>> Hello and welcome to this special CUBE update conversation, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my partner, Dave Vellante, co-host of theCUBE. Dave, lots of people are asking us what's going on with theCUBE what's happening. Obviously COVID people know that we go out to events to extract the signal from the noise. Number one leading in enterprise tech events, there's been no events. People want to know what's going on with theCUBE, theCUBE virtual. And they want to know when the events are going to come back and when it does what's theCUBE going to look like. >> Well, as you know, for a decade we were on premises at events, tech events, our great sponsors would have us there and let us do our thing. And we'd have editorial there, which is nice and have our own on discussions. But it was always at the host venue, or largely was, we've done some of our own shows but now with the virtual occurring we're driving a lot of our own events, We've got now the time to do that, and here's what I think, John, I really do believe that there's no question that in the second half of the year we're going to start to see some kind of hybrid emerge where you might see VIP's, almost like the Golden Globes, if you saw that, there may be 15, 20 people socially distant, comfortable, maybe a VIP event, 10, 20 CIO's in a room, and I think there's going to be a digital overlay to that, the virtual overlay to get greater reach. And then even in 2022, when physical comes back in a big way, I think virtual is here to stay. People are learning so much. They're learning the value of that long tail, that host event consumption that we've seen in our data and that's going to continue. And people are really learning how to fine tune that playbook. >> You know, I want to get your thoughts on this because I was explaining to someone about our CUBE virtual opportunity and events coming back. And as you know I've been an avid clubhouse user since December 30th and I've been noticing that the engagement is so high in these apps where people are collaborating. So, I want you to explain the dynamics as, as we have these cube virtual, our first event is March 24th, we've got Jerry Chen from Greylock, Michael Liebow from McKinsey, Jeff Barr from AWS, three big names, big individuals in terms of talent and start up power. But the names of the companies, McKinsey, Greylock, AWS, and me and you, you starting to see virtual as a format, Dave, where our community can come together to compliment theCUBE physical events and bring a new venue, a new format to engaging and creating content together. Can you explain what this means for audiences, our community and our sponsors? >> Well, I think a lot of companies are looking at just events in very narrow sense, we do an event, maybe it's a webinar, we're going to do an event, maybe it's small, mid-size, maybe even a large event. And then we're going onto the next one, onto the next one, so it's all about this sort of event cadence. And I think there's a much bigger picture here. And it's really about the content, the arc of content, the community, engaging with that community, over a long period of time, it's not a one-shot deal or they're not disposable, sort of events are kind of disposable in that regard. I think our philosophy is different. We really try to connect, build that community out. And then also bring that community back in, those who want to participate, it's almost like a reward system. If you participate in an event, a community event, the next one you're actually going to be featured, you're going to come on theCUBE, you're going to be participating in the program directly. And I think, John, for sponsors, it really means, we've seen that a lot of the value that the sponsors are getting really has not been replicated from the physical events. And so what we're trying to do here is give those many, many sponsors a platform in order to have their voices heard so that they can engage with broader communities and tap in to other communities. >> Dave, you know, we were just talking the other day about all these event platforms that are out there and we're a media platform and that there's a new dynamic out there where it's not about the number of events that you participated in, it's the audiences that you engage with and create content value together and sponsors that you enable, we enable, can enable to go direct to the consumer. And this is a big trend that we're seeing. Media as a service or direct to the consumer. You seeing companies like Tesla do it, Apple, even venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz going direct to the audience and cutting the middlemen out of being disintermediated. This is an interesting opportunity. Can you share your thoughts, because if a customer, our sponsor, is going to try to do that, they need to have media capabilities, not just event software. An event is a moment in time, media is ongoing for engaging. They're two different things but they have to work together. Can you explain what this means in basic terms to customers and audience? Why is this so important this new trend? >> I think it's really simple. The bottom line is that every company has to be in some way, shape or form a media company they're producing content, and everybody wants to control the narrative, control of the audience, except the way you do that is to produce great authentic content. And I will tell you most companies, certainly most companies in the tech business aren't really that good at it. There are a couple of standouts. You mentioned some big names like Tesla, so you see some VC firms doing it, but people are learning, and they're going to get better and better at it. But our basic premise and I think it's right on is that every company has to be a content company, a content producer. So what we want to do is help them do that. Give them tools, give them platforms, give them methodologies to really be able to in an agile fashion, produce high quality content and distribute it through a workflow and then iterate >> Agile Media, that's our opportunity and that's what we're going to try to do. And I think what I'm most excited about Dave is we can help our sponsors with a product that helps them go direct to their customer while we can at the same time increase our serving our audiences with high quality content so that they can work with us, consume or create with us. And I think that's a power dynamic that is a flywheel of innovation. This is kind of what media should be, and this is what we're trynna do. >> Well, that's a mega trend. And the other thing that I think people forget about sometime is that data, there's a data fabric that connects all these different events, all the different webinars, all the content initiatives, the content programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that data fabric flows in a distributed way throughout the year, throughout the network, throughout the community. And it's got to be a two-way street and it's fundamentally you have to put data at the core of those initiatives. >> And Dave, one of the exciting things we're doing that I'll share is on March 24th, 9:00 Pacific, we're doing theCUBE On Cloud Startups, our virtual event in conjunction with AWS, Amazon Web Services, startup showcase. We're going to showcase 10 of the hottest startups in the Amazon cloud ecosystem around data, data ops, and pre-public, the next UNICORE, the next deca-core, And these are the hottest companies that are going to be hitting the enterprise and emerging technology markets in the next year. We're going to showcase them in our format, this is theCUBE virtual, so check it out, join us, be part of our community. If you want to engage with us, definitely get on the roster. We're going to do these four times a year, and again, we do a lot more of them. And then you'll see us back in person, when the events come back, post pandemic. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, thank you for your time and we'll see you on the 24th, or at our events, thank you.