>> Announcer: From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017 brought to you by Samsung. >> Okay, welcome back and we're live here in San Francisco for the Samsung Developer Conference, SDC2017. I'm John Furrier. This is The Cube's exclusive coverage, and I'm excited to have an amazing guest, Amanda Cooloong who's a chief storyteller, Women in Tech International, Tech TV, TechZula. She's been really a storyteller in digital for a long time. Great to have you on. Been following all your Twittersphere and your content. >> Thank you. >> You did some work with Leo Laporte, Jason Calcanis, both this week in tech's kind of version of the scene. >> Mm hm. >> What are you up to now? >> Well I am working very closely with Women in Technology International, WITI. It is the largest, oldest organization for women in tech. They have a huge summit that they put on in San Jose every year, and I'm sort of the class clown for that and emcee the conference and lead the charge there. >> Well certainly you know what's interesting you have kind of a cool vibe, you're a cool person, you know tech, you know cloud computing. >> Mm hm. >> You've been in inside baseball for the tech scene. >> Mm hm. >> But now the consumer market with digital. >> Yeah. >> Pretty powerful, I mean like finally us geeks now have a national and global stage to flex our geekness, so you see nerds- >> We're suddenly cool? >> Cool to be a geek and now you see well the programmer calls us over thank god. >> (laughs) Well is it? >> Well the bad side of it. The good side of the democratization is happening. >> Right. >> So now you have an augmented reality. So it's just some cool stuff happening. What are you most impressed with? >> What am I most impressed with? Well I love Blockchain. I've been involved with some of that for three or four years now. I actually had a podcast about Blockchain and Bitcoin. And I'm really excited about what that means for investment specifically and ICOs, Initial Coin Offerings. My friend Brock Pierce is a big, big figurehead with all of that, with Blockchain Capital. And I believe that, especially for women that are looking to get into investment and get back in the earlier stage of things, I think ICOs, Initial Coin Offerings, are a huge opportunity for them to really change up the venture world. >> So when you say ICOs, which we know a lot about 'cause we're doing one at SiliconANGLE the next couple quarters. >> Yeah. >> No rush to do it but we're going to use our own cryptocurrency. But those nuances, when you say investment do you mean as an alternative to venture capital investment or actually investing in, say, the currency itself? >> Both. But I think of it as a completely new way to invest in companies. And there are so many barriers especially for women in technology... Again, that's a big platform for me. To getting into that world that ICOs just are completely changing up the entire ecosystem there. >> Well we're seen a ton of stuff. You saw Lisa Fetterman was on earlier. >> Mm hm. >> She had a huge success with her Kickstarter. Now she's got some pretty glamorous products. The cooking thing is pretty sexy, right? >> Mm hm. >> That thing could go- >> Sous vide, even the term sous vide. I mean, it's so fresh (laughs) >> I would put money to that. I mean it's just so... But that's a good example of Kickstarter. When we look at some of the ICOs, a lot of people are raising some serious capital in utility and stock or securities. >> Mm hm. >> Although the regulations are a moving train. But on the utility side it's a no-brainer. There's some significant cash being raised. In some cases, five to 50 million plus in token sales. >> Mm hm. >> That's like Kickstarter on steroids. >> It really is, and some people are afraid of it. You know, some people are saying that's completely absurd. Why would you ever do that? I personally would say don't put all of your eggs in one basket either. We know that. There's volatility anywhere. But, again, I think it's opening a lot of doors and giving certain people opportunities that they didn't have before. >> So how is your Bitcoin position these days? >> I may have been an early investor in some Bitcoin. I may obsessively look at the value every 15 minutes or so. No, I am fortunate. I listened to my mentors, and luckily I love emerging tech, so I'm doing well in that regard. >> I saw a post on Facebook: If you just bought 10 in bitcoin and smoked weed and sat on the beach and clipped coupons all day and did nothing else, you'd be worth 20 million dollars. >> Let's just say I know people that have actually bought castles with it. I'm not joking. >> What I like about the crypto Boxchain side is that there's an early community growing. So what's your analysis, because a lot of people want to know, is it Silk Road guys? Are they bad actors? Bitcoin's the underbelly of the internet. Early adopter. >> Those stories were so funny at the beginning. I mean, I live in