>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NetApp Insight 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage today of NetApp Insight 2018, I am Lisa Martin. Stu Miniman is my co-host for the day, and we're welcoming to theCUBE, for the first time, a couple of guests, one from NetApp, my former colleague, Emily Miller, acting VP of brand content and influencer marketing. And one of this morning's keynote, Gerd Leonhard, futurist, the CEO of The Futures Agency. I loved, Gerd, I loved your keynote this morning, it was very very interesting and informative. >> Thank you. >> And I liked how you said, you don't predict the future, you observe the future. So Emily, thinking about NetApp, its history, NetApp today, and in the future, talk to us a little bit about how this brand has transformed. >> Sure >> Not just digitally, for IT, but transforming, taking the feedback, and the really, kind of direction from your customers. >> Sure, so if I think about, you know, NetApp's been around for 25 years and we've played a great role in the, you know, kind of the storage history. But over the last few years as our customers' needs have changed, you know, really having to have data as your design point, how everything is evolving, changing, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, we had to listen to that and knowing that our customers are going to places like AI and, you know, deep learning, we have to move there. And so, a couple years ago, we looked at who are we as a company and who are we going to be for the next 25 years? And our purpose now is around how we empower our customers to change the world with data because that is what they are doing. So using a lot of these technologies, and the things that Gerd talked about this morning, it is happening, and so, we've got some great customers we're working with, where we're able to kind of see that brand promise come to life with things they're doing, and we're just excited to be able to continue to work with those companies that are pushing the edge because that helps us be better and be more proactive about the future. >> When you talk with customers, #datadriven is all over, right? We've been hearing that for a while. What is being data driven mean to a customer, because as Gerd talked about in his keynote this morning, there's always that conversation, Stu, we hear it all the time on theCUBE, on ethics. >> Right. >> When you talk about enabling customers to be data driven and developing a data strategy, how do they internalize that and actually work with NetApp to execute? >> Right, so we really see it as putting data at the heart of your business, it is that lifeblood, it has to be centered around that. And then, thinking about data fabric, it's really the strategy and the approach, so how do you envision how data from all over, all parts of your organization are able to be leveraged? You get the access and the insights, and you can utilize it. You don't want it to be stagnant, you've got to be able to use it to make better decisions, to have that information, those insights at your fingertips to do the things that have to be done in real time, all the time. >> So Gerd, we want to bring you into discussion here, there's certain fears, for people in technology, "Oh my gosh, my job's going to be "replaced, that can be automated." You know, I've gone to shows, talk about, oh hey, in humans, you're good at getting things to 95, 96%. You know, I can get perfectly accurate if I let the robots just automate things. You write about humans versus technology, what's your take? You know, singularity's coming, you were saying, so are we all out of a job? >> Well, this is of course, what I call a reductionism, right? It's the idea that you would have a machine who would do just what I do, exactly what I do, for very little money, and then you would have thousands of other machines that do thousands of other things, then. And the fact is that, I think McKinsey's study says only 5% of all jobs that can be automated, can be fully automated. So, even a pilot can be automated, but I wouldn't fly an airplane without a pilot, so we still have a pilot. And data scientists can be automated by an AI, yes, but there'll be many things that I need the data scientist for as a person. So, if you take human skills, what I call the andro-rhythms, you know, the human things. So, passion, ingenuity, design, creativity, negotiation. I think computers may learn that in 100 years, but to really be compassionate, it will have to be alive. And I wouldn't want them to be alive. So, I'm saying that yes, true, I think if you only do routine, like bookkeeping, like low level financial advice, like driving a bus. You have to retrain and relearn, yes. But otherwise, I wouldn't be that negative, I think there's also so many new things happening. I mean, 10 years ago, we didn't have social media managers, right, and now we got what, 30 million? So, I'm not that dark on the future there. >> I'm glad, you actually, you gave a great quote from Albert Einstein talking about that, really, imagination is infinite as opposed to, knowledge is kind of contained. NetApp talks a lot about being data driven, you gave the Jeff Bezos example of, you know, I need to listen to it. But there's heart, and there's kind of history, there's another great line from Jeff Bezos, is, "There is no compression algorithm for experience." So, how do we as humans balance that humanity and the data and the numbers? >> Well, the reality is, we don't live in a binary world. When we look at technology, it's always about yes, no, yes, no, zero, one. That's what machines do, we don't do that. (laughs) Humans are called multinary, which is essentially, to us, a lot more things matter than yes or no. Like, it depends, maybe, it may change, and so on. And so if we just look at that and say it's going to be data or humans, we have to pick one of the two, that will be a rather strange suggestion. I think we need to say that it's sometimes data, sometimes human, but we have to keep the humans in the loop, that's my key phrase. >> And I would say, I feel like that's really our opportunity as humans, is to decide where is the value, where is the layer of value that we add on. You know, again, kind of thinking back to NetApp's history, we're moving from storage to data, we are evolving. We have to add value at a higher level for our customers, and what was something that maybe we did as humans, and for advising, that's automated now, like think of the demo we saw this morning, and now what is that additional layer of value that you add on top? >> Yeah absolutely, as you're both saying, it's not a binary thing, Andy McPheener from Jolmston, from MIT, say, tracing with the machines, that humans plus machines will do way better than either humans or robots alone. >> You know, I think if you are arguing that we would be in a perfect world if the machines could run it perfectly, then I would argue that world would be a machine, right? So, it would be perfect, but it wouldn't be human, so what are we getting, right? It's a bad deal, so I think we need to find a good balance between the two, and also carve out things that are not about data. You know, like dating and love, relationships, you know, that can be about data, like matching, right? But in the end, the relationship isn't about data. (laughs) >> Well, you even said this morning, it's, knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. >> Right. >> And that's kind of where we are at these crossroads. Emily, let's kind of wrap up with you, you got some interesting customer examples, of how NetApp is helping customers become and live that data driven life, and embrace these emerging technologies, like AI. >> Right, so we have a customer we're working with in Serbia, and they are basically kind of digitizing a human to be able to interact from an AI standpoint, in terms of having an interactive conversation. And I've seen some of this before, with interviewing your grandparents, and you can store them, and you can interact, and I think what's really exciting, is that gives you the opportunity to do something you never could do before. I think to your points this morning, it's, how do we make sure we don't lose the richness from those more kind of offline experiences, so that they are complimentary? If we, as we expand and do things that we couldn't think about, that we didn't, we couldn't envision or imagine, and I think that's about being a data visionary. Like the people at the companies like 3Lateral, like we've seen today, on Wuji NextCODE on stage, the data visionaries are those who are saying, how can data transform my, not just my company, but my industry, my category, and how do I really think about it completely differently? >> It's an exciting time. Emily, Gerd, thank you so much, I wish we had more time to chat with you guys, but we appreciate you stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights. >> Great, thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Insight, pun intended. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we are with theCUBE, live all day at NetApp Insight 2018, stick around, Stu and I will be right back with our next guest.

(soft upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation I'm Lisa Martin. This is going to be a great conversation about corporate social responsibility, and I'm very pleased to have two great guests here with me today. Karen McCloskey joins us the director of internal communications and corporate philanthropy at NETSCOUT and Professor Sally Eaves is here as well the CEO of Aspirational Futures. She's also a professor of emerging tech and a CTO by background. Ladies welcome to the program it's great to have you on today. >> Thank you. >> Absolute pleasure. Thank you, great to join you both. >> We're going to get some great perspectives here. As I mentioned corporate social responsibility we're seeing that emerge across every industry and every company is really focused on that. Karen I want to start with you where tech companies are concerned we see corporate social responsibility really aligning with STEM and STEAM. Why is that? >> There is probably a couple of reasons, I sort of wrap it up as it's what employees do, it's part of their jobs, so they get excited about it and they want to share what they do with the next generation. And the other aspect that helps it align with tech is it involves the educational aspect. So we're teaching and we need up and coming students and employees and entrepreneurs with those skills. And the other part about STEM is when you think of it, it's typically K to 12 and then it rolls into college and it's working with students and the next generation. So the education and the pipeline or the education and the students speak to the pipeline aspect and then you add in people getting excited about their