>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, okay. Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage here. Reinvent 2020 for a W s amazing content happening here within across the industry on digital transformation and more, more important than ever in the public sector has been mawr impacted by anyone during the cove and pandemic. And we're here remotely with the Cube Virtual because of the pandemic. Got a great guest, Kim, a jurist. She's the leader on the U. S. Education, state and local government for a W s public sector Kim, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Remotely, at least we get to have a remote interview. >>Well, thank you for taking the time. This is This is our world these days, so it's good to be able to connect. >>Well, thanks for coming on. We're doing some specialty programming around public sector, mainly because it's such an important area. Uh, Andy Jassy Esquina, which is for the best conference at large at reinvent talks broadly, but I think it highlights what's going on in your world and that is this facing the truth. Um, this digital transformation has been forced upon us. It's accelerated and it's get busy, busy building or get busy figuring out how it might unwind and mawr education virtual remote if we >>didn't >>have video conference, and this could have been a disaster even further, but certainly has impacted everybody in the government education. How is it impacting share with us? What's going on? >>You know, I think that difficult partisans. When we turned on the news early days there in Cove it it was clear that students weren't learning and citizens couldn't get in contact with their government to ask for support. Um, I would say it was that moment in time where the technical debt that whether your state, local or education, you had to quickly realized that you need to connect with your students and your citizens. But I take a look at how quickly they were able to turn across the US Many of them realized what usually took years, literally turned into innovating overnight to support students as well as those filing for on unemployment claims. And I think that's what we heard a lot of, and those were some of the opportunities that Amazon really took, uh, to our customers said, Hey, we can help you solve these problems with great services such as connect >>you know, Connect came up in the keynote multiple times, and he really spend time on that as a as a disruption slash enabler for value. Can you share how cloud has scaled up some of your customers? I know connects, been pretty prominent in the public sector for Covic support and really has changed in saves lives in many cases. Can you share an example of how it's worked out? >>Absolutely. I mean, Rhode Island is is a great example. They use Amazon connect. They helped the state literally address this massive surgeon of unemployment insurance applications due to Cova 19. But literally the call times and the vines were cut down in What they were able to do is answer the call, not just have it be on a fast busy or a disconnect. Whether it was Department of Labor at Rhode Island, whether it was the state of Kentucky or the state of West Virginia, all those authorities use had to deal with that surge, and they were able to do it successfully and literally, in some cases, overnight to support citizens. That's how quickly they were able to innovate and hit those call centers, Um, effectively. But it's not just about the call center, because keep in mind they would go into those call centers with connect. They were able to actually take those calls from home, and we saw that in education as well. Take a look at L. A unified school district. What they had to do to quickly transition from in person training to supporting these students remotely. They had to do it overnight, and they use connect their asses well, not only to support the students, the teachers or the staff, but they took that opportunity to really continue educating and continue serving. >>You know, one of the things I was talking anti about in my one on one interview before reinvent was necessity is the mother of all invention in these days, and I think that came from a quote from one of your customers, like interviewed when asked, You know how the innovation strategy come about, and that's what they said. They said we needed it really bad, and we had to move quickly and then Andy said in his keynote that everything is on full display right now, meaning that the pandemic is forced one and you can see who's winning and who's not based on where they are in the cloud journey. So have to ask you leaderships a big part of this. What is the trend that you're seeing within your world because, you know, government not known for moving fast. And this is a speed game at this point. Healthcare. A big part of that. You got education. Government. What's >>the >>leadership mindset on innovating right now? And can you share because, yeah, you got some easy, you know, examples. Now the point is, hey, way have connect with people were like productivity opportunity that's now the new normal. So even in life does come back. There's new new things that have been discovered. Is that resonating with your your customers? And can you share the leadership mindset? >>Absolutely. So make no mistake. It was never a question of if it was a question of when the pandemic clearly is accelerating it. But, you know, we've been working with over 6500 government agencies and collaborating with them to really focus on some of their mission critical, um called based services. So and this is the new normal. They recognize it. And it's the foundation that during the pandemic that it's been said to say, Hey, we're going to push and we're gonna push quicker because they were actually able to demonstrate that they could do it. I'll give you an example. It's It's a heartbreaking one from my perspective. Being a mom, um, l. A. County Department of Child and Family Services, They operated their analog child protection hotline. Now the numbers are are unfortunate and staggering. But when you took a look at the peak before the pandemic, the call center received as many as 21,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in a month. During those pick times, up to 100 staff members would log in and literally take 120 back to back calls per hour. Now, when you think about that legacy environment with Amazon connect, they were able to continue the service, continue the support to help these Children and available 24 7, and they were able to do it from their homes. So e mean it gives me chills, just thinking about three unfortunate situations. But they were able to quickly move and and continue to support. Yeah, >>and the thing to I want to just bring up also had a customer I interviewed from Canada. I think they were partner with a censure. They had unemployment checks, they couldn't get out, and entitlement things that were literally checks and connect stood up that in like, record time. He was convinced. He's like he was kind of Amazon fan, but he was kind of still out of Amazon. He was like, I'm convinced we're gonna use Amazon going forward. It was a tipping point for him. There's a lot of these tipping points going on right now. This has been a big theme of this reinvent so far. Yeah, cloud transition, two full cloud value. This is the new normal What? What what what can clients get when they have budget or trying to get budget when they say the benefit? The clouds are what? >>Well, I mean again, use another use case. I'll go back to another example in L. A county. So when you think about l. A county itself, um, I won't give you the exact numbers because I don't know him off the top, but approximately 10 million residents and employs over 100,000 staff again. Look at the cost savings that they saw. So, you know, technical data is a problem. Being able to invest is a challenge because of budgets, but they were able to save 60% in one year from there on prem environment and licensing costs. But the cost is one piece. If you could take 17% fewer calls and you're solving those challenges by using a i N M l. Through the technology of what they were gathering through those calls, it made a huge impact and improved their service to their citizens. So you know it. The cost savings air there. And there are so many examples that states air, recognizing that they need to move quicker because they could take advantage of those costs, especially with some of the budget challenges we're going to see across the U. S. >>And the machine learning examples are off the charts. So, Kim, I gotta ask, you going forward now in reinvent what's the big focus for you and your teams and your customers because you guys are very customer focused. You're working backers from the customers. We hear that on and on what is going on in your customer base? One of the priorities, >>um, priorities for us will always remain on the mission to which our customers are focusing on. If we think about education, the question is, how are they re imagining the the delivery and the success in this new world that we're dealing with? So we'll continue to work and innovate with our partners and with amazing All right, a text that are in our business take a look at blackboard, right? They were able to scale 50 times their normal capacity globally, literally within 24 hours they're looking at How do they continue to innovate to serve? We're gonna work with K through 12 through academic medical centers and research, because when you think about what we need is we need to find that vaccine we need to find the ability to treat and serve. We're focused on those missions with the states, the research and the education teams. >>It's been unusual year learning is changing remote learning, remote work, the workforce, the workplace, the workloads. They're all changing. Onda clouds a big part of it. Um, final question for you. What's the take away for reinvent this year means different. You mentioned some of those highlights. What's the big take away for your audience? >>I think for state local education is it's available. It's now, and they have to serve their students and citizens quit. Um, what they've been able to do in the cloud again? A zay said at the start of the interview. They can now do overnight within minutes and hours and and support their citizens. And they have to do it quickly. So, >>uh, coyote to coyote goodness for the state and local governments to >>absolutely it's going to continue. And I think the important part is focused on the opportunity of innovating and supporting the mission >>Can Great to see you. Thanks for the insight. Thanks for the update. Appreciate it. We'll be following it. A lot of great successes. You guys have been having the Cuban involved in a bunch of them and we'll continue to follow the transformation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. Enjoy Sena. >>Okay. This is the Cube Virtual. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching more coverage. Walter Wall reinvent 2020 Virtual. Thanks for watching. Yeah,

