>> Hi. I'm Stew Minimum. And this is a special on the ground here at the V Tug Summer Slam 2019. It is the 16th year of the event. We had hosted the Cube many times at the veto. Winter warmer and sad to say this actually the final interview for V tug it into the final V tug event. But before we can wrap up a friend of mine, Sean to lean, who is a vey architect with Delhi emcee. I've been promising him for years that we would one of these days do an interview on the Cube at the V tug. So it is the absolute final interview. So, Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. All right. So, uh, not only do you work for Delhi emcee, but you're part of the social team, you know, here at the V tug event, I had conversations with Lee Ji. It was also his first time in a program on Matt. You know who I've spoken with in the past? Eso, you know, give us a little bit about your background at this event and what this community has meant to you. >> Oh, sure. Um So I'm trying to remember I think this is my fifth or sixth summer Slam. Um I mean, I basically once I started my professional career. You know, one of the first things that you know we did was look for user groups. And so when they usedto hold this event back a Gillette that was very close to home. Um and that was my first experience with the I think back then it was the New England V mug, but it's still the same community and community has always been a big part of my life and my career. I mean, I even joined, you know, AMC, Social Media Community team to basically work with influencers in the broader I t community. But I always make sure that I could do events like this, you know, in the New England area, because it's so important to be a part of this community and the I t crowd. Everybody knows everybody, and you can always learn something new just by talking to people. So, like I purposely go like during lunch and sit down with people who have never met before and introduce myself and see what they do for a living, and it's been a wonderful experience every year. It's a great >> point, you know, community is so important in these events, and especially in a regional event with local on your shirt doesn't matter as much because for the years we've been attending this, almost everybody has changed jobs. You know, companies have been acquired, companies go public, you know, people change their jobs. So it's about the learning as a community, the growth of what's happening, our careers more than kind of some of that day to day battle that, like you might happen in the storage community. >> Yeah, yeah, you got to be able to separate, Say, you know, your professional competitiveness and be able to, you know, just embrace people as people and be able to talk to them and share knowledge. And I think anyone else who's a part of the community is able to do that themselves as >> well. Yeah, it's been interesting. Virtualization was one of those galvanizing technology that brought a lot of people, you know, bloggers and people. Helping to participate in Cloud's been interesting in many ways. You know, there's some fragmentation. There's some tough competition out there yet we're all learning and you know it is most customers today. They've got, you know, hybrid cloud. They've got multi club, they've got lots of environment and therefore the user's, you know, don't necessarily look at some of those battles are going on, But they're looking to help run their business on and, you know, how are you seeing that environ? What? What? What do you hear from you know, users that you speak with today? >> So I'm here in a variety of things. There's a lot of people that are on different points. We'll call it in their cloud journey. There are some people who have just kind of gotten the edict from the board or upper management that says Cloud First, where we're gonna do everything in the cloud on dhe. Some people you know who have jumped all in with that are learning a very painful lesson, especially with their wallet. Um, we found that kind of the sweet spot in it is that hybrid cloud. There are some workloads that are absolutely great for cloud, and there are some that is just expensive. And so depending on the size of your infrastructure, you can actually save a good amount of money by setting up something local and having a cloud strategy as well. It's all about evaluating the workload. And I think earlier today during the keynotes this morning, that message was really coming across that it's not all about the cloud or even just one cloud. I mean, there's countless cloud providers out there with all sorts of different Ma operating models and pricing models. And the beauty of it is we're in a place now with the technology that people can almost nickel and dime and do what is best for them and not necessarily be told. This is how it's gonna be. This is your only option. >> Yeah. One of the things I took away from the keynotes this morning is you know, it is oh, so easy to get caught up on the latest cool tool or, you know, the wave or what people are talking about. But it's you know, what skill sets do I have? How do I make sure I understand what valuable for my business and my career? You know, it is. We bring this one to a close. You know, Sean, you know what you have on that >> Well, it's funny you brought up skill sets because a lot of that can be learned from the community. You