LA. Everyone loves the sensationalized story. And of course that existed with Bitcoin too, and yes, there was some truth to it. >> Oh of course there was. >> Yes, absolutely the Silk Road story was real. >> Anonymous and encrypted transactions. >> Oh yes. >> That's going to attract some honey to the bees. >> There's a reason why certain people can't come back into the country. Let's just leave it at that. However, we've also seen major financial institutions get onboard. You know, Fintech has exploded. There's a lot of legitimacy to Blockchain and the distributed ledger technology. >> It's one of the fastest growing products in the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger project- >> Yes. >> Which is just going gangbusters. IBM's behind it. >> Yep. >> So it's got that opensource vibe, I get that. But the community, talk about the community because there are people who are leading the community. You said you know a few of them. >> What's your take on the community? How big is it? It's emerging, obviously, it's growing. What's the protocol for new entrants coming in? What's the behavior norms? >> Sure. It's grown in leaps and bounds, I can say that. I mean, from the time I did my Bitcoin podcast a few years ago to now, back then it was very much the bro culture to a degree, a lot of libertarians (laughs), a lot of folks that couldn't come back in the country, to be quite honest. But there were certain people that came out of that movement though like Brock Pierce that really thought ahead to how do we legitimize this, how do we make sure that this is white knighted, so to speak. >> Yeah, well it's a revolutionary... It's fundamental. I had the founder of Alibaba Cloud on the record. Haven't published a video yet so this is exclusive material. He said, I asked him about Blockchain. He says it's fundamental to the internet. It is the internet. >> It is, mm hm. >> Just like TCP/IP was in the stack. >> Absolutely. >> He was adamant that this is not on top of the internet. It's fundamental to... He's talking about Blockchain. >> Yep. >> Absolutely 'cause it's supply chain, it's currency, it's a zillion things. >> It's not just coins. Everyone focused in on Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin. It's a distributed ledger technology. So it goes hand in hand with the internet of things. So the two have become very much married in that regard. >> You know, all these guys I interview on The Cube over the years, and certainly I lived through it, talk about the waves, the PC wave. >> Mm hm. They talk about the client server wave. Client server essentially, it's not so much about the mini computers 'cause the mini computers were not the client server wave 'cause that was proprietary operating systems and proprietary hardware. >> Mm hm. >> HP. >> Right. >> What made client server was TCP/IP. That created Threecom, Cisco, interoperability. So that really was that second wave. People are comparing Blockchain to TCP/IP. >> I can see that. >> Dr. Wang from Alibaba Cloud. Other people are saying like the dot com bubble, euphoric excitement. >> Yeah. >> So that begs the question. Who can bring functionality... This is my thesis. I want to test it with you. >> Mm hm. >> Who can bring functionality and simplicity? Because all the successes in Web 1.0, was Yahoo a directory of links, simple, easy to use. Cisco Routers, connect your networks, it works. So simplicity and functionality seems to be the norm in the Blockchain world. >> Mm hm. >> What's your thoughts on that? Can you share your reaction to that? >> Simplicity and functionality, I mean, for me it's- >> In terms of the winners versus the losers 'cause that's what people want to know with Blockchain. Where's the scams and where the legit? >> Mm hm, well the scams are the people that came from the gaming side that had no real business expanding out the way that they did and everybody loses their coin. But we won't name names there. I think more- >> It's okay to name names. >> (laughs) But with functionality, I mean again, I keep going back to its marriage with IOT, you know, the ledger based technology and just being able to do anything transactional. That's the simplicity of it for me, the fact that it's opensource, the fact that, yeah, I think that's the core of it. >> So let's talk about Samsung. We're here's at the Samsung event. >> Sure. >> How do you see these guys? We were talking about Blockchain. It's kind of the next big wave coming. Obviously a lot of things underneath that, but above that you've got software machine learning, all the goodness of open source is growing exponentially. That wave is coming to exponential growth in opensource, code shipments, meaning more people using opensource, and things like Blockchain. How does that impact a Samsung, an Apple, an Amazon? >> Well I think opensource is necessary for IOT specifically. Obviously that would be shut down without that. I've been talking with a lot of the