(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone! Welcome to the AWS Partner Showcase. This is season one, episode three with a focus on women in tech. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got two guests here with me, Sue Persichetti, the EVP of Global AWS Strategic Alliances at Jefferson Frank. A Tenth Revolution Group company. And Danielle Greshock, one of our own CUBE alumni, joins us, ISV PSA director. Ladies, it's great to have you on the program talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, women in tech. >> Thank you, Lisa! >> Great to be here! >> So let's go ahead and start with you. Give the audience an understanding of Jefferson Frank, what does the company do, and about the partnership with AWS. >> Sure, so let's just start, Jefferson Frank is a Tenth Revolution Group company. And if you look at it, it's really talent as a service. So Jefferson Frank provides talent solutions all over the world for AWS clients, partners, and users, et cetera. And we have a sister company called Revolent, which is a talent creation company within the AWS ecosystem. So we create talent and put it out in the ecosystem. Usually underrepresented groups, over half of them are women. And then we also have a company called Rebura, which is a delivery model around AWS technology. So all three companies fall under the Tenth Revolution Group organization. >> Got it, Danielle, talk to me a little bit about from AWS' perspective and the focus on hiring more women in technology and about the partnership. >> Yes, this has definitely been a focus ever since I joined eight years ago, but also just especially in the last few years of we've grown exponentially and our customer base has changed. We want to have an organization interacting with them that reflects our customers, right? And we know that we need to keep pace with that even with our growth. And so we've very much focused on early career talent, bringing more women and underrepresented minorities into the organization, sponsoring those folks, promoting them, giving them paths to grow inside of the organization. I'm an example of that, of course, I've benefited from it. But also, I try to bring that into my organization as well and it's super important. >> Tell me a little bit about how you benefited from that, Danielle. >> I just think that I've been able to get, a seat at the table. I think that. I feel as though I have folks supporting me very deeply and want to see me succeed. And also they put me forth as a representative to bring more women into the organization as well. They give me a platform in order to do that, like this, but also many other spots as well. And I'm happy to do it because I feel that... you always want to feel that you're making a difference in your job. And that is definitely a place where I get that time and space in order to be that representative. To bring more women into benefiting from having careers in technology, which there's a lot of value there. >> Lot of value. Absolutely. So back over to you, what are some of the trends that you are seeing from a gendered diversity perspective in tech? We know the numbers of women in technical positions. >> Right. There's so much data out there that shows when girls start dropping out, but what are some of the trends that you're seeing? >> So that's a really interesting question. And Lisa, I had a whole bunch of data points that I wanted to share with you but just two weeks ago, I was in San Francisco with AWS at The Summit. And we were talking about this, we were talking about how we can collectively together attract more women, not only to AWS, not only to technology, but to the AWS ecosystem in particular. And it was fascinating because I was talking about the challenges that women have, and how hard to believe but about 5% of women who were in the ecosystem have left in the past few years. Which was really, really something that shocked everyone when we were talking about it, because all of the things that we've been asking for, for instance working from home, better pay, more flexibility, better maternity leave. Seems like those things are happening. So we're getting what we want, but people are leaving. And it seemed like the feedback that we got was that a lot of women still felt very underrepresented. The number one thing was that they couldn't be... you can't be what you can't see. So because they... we feel, collectively women, people who identify as women, just don't see enough women in leadership, they don't see enough mentors. I think I've had great mentors, but just not enough. I'm lucky enough to have the president of our company, Zoe Morris is a woman and she does lead by example. So I'm very lucky for that. And Jefferson Frank really quickly we put out a hiring, a salary, and hiring guide. Career and hiring guide every year. And the data points, and that's about 65 pages long, no one else does it. It gives an abundance of information around everything about the AWS ecosystem that a hiring manager might need to know. What I thought was really unbelievable was that only 7% of the people that responded to it were women. So my goal, being that we have such a very big global platform, is to get more women to respond to that survey. So we can get as much information and take action. So... >> Absolutely only 7%. So a long way to go there. Danielle, talk to me about AWS' focus on women in tech. I was watching, Sue, I saw that you shared on LinkedIn the TED Talk that the CEO and founder of Girls Who Code did. And one of the things that she said was that there was a survey that HP did some years back that showed that 60%... that men will apply for jobs if they only meet 60% of the list of requirements. Whereas with females, it's far, far less. We've all been in that imposter syndrome conundrum before. But Danielle, talk to us about AWS' specific focus here to get these numbers up. >> Well, I think it speaks to what Susan was talking about how I think we're approaching it top and bottom, right? We're looking out at who are the women who are currently in technical positions and how can we make AWS an attractive place for them to work? And that's a lot of the changes that we've had around maternity leave and those types of things. But then also, a more flexible working arrangements. But then also early... how can we actually impact early career women and actually women who are still in school. And our training and certification team is doing amazing things to get more girls exposed to AWS, to technology, and make it a less intimidating place. And have them look at employees from AWS and say like, "Oh, I can see myself in those people". And kind of actually growing the viable pool of candidates. I think we're limited with the viable pool of candidates when you're talking about mid-to-late career. But how can we help retrain women who are coming back into the workplace after having a child, and how can we help with military women who want to... or underrepresented minorities who want to move into AWS? We have a great military program but then also just that early high school career getting them in that trajectory. >> Sue, is that something that Jefferson Frank is also able to help with is getting those younger girls before they start to feel... >> Right. "There's something wrong with me, I don't get this." >> Right. >> Talk to us about how Jefferson Frank can help really drive up that in those younger girls. >> Let me tell you one other thing to refer back to that Summit that we did we had breakout sessions and that was one of the topics. Cause that's the goal, right? To make sure that there are ways to attract them. That's the goal. So some of the things that we talked about was mentoring programs from a very young age, some people said high school. But then we said, even earlier, goes back to you can't be what you can't see. So getting mentoring programs established. We also talked about some of the great ideas was being careful of how we speak to women using the right language to attract them. And so there was a teachable moment for me there actually. It was really wonderful because an African American woman said to me, "Sue". And I was talking about how you can't be what you can't see. And what she said was, "Sue, it's really different for me as an African American woman" Or she identified as non-binary but she was relating to African American women. She said, "You're a white woman. Your journey was very different than my journey". And I thought, "This is how we're going to learn". I wasn't offended by her calling me out at all. It was a teachable moment. And I thought I understood that but those are the things that we need to educate people on. Those moments where we think we're saying and doing the right thing, but we really need to get that bias out there. So here at Jefferson Frank we're trying really hard to get that careers and hiring guide out there. It's on our website to get more women to talk to it, but to make suggestions in partnership with AWS around how we can do this. Mentoring. We have a mentor me program. We go around the country and do things like this. We try to get the education out there in partnership with AWS. We have a women's group, a women's leadership group. So much that we do and we try to do it in partnership with AWS. >> Danielle, can you comment on the impact that AWS has made so far regarding some of the trends and and gender diversity that Sue was talking about? What's the impact that's been made so far with this partnership? >> Well, I think just being able to get more of the data and have awareness of leaders on how... it used to be a couple years back, I would feel like sometimes the solving to bring more women into the organization was kind of something that folks thought, "Oh, this is... Danielle is going to solve this." And I think a lot of folks now realize, "Oh, this is something that we all need to solve for." And a lot of my colleagues, who maybe a couple years ago didn't have any awareness or didn't even have the tools to do what they needed to do in order to improve the statistics on their or in their organizations, now actually have those tools and are able to kind of work with companies like Susan's work with Jefferson Frank in order to actually get the data, and actually make good decisions, and feel as though they often... these are not lived experiences for these folks. So they don't know what they don't know. And by providing data, and providing awareness, and providing tooling, and then setting goals, I think all of those things have really turned things around in a very positive way. >> And so you bring up a great point about from a diversity perspective. What is Jefferson Frank doing to get those data points up to get more women of all, well, really underrepresented minorities to be able to provide that feedback so that you can have the data and gleamy insights from it to help companies like AWS on their strategic objectives? >> Right, so when I go back to that careers and hiring guide, that is my focus today really, because the more data that we have and the data takes... we need people to participate in order to accurately get ahold of that data. So that's why we're asking. We're taking the initiative to really expand our focus. We are a global organization with a very, very massive database all over the world. But if people don't take action then we can't get the right... the data will not be as accurate as we'd like it to be, therefore take better action. So what we're doing is we're asking people all over the world to participate on our website jeffersonfrank.com In the survey so we can learn as much as we can. 7% is such a... Danielle and I we've got to partner on this just to sort of get that message out there, get more data so we can execute. Some of the other things that we're doing, we're partnering, as I mentioned, more of these events. We're doing around the Summits, we're going to be having more EDNI events, and collecting more information from women. Like I said, internally, we do practice what we preach and we have our own programs that are out there, that are within our own company where the women who are talking to candidates and clients every single day are trying to get that message out there. So if I'm speaking to a client or one of our internal people are speaking to a client or a candidate, they're telling them, "Listen, we really are trying to get these numbers up. We want to attract as many people as we can. Would you mind going to this hiring guide and offering your own information?" So we've got to get that 7% up. We've got to keep talking. We've got to keep getting programs out there. One other thing I wanted to Danielle's point, she mentioned women in leadership, the number that we gathered was only 9% of women in leadership within the AWS ecosystem. We've got to get that number up as well, because I know for me, when I see people like Danielle or her peers it inspires me. And I feel like I just want to give back. Make sure I send the elevator back to the first floor and bring more women in to this amazing ecosystem. >> Absolutely, we need- >> Love that metaphor. >> I do too! But to your point to get those numbers up not just at AWS, but everywhere else we need It's a help me help you situation. >> Exactly. >> So ladies, underrepresented minorities, if you're watching go to the Jefferson Frank website, take the survey. Help provide the data so that the women here that are doing this amazing work, have it to help make decisions and have more of females in leadership roles or underrepresented minorities. So we can be what we can see. >> Exactly. >> Ladies, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing what you guys are doing together to partner on this important cause. >> Thank you for having me, Lisa! >> Thank you! Thank you! >> My pleasure! For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBES coverage of the AWS partner showcase. Thanks for your time. (gentle xylophone music)

>> Okay, up next in the Lightning Talk Session is Brian Galligan; Mgr, Security and Operations at Brookfield Properties. Brian, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> So unified visibility across extended asset surface area is key these days. You can't secure what you can't see. So tell me more about how you were able to centralize your view of network assets with Armis and what impact that had on your business. >> Yeah, that's been a really key component of ours where we've actually owned multiple companies with them and are always acquiring companies from time to time. So it's always a question. What is actually out there and what do we need to be worried about. So from an inventory perspective it's definitely something that we've been looking into. Armis was a great partner in being able to get us the visibility into a lot of the IoT that we have out in the environment. And then also trying to find what we have and what's actually installed on those devices. What's running, who's talking to who. So that's definitely been a key component with our partnership with Armis. >> You know, we interview a lot of practitioners and companies and one things we found is vulnerability Management programs. There's a lot of gaps. You know, vulnerability management comes across more sometimes just IT devices, but not all assets. How has Armis Vulnerability Management made things better for your business? And what can you see now that you couldn't see before? >> Yeah, again, because we own multiple companies and they actually use different tools for vulnerability management. It's been a challenge to be able to compare apples to apples on when we have vulnerability. When we have risk out there, how do you put a single number to it? How do you prioritize different initiatives across those sectors? And being able to use Armis and have that one score, have that one visibility and also that one platform that you can query across all of those different companies, has been huge because we just haven't had the ability to say are we vulnerable to X, Y and Z across the board in these different companies? >> You know, it's interesting when you have a lot of different assets and companies, as you mentioned. It kind of increases the complexity and yeah we love the enterprise. You solve complexity by more complexity but that's not the playbook anymore. We want simplicity. We want to have a better solution. So when you take into account, the criticality of these businesses as you're integrating in, in real time and the assets within those business operations you got to keep focused on the right solutions. What has Armis done for you that's been correct and right for you guys? >> Yeah, so being able to see the different like be able to actually drill down into the nitty gritty on what devices are connecting to what. Being able to enforce policies that way, I think has been a huge win that we've been able to see from Armis. It's one of those things where we were able to see north-south traffic. No problem with our typical SIM tools, firewall tools and different logging sources but we haven't been able to see anything east-west and that's where we're going to be most vulnerable. That's where we've been actually found. We found some gaps in our coverage from a pen test perspective where we've found that where we don't have that visibility. Armis has allowed us to get into that communication to better fine tune the rules that we have across devices across sectors, across the data center to properties. Properties of the data center and then also to the cloud. >> Yeah, visibility into the assets is huge. But as you're in operations you got to operationalize these tools. I mean, some people sound like they've got a great sales pitch and all sounds like, "Wait a minute, I got to re-configure my entire operations." At the end of the day, you want to have an easy to use, but effective capability. So you're not taxed either personnel or operations. How easy has it been with Armis to implement from an ease of use, simplicity, plug and play? In other words, how quickly did you get to the time to value? Can you share your thoughts? >> This honestly is the biggest value that we've seen in Armis. I think a, a big kudos goes to the professional services group for getting us stood up being able to explain the tool, be able to dig into it and then get us to that time to value. Honestly, we've only scratched the surface on what Armis can give us which is great because they've given us so much already. So definitely taking that model of let's crawl, walk, run with what we're able to do. But the professional services team has given us so much assistance in getting from one collector to now many collectors. And we're in that deployment phase where we're able to gather more data and find those anomalies that are out there. I again, big props to the, the professional services team. >> Yeah, you know one of we'd add an old expression when you know when the whole democratization happened on the web here comes all the people, you know social media and whatnot now with IoT here comes all the devices. Here comes all the things- >> Yeah. >> Things >> More things are being attached to the network. So Armis has this global asset knowledge base that crowd-sources the asset intelligence. How has that been a game changer for you? And were you shocked when you discovered how many assets they were able to discover and what impact did that have for you? >> We have a large wifi footprint for guests, vendors, contractors that are working on site along with our corporate side, which has a lot of devices on it as well. And being able to see what devices are using what services on there and then be able to fingerprint them easily has been huge. I would say one of the best stories that I can tell is actually with a pen test that we ran recently. We were able to determine what the pen test device was and how it was acting anomalous and then fingerprint that device within five minutes opposed to getting on the phone with probably four or five different groups to figure out what is this device? It's not one of our normal devices. It's not one of our normal builds or anything. We were able to find that device within probably three to five minutes with Armis and the fingerprinting capability. >> Yeah, nothing's going to get by you with these port scans or any kind of activity, so to speak, jumping on the wifi. Great stuff. Anything else you'd like to share about Armis while I got you here? >> Yeah, I would say that something recently, we actually have an open position on our team currently. And one of the most exciting things is being able to share our journey that we've had with Armis over the last year, year and a half, and their eyes light up when they hear the capabilities of what Armis can do, what Armis can offer. And you see a little bit of jealousy of, you know, "Hey I really wish my current organization had that." And it's one of those selling tools that you're able to give to security engineers, security analysts saying, "Here's what you're going to have on the team to be able to do your job, right." So that you don't have to worry about necessarily the normal mundane things. You get to actually go do the cool hunting stuff, which Armis allows you to do. >> Well. Brian, thanks for the time here on this Lightning Talk, appreciate your insight. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE the leader in enterprise tech coverage. Up next in the Lightning Talk Session is Alex Schuchman. He's the CISO of Colgate-Palmolive Thanks for watching.

>> Okay, up next in the Lightning Talk Session is Brian Galligan; Mgr, Security and Operations at Brookfield Properties. Brian, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> So unified visibility across extended asset surface area is key these days. You can't secure what you can't see. So tell me more about how you were able to centralize your view of network assets with Armis and what impact that had on your business. >> Yeah, that's been a really key component of ours where we've actually owned multiple companies with them and are always acquiring companies from time to time. So it's always a question. What is actually out there and what do we need to be worried about. So from an inventory perspective it's definitely something that we've been looking into. Armis was a great partner in being able to get us the visibility into a lot of the IoT that we have out in the environment. And then also trying to find what we have and what's actually installed on those devices. What's running, who's talking to who. So that's definitely been a key component with our partnership with Armis. >> You know, we interview a lot of practitioners and companies and one things we found is vulnerability Management programs. There's a lot of gaps. You know, vulnerability management comes across more sometimes just IT devices, but not all assets. How has Armis Vulnerability Management made things better for your business? And what can you see now that you couldn't see before? >> Yeah, again, because we own multiple companies and they actually use different tools for vulnerability management. It's been a challenge to be able to compare apples to apples on when we have vulnerability. When we have risk out there, how do you put a single number to it? How do you prioritize different initiatives across those sectors? And being able to use Armis and have that one score, have that one visibility and also that one platform that you can query across all of those different companies, has been huge because we just haven't had the ability to say are we vulnerable to X, Y and Z across the board in these different companies? >> You know, it's interesting when you have a lot of different assets and companies, as you mentioned. It kind of increases the complexity and yeah we love the enterprise. You solve complexity by more complexity but that's not the playbook anymore. We want simplicity. We want to have a better solution. So when you take into account, the criticality of these businesses as you're integrating in, in real time and the assets within those business operations you got to keep focused on the right solutions. What has Armis done for you that's been correct and right for you guys? >> Yeah, so being able to see the different like be able to actually drill down into the nitty gritty on what devices are connecting to what. Being able to enforce policies that way, I think has been a huge win that we've been able to see from Armis. It's one of those things where we were able to see north-south traffic. No problem with our typical SIM tools, firewall tools and different logging sources but we haven't been able to see anything east-west and that's where we're going to be most vulnerable. That's where we've been actually found. We found some gaps in our coverage from a pen test perspective where we've found that where we don't have that visibility. Armis has allowed us to get into that communication to better fine tune the rules that we have across devices across sectors, across the data center to properties. Properties of the data center and then also to the cloud. >> Yeah, visibility into the assets is huge. But as you're in operations you got to operationalize these tools. I mean, some people sound like they've got a great sales pitch and all sounds like, "Wait a minute, I got to re-configure my entire operations." At the end of the day, you want to have an easy to use, but effective capability. So you're not taxed either personnel or operations. How easy has it been with Armis to implement from an ease of use, simplicity, plug and play? In other words, how quickly did you get to the time to value? Can you share your thoughts? >> This honestly is the biggest value that we've seen in Armis. I think a, a big kudos goes to the professional services group for getting us stood up being able to explain the tool, be able to dig into it and then get us to that time to value. Honestly, we've only scratched the surface on what Armis can give us which is great because they've given us so much already. So definitely taking that model of let's crawl, walk, run with what we're able to do. But the professional services team has given us so much assistance in getting from one collector to now many collectors. And we're in that deployment phase where we're able to gather more data and find those anomalies that are out there. I again, big props to the, the professional services team. >> Yeah, you know one of we'd add an old expression when you know when the whole democratization happened on the web here comes all the people, you know social media and whatnot now with IoT here comes all the devices. Here comes all the things- >> Yeah. >> Things >> More things are being attached to the network. So Armis has this global asset knowledge base that crowd-sources the asset intelligence. How has that been a game changer for you? And were you shocked when you discovered how many assets they were able to discover and what impact did that have for you? >> We have a large wifi footprint for guests, vendors, contractors that are working on site along with our corporate side, which has a lot of devices on it as well. And being able to see what devices are using what services on there and then be able to fingerprint them easily has been huge. I would say one of the best stories that I can tell is actually with a pen test that we ran recently. We were able to determine what the pen test device was and how it was acting anomalous and then fingerprint that device within five minutes opposed to getting on the phone with probably four or five different groups to figure out what is this device? It's not one of our normal devices. It's not one of our normal builds or anything. We were able to find that device within probably three to five minutes with Armis and the fingerprinting capability. >> Yeah, nothing's going to get by you with these port scans or any kind of activity, so to speak, jumping on the wifi. Great stuff. Anything else you'd like to share about Armis while I got you here? >> Yeah, I would say that something recently, we actually have an open position on our team currently. And one of the most exciting things is being able to share our journey that we've had with Armis over the last year, year and a half, and their eyes light up when they hear the capabilities of what Armis can do, what Armis can offer. And you see a little bit of jealousy of, you know, "Hey I really wish my current organization had that." And it's one of those selling tools that you're able to give to security engineers, security analysts saying, "Here's what you're going to have on the team to be able to do your job, right." So that you don't have to worry about necessarily the normal mundane things. You get to actually go do the cool hunting stuff, which Armis allows you to do. >> Well. Brian, thanks for the time here on this Lightning Talk, appreciate your insight. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE the leader in enterprise tech coverage. Up next in the Lightning Talk Session is Alex Schuchman. He's the CISO of Colgate-Palmolive Thanks for watching.

