>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal Poly. >> Everyone, welcome to this special presentation with Cal Poly hosting the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE and SiliconANGLE here in our Palo Alto studios with our remote guests. We couldn't be there in person, but we're going to be here remote. We got a great session and a panel for one hour, topic preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Got a great lineup. Bill Britton, Lieutenant Colonel from the US Air Force, retired vice president for information technology and CIO and the director of the California Cybersecurity Institute for Cal Poly. Bill, thanks for joining us. Dr. Amy Fleischer, who's the dean of the College of Engineering at Cal Poly, and Trung Pham, professor and researcher at the US Air Force Academy. Folks, thanks for joining me today. >> Our pleasure. >> Got a great- >> Great to be here. >> Great panel. This is one of my favorite topics. >> Thank you for the opportunity. >> Preparing students for the next generation, the jobs for today and tomorrow. We got an hour. I'd love you guys to start with an opening statement to kick things off. Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I'm really pleased to be, to start on this as the director for the Cybersecurity Institute and the CIO at Cal Poly, it's really a fun, exciting job, because as a polytechnic, technology has such a forefront in what we're doing, and we've had a wonderful opportunity being 40 miles from Vandenberg Air Force Base to really look at the nexus of space and cybersecurity. And if you add into that both commercial, government, and civil space and cybersecurity, this is an expanding wide open time for cyber and space. In that role that we have with the Cybersecurity Institute, we partner with elements of the state and the university, and we try to really add value above our academic level, which is some of the highest in the nation, and to really merge down and go a little lower and start younger. So we actually are running the week prior to this showing a cybersecurity competition for high schools and middle schools in the state of California. That competition this year is based on a scenario around hacking of a commercial satellite and the forensics of the payload that was hacked and the networks associated with it. This is going to be done using products like Wireshark, Autopsy, and other tools that will give those high school students what we hope is a huge desire to follow up and go into cyber and cyberspace and space and follow that career path and either come to Cal Poly or some other institution that's going to let them really expand their horizons in cybersecurity and space for the future of our nation. >> Bill, thanks for that intro. By the way, I just want to give you props for an amazing team and job you guys are doing at Cal Poly, the DxHub and the efforts you guys are having with your challenge. Congratulations on that great work. >> Thank you. It's a rock star team. It's absolutely amazing to find that much talent at one location. And I think Amy's going to tell you, she's got the same amount of talent in her staff, so it's a great place to be. >> Dr. Amy Fleischer. You guys have a great organization down there, amazing curriculum, amazing people, great community. Your opening statement. >> Hello everybody. It's really great to be a part of this panel on behalf of the Cal Poly College of Engineering. Here at Cal Poly, we really take preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow completely seriously, and we can claim that our students really graduate so they're ready day one for their first real job. But that means that in getting them to that point, we have to help them get valuable and meaningful job experience before they graduate, both through our curriculum and through multiple internship or summer research opportunities. So we focus our curriculum on what we call a learn by doing philosophy. And this means that we have a combination of practical experience and learn by doing both in and out of the classroom. And we find that to be really critical for preparing students for the workforce. Here at Cal Poly, we have more than 6,000 engineering students. We're one of the largest undergraduate engineering schools in the country. And US News ranks us the eighth best undergraduate engineering program in the country and the top ranked state school. We're really, really proud that we offer this impactful hands-on engineering education that really exceeds that of virtually all private universities while reaching a wider audience of students. We offer 14 degree programs, and really, we're talking today about cyber and space, and I think most of those degree programs can really make an impact in the space and cybersecurity economy. And this includes not only things like aero and cyber directly, but also electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, materials engineering, even manufacturing, civil, and biomedical engineering, as there's a lot of infrastructure needs that go into supporting launch capabilities. Our aerospace program graduates hundreds of aerospace engineers and most of them are working right here in California with many of our corporate partners, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, JPL, and so many other places where we have Cal Poly engineers impacting the space economy. Our cybersecurity focus is found mainly in our computer science and software engineering programs, and it's really a rapidly growing interest among our students. Computer science is our most popular major, and industry interests and partnerships are integrated into our cyber curriculum, and we do that oftentimes through support from industry. So we have partnerships with Northrop Grumman for professorship in a cyber lab and from PG&E for critical infrastructure cybersecurity lab and professorship. And we think that industry partnerships like these are really critical to preparing students for the future as the field is evolving so quickly and making sure we adapt our facilities and our curriculum to stay in line with what we're seeing in industry is incredibly important. In our aerospace program, we have an educational partnership with the Air Force Research Labs that's allowing us to install new high-performance computing capabilities and a space environments lab that's going to enhance our satellite design capabilities. And if we talk about satellite design, Cal Poly is the founding home of the CubeSat program, which pioneered small satellite capabilities, And we remain the worldwide leader in maintaining the CubeSat standard, and our student program has launched more CubeSats than any other program. So here again we have this learn by doing experience every year for dozens of aerospace, electrical, computer science, mechanical engineering students, and other student activities that we think are just as important include ethical hacking through our white hat club, Cal Poly Space Systems, which does really, really big rocket launches, and our support program for women in both of these fields, like WISH, which is Women In Software and Hardware. Now, you know, really trying to bring in a wide variety of people into these fields is incredibly important, and outreach and support to those demographics traditionally underrepresented in these fields is going to be really critical to future success. So by drawing on the lived experiences by people with different types of backgrounds will we develop the type of culture and environment where all of us can get to the best solution. So in terms of bringing people into the field, we see that research shows we need to reach kids when they're in late elementary and middle schools to really overcome that cultural bias that works against diversity in our fields. And you heard Bill talking about the California Cybersecurity Institute's yearly cyber challenge, and there's a lot of other people who are working to bring in a wider variety of people into the field, like Girl Scouts, which has introduced dozens of new badges over the past few years, including a whole cybersecurity series of badges in concert with Palo Alto Networks. So we have our work cut out for us, but we know what we need to do, and if we're really committed to properly preparing the workforce for today and tomorrow, I think our future is going to be bright. I'm looking forward to our discussion today. >> Thank you, Dr. Fleischer, for a great comment, opening statement, and congratulations. You got the right formula down there, the right mindset, and you got a lot of talent, and community, as well. Thank you for that opening statement. Next up, from Colorado Springs, Trung Pham, who's a professor and researcher at the US Air Force Academy. He's doing a lot of research around the areas that are most important for the intersection of space and technology. Trung. >> Good afternoon. First I'd like to thank Cal Poly for the opportunity. And today I want to go briefly about cybersecurity in space application. Whenever we talk about cybersecurity, the impression is that it's a new field that is really highly complex involving a lot of technical area. But in reality, in my personal opinion, it is indeed a complex field because it involves many disciplines. The first thing we think about is computer engineering and computer networking, but it's also involving communication, sociology, law practice. And this practice of cybersecurity doesn't only involve computer expert, but it's also involve everybody else who has a computing device that is connected to the internet, and this participation is obviously everybody in today's environment. When we think about the internet, we know that it's a good source of information but come with the convenience of information that we can access, we are constantly facing danger from the internet. Some of them we might be aware of. Some of them we might not be aware of. For example, when we search on the internet, a lot of time our browser will be saying that this site is not trusted, so we will be more careful. But what about the sites that we trusted? We know that those are legitimate sites, but they're not 100% bulletproof. What happen if those site are attacked by a hacker and then they will be a silent source of danger that we might not be aware of. So in the reality, we need to be more practicing the cybersecurity from our civil point of view and not from a technical point of view. When we talk about space application, we should know that all the hardware are computer-based or controlled by by computer system, and therefore the hardware and the software must go through some certification process so that they can be rated as airworthy or flightworthy. When we know that in the certification process is focusing on the functionality of the hardware and software, but one aspect that is explicitly and implicitly required is the security of those components. And we know that those components have to be connected with the ground control station, and the communication is through the air, through the radio signal, so anybody who has access to those communication radio signal will be able to control the space system that we put up there. And we certainly do not want our system to be hijacked by a third party. Another aspect of cybersecurity is that we try to design the space system in a very strong manner so it's almost impossible to hack in. But what about some other weak system that might be connected to the strong system? For example, the space system will be connected to the ground control station, and on the ground control station, we have the human controller, and those people have cell phone. They are allowed to use cell phone for communication. But at the same time, they are connected to the internet through the cell phone, and their cell phone might be connected to the computer that control the flight software and hardware. So what I want to say is we try to build strong system and we've protected them, but there will be some weaker system that we could not intended but exists to be connected to our strong system, and those are the points the hacker will be trying to attack. If we know how to control the access to those weak points, we will be having a much better system for the space system. And when we see the cybersecurity that is requiring the participation everywhere it's important to notice that there is a source of opportunity for students who enter the workforce to consider. Obviously students in engineering can focus their knowledge and expertise to provide technological solution to protect the system that we view. But we also have students in business who can focus their expertise to write business plan so that they can provide a pathway for the engineering advances to reach the market. We also have student in law who can focus their expertise in policy governing the internet, governing the cybersecurity practice. And we also have student in education who can focus their expertise to design how to teach cybersecurity practice, and student in every other discipline can focus their effort to implement security measure to protect the system that they are using in their field. So it's obvious that cybersecurity is everywhere and it implies job opportunity everywhere for everybody in every discipline of study. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trung, for those great comments. Great technology opportunities. But interesting, as well, is the theme that we're seeing across the entire symposium and in the virtual hallways that we're hearing conversations, and you pointed out some of them. Dr. Fleischer did, as well. And Bill, you mentioned it. It's not one thing. It's not just technology. It's different skills. And Amy, you mentioned that computer science is the hottest degree, but you have the hottest aerospace program in the world. I mean, so all this is kind of balancing. It's interdisciplinary. It's a structural change. Before we get into some of the, how they prepare the students, can you guys talk about some of the structural changes that are modern now in preparing in these opportunities, because societal impact is a, law potentially impact, it's how we educate. There's now cross-discipline skill sets. It's not just get the degree, see you out in the field. Bill, you want to start? >> Well, what's really fun about this job is that in the Air Force, I worked in the space and missile business, and what we saw was a heavy reliance on checklist format, security procedures, analog systems, and what we're seeing now in our world, both in the government and the commercial side, is a move to a digital environment, and the digital environment is a very quick and adaptive environment, and it's going to require a digital understanding. Matter of fact, the undersecretary of Air Force for acquisition recently referenced the need to understand the digital environment and how that's affecting acquisition. So as both Amy and Trung said, even business students are now in the cybersecurity business. And so again, what we're seeing is the change. Now, another phenomenon that we're seeing in the space world is there's just so much data. One of the ways that we addressed that in the past was to look at high-performance computing. There was a lot stricter control over how that worked. But now what we're seeing is adaptation of cloud, cloud technologies in space support, space data, command and control. And so what we see is a modern space engineer who has to understand digital, has to understand cloud, and has to understand the context of all those with a cyber environment. That's really changing the forefront of what is a space engineer, what is a digital engineer, and what is a future engineer, both commercial or government. So I think the opportunity for all of these things is really good, particularly for a polytechnic, Air Force Academy, and others that are focusing on a more widened experiential level of cloud and engineering and other capabilities. And I'll tell you the part that as the CIO I have to remind everybody, all this stuff works with the IT stuff. So you've got to understand how your IT infrastructures are tied and working together. As we noted earlier, one of the things is that these are all relays from point to point, and that architecture is part of your cybersecurity architecture. So again, every component has now become a cyber aware, cyber knowledgeable, and what we like to call as a cyber cognizant citizen where they have to understand the context. (speaking on mute) >> (indistinct) software Dr. Fleischer, talk about your perspective, 'cause you mentioned some of the things about computer science. I remember in the '80s when I got my computer science degree, they called us software engineers and then you became software developers. And then, so again, engineering is the theme. If you're engineering a system, there's now software involved, and there's also business engineering, business models. So talk about some of your comments, 'cause you mentioned computer science is hot. You got the aerospace. You got these multi-disciplines. You got definitely diversity, as well, brings more perspectives in, as well. Your thoughts on these structural interdisciplinary things? >> I think this is really key to making sure that students are prepared to work in the workforce is looking at the blurring between fields. No longer are you just a computer scientist. No longer are you just an aerospace engineer. You really have to have an expertise where you can work with people across disciplines. All of these fields are just working with each other in ways we haven't seen before. And Bill brought up data. You know, data science is something that's cross-cutting across all of our fields. So we want engineers that have the disciplinary