know, if you don't have the professional skill sets Or maybe, you know, your employer might not pay the empty up for, you know, organized training. There are so many community based free trainings and webinar Siri's and stuff like that that can get you learned up in this. I remember, you know, in my career I was talking with a customer who was like, You know, we're making a shift. We're going to start being more cloud focused on here. My, I'm doing like updating their VM wear environment, and he's like, I need to get better at this. And I rattled off a few different community programs. I talked to him again six months later. He went through all that, and now he's playing around in Azure and Amazon and starting to learn some of that, and they almost gave him a promotion. They reorg, um, into a new role, where he's got more cloud responsibilities and effectively saved his job because he went to the out to the community and learned these skills. >> Yeah, but I always find in these events, right? If if you if you were open Thio, you know, new ideas, that intellectual curiosity. There is so much opportunity in tech these days. Sean won't want to give you the final word any, you know, memories you have from these events. Either you know, the main or the winter event. You know that you want to share, we bring our coverage to a close. >> I mean, you know, this event has been going on for so long, and it's always good stuff every single time. I'm going to miss the rubber chickens that that has always stuck out and to Mia's as one of the guys don't >> know that that's Hans from GM, where, you know, brings the rubber chickens will throw the little key chains at you when you go, Yeah, >> but you know, in general, you know, there's a lot of events out there where, you know, it's it's, you know, the morning and maybe the afternoon, the party afterwards and I'm not here to be like Party party party, but is almost just as important as the event itself. And I've never seen any other user group or event like that that really puts Satan's that time for networking. You get almost just as much business done. You know, they're talking to people, you know, when you're waiting in line for lobster and stuff like that Here, um, as you know, just kind of mingling around during the day. You meet so many people and make business connections and everything at the after party, Which is why I keep thinking they invest so much money in the after hours. Piece >> of it, I think Great point to end on, Shawn. The community is really central to what goes on there. This event. Listen to the customers and, you know, grew that the breath of the topics that they covered, they kept to keep on it. So 16 years of phenomenal run. I wanna have a big shout out to everyone that helped put the Vita gone. Of course, that is Chris and Don Harney at the court. Chris Williams did a lot of work there, but many other people that helped behind the scenes to make it happen. And of course, it was always the users at this event that with drivers for it, as well as the sponsors that helped participate And through this so Sean to lean. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Cube alumni. And I'm still minimum. Thank you. As always, for watching this program has been our pleasure. Tiu c All of the V tugs. If you go to the cube dot net, go up in the search bar in touch via tug. You could see previous years We've had so many great guests on the program. You know, I got to interview some of the alumni from the Patriots, which were some definite highlight for me as well as great technical content and good friends that I've made over the years. So with that, we're signing off from the final V tug here in Maine and thank you, as always for watching the Cube.

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering Food It, Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here at the Cube. We're in Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum which celebrates history but we're talking about tech in the food and agricultural space. Here at the Food IT Convention, about 350 people, somebody came all the way from New Zealand, got food manufacturers. We've got tech people, we've got big companies, start-ups and we have a lot of represents from academe which is always excited to have them on, so our next guest is Dr. Andy Thulin, he's the Dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, or SLO as we like to call them. Welcome. >> That's right. >> And all the way from Iowa, we have Dr. Wendy Wintersteen. She's the Dean of College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Iowa State. Welcome. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely, so first off, just kind of your impressions of this event? Small, intimate affair, one actually introduced everyone this morning, which I thought was a pretty interesting thing. Kind of your first impressions. >> It's a great environment. We have this mix of technology and a few production people here, but people thinking about the future. That's always an exciting place to be. >> Really, the environment, having the little set of exhibits, where people can go around, visit with entrepreneurs. It really, a great setting, I think for the discussion. >> So, Wendy, when you introduced your portion on the panel, you talked about the scale on which Iowa produces a lot of things. Pigs, and corns, and eggs, and chickens, and, so, you've been watchin' this space for a while. How do you see, from your perspective, kind of this technology wave, as it hits. Is it new, have we just not been payin' attention? Or is there something different now? >> Well, I think the speed of adoption, the speed of innovation is increasing, clearly. But, it's been a long time now that we've had power drive tractors so the farmers can sit and work on the technology in the cab related to their soil mapping, or yield monitors and the tractor's driving itself. So, we've had that sort of thing in Iowa for a long time and that continues to be improved upon, but that'd be just one example of what we're seeing. And, obviously, California has a huge agricultural presence, again, some people know, some people don't, the valley from top to bottom is something on the order of 500 miles of a whole lot of agriculture, so again, does this, do you see things changing? Is this more of the same? >> No, absolutely changing. I mean California produces some, a little over 400 different products. A lot of 'em, about a 100 of 'em, lead the country, in terms of marketplace. So, there's a lot of technology with the issues of water, lack thereof, or cleaning it up, or the labor challenges that we have for harvesting products. It's really turned into quite a challenge, so challenge drives innovation, you know, when you have your back against the wall, For example, in the strawberry fields I think, a year ago they had $800 million worth of labor to produce $2.4 million, billion dollars worth of strawberries. When you think about that, that's a lot of labor. When you can't get that labor in, you're drivin' by it, you got $300 million, wherever, they just weren't able to harvest it all 'cuz there was nobody to pick 'em. So, when you think about that, it's a billion dollars. It's a billion dollars that they couldn't get to. That drives innovation, so there's a lot of innovation goin' in these products. >> Pretty interesting, 'cuz, obviously, the water one jumps out, especially here in California, you know we had a really wet winter. The reservoirs are full. In fact, they're lettin' water out of the things. I would say we don't have a water problem, we have a water storage problem. This came up earlier today. The points of emphasis change, the points of pain change, and labor came up earlier. The number of people, the minimum wage laws, and the immigration stuff that's going on. Again, that's a real concern if you've got a billion dollars worth of strawberries sittin' in a field that you can't get to. >> Yeah, it's a real challenge. California faces a couple of shortages. We've got a water shortage, we've got a labor shortage, but we also have a talent shortage. We were talking this morning about the number of young people going to Ag colleges. It's up dramatically and we need all that talent and more. Everyone needs, all the grain industry, if you will, across the country, all the people that run these farms and ranches, and all, they're getting older. Who's coming back behind them? It's a technology driven industry today. It's not something that you can just go out and pick it up and start doing. It takes talent and science and technology to manage these operations. >> So, it's interesting. There's been science on kind of the genetic engineering if you will, genetically modified foods for a long time. Monsanto is always in the newspaper. But I asked something that's kind of funny, right, 'cuz we've been genetically modifying our food for a long time. Again, drive up and down I-5 and you'll see the funny looking walnut trees, that clearly didn't grow that way with a solid base on the bottom and a high-yield top. So, talk about attitudes, about this and people want it all. They want organic, but they also want it to look beautiful and perfect, be priced right and delivered from a local farmer. There's no simple solution to these problems. There's a lot of trade-offs that people have to make based on value so I wonder if you could talk about how that's evolving, Wendy, from your point of view. >> Well, certainly as we think about the products we produce in Iowa, we know that producers are willing to produce whatever the consumer would like. But they really want to be assured they have a market, so, right now in Iowa, we have cage-free eggs being produced, and those are being produced because there's a contract with a buyer, and, so I think producers are willing to adapt and address different opportunities in the big markets, different segments of that market, if they can see that profit opportunity that will allow them to continue in their business. From the producer's point of view, the subtheme of this show is Fork to Farm, as opposed to Farm to Fork which you think is the logical way, but it's come up and it's been discussed here quite a bit. It's the consumer, again, like they're doing in every business, is demanding what they want, they're willing to pay, and they're very specific in what they want. Was this like a sudden wave that hit from the producer point of view, or is this an opportunity? Is this a challenge? How is that kind of shifting market dynamics, impacting the producers? >> Well, I think it's all being driven by technology. We're talkin' this morning, years ago, it was the expert, you know, Wendy's of the world they had all the knowledge and then you had