing of our medium right now, because there's so much more to discover, but if people come in and have an open mind, and are willing ... If the people from Hollywood are willing to learn from the people who do gaming in Silicon Valley, who are open to learning from the people in New York who grew up on live theater, I feel those, finding that intersection, finding those beautiful intersections are where we're going to thrive. >> Well you guys highlight that multi disciplinary thing, but also highlights why diversity is so important. Diversity brings the most perspectives to the table, the most data, most contribution. It might be a little bit longer to work through the arguments, right? You got to be patient. >> Absolutely you have to be patient. We're really lucky to be working with John Legend on our VR piece. He had actually been looking for several years to find, wanting to play in this space, but not wanting to do it with the wrong partner at the wrong time. So, it's, there's an art to timing in everything that we do right now, and when we presented to him the story we're doing with the Legend of Crow, it felt like the perfect sort of match. >> Legend of Crow coming out. Head of Content, Kane Lee here, Baobab Studios. Thanks for spending the time here on the Cube Conversation. What's the timing of the release of the program? >> Probably late spring, but we're going to be announcing some news around that soon, and we have some more exciting updates about it that I can't wait to share. >> Alright, we are here at the Intel Tech Lounge as the Cube's Conversation at Sundance Film Festival, part of our coverage of Sundance 2018. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.