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. >>Everyone welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public sector summit. Virtual, of course, is the Cube virtual. We're here sheltered in place in our quarantine studio. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Got a great guest here? Cube Alumni. Can Eisner, Who's the director of worldwide education programs for AWS Amazon Web services? Ken, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. This could be a great segment. Looking forward to chatting. >>Thanks so much, John. Great to talk to you again. >>You know, I'll say, Cube Virtual public sector summit Virtual. We've been virtualized as a society. I'll see the pandemic and all the things that is going on around has been pretty crazy. And one of the things that's most notable is the impact on Education. New York Times This morning and many published reports around the impact College education. Not only economics on the campus aside, the state of the people in the society and Covert 19 is pushed schooling online for the foreseeable future. What's your reaction is you're in charge you've done a lot of work on the foundational level to get Amazon educational programs out there. Take a minute to explain how how this has impacted you guys and your ability to bring that educational stuff to the to the foreseeable future. >>Yeah, the first thing I'd say is this This truly is an absolutely unprecedented time There. Move from virtual instruction. Excuse me from in person classroom instruction into the virtual world at such amazing scale, rapidity is something that educational institutions weren't ready for that couldn't be ready for at this time. We had to enter it with amazing lump levels of empathy for what was going on on the ground in K 12 schools and higher ed schools with our educational technology and publisher providers. So I think the first thing was we had or for the speed at which it happened, we did have to step back and look at what was going on. There are some changes that are happening in the immediacy, and there are some things that Corbett, 19 is has sped educational institutions around the world to look at. An AWS is working with those K 12 providers, higher educational providers teachers and so on on that switch, whether it's providing infrastructure that move into online learning, helping teachers as they prepare for this sort of new normal you some of examples of what has happen. We've been working with the University of Arizona. Help them stand up contact centers with the onset of of cove it and students and teachers. It's being pushed into their home environment or into virtual environments to give instruction to receive instruction. There have been a lot of calls that happen in virtual environments to staff to help them support this. And so we stood up with the University of Arizona and Amazon Amazon Connect help staff provide mobile solutions through the cell phone or computer for for students. >>I want to get your thoughts. Absolutely. I talked to Andy Jassy about this as well as well about agility. This is the Amazon wheelhouse, and you guys have gone into the I T world now developers. You went cloud native, you in that market. He won the enterprise I t market. But the reason why is that you took an old school outdated, antiquated system of I t and made it agile. That seems enough This is the country with Teresa and Andy about education in public sector. The modernization is happening, but there's also the triage and you guys have to do now in terms of getting people online. So what specifically are you doing to help education customers continue their instruction online? Because they still got to execute. They still need to provide this discussion around the fall window Coming up. You got to have the foundational things. I know you've done that, but it is hard. So what's the downstream triage when you come out of this mode of Okay, here you go. And how do you get people set up and then how they transform and re invent? >>Yeah, at this time, the disaster recovery from how do you get in that phase one with this immediate move was so prominent. And we're trying to work through that phase one and sort into sort of phase two delivery of education, which is you're moving with scale moving with agility into this world, speed and agility are really going to be the new normal for education. There were some advances that just weren't happening quick enough. Students should always have access to 24 7 learning, um, and access into that mobile arena. And they weren't having that several things that we did was we looked at our infrastructure were some of those key infrastructure elements that helped with both learning and work remotely. There were things such as Amazon, your work Doc's, which enables thieves virtual our workspaces, which enable virtual desktop environments, and appstream, which enables it APs to be streamed through virtual arena onto your removal or your desktop. Yeah, Amazon connect as I. As I mentioned before, there were services that were vital in helping speed into the cloud that was quick burst into the cloud. And so we enabled some of those services to have special promotional free rates or a given time period, and we have actually now extended that offer a into the fall into September 30th. So first we have to help people really quickly with educators. So I run this program AWS Educate, which is Amazon's global program. To provide students and educators around the world with resource is needed, help them get into cloud learning. But what we saw was that teachers around the world we're not prepared for this massive shift what we did to help that preparedness is we looked at our educators. We found that we did a survey over the weekend and found that 68% of them had significant experience or enough experience in teaching distance or online virtual education, too. Potentially leverage that for other educators around the world. So we and the other thing is teachers are really eager to help other teachers in this move, especially as they saw and they empathize with With her was the panic. Our confusion are best practices and moving into that online arena. So we saw both that they had that experience in a mass willingness to help other people, and we immediately spun up a Siri's of educator and educator help tools, whether it was a Morris Valadez are No a gift, and Doug Berman providing webinars and office hours for other educators around the world. We also did a separate tech talks offering for students. So there were there was the helping scale, whether it's getting blackboard as they ramped up to over 50 x of their normal load in 24 hours to help them deliver on that scale, whether it waas the Egyptian ministry that was trying to had to understand. How could they help students access the information that they need it in speed? And they worked with thinkI, which is a net educational technology provider, to provide access to 22 million students who needed to get access online or whether it was the educator mobilization initiative that we ran. Threat US of AWS Educate Helps Teachers have the resource is that they need it with the speed that they needed to get online. This is we are working. We're learning from our customers. As this happens, this is a moving target. But when I move from this immediacy of pushing people into the virtual space into what's gonna happen this summer, as students need toe recapture, learning that they might have lost in the spring are depending where you are worldwide. There's getting to your point all K 12 higher ed and educational technology providers into the position where they can act with that agility and speed. And it's also helping those educators as they go through this. We're learning from our customers every day. >>Yeah, I want to get into those some of those lessons, but one of things that will say, You know, I'm really bullish about what you do. Getting cloud education, I think, is going to change the literacy and also job opportunities out there. I'm a huge believer that public sector is the next growth wave, just like I t was. And it's almost the same movie, right? You have inadequate systems. It's all outdated. You need these workloads, need to run and then run effectively, which you guys have done. But the interesting thing with Cove it is it essentially exposes the scabs and the uh out there because, you know, online has been an augmentation to the physical space. So when you pull that back, people like me go, wait a minute. I have kids. I'm trying to understand their learning impact. Everyone sees it now. It's almost like it's exposed. Whether it's under provisioned VP ends or black boys networking and everyone's pointing their fingers. It's your fault and its the end. So you brought this up. There's now stakeholders whose jobs depend upon something that's now primary that wasn't primary before. Whether it's the presenter, the content presented the teacher certainly