all the consumers listening to 'em and trusting 'em. Today, you have, as I call it, the mama tribe, or the soccer tribe, or that sort of thing, where they're listening to other parents, other mothers in that group, they're listening to the blogs, they're listening to their friends, that's driving the conversation and there's less science and technology behind it. They don't trust and the transparency thing comes up constantly. Technology has allowed this just wide open space where now they got so much information, how do they process that. What's real, what's not real, in terms of biotech, or is it this, or is it that? Is it wholesome, you know, all these factors. >> It's funny 'cuz you brought up the transparency earlier today as well, so people know what they're getting, they want to know, they really care. They just don't want to just get whatever generic ABC, like they used to. >> Right, and I think, again, there's a certain segment of the market that is very interested in that and companies are responding. I give the example of Nestles, and so, you get on their web page and you can see the ability to scan the code on a particular product and go and get a lot of information about that product back on the web page of that company. I think that for certain groups of consumers that's going to become even more important, and we have to be prepared to meet that demand. >> So, in terms of what's going on at your academic institutions, how is the environment changing because of technology, we've got these huge macro trends happening, right, cloud is a big thing, Edge Computing, which is obviously important, got to get the cloud to the edge (laughs) of the farm, sensors, big data, being able to collect all this data, I think somebody earlier said it went from no data to now a flood of data, how are you managing that? Better analytics and then, of course, there's fun stuff like drones and some of these other things that can now be applied. How's that workin' it's way into what you're doing in terms of training the next generation of entrepreneurs as well as the kind of traditional farmers in this space? >> Well, I think, first of all, we're seeing a lot more integration between what we do in engineering, and what we do in computer science, and what we do in agriculture and business. The overlap and the connection across those disciplines is occurring not just with our faculty but also with our students. We had a group of students at Iowa State before they graduated from the college, able to start a company called ScoutPro that was based on using technology to help farmers identify pests in the field, and that became a company using the technology to do that. Of course, that relied on software development, as well as clear understanding of agronomic and pest management strategy. I think those integrated approaches are occurring more and more. >> I think at Cal Poly it's, our motto has been for over a hundred years Learn by Doing, hands-on learning. That's key to us, as you have a lecture class, you have a lab that goes along with it so they're forced to. We have over 45 to 50 classes, enterprise classes, where you can come in and you can raise, let's say marigolds and then you can provide that whole value train, chain and sell it. You can raise broiler chicks every quarter, for 35 days you can raise 'em up, 7,000 birds and there's teams of students in these classes, they can do it, then they manage the whole process. A winery, for example, it's a bonded winery. They do the whole process. They know how to change the pumps and all that, so it's hands-on but you take that from there up to where those students go out into the industry. Our university just signed an agreement with Amazon for the cloud, so we're moving the whole complex, our IT, to the cloud through that organization. Is that right or wrong, I don't know, but we've got to do things faster, quicker, and just our infrastructure, would a cost us millions to do that, but that allowed the students, what is it, Apple is only, the iPhone is 10 years old tomorrow. Tomorrow. These kids, that's all they grew up with. So, we're constantly having to change our faculty, our leadership teams, constantly have to change to keep up and stay side-by-side with the technology, so it's changed our Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Cal Poly has a partnership with the community, with the university, it started in College of Business and we have a whole floor of a building in downtown San Luis Obispo and across the street we've got 60 apartments for students that are involved in these start-ups to live there so they can walk across the street, get right engaged. So, we're trying to do everything we can, every university is trying to do everything they can to kind of keep this space flowing, and this enthusiasm with these young people. That's where the change is going to occur. >> Right, right. Exciting times. >> It is exciting. >> It is. >> Alright, well, unfortunately, we are out of time. So, we're going to have to leave it there, but I really want to thank you for stopping by and wish you both safe travels home. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Dr. Thulin, Dr. Winterston, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the Cube. It's Food IT in Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back after this short break. (electronic music)