expertise that they can go deep into these fields, but we want them to be able to communicate with each other and to be able to communicate across disciplines and to be able to work in teams that are across disciplines. You can no longer just work with other computer scientists or just work with other aerospace engineers. There's no part of engineering that is siloed anymore. So that's how we're changing. You have to be able to work across those disciplines. And as you, as Trung pointed out, ethics has to come into this. So you can no longer try to fully separate what we would traditionally have called the liberal arts and say, well, that's over there in general education. No, ethics is an important part of what we're doing and how we integrate that into our curriculum. So is communication. So is working on public policy and seeing where all these different aspects tie together to make the impact that we want to have in the world. So you no longer can work solo in these fields. >> That's great point. And Bill also mentioned the cloud. One thing about the cloud that's showed us is horizontal scalability has created a lot of value, and certainly data is now horizontal. Trung, you mentioned some of the things about cryptography for the kids out there, I mean, you can look at the pathway for career. You can do a lot of tech, but you don't have to go deep sometimes. You can as deep as you want, but there's so much more there. What technology do you see that's going to help students, in your opinion? >> Well, I'm a professor in computer science, so I like to talk a little bit about computer programming. Now we are working in complex projects. So most of the time we don't design a system from scratch. We build it from different components, and the components that we have, either we get it from vendors or sometimes we get it from the internet in the open source environment. It's fun to get the source code and then make it work to our own application. So now when we are looking at cryptology, when we talk about encryption, for example, we can easily get the source code from the internet. And the question, is it safe to use those source code? And my question is maybe not. So I always encourage my students to learn how to write source code the traditional way that I learned a long time ago before I allow them to use the open source environment. And one of the things that they have to be careful especially with encryption is the code that might be hidden in the source that they downloaded. Some of the source might be harmful. It might open up back gate for a hacker to get in later. We've heard about these back gates back then when Microsoft designed the operating system with the protection of encryption, and it is true that is existing. So while open source code is a wonderful place to develop complex system, but it's also a dangerous place that we have to be aware of. >> Great point. Before we get into the comments, one quick thing for each of you I'd like to get your comments on. There's been a big movement on growth mindset, which has been a great big believer in having a growth mindset and learning and all that good stuff. But now when you talk about some of these things we're mentioning about systems, there's a new trend around a systems mindset, because if everything's now a system, distributed systems now you have space and cybersecurity, you have to understand the consequences of changes. And you mention some of that, Trung, in changes in the source code. Could you guys share your quick opinions on the of systems thinking? Is that a mindset that people should be looking at? Because it used to be just one thing. Oh, you're a systems guy or gal. There you go. You're done. Now it seems to be in social media and data, everything seems to be systems. What's your take? Dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you. >> I'd say it's another way of looking at not being just so deep in your discipline. You have to understand what the impact of the decisions that you're making have on a much broader system. And so I think it's important for all of our students to get some exposure to that systems level thinking and looking at the greater impact of the decision that they're making. Now, the issue is where do you set the systems boundary, right? And you can set the systems boundary very close in and concentrate on an aspect of a design, or you can continually move that system boundary out and see where do you hit the intersections of engineering and science along with ethics and public policy and the greater society. And I think that's where some of the interesting work is going to be. And I think at least exposing students and letting them know that they're going to have to make some of these considerations as they move throughout their career is going to be vital as we move into the future. >> Bill, what's your thoughts? >> I absolutely agree with Amy. And I think there's a context here that reverse engineering and forensics analysis and forensics engineering are becoming more critical than ever. The ability to look at what you have designed in a system and then tear it apart and look at it for gaps and holes and problem sets. Or when you're given some software that's already been pre-developed, checking it to make sure it is really going to do what it says it's going to do. That forensics ability becomes more and more a skillset that also you need the verbal skills to explain what it is you're doing and what you found. So the communication side, the systems analysis side, the forensics analysis side, these are all things that are part of system approach that I think you could spend hours on and we still haven't really done a great job on it. So it's one of my fortes is really the whole analysis side of forensics and reverse engineering. >> Trung, real quick, systems thinking, your thoughts. >> Well, I'd like to share with you my experience when I worked in the space station program at NASA. We had two different approaches. One is a compound approach where we design it from the system general point of view where we put components together to be a complex system. But at the same time, we have the (indistinct) approach where we have an engineer who spent time and effort building individual component and they have to be expert in those tiny component that general component they deliver. And in the space station program, we bring together the (indistinct) engineer who designed everything in detail and the system manager who managed the system design from the top down, and we meet in the middle, and together we compromised a lot of differences and we delivered the space station that we are operating today. >> Great insight. And that's the whole teamwork collaboration that Dr. Fleischer was mentioning. Thanks so much for that insight. I wanted to get that out there because I know myself as a parent, I'm always trying to think about what's best for my kids and their friends as they grow up into the workforce. I know educators and leaders in industry would love to know some of the best practices around some of the structural changes. So thanks for that insight. But this topic's about students and helping them prepare. So we heard be multiple discipline, broaden your horizons, think like systems, top down, bottom up, work together as a team, and follow the data. So I got to ask you guys, there's a huge amount of job openings in cybersecurity. It's well-documented. And certainly with the intersection of space and cyber, it's only going to get bigger, right? You're going to see more and more demand for new types of jobs. How do we get high school and college students interested in security as a career? Dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you on this one. I would say really one of the best ways to get students interested in a career is to show them the impact that it's going to have. There's definitely always going to be students who are going to want to do the technology for the technology's sake, but that will limit you to a narrow set of students, and by showing the greater impact that these types of careers are going to have on the types of problems that you're going to be able to solve and the impact you're going to be able to have on the world around you, that's the word that we really need to get out. And a wide variety of students really respond to these messages. So I think it's really kind of reaching out at the elementary, the middle school level, and really kind of getting this idea that you can make a big difference, a big positive difference in the field with some of these careers, is going to be really critical. >> Real question to follow up. What do you think is the best entry point? You mentioned middle. I didn't hear elementary school. There's a lot of discussions around pipelining, and we're going to get into women in tech and underrepresented minorities later. But is it too early, or what's your feeling on this? >> My feeling is the earlier we can normalize it, the better. If you can normalize an interest in computers and technology and building in elementary school, that's absolutely critical. But the drop-off point that we're seeing is between what I would call late elementary and early middle school. And just kind of as an anecdote, I for years ran an outreach program for Girl Scouts in grades four and five and grade six, seven, and eight. And we had 100 slots in each program. And every year the program would sell out for girls in grades four and five, and every year we'd have spots remaining in grades six, seven, and eight. And that's literally where the drop-off is occurring between that late elementary and that middle school range. So that's the area that we need to target to make sure we keep those young women involved and interested as we move forward. >> Bill, how are we going to get these kids interested in security? You mentioned a few programs you got. >> Yeah. >> I mean, who wouldn't want to be a white hat hacker? I mean, that sounds exciting. >> So yeah, great questions. Let's start with some basic principles, though, is let me ask you a question, John. Name for me one white hat, good person hacker, the name, who works in the space industry and is an exemplar for students to look up to. >> You? >> Oh man, I'm feeling really... >> I'm only, I can't imagine a figure- >> (indistinct) the answer because the answer we normally get is the cricket sound. So we don't have individuals we've identified in those areas for them to look up to. >> I was going to be snarky and say most white hackers won't even use their real name, but... >> Right, so there's an aura around their anonymity here. So again, the real question is how do we get them engaged and keep them engaged? And that's what Amy was pointing out to exactly, the engagement and sticking with it. So one of the things that we're trying to do through our competition on the state level and other elements is providing connections. We call them ambassadors. These are people in the business who can contact the students that are in the game or in that challenge environment and let 'em interact and let 'em talk about what they do and what they're doing in life. But give them a challenging game format. A lot of computer-based training, capture the flag stuff is great, but if you can make it hands-on, if you can make it a learn by doing experiment, if you can make it personally involved and see the benefit as a result of doing that challenge and then talk to the people who do that on a daily basis, that's how you get them involved. The second part is part of what we're doing is we're involving partnership companies in the development of the teams. So this year's competition that we're running has 82 teams from across the state of California. Of those 82 teams at six students a team, middle school, high school, and many of those have company partners, and these are practitioners in cybersecurity who are working with those students to participate. It's that adult connectivity. It's that visualization. So at the competition this year, we have the founder of Defcon Red Flag is a participant to talk to the students. We have Vint Cerf, who is, of course, very well-known for something called the internet, to participate. It's really getting the students to understand who's in this, who can I look up to, and how do I stay engaged with them? >> There's definitely a celebrity aspect of it, I will agree. I mean, the influencer aspect here with knowledge is key. Can you talk about these ambassadors, and how far along are you on that program? First of all, the challenge stuff is, anything gamification-wise, we've seen that with hackathons, it just really works well. Creates bonding. People who create together can get sticky and get very high community aspect to it. Talk about this ambassador thing. What is that, industry, is that academic? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> What is this ambassador thing? >> Industry partners that we've identified, some of which, and I won't hit all of 'em, so I'm sure I'll short change this, but Palo Alto, Cisco, Splunk, many of the companies in California, and what we've done is identified schools to participate in the challenge that may not have a strong STEM program or have any cyber program. And the idea of the company is they look for their employees who are in those school districts to partner with the schools to help provide outreach. It could be as simple as a couple hours a week, or it's a team support captain or it's providing computers and other devices to use. And so again, it's really about a constant connectivity and trying to help where some schools may not have the staff or support units in an area to really provide them what they need for connectivity. What that does is it gives us an opportunity to not just focus on it once a year, but throughout the year. So for the competition, all the teams that are participating have been receiving training and educational opportunities in the gamification side since they signed up to participate. So there's a website, there's learning materials, there's materials provided by certain vendor companies like Wireshark and others. So it's a continuum of opportunity for the students. >> You know, I've seen, just randomly, just got a random thought. Robotics clubs are moving then closer into that middle school area, Dr. Fleischer, and in certainly in high schools, it's almost like a varsity sport. E-sports is another one. My son just called me. "I made the JV at the college team." It's big and serious, right? And it's fun. This is the aspect of fun. It's hands-on. This is part of the culture down there. Learn by doing. Is there, like, a group? Is it, like, a club? I mean, how do you guys organize these bottoms-up organically interest topics? >> So here in the college of engineering, when we talk about learn by doing, we have learned by doing both in the classroom and out of the classroom. And if we look at these types of out of the classroom activities, we have over 80 clubs working on all different aspects, and many of these are bottom-up. The students have decided what they want to work on and have organized themselves around that. And then they get the leadership opportunities. The more experienced students train the less experienced students. And it continues to build from year after year after year with them even doing aspects of strategic planning from year to year for some of these competitions. Yeah, it's an absolutely great experience. And we don't define for them how their learn by doing experiences should be. We want them to define it. And I think the really cool thing about that is they have the ownership and they have the interest and they can come up with new clubs year after year to see which direction they want to take it, and we will help support those clubs as old clubs fade out and new clubs come in. >> Trung, real quick, before we go on the next talk track, what do you recommend for middle school, high school, or even elementary? A little bit of coding, Minecraft? I mean, how do you get 'em hooked on the fun and the dopamine of technology and cybersecurity? What's your take on that? >> On this aspect, I'd like to share with you my experience as a junior high and high school student in Texas. The university of Texas in Austin organized a competition for every high school in Texas in every field from poetry to mathematics to science, computer engineering. But it's not about the University of Texas. The University of Texas is only serving as a center for the final competition. They divide the competition to district and then regional and then state. At each level, we have local university and colleges volunteering to host the competition and make it fun for the student to participate. And also they connected the students with private enterprises to raise fund for scholarship. So student who see the competition is a fun event for them, they get exposed to different university hosting the event so that they can see different option for them to consider college. They also get a promise that if they participate, they will be considered for scholarship when they attend university and college. So I think the combination of fun and competition and the scholarship aspect will be a good thing to entice the student to commit to the area of cybersecurity. >> Got the engagement, the aspiration, scholarship, and you mentioned a volunteer. I think one of the things I'll observe is you guys are kind of hitting this as community. I mean, the story of Steve Jobs and Woz building the Mac, they called Bill Hewlett up in Palo Alto. He was in the phone book. And they scoured some parts from him. That's community. This is kind of what you're getting at. So this is kind of the formula we're seeing. So the next question I really want to get into is the women in technology, STEM, underrepresented minorities, how do we get them on cybersecurity career path? Is there a best practices there? Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I think it's really interesting. First thing I want to add is, if I could, just a clarification. What's really cool, the competition that we have and we're running, it's run by students from Cal Poly. So Amy referenced the clubs and other activities. So many of the organizers and developers of the competition that we're running are the students, but not just from engineering. So we actually have theater and liberal arts majors and technology for liberal arts majors who are part of the competition, and we use their areas of expertise, set design and other things, visualization, virtualization. Those are all part of how we then teach and educate cyber in our gamification and other areas. So they're all involved and they're learning, as well. So we have our students teaching other students. So we're really excited about that. And I think that's part of what leads to a mentoring aspect of what we're providing where our students are mentoring the other students. And I think it's also something that's really important in the game. The first year we held the game, we had several all-girl teams, and it was really interesting because A, they didn't really know if they could compete. I mean, this is their reference point. We don't know if. They did better than anybody. I mean, they just, they knocked the ball out of the park. The second part, then, is building that confidence level that can, going back and telling their cohorts that, hey, it's not this obtuse thing you can't do. It's something real that you can compete and win. And so again, it's building that camaraderie, that spirit, that knowledge that they can succeed. And I think that goes a long way. And Amy's programs and the reach out and the reach out that Cal Poly does to schools to develop, I think that's what it really is going to take. It is going to take that village approach to really increase diversity and inclusivity for the community. >> Dr. Fleischer, I'd love to get your thoughts. You mentioned your outreach program and the drop-off, some of those data. You're deeply involved in this. You're passionate about it. What's your thoughts on this career path opportunity for STEM? >> Yeah, I think STEM is an incredible career path opportunity for so many people. There's so many interesting problems that we can solve, particularly in cyber and in space systems. And I think we have to meet the kids where they are and kind of show them what the exciting part is about it, right? But Bill was alluding to this when he was talking about trying to name somebody that you can point to. And I think having those visible people where you can see yourself in that is absolutely critical, and those mentors and that mentorship program. So we use a lot of our students going out into California middle schools and elementary schools. And you want to see somebody that's like you, somebody that came from your background and was able to do this. So a lot of times we have students from our National Society of Black Engineers or our Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers or our Society of Women Engineers, which we have over 1,000 members, 1,000 student members in our Society of Women Engineers who are doing these outreach programs. But like I also said, it's hitting them at the lower levels, too, and Girl Scouts is actually distinguishing themselves as one of the leading STEM advocates in the country. And like I said, they developed all these cybersecurity badges starting in kindergarten. There's a cybersecurity badge for kindergartener and first graders. And it goes all the way up through late high school. The same thing with space systems. And they did the space systems in partnership with NASA. They did the cybersecurity in partnership with Palo Alto Networks. And what you do is you want to build these skills that the girls are developing, and like Bill said, work in girl-led teams where they can do it, and if they're doing it from kindergarten on, it just becomes normal, and they never think, well, this is not for me. And they see the older girls who are doing it and they see a very clear path leading them into these careers. >> Yeah, it's interesting, you used the word normalization earlier. That's exactly what it is. It's life, you get life skills and a new kind of badge. Why wouldn't you learn how to be a white hat hacker or have some fun or learn some skills? >> Amy: Absolutely. >> Just in the grind of your fun day. Super exciting. Okay, Trung, your thoughts on this. I mean, you have a diverse, diversity brings perspective to the table in cybersecurity because you have to think like the other guy, the adversary. You got to be the white hat. You can't be a white hat unless you know how black hat thinks. So there's a lot of needs here for more points of view. How are we going to get people trained on this from underrepresented minorities and women? What's your thoughts? >> Well, as a member of the IEEE Professional Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, every year we participate in the engineering week. We deploy our members to local junior high school and high school to talk about our project to promote the study of engineering. But at the same time, we also participate in the science fair that the state of Texas is organizing. Our engineer will be mentoring students, number one, to help them with the project, but number two, to help us identify talent so that we can recruit them further into the field of STEM. One of the participation that we did was the competition of the, what they call Future City, where students will be building a city on a computer simulation. And in recent year, we promote the theme of smart city where city will be connected the individual houses and together into the internet. And we want to bring awareness of cybersecurity into that competition. So we deploy engineer to supervise the people, the students who participate in the competition. We bring awareness not in the technical detail level, but in what we've call the compound level so student will be able to know what required to provide cybersecurity for the smart city that they are building. And at the same time, we were able to identify talent, especially talent in the minority and in the woman, so that we can recruit them more actively. And we also raise money for scholarship. We believe that scholarship is the best way to entice student to continue education at the college level. So with scholarship, it's very easy to recruit them to the field and then push them to go further into the cybersecurity area. >> Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of the parents like, oh, my kid's going to go join the soccer team, we get private lessons, and maybe they'll get a scholarship someday. Well, they only do half scholarships. Anyway. I mean, if they spent that time doing these other things, it's just, again, this is a new life skill, like the Girl Scouts. And this is where I want to get into this whole silo breaking down, because Amy, you brought this up, and Bill, you were talking about it, as well. You got multiple stakeholders here with this event. You've got public, you've got private, and you've got educators. It's the intersection of all of them. It's, again, if those silos break down, the confluence of those three stakeholders have to work together. So let's talk about that. Educators. You guys are educating young minds. You're interfacing with private institutions and now the public. What about educators? What can they do to make cyber better? 'Cause there's no real manual. I mean, it's not like this court is a body of work of how to educate cybersecurity. Maybe it's more recent. There's cutting edge best practices. But still, it's an evolving playbook. What's your thoughts for educators? Bill, we'll start with you. >> Well, I'm going to turn to Amy and let her go first. >> Let you go. >> That's fine. >> I would say as educators, it's really important for us to stay on top of how the field is evolving, right? So what we want to do is we want to promote these tight connections between educators and our faculty and applied research in industry and with industry partnerships. And I think that's how we're going to make sure that we're educating students in the best way. And you're talking about that inner, that confluence of the three different areas. And I think you have to keep those communication lines open to make sure that the information on where the field is going and what we need to concentrate on is flowing down into our educational process. And that works in both ways, that we can talk as educators and we can be telling industry what we're working on and what types of skills our students have and working with them to get the opportunities for our students to work in industry and develop those skills along the way, as well. And I think it's just all part of this really looking at what's going to be happening and how do we get people talking to each other? And the same thing with looking at public policy and bringing that into our education and into these real hands-on experiences. And that's how you really cement this type of knowledge with students, not by talking to them and not by showing them, but letting them do it. It's this learn by doing and building the resiliency that it takes when you learn by doing. And sometimes you learn by failing, but you just pick up and you keep going. And these are important skills that you develop along the way. >> You mentioned sharing, too. That's the key. Collaborating and sharing knowledge. It's an open world and everyone's collaborating. Bill, private-public partnerships. I mean, there's a real, private companies, you mentioned Palo Alto Networks and others. There's a real intersection there. They're motivated. They could, there's scholarship opportunities. Trung points to that. What is the public-private educator view there? How do companies get involved and what's the benefit for them? >> Well, that's what a lot of the universities are doing is to bring in as part of either their cyber centers or institutes people who are really focused on developing and furthering those public-private partnerships. That's really what my role is in all these things is to take us to a different level in those areas, not to take away from the academic side, but to add additional opportunities for both sides. Remember, in a public-private partnership, all entities have to have some gain in the process. Now, what I think is really interesting is the timing on particularly this subject, space and cybersecurity. This has been an absolute banner year for space. The standup of Space Force, the launch of commercial partnership, you know, commercial platforms delivering astronauts to the space station, recovering them, and bringing them back. The ability of a commercial satellite platform to be launched. Commercial platforms that not only launch but return back to where they're launched from. These are things that are stirring the hearts of the American citizens, the kids, again, they're getting interested. They're seeing this and getting enthused. So we have to seize upon that and we have to find a way to connect that. Public-private partnerships is the answer for that. It's not one segment that can handle it all. It's all of them combined together. If you look at space, space is going to be about commercial. It's going to be about civil. Moving from one side of the Earth to the other via space. And it's about government. And what's really cool for us, all those things are in our backyard. That's where that public-private comes together. The government's involved. The private sector's involved. The educators are involved. And we're all looking at the same things and trying to figure out, like this forum, what works best to go to the future. >> You know, if people are bored and they want to look for an exciting challenge, you couldn't have laid it out any clearer. It's the most exciting discipline. It's everything. I mean, we just talk about space. GPS is, everything we do is involved, has to do with satellites. (laughs) >> I have to tell you a story on that right? We have a very unique GPS story right in our backyard. So our sheriff is the son of the father of GPS for the Air Force. So you can't get better than that when it comes to being connected to all those platforms. So we really want to say, you know, this is so exciting for all of us because it gives everybody a job for a long time. >> You know, the kids that think TikTok's exciting, wait till they see what's going on here with you guys, this program. Trung, final word on this from the public side. You're at the Air Force. You're doing research. Are you guys opening it up? Are you integrating into the private and educational sectors? How do you see that formula playing out? And what's the best practice for students and preparing them? >> I think it's the same in every university in the engineering program will require our students to do the final project before graduation. And in this kind of project, we send them out to work in the private industry, the private company that sponsor them. They get the benefit of having an intern working for them and they get the benefit of reviewing the students as the prospective employee in the future. So it's good for the student to gain practical experience working in this program. Sometimes we call that a co-op program. Sometimes we call that a capstone program. And the company will accept the student on a trial basis, giving them some assignment and then pay them a little bit of money. So it's good for the student to earn some extra money, to have some experience that they can put on their resume when they apply for the final, for the job. So the collaboration between university and private sector is really important. When I join a faculty normally there already exist that connection. It came from normally, again, from the dean of engineering, who would wine and dine with companies, build up relationship, and sign up agreement. But it's us professor who have to do the (indistinct) approach to do a good performance so that we can build up credibility to continue the relationship with those company and the student that we selected to send to those company. We have to make sure that they will represent the university well, they will do a good job, and they will make a good impression. >> Thank you very much for a great insight, Trung, Bill, Amy. Amazing topic. I'd like to end this session with each of you to make a statement on the importance of cybersecurity to space. We'll go Trung, Bill, and Amy. Trung, the importance of cybersecurity to space, brief statement. >> The importance of cybersecurity, we know that it's affecting every component that we are using and we are connecting to, and those component, normally we use them for personal purpose, but when we enter the workforce, sometimes we connect them to the important system that the government or the company are investing to be put into space. So it's really important to practice cybersecurity, and a lot of time, it's very easy to know the concept. We have to be careful. But in reality, we tend to forget to to practice it the way we forget how to drive a car safely. And with driving a car, we have a program called defensive driving that requires us to go through training every two or three years so that we can get discount. Every organization we are providing the annual cybersecurity practice not to tell people about the technology, but to remind them about the danger of not practicing cybersecurity and it's a requirement for every one of us. >> Bill, the importance of cybersecurity to space. >> It's not just about young people. It's about all of us. As we grow and we change, as I referenced it, we're changing from an analog world to a digital world. Those of us who have been in the business and have hair that looks like mine, we need to be just as cognizant about cybersecurity practice as the young people. We need to understand how it affects our lives, and particularly in space, because we're going to be talking about people, moving people to space, moving payloads, data transfer, all of those things. And so there's a whole workforce that needs to be retrained or upskilled in cyber that's out there. So the opportunity is ever expansive for all of us. >> Amy, the importance of cybersecurity in space. >> I mean the emphasis of cybersecurity is space just simply can't be over emphasized. There are so many aspects that are going to have to be considered as systems get ever more complex. And as we pointed out, we're putting people's lives at stake here. This is incredibly, incredibly complicated and incredibly impactful, and actually really exciting, the opportunities that are here for students and the workforce of the future to really make an enormous impact on the world around us. And I hope we're able to get that message out to students and to children today, that these are really interesting fields that you need to consider. >> Thank you very much. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, and the importance of cybersecurity and space is the future of the world's all going to happen in and around space with technology, people, and society. Thank you to Cal Poly, and thank you for watching the Cybersecurity and Space Symposium 2020. (bright music)