>>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of ADA reinvent 2021 here, the cube coverage. I'm Judd for a, your host we're on the ground with two sets on the floor, real event. Of course, it's hybrid. It's online as well. You can check it out there. All the on-demand replays are there. We're here with Sandy Carter, worldwide vice president, public sector partners and programs. And we've got Fred Swanick, her founder, and chief curator of the room. We're talking about getting the best talent programming and in the cloud, doing great things, innovation all happening, Sandy. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube, but appreciate it. Thanks for halfway to see. Okay. So tell us about the room. What is the room what's going on? >>Um, well, I mentioned in the room is to help the world's most extraordinary do us to fulfill their potential. So, um, it's a community of exceptional talent that we are building throughout the world, um, and connecting this talent to each other and connecting them to the organizations that are looking for people who can really move the needle for those organizations. >>So what kind of results are you guys seeing right now? Give us some stats. >>Well, it's a, it's a relatively new concept. So we're about 5,000 members so far, um, from 77 different countries. Um, and this is, you know, we're talking about sort of the top two to 3% of talent in different fields. Um, and, um, as we go forward, you know, we're really looking, seeing this as an opportunity to curate, um, exceptional talent. Um, and it feels like software engineering, data science, UX, UI design, cloud computing, um, and, uh, it really helped to, um, identify diverse talent as well from pockets that have typically been untapped for technology. Okay. >>I want to ask you kind of, what's the, how you read the tea leaves. How do I spot the talent, but first talk about the relationship with Amazon. What's the program together? How you guys working together? It's a great mission. I mean, we need more people anyway, coding everywhere, globally. What's the AWS connection. >>So Fred and I met and, uh, he had this, I mean the brilliant concept of the room. And so, uh, obviously you need to run that on the cloud. And so he's got organizations he's working at connecting them through the room and kind of that piece that he was needing was the technology. So we stepped in to help him with the technology piece because he's got all the subject matter expertise to train 3 million Africans, um, coming up on tech, we also were able to provide him some of the classwork as well for the cloud computing models. So some of those certs and things that we want to get out into the marketplace as well, we're also helping Fred with that as well. So >>I mean, want to, just to add onto that, you know, one of the things that's unique about the room is that we're trying to really build a long-term relationship with talent. So imagine joining the room as a 20 year old and being part of it until you're 60. So you're going to have a lot of that. You collect on someone as they progress through different stages of their career and the ability for us to leverage that data, um, and continuously learn about someone's, you know, skills and values and use, um, predictive algorithms to be able to match them to the right opportunities at the right time of their lives. And this is where the machine learning comes in and the, you know, the data lake that we're building to build to really store this massive data that we're going to be building on the top talent to the world. >>You know, that's a really good point. It's a list that's like big trend in tech where it's, it's still it's over the life's life of the horizon of the person. And it's also blends community, exactly nurturing, identifying, and assisting. But at the same day, not just giving people the answer, they got to grow on their own, but some people grow differently. So again, progressions are nonlinear sometimes and creativity can come out of nowhere. Got it. Uh, which brings me up to my number one question, because this always was on my mind is how do you spot talent? What's the secret sauce? >>Well, there is no real secret source because every person is unique. So what we look for are people who have an extra dose of five things, courage, passion, resilience, imagination, and good values, right? And this is what we're looking for. And you will someone who is unusually driven to achieve great things. Um, so of course, you know, you look at it from a combination of their, their training, you know, what they, what they've learned, but also what they've actually done in the workplace and feedback that you get from previous employers and data that we collect through our own interactions with this person. Um, and so we screened them through, you know, with the town that we had, didn't fly, we take them through really rigorous selection process. So, um, it takes, uh, for example, people go through an online assessments and then they go through an in-person interview and then we'll take them through a one to three month bootcamp to really identify, you know, people who are exceptional and of course get data from different sources about the person as well. >>Sandy, how do you see this collaboration helping, uh, your other clients? I mean, obviously talent, cross pollinates, um, learnings, what's your, you see this level of >>It has, uh, you know, AWS grows, obviously we're going to need more talent, especially in Africa because we're growing so rapidly there and there's going to be so much talent available in Africa here in just a few short years. Most of the tech talent will be in Africa. I think that that's really essential, but also as looking after my partners, I had Fred today on the keynote explaining to all my partners around the world, 55,000 streaming folks, how they can also leverage the room to fill some of their roles as well. Because if you think about it, you know, we heard from Presidio there's 3 million open cyber security roles. Um, you know, we're training 20 of mine million cloud folks because we have a gap. We see a gap around the world. And part of my responsibility with partners is making sure that they can get access to the right skills. And we're counting on the room and what Fred has produced to produce some of those great skills. You have AI, AML and dev ops. Tell us some of the areas you haven't. >>You know, we're looking at, uh, business intelligence, data science, um, full-stack software engineering, cybersecurity, um, you know, IOT talent. So fields that, um, the world needs a lot more talented. And I think today, a lot of technology, um, talent is moving from one place to another and what we need is new supply. And so what the room is doing is not only a community of top 10, but we're actually producing and training a lot more new talent. And that was going to hopefully, uh, remove a key bottleneck that a lot of companies are facing today as they try to undergo the digital trends. >>Well, maybe you can add some hosts on there. We need some cube hosts, come on, always looking for more talent on the set. You could be there. >>Yeah. The other interesting thing, John, Fred and I on stage today, he was talking about how easy to the first narrative written for easy to was written by a gentleman out of South Africa. So think about that right. ECE to talent. And he was talking about Ian Musk is based, you know, south African, right? So think about all the great talent that exists. There. There you go. There you go. So how do you get access to that talent? And that's why we're so excited to partner with Fred. Not only is he wicked impressive when a time's most influential people, but his mission, his life purpose has really been to develop this great talent. And for us, that gets us really excited because we, yeah, >>I think there's plenty of opportunities to around new business models in the U S for instance, um, my friends started upstart, which they were betting on people almost like a stock market. You know, almost like currency will fund you and you pay us back. And there's all kinds of gamification techniques that you can start to weave into the system. Exactly. As you get the flywheel going, exactly, you can look at it holistically and say, Hey, how do we get more people in and harvest the value of knowledge? >>That's exactly. I mean, one of the elements of the technology platform that we developed to the Amazon with AWS is the room intelligence platform. And in there is something called legacy points. So every time you, as a member of the room, give someone else an opportunity. You invest in their venture, you hire them, you mentor them, you get points and you can leverage those points for some really cool experiences, right? So you want to game-ify um, this community that is, uh, you know, essentially crowdsourcing opportunities. And you're not only getting things from the room, but you're also giving to others to enable everyone to grow. >>Yeah, what's the coolest thing you've seen. And this is a great initiative. First of all, it's a great model. I think it's, this is the future. Cause I'm a big believer that communities groups, as we get into this hybrid world is going to open up the virtualization. What the virtual world has shown us is virtualization, which is a cloud technology when Amazon started with Zen, which is virtualization technology, but virtualization, conceptually is replicating things. So if you think hybrid world, you can blend the connect people together. So now you have this social construct, this connective tissue between relationships, and it's always evolving, you know, this and you've been involved in community from, from, from the early days when you have that social evolution, it's not software as a mechanism. It's a human thing. Exactly. It's organism, it evolves. And so if you can get the software to think like that and the group to drive the behavior, it's not community software. >>Exactly. I mean, we say that the room is not an online community. It's really an offline community powered by technology. So our vision is to actually have physical rooms in different cities around the world, whether it's talent gathers, but imagine showing up at a, at a room space and we've got the technology to know what your interests are. We know that you're working on a new venture and there's this, there's a venture capitalists in that area, investing that venture, we can connect you right then that space powered by the, >>And then you can have watch parties. For instance, there's an event going on in us. You can do some watch parties and time shifted and then re replicated online and create a localization, but yet have that connection in >>Present. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. So what are the >>Learnings, what's your big learning share with the audience? What you've learned, because this is really kind of on the front edge of the new kind of innovation we're seeing, being enabled with software. >>I mean, one thing we're learning is that, uh, talent is truly, uh, evenly distribute around the world, but what is not as opportunity. And so, um, there's some truly exceptional talent that is hidden and on tap today. And if we can, you know, and, and today with the COVID pandemic companies or around the world, a lot more open to hiring more talent. So there's a huge opportunity to access new talent from, from sources that haven't been tapped before. Well, but also learnings the power of blending, the online and offline world. So, um, you know, the room is, as I mentioned, brings people together, normally in line, but also offline. And so when you're able to meet talent and actually see someone's personality and get a sense of the culture fit the 360 degree for your foot, some of that, you can't just get on a LinkedIn. Yes. That I built it to make a decision, to hire someone who is much better. And finally, we're also learning about the importance of long-term relationships. One of my motives in the room is relationships not transactions where, um, you actually get to meet someone in an environment where they're not pretending in an interview and you get to really see who they are and build relationships with them before you need to hide them. And these are some really unique ways that we think we can redefine how talent finds opportunity in the 21st. So >>You can put a cube in every room, we pick >>You up because, >>And the cube, what we do here is that when people collaborate, whether they're doing an interview together, riffing and sharing content is creating knowledge, but that shared experience creates a bonding. So when you have that kind of mindset and this room concept where it's not just resume, get a job, see you later, it's learning, having peers and colleagues and people around you, and then seeing them in a journey, multiple laps around the track of humans >>And going through a career, not just a job. >>Yes, exactly. And then, and then celebrating the ups and downs in learning. It's not always roses, as you know, it's always pain before you accelerate. >>Exactly. And you never quite arrive at your destination. You're always growing, and this is where technology can really play. >>Okay. So super exciting. Where's this go next, Sandy. And next couple of minutes left in. >>So, um, one of the things that we've envisioned, so this is not done yet, but, um, Fred and I imagined like, what if you could have an Alexa set up and you could say, Hey, you know, Alexa, what should be my next job? Or how should I go train? Or I'm really interested in being on a Ted talk. What could I do having an Alexa skill might be a really cool thing to do. And with the great funding that Fred Scott and you should talk about the $400 million to that, he's already raised $400 million. I mean, there, I think the sky's the limit on platforms. Like >>That's a nice chunk of change. There it is. We've got some fat financing as they say, >>But, well, it's a big mission. So to request significant resources, >>Who's backing you guys. What's the, who's the, where's the money coming from? >>It's coming from, um, the MasterCard foundation. They, our biggest funder, um, as well as, um, some philanthropists, um, and essentially these are people who truly see the potential, uh, to unlock, um, opportunity for millions of people global >>For Glen, a global scale. The vision has global >>Executive starting in Africa, but truly global. Our vision is eventually to have a community of about 10 to 20 million of the most extraordinary doers in the world, in this community, and to connect them to opportunity >>Angela and diverse John. I mean, this is the other thing that gets me excited because innovation comes from diversity of thought and given the community, we'll have so many diverse individuals in it that are going to get trained and mentored to create something that is amazing for their career as well. That really gets me excited too, as well as Amazon website, >>Smart people, and yet identifying the fresh voices and the fresh minds that come with it, all that that comes together, >>The social capital that they need to really accelerate their impact. >>Then you read the room and then you get wherever you need. Thanks so much. Congratulations on your great mission. Love the room. Um, you need to be the in Cuban, every room, you gotta get those fresh voices out there. See any graduates on a great project, super exciting. And SageMaker, AI's all part of, it's all kind of, it's a cool wave. It's fun. Can I join? Can I play? I tell you I need a room. >>I think he's top talent. >>Thanks so much for coming. I really appreciate your insight. Great stuff here, bringing you all the action and knowledge and insight here at re-invent with the cube two sets on the floor. It's a hybrid event. We're in person in Las Vegas for a real event. I'm John ferry with the cube, the leader in global tech coverage. Thanks for watching.

>>mhm Yes, everyone, welcome back to the cubes coverage of dr khan 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube. Got a great segment here. One of the big supporters and open source amazon web services returning back second year. Dr khan virtual Deepak Singh, vice president of the compute services at AWS Deepak, Great to see you. Thanks for coming back on remotely again soon. We'll be in real life. Reinvent is going to be in person, we'll be there. Good to see you. >>Good to see you too, john it's always good to do these. I don't know how how often I've been at the cube now, but it's great every single time your >>legend and getting on there, a lot of important things to discuss your in one of the most important areas in the technology industry right now and that is at the confluence of cloud scale and modern development applications as they shift towards as Andy Jassy says, the new guard, right. It's been happening. You guys have been a big proponent of open source and enabling open source is a service creating business models for companies. But more importantly, you guys are powering, making it easier for folks to use software. And doctor has been a big relationship for you. Could you take a minute to first talk about the doctor, a W S relationship and your involvement and what you're doing? >>Yeah, actually it goes back a long way. Uh you know, Justin, we announced PCS had reinvented 2014 and PCS at that time was very much managed orchestration service on top of DACA at that time. I think it was the first really big one out there from a cloud provider. And since then, of course, the world has evolved quite a bit and relationship with DR has evolved a lot. The thing I'd like to talk to is something that we announced that Dr last year, I don't remember if I talked about it on the cube at that time. But last year we started working with DR on how can we go from doctor Run, which customers love or DR desktop, which customers love and make it easy for people to run containers on pcs and Fergie. Uh so most new customers running containers and AWS today start with this Yes and party or half of them and we wanted to make it very easy for them to start with where they are on the laptop which is often bucket to stop and have running services the native US. So we started working with DR and that that collaboration has been very successful. We want to keep you look forward to continuing to work on evolving that where you can use Docker compose doctor, desktop, doctor run the fuel that darker customers used and the labour grand production services on the end of your side, which is the part that we've got that on. So I think that's one area where we work really well together. Uh, the other area where I think the two companies continue to work well together. It's open source in general as some of, you know, AWS has a very strong commitment to contain a. D uh, EKS our community service is moving towards community. Forget it actually runs all on community today and uh, we collaborate dr Rhonda on the Ocr specification because, you know, the Oc I am expect is becoming the de facto packaging format idea. W S. This morning we launched yesterday, we launched a service called Opera. And the main expected input for opera is an Ocr image are being in this Atlanta as well, where those ci images now a way of packaging for lambda. And I think the last one I like to call out and it has been an amazing partnership and it's an area where most people don't pay attention is amid signing. Uh, there's a project called Notary. We do the second version of the Notary Spec for remit signing and AWS Docker and a couple of other companies have been working very closely together on bringing that uh, you know, finalizing no tv too, so that at least in our case we can start building services for our customers on top of that. You know, it's it's a great relationship and I expect to see it continue. >>Well, I think one of the themes this year is developer experience. So good. Good call out there in the new announcements on the tools you have and software because that seems to be a great developer integration with Docker question I have for you is how should the customers think about things like E C. S and versus E K. S. App, Runner lambda uh for kind of running their containers. How do they understand the difference is, what's there? What's the, what's the thought process there? What's >>that? It's a good question actually been announced after. And I think there was one of the questions I started getting on twitter. You know, let's start at the very beginning. Anyone can pick up a Docker container and run it on easy to today. You can run it on easy to, we can run a light sail, but doc around works just fine. It's the limits machine. Then people want to do more complex things. They want to run large scale orchestrated services. They won't run their entire business and containers. We have customers will do that today. Uh, you know, you have people like Vanguard who runs a significant portion of the infrastructure on pcs frg or you have to elope with the heavy user of chaos, our community service. So in general, if you're running large scale systems, you're building your platforms, you're most likely to use the csny Chaos. Um, if you come from a community's background, you're, you're running communities on prem or you want the flexibility and control the communities gives you, you're gonna end up with the chaos. That's what we see our customers doing. If you just want to run containers, you want to use AWS to its fullest extent where you want the continue a P I to be part of the W A S A P. I said then you pick is yes. And I think one of the reasons you see so many customers start with the CSN, Forget is with forget to get the significant ease of use from an operational standpoint. And we see many start ups and you know, enterprises, especially security focus enterprises leaning towards farming. But there's a class of customers that doesn't want to think about orchestration that just wants. Here's my code, here's my container image just run my service for me and that's when things like happen, I can come and that's one of the reasons we launched it. Land is a little bit different. Lambda is a unique service. You buy into an event driven architecture. If you do that, then you can figure our application into this. That's they should start its magic. Uh, the container part, there is what land announced agreement where they now support containers, packaging. So instead of zip files, you can package up your functions as containers. Then lambda will run them for you. The advantage it gives you with all the tooling that you built, that you have to build your containers now works the land as well. So I won't call and a container orchestration service in the same sense of the CSC cso Afrin are but it definitely allows the container image format as a standard packaging format. I think that's the sort of universal common theme that you find across AWS at this point of time. >>You know, one of the things that we're observing at this at this event here is a lot of developers Coop con and Lennox foundations. A lot of operators to kubernetes hits that. But here's developers. And the thing is I want to ease of use, simplicity experience, but also I want the innovation. Yeah, I want all of it. When I ask you what is amazon bring to the table for the new equation, what would you say? >>Yeah, I mean for me it's always you've probably heard me say this 100 times. Many 1000 times. It's foggy fog. It's unique to us. It takes a lot of what we have learned about operating infrastructure scale. The question we asked ourselves, you know, in many ways we talk about forget even before belong pcs but we have to learn on what it meant and what customers really wanted. But the idea was when you are running clusters of instances of machines to run containers on, you have to start thinking about a lot of things that in some ways VMS but BMS in the car were taken away capacity. What kind of infrastructure to run it on? Should have been touched. Should have not been back. You know, where is my container running? Those are things. They suddenly started having to think about those kind of backwards almost. So the idea was how can we make your containerized bundles? So TCS task or community is part of the thing that you talk to and that is the main unit that you operate on. That is the unit that you get built on and meet it on. That's where Forget comes in and it allows us to do many interesting things. We've effectively changed the engine of forget since we've launched it. Uh, we run it on ec two instances and we run it on fire cracker. Uh, we have changed the forget agent architecture. We've made a lot of underneath the hood, uh, changes that even take the take advantage of the broader innovation, the rate of us, We did a whole bunch more to launch acronym trans on top of family customers don't have to think about it. They don't have to worry about it. It happens underneath the hood. It's always your engine as as you go along and it takes away all the operational pain of managing clusters of running into picking which instances to use to getting out, trying to figure out how to bend back and get efficiency. That becomes our problem. So, you know, that is an area where you should expect to see a Stuart done more. It's becoming the fabric of so many things that eight of us now. Uh, it's, you know, in some ways we're just talking a lot more to do. >>Yeah. And it's a really good time. A lot more wave of developers coming in. One of the things that we've been reporting on on Silicon England cube with our cute videos is more developers keep on coming on, more people coming in and contributing to the open source community. Even end users, not just the normal awesome hyper scholars you're talking about like classic, I call main street enterprises. So two things I want to ask you on the customer side because you have kind of to customers, you have the community that open source community and you have enterprise customers that want to make it easier. What are you seeing and hearing from customers? I know you guys work backwards from the customer. So I got to ask you work backwards from the community and work backwards from the enterprise customer. What's going on in their environment? What's the key trends that they're riding? What's the big challenges? What's the big opportunities that they're facing and saying for the community? >>Yeah, I start with the enterprise. That's almost an easier answer. Which is, you know, we're seeing increasingly enterprises moving into the cloud wholesale. Like in some ways you could argue that the pandemic has just accelerated it, but we have started seeing that before. Uh they want to move to the cloud and adult modern best practices. Uh If you see my talk agreement last few years, I've talked about modernization and all the aspects of modernization, and that's 90% of our conversation with enterprises, I've walked into a meeting supposedly to talk about containers, whatever half a conversation is spent on. How does an organization modernize? What does an organization need to do to modernize and containers and serverless play a pretty important part in it, because it gives them an opportunity to step away from the shackles of sort of fixed infrastructure and the methods and approaches that built in. But equally, we are talking about C I C. D, you know, fully automated deployments. What does it mean for developers to run their own services? What are the child, how do you monitor and uh, instrument uh, your services? How do you do observe ability in the modern world? So those are the challenges that enterprises are going towards, and you're spending a ton of time helping them there. But many of them are still running infrastructure on premises. So, you know, we have outpost for them. Uh, you know, just last week, you're talking to a bunch of our customers and they have lots of interesting ideas and things that they want to do without both, but many of them also have their own infrastructure and that's where something like UCS anywhere came from, which is hey, you like using Pcs in the cloud, You like having the safety i that just orchestrates containers for you. It does it on on his in an AWS region. It will do it in an outpost. It'll do it on wavelength, it'll do it on local zone. How about we allow you to do it on whatever infrastructure you bring to us. Uh you want to bring a raspberry pi, you can do that. You want to bring your on premises data center infrastructure, we can do that or a point of sale device, as long as you can get the agent running and you can connect to an AWS region, even though it's okay to lose connectivity every now and then. We can orchestrate a container for you over there and, you know, the same customer that likes the ease of use of Vcs. And the simplicity really resonated with that message really resonates with them. So I think where we are today with the enterprise is we've got some really good solutions for you in eight of us and we are now allowing you to take those a. P. I. S and then launch containers wherever you want to run them, whether it's the edge or whether it's your own data center. I think that's a big part of where the enterprise is going. But by and large, I think yes, a lot of them are still making that change from running infrastructure and applications the way they used to do a modern sort of, if you want to use the word cloud native way and we're helping them a lot. We've done, the community is interesting. They want to be more participatory. Uh that's where things like co pilot comes from. God, honestly, the best thing we've ever done in my order is probably are open road maps where the community can go into the road map and engage with us over there, whether it's an open source project or just trying to tell us what the feature is and how they would like to see it. It's a great engagement and you know, it's not us a lot. It's helped us prioritize correctly and think about what we want to do next. So yeah, I think that's, that >>must be very hard to do for opening up the kimono on the road map because normally that's the crown jewels and its secretive and you know, and um, now it's all out in the open. I think that is a really interesting, um, experiment and what's your reaction to that? What's been the feedback on the road map peace? Because I mean, I definitely want to see, uh, >>we do it pretty much for every service in my organization and we've been doing it now for three years. So years forget, I think about three years and it's been great. Now we are very we are very upfront, which is security and availability. Our job 000 and you know, 100 times out of 100 at altitudes between a new feature and helping our customers be available and safe. We'll do that. And this is why we don't put dates in that we just tell you directionally where we are and what we are prioritizing Uh, there every now and then we'll put something in there that, you know, well not choose not to put a feature in there because we want to keep it secret until it launches. But for the most part, 99% of our own myself there and people engaged with it. And it's not proven to be a problem because you've also been very responsible with how we manage and be very transparent on whether we can commit to something or not. And I think that's not. >>I gotta ask you on as a leader uh threaded leader on this group. Open source is super important, as you know, and you continue to do it from under years. How are you investing in the future? What's your plan? Uh plans for your team, the industry actually very inclusive, Which is very cool. It's gonna resonate well, what's the plans? Give us some details on what you're investing in, what your priorities? What's your first principles? >>Yeah, So it goes in many ways, one when I I also have the luxury also on the amazon open source program office. So, you know, I get the chance to my team, rather not me help amazon engineers participate in open source. That that's the team that helps create the tools for them, makes it easy for them to contribute, creates, you know, manages all the licenses, etcetera. I'll give you a simple example, you know, in there, just think of the cr credential helper that was written by one of our engineers and he kind of distorted because he felt it was something that we needed to do. And we made it open source in general, in in many of our teams. The first question we asked is should something the open why is this thing not open source, especially if it's a utility or some piece of software that runs along with services. So they'll step one. But we've done some big things also, I, you know, a couple of years ago we launched Lennox operating system called bottle Rocket. And right from the beginning it was very clear to us that bottle Rocket was two things. It was both in AWS product. But first it was an open source project. We've already learned a little bit from what we've done at Firecracker. But making bottle rocket and open source operating system is very important. Anyone can take part of Rocket the open source to build tooling. You can run it whatever you want. If you want to take part of Rocket and build a version and manage it for another provider. For another provider wants to do it, go for it. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. So you'll see us do a lot there. Obviously there's multiple areas. You've seen WS investing on the open source side. But to me, the winds come from when engineers can participate in small things, released little helpers or get contributions from outside. I think that's where we're still, we can always have that. We're going to continue to strive to make it better and easier. And uh, you know, I said, I have, you know, me and my team, we have an opportunity to help their inside the company and we continue to do so. But that's what gets me excited. >>Yeah, that's great stuff. And congratulations on investing in the community, really enjoys it and I know it moves the needle for the industry. Deepak, I gotta ask you why I got you here. Dr khan obviously, developers, what's the most important story that they should be paying attention to as a developer because of what's going on shift left for security day two operations also known as a I ops getups, whatever you wanna call it, you know, ongoing, you get server lists, you got land. I mean, all kinds of great things are going on. You mentioned Fargate, >>um >>what should they be paying attention to that's going to really help their life, both innovation wise and just the quality of life. >>Yeah, I would say look at, you know, in the end it is very easy developers in particular, I want to build the buildings and it's very easy to get tempted to try and get learn everything about something. You have access to all the bells and whistles and knobs, but in reality, if you want to run things you want to, you want to focus on what's important, the business application, that and you the application. And I think a lot of what I'll tell developers and I think it's a lot of where the industry is going is we have built a really solid foundation, whether it's humanity, so you CSN forget or you know, continue industries out there. We have very solid foundation that, you know, our customers and develop a goal of the world can use to build upon. But increasingly, and you know, they are going to provide tools that sort of take that wrap them up and providing a nice package solution After another great example, our collaboration, the doctor around Dr desktop are a great example where we get all the mark focus on the application and build on top of that and you can get so much done. I think that's one trend. You'll see more and more. Those things are no longer toys, their production grade systems that you can build real world applications on, even though they're so easy to use. The second thing I would add to that is uh, get uh, it is, you know, you can give it whatever name you want. There's uh, there's nuances there, but I actually think get up is the way people should be running the infrastructure, my virus in my personal, you know, it's something that we believe a lot in homicide as hard as you go towards immutable infrastructure, infrastructure, automation, we can get off plays a significant role. I think developers naturally gravitate towards it. And if you want to live in a world where development and operations are tightly linked, I think it after the huge role to play in that it's actually a big part of how we're planning to do things like yes, anywhere, for example, a significant player and that it would be a proton. I think get up will be a significant in the future of proton as well. So I think that's the other trend. If you wanted to pick a trend that people should pay attention. That's what I believe in a lot. >>Well you're an expert. So I want to get you a quick definition. What is get Ops, how would you define it? Because that's a big trend. What does it, what does that mean? >>Electricity will probably shoot me for getting this wrong. I tell you how I think about it. Which is, you know, in many cases, um, you when you're doing deployments are pushing a deployment getups is more of a full deployment. When you are pushing code to get depository, you have a system that knows that the event has happened and then pulls from there and triggers the thing as opposed to you telling it take I have this new piece of code now go deployed everywhere. So to me, the biggest changes that Two parts one is it's more for full mechanism where you're pulling because something has changed. So it needs systems like container orchestrators to keep them, you know, to keep them in sync. And the second part of the natural natural evolution of infrastructure score, which is basically everything is called the figures code. Infrastructure as code, code is code and everything is getting stored in that software repo and the software repo becomes your store of record and drives everything. Uh So for a glass of customers, that's going to be a pretty big deal. >>Yeah, when you're checking in code, that's again, it's like a compiler for the compiler, a container for the container, you've got things for each other. Automation is ultimately what we're talking about here. And that's to me where machine learning kicks in. So again, having this open source foundational fabric, as you said, forget out the muck or the undifferentiated heavy lifting. This is what we're talking about automation, isn't it? Deepak? >>Yes. I mean I said uh one thing where we hang our hat on is there's such good stuff out there in the world which we like to contribute to, but the thing we like to hang our hat on is how do you run this? How do you do it this in ways that you can uniquely bring capabilities to customers where there's things like nitro or things are nitro open stuff. Well, the fact that we have built up this operational infrastructure over the last in a decade plus or in the container space over the last seven years where we really really know how to run these things at scale and have made all the investments to make it easy to do. So that's that's where we have hanger hard keeping people safe, helping them only available applications, their new startup, that just completely takes off in over the weekend. For whatever reason, because, you know, you're the next hot thing on twitter and our goal is to support you whether you are, you know, uh enterprise that's moving from the main train or you are the next hot startup, that's you know, growing virally and uh, you know, we've done a lot to build systems help both sides and yeah, it's >>interesting if you sing about open source where it's come from, I mean I remember that base wouldn't open source wasn't open, I would be peddling software, there's a free copy of Linux, UNIX um in college and now it's all free. But I mean just what's changed now. It used to be just free software, download software. You got it now, it's a service. Service now can be monetized quickly. And what you guys are offering with AWS and cloud scale is you've done all these things as I don't have to have a developer. I get the benefits of the scale, I can bring my open source code to the table, make it a service integrated in with other services and be the next snowflake, be the next, you know, a company that could scale. And that is that's the that's the innovation, right? That's the this is a new phenomenon. So it also changes the business model. >>Yeah, actually you're you're quite right. Actually, I I like one more thing to it. But you look at how a lot of enterprises use containers today. Most of them are using something like this year, Symphony or GS to build an internal developer platform and internal developer portal. And then the question then becomes this hard to scale this modern and development practices to an entire organization. What is your big bank that's been around as thousands and thousands of ID stuff That may not all be experts are running communities running container is when you scale it out different systems that proton come into play. That was actually the inspiration is how do you help an organization where they're building these developer Portholes and developer infrastructure, developer platforms, How do you make it easy for them to build it? Be almost use it as a way to get these modern practices into the hands of all the business units, where they may not have the time to become experts at the modern ways of running infrastructure because they're busy doing other things. And I think you'll see the a lot more happening that space that's not happening in the open source community. There's proton, there's a bunch of interesting things happening here and be interesting to see how that evolves. >>And also, you know, the communal, communal aspect of not just writing code together, but succeeding, right, building something. I mean, that's when you start to see the commercial meets open kind of ethos of communal activity of working together and sharing a big part of this year's. Dakar Con is sharing not just running and shipping code but sharing. >>Yeah, I mean if you think about it uh Dockers original value was you build run and shit right? You use the same code to build it, you use the same code to ship it, the same sort of infrastructure interface and then you run it and that, you know, the fact that the doctor images such a wonderfully shareable entity uh that can run every girl is such a powerful and it's called the Ci Image. Now I still call him Dr images because it's just easier. But that to me like that is a big deal and I think it's becoming and become an even bigger deal over the years. I came from something before, Amazon has to work in The sciences and bioinformatics and you know, the ability to share codeshare dependencies, package all of that up in a container image is a big deal. It's what got me one of the reasons I got fascinated with container 78 years ago. So it will be interesting to see where all of systems. >>It's great, great stuff. Great success. And congratulations. Deepak, Great to always talk to you got a great finger on the pulse. You lead a really important organizations at AWS and you know, doctor has such a huge success with developers, even though the company has gone through kind of a uh change over and a pivot to what they're doing now. They're back to their open source roots, but they have millions and millions of developers use Docker and new developers are coming in dot net developers are coming in. Windows developers are coming in and and so it's no longer about Lennox anymore. It's about just coding. >>Yeah. And it's it's part of this big trend towards infrastructure, automation and and you know development and deployment practices that I think everyone is going to adopt faster than we think they will. But you know, companies like Doctor and opens those projects that they involved are critical in making that a lot easier for them. And then you know, folks like us get to build on top of that orbit them and make it even easier. >>Well, great testimony the doctor that you guys based your E C. S on Docker Doctor has a critical role in developing community. I run composed in their hub with dr desktop and we'll be watching amazon and and the community activity and see what kind of experiences you guys can bring to the table and continue that momentum. Thank you Deepak for coming on the >>cube. Thank you, john. That's always a pleasure. >>Okay. Mr cubes. Dr khan 2021 virtual coverage. I'm john for your host of the cube. Thanks for watching.

from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante as we watch an historic election unfold before our eyes we look back at the early days of the millennium with the memorable presidential race of 2000 that decade of course was defined by 911 which permanently reshaped our thinking and we exited that decade at the tail end of a massive financial crisis only to enter the 2010s with the hope and the momentum of fiscal stimulus a flat globe job growth and very importantly the ascendancy of the cloud cloud computing unquestionably powered the innovation engine over the last 10 years and the pandemic marks a new era where adoption of cloud data and ai have been accelerated by at least two to three years and that's what's going to shape the future of the technology industry and frankly all businesses and organizations hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of thecube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we're going to update you on our latest cloud market share and dig in to some fresh october survey data from our partners over at etr let me start just with a brief summary of the latest action that's going on in cloud now quite interestingly each of the big three cloud players they showed nearly identical year-on-year growth rates in q3 as they did in q2 now we're going to dig into that in a moment but our data suggests that these three companies combined will account for more than 75 billion dollars in infrastructure as a service and platform as a service revenue in 2020 and they're potentially on track to hit 100 billion in 2021. customer survey data indicates that cio's top two infrastructure priorities remain security and cloud migration now that said as we previously reported the cloud it's not immune to the pandemic the remote worker pivot well it's a positive for cloud hasn't completely eradicated certain headwinds now what i mean here is that because the cloud vendors are now so large they're somewhat exposed to the softness in the overall i.t spending climate and also industries that have been hit hardest by the pandemic now would the cloud growth have been better if the pandemic didn't hit we'll never know for sure but our data suggests no covet has definitely been a benefactor to cloud in our view cloud will remain at the center of technological innovation for the foreseeable future the economics of cloud are becoming so compelling that we think the power of the big cloud companies will only increase this decade now importantly we're talking about the costs of running hyper-distributed systems we're not commenting here on what they charge customers that's a different story we believe the cost structure for the hyperscalers is superior to alternative approaches and we believe this advantage will only accelerate over the next several years we also believe that competition is going to continue to drive competitive pricing and innovation all right let's look at our latest market share numbers for the big three this chart shows our estimates of aws azure and the google cloud platform now viewers of this program know that these are is and pass figures and you also know that aws is the only company that provides clean numbers on that sector whereas azure and gcp are estimates that we make based on tidbits of guidance that the companies give us and survey data that we capture and other modeling that we do now as we've said we'll end this year it's about 75 billion in revenue or maybe even a little bit more note that for these three note that we've we've slightly restated some of our earlier estimates for azure to reconcile some differences that we had between constant currency and actual growth we try to keep things in constant currency where possible sorry for that but sometimes that happens azure according to our estimates as we reported last week is now 18 of microsoft's overall revenue number we had it at 19 that last week but when i dug in we made some adjustments so we toned it down a bit aws represents a much smaller percentage of course of amazon's revenues at about 12 percent but it represents 56 percent of amazon's profits gcp on the other hand accounts for less than five percent of google's overall revenue which as we've stated a few weeks ago needs more attention from google but look at the growth rates for these three platforms and the respective size of their is and pass businesses hear all this talk about repatriation i.e that what i mean by that is people go to the cloud but they're unhappy or the bill is too high it's too expensive so then they come back on prem well you just don't see that in the numbers so you gotta be careful when vendor a vendor tries to sell you on that trend i don't buy it except for selective situations now let's bring in some of the etr data and compare the spending momentum for each of the big three you've seen these wheel graphs before they show the breakdown of net score for aws microsoft and google now one note these figures represent these three companies overall within the etr technology taxonomy so for example they don't include amazon's retail business of course but they do include for example microsoft's entire tech portfolio not just the cloud the green portion of the wheel represents increases in spending via new adoptions and increased spending whereas the red sections show decreases via lower spending and defections net score which i've highlighted in the orange is calculated by subtracting the two reds from the two true greens in other words adoptions and increase minus decrease and replacements the takeaway here is these are all pretty strong with aws leading the pack microsoft is exceptionally strong as we pointed out last last week because they're so huge and they still have net scores comparable to aws which is a pure play gcp is a laggard and is showing softness in the data despite a sanguine outlook that we had back in 2019 based on survey data i don't know perhaps google's smaller presence muted their customers ability to take advantage of the platform the thinking there is the customers maybe needed to pivot to the cloud so quickly and aws and azure were the incumbents and that was maybe the most expedient path hence the higher increases in the spend more category but you do see gcp um they had 13 new adoptions which is pretty good so we'll keep looking at that regardless again these are not pure play cloud comparisons but they give a good indication of spending momentum i'd also note that all three show very low defections well each is showing solid increases in new adoptions especially google as i mentioned so that's kind of interesting to see but again google much much smaller you would expect that now i want to turn our attention to one of the hottest areas in cloud which is serverless and this is a pure play comparison so serverless let me start there it's a strange term because it's not really accurate but it's stuck serverless computing is a model where the cloud platform dynamically delivers services as the application requires so so you don't have to configure the compute and the containers for example rather when an application needs resources it goes and gets them and you only pay for when the services are actually invoked and in use so it's really good for workloads that spin up and spin down very frequently it kind of reminds me in concept anyway of the component tree that we saw in the days of soa if you remember that services oriented architecture but now this is cloud it's cloud native it's a whole new world and it's increasingly a popular model and as we'll show in a moment there's a lot of spending momentum in this area but before we do that i want to share some comments made by andy jassy a while back about serverless take a listen it's a good question and you know i really the comment i made was really about um directionally what amazon would do you know in this in the very earliest days of aws jeff used to say a lot if i were starting amazon today i'd have built it on top of aws we didn't have all the capability and all the functionality at that very moment but he knew what was coming and he saw what people were still able to accomplish even with where the services were at that point i think the same thing is true here with lambda which is i think if amazon were starting today it's a given they would build it on the cloud and i think with a lot of the applications that comprise amazon's consumer business we would build those on on our serverless capabilities now now lambda of course jesse referring to lambda that's amazon's serverless offering and if you think about amazon's retail business and take for example the frequent spin up and spin down of resources for something like black monday serverless would be a much more cost effective approach same for a managed data warehouse service for example where you know you don't want to pay for the compute if it's idle the app just calls for the compute when it's needed so it's a very popular model and it's got increased momentum today and you see that in this slide it shows the net score breakdown for serverless for azure aws is lambda which is again is their serverless offering and google cloud functions again you're shipping functions to the application that's why it's called functions look at the net scores azure functions nearly 70 aws at 65 google again lagging and that's a bit of a concern because this is a really really hot space all right let's move on and look at the competitive landscape as we like to do often and update you on that this xy graph is one of our favorites and it shows net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share on the horizontal market share is a measure of pervasiveness in the data set in the upper right you also see a table that ranks each vendor my net score and it includes the shared n in other words the number of mentions in this sector for each vendor now you can you can see up top in the middle i've selected on the cloud computing category so this represents only the cloud businesses for each of these players there's a little bit of nuance here and that we've selected on microsoft azure there's a category in the etr taxonomy for that and we're comparing that with aws overall so there's there are things in the aws overall number that fit into the other parts of the taxonomy like maybe ai collaboration etc whereas azures and gcp are just the cloud segments so i i know it's a bit strange because aws is all cloud but don't get caught up in the taxonomical nuance the point is it's good to be azure in aws it's shown there when you look at the upper right of the chart here they stand out and they stand alone in cloud leadership google cloud is they have nice elevated levels but they're much much smaller they don't have the presence in the market now look at that hybrid cloud zone emerging we've talked about this sometimes in the past and and i want to call it vmware cloud on aws red hat open shift and vmware cloud itself like vmware cloud foundation and their other cloud services all of these appear to be gaining traction and you can see in the number of occurrences in the upper right that shared end that i talked about we're starting to see real numbers that are meaningful in this space vmware cloud on aws for example has a net score of 53 percent with 116 accounts within that total respondent sample that you see there in the middle left of 1438 that's how many cios and technology buyers responded to the etr survey in october you look at open shift at 45 net score and that's with 82 accounts now openshift is in beta with what looked to be some really strong offerings on aws and you can see for context i've added dell emc's cloud offerings hpe's cloud offerings and the oracle cloud and ibm cloud and also rackspace dell actually pretty strong with a net score of 20 and 185 shared accounts much much higher than dell overall which is kind of in the red zone oracle ibm you see those rackspace you know organizing not killing it rackspace is kind of in the big negative so that's a concern but anyway we'd like for these guys we'd like to see the data match the marketing rhetoric for the the guys that are in the red and look alibaba is starting to to show up in the server there's only 26 shared ends but we thought we'd we'd put it in there those three key points again aws and microsoft keep on trucking google needs to do better hybrid is becoming real and that bodes well for multi-cloud and the legacy on-prem guys they got a lot of work to do they're under a lot of pressure the pivot to cloud has not been easy for them uh and it's still a case where they're i've talked about this a lot they're they're declines in their on-premises offerings they're not being offset by the new stuff the cloud momentum all right i want to close out by sharing some of the conversations and thoughts that we've had in the community around sas and its impact on cloud we really have been focusing on ias and pass of the sas layer obviously up the stack so let me first share that there's a lot of talk around and has been for years about aws they're slowing growth rates and whether or not they'll have to enter the sas market to expand their total available market and i've said consistently while i never say never about aws i don't think so at least not yet this chart plots the big three cloud players note aws is a bigger piece of this pie now that i've turned off the cloud computing filter and i know more nuances but the data wonks will will find you know see this and they'll ask me about it this is all of aws portfolio and again it's only the microsoft azure portfolio so you see it aws now overtakes azure on the x-axis i.e market share now we've plotted some of the major sas vendors and you can see servicenow and salesforce both very large and they have really strong spending momentum and servicenow's you know pushing 100 billion dollars in market value they've surpassed workday quite some time ago workday's got less presence but they've got really really solid net score and i got to say i'm impressed with sap despite some of the earnings challenges that they've been having they're right up there with splunk and tableau splunk has softened in recent surveys and i've i've also plotted in there netsuite and oracle fusion which are just okay and that is i think for now anyway aws is going to position as the best place and the most friendly and highest quality cloud in which to run your sas for example workday runs on aws aws is salesforce's preferred infrastructure platform so my premise here is just like retail companies might want not want to run on aws a number of sas companies that compete with microsoft they might think twice about running on azure so aws would be better off for now trying to attract those sas players and drive their services and sticking to infrastructure and the pass layer snowflake is actually kind of interesting and i've added them for context because their netscore is always kind of a bellwether it's really off the charts and they're an isv running on the cloud they're different from some of the other sas players and the snowflake is a database okay and most of snowflake's business runs on aws and aws competes with snowflake with redshift but aws has the best cloud and drives a lot of business for snowflake and vice versa so it's kind of interesting snow snowflake to redshift and a much smaller example is kind of like netflix to amazon prime video to compete they both thrive so i think aws is going to continue to grow by attracting sas players as the preferred platform and they'll also attract developers and try to disrupt sas players like servicenow which runs on its own cloud i remember years ago david floyer and i said that servicenow was it was awesome but at some point its infrastructure cost structure its infrastructure cost structure is going to be less competitive than those companies that are running on hyperscale clouds certainly the hyperscale clouds themselves and servicenow they have this multi-instance architecture which just can't easily port over to the cloud but it can charge a lot which it does now at some point some sharp developers are going to look at all this and say whoa see that service now i can build this for less and they'll attack servicenow and their seat base license model maybe with the consumption pricing model and a platform that's perhaps or a set of services that are perhaps less expensive you're seeing this to a you know a certain degree with like elastic inside the application performance management space so there's some some things to watch there but there are those who firmly believe that aws will and must enter the sas space directly we talked last week about how beneficial microsoft's application business is for azure and what a flywheel that is but for me i think we're not there yet let's give it some time i think maybe four to five years before aws may even start to think about filling some of the space up the stack now maybe they'll find some unique opportunities to do that for instance at the edge but i think that's way off okay so bottom line it's good to be in tech these days it's even better to be in the cloud and it's best if you're aws and microsoft and i don't see that changing for a while now remember these episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen i publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com you can get in touch with me through email it's david at siliconangle.com feel free to dm me on twitter at d vallante i post on linkedin love your comments there thank you and don't forget to check out etr plus for all the survey action thanks for watching this episode of thecube insights powered by etr this is dave vellante stay safe stay sane and we'll see you next time you