job and what they do and that's the employee engagement aspect so it really brings the two pieces together. >> I want to dig into that employee engagement in a minute but Sally I would like to get your perspective. Tell us a little bit about Aspirational Futures and then let's talk about the alignment between that and STEM and STEAM. >> Absolutely, so yeah, Aspirational Futures, is a non-profit kind of working across tech education and social impact and really looking at kind of opening up opportunities to the industry to a diversity of experience and using tech and data as a force for good. We do projects locally and across the world I'm kind of breaking down those barriers. It's going to be all about democratization of opportunity I would say. And in terms of STEM to STEAM that's where I see the journey going at the moment and effectively with that STEAM focus you're bringing the arts to an equal stage to the tech skills as well. So for me that's really important because it comes down to curiosity, encouraging people to get into the sector, showing what you can do, building creative confidence, emotional intelligence, those types of skills alongside the tech skills to actually build it. So it's that combination There's complimentary factors that come together. So for me STEAM is a great way to get holistic learning for life With the rate of change we've got at the moment kind of gives you that tool set to work from to be empowered and confident for the future. >> That confidence is so critical. >> Its really. >> For anybody of any age, right? But one of the things that we've seen that is in the inaugural ESG report that NETSCOUT just published is this digital divide. We've seen it for quite a while now but we also saw it grow during the pandemic, Sally from your perspective, what is that and how can tech companies help to fill that gap? >> It's a great point. I think one other thing that the pandemic did was made it more visible as well. So I think particularly we're working in certain spaces we've seen it more, but I think for everybody it's affected our daily lives in education from home, for example for the first time it's made gaps more visible. So absolutely huge to focus on that. And I think we're seeing it from the organizational perspective as well. We're seeing gaps around certain types of roles. We're seeing higher churn because of a lack of data literacy skills. So it's becoming something that's becoming a CUBE Conversation, you know, in day-to-day family life but in organizations across the world as well. And also it's about challenging assumptions. And it just a few weeks ago there was some research that came out at the University of Reading in the UK in conglomerate with other universities as well. And it was kind of showing that actually you can't make the assumption, for example, that teenagers that kind of call digital natures all the time actually have full confidence in using data either, It was actually showing there were gaps there too. So we've got to challenge assumptions. So literacy in all its forms whether it's data, whether it's financial is absolutely key and we've got to start earlier. So what I'm seeing more of is better outreach from tech companies and other organizations in the primary schools through to universities as well kind of internships and placements, but also another really interesting area that we do with the nonprofit is looking at data waste as well. You know, 90% of data there's archive isn't touched again after kind of three months, you think about the amount of data we're producing at the moment how can we reuse that as a force for good as a training opportunity? So let's think creatively let's be pragmatic address some of these data literacy gaps, but we have to do it at all levels of the community and also for adult learners too. That's usually important. >> Right, there's no, it knows no age and you're right that the visibility on it I think it can be a very good thing shining that light finally going we've got to do something. Karen talked to us about what NETSCOUT is doing. The digital divide is there you guys are really focused on helping to mitigate that. >> That's right. That's right. So as guardians of the connected world, that's our job with our customers and our products, but also with our people in our communities is getting people connected and how can we do that? And in what ways are we able to do that? And recently we engaged with Tech Goes Home which is based in Boston and they provide those first three pillars that everybody needs access to a device, access to the internet and skills to use that. And they work with families and students and they say their programs go from nine to 90. So they've got everybody covered. And what's exciting for us is it kind of falls from a volunteer perspective right in our wheelhouse. So they had to transition from in-person to distance learning with the pandemic and suddenly their program materials needed to be online and they needed to get people up and running without the benefit of an in-person class. What NETSCOUT volunteers were able to do was create those tutorials and those programs that they needed and we also have people all over the world and then we translated them into a bunch of different languages and they were able to then move forward with their programs. So Tech Goes Home and programs like that are really that first step in bridging the digital divide. And then once you've got the basics, the toolkit and the skills what else can you do? And Sally mentioned visibility it's what are the opportunities? What can I do now? I didn't realize there was a career path here, I need these skills to build a business help me learn more. So then there's that whole other aspect of furthering what they can do now that they have those skills and the learning and something like a hackathon might be a fun way to engage kids in those skills and help them go a little further with the tools they have. >> And NETSCOUT has done a number of hackathon programs last year I know you had an All-Girls Hackathon virtually in 2020. Talk to me about some of that and then I want to get Sally I'm going to get your perspectives on what you're doing as well. So our hackathons and I'll try and keep this brief because we've done a lot. There were actually brought forward as an employee idea. So that also speaks to our culture. It's like, hey, we should do more of this. We have partner with Shooting Star Foundation and one of our employees is one of their, or is their board chair. And the hackathons what they do and these are beginners hackathons. So we're talking middle high school and the theme is civic. So something good for society. And what we do is over a course of 12 hours not to mention all the pre-planning. When we had the in-person ones they were in our office they got to see employees up close run around the building to the extent that they could and build their project. And Sally I think you had also mentioned that creativity in that confidence. I mean what those kids did in a day was amazing. You know, they came in and they're all kind of looking around and they don't really know what to do. And at the end of the they had made new friends, they were standing up in front of executive judges, presenting their idea, and they all felt really good about it and they had fun. So I think it can be a fun impactful way to both engage employees because it's a heck of a team building experience and sort of bring students in and give them that visibility to what's possible in their tech career. >> And that confidence. Sally talked to me about hackathons from your perspective and what you're involved in? >> Absolutely, funny now I've just come from one. So I'm a Cop 26 at the moment and I've been involved in one with a university again, using that talent and building that empowerment around STG challenges. So in this particular case around sustainability, so absolutely love that and really echo Karen's thoughts there about how this is a reciprocal relationship, it's also super rewarding for all the employees as well, we're all learning and learning from each other's, which I think is a fantastic thing. And also another point about visibility. Now seeing someone in a role that you might want to do in the future, I think is hugely important as well. So as part of the nonprofit I run a series called 365 and that's all about putting visibility on role models in tech every single day of the year. So not for example just like International Women's Day or Girls in ICT Day, but every single day and for a diversity of experience, because I think it's really important to interview people for C-suite level. But equally I just did an interview with a 14 year old. He did an amazing project in their community to support a local hospital using a 3D printer. It makes it relatable, you can see yourself in that particular role in the future, and you can also show how tech can be used for good business, but also for good for society at the same time. I think that can challenge assumptions and show there's lots of different roles, there's lots of different skills that make a difference in a tech career. So coding could be really important but so is empathy, and so is communication skills. So again, going back to that STEAM focus there's something for everyone. I think that's really important to kind of knock down those boundaries, challenge assumptions, and drop the the STEM drop off we say make it a little bit more STEAM focused I think that can help challenge those assumptions and get more people curious, creative, confident about tech. >> I couldn't agree more, curious, creative and confident. The three Cs that will help anyone and also to sell it to your point showing the breadth and diversity of roles within tech coding is one of them. >> Sally: Absolutely. >> As might be the one of the ones that's the most known but there's so many opportunities to allow these kids to be able to see what they can be is game-changing, especially in today's climate. Karen talk to me about you mentioned in the beginning of our interview Karen, the employee engagement, I know that that environmental social governance is core to NETSCOUT's DNA but we're talking over 2,400 employees in 35 countries. Your folks really want to be engaged and have a purpose. Talk to me about how you got the employees together, it sounds like it was maybe from within. >> That's absolutely right. We have a to support employees when they bring forth these good ideas and the hackathon was one example of that. And the cool thing about the hackathons is that it leads to all these other community connections and people bring forth other ideas. So we had an in-person hackathon at our Allen office in 2019. Some of the employees there met staff from Collin College who were said, "Hey, we'd like to bring this hackathon to us." So then the