high availability. I t. Um >>all these things >>are just under huge pressure. So I gotta ask you, what are the key lessons and learnings that you have seen over the past few months that you could share because people are shell shocked and they're trying to move faster? >>Yeah. So first of all is speed and agility and education are the new normal. They should have been here for a while. They need to be here now when you've got a 30 year textbook, your ruling over education when students need to get the skills of tomorrow. Today we need to be adapting quickly in order to give those students the skills to give educational institution those opportunities. Every institution needs to be enable virtual education. Every institution needs to have disaster recovery solutions and they weren't in place. These solutions need to be comprehensive. Students need access to devices. Teachers need access to professional development. We need contact centers. We worked with Los Angeles Unified School District not just to stand up a contact center, which we did with yeah, Amazon connect. But we also connected their high school seniors too, with headphones. I think we provide 132,000 students with headphones. We are helping to source with through our Amazon business relationship devices for everybody. Every student needs access in their home. Every student needs access to great learning and they needed on demand. Teachers need that readiness. I think the other thing that's happening is the whole world is again speeding through changes that probably should have happened to the system already that virtual learning is vital. Another thing that's vital is lifelong learning. We're finding that and we probably should have already seen. This is everybody needs to be a student throughout their entire life, and they need to be streaming in and out of education. The only way that this could be properly done is through virtual environments through the cloud and through an access to on demand learning. We believe that this that the work that's being done I was actually talking to some people in Australia the other day and they're saying, You know, the government is moving away from degree centrist city and moving into a more modular stackable education. We've been building AWS educate to stack to the job to stack to careers, and that type of move into education, I think, is also being spent So were you were seeing the that move Apple absolutely accelerate. We're also seeing the need to accelerate the speed to research. Obviously with what's going on going on with Kobe 19 there is a need for tools to connect our researchers two cures to diagnostic, um, opportunities. We worked with the University of British Columbia, Vancouver General Hospital and the Vancouver I Get this thing, the Vancouver Coastal Health Research UNE Institute to develop to use Amazon sage maker to speed ai diagnostic tool so that pushed towards research is absolutely vital as well. We just announced a $20 million investment in helping you speak that that research to market so education needs to operate at scale education needs to operate at speed, and education needs to deliver to a changing customer. And we've got to be partners on that journey. >>And I think I would just add reinvent a word. You guys name your conference after every year. This is a re invention opportunity. Clearly, um, and you know, I was talking to some other parents is like, I'm not going to send my kids to school online learning for zoom interview, zoom, zoom, zoom classes. I'm like, Hey, you know, get a cloud data engineering degree from Amazon educate because they'll have a job like that. Once you put on linked in the job skills are out there. The jobs are needed. Skills aren't so. I got to ask you, you know, with this whole re Skilling, whether it's a Gap year student in between semesters, while this takes care of our up Skilling people on the job, this is huge world economic form said by 2020 half of the employees will need to be re skilled up skilled. This is a huge impact and even more focus with covert 19. >>That's absolutely correct. Yeah, I think one thing that's happening is we're cloud computing has been the number one Lincoln skill for the past four or five years. The the skill. Whether it's software development in the cloud cloud architecture, your data world, our cyber security and other operational rules, those are going to be in the most demand. Those are the skills that are growing. We need to be able prepare people for rules in technology. The lifelong worker, the re skill up skill opportunities, absolutely vital Gap year is going to be available for some students. But we also got a look at you know how the this that how covert 19 can accelerate gaps between students. Every student needs access to high quality education. Every teacher needs to be equipped with the latest professional development. We've got focused like a laser, not just on. The people could afford a gap. Here are the people who who are going to be some schools who actually had solutions that could immediately push there kids into their their youth, their students in college or even employees. You need those re skills. We're all home. But it also needs to extend into the middle of the middle of Los Angeles and and you're into low income students. And in Egypt, I was really excited. We we've been working with Northern Virginia community colleges as I think you know, they were one of the lead institutions. On launching an associate degree in the cloud, they took their courses and offer what they call a jump year to 70,000 high school senior. Our high school students in Northern Virginia in the northern Virginia area, including enabling some of our cloud computing horses, are the work courses that we worked on with them to the students. So yeah, those new partnerships, that extension of college into high school and college into re skill up skills, absolutely vital. But institutions need to be able to move fast with the tools that the cloud provides you into those arena. >>Well, you know, I think you've got a really hard job to do there. It's foundational in love, what you're doing and you know me. I've been harping people who watch the Cube know that I'm always chirping and talking about how the learning is non linear. It's horizontally scalable. There's different application. You can have an application for education. It's a Siri's of different things. The workload of learning is completely different. I think to me what you guys are doing right now setting that basics foundation infrastructure. It's like the E. C two s three model. Then you got more on top of it platform, and I think ultimately the creativity is going to come from the marketplace. Whoever can build those workloads in a very agile, scalable way to meet the needs, because, let's face it, it can't be boring. Education is gonna be robust, resilient and got to deliver the payload and that's gonna be customized applications that have yet to be invented. Reinvented >>absolutely. Hopefully were jump starting that next wave of innovation spreading the opportunities Teoh all students. Hopefully we are really looking at those endemic issues and education and following leaders like University of Arizona. What the Ministry of Education, um in in Egypt has done and Northern Virginia community. Hopefully we are really taking this the opportunity of this disaster to invent on behalf of our students. Bring in you forward to the 21st century as opposed to yeah, just looking at this naval gazing way we do wrong and the past. This is an exciting opportunity, albeit a obviously scary one is we're all dealing with this with this and >>there's no doubt once we've retrenching and get some solid ground postcode 19. It's a reinvention and a reimagine growth market opportunity because you got changing technology, changing economics and changing expectations and experiences that are needed. These are three major things going down right now. >>Absolutely, absolutely. And to your point, the retraining of workers, the up skill that the great thing is that governments realize this imperative as do educational institutions and obviously yet students. This is, and we seem like what educators can do when they want to help. Yeah, other educators, this is This is an opportunity in our society to really look at every everybody is a constant learner were a constant learning from our customers. But everybody, there is no end to education. It cannot be terminal. And this is an opportunity to really provide the students learners with skills that they need in an on demand fashion at all times and re think re innovate, reinvent the way we look at education in general. >>Well, a man, Jeff Bezos says Day one. It's a new day, one, right? So you know that there is going to reinvent Ken. You doing great work. Director of worldwide education programs Ken Eisner with Amazon Web services, Certifications and degrees and cloud computing will be the norm. It's gonna happen again. If you're a cloud data engineer. Data says you're going to get a job. I mean, no doubt about it. So thanks so much for sharing your insights. Really appreciate it. Thank you, >>John. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. >>Can guys They're here Inside the Cube. Virtual coverage of AWS Public sector Online Summit. We've been virtualized. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah, >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back, You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube were in Seattle, >> Washington downtown, right next to the convention center for the AWS. Imagine e d. You show. It's a second year of the show found by Andrew Cohen. His crew, part of Theresa's public sector group, really focused on education. Education means everything from K through 12 higher education and community college education, getting out of the military and retraining education. It's ah, it's a really huge category, and it's everything from, you know, getting the colleges to do a better job by being on cloud infrastructure, innovating and really thinking outside the box are really excited to have the man who's doing a lot of the work on the curriculum development in the education is Ken Eisner is the director of worldwide education programs for AWS. Educate can great to see you. Thank you so much for having absolutely nice shot out this morning by Theresa, she said. She just keeps asking you for more. So >> you want to deliver for Theresa? Carl says she is. She is a dynamo and she drives us >> all she does. So let's dive into it a little bit. So, you know, there was, Ah, great line that they played in the keynote with Andy talking about, You know, we cannot be protecting old institutions. We need to think about the kids is a story I hear all the time where somebody came from a time machine from 17 76 and landed here today. It wouldn't recognize how we talk, how we get around, but they would recognize one thing, and unfortunately, that's the school house down at the end of the block. So you guys are trying to change that. You're really trying to revolutionize what's happening in education, give us a little bit of background on some of the specific things that you're working on today. >> Yeah, I I think Andy, one of the things that he mentioned at that time was that education is really in a crisis on. We need to be inventing at a rapid rate. We need to show that invented simplify inside that occassion. Andi, he's incredibly, he's correct. The students are our customers, and we've got to be changing things for them. What we've been really excited to see is that with this giant growth in cloud computing A W S. It was the fastest I T vendor to ever hit $10,000,000,000 a year. The run rate We're now growing at a 42% or 41% year over year growth Ray and $31,000,000,000 a year Lee company. It's creating this giant cloud computing opportunity cloud computing in the number one Lincoln Skill for the past four years in Rome, when we look at that software development to cloud architecture to the data science and artificial intelligence and data analytics and cyber security rules. But we're not preparing kids for this. Market Gallop ran a study that that showed about 11% of business executives thought that students were prepared for their jobs. It's not working, It's gotta change. And the exciting thing that's happening right now is workforce development. Governments are really pushing for change in education, and it's starting to happen >> right? It's pretty amazing were here last year. The team last year was very much round the community college releases and the certification of the associate programs and trial down in Southern California, and this year. I've been surprised. We've had two guests on where it's the state governor has pushed these initiatives not at the district level, the city level, but from the state winning both Louisiana as well as Virginia. That's pretty amazing support to move in such an aggressive direction and really a new area. >> Yeah, I was actually just moderating a panel where we had Virginia, Louisiana, in California, all sitting down talking about that scaling statewide strategy. We had announcements from the entire CUNY and Sunni or City University of New York and State University of New York system to do both two and four year programs in Cloud Computing. And Louisiana announced it with their K 12 system, their community college system and their four year with Governor John Bel Edwards making the announcement two months ago. So right we are seeing this scaling consortium, a play where institutions are collaborating across themselves. They're collaborating vertically with your higher ed and K 12 and yet direct to the workforce because we need to be hiring people at such a rapid ray that we we need to be also putting a lot of skin in the game and that story that happened so again, I agree with Andy said. Education is at a crisis. But now we're starting to see change makers inside of education, making that move right. It's interesting. I wonder, >> you know, is it? Is it? I don't want to say second tier, that's the wrong word, but kind of what I'm thinking, you know, kind of these other institutions that the schools that don't necessarily have the super top in cachet, you know who are forced to be innovative, right? We're number two. We try harder. As they used to say in the in the Hertz commercial. Um, really a lot of creativity coming out of again the community colleges last year in L. A. Which I was, I was blown away, that kind of understand cause that specifically to skill people up to get a job. But now you're hearing it in much more kind of traditional institutions and doing really innovative things like the thing with the the Marines teaching active duty Marines about data science. >> Yeah, who came up with that idea that phenomenal Well, you know, data permeates every threat. It's not just impure data science, jobs and machine learning jobs. There's air brilliantly important, but it's also in marketing jobs and business jobs. And so on. Dad Analytics, that intelligence, security, cybersecurity so important that you think, God, you Northern Virginia Community College in U. S. Marine Corps are working for to make these programs available to their veterans and active military. The other thing is, they're sharing it with the rest of the student by. So that's I think another thing that's happening is this sharing this ability, all of for this cloud degree program that AWS educate is running. All these institutions are sharing their curricula. So the stuff that was done in Los Angeles is being learned in Virginia is the stuff that the U. S Marine Corps is doing is being available to students. Who are you not in military occupations? I think that collaboration mode is is amazing. The thing they say about community colleges and just this new locus of control for education on dhe. Why it's changing community colleges. You're right there. They're moving fast. These institutions have a bias for action. They know they have to. You change the r A. Y right? It's about preventing students for this work for, but they also serve as a flywheel to those four year institutions back to the 12 into the into the workforce and they hit you underserved audience. Is that the rest? So that you were not all picking from the same crew? You cannot keep going to just your lead institutions and recruit. We have to grow that pipeline. So you thank thank these places for moving quick brand operating for their student, right? >> Right, And and And that's where the innovation happens, right? I mean, that's that's, uh, that that's goodness. And the other thing that that was pretty interesting was, um, you know, obviously Skilling people up to get jobs. You need to hire him. That's pretty. That's pretty obvious and simple, but really bringing kind of big data attitude analytics attitude into the universities across into the research departments and the medical schools. And you think at first well, of course, researchers are data centric, right? They've been doing it that way for a long time, but they haven't been doing it and kind of the modern big, big data, real time analytics, you know, streaming data, not sampling data, all the data. So so even bringing that type of point of view, I don't know mindset to the academic institutions outside of what they're doing for the students. >> Absolutely. The machine learning is really changing the game. This notion of big data, the way that costs have gone down in terms of storing and utilizing data and right, it's streaming data. It's non Columbia or down, as opposed to yeah, the old pure sequel set up right that that is a game changer. No longer can you make just can you make a theory and tested out theories air coming streaming by looking at that data and letting it do some work for you, which is kind of machine learning, artificial intelligence path, and it's all becoming democratized. So, yes, researchers need to need learn these new past two to make sense and tow leverage. This with that big data on the medical center site, there are cures that can be discerned again. Some of our most pressing diseases by leveraging data way gonna change. And we, by the way, we gotta change that mindset, not just yeah, the phD level, but actually at the K 12 levels. Are kids learning the right skills to prepare them for you this new big data world once they get into higher ed, right? And then the last piece, which again we've seen >> on the Enterprise. You've kind of seen the movie on the enterprise side in terms of of cloud adoption. What AWS has done is at first it's a better, more efficient way to run your infrastructure. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of good things that come from running a cloud infrastructure, but >> that's not. But that's not the end, right? The answer to the question >> is the innovation right? It's It's the speed of change, of speed development and some of the things that we're seeing here around the competitive nature of higher education, trying to appeal to the younger kids because you're competing for their time and attention in there. And they're dollar really interesting stuff with Alexa and some of these other kind of innovation, which is where the goodness really starts to pay off on a cloud investment. >> Yeah, without a doubt, Alexa Week AWS came up with robo maker and Deep Racer on our last reinvent, and there's there's organizations at the K 12 level like First Robotics and Project lead. The way they're doing really cool stuff by making this this relevant it you education becomes more relevant when kids get to do hands on stuff. A W S lowers the price for failure lowers the ability you can just open a browser and do real world hands on bay hands on stuff robotics, a rvr that all of these things again are game changers inside the classroom. But you also have to connect it to jobs at the end, right? And if your educational institutions can become more relevant to their students in terms of preparing them for jobs like they've done in Santa Monica College and like they're doing in Northern Virginia Community College across the state of Louisiana and by May putting the real world stuff in the hands of their kids, they will then start to attract assumes. We saw this happen in Santa Monica. They opened up one class, a classroom of 35 students that sold out in a day. They opened another co ward of 35 sold out in another day or two. The name went from 70 students. Last year, about 325 they opened up this California cloud workforce project where they now have 825 students of five. These Northern Virginia Community College. They're they're cloud associate degree that they ran into tandem with AWS Educate grew from 30 students at the start of the year to well over 100. Now the's programs will drive students to them, right and students will get a job at the end. >> Right? Right, well and can. And can the school support the demand? I mean, that's That's a problem we see with CS, right? Everyone says, Tell your kids to take CS. They want to take CS. Guess what? There's no sections, hope in C. S. So you know, thinking of it in a different way, a little bit more innovative way providing that infrastructure kind of ready to go in a cloud based way. Now we'll hopefully enable them to get more kids and really fulfill the demand. >> Absolutely. There's another thing with professional development. I think you're hitting on, so we definitely have a shortage in terms of teachers who are capable to teach about software development and cloud architecture and data sciences and cybersecurity. So we're putting AWS educators putting a specific focus on professional development. We also want to bring Amazonian, Tze and our customers and partners into the classroom to help with that, because the work based learning and the focus on subject matter expert experts is also important. But we really need to have programs both from industry as well as government out support new teachers coming into this field and in service training for existing teachers to make sure, because yes, we launch those programs and students will come. We have to make sure that were adequately preparing teachers. It's not it's not. It's not easy, but again, we're seeing whether it's Koda Cole out of yeah out of, uh, Roosevelt High School. Are the people that were working with George Mason University and so on were seeing such an appetite for making change for their students? And so they're putting in those extra hours they're getting that AWS certification, and they're getting stronger, prepared to teach inside the clients. >> That's amazing, cause right. Teachers have so many conflict ing draws on their time, many of which have nothing to do with teaching right whether it's regulations. And there's just so many things the teachers have to deal with. So you know the fact that they're encouraged. The fact that they want t to spend and invest in this is really a good sign and really a nice kind of indicator to you and the team that, you know, you guys were hitting something really, really positive. >> Yeah, I think we've had its this foam oh fear of missing out opportunity. There's the excitement of the cloud. There's the excitement of watching your kids. You're really transformed their lives. And it could be Alfredo Cologne who came over from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. You wiped out his economic potential and started taking AWS educate. And you're learning some of these pathways and then landing a job as the Dev Ops engineered. When you see the transformation in your students, no matter what their background is, it is. It is a game changer. This has got to be you. Listen, I love watching that women's team when I win the World Cup, and that the excitement cloud is like the new sport. Robotics is the new sport for these kids. They'll bring them on >> pathways to career, right. We'll take for taking a few minutes in The passion comes through, Andrew Koza big passion guy. And we know Teresa is a CZ Well, so it shines through and keep doing good work. >> Thank you so much for the time. Alright, he's can on Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're in downtown Seattle. A aws. Imagine e d. Thanks for watching. >> We'll see you next time.

>> from Seattle WASHINGTON. It's the Q covering AWS Imagine brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the cue, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS. Imagine, Edie, you event. It's a small conference. It's a second year, but it'll crow like a weed like everything else does the of us. And it's all about Amazon and a degree. As for education, and that's everything from K through 12 community college, higher education, retraining vets coming out of the service. It's a really big area. And we're really excited to have fresh off his keynote presentations where he changed his title on me from what it was >> this morning tow. It was the senator duties >> David Raymond, the director of what was the Virginia Cyber Range and now is the U. S. Cyber range. Virginia Tech. David, Great to see you. >> Yeah, Thank you. Thanks. So the Virginia cyber age actually will continue to exist in its current form. Okay, Well, it'll still serve faculty and students in the in the Commonwealth of Virginia, funded by the state of Virginia. Now the U. S. Cyber Angel fund will provide service to folks outside over, >> so we jumped ahead. So? So it's back up. A step ladder is the Virginia, >> So the Virginia Cyber Range provides courseware and infrastructure so students could do hands on cyber security, educational activities in Virginia, high schools and colleges so funded by the state of Virginia and, um provides this service at no charge to the schools >> and even in high school, >> even in high school. Yes, so now that there are now cybersecurity courses in the Virginia Department of Education course catalogue as of two years ago, and I mean they've grown like wildfire, >> I'm just so a ton of talk here about skills gap. And there's tremendous skills gap. Even the machine's gonna take everybody's job. There's a whole lot of jobs are filled, but what's interesting? I mean, it's the high school angle is really weird. I mean, how do you Most high school kids haven't even kind of clued in tow, privacy and security, opting in and opting out. It's gotta be a really interesting conversation when now you bring security into that a potential career into that and directly reflects on all those things that you do on your phone. >> Well, I would argue that that's exactly the problem. Students are not exposed to cyber security, you know. They don't want the curia potentials are they really don't understand what it is we talked about. We talked about teenagers being digital natives. Really? They know how to use smartphones. They know how to use computers, but they don't understand how they work. And they don't understand the security aspects that go along with using all this technology. And I would argue that by the time a student gets into college they have a plan, right? So I have a student in college. He's he's gonna be a doctor. He knows what a doctor is. He heard of that his whole life. And in high school, he was able to get certified as a nursing assistant. We need cyber security in that same realm, right? If we start students in high school and we and we expose them to cybersecurity courses, they're all elective courses. Some of the students will latch onto it, and I'll say, Hey, this is what I want to be when I grew up. And in Virginia, we have we have this dearth of cyber security expertise and this is true across the country. In Virginia, right now, we have over 30,000 cyber security jobs that are unfilled. That's about 1/3 of the cyber security jobs in this state. And I mean, that's a serious problem, not only in Virginia but nationwide. And one of the ways to fix that is to get high school students exposed to cybersecurity classes, give them some real hands on opportunities. So they're really doing it, not just learning the words and passing the test, and I mean really again in Virginia, this is this is grown like wildfire and really thinks revolutionized cybersecurity education in the state. >> And what are some of the topics that say, a high school level, where you know you're kind of getting versed on the vocabulary and the terminology vs when they go into into college and start to take those types, of course, is >> yeah, so in Virginia, there's actually cybersecurity courses across the C T E career pathways. And so SETI is the career and technical education curricula. And so there are courses like cyber security and health care, where students learn about personal health data and how to secure that specific specific kinds of data, they learn about the regulations behind that data. There's healthcare in manufacturing, where students learn about industrial control systems and you know how those things need to be secured and how they're different from a laptop or a phone. And the way those air secured and what feeds into all of those courses is an introductory course. Cyber security fundamentals, where students learn some of the very basics they learn the terminology. They learn things like the C I. A. Triad right, confidentiality, integrity and availability of the three basic components of security that you try to maintain for any system. So they start out learning the basics. But still they're doing that hands on. So they're so they're in a network environment where they see that you know that later on in the course during Capstone exercises, they might see someone trying to attack a computer that they're that they're tasked to defend and a defender of what does that look like? What are the things that I'm going to do? That computer? You know, I might install anti virus. I might have a firewall on the computer. And how do I set that up and etcetera etcetera. So high school start with the basics. As as students progressed through their high school years, there are opportunities to take further more advanced classes in