(Latin music) >> Narrator: Live, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to by Blockchain Industries. (Latin music) >> Welcome back to our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage, here, this is theCUBE for Blockchain Unbound, the future of blockchain cryptocurrency, the decentralized web, the future of society, the world, of work, et cetera, play, it's all happening right here, I'm reporting it, the global internet's coming together, my next guest is Fred Krueger, a founder and CEO of a new innovative approach called WorkCoin, the future of work, he's tackling. Fred, great to see you! >> Thank you very much, John. >> So we saw each other in Palo Alto at the D10e at the Four Seasons, caught up, we're Facebook friends, we're LinkedIn friends, just a quick shout out to you, I saw you livestreaming Brock Pierce's keynote today, which I thought was phenomenal. >> Yeah, it was a great keynote. >> Great work. >> And it's Pi Day. >> It's Pi Day? >> And I'm a mathematician, so, it's my day! (Fred laughs) >> It's geek day. >> It's geek day. >> All those nerds are celebrating. So, Fred, before we get into WorkCoin, I just want to get your thoughts on the Brock Pierce keynote, I took a video of it, with my shaky camera, but I thought the content was great. You have it up on Facebook on your feed, I just shared it, what was your takeaway of his message? I thought it was unedited, obviously, no New York Times spin here, no-- >> Well first of all, it's very authentic, I've known Brock 10 years, and, I think those of us who have known Brock a long time know that he's changed. He became very rich, and he's giving away, and he really means the best. It's completely from the heart, and, it's 100% real. >> Being in the media business, kind of by accident, and I'm not a media journalist by training, we're all about the data, we open our datas, everyone knows we share the free content. I saw the New York Times article about him, and I just saw it twisted, okay? The social justice warriors out there just aren't getting the kind of social justice that he's actually trying to do. So, you've known him for 10 years, I see as clear as day, when it's unfiltered, you say, here's a guy, who's eccentric, smart, rich now, paying it forward? >> Yep. >> I don't see anything wrong with that. >> Look, I think that the-- >> What is everyone missing? >> There's a little jealously, let's be honest, people resent a little bit, and I think part of it's the cryptocurrency world's fault. When your symbol of success is the Lamborghini, it's sort of like, this is the most garish, success-driven, money-oriented crowd, and it reminds me a little bit of the domain name kind of people. But Brock's ironically not at all that, so, he's got a-- >> If you look at the ad tech world, and the domain name world, 'cause they're all kind of tied together, I won't say underbelly, but fast and loose would be kind of the way I would describe it. >> Initially, yes, ad tech, right? So if you look at ad tech back in say, I don't know, 2003, 2004, it was like gunslingers, right? You wanted to by some impressions, you'd go to a guy, the guy'd be like, "I got some choice impressions, bro." >> I'll say a watch too while I'm at it. >> Yeah, exactly. (John laughs) That was the ad tech world, right? And that world was basically replaced by Google and Facebook, who now control 80% of the inventory, and it's pretty much, you go to a screen, it's all service and that's it. I don't know if that's going to be the case in cryptocurrencies, but right now, initially, you sort of have this, they're a Wild West phenomenon. >> Any time you got alpha geeks, and major infrastructure application developer shift happening, which is happening, you kind of look at these key inflection points, you need to kind of have a strong community self-policing policy, if you look at the original DNS days, 'cause you remember, I was there too, Jon Postel, rest in peace, godspeed, we all know what he did, Vint Cerf with TCP/IP, the core dudes, and gals, back then, they were tight! So any kind of new entrants that came in had to prove their worth. I won't say they were the most welcoming, 'cause they were nervous of people to infect the early formation, mostly they're guys, they're nerds. >> Right, so I think if you look back at domain names, back in the day, a lot of people don't know this, but Jon Postel actually kept the list of domain names in a text file, right? You had basically wanted a domain name, you called Jon up, and you said, "I'd like my name added to the DNS," and he could be like, "Okay, let me add it "to the text file." Again, these things all start in a very sort of anarchic way, and now-- >> But they get commercial. >> It gets commercial, and it gets-- >> SAIC, Network Solutions, in various time, we all know the history, ICANN, controlled by the Department of Commerce up until a certain point in time-- >> Uh, 'til about four years ago, really. >> So, this is moving so fast. You're a student of the industry, you're also doing a startup called WorkCoin, what is the formula for success, what is your strategy, what are you guys doing at WorkCoin, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing, your team, your approach-- >> So let's start with the problem, right? If you look at freelancing, right now, everybody knows that a lot of people freelance, and I don't think people understand how many people freelance. There are 57 million people in America who freelance. It's close to 50%, of us, don't actually have jobs, other than freelancing. And so, this is a slow moving train, but it's basically moving in the direction of more freelancers, and we're going to cross the 50% mark-- >> And that's only going to get bigger, because of virtual work, the global workforce, no boundaries-- >> Right, and so it's global phenomena, right? Freelancing is just going up, and up, and up. Now, you would think in this world, there would be something like Google where you could sit there, and go type patent attorney, and you could get 20 patent attorneys that would be competing for your business, and each one would have their price, and, you could just click, and hire a patent attorney, right? Is that the case? >> No. >> No, okay. >> I need a patent attorney. >> So, what if you have to hire a telegram manager for your telegram channel? Can you find those just by googling telegram manager, no. So basically-- >> The user expectation is different than the infrastructure can deliver it, that's what you're basically saying. >> No, what I'm saying is it should be that way, it is not that way, and the reason it's not that way is that basically, there's no economics to do that with credit cards, so, if you're building a marketplace where it's kind of these people are find each other, you need the economics to make sense. And when you're being charged 3.5% each way, plus you have to worry about chargebacks, buyer fraud, and everything else, you can't built a marketplace that's open and transparent. It's just not possible. And I realized six months ago, that with crypto, you actually could. Not that it's going to be necessarily easy, but, technically, it is possible. There's zero marginal cost, once I'm taking in crypto, I'm paying out crypto, in a sort of open marketplace where I can actually see the person, so I could hire John Furrier, not John F., right? >> But why don't you go to LinkedIn, this is what someone might say. >> Well, if you go to LinkedIn, first of all, the person there might not be in the market, probably is not in the market for a specific service, right? You can go there, then you need to message them. And you just say, "Hey, your profile looks great, "I noticed you're a patent attorney, "you want to file this patent for me?" And then you have to negotiate, it's not a transactional mechanism, right? >> It's a lot of steps. >> It's not transactional, right? So it's not click, buy, fund, engage, it just doesn't work that way. It's just such a big elephant in the room problem, that everybody has these problems, nobody can find these good freelancers. What do you end up doing? You end up going to Facebook, and you go, "Hey, does anybody know any good patent attorneys?" That's what you do. >> That's a bounty. >> Well, it's kind of, yeah. >> It's kind of a social bounty. "Hey hive, hey friends, does anyone know anything?" >> It's social proof, right? Which is another thing that's very important, because, if John, if you were-- >> Hold on, take a minute to explain what social proof is for the folks. >> Social proof is just the simple concept that it's a recommendation coming from somebody that you know, and trust. So, for example, I may not be interested in your video services, John, but I know you, and I am in the business of a graphic designer, and you're like, "Fred, I know this amazing graphic designer, "and she's relatively cheap." Okay, well that's probably good enough for me to at least start looking at her work, and going the next step. On the other hand, if I'm just looking at 100 graphic designers, I do not know. >> It's customized contextual data, around a specific transaction from a trusted source. So you socially, are connected to, or related. >> It, sort of, think about this, it doesn't even have to be a source that you know, it could be just a source that you know of, right? So, to use the Brock example again, Brock's probably not going to be selling his services on my platform, but what if he recommends somebody, people like giving the gift of recommendation. So Brock knows a lot of people, may not be doing as well as him, right? And he's like, "Well, this guy could be a fantastic guy "to hire as social media manager," for example. Helping out a guy that needs a little bit of work. >> And endorsement's a major thing. >> It is giving something, right? You're giving your own brand, by saying, "I stand behind this person." >> Alright, so tell me about where you are with WorkCoin, honestly, people might not know your background, if you check him out on LinkedIn, Fred Krueger, mathematician, Stanford PhD, well-educated, from a centralized organization, like Stanford, has a good reputation, you're a math guy, is there math involved? Obviously, Blockchain's math related, you got crypto, how are you guys building this out, share a little bit of, if you can, show a little leg on the tech-- >> The tech is sort of simple. So basically the way it is, is right now it's built in Google Cloud, but we have an interface where you can fund the thing, and so it's built, first of all, that's the first thing. We built it on web and mobile. And you can basically buy WorkCoins from the platform itself, using Ethereum, and also, we've integrated with Sensei, a different token. So, we can integrate with different tokens, so you're using these tokens to fund the coin, to fund your account, right? And then, once you have the tokens in your account, you can then buy services with them, right? And then the service provider, the minute they finish delivery of the service, to your expectation, they get the coin in their account, and then they can transfer that coin back into Ethereum, or Bitcoin, or whatever, to cash out. >> Okay, so wait, now that product's built, has the coins been issued? Are you guys doing an ICO? Are you raising money? >> So we're in the middle of an ICO-- >> Private? >> Private, only for now. So we've raised just under $4,000,000-- >> Great, congratulations. >> I have no idea if that's good or not-- >> Well, it's better than a zero (laughs). >> It's better than zero, right? It is better than zero, right? >> So there's interest obviously. >> Yeah, so look, we've got a lot of interest in our product, and I think part of the interest is it's very simple. A lot of people can go, "I think this thing makes sense." Now, does that mean we're going to be completely successful in taking over the world, I don't know. >> Well, I mean, you got some tailwinds at your back. One, the infrastructure in e-commerce, and the things that you're going after, are 20-year-old stacks. Number two, the business model, and expectation of the users, is shifting radically, and expectations are different, and there's no actual product that does it (laughs), so. >> So a lot of these ICOs, I think they're going to have technical problems actually building into the specification. 'Cause it's difficult, when you're dealing with the Blockchain, first of all, you're building on some movable platform, right? I met some people just today who are building on Hash-Craft, now, that's great, but Hash-Craft is like one day old, you know? So you're building on something that is one day old, and they've just announced their coin five minutes ago, you know. Again, that's great, but normally as a developer myself, I'm used to building on things that are years old, I mean, even something that's three years old is new. >> This momentum going on, that someone might want to tout Hash-Craft for is, 'cause it's got momentum-- >> It's got total momentum. >> They're betting on an ecosystem. But that brings up the other thing I want to get your thoughts on, because we've observed this at Polycon, we've been watching the industry landscape now, onto our 10th year, there's almost an ecosystem stake in the ground. The good news is, ecosystem's developing. You got entrepreneurs, you got projects, you got funding coming in, but as it's going to be a fight for the ecosystem, because you can't have zillion ecosystems, eventually they have to be-- >> Well, you know-- >> Or can you? >> Here's the problem, that everybody's focused on the plumbing right now, right, the infrastructure? But, what they should be focusing it on is the app. And I've a question for you, and I've asked this question to my advisors and investors, which are DNA Fund, and I say-- >> Let's see if I get it right, it's a test here on the spot, I love this, go. >> Okay, so here's the question, how many, in your wallet right now, on your mobile phone, show me how many Blockchain apps you have right now. >> Uh, zero, on my phone? >> Okay, zero. >> Well I have a burner phone for my other one, so (laughs). >> But on any phone, on any phone that you possess, how many Blockchain apps do you have on your phone? >> Wallet or apps? >> An app that you-- >> Zero. >> An app, other than a wallet, zero, right? Every single person I've asked in this conference has the same number, zero. Now, think about this, if you'd-- >> Actually, I have one. >> Uh, which one? >> It's called Cube Coin. >> Okay, there you go, Cube Coin. But, here's the problem, if you went to a normal-- >> Can I get WorkCoin right now? >> Yeah, well not right now, but I have it on my wallet. So for example, it's in test flight, but my point is I have a fully functional thing I can go buy services, use the coin, everything, in an app. I think this is one of the things-- >> So, hypothetically, if I had an application that was fully functional, with Blockchain, with cryptocurrency, with ERC 2 smart contracts, I would be ahead of the game? >> You would be ahead of the game. I mean, I think-- >> Great news, guys! >> And I think you absolutely are thinking the right thinking, because, everybody's just looking at the plumbing, and, look, I love EOS, but, it's sort of a new operating system, same as Hash-Craft, but you need apps to run on your thing-- >> First of all, I love chatting with you, you're super smart, folks out there, Fred is someone you should check out, you got great advisor potential. You're right on this, I want to test something out with you, I've been thinking about this for a while. If you think about the OSI model, OSI stack, for the younger kids, that was a key movement that generated the key standards in the stack for inner networking, and physical devices. So, it was started from the bottom up. The top of the stack actually never standardized, it became the presentation session layer, they differentiated, then eventually became front end. If you look at what's happening now, the top of the stack is really the ones that's standardizing, or standardizing with business logic, the bottom of the stack has many different versions of say, Blockchain, so the question is is that, it might be the world that will never have a TCP/IP moment, it might be that the business app logic will dictate to some sort of abstraction layer, down to programmable plumbing. You see this with cloud with DevOps. So the question is, do see it that way? I'm thinking out loud here, but when I'm seeing the trend here, it's just that, people who make the business logic decisions first, and nail those, that they're far more successful swapping out and hedging on the plumbing. >> Look, I think you mentioned the word alpha geek, and I think you've just defined yourself as an alpha geek. Let's just go in Denzel Washington's set in the movie Philadelphia, talk to me like I'm a five year old, okay? What is the problem you're solving? >> The app, you said it, it's the app! >> My point is like, everybody is walking around with apps, if the thing doesn't fit on an app, it's not solving any problem, that's the bottom line. I don't care whether you're-- >> You're validating the concept that all that matters is the app, the plumbing will sort itself out. >> I think so. >> Is that a dependency, or is it an interdependency? >> What do you need in a plumbing? Here's how I think you should think. Do I need 4,000 transactions per second? I would say, rarely, most people are not sitting there going, "I need to do 4,000 transactions per second." >> If you need that, you've already crossed the finish line, you probably want a proprietary solution. >> Just to put things in perspective, Bitcoin does 300,000 transactions per day. >> Well, why does Ripple work? Ripple works because they nailed the business model. >> I'll tell you what I think of Ripple-- >> What's your take? >> Why ripple works, I think all, and I'm not the first person to say this, but I think that, the thing that works right now, the core application of all this stuff, is money, right? That's the core thing. Now, if you're talking about