employees said, "Hey, can we do a hackathon with Collin College?" It's so really it's employee driven, employee organized, supported by the company with the resources and other employees love to be part of that. And the event at Collin College brought out all those skills from the students. It was on climate change so relatively hot topic. And they did a fantastic job while they were there, but that employee engagement as you said, it comes from within. So they have the idea we have a way and a path that they can find what is needed in their community and deliver on that. And it really becomes a sense of pride and accomplishment that it wasn't a top-down mandate that you must go volunteer or paint this wall. They identified the need in the community, propose the project, get the volunteers, get the corporate support and go forth and do it. And it's really amazing to see what people do in their community. >> Well, it's incredibly rewarding and fulfilling but also very symbiotic. There's one thing that's great about the students or those that are from nine to 90, like you said, having a mentor or mentors and sponsors but it's also another thing for employees to be even more productive and proud of themselves to be able to mentor and sponsor those folks in the next generations coming up. I can imagine that employee productivity would likely increase because the employees are able to fulfill have something fulfilling or rewarding with these programs. Karen talk to me a little bit about employee productivity as a kind of a side benefit of this. >> Well, I was going to say during the hackathons I don't know how productive we are 'cause there's a lot of planning and pre-work that goes into it. But I think what happens is it's an incredible team building experience across the company. So you reaching out to executives hey would you be a judge for this event? And you know you're explaining what it is and where it is. And you're roping your coworkers into spending 12 hours with you on a Sunday. And then you're finding somebody who has access to a speaker. So you're talking to people about it it's outside your day-to-day job. And then when it's over, you're like, "Oh yeah, hey, I know somebody in that group I worked with them on the hackathon or I can go up and talk to this executive because we hung out in the hackathon room for X many hours on a Saturday." So it's another way to build those relationships which in the end make you more or help you be more productive as a whole across the company. >> Absolutely relationship building, networking, those are all critical components to having a successful career. Whether we're talking about STEAM or not. I want to unpack something Sally that you said in our remaining few minutes you talked about challenging assumptions. And I guess suppose I'm one of those ones that always assumes if I see a gen Z or they're going to know way more about how to use my phone than I do but you bring up a really good point that there are these assumptions that we need to focus on, shine the light on, address them and crack them wide open to show these folks from nine to 90 that there are so many opportunities out there, there are limitless out there I would say. >> Absolutely, it's all about breaking down those barriers. And that research I mentioned something like 43% of teenagers about kind of 16 to 21 years of age we're saying they don't feel data literate. And that assumption is incorrect so gain so making sure we include everyone in this conversation. So going as young as possible in terms of introducing people to these opportunities but making sure we don't leave any particular age group behind it's that breadth of engagement with all ages is absolutely key. But again showing there are so many different routes into tech as a career. There isn't one linear path, you can come from a different area and those skills will be hugely valid in a tech career. So absolutely challenging assumptions, changing the narrative about what a tech career looks like, I think is absolutely hugely important hence why I do that series because you want to see someone that's relatable to you, at your next level potentially, it's something you need a three steps ahead. It just makes it so important. So for me democratization of opportunity, breaking down barriers, showing that you can go around different ways and it's absolutely fine. And you know what that would probably you can learn from that experience, you can learn from mistakes all those things make a difference so don't be put off and don't let anyone hold you back and reach out for mentor. You mentioned sponsorship earlier on as well I think that's another thing as well kind of using the sphere of influence we develop in our careers and maybe through social media and can helping people along the way not just through mentorship but through active sponsorship as well. There's so many things we can do together. I think organizations are really listening to this is better embedding around DEI initiatives now than ever before and as Karen has been describing fantastic outreach into communities through hackathons, through linking up with schools. So I think we're getting a real contagion of change that's positive here. And I think the pandemic has helped. It's helped us all to kind of pause and reflect, what we stand for as people, as organizations all the way through and I'm really excited that we can really harness this energy and take it forward and really make a difference here by coming together. >> And that is such a great silver lining all of those points Sally that you mentioned. Karen, I want to wrap with you. There's great momentum within NETSCOUT I mentioned, over 2,400 employees actively so many people in the employee community actively engaging in the hackathons and the opportunities to show from nine year olds to 90 year olds the opportunities that STEAM delivers. So what's next for NETSCOUT, what can we anticipate? >> More hackathons, more focused on the digital divide. I just want to, as Sally was speaking, something occurred to me when you said it's never a clear path on the tech journey. I would love to be listening to one of those conversations 10 years from now and have somebody say, oh, when you were asked that question that you're always asked what got you on your journey? What started? I'd love to hear someone say, "Oh, I went to this hackathon once "and it is something and ever since then I got interested in it." That would be a lot of fun. I would love to see that. And for NETSCOUT we're going to continue to do what we do best. We focus on where we can make a difference, we go in wholeheartedly, we engage with volunteers and we'll just keep doing what we're doing. >> Excellent ladies what a great conversation. I love the lights that you're shining on these very important topics there. You're right, I talked to a lot of people about their career paths and they're very, zig-zaggy. Its the exception to find one, you know, that we're studying computer science or engineering, but Karen I have no doubt with the focus that NETSCOUT's putting that Sally that your organization is putting on things like hackathons, getting people out there, educated becoming data literate that no doubt that the narrative will change in the next few years that I went to this hackathon that NETSCOUT did and here I am now. So great work, very important work. I think the pandemic has brought some silver linings there to what your organizations are both doing and look forward to seeing the next generation that you're inspiring. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Real pleasure. >> Likewise. For Sally Eaves and Karen McCloskey, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE Conversation. (soft upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Washington D.C. it's The Cube covering AWS Public Sector Summit, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to The Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector summit here in our nation's capitol, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Co-hosting alongside analyst John Furrier. We are welcoming today Troy Bertram. He is the GM Public Business Development Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube, Troy >> Thanks for having me Rebecca >> Rebecca: A first timer. >> It is the first time. >> Rebecca: Welcome. >> Yes, thank you John, thank you Rebecca. >> Let's talk about your partner organization. Why don't you let our viewers know how it's structured, what its mission is, how it works. >> Yes, certainly. Our public sector partner teams work with our partners around the world that really support the mission requirements of government, education, and non-profits. Our partners are part of the large Amazon partner network, so 35,000 plus partners, but really our customers choose, Whether it's technology partners that have really focused their SaaS, PaaS, ISV solutions on government customers and worked through accreditations and certifications, or it's the consulting partners that go to market and own the prime contract vehicles. Contracts are how our customers buy in public sector. What we've done is really focused our teams from start-ups, and venture capitalists, and incubators, through technology, ISVs, PaaS and SaaS partners to our large consulting partners; global consulting partners, but also really helping curate those consulting partners that meet socioeconomic requirements. Often times governments have laws, regulations to buy small woman owned 8(a), service disabled veteran, as veteran, one of my near and dear partner subset to me, and we work with them to help navigate through and develop programs to work through the APN, and often times it's a partner to partner activity of a consulting partner working with a specialized ISV technology solution that can meet a customer's mission requirements. >> What's interesting about the cloud, we've been talking about our intro this morning is the agility and government's now seeing it benefits, and it's not just and aha moment anymore cloud is really, it's driving a lot of change. That's been lifting up a lot of your partner profiles. You have start-ups to large entities all playing together because the requirements my change based upon either the agency or the public sector entity. >> Yes. >> Have unique needs, so you have a broad range of partners. How do you guys nurture that? That's good diversity. You have nice solution set from tech to business. How do you guys nurture that? What's some of the challenges and opportunities you guys are seeing with the growth. >> Cloud is really allowed a reset for many of our partners. Whether you are born in the cloud company, that doesn't necessarily have a long legacy, and haven't built an entire infrastructure, and you don't have an infrastructure of people, but also don't have technology debt that you've been burdened with because of your prior operating models. It's nurturing that born in the cloud company that maybe a services oriented migration partner that's focused on moving our customers applications and workloads, or it's nurturing the technology and helping them build, or it's a refactor and a legacy on premise solution or those solution providers that have traditionally operated in an on-prem environment. Helping them train, certify, and really build a new practice. >> And it's exciting too. You got the ecosystem kind of approach where, you know a thousand flowers can bloom. I've got to ask you, what do you see sprouting up? What's growing most? What is some of the trends that you see in the partner ecosystem? What's growing fast? What's the demand? What's the hot area? >> The real demand is for people with skill sets. In our business, skill sets also often include security clearances, and a knowledge of the working environment that they're migrating from. We're spending an inordinate amount training and educating. Also, our partner selling community of understanding the dynamics of how to go to market, and the contract vehicles, and how to navigate. The opportunities are really immense. It's nurturing those thousand flowers, and it is a challenge for many of us. How do we nurture those thousand flowers simultaneously? >> Are you finding the right people? A big theme on The Cube here is the skills gap. I just saw a Deloitte survey. 