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE coming to you from our Palo Alto studios for a CUBE Conversation. We're talking about the Citrix Workspace Summit. It happened earlier today. And we've got one of the experts in the field, CUBE alumni and always a really fun guest to have on. Let's give a welcome to Tamara McCleary. She's coming to us from Colorado. She's the CEO of Thulium but you know her from social media and seeing her at all the conferences and speaking. And Tamara, it's great to see you again >> Jeff, it's so good to be here. Hey, next best thing to being in person, right? >> Absolutely. I mean, there is some good stuff. Neither of us had to get on an airplane today and we were able just to connect via the magic of the internet, which I think people forget how magic it truly is. So I looked up, we last spoke, it was mid-April. We were about a month into this thing after the kind of shutdown. And really the topic there was about this light switch moment on the work from home front. Now we're seven months into this, eight months into this, and clearly it's not going away anytime soon. And even when it does, it's not going to go back exactly to the way it was. So first off, how are you doing? 'Cause I know you spend a lot of time at conferences and traveling all over the world, so your life's been changed quite a bit. And then two, just your kind of perspective as we've moved from the light switch moment to the, that this is the new normal and will be the new normal going forward. Maybe not exactly how it is today, but we're not going back to the way that it was before. >> You couldn't be more spot on, Jeff. In fact, when you said April, to me, it almost feels like not seven months. It feels much longer ago. And since the last time I got on an airplane was the end of February, and that was a huge disruption to me in my life. I had always been in three, four cities a week, every week, and haven't traveled on an airplane since February. So the world is different, and it has shifted, and there's no going back. We can't step in the river twice and hit that same spot. I totally messed up that quote, but that's me. You're used to that already. >> Jeff: Exactly. >> But some things don't change. But I think when we look at work, and what we were talking about back in April is that now we're looking at the potential for kind of a hybrid approach, whether we're talking about work or even kids, some kids going back to school, there's a hybrid approach. And with that comes its own set of complexities that we have to consider. So not only has the culture shifted into a place where you have your workforce who has gotten used to working remotely, and there's a lot of things with working remotely that we didn't have when office was the centrical focus for the workplace. So there's a lot of flexibility when you work from home. And I think one of the interesting things with the Citrix Workspace Summit was when CEO David Henshall talked about how it's the people, right? So it's our workforce, our employees who are our most valuable, but also our most costly assets. So we have to make sure that the employee experience is one that is pleasing and helps us to have not only talent acquisition, but also talent retention in a really dynamic, competitive atmosphere. And I'm sure I just posed this question so we could go a million different places with this. Where do you want to go with it, Jeff? >> Well, I was going to say, and of course we can go forever, and we don't have forever, so at some point we'll have to stop talking at the end of this interview. But I just love having you on. And what I want to drill in is as we've talked about the new way to work for a very, very long time. This is not a new topic. And we've had remote work tools and we've had VPNs and we've had mobile phones now since 2007, but we didn't have this forcing function, and I think that's what's really different here is that now it wasn't a choice anymore. There was no more planning and talking about it and maybe or maybe not. Work from home was kind of a first-class citizen in terms of priority. COVID changed all that dramatically overnight. And it's driven home this other kind of concept which we talk a lot about generically in terms of the customer experience as they interact with our applications, which is the way that now they actually interact with the company. And we've talked a little bit about new way to work, but now it's really driven to the forefront, because as you said, there's a lot of benefits from working from home. You could eat dinner with your family, maybe can pick up a few more of the kids' activities, whether it's a sports game in the middle of the afternoon or something in the evening, but there's also a lot of stress. There's a lot of kind of this always on and this constant notifications, whether it's coming from email or text or Slack or Teams or Asana or whatever. So refocusing on the employee experience and elevating that up into a much more important thing, as you said, for both wellness and employee satisfaction, but also retention and getting new employees. It's really changed the priority of that whole set of, kind of point of view around the employee experience that wasn't there kind of pre-COVID. >> Absolutely. And I think you just tapped onto something that I think affects all of us who are juggling these multifaceted lives, and that is the constant interruption and distraction, and that costs money. And I think about that as the CEO of our organization is that how many of these distractions could be avoided to create efficiency and productivity. It also creates happiness for the individual. I don't think anybody likes to be constantly distracted, but when you have a bunch of different applications and you don't have them in one accessible place and you're constantly having to flip between these applications, it can cause a lot of friction and frustration. And I think genuinely that was my very first introduction to Citrix was the ability to really streamline and have everything in one place on a beautiful dashboard that was personalized to the individual. Not everybody in the organization needs to have all the applications, right? Some of your employees only need a few, and it just depends on who they are and what they're doing within the organization. And so I think decreasing that friction, making it easier for people, and certainly ensuring not only a frictionless experience at home but also ensuring security is huge. I mean, how many times have we talked about cybersecurity is not a bolt on afterwards. It has to be all the way up through the stack. And certainly we did have an increased threat landscape with work from home situations because there were all these security breaches and issues and vulnerabilities. So I know we're not talking security today, but I'm wild about it. But I think that all of these things, what I like about what Citrix is doing, and I enjoy the Summit, is the fact that they're blending everything into a single solution so that it just gets done. Work gets done from wherever you are, whether you're at home, you're in office, or in your car, work gets done. >> And not only work but I thought the theme that's interesting that came out in David's keynote is our best work. It's good work and high-value work. And there's really kind of two aspects of that. One, as you just said, is please help me with the distractions and use machine learning and artificial intelligence and this unified platform to decide whether I should or should not be distracted. Also help me prioritize what I should be working on kind of right now, which, again, a great opportunity for AI and ML to elevate that which is most important to the top of my inbox. But even more in one of the keynotes was integrating the concept of wellness, and not just wellness in the HR manual at the back after vision and dental and getting your health checks, but wellness even where the application suggests that you take a two-hour window in this particular period of time to be thoughtful and do some deep thinking. And someone mentioned the people we talk about in automation and getting rid of drudgery and errors and all the bad stuff that comes from doing crappy work, not only is it not fun, but super error prone. This is a really different to use technology to help the employee, as you said, not only just get work done, but get good work done, get high-value work done, prioritize good stuff, and not just deal with the incessant henpecking that is the notification world that it's really easy to fall into if you don't turn some of that stuff off or at least tone them down a little bit. >> That's so true. I don't know if you saw this, but there a study by Stanford of, I think it was 16,000 workers, and over a nine-month period, they did this study, and it was a study looking at work from home and whether productivity was increased. And every, 'cause at first you remember what it was, Jeff. I mean, in the old regime, we would thought, oh dear, we don't want a remote workforce because everybody's going to be hanging out in their pajamas and screwing around and not doing work. And that's not true. What ends up happening is that this study showed that productivity increased by 13%. And, I mean, that's huge, right? So there was a huge bump in performance. And in this particular study, the variables that they cited was perhaps that they had a quieter workspace. I mean, you're not getting barraged by all the endless meetings, unless you have endless Zoom meetings, but that's a whole nother conversation. But you're having more time to focus and flexibility on when you work, which also increases focus. But I thought what you mentioned, the wellness piece was important, because then if you look at other studies, there was a Forbes article that cited that the average worker starts at 8:32 a.m. or something like that and works until 5:38 p.m. And I think the days of the week that were the most productive were Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. But this was interesting, I thought. Telephone calls were up by 230%, so the calls that employees were making, and CRM activity was up by 176% and email up by 57% and chats up by 9%. So what we're seeing is that people are trying to find creative ways to remain connected and communicate, but in different ways. And I think that's where the wellness piece comes in and kind of what you were saying with that. I think it's a microapp that Citrix has on their Workspace, their workspace dashboard that pops up a reminder and says, hey, you think you should take a break or get up from your desk. But I think that what's nice about that is it's easy to get sucked into your computer all day. I'm guilty. I will definitely say I can start off pretty darn early in the morning or usually around by five and go till late at night. But, and it's all in front of the computer screen. So maybe I need that Citrix workspace solution to tap me on the shoulder and tell me to go take a meditation break. >> At least one of those watches that'll tell you to get up and twist around. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. They had Satya Nadella on, and Satya is a phenomenal executive, been super successful turning that big, very large boat, Microsoft, into really a cloud company and a SaaS company, and nothing but great success. Always happy to hear him. He had some interesting comments I want to run by you. One of them he said is we were dogmatic about work before, but don't replace what we were with just a new dogma. And what he really highlighted, A, obviously without the technology platform and cloud and all these tools that we have in place, this couldn't have happened. But more importantly, he said it really highlights the need for flexibility and resiliency, and to really, again, kind of elevate those as the first class citizens as to what you should be optimizing for. And really the highlight within this sudden shift with COVID that if you've got those capabilities, you're going to be successful, and if you don't, you're in real trouble >> I'm glad you brought Satya up, because he also said something really cool that I think is true, and that is we are running right now, currently we are running a global scale experiment. Do you remember him saying that? >> Yeah. >> And it's so true. I think right now the social scientists are going wild because finally they've got their captive collection of their study, their guinea pigs. But the other thing he was saying, too, is that we're going to be harnessing all these technologies to be able to re-skill and up-skill. And how long have we been talking about this, Jeff, with the future of work, that it will be a re-skilling and up-skilling of the workforce. He even mentioned holographic technology. He didn't go into it, but just the mention of it got me thinking about how we are currently using some of those nascent technologies to be able to up-skill and re-skill our workforces and also protect a workforce that doesn't necessarily need to be on scene on the edge of it all. And then he gave an example of an engineer being able to communicate with a first-line worker without having to be actually in the physical presence. And so I think this crucible that we're in called a global pandemic, forcing our hand, really, to do all the things that we've been talking about at all these conferences that we've been to, for me, maybe the past two decades, is that it's show, don't tell. So we're not talking about it anymore. We actually have to do it. And another thing that Satya said was that nine to five is definitely not true anymore with work. It's flexibility. And it's really... He also mentioned this EEG study into meeting fatigue. >> Jeff: Yes. >> I thought it was pretty wild. An EEG study into meeting fatigue. And I bet even without reading that study, all of us who are on video conferencing systems can probably tell what the outcome of that was. But concentration wanes very quickly. In fact, I think in that study it was after 20 minutes. But, so kudos to Citrix for putting on their summits, because did you notice for once we had the enjoyment of all these just really contents, deliciously packed segments that were short. >> Jeff: Right. >> Whereas at live events, they went on way too long. I mean, even customer stories went on way too long. And I really love the staccato nature of these customer stories and partnerships and what was working, and I just thought that they did a really nice job, and it was interesting because it met perfectly with staying underneath that 20-minute window before attention wanes. >> Right, right. And they even broke it up into three conferences, right? It was Citrix Synergy before. >> Right. >> Now it's workspaces, it's cloud, and then the third one will be security. But I want to double down on another concept. We talked about it last time with you and with Amy about measuring work and about kind of old work paradigms in terms of measuring performance that were really based more on activity than output. And this concept that work is an output, not a place. And it kind of makes you think of talking about cloud and a cloud-centric way of thinking about things. It's not necessarily the delivery method. It's about adopting quick change and rapid pace and having everything available that you need anywhere you are at the same time. So it seems strange to me that it took this to drive people to figure out that they should be measuring output and not activity. And were some early applications that came out when this all went down that are going to report back as to how often are you looking at your Zoom calls and how often are you sitting in front of your desk and all this silly stuff that just, again, misses the point. And I think this whole employee experience is, as you said, make 'em happy, make 'em feel fulfilled. They want to do meaningful work. They want to do high-value work. They just don't want to be an integration machine between the email system and the accounts receivable system and the accounts payable system. There's so much of an opportunity to get more value from the people, which, oh, by the way, makes for happier people. So do you think finally we're at a point where we can start getting away from just measuring activity unless that's your job to put a widget on a screw and really focus on output and high-value output and innovative output and deep thinking output versus just checking another box and passing the paper down the line? >> You know, Jeff, that reminds me of what Erica Volini, I think she's global human capital practice at Deloitte. I really loved her presentation. I also like the fact that I felt like she was speaking from her home, and she mentioned she's a new mom, and so there was this warmth and connection there which also I think is something really that we don't think about being, but it is a gift since we've all had to work from home is being able to see kind of executive individuals in a regular environment, and it humanizes it all, right? She said something really interesting in her talk. She was talking about rearchitecting the future of work, and she was talking about essentially, the premise was that human beings need, crave, have to have work that's meaningful and real. And part of this whole experience piece, part of this removing the friction from the experience of the employee and providing opportunities, stimulating growth opportunities for employees to give them that sense of meaning. But also she talked about the relationships. I mean, work is a huge part of the relationships in our life. And so this meaningful relationships and connections and in her architecting the work of the future, it's harnessing technology in service to humans to do a better job. And I think the word she used was augmentation, right? So the augmentation piece would be as we think about reinventing or re-imagining or re-architecting, we look at what's going to happen when we have the human working with the machine, but the machine in service to augmenting that human being to do, potential is what she was talking about, to really reach their potential. And so it's not about being replaced by technology. It's not being replaced by artificial intelligence, with machine learning algorithms. It's actually working in tandem so that technology potentiates the human that is using the technology. And I think that was a really good way of putting it. >> Right, right. I mean, we talk, it's one of our taglines, right? To separate the signal from the noise. And the problem is with so many systems now, and I forget, you may know off the top of your head, the average number of applications that people have to interact with every day to get their job done. >> Too many. >> Too many. >> Too many. >> It's a lot. So, so there is a lot of noise, but there's also some signal. And so if you're not paying attention, you can miss the signal that might be super, super important because you're overwhelmed by the noise. And so I think it is a real interesting challenge. It's a technology challenge to apply the machine learning and artificial intelligence, to sort through the total flow, to be able to prioritize and separate the signal from the noise to make sure we're working on the stuff that we should be working on. And I think it's a growing challenge as we just seem to always be adding new applications and adding new notifications and adding new systems that we have to interact with versus taking them away. So Citrix has this approach where we're just going to bring it all in together under one place. And so whether it's your Salesforce notification or your Slack notification or Zoom meeting, whatever, to have it orchestrated as a single place so I don't have 18 tabs, 14 browsers, and two laptops running just to get my day job done. >> You're going to make me self-conscious of all the tabs I have right now. Thanks a lot, Jeff. But, it's kind of, I like hearing stories, right? I think stories communicate to me kind of these practical applications. And I think Citrix did a brilliant job in the Workspace Summit of highlighting some of these customer stories that were really inspiring during the pandemic. One of 'em was City National Bank and Ariel Carrion? This is a test of my memory. He's the CTO, right, of City National Bank. And he's talking about that they had already had a partial migration to the cloud prior to the pandemic. So obviously there was an advantage for those organizations that already had their toe in the water. So, but when the pandemic hit, then it really catalyzed that movement all the way into the cloud and essentially creating a digital bank. And what was really interesting to me is that they funded 9600 loans and taking on new clients during that time of transformation to a digital bank. And one of the coolest things that he said to me was that in a regular program, it would've taken, mind you, get this. It would've taken 14 years, 14 years to accomplish what they did in three months. >> That's a long time. >> I was blown away, right? Just to me, that speaks a lot, because what we're talking about here is their clients are small business, and who do you think was impacted most during the pandemic? Small business. So the ability to get loans was critically important to the survival of a lot of companies. And the same story they had with eBay and David Lessor was talking, he's a senior manager in the office of the CIO, I think I remember. And he was talking about how obviously eBay is a digital platform, right? But if you think about the pandemic when we were all had these shelter in place orders, lots of people were able to still make money and earn a living because they were able to do business on eBay. And both eBay and City National Bank are obviously customers of Citrix. But I just found this to be really inspiring, because for eBay pre-pandemic, it was like, I don't know. I think they said they had 11,000 connected users prior to the pandemic, and a lot of those were in physical call centers. >> Jeff: Right. >> And then post-pandemic, I think he was reaching, saying end of Q4 was going to be something like 14,000 connected users. That's huge from 11 to 14. >> Yeah. >> And again, to your point, it's kind of forcing our hand into really not only pivoting, but increasing our speed in this ever-changing dynamic environment. >> Right. >> You know, one of the other things that came up, before I let you go, that it's always nice to have frameworks. Sometimes it just helps us organize our thoughts and it's kind of a mental cheat sheet. And they talked about the four Cs, connectivity, content, collaboration, and culture. And I would have to say they're in inverse order of how I would potentially have prioritized them. But I just wanted to zero in on the culture piece, 'cause I don't think people focus enough on culture. And one of the things I think we talked about in April, and I've certainly talked about a number of times going through this thing in leadership in these crazy times is that the frequency and the type and the topics in communication within your internal world have gone up dramatically. I think we had the, we had a CMO on the other day, and she said internal comms, this is a big company, prior to COVID was important, but not that important within the list of the CMO's activity. But then once this thing hit, right, suddenly internal communications, again, in terms of frequency and the types of topics you're talking about and the forums that you talk about and the actual vehicles in which you talk about, whether it's a all hands Zoom call or it's more frequent one-on-ones with your manager, really, really increase the importance of culture, and then I think probably is going to show over time the people that have it right, getting some separation distance from the people that got it wrong. I wonder if you could just talk about, 'cause you're a big culture person and you know how important the people part of the whole thing is. >> Yeah, culture drives everything. You're right. And that was Citrix's CIO who gave those four Cs, I think, Meerah Rajavel. >> Yeah, yeah. >> She gave those four Cs. And you couldn't be, you couldn't have tapped into something that I think is the soft underbelly of the organization, which is what is the culture. And anyone who's worked in an organization with a sick culture knows that it's just, it's cancerous, right? It grows and it causes decay. And I don't care how much innovation you have. If the culture is sick, you just, you're going to lose your best people. It's hard to work in a sick culture. And so I think what we had to do is when we all started working remotely, that was a culture shift, because we were siloed off of it. We weren't actually hanging out in physical space. Some of the things that we enjoyed about meeting with other human beings physically changed. And so it really behooved organizations to take a look at how they were going to foster culture digitally, how they were going to create that sense of bonding between not only those within your departmental area, but cross over into other areas. And I think that creating that culture that says I don't have to be in the exact same physical space, but we can still connect. I mean, you and I are doing this. We're not in the same physical space. >> Jeff: Right. >> But I'm still going to feel like we met today. >> Jeff: Right. >> You can create that for your employees. And it also means that we learned that we don't have to be in that same physical space, right? And I thought that was a really interesting position when Hayden Brown, the CEO of Upwork, was talking at the summit and saying that even when we look at creating culture with employees who aren't necessarily, maybe it's a workforce from all over the world that you're using, a remote workforce. And when you're using things like employees, if you've got work to do and you can find a really good talent and you can grab them for what it is that you need, you're actually increasing your ability to be able to deliver on things versus having to worry about whether you have that person in house, but you still can create that culture where everyone is inclusive, where someone can be in Australia and someone's in San Francisco and someone's in the UK, and you still have to create a cohesive, inclusive culture. And it matters not anymore whether or not you are a full-time employee or if you're a contract worker. I think in today's space, and certainly in those future of work conversations, it's more about, to the very first thing you said at the beginning, it's more about output. How's that for tying it back up again? >> Jeff: Yeah, very good. >> And that was totally unplanned. But it is about output, and that's going to be the future of work culture. It's not going to be the title that you have, whether or not you're a full-time employee or a part-time employee or a contract worker. It's going to be who are you meeting with? Who are you having these digital interfaces with and Slacking with or using any sort of platform application that you want to use. It's remaining in touch and in communication, and no longer is it about a physical space. It's a digital space. >> Right, right. All right, well, I'm going to give you the last word. You are a super positive person, and there's reasons, and for people that haven't watched your TED Talk, they should. I think it's super impactful and it really changed the way I look at you. So of all the negatives, wrap us up with some positives that you see as we come out of COVID that going through this experience will make in our lives, both our work lives as well as our personal lives. >> Well, since you're going to allow me to go deep here, I would say one of the things that COVID has brought us is pause. It caused us to go in. And with any dark night of the soul, we have to wrestle with the things that are real for us, and the things that fall away are those that were false, false perceptions, false ideas, illusions of even thinking who we are, what we're doing. And we had to come home to ourselves. And I think one of the things that COVID gave us through uncertainty was finding a center in that uncertainty. And maybe we got to know our beloveds a bit more. Maybe we got to know our kids a bit more, even if they drive us crazy sometimes. But in the end, I think maybe we all got to know ourselves a little bit more. And for that, I think we can harness those seeds of wisdom and make better choices in the future to co-create together a future that we are all pleased to wake up in, one that is fair, one that is equal, one that is inclusive, and one that we can be proud to have contributed to. And that's what I hope we've taken from this extremely hard time. >> Well, Tamara, thanks for sharing your wisdom with us. Really appreciate it. And great to see ya. >> Good to see you, too, thank you. >> All right, she's Tamara, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (bright music)