the high schools. And then when they get to college, some of those students are gonna have latched onto cyber security as a potential career field. Now, now we've got him right way, get him into the right into the right majors and into the right courses. And our hope is that that's gonna sort of kick start this pipeline of students in Virginia colleges, >> right? And then I wonder if you could >> talk a little bit about the support at the state level. And it's pretty interesting that you had him from the state level we heard earlier today about supported the state level. And it was Louisiana for for another big initiative. So you know that the fact that the governor and the Legislature are basically branding this at the state level, not the individual school district level, is a pretty strong statement of the prioritization that they're putting on this >> that has been critical to our success. If we didn't have state level support, significant state level support, there's no way we could be where we are. So the previous governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, he latched on to cyber security education as one of his signature initiatives. In fact, he was the president of the State Governors Association, and in that role he cybersecurity was one of his condition. So so he felt strongly about educating K 12 education college students feeding that cybersecurity pipeline Onda Cyberangels one of one of a handful of different initiatives. So they were veterans scholarships, and there were some community college scholarships and other other initiatives. Some of those are still ongoing so far are not. But but Cyber Range has been very successful. Funded by the state provides a service at no cost to high schools and colleges on Dad's Been >> critically, I can't help. We're at our say earlier this year, and I'm just thinking of all the CEOs that I was sitting with over the course of a couple of days that are probably looking for your phone number right now. Make introduction. But I'm curious. Are are the company's security companies. I mean, Arcee is a huge show. Amazon just had their first ever security conference means a lot of money being invested in this space. Are they behind it? Have you have you looked for in a kind of private company participation to help? Because they desperately need these employees? >> Definitely. So we've just started down that road, Really? I mean, our state funding has kept us strong to this point in our state funding is gonna continue into the foreseeable future. But you're right. There are definitely opportunities to work with industry. Certainly a DBS has been a very strong partner of our since the very beginning. They really I mean, without without the help of some, some of their cloud architects and other technical folks way could not have built what we built in the eight of us. Cloud. We've also been talking to Palo Alto about using some of their virtual appliances in our network environments. So yeah, so we're definitely going down the road of industry partners and that will continue to grow, I'm sure >> So then fast forward today to the keynote and your your announcement that now you taking it beyond just Virginia. So now it's the U. S. Cyber range. Have that come apart? Come about. What does that mean? >> Yes, So we've been We've been sharing the story of the Virginia cyber range for the last couple of years, and I goto national conferences and talk about it. And, um, just to just sort of inform other states, other other school systems what Virginia's doing. How could you? How could you potentially match what we're doing and what The question that I keep getting is I don't want to reinvent the wheel. How can I buy what you have? And that's been sort of a constant drumbeat over the last couple of years. So we decided fairly early on that we might want to try to expand beyond Virginia, and it just sort of the conditions were right about six months ago. So we set a mark on the wall, he said. In Summer of 2019 we're gonna make this available to folks outside of Virginia. And so, so again, the Virginia Cyberangels still exist. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U. S cyber range is still part of Virginia Tech. So within Virginia Tech, but we will have to we will have to essentially recoup our costs so we'll have to spend money on cloud infrastructure and We'll have to spend salary money on folks who support this effort. And so we'll recoup costs from folks that are outside of Virginia using our service. But, um, we think the costs are gonna be very competitive compared to similar efforts. And we're looking forward to some successes here. >> And do you think you're you're kind of breakthrough will be at the high school level, the You know, that underground level, you know, where do you kind of see the opportunities? You've got the whole thing covered with state support in Virginia. How does that get started in California? How's that get started here? Yeah, that's a Washington state. >> That's a great question. So really, when we started this, I thought we were building a thing for higher ed. That's my experience. I've been teaching cyber security and higher ed for several years, and I knew I knew what I would want if I was using it, and I do use it. So I teach classes at Virginia Tech Graduate program. So I I used the Virginia side in my class, and, um, what has happened is that the high schools have latched onto this as I mentioned, and Most of our users are high schools. In Virginia, we have 180. Virginia High School is using the Virgin Cyber. That's almost >> 188 1 >> 180. That's almost half the high schools in the state using the Virginia cyber age. So we think. And if you think about, you know, higher. Ed has been teaching cybersecurity classes that the faculty members who have been teaching them a lot of them have set up their own network infrastructure. They have it set up the way they want it, and it ties into their existing courseware, and you know they're going to use that, At least for now. What we provide is is something that makes it so that a high school or a community college doesn't have to figure out how to fund or figure out how to actually put this network architecture together. They just come to us. They have the flexibility of the flexibility to use, just are very basic plug and play network environments, or they have flexibility to, um, make modifications depending on how sophisticated they themselves are with with, you know, manipulating systems and many playing the network so so Our expectation is that the biggest growth is going to be in the high school market, >> right? That's great, because when you say cyber range God, finally, Donna me use it like a target range. It's like a place to go practice >> where the name comes from, right? >> Absolutely. If I finally like okay, I get it. So because it's not only the curriculum and the course where and everything else but it's actually an environment, it depends on the stage things and do things exactly >> So students could d'oh offensive, offensive and defensive cybersecurity activities. And so early on, when we were teaching students howto hack essentially in colleges, you know, there were people who were concerned about that on the military case we make for that is you can't teach somebody how to defend unless they understand how they're gonna be attacked. The same is true in this case. So all of our all of our course, where has lots of ethics and no other legal and other other discussions embedded throughout. So students understand the implications of what their actions would be if they do it somewhere else. And, um, right, these are all isolated network environments their places where students can get hands on in a place where they can essentially do whatever they want without causing trouble on the school network or on the Internet. And it's very much akin to a rifle range, >> right? Like you said, you can have different scenarios. And I would imagine there's probably gonna be competitions of you think. Fact. You know what's going on in the robotics world for lots of all these things, right? Like white hat, black hat hacker. Well, very, very exciting. David, Congratulations. And it sounds like you're well on your way. Thanks. Great. Alright, >> He's David. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were at Washington State Convention Centre just across the street at a W s. Imagine. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. >> Thanks.

>> From Seattle, Washington, it's the Cube! Covering AWS Imagine, brought to you by Amazon web services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Rick here with the Cube. We're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference, it's the second year of the conference, we came up last year, I think it was like 400 people, this year's like 800 people, like all the Amazons, it grows and grows and grows. Really again, specifically a carve out from the public sector group, all about education, that's K-12, that's higher education, it's community college education, it's retraining vets, it's a huge thing. We're really excited to have the ring leader this whole event, he's just coming off the keynote, he's Andrew Ko, he's a global education director for AWS, working for Teresa. Andrew, great to see you. >> Thank you very much for having us here. >> What an event! >> Yes! >> And good job on the keynote, you guys covered a lot of different segments. This education opportunity challenge-- >> Yah. >> Is so multifaceted. >> Yes. >> Now how do you kind of organize again, what are the ways that you kind of look at this opportunity? >> Well, that's a great point, we could go on for days and for so many of the important topics, but we've really broken it down into three themes that we've carried on from last year. Really wanted to help and assist when it comes to employability. As we talk about the growth of AWS Cloud, what we're finding is there's a tremendous amount of lack of skilled talent to really fulfill those