60% of executives, and these are executives, they're not in the public sector, said a skills gap hindered their AI initiatives and hindering their cloud computing initiatives. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from the people you're talking to? >> There's a thirst for both knowledge and training, but there's also, from the executive side, we have a need to fill. There's an abundance of roles, and all of us working together. One of our initiatives is even the job boards that we're working with our educate team and Ken Eisner a peer that leads that is, we're helping our partners promote their open roles. Allowing our partners to look for and curate the same talent that Amazon is helping train and develop because when our partners can find amazing talent, our customers win. It benefits AWS and the partner ecosystem. >> Education's huge. You got to have the ongoing digital course ware. Is that a top priority for you? What are some of your top goals for this year in your plan? >> When it comes to education, top goal is training many of our new partners through our emerging partner team. Many of the new partners have a commercial practice. We're also looking at those partners and actively recruiting those partners that have built a commercial practice that are looking to enter government. Whether it's our distributors or our resellers that own the prime contract vehicles, we're doing partner to partner activities. We call it partner speed dating. It's contract vehicles that exist across state and local government, US federal, or in the international community for those ISVs that want to enter new market regions is pairing with those existing local companies that have contract vehicles and then helping train and educate on the nuances of public sector. >> We were talking with General Keith Alexander and retired General Yesthidae came on and I asked them directly, if you could a magic wand, I think I said, something along the lines of if you had a magic wand, what would you do to change the government? It could go faster. He said the technology check we're doing very well, it's moving along great, it's the procurement process. It's just too long. He mentioned contracts. This is really the key point we keep hearing. The red tape. What's the update there? I'm sure partners aren't wanting more red tape. They want to cut through it, to your point. >> No. It's really an education process. When I started at Amazon over six and a half years ago, my first role was to stand up, and it still is the core of my role, I have individuals in 22 different countries around the world, and we're helping governments and VR partners through the procurement process. We did this past week in my home state of Minnesota, our 10,000th RFX, so we consider an FRP, FRI, an RFQ a tender, I need to buy, I want to buy something. We responded to 10,000 of those in six years and two months. That's an abundance of contract that ultimately, many of them are task orders and IDIQs and GWAX. There's an abundance of pathways as General Alexander stated for customers to buy the technology. Now it's educating the contracting officers, the COs, the KOs, around the world on the existing pathways and how to leverage them. We still see old procurement methodologies being applied to the cloud, and it does slow down the end customer's mission requirements. >> And the path to value. >> Yes, the path to value. Exactly. They want to move and move fast and contracts is how we buy, but it's also what slows us down. >> You know, you're with Amazon six years plus, so you know this, so the speeds of value's been the key thing for the cloud. As you look at success now with Amazon public sector, not only in the US, but abroad and internationally, you got massive tailwinds on the success. The growth is phenomenal. How does that feel? What's some observations? What's some learnings that you can take away from the past few years and where's it going? >> It feels like it's day one. It does feel like it's day one. There are tailwinds, but there's still an abundance of customer requirements, and they're evolving, and they're more complex. I personally really like my career's been public sector. Solving the mission requirements, whether it's helping a forward deployed airman, soldier, really keeping them at the cutting edge of technology, and out of harms way, or our first responders; some of the new product demonstrations that we've seen of evolving technology that's helping a firefighter see from an aerial drone vehicle. What does it look like on the other side of this building, and how can I now communicate across different agencies? Is phenomenal. In my home state, where Army Futures Command, I live in Austin, Texas. Army Futures Command is working with the state of Texas as well as the University of Texas to really collaborate as we've never seen before. The barriers of emerging technology to legacy government, to ministries, and health defenses around the world, ministries of defense, and health agencies around the world. >> The data, the scale of Amazon cloud is going to to make that possible. Ground Station's a great example of how that's growing like a weed. The DOD has got a great charter around using agility and AI. >> Collaboration, which is so critical too, as you said. >> It is, and our VM Ware partnership with VM Ware on AWS can really help, and that's a partner play. That's partners helping migrate using the co-developed technology to really move and move faster. Use those existing apps and vacate those data centers. >> Well, thanks for coming on The Cube. Got to be a quick plug, plug the organization, share with the audience, what you're looking for, and update on the partner network. Give a quick plug for your group. >> What we're really looking for is, we've got 105 different competency partners that have really invested in their government, their education, their non-profit competency, and we want to help. I personally want to help them promote their business, and what the opportunity is to connect to either other partners or to government mission requirements. Really welcome the opportunity, John, to come on and look forward to seeing my partners on The Cube in the future. Thank you. >> Well, Troy Bertram, you are now a Cube alum, >> A Cube alum >> Thank you. (panel laughing) >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier, you are watching The Cube, stay tuned for more AWS Public Sector Summit.

>> From the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering HOSHO CON 2018. Brought to you by HOSHO. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE special live coverage here in Las Vegas for the first ever, Blockchain Security Conference. Really discussing security as an industry, it's called HOSHO CON, put on by HOSHO. We're here with the Co-Founder and CEO of HOSHO and main supporters of sponsoring this project or event HOSHO CON. We have Yo Sub Kwon, who is the CEO and Co-Founder. Good to see you. >> Good to see you, good to be here. Hey thanks for putting this on. I've interviewed Hartej, your Co-founder, in Toronto the Futures conference. We've had many great conversations on theCUBE. But when we talked about HOSHO CON, this conference, he really wanted to do it as an industry conference. Not as just a HOSHO event. >> (Yo agrees) >> This is really key to you guys culture here at HOSHO your company. >> Yeah. >> Take a minute and explain the event. Why this event? Why the format? And that it is open? >> I mean basically, you know, like we've been to just so many events over the, like I think we've done like 80 events this year, and the topic of conversation is, you know, around investing, it's around ICO's, it's around all these things and security touches all of those and I just feel like, and we all felt it and like the other security companies felt it too, that it just wasn't a topic that was discussed in great enough depth especially given the increasing amounts of hacks and theft and all these problems that relate directly to security. And I just feel like it's really important for us as an industry to discuss, you know, what security practices are good? What should be done? How you should do them? What resources are available to companies to learn more about security? And what resources don't exist and need to be developed? And that needs to be done in a collaborative way. Well congratulations and props to you guys for really sponsoring this and taking the leadership role in the industry but again you guys are humble and it's a good way to do it. Is to have these conversations. So thank you for doing that, appreciate it and thanks for having theCUBE here. We really appreciate it. The question I want to ask you is: I've noticed a trend here, first of all a lot of smart people here, so it's like, it's not a massive, no IPO, ICO pitch competitions, this is really down and dirty security. >> Yeah. >> Okay, black hat, white hat but it's kind of a intercultural vibe it's the community. >> Yeah. >> Coming together. But also two kind of tracks are developing there's the crypto security and then there's cyber security threats coming up. Because you said it's touching on all these points. And you're hearing, even hearing a little bit of IOT and hardware, we had Rivetz on earlier the CEO Steven Sprague so a lot of different solutions and a lot of different opportunities, a lot of different vulnerabilities. Can you explain the landscape of how