>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of Exascale Day. Made possible by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are celebrating Exascale Day. 10, 18, I think it's the second year of celebrating Exascale Day, and we're really excited to have our next guest and talk about kind of what this type of compute scale enables, and really look a little bit further down the road at some big issues, big problems and big opportunities that this is going to open up. And I'm really excited to get in this conversation with our next guest. He is Bryan Pijanowski the Professor of Landscape and Soundscape Ecology at Purdue University. Bryan, great to meet you. >> Great to be here. >> So, in getting ready for this conversation, I just watched your TED Talk, and I just loved one of the quotes. I actually got one of quote from it that's basically saying you are exploring the world through sound. I just would love to get a little deeper perspective on that, because that's such a unique way to think about things and you really dig into it and explain why this is such an important way to enjoy the world, to absorb the world and think about the world. >> Yeah, that's right Jeff. So the way I see it, sound is kind of like a universal variable. It exists all around us. And you can't even find a place on earth where there's no sound, where it's completely silent. Sound is a signal of something that's happening. And we can use that information in ways to allow us to understand the earth. Just thinking about all the different kinds of sounds that exist around us on a daily basis. I hear the birds, I hear the insects, but there's just a lot more than that. It's mammals and some cases, a lot of reptiles. And then when you begin thinking outside the biological system, you begin to hear rain, wind, thunder. And then there's the sounds that we make, sounds of traffic, the sounds of church bells. All of this is information, some of it's symbolic, some of it's telling me something about change. As an ecologist that's what I'm interested in, how is the earth changing? >> That's great and then you guys set up at Purdue, the Purdue Center for Global Soundscapes. Tell us a little bit about the mission and some of the work that you guys do. >> Well, our mission is really to use sound as a lens to study the earth, but to capture it in ways that are meaningful and to bring that back to the public to tell them a story about how the earth kind of exists. There's an incredible awe of nature that we all experience when we go out and listen into to the wild spaces of the earth. I've gone to the Eastern Steppes of Mongolian, I've climbed towers in the Paleotropics of Borneo and listened at night. And ask the question, how are these sounds different? And what is a grassland really supposed to sound like, without humans around? So we use that information and bring it back and analyze it as a means to understand how the earth is changing and really what the biological community is all about, and how things like climate change are altering our spaces, our wild spaces. I'm also interested in the role that people play and producing sound and also using sound. So getting back to Mongolia, we have a new NSF funded project where we're going to be studying herders and the ways in which they use sonic practices. They use a lot of sounds as information sources about how the environment is changing, but also how they relate back to place and to heritage a special sounds that resonate, the sounds of a river, for example, are the resonance patterns that they tune their throat to that pay homage to their parents that were born at the side of that river. There's these special connections that people have with place through sound. And so that's another thing that we're trying to do. In really simple terms, I want to go out and, what I call it sounds rather simple, record the earth-- >> Right. >> What does that mean? I want to go to every major biome and conduct a research study there. I want to know what does a grassland sound like? What is a coral reef sound like? A kelp forest and the oceans, a desert, and then capture that as baseline and use that information-- >> Yeah. >> For scientific purposes >> Now, there's so much to unpack there Bryan. First off is just kind of the foundational role that sound plays in our lives that you've outlined in great detail and you talked about it's the first sense that's really activated as we get consciousness, even before we're born right? We hear the sounds of our mother's heartbeat and her voice. And even the last sense that goes at the end a lot of times, in this really intimate relationship, as you just said, that the sounds represent in terms of our history. We don't have to look any further than a favorite song that can instantly transport you, almost like a time machine to a particular place in time. Very, very cool. Now, it's really interesting that what you're doing now is taking advantage of new technology and just kind of a new angle to capture sound in a way that we haven't done before. I think you said you have sound listening devices oftentimes in a single location for a year. You're not only capturing sound, the right sound is changes in air pressure, so that you're getting changes in air pressure, you're getting vibration, which is kind of a whole different level of data. And then to be able to collect that for a whole year and then start to try to figure out a baseline which is pretty simple to understand, but you're talking about this chorus. I love your phrase, a chorus, because that sound is made up of a bunch of individual inputs. And now trying to kind of go under the covers to figure out what is that baseline actually composed of. And you talk about a bunch of really interesting particular animals and species that combine to create this chorus that now you know is a baseline. How did you use to do that before? I think it's funny one of your research papers, you reach out to the great bird followers and bird listeners, 'cause as you said, that's the easiest way or the most prolific way for people to identify birds. So please help us in a crowdsource way try to identify all the pieces that make this beautiful chorus, that is the soundscape for a particular area. >> Right, yeah, that's right. It really does take a team of scientists and engineers and even folks in the social sciences and the humanities to really begin to put all of these pieces together. Experts in many fields are extremely valuable. They've got great ears because that's the tools that they use to go out and identify birds or insects or amphibians. What we don't have are generalists that go out and can tell you what everything sounds like. And I'll tell you that will probably never ever happen. That's just way too much, we have millions of species that exist on this planet. And we just don't have a specific catalog of what everything sounds like, it's just not possible or doable. So I need to go out and discover and bring those discoveries back that help us to understand nature and understand how the earth is changing. I can't wait for us to eventually develop that catalog. So we're trying to develop techniques and tools and approaches that allow us to develop this electronic catalog. Like you're saying this chorus, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a species specific chorus, it can be a chorus of all these different kind of sounds that we think relate back to this kind of animal or that kind of animal based upon the animals instrument-- >> Right, great. >> And this is the sound. >> Now again, you know, keep it to the exascale theme, right? You're collecting a lot of data and you mentioned in one of the pieces I've dug up, that your longest study in a single location is 17 years. You've got over 4 million recordings. And I think you said over 230 years if you wanted to listen to them all back to back. I mean, this is a huge, a big data problem in terms of the massive amount of data that you have and need to run through an analysis. >> Yeah, that's right. We're collecting 48,000 data points per second. So that's 48 kilohertz. And then so you multiply everything and then you have a sense of how many data points you actually have to put them all together. When you're listening to a sound file over 10 minutes, you have hundreds of sounds that exist in them. Oftentimes you just don't know what they are, but you can more or less put some kind of measure on all of them and then begin to summarize them over space and time and try to understand it from a perspective of really science. >> Right, right. And then I just love to get your take as you progress down this kind of identification road, we're all very familiar with copyright infringement hits on YouTube or social media or whatever, when it picks up on some sound and the technology is actually really sophisticated to pick up some of those sound signatures. But to your point, it's a lot easier to compare against the known and to search for that known. Then when you've got this kind of undefined chorus that said we do know that there can be great analysis done that we've seen AI and ML applied, especially in the surveillance side on the video-- >> Right. >> With video that it can actually do a lot of computation and a lot of extracting signal from the noise, if you will. As you look down the road on the compute side for the algorithms that you guys are trying to build with the human input of people that know what you're listening to, what kind of opportunities do you see and where are we on that journey where you can get more leverage out of some of these technology tools? >> Well, I think what we're doing right now is developing the methodological needs, kind of describe what it is we need to move into that new space, which is going to require these computational, that computational infrastructure. So, for example, we have a study right now where we're trying to identify certain kinds of mosquitoes (chuckling) a vector-borne mosquitoes, and our estimates is that we need about maybe 900 to 1200 specific recordings per species to be able to put it into something like a convolutional neural network to be able to extract out the information, and look at the patterns and data, to be able to say indeed this is the species that we're interested in. So what we're going to need and in the future here is really a lot of information that allow us to kind of train these neural networks and help us identify what's in the sound files. As you can imagine the computational infrastructure needed to do that for data storage and CPU, GPU is going to be truly amazing. >> Right, right. So I want to get your take on another topic. And again the basis of your research is really all bound around the biodiversity crisis right? That's from the kind of-- >> Yeah. >> The thing that's started it and now you're using sound as a way to measure baseline and talk about loss of species, reduced abundancies and rampant expansion of invasive species as part of your report. But I'd love to get your take on cities. And how do you think cities fit the future? Clearly, it's an efficient way to get a lot of people together. There's a huge migration of people-- >> Right. >> To cities, but one of your themes in your Ted Talk is reconnecting with nature-- >> Yeah. >> Because we're in cities, but there's this paradox right? Because you don't want people living in nature can be a little bit disruptive. So is it better to kind of get them all in a tip of a peninsula in San Francisco or-- >> Yeah. >> But then do they lose that connection that's so important. >> Yeah. >> I just love to get your take on cities and the impacts that they're have on your core research. >> Yeah, I mean, it truly is a paradox as you just described it. We're living in a concrete jungle surrounded by not a lot of nature, really, honestly, occasional bird species that tend to be fairly limited, selected for limited environments. So many people just don't get out into the wild. But visiting national parks certainly is one of those kinds of experience that people oftentimes have. But I'll just say that it's getting out there and truly listening and feeling this emotional feeling, psychological feeling that wraps around you, it's a solitude. It's just you and nature and there's just no one around. >> Right. >> And that's when it really truly sinks in, that you're a part of this place, this marvelous place called earth. And so there are very few people that have had that experience. And so as I've gone to some of these places, I say to myself I need to bring this back. I need to tell the story, tell the story of the awe of nature, because it truly is an amazing place. Even if you just close your eyes and listen. >> Right, right. >> And it, the dawn chorus in the morning in every place tells me so much about that place. It tells me about all the animals that exist there. The nighttime tells me so much too. As a scientist that's spent most of his career kind of going out and working during the day, there's so much happening at night. Matter of fact-- >> Right. >> There's more sounds at night than there were during the day. So there is a need for us to experience nature and we don't do that. And we're not aware of these crises that are happening all over the planet. I do go to places and I listen, and I can tell you I'm listening for things that I think should be there. You can listen and you can hear the gaps, the gaps and that in that chorus, and you think what should be there-- >> Right. >> And then why isn't it there? And that's where I really want to be able to dig deep into my sound files and start to explore that more fully. >> It's great, it's great, I mean, I just love the whole concept of, and you identified it in the moment you're in the tent, the thunderstorm came by, it's really just kind of changing your lens. It's really twisting your lens, changing your focus, because that sound is there, right? It's been there all along, it's just, do you tune it in or do you tune it out? Do you pay attention? Do not pay attention is an active process or a passive process and like-- >> Right. >> I love that perspective. And I want to shift gears a little bit, 'cause another big environmental thing, and you mentioned it quite frequently is feeding the world's growing population and feeding it-- >> Yeah. >> In an efficient way. And anytime you see kind of factory farming applied to a lot of things you wonder is it sustainable, and then all the issues that come from kind of single output production whether that's pigs or coffee or whatever and the susceptibility to disease and this and that. So I wonder if you could share your thoughts on, based on your research, what needs to change to successfully and without too much destruction feed this ever increasing population? >> Yeah, I mean, that's one of the grand challenges. I mean, society is facing so many at the moment. In the next 20 years or so, 30 years, we're going to add another 2 billion people to the planet, and how do we feed all of them? How do we feed them well and equitably across the globe? I don't know how to do that. But I'll tell you that our crops and the ecosystem that supports the food production needs the animals and the trees and the microbes for the ecosystem to function. We have many of our crops that are pollinated by birds and insects and other animals, seeds need to be dispersed. And so we need the rest of life to exist and thrive for us to thrive too. It's not an either, it's not them or us, it has to be all of us together on this planet working together. We have to find solutions. And again, it's me going out to some of these places and bringing it back and saying, you have to listen, you have to listen to these places-- >> Right. >> They're truly a marvelous. >> So I know most of your listening devices are in remote areas and not necessarily in urban areas, but I'm curious, do you have any in urban areas? And if so, how has that signature changed since COVID? I just got to ask, (Bryan chuckling) because we went to this-- >> Yeah. >> Light switch moment in the middle of March, human activity slowed down-- >> Yeah. >> In a way that no one could have forecast ever on a single event, globally which is just fascinating. And you think of the amount of airplanes that were not flying and trains that we're not moving and people not moving. Did you have any any data or have you been able to collect data or see data as the impact of that? Not only directly in wherever the sensors are, but a kind of a second order impact because of the lack of pollution and the other kind of human activity that just went down. I mean, certainly a lot of memes (Bryan chuckling) on social media of all the animals-- >> Yeah. >> Come back into the city. But I'm just curious if you have any data in the observation? >> Yeah, we're part of actually a global study, there's couple of hundred of us that are contributing our data to what we call the Silent Cities project. It's being coordinated out of Europe right now. So we placed our sensors out in different areas, actually around West Lafayette area here in Indiana, near road crossings and that sort of thing to be able to kind of capture that information. We have had in this area here now, the 17 year study. So we do have studies that get into areas that tend to be fairly urban. So we do have a lot of information. I tell you, I don't need my sensors to tell me something that I already know and you suspect is true. Our cities were quiet, much quieter during the COVID situation. And it's continued to kind of get a little bit louder, as we've kind of released some of the policies that put us into our homes. And so yes, there is a major change. Now there have been a couple of studies that just come out that are pretty interesting. One, which was in San Francisco looking at the white-crowned sparrow. And they looked at historical data that went back something like 20 years. And they found that the birds in the cities were singing a much softer, 30% softer. >> Really? >> And they, yeah, and they would lower their frequencies. So the way sound works is that if you lower your frequencies that sound can travel farther. And so the males can now hear themselves twice as far just due to the fact that our cities are quieter. So it does have an impact on animals, truly it does. There was some studies back in 2001, during  the September, the 9/11 crisis as well, where people are going out and kind of looking at data, acoustic data, and discovering that things were much quieter. I'd be very interested to look at some of the data we have in our oceans, to what extent are oceans quieter. Our oceans sadly are the loudest part of this planet. It's really noisy, sound travels, five times farther. Generally the noise is lower frequencies, and we have lots of ships that are all over the planet and in our oceans. So I'd really be interested in those kinds of studies as well, to what extent is it impacting and helping our friends in the oceans. >> Right, right, well, I was just going to ask you that question because I think a lot of people clearly understand sound in the air that surrounds us, but you talk a lot about sound in ocean, and sound as an indicator of ocean health, and again, this concept of a chorus. And I think everybody's probably familiar with the sounds of the humpback whale right? He got very popular and we've all seen and heard that. But you're doing a lot of research, as you said, in oceans and in water. And I wonder if you can, again, kind of provide a little bit more color around that, because I don't think you people, maybe we're just not that tuned into it, think of the ocean or water as a rich sound environment especially to the degree as you're talking about where you can actually start to really understand what's going on. >> Yeah, I mean, some of us think that sound in the oceans is probably more important to animals than on land, on the terrestrial side. Sound helps animals to navigate through complex waterways and find food resources. You can only use site so far underwater especially when it gets to be kind of dark, once you get down to certain levels. So there many of us think that sound is probably going to be an important component to measuring the status of health in our oceans. >> It's great. Well, Bryan, I really enjoyed this conversation. I've really enjoyed your Ted Talk, and now I've got a bunch of research papers I want to dig into a little bit more as well. >> Okay.(chuckling) >> It's a fascinating topic, but I think the most important thing that you talked about extensively in your Ted Talk is really just taking a minute to take a step back from the individual perspective, appreciate what's around us, hear, that information and I think there's a real direct correlation to the power of exascale, to the power of hearing this data, processing this data, and putting intelligence on that data, understanding that data in a good way, in a positive way, in a delightful way, spiritual way, even that we couldn't do before, or we just weren't paying attention like with what you know is on your phone please-- >> Yeah, really. >> It's all around you. It's been there a whole time. >> Yeah. (both chuckling) >> Yeah, Jeff, I really encourage your viewers to count it, just go out and listen. As we say, go out and listen and join the mission. >> I love it, and you can get started by going to the Center for Global Soundscapes and you have a beautiful landscape. I had it going earlier this morning while I was digging through some of the research of Bryan. (Bryan chuckling) Thank you very much (Bryan murmurs) and really enjoyed the conversation best to you-- >> Okay. >> And your team and your continued success. >> Alright, thank you. >> Alright, thank you. All right, he's Bryan-- >> Goodbye. >> I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. (Bryan chuckling) for continuing coverage of Exascale Day. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (calm ambient music)

>> Welcome. My name is Richard Henshall. I'm a senior manager for product management, for Ansible Automation Platform. Think to yourself, how did you adapt to the changes this year? How was your team forced to adapt? And were you prepared and had you been automating already? Talking for the Ansible team, we're ready to move forward. Now we suspect that sentiment is shared by many of us here. We just had a good lesson in why being able to adapt quickly is so important. The previous ways of working may not always be available to us, and we have to change the way we focus and look at things. And this is why I have such a strong belief in the power that automation can gift us. And if we remind ourselves of what the goal of automation is, and to put it very simply, to perform work with minimal human interaction On one hand, this sounds great, no work. But it can also seem very impersonal. And the reality is automation cannot be achieved without knowledge and experience. Because what needs to be automated is what we learn. So much of what we do is specific to our circumstances, to our business or our own personal backgrounds. So how we approach automation is also important. And that's why this year's message "Automate to connect" is relevant to the times we find ourselves in. As a rhetorical question, and of course, all of these are rhetorical questions. I'm sat in a room at my house, staring at a camera. I would next ask you why we need to connect? And what do we connect for? Do we connect to share knowledge, to learn from others, to work on common goals and objectives? Reality is it should be all of these. Any intent when we connect from our work perspective, needs to be about collaboration. Collaboration is essential when we approach how we deal with change. Because when we talk about change, we often see it explained as people process and technology. But when we're forced to change, the unexpected circumstances, you can't always be prepared. You're not always given the time to plan and prepare the way you'd like. So having a way to connect, to build relationships and to collaborate is more important than ever. Back in the days when I was learning my trade, middleware engineering before the endless video calls, presentations and spreadsheets, the most difficult relationship to improve was between us in engineering and the network team. And it wasn't because of the skills it wasn't because we didn't like each other, at least I'd like to think so. And it wasn't for lack of trying. It's because the network team, they're on a different floor, big security door, magnetic locks, special key cards that you needed to have access for. It was aggressively protected so they couldn't be interfered with. It wasn't this opportunity to build the relationships in the same way that we could when we could go and collaborate with the Linux Windows or storage teams. You couldn't wander off and discuss a problem, just have a chat, they were locked away. Now, maybe they like that and sometimes it's good to be locked away, but it forms a barrier. And it's a barrier to collaboration. And so with this group, collaboration required meetings, it required planning and this made it harder. And when something's hard, it makes it easier not to do it. And additionally, we didn't have a platform to help us. So ask yourself, does that sound familiar to your circumstance? What we needed to connect those relationships and we've seen this time and time again, is that for automation we need a consistent technology foundation to connect. With the foundation encourages simplicity for collaboration foundation to connect the people, process and technology and a foundation to help us build trust in those relationships. If we'd had that foundation, that platform, we could have been successful much faster. 'Cause it's important we understand that success depends on trust between groups. To be successful in adapting to change we need to know we trust when the situation may not be perfect. It might be different offices, could be different countries, probably different languages, maybe even different objectives between these different groups. It might be a global pandemic, which is a phrase I never thought I would say in a keynote, but connecting with your colleagues, collaborating and therefore participating in the work that's done. Working as a wider team, enables you to see a broader perspective. Because how else do we trust? Unless we understand each other. How do we trust what we can create? Who has created it? Is he up to standard? And how do we trust what's running where? And who's been running it that we can scale with the correct control? And how do we trust that we can engage removing friction and complexity. And we can do all these things by being given the opportunity to participate, to be included in the overall process. Ultimately, how do we participate to achieve our goals? And what goals do we choose? Your goals are your business challenges automate what makes both your business and IT successful because participation is key to that process. And the more people you can bring together to connect, the more benefit you can achieve. If we've connected and collaborated, we trust what's being produced because automation can be a selfish act. I, the individual do something to make my job easier, but you should think of automation as a gift of knowledge and experience. How can you automate your job to make your colleagues' lives easier? So as we assume and know that participation enables collaboration, how do we help you to collaborate? Well with Ansible, the language of collaboration. And to collaborate, we need to connect. And for that, we have the Ansible Automation Platform. Everything I've described so far is drawn from our collective experience with customers. When Ansible the tool was released, it started as a way to perform automation in a simpler way. As your needs changed, we added more domains and then your needs changed again. As complexity and scale surfaced, a different set of challenges for us to look after. Not only did you do the automation, you need to do more automation as you achieve some successes. And afterwards you have to manage all that automation. To be successful we have deserved that it's not just what you do, it's how and where you do it. It's not just about the tool. It's about the structure, the framework. A focal point and a user experience in maintaining your automation assets. And this is why we focused all of our product offerings into Ansible Automation Platform, a single offering for enterprise grade automation. We've supported your changes in the past, and we've been working to support your changes for the future, help you adapt and connect. Now, if Ansible is the language of collaboration, collections, Ansible content collections are the building blocks of how you simplify the connection of your trusted technologies. Last year, we launched collections as a way to improve the management of content distributed within the Ansible project and the Ansible products. The teams involved were busy working on making this happen over the last 12 months. Working with our community and partners to migrate over 4000.5 modules. This work including this summer with the Ansible collections, 1.0 release. Last Ansible Fest we unveiled certified platforms with the Ansible certified partner program. End to end support for Ansible content between Red Hat and our trusted partners. We now have over 50 certified platforms focused on curated enterprise technology domains. The platforms that you use and rely upon because connecting these domains is connecting your teams. I'm talking about connecting teams. I'm sure that your planning has started already working on cloud native adoption. Key to that cloud native journey and story are containers. And that brings its own set of changes to the way that we work. And we want to support you as you adapt to these changes. I assume most of you are aware that OpenShift is Red Hat's intuivating container orchestration platform based on Kubernetes. And I'd like to announce the release of certified Ansible content collections of Red Hat OpenShift. Whether it be for augmenting provisioning, customizing cluster nodes, or data operations. Collections gives us the perfect opportunity to deliver these use cases and more. Because we know Red Hat customers have chosen and trust Ansible Automation and OpenShift platforms to drive transformation programs. But the connection between these two platforms and the teams that deliver these has always been very implementation efforts. We know that we need to move away from that implementation effort and move to product integration. The reality of evolving tech is it's never all or nothing. If you're fortunate, you can deploy your cloud native application entirely on OpenShift. But what happens, we need to manage across clusters or access existing infrastructure like networks or databases. We're excited to bridge traditional container and edge through Ansible Automation. Perhaps the only automation and container platform solution that is truly agnostic Ansible just doesn't care whose platform you're running on. The new Ansible resource operator, which we deployed as part of Red Hat advanced cluster management is our answer. We're making the Ansible Automation platform a first class provider inside ACM. To enable call outs to automation assets deployed on the automation platform and to make it easily accessible to container management workflows and connect two industry leading technology platforms. Enabling this integration with our customers to identify and enforce policies, applied governance models consistently across multiple clusters, as a deploy and scale complex applications across hybrid multi cluster environments. In the future, the resource operator will be available for any OpenShift deployed service to integrate to the Ansible Automation Platform. And to find out more about this, be sure to checkout Matt Jones' "Future of Ansible Automation Talk" as well as the ACM breakout sessions. Now, as collections are about connecting technology and product integrations are about connecting process. We still need to think about connecting people. How do we ensure that users can find trusted content? So while many users are happy to get content from Ansible galaxy, we know that many enterprises are far less comfortable with that situation. And certainly not comfortable uploading private developed content themselves. We also know that galaxy isn't the only source of content for you to use. There are other source control, repositories, other locations, perhaps even file shares where you allow your teams to collaborate and connect. With all these different sources it can be hard for your users, your internal communities to connect and trust they're using approved content. So we want to connect teams, help them collaborate, have shared goals and ensure trust in how they automate. We need to fill that gap. And that's why last year we launched the automation hub on cloud@redhat.com. As a trusted source for download downstream certified Ansible content supported as part of ground sports automation platform subscription. And this is where you access the collections for those 50 certified platforms I mentioned earlier. But that was only part one of the plan. So while we can provide a location for trusted content that doesn't bring together content from other sources. Before, I mentioned collections were introduced to help the management of automation content. By adopting collections, you provide a path for automation developers to bring content together in a common location, allow multiple teams to increase their time to value in the automation adoption journeys. But to connect internal communities of practice, we need to provide a focal point for all things related to automation content. And that's why we're pleased to announce that the private version of automation hub will be released to the content and knowledge management component of the Ansible Automation Platform. Your privately hosted location for all your Ansible content, to allow you to curate which content is available from which sources, whether it's from Red Hat, the Ansible community, or develop internally. You now have the control over which content you trust. Finally, this year we launched our third hosted service and no additional cost to platform customers. The automation services catalog. The purpose of this service was to allow you to connect your business users with rules-based governance and a simplified user experience to the automation creator deployed via the platform. We're announcing a tech preview launch with the connected technology security connect to your own prem platform environments. It's based on a technology that's part of our future plans. And again, if you attend Matt Jones' "Future of Ansible Automation Talk", you'll hear more about what we're planning in this area. Because this year has been somewhat challenging, automation and Ansible have become more important to many individuals and organizations. So I could leave you with one set of thoughts to adapt and to change as we face, keep things simple, participate in making automation happen and understand the problems to be solved, but always try and keep it simple. Evolve and scale as you connect your teams, as you would grow and expand your automation, grow and expand the scale you're working at as you move forward. And collaborate to break down the silos and domains that build and build your automation that makes change possible. Whether you're an Ansible expert or someone looking for some way to start, we have sessions we hope will inspire you to make your own changes and sessions that will give you the knowledge of how to adapt for the future. Thank you and happy automating.