developers here, the Samsung-specific people saying what is it that's exciting you about this forward movement, like with the keynote this morning. What do we need? How do we move this entire industry forward with IOT? And they're excited about the platform that Samsung has announced this morning in terms of just the ubiquity of everything working together in comparison to, well, a lot of other... Sorry. >> So the crypto thing is also tying into that too. >> Yes. >> I was tying that with IOT because IOT has some security issues. >> Right. >> So we can argue maybe- >> Some security issues? (laughs) >> Well the surface area. So you know, the theme in the enterprise is, you know, cloud computing. There's no moat anymore, there's no firewall. >> Yeah. >> Perimiterless security. Perimiterless problems. It means the edge is a surface area, and we've seen these attacks coming. >> Right. >> That's a problem. >> Mm hm. >> So there's no silver bullet right now. >> Yeah. >> So Samsung probably is cagey right now on the data. >> Exactly. >> They've got some security products, but smarter things is their kind of pitch. >> And then everybody keeps saying well who owns the security piece, who's responsible for the security piece. I think that's a big question we're going to see popping up a lot because the security piece is going to be a very valuable piece to all of this, especially when you're looking at edge computing too and data being passed back and forth between the edge. I would rather see everything stay with just the edge devices, personally. >> Yeah, well it's easier to manage, why do you want to move data across the network? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Move compute it's more efficient. >> Yeah. >> So final take on augmented reality VR. >> Oh, okay. >> What's imploding? What's imploded? What's growing? What's rising? What's falling? >> Sure. >> We had a comment earlier, said VR 1.0 is over. >> It really is. I personally think AR is where it's at. I've watched a lot of things on the VR front and a lot of it was marketing speak. I think we need a bigger push on the hardware side for VR to work effectively too. We also need to look at the audience there. And a lot of people are complaining, well I don't just want to go disappear into a separate world. A lot of women, actually, are complaining about that side of it. But the AR side I think has way more application. >> Yeah, crawl, walk, run in virtual space, basically. >> Yeah, yeah. VR I think will still be a place, but I think AR is going to be a bigger explosion. >> One of the things we were talking about earlier was as folks have been through many waves you and I've seen, waves of innovation, Web 1.0, the early adopters were the adult industry with banners 'cause they were about making money. We saw this wave. We're seeing the Silk Roads and Blockchain. Arbitrage comes from usually bad actors and not usually desirable actors. >> Right. >> But one big indicator of the current user experience we're seeing is the gaming culture, right. >> Mm hm. >> Gaming right now seems to be the early adopter indicator of the major trend lines 'cause it's gamification, it's a little bit analog, multiplayer. >> Look at Unity. Unity has a huge presence here at SDC and especially on the VR front if you want to look at that. Unity's a huge player there. >> What are some of the things you see coming out of the gaming world? 'Cause we've seen virtual currencies, ICO, lot of storage, lot of dynamic, realtime. >> Yeah. Gaming mechanism too across the board always play into this too, but I think the big one is ICOs for me. That's the one I've been focusing on a lot, yeah. >> I'd like to follow up more with you on the ICO thing. We're doing a whole programming on that on November second, love to have you. >> Mm hm. Look at what Crystal Rose with Sensay's been doing. >> Who? >> Crystal Rose, Sensay, she's launched her own ICO called SENSE. >> SENSE. Great, looking forward to chatting more. >> Mm hm, out of LA. >> Final question for you for the folks not here. What's the vibe here? How would you describe SDC2017? >> I love that there's a great vibe of innovation. Honestly, I've been to some other stodgier conferences lately, and this one definitely has a nice playful, creative vibe. >> B2B is boring to boring. This is not- >> I know, you were talking about E2E, everything to everything. See, I was listening. >> You were. >> Everything to everything. Exciting to exciting. >> Exciting. >> See, I listened to that too. Yeah, I would say there's a lot of creativity here. There's a lot of side conversations happening. That's important. And I see a good balance of men and women, so that makes me happy. >> Well I'm excited from Vanessa for bringing on a great lineup, you included. >> Thank you. >> Great to meet you in person. Had a great conversation here inside The Cube. I'm John Furrier here, exclusive coverage of the SDC2017. We'll be back after this short break.