the players are here, where are they coming from? >> Okay, yeah. >> What's their backgrounds? >> Absolutely I mean there are definitely, a lot of brilliant minds here and that was one of the goals of HOSHO CON is to bring people that are of all different, you know, parts of the industry whether they're, they're layers or they're information security experts or they're, you now, regulators or they're it just, developers bring them all into the same room and to kind of discuss these problems that you know, plague all of us and you know a developer's going to have a much different perspective and solution than a lawyer and but those thing can work together and the problems might still be the same. And so we've been in the industry for just like, even though HOSHO's a young company, the people that are on our team, myself, I've been in, I got into Bitcoin eight years ago, like we just have this network of people that are in the industry, have seen the kind of like cyclic nature of, you know, like a gigantic influx of people come in, these problems arise where, you know, entrepreneurs are like really focused on like growing, getting traction and then they focus less on their security, it goes to the wayside and then these big hacks happen and then the industry kind of smartens up and everything you know starts getting a little bit closer to what seems you know maybe safe or like approachable for a growth trajectory and then another gigantic influx happens and then the same thing. And so what we really need to do is like when that next big influx happens is to have standards in place to have things that an entrepreneur can just turn to and be like: "Okay, this is what I need to do "if I want to be considered credible in this industry "and I want to protect my users and my investors." >> Can you talk about some of the top conversations that are going on here, because I think that's a great point? People want you know legitimacy, they want solutions that work, that are credible and then maintain kind of, I won't say enterprise grade, but commercial grade reliable so that people can focus on building up their companies and or preparing for the growth. What is some of the top conversations? >> A lot of it's just learning about what other people do, like even with like Rivetz, we're putting, they're using the trust executions based on like what's already on billions of devices and you know basically letting people know that that space exists on this hardware and that they can be used for all these different purposes to validate you know data going in. And, you know, there's been conversations around custody. I was on a panel earlier today about custody and basically the way I felt like it left off and the conclusion was that there is a long way to go on custody but it is incredibly crucial. Big institutional players that want to enter the markets and want to put their money into a regulated custodian they're, it's difficult to do so even with registered custodian's existing because the limitations that they have in understanding the technology and being able to provide support for all the different digital assets that exist. >> So we're reporting this morning the SEC herein the US has tightened the noose on the ICO-funded startups. I think the story originated out of Decrypt Media but essentially the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, is cracking down and they're going back and saying: "You got to refund some of that money." >> Yeah. >> Because of violations. That's one regulatory thing but there's also, there's software that writes these smart contracts. You guys are in that business. The software is software money, security is critical. How stable is this becoming in your mind? What's the to do items? How should a company who want's to either use the ICO process or and or use token economics to fuel their business model they got to be secure on the business front? >> Yeah. So basically smart contracts were so new when we first got in to it that people just didn't know how to develop securely in them and so there were just critical mistakes being made all over the place. We've seen over the last year a lot of improvement on that front, more libraries are being developed and people are writing consistently more secure contracts. But now what we're seeing is contracts are getting increasingly complex and with additional complexity, because it's software there's room for, you know more problems and I think that it's going to, it's going to be an interesting challenge going forward, there's thing like formal verification I think that has a huge place in the future regarding smart contracts but it's there's a lot of tools that need to be developed that's one of the things that we worked on and we're really excited about is Meadow Suite because that's software that let's you develop smart contracts. We built it intentionally with security analysis in mind and then we made it more full featured to become a development tool for writing smart contracts and developing a protocols. And so I think the more of those type of things that you see come out that bring it more to feature parity to what software developers are used to if they're say building a web application it makes it a lot easier to adhere to good practices and write secure code. >> And also kind a not have to do manual audits? >> Yeah. >> I mean at the end of the day you want to get to some sort of automation. >> Absolutely. >> Framework. >> I mean we've already automated a lot of the things that we do. But and there's still a lot left to do but we know that there is a lot left that can be automated and we hope that eventually the tools are just put into developers hands were they can do most of that work themselves. >> Yo Sub take your CEO hat off from HOSHO for a minute put your industry hat on. >> Okay. >> What are some of the names here that, and conversations, topics that you find interesting personally? >> Okay, I mean. >> (John laughs) >> A lot of people that we brought here are like our friends, we know them right? And so like I was talking to. >> Your kind of celebrities. >> I was talking with like TokenMarket earlier and like, you know, we're partners with them and they really, they're really great guys and like some of the stuff that they are trying to do and you know just listening to what other companies are trying to do with like security tokens that seem to be the thing that really moving forward. And I'm kind of fascinated like, we try to stay agnostic you know like when we're like looking at all these different technologies. But then like someone explains something to you and you're awe man that's really cool. >> Yeah. (both laughs) >> And there's some good minds here. What's the coolest thing you've seen so far? >> Well I've been locked in, I've been locked behind doors in a lot of meetings so far but the, let's see, I think what Unchained Capital is working on is really sweet. They basically, I mean like I think their business model makes a lot of sense. Like basically they hold your crypto's so you maintain exposure to it and then they'll issue you a loan. They can like turn around a loan like in 24 hous, you just hand then a bunch of Bitcoin and then they'll just give you cash and then you can you know you have that cash and then you still maintain exposure through crypto if you pay it all back you get your crypto back. (laughs) >> So it's collateralized crypto? >> Exactly I mean like that makes perfect sense to me. Like you know it's just like as long as you can liquidate that crypto and Bitcoin or Ethereum like those are big enough markets now where you can easily liquidate. Well that's awesome. Thanks for putting on this event and I want to get back to HOSHO. How's business going? You're the CEO, Commander in Chief, what's going on with the company? How's things going? >> Yeah. >> Quick update. >> Well everything's crazy right, like we're moving quickly and the next steps are Asia. We really want to basically penetrate those markets. Only, we don't have as much coverage there as we would like but having spent some time there earlier this year doing some reconnaissance it's a crazy, crazy space over there. There's a lot of action happening, there's a lot of adoption. People are really enthusiastic about it but security almost seems like six months to a year behind North America and Europe as far as what exchanges are requiring, what investors are demanding of their portfolio companies. And so I think that now that they've had such major hacks happen over the last six months they're starting to realize. >> Major hacks talking about 60 Million. I mean I heard numbers up to 300 plus million. >> Yeah. >> I mean these are it's not like five dollars out of your wallet. >> Yeah. >> This is massive. >> Like over a billion dollars has been stolen in some capacity and like it's been pretty crazy yeah, so. >> Where's the big vulnerability? Exchanges, is it the DApps, where's the holes? >> They're all over the place but the biggest numbers definitely come from exchanges. Exchanges just need to be far more responsible and just, I feel like a lot of it is just negligence. They're growing so quickly that they don't pay attention to, you know, putting resources into educating their staff on really simple security practices. You know things like phishing and social engineering, like things that were good security practices still are good security practices. And a lot of those attacks are not even anything like some new exploit of a new technology it's the same kind of thing of like phishing, social engineering, sims swapping, you know, poor user access control, bad passwords. >> I mean the basics. >> Yeah. >> But this is what growth does to you you've point earlier. As more people start feeling growth there's more exposure service area wise. >> Yeah. >> New dynamics are kicking in. >> Well I'm starting to see new exchanges that are popping up that are you know taking security very seriously and the way they're treating it is that is their differentiator but in my mind like security shouldn't be a differentiator. Everybody should. >> (John laughs) >> If you're an exchange and you're holding massive amounts of other people's assets you should take security very seriously. That should just be a default, a standard. >> You have to be differentiating strategy with security it's not, it doesn't make sense. >> Marketing 101 you shouldn't be different, it should be standard. (both laughs) >> I mean if that's the state of the art, this is the problem. This highlights the problem. >> It does yeah. >> Alright so what's, what's the future for this event? How do you guys see this unfolding? Obviously this is the first inaugural event here HOSHO CON, How do you see it evolving? >> I think a lot of conversations should hopefully spur from this and we want to make this a yearly event. So we're definitely