>> Announcer: From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is The Cube Conversation. >> Everyone welcome to this special live stream here in The Cube Studios. I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got a great panel discussion here for one hour, sponsored by Lumina PR, not sponsored but organized by Lumina PR. An authentic conversation around professionals in the news media, and communication professionals, how they can work together. As we know, pitching stories to national media takes place in the backdrop in today's market, which is on full display. The Coronavirus, racial unrest in our country and a lot of new tech challenges from companies, their role in society with their technology and of course, an election all make for important stories to be developed and reported. And we got a great panel here and the purpose is to bridge the two worlds. People trying to get news out for their companies in a way that's relevant and important for audiences. I've got a great panelists here, Gerard Baker Editor at Large with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Savitz, Associate Editor with Barron's and Brenna Goth who's a Southwest Staff Correspondent with Bloomberg Publications. Thanks for joining me today, guys, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> So we're going to break this down, we got about an hour, we're going to probably do about 40 minutes. I'd love to get your thoughts in this power panel. And you guys are on the front lines decades of experience, seeing these waves of media evolve. And now more than ever, you can't believe what's happening. You're seeing the funding of journalism really challenging at an all time high. You have stories that are super important to audiences and society really changing and we need this more than ever to have more important stories to be told. So this is really a challenge. And so I want to get your thoughts on this first segment. The challenge is around collecting the data, doing the analysis, getting the stories out, prioritizing stories in this time. So I'd love to get your thoughts. We'll start with you, Brenna, what's your thoughts on this as you're out there in Arizona. Coronavirus on the worst is one of the states there. What are your challenges? >> I would say for me, one of the challenges of the past couple months is just the the sheer influx of different types of stories we've had and the amount of news coming out. So I think one of the challenging things is a lot of times we'll get into a bit of a routine covering one story. So early on maybe the Coronavirus, and then something else will come up. So I personally have been covering some of the Coronavirus news here in Arizona and in the Southwest, as well as some of the protests we've seen with the Black Lives Matter movement. And prioritizing that is pretty difficult. And so one thing that I I've been doing is I've noticed that a lot of my routine projects or things I've been working on earlier in the year are off the table, and I'll get back to them when I have time. But for now, I feel like I'm a little bit more on breaking news almost every day in a way that I wasn't before. >> Gerard, I want to get your thoughts on this. Wall Street Journal has been since I could remember when the web hit the scene early on very digital savvy. Reporting, it's obviously, awesome as well. As you have people in sheltering in place, both journalists and the people themselves and the companies, there's an important part of the digital component. How do you see that as an opportunity and a challenge at the same time because you want to get data out there, you want to be collecting and reporting those stories? How do you see that opportunity, given the challenge that people can't meet face to face? >> First of all, thank you very much for having me. I think as we've all discovered in all fields of endeavor in the last three months, it's been quite a revelation, how much we can do without using without access to the traditional office environment. I think one of the things that Coronavirus, this crisis will have done we all agree I think is that it will have fundamentally changed the way people work. There'll be a lot more people quite a bit more working from home. They'll be a lot more remote working. Generally, there'll be a lot less travel. So on the one hand, it's been eye opening. actually how relatively easy, I use that word carefully. But how we've managed, and I think it's true of all news organizations, how we've managed surprisingly well, I think, without actually being at work. At the Wall Street Journal, we have a big office, obviously in midtown Manhattan, as well as dozens of bureaus around the world. Nobody has really been in that office since the middle of March. And yet we've put out a complete Wall Street Journal product, everything from the print edition, obviously, through every aspect of digital media, the website, all of the apps, video, everything, audio, podcasts. We've been able to do pretty well everything that we could do when we were all working in the office. So I think that will be an important lesson and that will clearly induce some change, some long term changes, I think about the way we work. That said, I'd point to two particular challenges that I think we have not properly overcome. Or if you like that we have, the two impediments, that the crisis has produced for us. One is, as you said, the absence of face to face activity, the hive process, which I think is really important. I think that a lot of the best ideas, a lot of the best, the best stories are developed through conversations between people in an office which don't necessarily we can't necessarily replicate through the online experience through this kind of event or through the Zoom meetings that we've all been doing. I think that has inhibited to some extent, some of the more creative activity that we could have done. I think the second larger problem which we all must face with this is that being essentially locked up in our homes for more than three months, which most of us has been I think accentuates a problem that is already that has been a problem in journalism for a long time, which is that journalists tend to cluster in the major metropolitan areas. I think, a couple of years ago, I read a study which said, I think that more than three quarters of journalists work for major news organizations, print, digital TV, radio, whatever, live and work in one of four major metropolises in the US. That's the New York area, the Washington DC area, the San Francisco area and the LA area. And that tends to create a very narrow worldview, unfortunately, because not enough people either come from those areas, but from outside those areas or spend enough time talking to people from outside those areas. And I think the Coronavirus has accentuated that. And I think in terms of coverage, I'm here in New York. I've been in New York continuously for three and a half months now which is quite unusual, I usually travel a lot. And so my reporting, I write columns now, mainly, but obviously I talk to people too. But the reporting, the editing that we're doing here is inevitably influenced by the experience that we've had in New York, which has obviously been, frankly, devastating. New York has been devastated by Coronavirus in a way that no where else in the country has. And I think to some extent, that does, perhaps have undue influence on the coverage. We're all locked up. We're all mindful of our own health. We're all mindful of people that we know who've gone to hospital or have been very, very sick or where we are, we are heavily influenced by our own immediate environment. And I think that has been a problem if we had been, imagine if the journalists in the country, instead of being clustered in New York and LA and San Francisco had been sort of spread over Texas and Missouri and Florida, things like that. I think you'd have a very different overall accounting of this story over the last three months. So I think it's just, it's accentuated that phenomenon in journalism, which I think we're mindful of, and which we all need to do a better job of addressing. >> It's really interesting. And I want to come back to that point around, who you're collaborating with to get this, now we have virtual ground truth, I guess, how you collaborate. But decision making around stories is, you need an open mind. And if you have this, I guess, I'll call it groupthink or clustering is interesting, now we have digital and we have virtual, it opens up the aperture but we still have the groupthink. But I want to get Eric's take first on his work environment, 'cause I know you've lived on both sides of New York and San Francisco area, as well as you've worked out in the field for agencies, as well on the other side, on the storytelling side. How has this current news environment, journalism environment impacted your view and challenges and your opportunities that you're going after the news? >> Well, so there's there's a few elements here. So one, Barron's Of course, covers the world, looks at the world through a financial lens. We cover the stock market every day. The stock market is not the center of story, but it is an important element of what's been unfolding over the last few months and the markets have been incredibly volatile, we change the way that we approach the markets. Because everything, the big stories are macro stories, huge swings in stock prices, huge swings in the price of oil, dramatic moves in almost every financial security that you can imagine. And so there's a little bit of a struggle for us as we try and shift our daily coverage to be a little more focused on the macro stories as we're still trying to tell what's happening with individual stocks and companies, but these bigger stories have changed our approach. So even if you look at say the covers of our magazine over the last few months, typically, we would do a cover on a company or an investor, that sort of thing. And now they're all big, thematic stories, because the world has changed. And world is changing how it looks at the financial markets. I think one thing that that Gerard touched on is the inability to really leave your house. I'm sitting in my little home office here, where I've been working since March, and my inability to get out and talk to people in person to have some, some interface with the companies and people that I cover, makes it tougher. You get story ideas from those interactions. I think Gerard said some of it comes from your interactions with your colleagues. But some of that also just comes from your ability to interact with sources and that is really tougher to do. It's more formalistic if you do it online. It's just not the same to be on a Zoom call as to be sitting in a Starbucks with somebody and talking about what's going on. I think the other elements of this is that there's, we have a lot of attempts, trying new things trying to reach our readers. We'll do video sessions, we'll do all sorts of other things. And it's one more layer on top of everything else is that there's a lot of demands on the time for the people who are working in journalism right now. I would say one other thing I'll touch on, John, which is, you mentioned, I did use, I worked for public communications for a while, and I do feel their pain because the ability to do any normal PR pitching for new products, new services, the kinds of things that PR people do every day is really tough. It's just really hard to get anybody's attention for those things right now. And the world is focused on these very large problems. >> Well, we'll unpack the PR comms opportunities in the next section. But I want to to just come back to this topic teased out from Gerard and Brenna when you guys were getting out as well. This virtual ground truth, ultimately, at the end of the day, you got to get the stories, you got to report them, they got to be distributed. Obviously, the Wall Street Journal is operating well, by the way, I love the Q&A video chats and what they got going on over there. So the format's are evolving and doing a good job, people are running their business. But as journalists and reporters out there, you got to get the truth and the ground truth comes from interaction. So as you have an aperture with digital, there's also groupthink on, say, Twitter and these channels. So getting in touch with the audience to have those stories. How are you collecting the data? How are you reporting? Has anything changed or shifted that you can point to because ultimately, it's virtual. You still got to get the ground truth, you still got to get the stories. Any thoughts on this point? >> I think in a way what we're seeing is in writ large actually is a problem again, another problem that I think digital journalism or the digital product digital content, if you like, actually presents for us today, which is that it's often said, I think rightly, that one of the, as successful as a lot of digital journalism has been and thank you for what you said about the Wall Street Journal. And we have done a tremendous job and by the way, one of the things that's been a striking feature of this crisis has been the rapid growth in subscriptions that we've had at the Journal. I know other news organizations have too. But we've benefited particularly from a hunger for the quality news. And we've put on an enormous number subscriptions in the last three months. So we've been very fortunate in that respect. But one of the challenges that people always say, one of the one of the drawbacks that people always draw attention to about digital content is that there's a lack of, for want of a better words, serendipity about the experience. When you used to read a newspaper, print newspapers, when may be some of us are old enough to remember, we'd get a newspaper, we'd open it up, we'd look at the front page, we look inside, we'd look at what other sections they were. And we would find things, very large number of things that we weren't particularly, we weren't looking for, we weren't expecting to, we're looking for a story about such. With the digital experience, as we know, that's a much it's a much less serendipitous experience. So you tend to a lot of search, you're looking, you find things that you tend to be looking for, and you find fewer things that, you follow particular people on social media that you have a particular interest in, you follow particular topics and have RSS feeds or whatever else you're doing. And you follow things that, you tend to find things that you were looking for. You don't find many things you weren't. What I think that the virus, the being locked up at home, again, has had a similar effect. That we, again, some of the best stories that I think anybody comes across in life, but news organizations are able to do are those stories that you know that you come across when you might have been looking for something else. You might have been working on a story about a particular company with a particular view to doing one thing and you came across somebody else. And he or she may have told you something actually really quite different and quite interesting and it took you in a different direction. That is easier to do when you're talking to people face to face, when you're actually there, when you're calling, when you're tasked with looking at a topic in the realm. When you are again, sitting at home with your phone on your computer, you tend to be more narrowly so you tend to sort of operate in lanes. And I think that we haven't had the breadth probably of journalism that I think you would get. So that's a very important you talk about data. The data that we have is obviously, we've got access broadly to the same data that we would have, the same electronically delivered data that we would have if we'd been sitting in our office. The data that I think in some ways is more interesting is the non electronically delivered data that is again, the casual conversation, the observation that you might get from being in a particular place or being with someone. The stimuli that arise from being physically in a place that you just aren't getting. And I think that is an important driver of a lot of stories. And we're missing that. >> Well, Gerard, I just want to ask real quick before I go to Brenna on her her take on this. You mentioned the serendipity and taking the stories in certain directions from the interactions. But also there's trust involved. As you build that relationship, there's trust between the parties, and that takes you down that road. How do you develop trust as you are online now? Is there a methodology or technique? Because you want to get the stories out fast, it's a speed game. But there's also the development side of it where a trust equation needs to build. What's your thoughts on that piece? Because that's where the real deeper stories come from. >> So I wasn't sure if you're asking me or Gerard. >> Gerard if he wants can answer that is the trust piece. >> I'll let the others speak to that too. Yeah, it is probably harder to... Again, most probably most people, most stories, most investigative stories, most scoops, most exclusives tend to come from people you already trust, right? So you've developed a trust with them, and they've developed a trust with you. Perhaps more importantly, they know you're going to treat the story fairly and properly. And that tends to develop over time. And I don't think that's been particularly impaired by this process. You don't need to have a physical proximity with someone in order to be able to develop that trust. My sources, I generally speak to them on the phone 99% of the time anyway, and you can still do that from home. So I don't think that's quite... Obviously, again, there are many more benefits from being able to actually physically interact with someone. But I think the level of, trust takes a long time to develop, let's be honest, too, as well. And I think you develop that trust both by developing good sources. and again, as I said, with the sources understanding that you're going to do the story well. >> Brenna, speed game is out there, you got to get stories fast. How do you balance speed and getting the stories and doing some digging into it? What's your thoughts on all this? >> I would say, every week is looking different for me these days. A lot of times there are government announcements coming out, or there are numbers coming out or something that really does require a really quick story. And so what I've been trying to do is get those stories out as quick as possible with maybe sources I already have, or really just the facts on the ground I can get quickly. And then I think in these days, too, there is a ton of room for following up on things. And some news event will come out but it sparks another idea. And that's the time to that when I'm hearing from PR people or I'm hearing from people who care about the issue, right after that first event is really useful for me to hear who else is thinking about these things and maybe ways I can go beyond the first story for something that more in depth and adds more context and provides more value to our readers. >> Awesome. Well, guys, great commentary and insight there on the current situation. The next section is with the role of PR, because it's changing. I've heard the term earned media is a term that's been kicked around. Now we're all virtual, and we're all connected. The media is all virtual. It's all earned at this point. And that's not just a journalistic thing, there's storytelling. There's new voices emerging. You got these newsletter services, audiences are moving very quickly around trying to figure out what's real. So comms folks are trying to get out there and do their job and tell a story. And sometimes that story doesn't meet the cadence of say, news and/or reporting. So let's talk about that. Eric, you brought this up. You have been on both sides. You said you feel for the folks out there who are trying to do their job. How is the job changing? And what can they do now? >> The news cycle is so ferocious at the moment that it's very difficult to insert your weigh in on something that doesn't touch on the virus or the economy or social unrest or the volatility of the financial markets. So I think there's certain kinds of things that are probably best saved for another moment in time, If you're trying to launch new products or trying to announce new services, or those things are just tougher to do right now. I think that the most interesting questions right now are, If I'm a comms person, how can I make myself and my clients a resource to media who are trying to tell stories about these things, do it in a timely way, not overreach, not try insert myself into a story that really isn't a good fit? Now, every time one of these things happen, we got inboxes full of pitches for things that are only tangentially relevant and are probably not really that helpful, either to the reporter generally or to the client of the firm that is trying to pitch an idea. But I will say on the on this at the same time that I rely on my connections to people in corporate comms every single day to make connections with companies that I cover and need to talk to. And it's a moment when almost more than ever, I need immediacy of response, accurate information access to the right people at the companies who I'm trying to cover. But it does mean you need to be I think sharper or a little more pointed a little more your thinking about why am I pitching this person this story? Because the there's no time to waste. We are working 24 hours a day is what it feels like. You don't want to be wasting people's time. >> Well, you guys you guys represent big brands in media which is phenomenal. And anyone would love to have their company mentioned obviously, in a good way, that's their goal. But the word media relations means you relate to the media. If there's no media to relate to, the roles change, and there's not enough seats at the table, so to speak. So getting a clip on in the clip book that gets sent to management, look, "We're on Bloomberg." "Great, check." But is at it? So people, this is a department that needs to do more. Is there things that they can do, that isn't just chasing, getting on your franchises stories? Because it obviously would be great if we were all on Barron's Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, but they can't always get that. They still got to do more. They got to develop the relationships. >> John, one thing I would be conscious of here is that many of our publications, it's certainly true for journalists, true for us at Barron's and it's certainly true for Bloomberg. We're all multimedia publishers. We're doing lots of things. Barron's has television show on Fox. We have a video series. We have podcasts and newsletters, and daily live audio chats and all sorts of other stuff in addition to the magazine and the website. And so part of that is trying to figure out not just the right publication, but maybe there's an opportunity to do a very particular, maybe you'd be great fit for this thing, but not that thing. And having a real understanding of what are the moving parts. And then the other part, which is always the hardest part, in a way, is truly understanding not just I want to pitch to Bloomberg, but who do I want to pitch at Bloomberg. So I might have a great story for the Wall Street Journal and maybe Gerard would care but maybe it's really somebody you heard on the street who cares or somebody who's covering a particular company. So you have to navigate that, I think effectively. And even, more so now, because we're not sitting in a newsroom. I can't go yell over to somebody who's a few desks away and suggest they take a look at something. >> Do you think that the comm-- (talk over each other) Do you think the comms teams are savvy and literate in multimedia? Are they still stuck in the print ways or the group swing is they're used to what they're doing and haven't evolved? Is that something that you're seeing here? >> I think it varies. Some people will really get it. I think one of the things that that this comes back to in a sense is it's relationship driven. To Gerard's point, it's not so much about trusting people that I don't know, it's about I've been at this a long time, I know what people I know, who I trust, and they know the things I'm interested in and so that relationship is really important. It's a lot harder to try that with somebody new. And the other thing is, I think relevant here is something that we touched on earlier, which is the idiosyncratic element. The ability for me to go out and see new things is tougher. In the technology business, you could spend half your time just going to events, You could go to the conferences and trade shows and dinners and lunches and coffees all day long. And you would get a lot of good story ideas that way. And now you can't do any of that. >> There's no digital hallway. There are out there. It's called Twitter, I guess or-- >> Well, you're doing it from sitting in this very I'm still doing it from sitting in the same chair, having conversations, in some ways like that. But it's not nearly the same. >> Gerard, Brenna, what do you guys think about the comms opportunity, challenges, either whether it's directly or indirectly, things that they could do differently? Share your thoughts. Gerard, we'll start with you? >> Well, I would echo Eric's point as far as knowing who you're pitching to. And I would say that in, at least for the people I'm working with, some of our beats have changed because there are new issues to cover. Someone's taking more of a role covering virus coverage, someone's taking more of a role covering protests. And so I think knowing instead of casting a really wide net, I'm normally happy to try to direct pitches in the right direction. But I do have less time to do that now. So I think if someone can come to me and say, "I know you've been covering this, "this is how my content fits in with that." It'd grab my attention more and makes it easier for me. So I would say that that is one thing that as beats are shifting and people are taking on a little bit of new roles in our coverage, that that's something PR and marketing teams could definitely keep an eye on. >> I agree with all of that. And all everything everybody said. I'd say two very quick things. One, exactly as everybody said, really know who you are pitching to. It's partly just, it's going to be much more effective if you're pitching to the right person, the right story. But when I say that also make the extra effort to familiarize yourself with the work that that reporter or that editor has done. You cannot, I'm sorry to say, overestimate the vanity of reporters or editors or anybody. And so if you're pitching a story to a particular reporter, in a field, make sure you're familiar with what that person may have done and say to her, "I really thought you did a great job "on the reporting that you did on this." Or, "I read your really interesting piece about that," or "I listened to your podcast." It's a relatively easy thing to do that yields extraordinarily well. A, because it appeals to anybody's fantasy and we all have a little bit of that. But, B, it also suggests to the reporter or the editor or the person involved the PR person communications person pitching them, really knows this, has really done their work and has really actually takes this seriously. And instead of just calling, the number of emails I get, and I'm sure it's the same for the others too, or occasional calls out of the blue or LinkedIn messages. >> I love your work. I love your work. >> (voice cuts out) was technology. Well, I have a technology story for you. It's absolutely valueless. So that's the first thing, I would really emphasize that. The second thing I'd say is, especially on the specific relation to this crisis, this Coronavirus issue is it's a tricky balance to get right. On the one hand, make sure that what you're doing what you're pitching is not completely irrelevant right now. The last three months has not been a very good time to pitch a story about going out with a bunch of people to a crowded restaurant or whatever or something like that to do something. Clearly, we know that. At the same time, don't go to the other extreme and try and make every little thing you have seen every story you may have every product or service or idea that you're pitching don't make it the thing that suddenly is really important because of Coronavirus. I've seen too many of those too. People trying too hard to say, "In this time of crisis, "in this challenging time, what people really want to hear "about is "I don't know, "some new diaper "baby's diaper product that I'm developing or whatever." That's trying too hard. So there is something in the middle, which is, don't pitch the obviously irrelevant story that is just not going to get any attention through this process. >> So you're saying don't-- >> And at the same time, don't go too far in the other direction. And essentially, underestimate the reporter's intelligence 'cause that reporter can tell you, "I can see that you're trying too hard." >> So no shotgun approach, obviously, "Hey, I love your work." Okay, yeah. And then be sensitive to what you're working on not try to force an angle on you, if you're doing a story. Eric, I want to get your thoughts on the evolution of some of the prominent journalists that I've known and/or communication professionals that are taking roles in the big companies to be storytellers, or editors of large companies. I interviewed Andy Cunningham last year, who used to be With Cunningham Communications, and formerly of Apple, better in the tech space and NPR. She said, "Companies have to own their own story "and tell it and put it out there." I've seen journalists say on Facebook, "I'm working on a story of x." And then crowdsource a little inbound. Thoughts on this new role of corporations telling their own story, going direct to the consumers. >> I think to a certain extent, that's valuable. And in some ways, it's a little overrated. There are a lot of companies creating content on their websites, or they're creating their own podcasts or they're creating their own newsletter and those kinds of things. I'm not quite sure how much of that, what the consumption level is for some of those things. I think, to me, the more valuable element of telling your story is less about the form and function and it's more about being able to really tell people, explain to them why what they do matters and to whom it matters, understanding the audience that's going to want to hear your story. There are, to your point, there are quite a few journalists who have migrated to either corporate communications or being in house storytellers of one kind or another for large businesses. And there's certainly a need to figure out the right way to tell your story. I think in a funny way, this is a tougher moment for those things. Because the world is being driven by external events, by these huge global forces are what we're all focused on right now. And it makes it a lot tougher to try and steer your own story at this particular moment in time. And I think you do see it Gerard was talking about don't try and... You want to know what other people are doing. You do want to be aware of what others are writing about. But there's this tendency to want to say, "I saw you wrote a story about Peloton "and we too have a exercise story that you can, "something that's similar." >> (chuckles) A story similar to it. We have a dance video or something. People are trying to glam on to things and taking a few steps too far. But in terms of your original question, it's just tougher at the moment to control your story in that particular fashion, I think. >> Well, this brings up a good point. I want to get to Gerard's take on this because the Wall Street Journal obviously has been around for many, many decades. and it's institution in journalism. In the old days, if you weren't relevant enough to make the news, if you weren't the most important story that people cared about, the editors make that choice and you're on the front page or in a story editorially. And companies would say, "No, but I should be in there." And you'd say, "That's what advertising is for." And that's the way it seemed to work in the past. If you weren't relevant in the spirit of the decision making of important story or it needs to be communicated to the audience, there's ads for that. You can get a full page ad in the old days. Now with the new world, what's an ad, what's a story? You now have multiple omni-channels out there. So traditionally, you want to get the best, most important story that's about relevance. So companies might not have a relevant story and they're telling a boring story. There's no there, there, or they miss the story. How do you see this? 