documents on the Blockchain, is that going to be useful, perhaps. In a realist's say in the Blockchain, perhaps. Poetry on the Blockchain, maybe. Love on the Blockchain? Why ban it, you know? >> Hey, there's crypto-kiddies on the Blockchain, love is coming next. >> Love is coming next. But, the core killer app, the killer app, is money. It's paying people. That is the killer app of the Blockchain right now, okay? So, every single one of the things that's really successful is about paying people. So what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is super great, for taking money, and moving it out of China, and into the United States. Or out of Nigeria, and into Switzerland, right? You want to take $100,000 out of Nigeria, and move it to Switzerland? Bitcoin is your answer. Now, you want to move money from bank A to bank B, Ripple is your answer, right? (John laughs) If you want to move money from Medellin, Colombia, that you use in narcos, Moneiro is probably your crypto of choice, you know? (John laughs) Business truly anonymous. And I think it's really about payment, right? And so, I look at WorkCoin as, what is the killer thing you're doing here, you're paying people. You're paying people for work, so, it's designed for that. That's so simple. >> The killer app is money, Miko Matsumura would say, open source money, that's his narrative, love that vision. Okay, if money's the killer app, the rest is all kind of window dressing around trying to race to-- >> I think it's the killer, it's the initial killer app. I think we need to get to the point where we all, not all of us, but where enough of us start transacting, with money, with digital money, and then after digital money, there will be other killer apps, right? It's sort of like, if you look at the internet, and again, I'm repeating somebody else's argument-- >> It's Fred Krueger's hierarchy of needs, money-- >> Money starts, right? >> Money is the baseline. >> The initial thing, what was the first thing of internet? I was on the internet before it was the internet. It was called the ARPANET, at Stanford, right? I don't know if you remember those days-- >> I do remember, yeah, I was in college. >> But the ARPANET, it was email, right? We had the first versions of email. And that was back in 1986. >> Email was the killer app for 15, 20 years. >> It was the killer app, right? And I think-- >> For 15 or 20 years. >> Absolutely, well before websites, you know? So I think, we got to solve money first. And I bless everybody who has got some other model, and maybe they're right, maybe notarization of documents on the internet is a-- >> There's going to be use cases for Blockchain, some obvious low-hanging fruit, but, that's not revolutionary, that's not game-changing, what is game-changing is the promise of a new decentralized infrastructure. >> Here's the great thing that's absolutely killer about what this whole world is, and this is why I'm very bullish, it's, if you look at the internet of transmitting value, from one node to another node, credit cards just do not do a very good job of that, right? So, you can't put a credit card inside a machine, very well, at all, right? It doesn't work! And very simple reason, why? Because you get those Amex fraud alerts. (John laughs) Now the machine, if he's paying another machine, the second machine doesn't know how to interpret the first machine's Amex fraud alerts. So, the machine has to pay in, the machine's something that's immutable. I'm paying you a little bit of token. The classic example is the self-driving car that pays the gas pump, 'cause it's a gas self-driving car, it pays it to fill up, and the gas pump may have to pay its landlord in rent, and all of this is done with tokens, right? With credit cards, that does not work. So it has to be tokens. >> Well, what credit cards did for other transactions a little bit simplifies your things, there's a whole 'nother wave coming, that just makes it easier and reduces the steps. >> It reduces the friction, and that's why I think, actually, the killer app's going to be marketplaces, because, if you look at a marketplace, whether it's a marketplace like ours, for freelancers, or your marketplace for virtual goods, and like wax, or whatever it is, right? I think marketplaces, where there's no friction, where once you've paid, it's in. There's no like, I want my money back. That is a killer app, it's an absolute killer app. I think we're going to see real massive consumer adoption with that, and that's ultimately, I think, that's what we need, because if it's all just business models, and people touting their 4,000 transactions a second, that's not going to fly. >> Well Fred, you have a great social graph, that's socially proved, you got a great credentials, in mathematics, PhD from Stanford, you reinvent nine, how many exits? >> Nine exits. >> Nine exits. You're reinventing freelancing on the Blockchain, you're an alpha geek, but you can also explain things to a five year old, great to have you on-- >> Thank you very much John. >> Talk about the WorkCoin, final word, get the plugin for WorkCoin, can people use it now, when is it going to be available-- >> Look, you can go check out our platform, as Miko said, Miko's an advisor, and Miko said, "Fred, think of it as a museum, "you can come visit the museum, "you're not going to see a zillion, "but you can do searches there, you can find people." The museum is not fully operational, right? You can come and check it out, you can take a look at the trains at the museum, the trains will finally operate once we're finished with our ICO, we can really turn the thing on, and everything will work, and what I'd like you to do, actually, you can follow our ICO, if you're not American, you can invest in our ICO-- >> WorkCoin dot-- >> Net. >> Workcoin.net >> Workcoin.net, and, really, at the end, if you have some skill that you can sell on the internet, you're a knowledge worker, you can do anything. List your skill for sale, right? And then, that's the first thing. If you're a student at home, maybe you can do research reports. I used to be a starving student at Stanford. I was mainly spending my time in the statistics department, if somebody said, "Fred, instead of grading "undergrad papers, we'll pay you money "to do statistical work for a company," I would be like, "That would be amazing!" Of course, nobody said that. >> And anyways, you could also have the ability to collaborate with some quickly, and do a smart contract, you could do some commerce, and get paid. >> And get paid for it! >> Hey, hey! >> How 'about that, so I just see-- >> Move from the TA's grading papers payroll, which is like peanuts-- >> And maybe make a little bit more doing something that's more relevant to my PhD. All I know is there's so many times where I've said, my math skills are getting rusty, and I was like, I'd really wish I could talk to somebody who knew something about this distribution, or, could help me-- >> And instantly, magically have them-- And I can't even find them! Like, I have no idea, I have no idea how I would go and find people at Stanford Institute, I would have no idea. So if I could type Stanford, statistics, and find 20 people there, or USC Statistics, imagine that, right? That could change the world-- >> That lowers the barriers, friction barriers, to-- >> Everybody could be hiring graduate students. >> Well it's not just hiring, collaborating too. >> Collaborating, yeah. >> Everything. >> And any question that you have, you know? >> Doctor doing cancer research, might want to find someone in China, or abroad, or in-- >> It's a worldwide thing, right? We have to get this platform so it's open, and so everybody kind of goes there, and it's like your identity on there, there's no real boundary to how we can get. Once we get started, I'm sure this'll snowball. >> Fred, I really appreciate you taking the time-- >> Thanks a lot for your time. >> And I love your mission, and, we support you, whatever you need, WorkCoin, we got to find people out there to collaborate with, otherwise you're going to get pushed fake news and fake data, best way to find it is through someone's profile on WorkCoin-- >> Thanks. >> Was looking forward to seeing the product, I'm John Furrier, here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, Restart Week, a lot of great things happening, Brock Pierce on the keynote this morning really talking about his new venture fund, Restart, which is going to be committed 100% to Puerto Rico, this is where the action will be, we will be following this exclusive story, continuing, we'll be back with more, thanks for watching. (soothing electronic music)

(upbeat tropical music) >> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's The Cube, covering Blockchain Unbound, brought to you be Blockchain Industries. (upbeat tropical music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to this special Cube conversation. We are on the ground in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound and Restart Week, a variety of blockchain, cryptocurrency, industry events, a lot of action here. All the thought leaders, the pioneers, a lot of the people making it happen, from entrepreneurs to the investors, and entrepreneurs who made it in bitcoin blockchain, as well as participants in the local community. Our next guest is Michael Angelo, the co-founder of EDU Block, Edublock.io, EDUblock.io. Interesting story here, he's got a school chain, I call it, going around. Michael, welcome to the conversation. >> It's great to be here. >> So talk about what you guys do. And I think it's super fascinating, you guys are creating a value chain with the university system. Obviously, you know, the first thing that jumps to mind is, hey, it's like the internet. Connect the internet with TCP/IP and next thing you know, the internet's born, the web is born. You're doing something really fascinating with your project, connecting the universities here in Puerto Rico. Take a minute to explain what you're working on. >> Okay, so, Edublock is an educational platform based in Puerto Rico. So what we're doing is, we're connecting every single university in the island to work on open-source projects, to make solutions for the private sector. >> And so you're enabling this actual connectedness, so you got the blockchain which can enable that, cryptocurrency in Puerto Rico is certainly hot. A lot of the ecosystem blending in, coming into the country, into the area; people are excited. What's going on in the front lines? As the young kids are looking at this revolution, this is a massive wave, they've got to be inspired. They've got to look at this as an opportunity. What's some of the things that you're seeing on the front-lines, there? >> Okay, well let me tell you. So, people are scared here. So, Edublock wants to create transparency in blockchain and make people trust us and trust the movement. So we see a bunch of people coming here, and we see a tremendous potential for the island. We could become an emerging market through blockchain technology. But people are scared. Most people come here and they talk about the how and the what, so Edublock wants to talk about the why. So, why is... We want to educate, we want to make this transparent. We want to change the lives of a bunch of people, teach them, so they can become the next world leaders. >> And really, enabling them with tools. So Brock Pierce gave the keynote here, to the kickoff of Blockchain Unbound, as part of a kind of a pitch competition with d10e. Great message, power of we, not me, is really what makes it happen. Paying it forward, cultural ethos. It's global, so this whole global economy's shaping. This is an opportunity for a digital nation to emerge. How do you guys talk about that? The young guys going in there, the developers. The trust needs to be there. What are some of the things people are working on? What kind of things do you imagine happening with Edublock? What are some of the things on your mind, there? >> Okay, so basically what we're doing is, anyone who's coming here in the island, we're just asking them, if you want outreach, you have an ICO, you have a big project, so we have this ecosystem that's running. We have software developers, and you want to teach people. So if you have your ICOs, you have a project, you give it to us, we just lay it down in the ecosystem and see how it works, trial and error. And it's a win-win, 'cause it's free. So you win, you win the expansion here in the island, and we win knowledge. >> So basically, you guys are opening up your arms, saying, hey, throw us what you got, we'll kick the tires, we'll give it a dry run, we'll give you feedback, there's some learnings that are shared. Is that kind of the thing you guys are thinking about? Is that what you're referring to? >> Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing as of now. So we have few projects, we're working with ListCoin, and we have a few ICOs of ourselves, that I cannot go into details right now. But some big projects, that I think some software developers in the island that have talent, could work on, and just develop. >> Michael, talk about who's working with you guys. Who's helping you out? Give some shout-outs, who's involved in the project, what kind of momentum do you have? And what are you guys looking for, for continued support? >> So, we're looking for people that come to the island and have big ICOs. We're looking to just speak with them, see if they could give us some feedback on what we have to do to move along this project. So we're working with Link Puerto Rico, it's a software development company here in the island. So they're helping us with the curriculum. So we're working hands-on with ICOs, but we also want to teach. So we have to make a curriculum. So we teach people that have no idea. The other day, we had an event where we taught 50 people how to create a smart contract from scratch. Those are 50 people who are not the same anymore. So we're working with Brock Pierce, he's going to be one of the main speakers at our event. We're going to have an event the 17th. You can register at Edublock.eo, it's totally free. Why did this event come to be? So, we have Blockchain Unbound, right? So it's about $1,000. So most people want to be part of this event that can't be. Most humans, that's too of a hefty pay. >> John: Yeah, it's a lot of cash. >> It's a lot of cash. You know, $1,000 is food; $1,000 is gas, a whole semester is $1,000. So what we did was, we grabbed 14 main speakers from Blockchain Unbound, Enrique Martinez, Brock Pierce, ListCoin, ArtCoin, they're going to be talking about microgrids, about housing. So we got a university, we have the people. It's free, so anyone can come. All you have to do is register at Edublock.io. >> Great stuff, Michael, this is fantastic. I love what you're doing, and I'm really thankful you're doing it. And because, when you get people together, magic happens. And I think what's really exciting is that the market is accepting that now. And Brock talked about that on stage today, here at Blockchain Unbound, announcing his restart venture fund. 100% dedicated to entrepreneurs. And he's structuring it in a way, where... I mean, not a lot of preference here. So he gets a little bit carved out for the managers of the fund, and they got some lot of cash they're managing. But it's all about feeding the entrepreneurial ecosystem for venture development. >> And that's great, that's why Edublock has to be a thing. 'Cause we are the educational system in the island. And so, if this is a movement that's happening here, and this is going to become the epicenter of this multi-billion dollar market, we need to have people prepared for this. We have to create the transparency. So that's why Edublock is such an important thing, here in the island. >> I love what you're doing, the young people. I see it in Silicon Valley, all around the United States and around the world. Trust matters, reputation matters, who you work with matters. And I love your project. It reminds me of when I interviewed Vint Cerf many years ago, father of the internet. TCP/IP connected three universities, four universities, five universities, and then multiple universities. That became the backbone for the internet. I see what you're doing as something as game-changing. You can connect the universities and then the curriculum, and keep it decentralized, no central authority, you have the trust and you have the voices of the people and software and applications. That's super fantastic. >> By the way, I just want to say something right now. You don't have to be a software developer to be in Edublock. So, most people are scared that if they aren't a programmer, they don't have experience, the don't know solidity, they can't be part of Edublock. The thing is, we're teaching from scratch, as well. We're working with software, we're working with hardware, we're working with a team of daily traders. Miners, we're going to teach how to make GPU, how to make an A6 from scratch. So you're going to learn a lot of things, and it's free. >> Great point. That brings up the community question. Because the point is, you don't have to be a coder. You're in the community. So, I want to ask you, what is the community like right now? What's it look like? It sounds like it's robust, it's active. What do you and the guys hope to do with the development of the community? >> Okay so the community, I would say it's divided, as of now. So most people are scared, they don't know what's going on. Most people that come here start off with the what, the how, and people are scared. But the young people, are like, yo, this is happening. This is not a moment, this is a movement. This is a movement and they're just so happy to be part of it. >> Well, I got to tell ya, as an old guy like me, I've seen many waves. When the waves come, you jump on it. And I'm so excited that you're doing what you're doing. Appreciate what you're doing. Michael Angelo, co-founder of EDU block.io, Edublock.io. They have a big event on the 17th, if you want to check it out. We're going to try to do a swing by with The Cube, but congratulations. Bringing the content to the masses, that's our job at The Cube, that's what we do, that's our mission. And thanks for taking this time, appreciate it. >> Of course. >> I'm John Furrier, with The Cube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