going to take a lot of the feedback from people that attended and see what they want, what they really enjoyed, what they really want to talk about. And even I think, a lot, since we're recoding all of the talks we'll be putting them up online at some point and I think it'd be really good to see like what the transition is like next year from like, where we were in some of these problems and addressing those problems you know a year from now. Like I think that will be really exciting. >> You guys are expanding in Europe, HOSHO good job with that. Who's the kind of clientele that you guys have? Is it ICO's? Is it companies? It is enterprise? Who are your target customers? >> So we have a lot of companies that are ICO's for sure. We have more exchanges and protocols joining those ranks. And then we are trying to move into enterprise as well. We made a partnership with Telefónica and developed a partnership with them to be able to sell to more enterprise clients and what they need. >> And what's your value proposition that you guys are offering? >> We are, well, we do smart contract audits, we do penetration testing. Those are things that a lot of companies in this space need. And then also we've been helping with security architecture and cryptocurrency assessments. >> And tooling, tools for development. >> And tooling, yeah we're trying to do our part. I mean we can't and won't do it alone but we try to develop things that, if we develop anything that's useful from a security perspective, we try and make it available for everyone. >> Yo Sub thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate your time and congratulations, it's a great event. >> Thank you. >> HOSHO CON sponsored by HOSHO and other's in the industry, it's an industry event, it's not just their company, it's their friends all coming together to solve the major problems with security, making it standard, making it safe and supporting the growth with the community. It's theCUBE covering live here in Vegas. I'm John Furrier stay with us for more CUBE coverage after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)

Probably Toronto, Canada. It's the cube covering blockchain futurist conference 2018, brought to you by the queue. Hello and welcome back to you keep live covers here in Toronto for the untraceable blockchain uterus conference two days a wall to wall coverage. We were just seeing it here on the coupon shopper host Dave Vellante, Tony Lane, Cuba last night with culture and we have James Mcdonald, head of strategy of Sentinel. He's also a PGA professional golf professional and a boxer. Extraordinary. Welcome to the cube. Thanks. You ever had in my notes. Funny before camera came on. Super exciting. Even though the market's kind of in a downward trough and by the, you know, do its normal cycle and Crypto, tons of energy. The culture is changing. There's a real energy around focusing on high quality builders, high quality individuals. This is a real dynamic projects for good projects for profit is great engineering going on. What could be better for sure, and we've been through the trod so many times. We've gotten to the point that now I just kind of like. I'm like, well, I mean we're here again. You know what I mean? And now it's time for, we figure out right now who's really in it to win it and who's just playing the game. Tell you know what I love about. You've got great energy, great. Already got great culture. You've been around, you've seen it early, you've been involved in a lot of the iterations of the industry that's just now growing to be a baby and his growing up into it's elementary school years. What are you, what's your take? I mean you look at this, I know you do a lot of retreats and self reflection. What's the industry? Where's it come from? Where is it now? How do you feel about what's happening? So I did in blockchain since 2011 and from a price perspective, there's actually a science fiction story that came out on Reddit in 2014 or 13 by someone named, got underscore Nada and it's called I am from the future. And I am here to stop you from what you were doing in this science fiction story. He outlines this pricing curve that basically shows the first five years of bitcoins existence. If no other market factors happen, no outside influence, no qualitative influenced the first five years, 10 x every year, second five years, every other year, 10 x every other year. And what's crazy is that if we wouldn't have had Mt. Gox and some of these other events like bitcoin was only supposed to go to 10 k last year, which is double. So if we wouldn't have had those external events, that pattern would have actually been it. So what's really easy and simple to remember about bitcoin is that it has a scarce supply. That's, I think that's the easiest way to put any of this. And so this is just a period of time. The market over extended itself and it shouldn't have gone realistically past 10 K it doubled. So yeah, I mean that's a if that's to be expected, right? No, no. In my opinion, I looked at either an exercise about six months with my friend. We look at the Nasdaq during the pre bubble days and we'll exchange of the Nasdaq and that's just a small scale relative to global care crypto. It's actually in line with some of the expansion we've seen in other financial market, so I kinda think it's good to have to do curation going on and calling out some of the dead wood, bring it into the better projects. This is kind of the reality now. Rip Good Times. Well, you know Bradley or yesterday at the cloud and blockchain conference posited that wasn't talking about Bitcoin, he was talking about ether. He said there's just too many damn coins and every ICO is most ics anyway. Tied to the theory. Yes, buy it. Well, I mean you can take this one too, but what I see is a decoupling at some point that has to be some sort of decoupling at the moment. Everything is very correlated and I think as time goes on you will see it's like survival of the fittest. Right? So you've got, you've got a lot of blockchains and you've got a lot of tokens on ethereum that want to come off to theory and it's survival of the fittest. I feel like. Yeah, the best ones will prevail and the ones that aren't trusted or secure. Yeah. So talk about who's in it to win it. What do you look for in the contenders versus the pretenders? What are the attributes that you as deep experts in this field look toward the winters? Well, I see as right now we're kind of like a candy that you love coming out with a new flavor. It's like everyone's like, oh yeah, like remember this candy gotta buy it now, but at the end of the day it's pretty much the same candy and she was like a little different sweetener and so we will experience obviously a sharp correction. Yeah, for sure. But I think what's really beautiful about this is it's actually enabling creative potential jobs of the future are not going to be, oh, I know how to do c plus plus now I have a job forever. It's going to be about reinvention at that is the real economy of the future and chains and huge enabler for that new markets are opening up to. So it's not just the reinvention, which I agree, reimagined the reinvention and new markets. Our change was on earlier saying eight and 80 day tour of 10 countries. New markets are exploding. That's just a new markets is rechanging system, not your grandfather's venture capital model, silicon valley or New York or London. It's with the globe. There are many, many reasons to tokenize the world. The thing that, the thing that stands out to me is, you know, when you look at tokenizing securities, the fact that this opens up the free market to everyone, you know, these things can be traded 24 slash seven, three, six, five from anywhere in the world. Traditionally if you want to buy stocks, will streets open for less time than it's been. It's closed and so it. It just opens up the free market to everyone all over the world and to me that's that journalists, you're a professional golfer. Someone use a golf analogy too, because I'd love Golf Golfer, so excellent Golfer. Not a pro, but he could be. I don't keep score with them many times and he never played. She played like, well, why don't you twice a year consistently shoots. There's a little bit hockey and a happy Gilmore going on golf metaphor, so the world that we know that's the centralized governed world banks, big corporations that are being essential. I consider them like a wooden shaft and the old clubs. Now all of a sudden graphite shafts, youth club heads, new technology. The game doesn't really change fundamental APP, but it changes the performance you by that is that a good analogy? Needed to. Perfect analogy. When you go to the golf clubs, then you've got the older members and they don't buy it. They say that the performance doesn't increase with the new technology, but really we know that old stodgy members, it comes down to that people are naturally averse to change. People don't change something that they don't quite understand. They'd naturally dismissed if they don't want to delve in, felt dismiss that and everyone here today is going down this rabbit hole, but there's a hell of a lot of people out there that I didn't really get it. I don't want to get it. So. And they'll dismiss that and they'll even. They'll even talk it down if it threatens them. At the game changes. No, I mean come on. If you look at the current distribution, over time we've moved from tribalized kings and Queens to nation states. Let's hope that we actually enable a redistribution of wealth. I want to see blockchain create the garden of Eden. We're experiencing now is basically same incentives, slightly less bad people, and I feel that if we really use new technology is an opportunity for change. Change is gonna happen and if we make the integration of new technology about experiencing compassion in action as humanity, we changed human perception, human behavior, your understanding of your own limitations. When we enabled real freedom, not just the illusion of freedom as money on Amazon yesterday, which he's with, he's done an amazing work what he's doing to transform the Caribbean islands with exchange changing a society there digitally connected almost 100 percent penetration of mobile. It's incredible. They can't access some basic services society. A new game changer. You're taking an integrative approach to how you interact with people and it's part of your persona. Maybe I'm pushing the golf analogy to bring it, bring it, watching the end of the PGA this week and they were interviewed. Tiger Woods is back and he's comes in and they were interviewing him and he wants to be on the Ryder Cup team. Now, if you've observed him in the Ryder Cup, not great. This is a team sport. The euro's always killed the Americans when the superstar is right and it's sort of the same thing that you're