'Cause this is the blend, this is the gray area that I see. It's certainly a good story, depending on who you're talking to, the 10 people who like it. >> I think there's no question. We're in the news business, topicality matters. You're going to have a much better chance of getting your story, getting your product or service, whatever covered by the Wall Street Journal, Barron's or anywhere else for that matter, if it seems somehow news related, whether it's the virus or the unrest that we've been seeing, or it's to do with the economy. Clearly, you can have an effect. Newspapers, news organizations of all the three news organizations we represent don't just, are not just obviously completely obsessed with what happened this morning and what's going on right now. We are all digging into deeper stories, especially in the business field. Part of what we all do is actually try to get beyond the daily headlines. And so what's happening with the fortunes of a particular company. Obviously, they may be impacted by they're going to be impacted by the lockdown and Coronavirus. But they actually were doing some interesting things that they were developing over the long term, and we would like to look into that too. So again, there is a balance there. And I'm not going to pretend that if you have a really topical story about some new medical device or some new technology for dealing with this new world that we're all operating in, you're probably going to get more attention than you would if you don't have that. But I wouldn't also underestimate, the other thing is, as well as topicality, everybody's looking at the same time to be different, and every journalist wants to do something original and exclusive. And so they are looking for a good story that may be completely unrelated. In fact, I would also underestimate, I wouldn't underestimate either the desire of readers and viewers and listeners to actually have some deeper reported stories on subjects that are not directly in the news right now. So again, it's about striking the balance right. But I wouldn't say that, that there is not at all, I wouldn't say there is not a strong role for interesting stories that may not have anything to do what's going on with the news right now. >> Brenna, you want to add on your thoughts, you're in the front lines as well, Bloomberg, everyone wants to be on Bloomberg. There's Bloomberg radio. You guys got tons of media too, there's tons of stuff to do. How do they navigate? And how do you view the interactions with comms folks? >> It looks we're having a little bit of challenge with... Eric, your thoughts on comm professionals. The questions in the chats are everything's so fast paced, do you think it's less likely for reporters to respond to PR comms people who don't have interacted with you before? Or with people you haven't met before? >> It's an internal problem. I've seen data that talks about the ratio of comms people to reporters, and it's, I don't know, six or seven to one or something like that, and there are days when it feels like it's 70 to one. And so it is challenging to break through. And I think it's particularly challenging now because some of the tools you might have had, you might have said, "Can we grab coffee one day or something like that," trying to find ways to get in front of that person when you don't need them. It's a relationship business. I know this is a frustrating answer, but I think it's the right answer which is those relationships between media and comms people are most successful when they've been established over time. And so you're not getting... The spray and pray strategy doesn't really work. It's about, "Eric, I have a story that's perfect for you. "And here's why I think you you should talk to this guy." And if they really know me, there's a reasonable chance that I'll not only listen to them, but I'll at least take the call. You need to have that high degree of targeting. It is really hard to break through and people try everything. They try, the insincere version of the, "I read your story, it was great. "but here's another great story." Which maybe they read your story, maybe they didn't at least it was an attempt. Or, "if you like this company, you'll love that one." People try all these tricks to try and get get to you. I think the highest level of highest probability of success comes from the more information you have about not just what I covered yesterday, but what do I cover over time? What kinds of stories am I writing? What kinds of stories does the publication write? And also to keep the pitching tight, I was big believer when I was doing comms, you should be able to pitch stories in two sentences. And you'll know from that whether there's going to be connection or not, don't send me five or more pitches. Time is of the essence, keep it short and as targeted as possible. >> That's a good answer to Paul Bernardo's question in the chat, which is how do you do the pitch. Brenna, you're back. Can you hear us? No. Okay. We'll get back to her when she gets logged back in. Gerard, your thoughts on how to reach you. I've never met you before, if I'm a CEO or I'm a comms person, a company never heard of, how do I get your attention? If I can't have a coffee with you with COVID, how do I connect with you virtually? (talk over each other) >> Exactly as Eric said, it is about targeting, it's really about making sure you are. And again, it's, I hate to say this, but it's not that hard. If you are the comms person for a large or medium sized company or even a small company, and you've got a particular pitch you want to make, you're probably dealing in a particular field, a particular sector, business sector or whatever. Let's say it says not technology for change, let's say it's fast moving consumer goods or something like that. Bloomberg, Brenna is in an enormous organization with a huge number of journalist you deal and a great deal of specialism and quality with all kinds of sectors. The Wall Street Journal is a very large organization, we have 13, 1400 reporters, 13 to 1400 hundred journalist and staff, I should say. Barron's is a very large organization with especially a particularly strong field coverage, especially in certain sectors of business and finance. It's not that hard to find out A, who is the right person, actually the right person in those organizations who's been dealing with the story that you're trying to sell. Secondly, it's absolutely not hard to find out what they have written or broadcast or produced on in that general field in the course of the last, and again, as Eric says, going back not just over the last week or two, but over the last year or two, you can get a sense of their specialism and understand them. It's really not that hard. It's the work of an hour to go back and see who the right person is and to find out what they've done. And then to tailor the pitch that you're making to that person. And again, I say that partly, it's not purely about the vanity of the reporter, it's that the reporter will just be much more favorably inclined to deal with someone who clearly knows, frankly, not just what they're pitching, but what the journalist is doing and what he or she, in his or her daily activity is actually doing. Target it as narrowly as you can. And again, I would just echo what Eric and I think what Brenna was also saying earlier too that I'm really genuinely surprised at how many very broad pitches, again, I'm not directly in a relative role now. But I was the editor in chief of the Journal for almost six years. And even in that position, the number of extraordinarily broad pitches I get from people who clearly didn't really know who I was, who didn't know what I did, and in some cases, didn't even really know what Wall Street Journal was. If you can find that, if you actually believe that. It's not hard. It's not that hard to do that. And you will have so much more success, if you are identifying the organization, the people, the types of stories that they're interested in, it really is not that difficult to do. >> Okay, I really appreciate, first of all, great insight there. I want to get some questions from the crowd so if you're going to chat, there was a little bit of a chat hiccup in there. So it should be fixed. We're going to go to the chat for some questions for this distinguished panel. Talk about the new coffee. There's a good question here. Have you noticed news fatigue, or reader seeking out news other than COVID? If so, what news stories have you been seeing trending? In other words, are people sick and tired of COVID? Or is it still on the front pages? Is that relevant? And if not COVID, what stories are important, do you think? >> Well, I could take a brief stab at that. I think it's not just COVID per se, for us, the volatility of the stock market, the uncertainties in the current economic environment, the impact on on joblessness, these massive shifts of perceptions on urban lifestyles. There's a million elements of this that go beyond the core, what's happening with the virus story. I do think as a whole, all those things, and then you combine that with the social unrest and Black Lives Matter. And then on top of that, the pending election in the fall. There's just not a lot of room left for other stuff. And I think I would look at it a little bit differently. It's not finding stories that don't talk on those things, it's finding ways for coverage of other things whether it's entertainment. Obviously, there's a huge impact on the entertainment business. There's a huge impact on sports. There's obviously a huge impact on travel and retail and restaurants and even things like religious life and schooling. I have the done parents of a college, was about to be a college sophomore, prays every day that she can go back to school in the fall. There are lots of elements to this. And it's pretty hard to imagine I would say to Gerard's point earlier, people are looking for good stories, they're always looking for good stories on any, but trying to find topics that don't touch on any of these big trends, there's not a lot of reasons to look for those. >> I agree. Let me just give you an example. I think Eric's exactly right. It's hard to break through. I'll just give you an example, when you asked that question, I just went straight to my Wall Street Journal app on my phone. And of course, like every organization, you can look at stories by sections and by interest and by topic and by popularity. And what are the three most popular stories right now on the Wall Street Journal app? I can tell you the first one is how exactly do you catch COVID-19? I think that's been around since for about a month. The second story is cases accelerate across the United States. And the third story is New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, tell travelers from areas with virus rates to self isolate. So look, I think anecdotally, there is a sense of COVID fatigue. Well, we're all slightly tired of it. And certainly, we were probably all getting tired, or rather distressed by those terrible cases and when we've seen them really accelerate back in March and April and these awful stories of people getting sick and dying. I was COVID fatigued. But I just have to say all of the evidence we have from our data, in terms of as I said earlier, the interest in the story, the demand for what we're doing, the growth in subscriptions that we've had, and just as I said, little things like that, that I can point you at any one time, I can guarantee you that our among our top 10 most read stories, at least half of them will be COVID-19. >> I think it's safe to say general interest in that outcome of progression of that is super critical. And I think this brings up the tech angle, which we can get into a minute. But just stick with some of these questions I just want to just keep these questions flowing while we have a couple more minutes left here. In these very challenging times for journalism, do byline articles have more power to grab the editors attention in the pitching process? >> Well, I think I assume what the questioner is asking when he said byline articles is contributed. >> Yes. >> Contributed content. Barron's doesn't run a lot of contributing content that way in a very limited way. When I worked at Forbes, we used to run tons of it. I'm not a big believer that that's necessarily a great way to generate a lot of attention. You might get published in some publication, if you can get yourself onto the op ed page of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, more power to you. But I think in most cases-- >> It's the exception not the rule Exception not the rule so to speak, on the big one. >> Yeah. >> Well, this brings up the whole point about certainly on SiliconANGLE, our property, where I'm co founder and chief, we basically debate over and get so many pitches, "hey, I want to write for you, here's a contributed article." And it's essentially an advertisement. Come on, really, it's not really relevant. In some case we (talk over each other) analysts come in and and done that. But this brings up the question, we're seeing these newsletters like sub stack and these services really are funding direct journalism. So it's an interesting. if you're good enough to write Gerard, what's your take on this, you've seen this, you have a bit of experience in this. >> I think, fundamental problem here is that is people like the idea of doing by lines or contributed content, but often don't have enough to say. You can't just do, turn your marketing brochure into a piece of an 800 word with the content that that's going to be compelling or really attract any attention. I think there's a place for it, if you truly have something important to say, and if you really have something new to say, and it's not thinly disguised marketing material. Yeah, you can find a way to do that. I'm not sure I would over-rotate on that as an approach. >> No, I just briefly, again, I completely agree. At the Journal we just don't ever publish those pieces. As Eric says, you're always, everyone is always welcome to try and pitch to the op ed pages of the Journal. They're not generally going to I don't answer for them, I don't make those decisions. But I've never seen a marketing pitch run as an op ed effectively. I just think you have to know again, who you're aiming at. I'm sure it's true for Bloomberg, Barron's and the Journal, most other major news organizations are not really going to consider that. There might be organizations, there might be magazines, digital and print magazines. There might be certain trade publications that would consider that. Again, at the Journal and I'm sure most of the large news organizations, we have very strict rules about what we can publish. And how and who can get published. And it's essentially journal editorials, that journal news staff who can publish stories we don't really take byline, outside contribution. >> Given that your time is so valuable, guys, what's the biggest, best practice to get your attention? Eric, you mentioned keeping things tight and crisp. Are there certain techniques to get your attention? >> Well I'll mention just a couple of quick things. Email is better than most other channels, despite the volume. Patience is required as a result because of the volume. People do try and crawl over the transom, hit you up on LinkedIn, DM you on Twitter, there's a lot of things that people try and do. I think a very tightly crafted, highly personalized email with the right subject line is probably still the most effective way, unless it's somebody you actually, there are people who know me who know they have the right to pick up the phone and call me if they really think they have... That's a relationship that's built over time. The one thing on this I would add which I think came up a little bit before thinking about it is, you have to engage in retail PR, not not wholesale PR. The idea that you're going to spam a list of 100 people and think that that's really going to be a successful approach, it's not unless you're just making an announcement, and if you're issuing your earnings release, or you've announced a large acquisition or those things, fine, then I need to get the information. But simply sending around a very wide list is not a good strategy, in most cases, I would say probably for anyone. >> We got Brenna back, can you hear me? She's back, okay. >> I can hear you, I'm back. >> Well, let's go back to you, we missed you. Thanks for coming back in. We had a glitch on our end but appreciate it, bandwidth internet is for... Virtual is always a challenge to do live, but thank you. The trend we're just going through is how do I pitch to you? What's the best practice? How do I get your attention? Do bylines lines work? Actually, Bloomberg doesn't do that very often either as well as like the Journal. but your thoughts on folks out there who are really trying to figure out how to do a good job, how to get your attention, how to augment your role and responsibilities. What's your thoughts? >> I would say, going back to what we said a little bit before about really knowing who you're pitching to. If you know something that I've written recently that you can reference, that gets my attention. But I would also encourage people to try to think about different ways that they can be part of a story if they are looking to be mentioned in one of our articles. And what I mean by that is, maybe you are launching new products or you have a new initiative, but think about other ways that your companies relate to what's going on right now. So for instance, one thing that I'm really interested in is just the the changing nature of work in the office place itself. So maybe you know of something that's going on at a company, unlimited vacation for the first time or sabbaticals are being offered to working parents who have nowhere to send their children, or something that's unique about the current moment that we're living in. And I think that those make really good interviews. So it might not be us featuring your product or featuring exactly what your company does, but it still makes you part of the conversation. And I think it's still, it's probably valuable to the company as well to get that mention, and people may be looking into what you guys do. So I would say that something else we are really interested in right now is really looking at who we're quoting and the diversity of our sources. So that's something else I would put a plug in for PR people to be keeping an eye on, is if you're always putting up your same CEO who is maybe of a certain demographic, but you have other people in your company who you can give the opportunity to talk with the media. I'm really interested in making sure I'm using a diverse list of sources and I'm not just always calling the same person. So if you can identify people who maybe even aren't experienced with it, but they're willing to give it a try, I think that now's a really good moment to be able to get new voices in there. >> Rather than the speed dial person you go to for that vertical or that story, building out those sources. >> Exactly. >> Great, that's great insight, Everyone, great insights. And thank you for your time on this awesome panel. Love to do it again. This has been super informative. I love some of the engagement out there. And again, I think we can do more of these and get the word out. I'd like to end the panel on an uplifting note for young aspiring journalists coming out of school. Honestly, journalism programs are evolving. The landscape is changing. We're seeing a sea change. As younger generation comes out of college and master's programs in journalism, we need to tell the most important stories. Could you each take a minute to give your advice to folks either going in and coming out of school, what to be prepared for, how they can make an impact? Brenna, we'll start with you, Gerard and Eric. >> That's a big question. I would say one thing that has been been encouraging about everything going on right now as I have seen an increased hunger for information and an increased hunger for accurate information. So I do think it can obviously be disheartening to look at the furloughs and the layoffs and everything that is going on around the country. But at the same time, I think we have been able to see really big impacts from the people that are doing reporting on protests and police brutality and on responses to the virus. And so I think for young journalists, definitely take a look at the people who are doing work that you think is making a difference. And be inspired by that to keep pushing even though the market might be a little bit difficult for a while. >> I'd say two things. One, again, echoing what Brenna said, identify people that you follow or you admire or you think are making a real contribution in the field and maybe directly interact with them. I think all of us, whoever we are, always like to hear from young journalists and budding journalists. And again, similar advice to giving to the advice that we were giving about PR pitches. If you know what that person has been doing, and then contact them and follow them. And I know I've been contacted by a number of young journalists like that. The other thing I'd say is and this is more of a plea than a piece of advice. But I do think it will work in the long run, be prepared to go against the grain. I fear that too much journalism today is of the same piece. There is not a lot of intellectual diversity in what we're seeing There's a tendency to follow the herd. Goes back a little bit to what I was saying right at the opening about the fact that too many journalists, quite frankly, are clustered in the major metropolitan areas in this country and around the world. Have something distinctive and a bit different to say. I'm not suggesting you offer some crazy theory or a set of observations about the world but be prepared to... To me, the reason I went into journalism was because I was always a bit skeptical about whenever I saw something in any media, which especially one which seemed to have a huge amount of support and was repeated in all places, I always asked myself, "Is that really true? "Is that actually right? "Maybe there's an alternative to that." And that's going to make you stand out as a journalist, that's going to give you a distinctiveness. It's quite hard to do in some respects right now, because standing out from the crowd can get you into trouble. And I'm not suggesting that people should do that. Have a record of original storytelling, of reporting, of doing things perhaps that not, because look, candidly, there are probably right now in this country, 100,00 budding putative journalists who would like to go out and write about, report on Black Lives Matter and the reports on the problems of racial inequality in this country and the protests and all of that kind of stuff. The problem there is there are already 100,000 of those people who want to do that in addition to probably the 100,000 journalists who are already doing it. Find something else, find something different. have something distinctive to offer so that when attention moves on from these big stories, whether it's COVID or race or politics or the election or Donald Trump or whatever. Have something else to offer that is quite distinctive and where you have actually managed to carve out for yourself a real record as having an independent voice. >> Brenna and Gerard, great insight. Eric, take us home close us out. >> Sure. I'd say a couple things. So one is as a new, as a young journalist, I think first of all, having a variety of tools in your toolkit is super valuable. So be able to write long and write short, be able to do audio, blogs, podcast, video. If you can shoot photos and the more skills that you have, a following on social media. You want to have all of the tools in your toolkit because it is challenging to get a job and so you want to be able to be flexible enough to fill all those roles. And the truth is that a modern journalist is finding the need to do all of that. When I first started at Barron's many, many years ago, we did one thing, we did a weekly magazine. You'd have two weeks to write a story. It was very comfortable. And that's just not the way the world works anymore. So that's one element. And the other thing, I think Gerard is right. You really want to have a certain expertise if possible that makes you stand out. And the contradiction is, but you also want to have the flexibility to do lots of different stories. You want to get (voice cuts out) hold. But if you have some expertise, that is hard to find, that's really valuable. When Barron's hires we're always looking for people who have, can write well but also really understand the financial markets. And it can be challenging for us sometimes to find those people. And so I think there's, you need to go short and long. It's a barbell strategy. Have expertise, but also be flexible in both your approach and the things you're willing to cover. >> Great insight. Folks, thanks for the great commentary, great chats for the folks watching, really appreciate your valuable time. Be original, go against the grain, be skeptical, and just do a good job. I think there's a lot of opportunity. And I think the world's changing. Thanks for your time. And I hope the comms folks enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Appreciate it. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> I'm John Furrier here in the Cube for this Cube Talk was one hour power panel. Awesome conversation. Stay in chat if you want to ask more questions. We'll come back and look at those chats later. But thank you for watching. Have a nice day. (instrumental music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's the queue with digital coverage of DockerCon live 2020. Brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome, welcome, welcome to DockerCon 2020. We got over 50,000 people registered so there's clearly a ton of interest in the world of Docker and Eddie's as I like to call it. And we've assembled a power panel of Open Source and cloud native experts to talk about where things stand in 2020 and where we're headed. I'm Shawn Conley, I'll be the moderator for today's panel. I'm also a proud alum of JBoss, Red Hat, SpringSource, VMware and Hortonworks and I'm broadcasting from my hometown of Philly. Our panelists include; Michelle Noorali, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, joining us from Atlanta, Georgia. We have Kelsey Hightower, Principal developer advocate at Google Cloud, joining us from Washington State and we have Chris Aniszczyk, CTO CIO at the CNCF, joining us from Austin, Texas. So I think we have the country pretty well covered. Thank you all for spending time with us on this power panel. Chris, I'm going to start with you, let's dive right in. You've been in the middle of the Docker netease wave since the beginning with a clear focus on building a better world through open collaboration. What are your thoughts on how the Open Source landscape has evolved over the past few years? Where are we in 2020? And where are we headed from both community and a tech perspective? Just curious to get things sized up? >> Sure, when CNCF started about roughly four, over four years ago, the technology mostly focused on just the things around Kubernetes, monitoring communities with technology like Prometheus, and I think in 2020 and the future, we definitely want to move up the stack. So there's a lot of tools being built on the periphery now. So there's a lot of tools that handle running different types of workloads on Kubernetes. So things like Uvert and Shay runs VMs on Kubernetes, which is crazy, not just containers. You have folks that, Microsoft experimenting with a project called Kruslet which is trying to run web assembly workloads natively on Kubernetes. So I think what we've seen now is more and more tools built around the periphery, while the core of Kubernetes has stabilized. So different technologies and spaces such as security and different ways to run different types of workloads. And at least that's kind of what I've seen. >> So do you have a fair amount of vendors as well as end users still submitting in projects in, is there still a pretty high volume? >> Yeah, we have 48 total projects in CNCF right now and Michelle could speak a little bit more to this being on the DOC, the pipeline for new projects is quite extensive and it covers all sorts of spaces from two service meshes to security projects and so on. So it's ever so expanding and filling in gaps in that cloud native landscape that we have. >> Awesome. Michelle, Let's head to you. But before we actually dive in, let's talk a little glory days. A rumor has it that you are the Fifth Grade Kickball Championship team captain. (Michelle laughs) Are the rumors true? >> They are, my speech at the end of the year was the first talk I ever gave. But yeah, it was really fun. I wasn't captain 'cause I wasn't really great at anything else apart from constantly cheer on the team. >> A little better than my eighth grade Spelling Champ Award so I think I'd rather have the kickball. But you've definitely, spent a lot of time leading an Open Source, you've been across many projects for many years. So how does the art and science of collaboration, inclusivity and teamwork vary? 