(click) >> I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Google for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Award Event and we're very excited to be joined by one of the award winners, Neha Jain, Engineering Manager at LinkedIn. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, thank you, Lisa. >> And, second of all, congratulations on the award. We'll talk about that in a second, but one of the things that I found very inspiring when I was doing some research about you is how you describe yourself on LinkedIn. A lot of us use LinkedIn, of course. I love that you said that you love to work on technology that empowers users and uplifts the society. What a beautiful statement. >> Thank you so much. >> Tell me a little bit more about what you mean about that. >> Growing up, I always wanted to be in a space where I was doing something for the community. A little bit about myself is I'm an only child and my father passed away when I was barely a year old. So my mom, who's also disabled, raised me literally single-handedly and we had a lot of help on the way. So the thing that always kept me going and inspired is if I could do it, then anyone can. And I have to make that happen, and that is an obligation or a responsibility that I have toward the world. That's basically what I did. Initially I wanted to become a doctor and help the patients get the best of their health but I couldn't deal with blood. >> That's kind of a key. That was a good decision. >> I was really interested in math as a child, so I was like, "Yeah, let's try this engineering thing. "It also sounds pretty fun." And then that's how I started in the engineering field. Initially I joined a company directly from college, but the work didn't inspire me as much. And then I found out about SlideShare. It was a company in the user-generated space, user-generated content space, and they had a female CEO and I was like, "Oh my God, this is just perfect, "and I have to get there." So I joined SlideShare, and six months later it got acquired by LinkedIn. Interesting turn of events. And then now at LinkedIn, we are in the process of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. And that's a mission I can live for. That's something that inspires me every single day and gets me up in the morning, gets me to work, where we are trying to get the right talent matched with the right job, get the companies the right hire. That's very inspiring work to do. >> As an, and I would say, inspiring female in technology, what are some of the things that once you finished your education, you said your first job, you realized, "This isn't quite what I want." But you have the drive, it sounds like probably innately for you that, "I want something else." You kind of knew what you were looking for. Or maybe you knew, "I know when I get there." >> Yeah, you could say that. It's something that, ah, what I was doing was interesting work, but in terms of impact, it wasn't very clear. So I'm sort of a person who's driven more by results, by metrics or something like that. There should be something tangible that's coming out of it, that I can measure. >> Right, yes, validating, right? >> So then I was like, at that time, internet was taking off, and it was all very -- People were all over the place and there were so many things getting shared. And then Facebook came around and then there was Arab Spring and so many other things that were happening. People were taking ownership of their own lives and their own values. I thought that something in the internet space would be an interesting place to be where you could make the change and empower people, empower your users. And I wasn't willing to move out of India at that point, so it was like, "Let's just join SlideShare." I'd been using SlideShare when I was in college doing researches and working for Google Summer of Code. So then I saw that they had a banner that they were hiring, and I'm like, "Okay, yeah, let's just interview for them." >> And here you are. Within the last couple of minutes here, I want to talk about the Top Women in Cloud Award that you're being honored with tonight. And also something that I thought was really, really honest that you wrote on LinkedIn was your experience with imposter syndrome, which I've had for many years and didn't even know what it was until I read about it. And I think that's so, it's such a strong message, knowing that you've had that, but also seeing how accomplished you are, what does this CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Award mean to you? >> That's a very good question. That's something that I'd been asking myself as well when I first got nominated for it. So my friend, who is the co-founder of Haliburton School, Silmar, he nominated me for the award. I got the email and I was very excited that okay, this is really interesting. How could I become this person? And then I read the application form. There were five questions and I'm like, "I'm not good enough. "I'll not be selected. "I'll just spend a lot of time filling out "this application form, and it will all be futile." So I thought, "Let's just not do it." But then Silmar, he just didn't nominate me for the award, he pushed me to apply, to fill out the application. >> Because he knew how accomplished you were. >> And I am so grateful to him for that. He started a Google Doc where he copied all the questions, and he started listing all the things that I'd done. >> That's fantastic, Neha. >> He is the kind of mentor or the kind of friend, the kind of force that I guess if all the females and all the people had, the world would be a different place. So that's the kind of inspiration, the kind of support that you want from people. >> Absolutely. >> Then I was talking to my husband and my husband was like, he's a very logical person, he wouldn't give you direct prescriptions that, "Okay, no, you should do it, "you should do that," or this or that. He would ask you questions and then make you decide what you want to do, but in those questions will steer you in the direction. >> Right. >> Which is very clever of him. Very few people have the kind of smartness to do that where you don't even realize that you are being pushed into some of the things. >> It sounds like he helps you think through, and you realize, "I have accomplished a lot. "I am deserving of this award." And here you are, being honored tonight. >> Yeah, so it's like, maybe that's not what I thought. What I thought is that there are things, and I should probably apply for it and not wait, not give up because of the result. So that's something that I've also learned in my life. My mom always tells me, "Don't bind yourself to the result. "Just give your best shot. "That's all which is in your control, "so just do that." And that's basically also what my husband also ended up pointing out to me. So then I was like, "Okay, fine, I'll apply." And it was basically like just three days before the application deadline. So I filled out the application form, sent it out to the LinkedIn's comps team for review, my manager reviewed the entire work-related stuff, and I'm so grateful that they were able to do the review process in time so that I could apply right before the deadline. I don't know what the CloudNOW award will mean for me, and I hope that we are able to drive real change in the tech field and bring more women and more diversity and inclusion and belonging in the community. So today, Vint Cerf was the keynote speaker. And he was saying that when he joined the tech industry there were 50 percent women, and there were women who were programming. And if you've seen the movie Hidden Figures, >> Oh, yes. >> There were women who figured out how to program. >> A very long time ago. >> Yeah, a long time ago. And we've had people like Grace Hopper and all these other women leaders. And now just 20 years later, you would think the situation would get better, but it has actually gotten worse. >> Right. >> So why is it? The thing that falls on us as a responsibility is to figure out why would we change direction for the worse. And, people have gotten smarter, not lesser intelligent, right? So why would women not opt into computer science and give up? There is something that we aren't doing right. And I think a lot of companies have started asking the right question. Like in LinkedIn, we have the diversity, inclusion and belonging initiative. And we try to make these differences in real time. When I joined LinkedIn, when I moved to the United States, I couldn't recognize people because of the variety of facial structures. And I had a lot of difficulty. I had always grown up seeing Indian faces. And I could easy tell that you were Calcutta or you're from Bangalore. And I could tell it from their faces. But that wasn't something here. And I would always confuse people, and that bothered me a lot. But at LinkedIn, all the things that we had, all the initiatives that we had, the culture and the values, they help me feel belonged. And not a single day has passed where I don't feel that I am not the right person for this job. >> You're making a contribution. >> Yeah. >> Well, congratulations Neha on the award. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for stopping by, and I think you're quite inspirational. >> Thank you so much. >> And we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at Google. Thanks for watching.

(digital clicking noise) >> Hi. Lisa Martin with the CUBE. On the ground at Google for the 6th annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards event. We're very excited to be here. And now to be joined by the founder of CloudNOW, Jocelyn Degance Graham. Welcome back to the CUBE. >> Lisa, we are so happy to have you and the CUBE back for the second year. So our 6th annual event and the second year that you've been broadcasting. We're just really delighted to have your team be able to shine a spotlight on the incredible accomplishments of these women in tech. >> It's always so inspiring, Jocelyn, I was telling you before we went live, that I love reading about the people that you're honoring. But you yourself have been awarded a number of times. So you're quite the women in technology as well. >> (laughs) >> I wanted to talk a little bit about CloudNOW and what you've guys have done. Two really big announcements this year. Tell us about that. >> So the big things we've really been working on for 2017 are the scholarships, Lisa. I have to say of all the professional things this year, I really am the most heartened by the work in the scholarships. It is what is most important to me. As so we start by identifying two exceptional academic partners. We had looked at a number of ... We had read the research, we've been looking at how do you most make impact. And have more women join tech, join technical ranks, right? And so there's been a lot of debate and a lot of research about that. And what we have found is that it's very important for women to have a role model in an organization. It does not necessarily even have to be a mentor. It needs to be a role model. The other piece of the equation is the ambition gap. So it's not just about getting tons of women in the pipeline It's also about getting women that really want to take it the whole way. So this kind of combination factor of that next generation of leader that's really going to be able to get to that upper echelon of office. So the academic partners that we selected, we feel like they've really have done a great job of identifying those future leaders. For us to be able to place our investments with them. To gather corporate partnerships that are willing to be able to fund that next generation of leaders. So we have exceptional partners. We have exceptional academic institutions. If I can, I'd love to tell you just a little bit about the academic partners that we've selected. >> Yes, absolutely, please do. >> Yeah, so the first one is Holberton School. And Holberton is in San Francisco. They have a really unique model. They don't charge students any kind of tuition up front. What they do is once the student has gotten their first full-time job, then they start paying back what they would have paid in tuition. And so, it's a remarkably equitable kind of format for education. >> Lisa: It is. >> It's very different than what most people are seeing for colleges and universities. The problem is in how expensive it is to live in San Francisco. >> Lisa: Right. >> So the scholarships are actually a living wage stipend. Because the school is too intensive for the students to actually be able to work. It's a very compact program. Instead of four year, the students are done in two. So that's our first academic partner. The students are getting jobs at fantastic companies like LinkedIn, and NASA. And they are actually out-competing MIT and Stanford grads for those jobs. >> That's phenomenal. >> It is phenomenal. So we are more than happy to suggest to our corporate funders that they put their money on those bets. >> Lisa: Excellent. >> So we've got Google and we've got Accenture that are funding those Holberton scholarships. And then the second academic partner is in Bangalore, India. And it's Shanti Bhavan. You might have seen this with the Netflix documentary, "Daughters of Destiny." >> Lisa: It was incredible. >> Absolutely incredible and absolutely moving. The Shanti Bhavan school, for your viewers that are unfamiliar with it, they take children from the poorest of the poor background, in rural India. They commit to educating these children from the age of four all the way through the university level. The scholarships we put together with the help of Intel and Apcera and CB Technologies are to fund girls studying STEM at the university level in Bangalore. And this is just the beginning, Lisa. We really hope that in 2018 we can increase the number of scholarships and we really hope that we'll be able to increase the number of corporate partnerships as well. Because these students are doing phenomenal things and we really believe that they're going to be taking their place along side any of what the Ivy League graduates would be doing. >> I love that. And in our last minute, talk to us about Google and Google's involvement with you. Because that's pretty remarkable what you've been able to achieve for CloudNOW with Google. >> Thank you. The Google involvement has definitely been an involving partnership. And the funding for Google actually happened ... It was a happy circumstance that I ran into Vint Serf at a party and got introduced to him. I gave him a quick 30 second overview of what CloudNOW had been doing and he handed me his business card and said, "It sounds really interesting, send me an email." >> Wow, from one of the fathers of the internet. That's pretty amazing. >> I couldn't believe how accessible or easy-going he was. But I went ahead and I emailed him. I said, "What I'm looking for is some money for a scholarship fund. I'm not asking you for it, I just know if you were to endorse this, the money would very easily be found." So I went to sleep. Woke up, the very next morning there was a response from Vint and he had sent me the money. >> Oh my goodness. >> And we were done. The fund was closed, we were on our way. >> Wow. >> And what he said in response, it was so beautiful, Lisa. He said, "One does what one can to be of service." That message, I've been really holding it with me for the last several months. "One does what one can to be of service" Because I think it's just a very inspiring message, especially as we all go into 2018 and think about what we're grateful for. I hope there are people in your audience that feel like they can do what they can and will join us in this very heart-felt mission. >> Wow. You are so inspiring Jocelyn. With what you and your partners have created with CloudNOW. We thank you so much for asking us to be here. Our second year with the CUBE. It's a great event to cover. But be proud of what you've accomplished. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Because it's incredible. >> Thank you for all of your support, it really means a lot to me. >> Excellent. We want to thank you for watching the CUBE, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google for the 6th annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud event. Thanks for watching. (digital beat music)