saying. It's the get the haves and have nots. It's a team sport and it's community driven. Increases viewings like you wouldn't need tigers pain. Everyone tunes in, which is great for the sport, for the Americans because they always lose when he plays. I think it would be, you know, why not put him in the team because it's good for the game. It gets people more engaged. He goes and he's been humbled. You know that your thing is there a lock if you the back, you want them involved but you don't want to dominate it. Alright, so guys, let's take it back to reality. You guys are working together on a project we talking, talking you guys, what are you guys working on know about the projects you guys are involved in right now. What James and I do together is we take these skills, we've learned through my life, you a performing artist in his previous life as a professional athlete and we've really taken what we've learned through our knowledge and our network to help entrepreneurs who are driven with integrity and appear to be a success. So it's really, well we do together is we just really, um, and that's, that's what we do both for fun and for enjoyment. And what I'm working on personally, James is the head of strategy at a company and I'll let him get into that when I'm working on personally is global citizenship and my company culture is actually focused on something really integral to the block chain which is capitalizing the market share on the tradition, the transition out of nation states and into oriented and governance models. So we have one layer that's open source for free for the world, for ever to own your agreements and to own your identity as a self sovereign individual stewarded by your community to give everyone more context on each other. And then our for profit businesses basically facebook connects people to their friends, culture connects people to communities and connects communities to dapps that are services and economists basically. And we build that whole ecosystem. So that's really what I'm up to at culture. And then James and I have our own adventure together and James is also had a strategy at center. Yup. Okay. So sentinel is an interoperable network layer for distributed resources. So let me break that down. What block chain technology allows is for you to monetize access resources like access bandwidth, access, GPU or CPU power. And so our first working product is a decentralized vpn. So you know what a vpn is. Sure. So the sentinel, the VPN is distributed. So what that allows you to do for example, is you could access, you can monetize your excess bandwidth by hosting a note that people can connect to it. And the beauty of the decentralized vpn is that it's probable, so all the code is open source and there's proof that the data is actually being kept private, it's encrypted, um, and there's no, there's no centralized or a body or a company that can be shut down or, or forced to give up data or paid for paid for data. It's distributed. So it's fast and it's secure. So yeah, there's a lot of big companies in the crypto space that are very concerned with data privacy and they didn't, may not trump central vpn, traditional centralized vpn paid. So you host your own node, you get paid. It's a marketplace. So anyone in the world can set up their own node, run their own node, help other people obscure their traffic if they don't want. Like for example, Gdpr, if you don't want every website that you visit to monitor literally everything you do, you might want to consider using a vpn for the sake of preserving your own personal privacy and the integrity of your data which you own and rightfully should actually own the monetization value of. So in the world you can have a few node and you guys can pay, people can pay $5 your whole network and use it. So I can sell my xx compute capacity, network bandwidth, the storage sewer. No touching that. A storage, I mean down the line. So it's for, for, for distributed resources. That sentinel. The first product is the dvps yes. Down the line. Yeah. We're going to come up with much more so others could actually plug into that platform like a live stream in China. I can pop on a vpn. There it is. Run Google apps in China because you can run google. Yes. You know, she'd even China. Let's you. Cool. All right guys. Well thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks. Very inspirational. I think there's a lot of mission driven cultural change coming very fast. This next generation coming up is going to be the stewards of making the change happen. It's our job to set the table and get these services out there. Congratulations. Okay. Cube coverage here live in Toronto at the untraceable blockchain futures conference. Two days is the cube wall to wall coverage. I'm John Furrier, stay with us Dave ones continuing the best gas, the most important people. Bring in the great blockchain crypto world together here in Toronto. We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE. Covering Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage in Toronto for the Blockchain Cloud Summit, part of the Blockchain Futurist event happening tomorrow and Thursday here in Toronto. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We're here with Gabriel Abed who's the founder of Bitt and also the Digital Asset Fund. Great story he's been there from the beginning. President at creation in the movement that's now changing the world. Blockchain and cryptocurrency certainly. Infrastructure and token economics, changing how things are doing. And rolling out, reimagining everything from infrastructure to value exchanges. Gabriel welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you it's great to be here. >> So we were just talking on camera, you like to go after the big changes. You're an entrepreneur, you have that fire in your belly. You've been very successful. Where are we? I mean, you've been part of the movement, we're now on the cusp of mainstream adoption, there's still work to do. >> Oh, plenty of work. Lots of infrastructure still to build, many regulators and legislators still to educate, lots of laws still to be amended and changed. And, at the end of the day, it's happening and it's happening quickly and beautifully right now. The entire industry is changing. >> One of the things that you've done, you've taken on some big projects and you've made change happen. Regulation is one of the hottest topics we're hearing certainly in the United States, it affects innovation and there's so much entrepreneurial activity happening right now. There's so many entrepreneurs, alpha entrepreneurs really want to do great things, and regulation is just a blocker. It's an antibody for innovation. And you've busted through that. And it's probably going to continue. The old guard is either going to be replaced or adapting to the technology. You've done that, and a lot of people want to do what you've done. What's the secret? What's the secret of your success? How have you taken on these big, incumbent positions and taken them over >> But you're not running from regulators, you're embracing them. >> No, no, I think regulators are important to a responsible and sophisticated market. When my partner and I started Bitt in 2013, 2014, we immediately realized that if we wanted to build a product for the monetary authorities around the world, we needed to have the buy-in from the regulators. So from day one we were regulator-friendly. And it's not to say that we don't believe in a decentralized future, I'm as big of an advocate for decentralization and the freedom of information as anyone else, but I'm also a big believer in if you're a product for a market in the traditional world you have to involve the regulators in order to ensure that product does its job, keeps the consumers safe, and ensures that the economy around it doesn't collapse. So regulators are critical in this field. >> Talk about what you guys have done. Take a minute to explain the project you did, how it worked out, the tenacity, but also, what was the outcome? What were you trying to do in the project and where is it right now? >> It depends on the project you're referring to >> Maybe start at the beginning >> The Caribbean >> Let's start at the beginning. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Okay, so, Gabriel Abed, born, raised, educated in Barbados, around the age of 19, I decided I was going to take my computer science education a bit further. I went to Canada, I did a Bachelor of IT, where I majored in network security. In Ontario, the University of Ontario. And, unlike the rest of of my peers, who usually stay in Canada, I decided to go back to my little nation with the education that I had just received. And I took that education home, and started one of the world's first blockchain companies, but at the time I didn't understand blockchain per se, I understood it as a commodity, as a cool investment, I didn't understand the true nature behind the protocol itself. It was only until 2013 that my partner and I ran one of the larger mining operations in the world, that we realized a commodity was actually a protocol. A network tool. A system that you could build on top of. So in 2014, we actually created one of the world's first blockchain assets, on Bitcoin's blockchain. And that a representation of a digital dollar for a central bank. And the notion behind Bitt.com in 2014 was, let's compete with cash, because it's inefficient, it's costly, and it slows down the movement of society. So what we wanted to do is create a digital version of that, that would save economies hundreds of millions of dollars. Cash is expensive to to create, that linen, plastic, paper money, it's easily forged, it can be counterfeited, it's hard to transport, it has an expense to transport, it has an expense to count, it has an expense to secure, and then it has overheads around the entire ecosystem of accountability. Whereas, a blockchain-based digital dollar eliminates all of those efficiencies, and increases the ability for a monetary authority to trace, track, and have a better form of anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing and a better overview of their entire society. So that all, we took that notion, went to the central bank of Barbados, who at the time was being led by Dr. DeLisle Worrell, and our very first meeting he had asked me to excuse his office. And 13 meetings later, and a whole two years, lots of development, building out infrastructure around compliance, around finance, around security, and around regulation, we finally got the nod of approval from Dr. DeLisle Worrell to operate a fiat example of a digital dollar in Barbados. And since then, we have been working with several central banks around the world, bitt.com today is the leading central bank provider for digital dollars. A lot has changed, I've developed