demands. So workforce is one of those particular areas. Secondly, we're seeing a tremendous growth on machine learning. The way to really predict things, whether it's student success or research. Finally, we also have a third theme that is come around innovation and transformation. Not so much always about the IT, but how are people moving along quickly on their Cloud journey? And really enabling a lot of their stakeholders, like researchers, medical centers, as well as students, to really adopt and learn technology but also embrace it in very very new innovative ways. >> Right. It's it's funny, there was a video showed in the keynote with Andy and I just want to pull the quote where you said it's not about protecting today, the infrastructure-- >> Yup. >> And we've joked many times on air about if when the time machine and you pulled somebody from 1760 and they came here-- >> Andrew: Yah. >> The only thing they'd recognize is the schoolhouse, right? >> Andrew: Right. >> But you guys are really working to change that. Everything from really, Cloud as an infrastructure efficiency play-- >> Andrew: Right. >> All the way through Cloud as an enabler for innovation, doing some really crazy things with Alexa and some of the other projects that are underway. >> Absolutely. And and we always start with our customers first. They're really the ones that have that vision and want to ensure that it's improved, and so we're excited to be a part of that journey. And as just a couple examples on how that is starting to change, is through this adaptive way of looking at information and data, and as an example as I mentioned that we're going to have an incredible panel sessions of many of our speakers, and one of which I like to call out is with the California Community College. They have over 2.1 million students at any given year, and now with the technology, they can start to try to look at patterns of success for students, patterns of challenges, and really start to make education more interactive, which is a one-way like what you were mentioning maybe it was a hundred years ago. >> Right, with the chalkboard. (chuckles) >> So it's so funny with, we talk about ML and AI-- >> Yup. >> You know, everyone's talks in the paper about, you know, the machines are going to take all of our jobs, but if you go to the back pages of the paper, I don't know if they have that anymore-- >> Yah. (chuckles) >> There's a whole lot of open recs, right? >> Yup. >> People can't hire fast enough for these jobs-- >> Right. >> So it's actually that's a much bigger problem than them taking jobs away right now, so this re-skilling is really really significant. >> Absolutely. And we always say that there's not necessarily always a jobs gap, but it's really a skills gap that are going unfulfilled. So there is a change in a lot of the talents that are required, but that's why it's so important for us representing education. That's not just about the infrastructure but how do we better prepare not just the learners of today that need some re-skilling, but also the learners for tomorrow, and provide them a pathway in a way to be interested in it, but also more importantly, getting jobs. >> Jeff: Right. >> The end of day, it's not just about a learning thing, it's about an economic thing. And so we're finding all those announcements as you heard earlier, such as Brazil. With SENAI, they're going to now announce that this curriculum is going to be available for 2.5 million education learners across the entire country, working with 740 universities so we're really excited to be behind that, and we would love to take the credit but really it's our customers, it's our leaders, it's those individuals that are really cutting edge and making those things happen. >> Jeff: Right. So again, last year was a lot about the community college and the certification of those programs, the accreditation. This year you're introducing bachelor programs, and-- >> Yes. >> Really amazing statement in the keynote about the governor of the state of Louisiana-- >> Yes. >> Basically dictating the importance of having a four-year degree based on Cloud skills. That's pretty significant. >> It's exciting. I mean, and I would say, as living in Virginia we're excited to see Northern Virginia alongside with Santa Monica Community College and Columbus Day Community College jointly together created, it wasn't us that created it, it was actually the faculty members and we got together created it, and the governor of Louisiana just took it to the next level. He really, alongside with his leadership team, of the individual leaders of the state community colleges as well as the universities said not only are we going to adopt the two-year across the state but we're going to have it articulate, allowing for students to get credit at the four-year. >> Jeff: Right. >> And why that's important, Jeff, is that we want to make sure that the pathway has on-ramps of how and where you can intersect and to get re-skilled, but also off-ramps. Some of them may get jobs right away at community college, some of them want to go to a four-year and go have more deeper learning and a different experience so-- >> Jeff: Right. >> All those options are now open. >> Right. >> And having that governor just indicates that it's important at a massive massive scale. >> Jeff: Yah. So another thing, we we have to talk about Alexa right? I forget how many millions of units you said are sold-- >> Hundred million devices last time I checked, yah. 70,000 skills. >> Lots and lots of skills, right, the skills. So it's pretty interesting in terms of really kind of helping the universities, beside just be more efficient with the Cloud infrastructure but actually appeal to their customers' students-- [Andrew] Yah. >> In a very very different way. And a pretty creative way to use Alexa and what's what's fascinating to me is I don't think we've barely scratched the surface-- >> Andrew: That's correct. >> Of voice, as a UI. >> Andrew: Yah. >> We won't. We're old, we have thumbs. (chuckles) >> But the kids coming up, right? Eventually that's going to flip-- >> Andrew: Right. >> And it's going to be more voice than keyboards so you guys took an interesting tack from the beginning, opening up the API to let people program it, versus just learning-- >> Absolutely. >> Another method. So some exciting skills, what are some of the ones that that surprise you as you go around-- >> Well-- >> To visit these customers? >> There's so many of them, it's hard to announce and discuss all of them but I would definitely say yes, this next generation, not the old fuddy-duddies like me, learn very differently now. And they're expecting to learn very differently and I think voice and natural user interface is going to be the big thing that people are going to be comfortable to talk to things and have responses back, and some of the things that we announced with our partners, well actually a few weeks ago that we mentioned in the keynote, like Kahoot!, one of the larger interactive ways of young students learning from gamification. Now they can actually speak to it, and engage in much different ways rather than just typing on a keyboard or or coding or typing things in phones, so that's exciting. Or ACT. As you just mentioned earlier, you have a young rising sophomore in a university. They probably had to, she or he had to probably study in order to get into college. Well, what if there was a voice-enabled advisor of how to take the test and the examination and that's what ACT launched. >> Jeff: Right. >> Just some small examples, and now we want to extend that excitement by encouraging other education technology companies to enroll their application by South by Southwest that we're going to announce the winners there-- >> Jeff: Right. >> Next year. So to have a lot of energy, have the educators, and just build on that incredible momentum. >> Alright Andrew, so before I let you go, I know that you got a couple thousand people here waiting to talk to you. (chuckles) The other thing is you guys have gone outside the classroom, right? >> Mm-hmm. >> Really interesting conversation about helping active-duty marines learn how to use data. Really interesting conversations about bringing the big data revolution more heavily into research and more heavily into medical and more heavily into those types of activities that happen at top-tier universities. >> Andrew: Yah. >> Really different way to again apply this revolution that's been happening on the commercial side, the enterprise side into which we play, and and helping people adapt and and evolve and really embrace big data as a tool in solving these other problems. >> Absolutely. And I think you mentioned some very important points there. Number one for us, we always think of learners as individuals that are just growing up through the educational system. But we also have learners that are lifelong learners, that have changing careers or alternating changing, so we're excited to be a part of the announcement with Northern Virginia Community College where they created a special program for Marine Corps, so they can come out and learn data intelligence, that would be applied for all, but also focused with the Marine Corps individuals there to really learn another skill set and apply it to a new occupation. >> Jeff: In their active duty. This is not for when they come out-- >> Absolutely. >> For for re-train. This is in while they're in their >> Very important. >> In their existing job. >> Absolutely. And that so that when they come out they have now applied skills in addition to the skills that they've learned being in the Marine Corps, so that they can also become really productive right after their enlistment there. >> Jeff: Right. >> And then you mentioned about research, I mean that is also an exciting thing that people so often also forget, that education also extends out there, and so like UCLA, they've created a new department blending medicine as well as engineering to tackle very important research like cancer and genomics, and so those complicated facets are now no longer is IT a separate conversation, but it's an infused way where much more high-performance computing can handle some interesting research to accelerate the outcomes. >> Right. Well Andrew, well thanks for inviting us to be here for the ride. We've we've been along the AWS ride (chuckles) >> For a while, from summits in 2012 and reinvents so we know it's going to grow, we're excited to watch it, and we'll see you next year. >> Jeff, thank you very much, and the ride is just beginning. >> Alright. He's Andrew, I'm Jeff, you're watching the Cube, we're in downtown Seattle at the AWS Imagine EDU Conference. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From the Amazon Meeting Center in Downtown Seattle, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine: A Better World, A Global Education Conference sponsored by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Seattle, Washington, at the AWS, I think it's called the Meeting Space. There's a lot of AWS buildings around here. It's AWS Imagine: Education, first year of the conference, about 900 registered folks, 22 countries represented. Really excited, this thing is going to grow. We've seen it before with AWS. We saw it with Summit: Reinvent. AWS Public Sector. We're excited to be here for the very first time and our next guest is Dr. Scott Ralls. He is the President of Northern Virginia Community College. Scott, great to see you. >> Thank you, it's good to be here Jeff, appreciate it. >> A lot of mentions of NOVA, and that's you guys. >> That's us, yeah. >> That's not the PBS programming. You guys are kind of out front on some of these initiatives, with 3sa and AWS Public Sector. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the Veterans' Apprenticeship Program, which has been in place for a little while. >> Just a little bit about NOVA, we're a community college just right outside of the Virginia suburbs of D.C. We're the, I'd say, the biggest college that nobody's heard of outside of our region. We have about 100,000 students. >> 100,000? >> 100,000. >> And how many campuses? >> Six campuses. >> For us, our niche is information technology. It's where the internet runs through our region, and so that cloud computing, we have the highest concentration of cloud computing cyber degrees. That's why the AWS partnership is so key for us, because it's about the opportunity for our students. And for AWS, it's about filling those jobs. Also, we have a lot of employers in our region that hire based on AWS credentials. AWS is the backbone for them. That's why for us as a community college, being jobs-focused, filling that gap, that's why it's key for us. >> That's Tyson's corner, right? That's where AOL started-- >> That's right, that's right, that's right. >> and there's a whole history. >> You've got all the cyber right around there. One writer has said that we're the bullseye of the internet. It's a unique place, but it's a unique opportunity for our students. >> Right, and the smart money's on the AWS second headquarter being in that neighborhood, but we don't-- >> Knock on wood. >> Knock on wood. We would love to see that. >> I'm just curious then if you've been educating people to get jobs in this IT sector, how you've seen that evolve over time? Because it used to be there were a lot of sys admin jobs or a lot of jobs that now automation and cloud is taking away. On the other hand, there's a lot of new jobs that the technology's enabling, like happens every time. How are you seeing the landscape change? >> I really think that's the way it has been. 30 years ago, when I was breaking into this workforce and world, that same conversation was going on. Automation was going to take all the jobs. There's been all kinds of new opportunities that emerge and that's the same thing we see, and certainly in Northern Virginia we see that so, for us, as a community college, we're doing it two ways. You asked about the apprenticeship program, that was our first entree with AWS so we are one of their primary training providers, education providers for apprenticeship. Those are the veterans and others that are hired by AWS, they come to our college for the education component, the certifications, the IT skills. The second part for us is the new cloud degree which we introduced in February, which is a two-year, first cloud degree in the country that will help other students who are not those coming through apprenticeship to also break into this important area. >> This is an associate's degree like all the other degrees you guys offer >> That's right. as a two-year program. I'd be just curious, what are some of the curricula? What are some of the core classes that they take that are part of that degree? >> One of the things that we've been doing, we use a lot of data analytics on the workforce side that others do not so part of it's our engagement, talking with the AWS leaders about what's needed. Part of it's also watching what AW, what credentials, what skills AWS is hiring for and then others who use the AWS platform, so you will see certain types of credentials that are built in, security plus, Linux plus, AWS Solutions Architect built in. Also even programming language, it's like Python because of its importance in that regard. We kind of use that as the, using that intelligence, if you will, to be able to build out what the degree should look like. Because we're paying attention to how AWS hires and how the IT users of AWS, how they're hiring and what the skills are that they're looking for. >> How hard is it to get that through at the school, to actually have an associate degree based on cloud? Were they receptive of the idea, did everybody see it coming, was it a hard push? >> We did it within one year, we did it within one year. >> Did it in one year? >> Within one year. >> Everything in the cloud happens fast. >> We moved fast on this. It is built off of our IT degree, so it's a specialization of that degree, so it was really, I think what made it move faster for us was two things. One is AWS has a great program called AWS Educate, which essentially provides a lot of the curriculum content. It's the kind of things if you were starting a degree, you would have to go out and create on your own. Having that rich content. Other partners, like Columbus State, who is also, Santa Monica, others that are working on cloud degrees and we can partner with each other. Then having the apprenticeship as sort of a North Star to tack on with respect to how companies are hiring and what skills are needed. That allowed us to move fast. >> Beyond Educate and the actual materials and curriculum materials, what does partnering with AWS do for you guys? What has that enabled you to do as part of this program that you couldn't do or it'd be a whole lot harder? >> Not everybody looks at community colleges. Being partnered with AWS, who they are, is key for us, it's important for us. I think it's also they recognize how important it is for them. Not everybody recognizes that. One thing that's unique for us as a community college, we have a lot of students who come to us who already have four-year degrees to get that skills part. It's almost like a graduate school. The apprentices are that way. Most of the apprentices already have four-year degrees in computer science, and we're providing that finishing piece. I think AWS sees in us how to broaden the, to scale, to fill that talent gap. I really think the only way you're going to diversify the talent gap and scale the talent gap is through institutions like ours. >> It's really an interesting statement on the role of community colleges in this whole refactoring of education. One, as you said, a lot of people have four-year degrees, so this concept of ongoing education, continue to get new skills as the opportunities dictate. Have that very specific knowledge and these certifications that are not Intro Philosophy or English Lit 205. These are very specific things that people can apply to their job today. >> The curriculum changes so fast, so we have to be willing to change, our instructors have to be willing to get that new thing. The history curriculum doesn't change that quickly, but the IT curriculum and particularly as it relates to cloud and cyber and other areas. If we're not doing that, then we're out of the ballgame, and when we're out of the ballgame that means our students are out of the ballgame, and that's what it's all about. >> When you come to an event like this, what are you hoping to get out of an event like this? Flew across the country, unfortunately through all the terrible smoke and stuff we have on the west coast. What are some of the things you hope to gain here with some of the other educators? >> One thing that always happens at AWS events is the connections that you make. Part of it is you do hear people, like we heard this morning, that you wouldn't have the opportunity to hear before, on machine learning and other areas. A lot of it's about the connections, so actually tomorrow morning a lot of the community colleges and others who are creating cloud programs will be working together tomorrow. AWS does a great job of maximizing our time, so we're part of the program, but we're also breaking off to really partner and that allows us all to move quicker. When we can build off of each other and then have the resources like AWS makes available to us. >> Sounds like you're moving pretty quick-- >> We're trying, we're trying. >> To get all that done and to get it done in a year. >> We have to keep up with where they're going. >> It's not what academic institutions are generally known for, speed and change. >> We're not your average academic institution. >> There ya go, alright. He's Dr. Scott Ralls,-- >> Thank you, 'preciate it. thanks for taking a few minutes with ya. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS public sector, Imagine, in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching, catch ya next time. (electronic tones)