>> Narrator: Live from New York City, it's theCUBE covering IBM Data Science For All brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back here on theCUBE. We are live in New York continuing our coverage here for Data Science for All where all things happen. Big things are happening. In fact, there's a huge event tonight I'm going to tell you about a little bit later on, but Tricia Wang who is our next guest is a part of that panel discussion that you'll want to tune in for live on ibmgo.com. 6 o'clock, but more on that a little bit later on. Along with Dave Vellante, John Walls here, and Tricia Wang now joins us. A first ever for us. How are you doing? >> Good. >> A global tech ethnographer. >> You said it correctly, yay! >> I learned a long time ago when you're not sure slow down. >> A plus already. >> Slow down and breathe. >> Slow down. >> You did a good job. Want to do it one more time? >> A global tech ethnographer. >> Tricia: Good job. >> Studying ethnography and putting ethnography into practice. How about that? >> Really great. >> That's taking on the challenge stretch. >> Now say it 10 times faster in a row. >> How about when we're done? Also co-founder of Sudden Compass. So first off, let's tell our viewers a little bit about Sudden Compass. Then I want to get into the ethnography and how that relates to tech. So let's go first off about Sudden Compass and the origins there. >> So Sudden Compass, we're a consulting firm based in New York City, and we help our partners embrace and understand the complexity of their customers. So whenever there are, wherever there's data and wherever there's people, we are there to help them make sure that they can understand their customers at the end of the day. And customers are really the most unpredictable, the most unknown, and the most difficult to quantify thing for any business. We see a lot of our partners really investing in big data data science tools and they're hiring the most amazing data scientists, but we saw them still struggling to make the right decisions, they still weren't getting their ROI, and they certainly weren't growing their customer base. And what we are helping them do is to say, "Look, you can't just rely only on data science. "You can't put it all into only the tool. "You have to think about how to operationalize that "and build a culture around it "and get the right skillsets in place, "and incorporate what we call the thick data, "which is the stuff that's very difficult to quantify, "the unknown, "and then you can figure out "how to best mathematically scale your data models "when it's actually based on real human behavior, "which is what the practice of ethnography is there to help "is to help you understand what do humans actually do, "what is unquantifiable. "And then once you find out those unquantifiable bits "you then have the art and science of figuring out "how do you scale it into a data model." >> Yeah, see that's what I find fascinating about this is that you've got hard and fast, right, data, objective, black and white, very clear, and then you've got people, you know? We all react differently. We have different influences, and different biases, and prejudices, and all that stuff, aptitudes. So you are meshing this art and science. >> Tricia: Absolutely. >> And what is that telling you then about how best to your clients and how to use data (mumbles)? >> Well, we tell our clients that because people are, there are biases, and people are not objective and there's emotions, that all ends up in the data set. To think that your data set, your quantitative data set, is free of biases and has some kind of been scrubbed of emotion is a total fallacy and it's something that needs to be corrected, because that means decision makers are making decisions based off of numbers thinking that they're objective when in fact they contain all the biases of the very complexity of the humans that they're serving. So, there is an art and science of making sure that when you capture that complexity ... We're saying, "Don't scrub it away." Traditional marketing wants to say, "Put your customers in boxes. "Put them in segments. "Use demographic variables like education, income. "Then you can just put everyone in a box, "figure out where you want to target, "figure out the right channels, "and you buy against that and you reach them." That's not how it works anymore. Customers now are moving faster than corporations. The new net worth customer of today has multiple identities is better understood when in relationship to other people. And we're not saying get rid of the data science. We're saying absolutely have it. You need to have scale. What is thick data going to offer you? Not scale, but it will offer you depth. So, that's why you need to combine both to be able to make effective decisions. >> So, I presume you work with a lot of big consumer brands. Is that a safe assumption? >> Absolutely. >> Okay. So, we work with a lot of big tech brands, like IBM and others, and they tend to move at the speed of the CIO, which tends to be really slow and really risk averse, and they're afraid to over rotate and get ahead over their skis. What do you tell folks like that? Is that a mistake being so cautious in this digital age? >> Well, I think the new CIO is on the cutting edge. I was just at Constellation Research Annual Conference in Half Moon Bay at-- >> Our friend Ray Wang. >> Yeah, Ray Wang. And I just spoke about this at their Constellation Connected Enterprise where they had the most, I would have to say the most amazing forward thinking collection of CIOs, CTOs, CDOs all in one room. And the conversation there was like, "We cannot afford to be slow anymore. "We have to be on the edge "of helping our companies push the ground." So, investing in tools is not enough. It is no longer enough to be the buyer, and to just have a relationship with your vendor and assume that they will help you deliver all the understanding. So, CIOs and CTOs need to ensure that their teams are diverse, multi-functional, and that they're totally integrated embedded into the business. And I don't mean just involve a business analyst as if that's cutting edge. I'm saying, "No, you need to make sure that every team "has qualitative people, "and that they're embedded and working closely together." The problem is we don't teach these skills. We're not graduating data scientists or ethnographers who even want to talk to each other. In fact, each side thinks the other side is useless. We're saying, "No, "we need to be able to have these skills "being taught within companies." And you don't need to hire a PhD data scientist or a PhD ethnographer. What we're saying is that these skills can be taught. We need to teach people to be data literate. You've hired the right experts, you have bought the right tools, but we now need to make sure that we're creating data literacy among decision makers so that we can turn these data into insights and then into action. >> Let's peel that a little bit. Data literate, you're talking about creativity, visualization, combining different perspectives? Where should the educational focus be? >> The educational focus should be on one storytelling. Right now, you cannot just be assuming that you can have a decision maker make a decision based on a number or some long PowerPoint report. We have to teach people how to tell compelling stories with data. And when I say data I'm talking about it needs the human component and it needs the numbers. And so one of the things that I saw, this is really close to my heart, was when I was at Nokia, and I remember I spent a decade understanding China. I really understood China. And when I finally had the insight where I was like, "Look, after spending 10 years there, "following 100 to 200 families around, "I had the insight back in 2009 that look, "your company is about to go out of business because "people don't want to buy your feature phones anymore. "They're going to want to buy smartphones." But, I only had qualitative data, and I needed to work alongside the business analysts and the data scientists. I needed access to their data sets, but I needed us to play together and to be on a team together so that I could scale my insights into quantitative models. And the problem was that, your question is, "What does that look like?" That looks like sitting on a team, having a mandate to say, "You have to play together, "and be able to tell an effective story "to the management and to leadership." But back then they were saying, "No, "we don't even consider your data set "to be worthwhile to even look at." >> We love our candy bar phone, right? It's a killer. >> Tricia: And we love our numbers. We love our surveys that tell us-- >> Market share was great. >> Market share is great. We've done all of the analysis. >> Forget the razor. >> Exactly. I'm like, "Look, of course your market share was great, "because your surveys were optimized "for your existing business model." So, big data is great if you want to optimize your supply chain or in systems that are very contained and quantifiable that's more or less fine. You can get optimization. You can get that one to two to five percent. But if you really want to grow your company and you want to ensure its longevity, you cannot just rely on your quantitative data to tell you how to do that. You actually need thick data for discovery, because you need to find the unknown. >> One of the things you talk about your passion is to understand how human perspectives shape the technology we build and how we use it. >> Tricia: Yes, you're speaking my language. >> Okay, so when you think about the development of the iPhone, it wasn't a bunch of surveys that led Steve Jobs to develop the iPhone. I guess the question is does technology lead and shape human perspectives or do human perspectives shape technology? >> Well, it's a dialectical relationship. It's like does a hamburger ... Does a bun shape the burger or does the bun shape the burger? You would never think of asking someone who loves a hamburger that question, because they both shape each other. >> Okay. (laughing) >> So, it's symbiote here, totally symbiotic. >> Surprise answer. You weren't expecting that. >> No, but it is kind of ... Okay, so you're saying it's not a chicken and egg, it's both. >> Absolutely. And the best companies are attuned to both. The best companies know that. The most powerful companies of the 21st century are obsessed with their customers and they're going to do a great job at leveraging human models to be scaled into data models, and that gap is going to be very, very narrow. You get big data. We're going to see more AI or ML disasters when their data models are really far from their actual human models. That's how we get disasters like Tesco or Target, or even when Google misidentified black people as gorillas. It's because their model of their data was so far from the understanding of humans. And the best companies of the future are going to know how to close that gap, and that means they will have the thick data and big data closely integrated. >> Who's doing that today? It seems like there are no ethics in AI. People are aggressively AI for profit and not really thinking about the human impacts and the societal impacts. >> Let's look at IBM. They're doing it. I would say that some of the most innovative projects that are happening at IBM with Watson, where people are using AI to solve meaningful social problems. I don't think that has to be-- >> Like IBM For Social Good. >> Exactly, but it's also, it's not just experimental. I think IBM is doing really great stuff using Watson to understand, identify skin cancer, or looking at the ways that people are using AI to understand eye diseases, things that you can do at scale. But also businesses are also figuring out how to use AI for actually doing better things. I think some of the most interesting ... We're going to see more examples of people using AI for solving meaningful social problems and making a profit at the same time. I think one really great example is WorkIt is they're using AI. They're actually working with Watson. Watson is who they hired to create their engine where union workers can ask questions of Watson that they may not want to ask or may be too costly to ask. So you can be like, "If I want to take one day off, "will this affect my contract or my job?" That's a very meaningful social problem that unions are now working with, and I think that's a really great example of how Watson is really pushing the edge to solve meaningful social problems at the same time. >> I worry sometimes that that's like the little device that you put in your car for the insurance company to see how you drive. >> How do you brake? How do you drive? >> Do people trust feeding that data to Watson because they're afraid Big Brother is watching? >> That's why we always have to have human intelligence working with machine intelligence. This idea of AI versus humans is a false binary, and I don't even know why we're engaging in those kinds of questions. We're not clearly, but there are people who are talking about it as if it's one or the other, and I find it to be a total waste of time. It's like clearly the best AI systems will be integrated with human intelligence, and we need the human training the data with machine learning systems. >> Alright, I'll play the yeah but. >> You're going to play the what? >> Yeah but! >> Yeah but! (crosstalk) >> That machines are replacing humans in cognitive functions. You walk into an airport and there are kiosks. People are losing jobs. >> Right, no that's real. >> So okay, so that's real. >> That is real. >> You agree with that. >> Job loss is real and job replacement is real. >> And I presume you agree that education is at least a part the answer, and training people differently than-- >> Tricia: Absolutely. >> Just straight reading, writing, and arithmetic, but thoughts on that. >> Well what I mean is that, yes, AI is replacing jobs, but the fact that we're treating AI as some kind of rogue machine that is operating on its own without human guidance, that's not happening, and that's not happening right now, and that's not happening in application. And what is more meaningful to talk about is how do we make sure that humans are more involved with the machines, that we always have a human in the loop, and that they're always making sure that they're training in a way where it's bringing up these ethical questions that are very important that you just raised. >> Right, well, and of course a lot of AI people would say is about prediction and then automation. So think about some of the brands that you serve, consult with, don't they want the machines to make certain decisions for them so that they can affect an outcome? >> I think that people want machines to surface things that is very difficult for humans to do. So if a machine can efficiently surface here is a pattern that's going on then that is very helpful. I think we have companies that are saying, "We can automate your decisions," but when you actually look at what they can automate it's in very contained, quantifiable systems. It's around systems around their supply chain or logistics. But, you really do not want your machine automating any decision when it really affects people, in particular your customers. >> Okay, so maybe changing the air pressure somewhere on a widget that's fine, but not-- >> Right, but you still need someone checking that, because will that air pressure create some unintended consequences later on? There's always some kind of human oversight. >> So I was looking at your website, and I always look for, I'm intrigued by interesting, curious thoughts. >> Tricia: Okay, I have a crazy website. >> No, it's very good, but back in your favorite quotes, "Rather have a question I can't answer "than an answer I can't question." So, how do you bring that kind of there's no fear of failure to the boardroom, to people who have to make big leaps and big decisions and enter this digital transformative world? >> I think that a lot of companies are so fearful of what's going to happen next, and that fear can oftentimes corner them into asking small questions and acting small where they're just asking how do we optimize something? That's really essentially what they're asking. "How do we optimize X? "How do we optimize this business?" What they're not really asking are the hard questions, the right questions, the discovery level questions that are very difficult to answer that no big data set can answer. And those are questions ... The questions about the unknown are the most difficult, but that's where you're going to get growth, because when something is unknown that means you have not either quantified it yet or you haven't found the relationship yet in your data set, and that's your competitive advantage. And that's where the boardroom really needs to set the mandate to say, "Look, I don't want you guys only answering "downstream, company-centric questions like, "'How do we optimize XYZ?"'" which is still important to answer. We're saying you absolutely need to pay attention to that, but you also need to ask upstream very customer-centric questions. And that's very difficult, because all day you're operating inside a company . You have to then step outside of your shoes and leave the building and see the world from a customer's perspective or from even a non existing customer's perspective, which is even more difficult. >> The whole know your customer meme has taken off in a big way right now, but I do feel like the pendulum is swinging. Well, I'm sanguined toward AI. It seems to me that ... It used to be that brands had all the power. They had all the knowledge, they knew the pricing, and the consumers knew nothing. The Internet changed all that. I feel like digital transformation and all this AI is an attempt to create that asymmetry again back in favor of the brand. I see people getting very aggressive toward, certainly you see this with Amazon, Amazon I think knows more about me than I know about myself. Should we be concerned about that and who protects the consumer, or is just maybe the benefits outweigh the risks there? >> I think that's such an important question you're asking and it's totally important. A really great TED talk just went up by Zeynep Tufekci where she talks about the most brilliant data scientists, the most brilliant minds of our day, are working on ad tech platforms that are now being created to essentially do what Kenyatta Jeez calls advertising terrorism, which is that all of this data is being collected so that advertisers have this information about us that could be used to create the future forms of surveillance. And that's why we need organizations to ask the kind of questions that you did. So two organizations that I think are doing a really great job to look at are Data & Society. Founder is Danah Boyd. Based in New York City. This is where I'm an affiliate. And they have all these programs that really look at digital privacy, identity, ramifications of all these things we're looking at with AI systems. Really great set of researchers. And then Vint Cerf (mumbles) co-founded People-Centered Internet. And I think this is another organization that we really should be looking at, it's based on the West Coast, where they're also asking similar questions of like instead of just looking at the Internet as a one-to-one model, what is the Internet doing for communities, and how do we make sure we leverage the role of communities to protect what the original founders of the Internet created? >> Right, Danah Boyd, CUBE alum. Shout out to Jeff Hammerbacher, founder of Cloudera, the originator of the greatest minds of my generation are trying to get people to click on ads. Quit Cloudera and now is working at Mount Sinai as an MD, amazing, trying to solve cancer. >> John: A lot of CUBE alums out there. >> Yeah. >> And now we have another one. >> Woo-hoo! >> Tricia, thank you for being with us. >> You're welcome. >> Fascinating stuff. >> Thanks for being on. >> It really is. >> Great questions. >> Nice to really just change the lens a little bit, look through it a different way. Tricia, by the way, part of a panel tonight with Michael Li and Nir Kaldero who we had earlier on theCUBE, 6 o'clock to 7:15 live on ibmgo.com. Nate Silver also joining the conversation, so be sure to tune in for that live tonight 6 o'clock. Back with more of theCUBE though right after this. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Google Cloud Next '17. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Google Next, here from our Palo Alto studio. Happy to welcome to the program a first time guest, Udi Nachmany, who is the Head of Public Cloud at Ubuntu, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, pleasure to be here. >> All right, so I think it goes without saying, anybody that understands the landscape. Oh wait, there's Cloud, there's Linux, and especially Ubuntu, you know that's going to be there. Before we get into some of these, just tell us a little bit about your role there, and inside the company. >> Sure, I've been with Canonical for about three years, and I head up our partnership with the public clouds and the public IS providers as a whole. >> Yeah. >> That includes Google, AWS, Azure, and many, many others. >> So can you just clarify one thing for us, though? >> Yes. >> You just said Canonical, I introduced you as Ubuntu. >> Yes. >> Which is it? How should we be referring to these two? Well, we are very well known for our products. >> Yeah. >> We're best well known our corporate brand and we're very happy with both names. I usually introduce myself as Udi from Ubuntu, >> Yeah. >> Slash Canonical, so we're used to that. >> Totally understand. So public cloud, give us your view on the landscape today. We want to talk specifically about some of the Google stuff, but what's happening, and what are customers to you for public cloud, where does your suite play into that environment? >> Sure, Ubuntu is a very popular OS, and I think probably the most popular, the area where we're most dominant is public cloud, So a large majority of workload's on Google Cloud, Azure, the Linux part of Azure, AWS, and many, many other providers is running on Ubuntu. A lot of high-visibility services actual develop on Ubuntu. And we have responsibility in that. We need to make the Ubuntu experience predictable and optimized for that cloud platform and have people trust that experience, and believe in it. So that's our job on a technical level, and then on the second level, our job is to help users access support and tooling on top of that, to help them with the operational reality. Because what we see, unless you've probably heard it before from Canonical, what we see is it's great that the licensing cost, the cost of software has gone down, that's great news for everyone, however what a lot of people don't realize is that the cost of operations has gone up, it's skyrocketed, right? It's great Kubernetes is open source, but how do you actually spin up a cluster, how do you deal with this architecture, what does it mean for your business? So that's where we critically focus on private and public cloud. >> Yeah, it's funny. I did an interview with Brad Anderson a few years ago, and I'm like, "Customers are complaining "about licensing costs," and he starts ranting, he's like, "Licensing costs? Do you know that licensing is 6% of the overall cost of what you have?" So, look, we understand operations are difficult, so why is that such a strong fit? What do you bring, what customers do you serve that they're choosing you in such a large preponderance? >> I think the two things we do well, one is we're very well-embedded in the industry and in the community, and pretty much where people are developing something exciting, they're developing it on Ubuntu and they're talking to us through the process. We get a really good view of their problems and challenges, as well as our own. And the second thing is we have come up with tools and frameworks to allow a lot of that knowledge to be crowdsourced, right? So a good example is our modeling platform Juju, where you can very easily get from not knowing anything about, for example Kubernetes, into a position where you have a Kubernetes architecture running on a public cloud, like Google, or in another public cloud, or in bare metal, right? So because we tackled that, we assume that somebody's done this before you, somebody's figured this out. Take all that knowledge, encapsulate it in what we call a Charm, and take that Charm and build an architecture on Juju, on the canvas, or through the CLI. >> Okay, maybe could you compare, contrast, Google, of course, has some pretty good chops when it come to Kubernetes, they're really trying to make some of these offerings really as a service, so ya know, what does Google do, what do you do? How do they work together? Are you actually partnering there or are you just in the community just working on things? >> Google is in this in two different ways. One is they have their own managed service GKE, and that's great and I think people who are all in on Google, then that's a probably a good way to go. You get the expertise, and you get the things that you need. Our approach, as always, is cloud-neutral and we do believe in a hybrid world. We are members of the CNCF, we're silver sponsors of the CNCF, we're very well-embedded in the Kubernetes community, and we do ship a pure upstream Kubernetes distribution that we also sell support for. So we work very closely with Google, in general, Google Cloud, on making sure Ubuntu runs well on GCE, and on the other side, we work very closely with the Kubernetes community in that ecosystem, to again, make sure that it becomes very easy to work with that solution. >> Every player that you talk to in the ecosystem gives you a different story when it comes to multi-cloud environments. Google's message tends to be pretty open. I mean, obviously, with what they're doing with Kubernetes and being their position of where they are with customer adoption, they understand that a lot of people that are doing cloud aren't doing it on Google's Cloud, so they want to make it, you can live in both worlds, and we can support it. I listened to Amazon today, they're like, well, the future's going to be, we're all going to be there, we're going to hire another 100,000 people throughout all of Amazon in the US in the next 18 months. And Microsoft is trying to wrap their arms around a lot of their applications, IBM and Google are there, doing their thing. You've got visibility into customers in all of these environments due to your place in the stack. What are you seeing today? How is Google's adoption going? Is one question I have for you. And two, most customers, I would think, are running kind of multi-cloud, if you will, is the term, is that what you see? How many clouds are they doing? What are you seeing, kind of shifts in there, and I know I asked you three different questions there, but maybe you can dig into that and unpack it for us. >> Sure. I think, in terms of what they, at least top three clouds are saying, I think it's more important to look at what they're doing. If you think about the AWS and VMWare announcement, if you think about Azure Stack for Microsoft, I think those are clearly admissions that there is an OnPrem story and there's a hybrid story that they feel they need to address. They might believe in a world where everybody's happy on a public cloud, but they also live in reality. >> We're on a public cloud show, we're not allowed to mitt about OnPrem, right? Next you're going to, like, mention OpenStack. >> Absolutely. And then, in terms of Google, I think the interesting thing Google's doing, Google are clearly in that, even in terms of size and growth, I think they're in that top three league. They are, my impression is they are focused on building the services and the applications that will attract the users, right? So they don't have this blanket approach of you must use this, because this is the best cloud ever. They actually work on making very good, specific solutions, like for big data and for other things, and Kubernetes is a good example, that will attract people and get them into that specific part of Google Cloud platform, and hopefully in the future, using more and more. So I think they have a very interesting more product than approach, in that sense. >> Okay, so. >> I think I answered one question. >> Yeah, you touched on, yes customers have public and OnPrem. >> Yeah. >> Kind of hybrid, if you will. What about public cloud, you know? Most customers have multiple public clouds in your data or are they tending to get most of it on a single cloud, and might having a second one for some other piece? >> Yeah, I think right now, we're seeing, is a lot of a lot of people using perhaps a couple of platforms. Especially if they have certain size, I'm putting things like serenity and data prophesy aside, but just in terms of public cloud users, they might, again, use a specific platform for a specific service, they might use bare metal servers on software, for example, and VMs on the cloud. People are, by and large, the savvy users do understand that a mix is needed, which also plays to our strength, of course, with tools like Juju and Landscape, we allow you to really solve that operational problem, while being really substrate-agnostic, right? And you don't have to necessarily worry about getting logged in to one or the other. The main thing is, you can manage that, and you can focus on your app. >> All right. Udi, what's the top couple of things that customers are coming to you at these shows for? Where do they find themselves engaging with you as opposed to just, ya know, they're the developers, they're loving what you're doing? >> Sure. So the one thing I mentioned before is operations, right? I've heard about big data, I've heard about Kubernetes. What are my options? Do I hire a team? Do I get a consultant? Do I spend six months reading about this? And they're looking for that help, and I think Juju as an open-source tool and conjure-up as a developer tool that's also open-source. Really expand their options in that sense, and make it much more efficient for them to do that. And the second thing I'd say is Ubuntu is obviously very popular on public cloud, it's popular in production, so production workloads, business-critical workloads. And more and more organizations are realizing that they need to think long and hard about what that means in terms of getting the right support for it, in terms of things like security. An example, this week there was a kernel vulnerability in Linus Distros, I don't think it has a name yet, and we have something called the Canonical Livepatch service which patches kernel vulnerabilities, you can guess by the name. Now, people who have that through our support package have not felt a thing through this vulnerability. So I think we'll start to see more and more of these, where people have a lot of machines running on different substrates, and they're really worried about their up time and what a professional support organization can help them do to maintain that up time. >> It's real interesting times, being a company involved in open sourced, involved in open cloud. I want you to react, there was a quote that Vint Cerf gave at the Google event, I was listening, they had a great session Marc Andreessen and Vint Cerf. >> Yeah it was overcrowed. >> Go there. There was actually room if you got in, but I was glad I got up there, and Vint Cerf said, "We have to be careful about fast leading to instability." What's your take on that? I hear, when I go to a lot of these shows it's like, wow, I used to go from 18 months to six months to six weeks for my deployments. And public cloud will just update everything automatically, but that speed, ya know? As you were just talking, security is one of the issues, but there's instability, what's your take on that? And how are customers dealing with this increasing pace of change, which is the only constant that we have in our industry? >> Yeah, that's very true. I think, so from conversations with customers I've had recently. I've had a few where they've been sitting around and really deliberating what they need to do with this public cloud thing that they've heard about. Trying to buy time, eventually might lead to panicking. So a big financial institution that I met, maybe a month ago are trying to move all in to AWS, right? Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for them, whether it's the right thing for them, I don't think that discussion necessarily took place, it may well be the best thing for them. But it's the kind of, they're rushing in to that decision, because they took so much time to try and understand. On the other hand, you see people who are much more savvy, and understand that in terms of the rate of change, like you said, it's a constant, so you need to take ownership of your architecture. You can't be locked in to one box that solves all your problems. You need to make sure you have the operation agility and you're using the right tooling, to help you stay nimble when the next big thing comes along. Or the next little thing, which is sometimes just as scary. And I think, again, that's where we're very well placed and that's where we can have very interesting conversations. >> Really interesting stuff. Actually, I just published a case study with City, talking about, they use AWS, I would say tactically would be the way to put it. They build, they have a number of locations where they have infrastructure. Speed and agility absolutely something they need as an outcome. Public cloud is a tool that they use at certain times, but not... There are things they were concerned about in how they build their architectures. Want to give you the last word. We see Canonical, Ubuntu at a lot of shows, you're involved in a lot of partnerships. What do we expect to see from your cloud group, kind of over the next six months, what shall we be keeping an eye on? >> I think on the private cloud side we've been doing some great work into the toggle vertical, and I think you'll see us expanding into more verticals, like financial services, where we've had some good early successes. >> Can I ask, is that NFV-related? It was the top discussion point that I had at OpenStacks on it last year was around NFV. Is it that specific or? >> Yeah, that's an element of it, yeah, but it's about, how do I make my privat cloud economically viable as AWS or Google or Azure would be? How do I free myself from that and enable myself to move between the substrates without making that trade off. So I think that's on the private cloud side. And I think you're going to see more and more crossover between the world of platforms and switches and servers and the world of devices, web-connected devices. We just finished MWC in Barcelona last week. I think we're in the top 13 or 14 bars in terms of visibility, way ahead of most other OS platforms. And I think that's because our message resonates, right? It's great to have five million devices out there, but how do you actually ship a security fix? How do you ship an update? How do you ship an app, and how do you commercialize that? When you have that size of fleet. So that's a whole different kind of challenge, which, again, with the approach we have to operations, I think we are already there, in terms of offering the solution. So I think you're going to see a lot of more activity on that front. And in the public cloud, I'd say it's really about continuing to work ever closer with the bigger public clouds so that you have optimized experiences on Ubuntu, on that public cloud, on your public cloud of choice. And you're going to see a lot more focus on support offerings, sold through those clouds, which makes a lot of sense, not everyone wants to buy from another supplier. It's much easier to get all your needs met through one centralized bill. So you're going to see that as well. >> Udi Nachmany, really appreciate you coming to our studio here to help us with our coverage of Google Next 2017. We'll be wrapping up day one of two days of live coverage here from the SiliconANGLE Media Studio in Palo Alto. You're watching theCUBE (electronic music)