other tools since, and other businesses, but bitt.com continues to be the best friend for central banks looking to move and transition into the digital arena. >> Why, I mean other than a closed mindset, why wouldn't every government around the world want to move in this direction? Initiate some kind of FedCoin, for example. >> Education, education, it's the fear that the system may not be scalable, it's the fear that the system could be hacked, it's the fear that they could be cut out, their control, at the end of the day, monetary authorities, like the Federal Reserve, they have a control on the money supply. Whereas, something like decentralized cryptographic currencies, there is nobody in control of the money supply. Hence, inflation versus deflation systems. Then there's the issue of hacking and the threat of digital and cybersecurity. Typically, the head of these monetary authorities are older gentlemen who are traditionally conservative. And who are not (mumbles) with cybersecurity. So the fear of hacking is very real for someone like them, whereas someone like me who is trained as a network security expert, those fears can be mitigated with good policy and procedure, cold wallets, and the right process, to ensuring the environment can run without the risk or the fear of malicious attacks. So it really boils down to education. The educated governors of central banks, like there's one, for example, Timothy Antoine. Dr. Antoine is the governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. And they govern and mandate the currency union of eight islands below them. St. Lucia, Grenada, Antigua, et cetera. Now, he's a governor that gets this and has wrapped his head around it, and understands that this is the future. He gets it so much that he signed an agreement with bitt.com to begin exploring a pilot for his currency union to have a digital dollar implemented in it. You also have governors and presidents like that of Curacao. Or the central bank of Curacao, where we've just signed an agreement to move forward with a phase of looking at the implications of rolling out a digital dollar in a society like Curacao and St. Maarten. What is the ramifications? What is the feasibility study behind that? So, to answer your question, it's not every single regulator, governor, and central bank manager is going to head toward this technology tomorrow. But with more education, and more lobbying, you will see more and more central bank governors moving in this direction, because it's better, cheaper, faster, makes their job easier, gives them more control, gives them more oversight, and provides all the things that they would want as a central bank to continue to do their job for their society. Which is to protect their dollar from alien threats. And to ensure that the dollar remains stable, and to just generally ensure that the society is functioning the way it should. >> Gabriel, what's your vision on what this will enable for the citizens? What's the impact that you see happening? If this continues down the trajectory, what is the adoption look like, impact to people's lives on a everyday basis. >> Well, for a very starting point, you democratize payment. Right now, if I want to make a payment, I have to go through a utility company called a bank. And this bank typically has frictional costs, and frictional overheads and time. That's one of the biggest problems, is that these monopolistic infrastructures hinder the ability for the average participation of a free-flowing payment system. So what you end up having is rather than me being able to make a digital payment in seconds, with no cost, I have to wait days, I have to use manual-based systems whether it's check, cash or the bank's Visa Mastercard system. And then it has frictional costs. So right off the bat, you democratize payment. What does that do for a society in a developing nation? It empowers people. And you're empowered because now as a developer, I can build on this payment system. As an entrepreneur, I can tap in to this payment system. As a merchant, I can utilize this low-cost payment system. As a society, I now have GDP growth because of financial inclusion. The underbanked, who do not have access to banking facilities for one reason or another, maybe they don't like the bank, maybe the banks don't like them. Maybe they don't have two proofs of ID. Maybe they don't have a fixed place of abode. Maybe they don't have the minimum deposit amount. All of these features keep the poor and the underbanked out of the system. Whereas, in developed nations, we have mobile penetration rates that are through the roof. In some cases, like Barbados, over 100 percent. So if you have 100 percent penetration rate of this mobile platform, this thing in my pocket, but I cannot access the banking system, well flip that around, democratize the payment system, allow payments to exist on this mobile phone, and watch how quickly society becomes banked. So what you end up having is full adoption. Why would we not have full adoption when it's cheaper, it's faster, it's more inclusive. >> And the data from that collective intelligence only creates a digital nation >> A more responsible environment. >> Wealth creation environment. >> It creates a more traced, tracked, and accountable society so that the monetary authorities in the government can now start making educated decisions on data. They now know who's buying milk, who's gambling, who's paying their taxes and who's not. >> The downstream benefits of this are massive. >> The downstream benefits are massive, enormous. They're disruptive. This is a brand new fiscal tool, a monetary tool, being given to central banks to start eroding the field of private e-money systems, and to start bringing about a uniform standard towards payments. Plain and simple. We're going to the central banks and introducing a new monetary instrument, that they're in control of. That now the commercial banks, the financial institutions, the corporatocracies, the citizens, and the merchants can all fall under one roof issued by their monetary authority. And this is not a cell phone company or a bank building their own private system that I have to jump through some hoops and some red tape and sign away my first born and give away my left arm to enter. This is a free and open source standard system. >> And it's networked, as you said, penetration is 100 percent on mobile or roughly that, it's a network society that now has digital fabric built into it. This is the future. >> But I played this out in terms of, when you talked about this in your panel, now every device, every thing, every physical asset will be instrumented. >> Yes. >> And as a result, theory can be coconuts. >> You're building the deep infrastructure. I remember we met with World Bank back in 2014 and they coined this term for me. Because they were saying we want to help entrepreneurs and it's important to help entrepreneurs in developing nations because they're the lifeblood of it. But what we are building is the deep infrastructure. And that's exactly what it is. It's the infrastructure that would allow the entrepreneur and the developer to now have a framework that they can build against to provide more uplift. So in essence, it's really going to be exponential growth once systems like this are implemented. The stock market can move digital, and people could buy stocks using digital dollars. E-commerce can occur because I can now buy things online or sell things online with digital dollars. I can now be part of a global, financial ecosystem, with my smartphone and my wallet. >> That's a great use case, congratulations on amazing success, so much is on your plate, you've had great success in this new era, what's on your plate now, what are you working on, what's happening in your world now? >> So in 2017, we realized Bitt was entering a new growth phase. It was no longer a battle of trying to convince regulators and central banks, our product had been proven. Our reputation had been proven. It was time now to scale the company into a professional level of dealing with these regulators around the world. At the end of the day, we would like to digitize cash, wherever cash exists. And to provide those tools for central banks around the world. That would require professional management, and that is not I. >> (laughs) >> So, our investors and shareholders were quite comfortable with our proposal of bringing on that professional management, so in 2017 I resigned as CEO, retained a board position and still single largest shareholder, but with the idea of what other types of infrastructure can I build, now that a deep infrastructure had been put in place. So I've been attacking three major markets, the banking sector, an actual commercial banking enterprise working with a group from the United States towards looking at deploying the future of where we think commercial banking is going. I think that the community, the crypto community in general, there's a lot of noise happening in the chats. And therefore we built a machine learning chat bot to start looking at market sentiments and aggregating market information and of course building common tools for community members. So we've launched a agent called Gabby, the form to gab. My name's Gabriel and my mom calls me Gabby, so it works out quite well. >> You have the gift of gab that's for sure. >> And then I launched a mutual fund with a very sophisticated former managing director of JPMorgan. A guy named Richard Galvin. And we launched the world's first protocol-only fund. We focus only on protocols. And that's called Digital Asset Fund. And we launched that in late 2017 and got full regulatory approval to become a professional fund, that handles 100 percent, solely crypto. And that's basically been my ride, and then outside of that, just your standard consulting, because everybody from World Bank, to IADB, to some government agency to some private organization wants to know about blockchain they want advice, and they need a team of people to give them that advice. So it's just been, all around, looking at how I can be an entrepreneur in this space, while finding great leaders, and partnering with those leaders to build out great companies. While still focusing on ensuring bitt.com becomes the solution for dollars, digital dollars, worldwide. >> Got a great mission, entrepreneur, builder, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Industry's lucky to have you, congratulations. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you guys. >> CUBE coverage here, live in Toronto for the first Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit in concert with the Blockchain Futures Conference happening in the next two days after today. More coverage from theCUBE we're live here, stay with us for more great coverage after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)