'Cause you're involved in a variety of efforts, both in the CNCF and even outside of that. And then what are some tips for expanding the tent of Open Source projects? >> That's a good question. I think it's about transparency. Just come in and tell people what you really need to do and clearly articulate your problem, more clearly articulate your problem and why you can't solve it with any other solution, the more people are going to understand what you're trying to do and be able to collaborate with you better. What I love about Open Source is that where I've seen it succeed is where incentives of different perspectives and parties align and you're just transparent about what you want. So you can collaborate where it makes sense, even if you compete as a company with another company in the same area. So I really like that, but I just feel like transparency and honesty is what it comes down to and clearly communicating those objectives. >> Yeah, and the various foundations, I think one of the things that I've seen, particularly Apache Software Foundation and others is the notion of checking your badge at the door. Because the competition might be between companies, but in many respects, you have engineers across many companies that are just kicking butt with the tech they contribute, claiming victory in one way or the other might make for interesting marketing drama. But, I think that's a little bit of the challenge. In some of the, standards-based work you're doing I know with CNI and some other things, are they similar, are they different? How would you compare and contrast into something a little more structured like CNCF? >> Yeah, so most of what I do is in the CNCF, but there's specs and there's projects. I think what CNCF does a great job at is just iterating to make it an easier place for developers to collaborate. You can ask the CNCF for basically whatever you need, and they'll try their best to figure out how to make it happen. And we just continue to work on making the processes are clearer and more transparent. And I think in terms of specs and projects, those are such different collaboration environments. Because if you're in a project, you have to say, "Okay, I want this feature or I want this bug fixed." But when you're in a spec environment, you have to think a little outside of the box and like, what framework do you want to work in? You have to think a little farther ahead in terms of is this solution or this decision we're going to make going to last for the next how many years? You have to get more of a buy in from all of the key stakeholders and maintainers. So it's a little bit of a longer process, I think. But what's so beautiful is that you have this really solid, standard or interface that opens up an ecosystem and allows people to build things that you could never have even imagined or dreamed of so-- >> Gotcha. So I'm Kelsey, we'll head over to you as your focus is on, developer advocate, you've been in the cloud native front lines for many years. Today developers are faced with a ton of moving parts, spanning containers, functions, Cloud Service primitives, including container services, server-less platforms, lots more, right? I mean, there's just a ton of choice. How do you help developers maintain a minimalist mantra in the face of such a wealth of choice? I think minimalism I hear you talk about that periodically, I know you're a fan of that. How do you pass that on and your developer advocacy in your day to day work? >> Yeah, I think, for most developers, most of this is not really the top of mind for them, is something you may see a post on Hacker News, and you might double click into it. Maybe someone on your team brought one of these tools in and maybe it leaks up into your workflow so you're forced to think about it. But for most developers, they just really want to continue writing code like they've been doing. And the best of these projects they'll never see. They just work, they get out of the way, they help them with log in, they help them run their application. But for most people, this isn't the core idea of the job for them. For people in operations, on the other hand, maybe these components fill a gap. So they look at a lot of this stuff that you see in the CNCF and Open Source space as number one, various companies or teams sharing the way that they do things, right? So these are ideas that are put into the Open Source, some of them will turn into products, some of them will just stay as projects that had mutual benefit for multiple people. But for the most part, it's like walking through an ion like Home Depot. You pick the tools that you need, you can safely ignore the ones you don't need, and maybe something looks interesting and maybe you study it to see if that if you have a problem. And for most people, if you don't have that problem that that tool solves, you should be happy. No one needs every project and I think that's where the foundation for confusion. So my main job is to help people not get stuck and confused in LAN and just be pragmatic and just use the tools that work for 'em. >> Yeah, and you've spent the last little while in the server-less space really diving into that area, compare and contrast, I guess, what you found there, minimalist approach, who are you speaking to from a server-less perspective versus that of the broader CNCF? >> The thing that really pushed me over, I was teaching my daughter how to make a website. So she's on her Chromebook, making a website, and she's hitting 127.0.0.1, and it looks like geo cities from the 90s but look, she's making website. And she wanted her friends to take a look. So she copied and paste from her browser 127.0.0.1 and none of her friends could pull it up. So this is the point where every parent has to cross that line and say, "Hey, do I really need to sit down "and teach my daughter about Linux "and Docker and Kubernetes." That isn't her main goal, her goal was to just launch her website in a way that someone else can see it. So we got Firebase installed on her laptop, she ran one command, Firebase deploy. And our site was up in a few minutes, and she sent it over to her friend and there you go, she was off and running. The whole server-less movement has that philosophy as one of the stated goal that needs to be the workflow. So, I think server-less is starting to get closer and closer, you start to see us talk about and Chris mentioned this earlier, we're moving up the stack. Where we're going to up the stack, the North Star there is feel where you get the focus on what you're doing, and not necessarily how to do it underneath. And I think server-less is not quite there yet but every type of workload, stateless web apps check, event driven workflows check, but not necessarily for things like machine learning and some other workloads that more traditional enterprises want to run so there's still work to do there. So server-less for me, serves as the North Star for why all these Projects exists for people that may have to roll their own platform, to provide the experience. >> So, Chris, on a related note, with what we were just talking about with Kelsey, what's your perspective on the explosion of the cloud native landscape? There's, a ton of individual projects, each can be used separately, but in many cases, they're like Lego blocks and used together. So things like the surface mesh interface, standardizing interfaces, so things can snap together more easily, I think, are some of the approaches but are you doing anything specifically to encourage this cross fertilization and collaboration of bug ability, because there's just a ton of projects, not only at the CNCF but outside the CNCF that need to plug in? >> Yeah, I mean, a lot of this happens organically. CNCF really provides of the neutral home where companies, competitors, could trust each other to build interesting technology. We don't force integration or collaboration, it happens on its own. We essentially allow the market to decide what a successful project is long term or what an integration is. We have a great Technical Oversight Committee that helps shepherd the overall technical vision for the organization and sometimes steps in and tries to do the right thing when it comes to potentially integrating a project. Previously, we had this issue where there was a project called Open Tracing, and an effort called Open Census, which is basically trying to standardize how you're going to deal with metrics, on the tree and so on in a cloud native world that we're essentially competing with each other. The CNCF TC and committee came together and merged those projects into one parent ever called Open Elementary and so that to me is a case study of how our committee helps, bridges things. But we don't force things, we essentially want our community of end users and vendors to decide which technology is best in the long term, and we'll support that. >> Okay, awesome. And, Michelle, you've been focused on making distributed systems digestible, which to me is about simplifying things. And so back when Docker arrived on the scene, some people referred to it as developer dopamine, which I love that term, because it's simplified a bunch of crufty stuff for developers and actually helped them focus on doing their job, writing code, delivering code, what's happening in the community to help developers wire together multi-part modern apps in a way that's elegant, digestible, feels like a dopamine rush? >> Yeah, one of the goals of the(mumbles) project was to make it easier to deploy an application on Kubernetes so that you could see what the finished product looks like. And then dig into all of the things that that application is composed of, all the resources. So we're really passionate about this kind of stuff for a while now. And I love seeing projects that come into the space that have this same goal and just iterate and make things easier. I think we have a ways to go still, I think a lot of the iOS developers and JS developers I get to talk to don't really care that much about Kubernetes. They just want to, like Kelsey said, just focus on their code. So one of the projects that I really like working with is Tilt gives you this dashboard in your CLI, aggregates all your logs from your applications, And it kind of watches your application changes, and reconfigures those changes in Kubernetes so you can see what's going on, it'll catch errors, anything with a dashboard I love these days. So Yali is like a metrics dashboard that's integrated with STL, a service graph of your service mesh, and lets you see the metrics running there. I love that, I love that dashboard so much. Linkerd has some really good service graph images, too. So anything that helps me as an end user, which I'm not technically an end user, but me as a person who's just trying to get stuff up and running and working, see the state of the world easily and digest them has been really exciting to see. And I'm seeing more and more dashboards come to light and I'm very excited about that. >> Yeah, as part of the DockerCon just as a person who will be attending some of the sessions, I'm really looking forward to see where DockerCompose is going, I know they opened up the spec to broader input. I think your point, the good one, is there's a bit more work to really embrace the wealth of application artifacts that compose a larger application. So there's definitely work the broader community needs to lean in on, I think. >> I'm glad you brought that up, actually. Compose is something that I should have mentioned and I'm glad you bring that up. I want to see programming language libraries, integrate with the Compose spec. I really want to see what happens with that I think is great that they open that up and made that a spec because obviously people really like using Compose. >> Excellent. So Kelsey, I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on your January post on changelog entitled, "Monoliths are the Future." Your post actually really resonated with me. My son works for a software company in Austin, Texas. So your hometown there, Chris. >> Yeah. >> Shout out to Will and the chorus team. His development work focuses on adding modern features via micro services as extensions to the core monolith that the company was founded on. So just share some thoughts on monoliths, micro services. And also, what's deliverance dopamine from your perspective more broadly, but people usually phrase as monoliths versus micro services, but I get the sense you don't believe it's either or. >> Yeah, I think most companies from the pragmatic so one of their argument is one of pragmatism. Most companies have trouble designing any app, monolith, deployable or microservices architecture. And then these things evolve over time. Unless you're really careful, it's really hard to know how to slice these things. So taking an idea or a problem and just knowing how to perfectly compartmentalize it into individual deployable component, that's hard for even the best people to do. And double down knowing the actual solution to the particular problem. A lot of problems people are solving they're solving for the first time. It's really interesting, our industry in general, a lot of people who work in it have never solved the particular problem that they're trying to solve for the first time. So that's interesting. The other part there is that most of these tools that are here to help are really only at the infrastructure layer. We're talking freeways and bridges and toll bridges, but there's nothing that happens in the actual developer space right there in memory. So the libraries that interface to the structure logging, the libraries that deal with rate limiting, the libraries that deal with authorization, can this person make this query with this user ID? A lot of those things are still left for developers to figure out on their own. So while we have things like the brunettes and fluid D, we have all of these tools to deploy apps into those target, most developers still have the problem of everything you do above that line. And to be honest, the majority of the complexity has to be resolved right there in the app. That's the thing that's taking requests directly from the user. And this is where maybe as an industry, we're over-correcting. So we had, you said you come from the JBoss world, I started a lot of my Cisco administration, there's where we focus a little bit more on the actual application needs, maybe from a router that as well. But now what we're seeing is things like Spring Boot, start to offer a little bit more integration points in the application space itself. So I think the biggest parts that are missing now are what are the frameworks people will use for authorization? So you have projects like OPA, Open Policy Agent for those that are new to that, it gives you this very low level framework, but you still have to understand the concepts around, what does it mean to allow someone to do something and one missed configuration, all your security goes out of the window. So I think for most developers this is where the next set of challenges lie, if not actually the original challenge. So for some people, they were able to solve most of these problems with virtualization, run some scripts, virtualize everything and be fine. And monoliths were okay for that. For some reason, we've thrown pragmatism out of the window and some people are saying the only way to solve these problems is by breaking the app into 1000 pieces. Forget the fact that you had trouble managing one piece, you're going to somehow find the ability to manage 1000 pieces with these tools underneath but still not solving the actual developer problems. So this is where you've seen it already with a couple of popular blog posts from other companies. They cut too deep. They're going from 2000, 3000 microservices back to maybe 100 or 200. So to my world, it's going to be not just one monolith, but end up maybe having 10 or 20 monoliths that maybe reflect the organization that you have versus the architectural pattern that you're at. >> I view it as like a constellation of stars and planets, et cetera. Where you you might have a star that has a variety of, which is a monolith, and you have a variety of sort of planetary microservices that float around it. But that's reality, that's the reality of modern applications, particularly if you're not starting from a clean slate. I mean your points, a good one is, in many respects, I think the infrastructure is code movement has helped automate a bit of the deployment of the platform. I've been personally focused on app development JBoss as well as springsSource. The Spring team I know that tech pretty well over the years 'cause I was involved with that. So I find that James Governor's discussion of progressive delivery really resonates with me, as a developer, not so much as an infrastructure Deployer. So continuous delivery is more of infrastructure notice notion, progressive delivery, feature flags, those types of things, or app level, concepts, minimizing the blast radius of your, the new features you're deploying, that type of stuff, I think begins to speak to the pain of application delivery. So I'll guess I'll put this up. Michelle, I might aim it to you, and then we'll go around the horn, what are your thoughts on the progressive delivery area? How could that potentially begin to impact cloud native over 2020? I'm looking for some rallying cries that move up the stack and give a set of best practices, if you will. And I think James Governor of RedMonk opened on something that's pretty important. >> Yeah, I think it's all about automating all that stuff that you don't really know about. Like Flagger is an awesome progressive delivery tool, you can just deploy something, and people have been asking for so many years, ever since I've been in this space, it's like, "How do I do AB deployment?" "How do I do Canary?" "How do I execute these different deployment strategies?" And Flagger is a really good example, for example, it's a really good way to execute these deployment strategies but then, make sure that everything's happening correctly via observing metrics, rollback if you need to, so you don't just throw your whole system. I think it solves the problem and allows you to take risks but also keeps you safe in that you can be confident as you roll out your changes that it all works, it's metrics driven. So I'm just really looking forward to seeing more tools like that. And dashboards, enable that kind of functionality. >> Chris, what are your thoughts in that progressive delivery area? >> I mean, CNCF alone has a lot of projects in that space, things like Argo that are tackling it. But I want to go back a little bit to your point around developer dopamine, as someone that probably spent about a decade of his career focused on developer tooling and in fact, if you remember the Eclipse IDE and that whole integrated experience, I was blown away recently by a demo from GitHub. They have something called code spaces, which a long time ago, I was trying to build development environments that essentially if you were an engineer that joined a team recently, you could basically get an environment quickly start it with everything configured, source code checked out, environment properly set up. And that was a very hard problem. This was like before container days and so on and to see something like code spaces where you'd go to a repo or project, open it up, behind the scenes they have a container that is set up for the environment that you need to build and just have a VS code ID integrated experience, to me is completely magical. It hits like developer dopamine immediately for me, 'cause a lot of problems when you're going to work with a project attribute, that whole initial bootstrap of, "Oh you need to make sure you have this library, this install," it's so incredibly painful on top of just setting up your developer environment. So as we continue to move up the stack, I think you're going to see an incredible amount of improvements around the developer tooling and developer experience that people have powered by a lot of this cloud native technology behind the scenes that people may not know about. >> Yeah, 'cause I've been talking with the team over at Docker, the work they're doing with that desktop, enable the aim local environment, make sure it matches as closely as possible as your deployed environments that you might be targeting. These are some of the pains, that I see. It's hard for developers to get bootstrapped up, it might take him a day or two to actually just set up their local laptop and development environment, and particularly if they change teams. So that complexity really corralling that down and not necessarily being overly prescriptive as to what tool you use. So if you're visual code, great, it should feel integrated into that environment, use a different environment or if you feel more comfortable at the command line, you should be able to opt into that. That's some of the stuff I get excited to potentially see over 2020 as things progress up the stack, as you said. So, Michelle, just from an innovation train perspective, and we've covered a little bit, what's the best way for people to get started? I think Kelsey covered a little bit of that, being very pragmatic, but all this innovation is pretty intimidating, you can get mowed over by the train, so to speak. So what's your advice for how people get started, how they get involved, et cetera. >> Yeah, it really depends on what you're looking for and what you want to learn. So, if you're someone who's new to the space, honestly, check out the case studies on cncf.io, those are incredible. You might find environments that are similar to your organization's environments, and read about what worked for them, how they set things up, any hiccups they crossed. It'll give you a broad overview of the challenges that people are trying to solve with the technology in this space. And you can use that drill into the areas that you want to learn more about, just depending on where you're coming from. I find myself watching old KubeCon talks on the cloud native computing foundations YouTube channel, so they have like playlists for all of the conferences and the special interest groups in CNCF. And I really enjoy talking, I really enjoy watching excuse me, older talks, just because they explain why things were done, the way they were done, and that helps me build the tools I built. And if you're looking to get involved, if you're building projects or tools or specs and want to contribute, we have special interest groups in the CNCF. So you can find that in the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee, TOC GitHub repo. And so for that, if you want to get involved there, choose a vertical. Do you want to learn about observability? Do you want to drill into networking? Do you care about how to deliver your app? So we have a cig called app delivery, there's a cig for each major vertical, and you can go there to see what is happening on the edge. Really, these are conversations about, okay, what's working, what's not working and what are the next changes we want to see in the next months. So if you want that kind of granularity and discussion on what's happening like that, then definitely join those those meetings. Check out those meeting notes and recordings. >> Gotcha. So on Kelsey, as you look at 2020 and beyond, I know, you've been really involved in some of the earlier emerging tech spaces, what gets you excited when you look forward? What gets your own level of dopamine up versus the broader community? What do you see coming that we should start thinking about now? >> I don't think any of the raw technology pieces get me super excited anymore. Like, I've seen the circle of around three or four times, in five years, there's going to be a new thing, there might be a new foundation, there'll be a new set of conferences, and we'll all rally up and probably do this again. So what's interesting now is what people are actually using the technology for. Some people are launching new things that maybe weren't possible because infrastructure costs were too high. People able to jump into new business segments. You start to see these channels on YouTube where everyone can buy a mic and a B app and have their own podcasts and be broadcast to the globe, just for a few bucks, if not for free. Those revolutionary things are the big deal and they're hard to come by. So I think we've done a good job democratizing these ideas, distributed systems, one company got really good at packaging applications to share with each other, I think that's great, and never going to reset again. And now what's going to be interesting is, what will people build with this stuff? If we end up building the same things we were building before, and then we're talking about another digital transformation 10 years from now because it's going to be funny but Kubernetes will be the new legacy. It's going to be the things that, "Oh, man, I got stuck in this Kubernetes thing," and there'll be some governor on TV, looking for old school Kubernetes engineers to migrate them to some new thing, that's going to happen. You got to know that. So at some point merry go round will stop. And we're going to be focused on what you do with this. So the internet is there, most people have no idea of the complexities of underwater sea cables. It's beyond one or two people, or even one or two companies to comprehend. You're at the point now, where most people that jump on the internet are talking about what you do with the internet. You can have Netflix, you can do meetings like this one, it's about what you do with it. So that's going to be interesting. And we're just not there yet with tech, tech is so, infrastructure stuff. We're so in the weeds, that most people almost burn out what's just getting to the point where you can start to look at what you do with this stuff. So that's what I keep in my eye on, is when do we get to the point when people just ship things and build things? And I think the closest I've seen so far is in the mobile space. If you're iOS developer, Android developer, you use the SDK that they gave you, every year there's some new device that enables some new things speech to text, VR, AR and you import an STK, and it just worked. And you can put it in one place and 100 million people can download it at the same time with no DevOps team, that's amazing. When can we do that for server side applications? That's going to be something I'm going to find really innovative. >> Excellent. Yeah, I mean, I could definitely relate. I was Hortonworks in 2011, so, Hadoop, in many respects, was sort of the precursor to the Kubernetes area, in that it was, as I like to refer to, it was a bunch of animals in the zoo, wasn't just the yellow elephant. And when things mature beyond it's basically talking about what kind of analytics are driving, what type of machine learning algorithms and applications are they delivering? You know that's when things tip over into a real solution space. So I definitely see that. I think the other cool thing even just outside of the container and container space, is there's just such a wealth of data related services. And I think how those two worlds come together, you brought up the fact that, in many respects, server-less is great, it's stateless, but there's just a ton of stateful patterns out there that I think also need to be addressed as these richer applications to be from a data processing and actionable insights perspective. >> I also want to be clear on one thing. So some people confuse two things here, what Michelle said earlier about, for the first time, a whole group of people get to learn about distributed systems and things that were reserved to white papers, PhDs, CF site, this stuff is now super accessible. You go to the CNCF site, all the things that you read about or we used to read about, you can actually download, see how it's implemented and actually change how it work. That is something we should never say is a waste of time. Learning is always good because someone has to build these type of systems and whether they sell it under the guise of server-less or not, this will always be important. Now the other side of this is, that there are people who are not looking to learn that stuff, the majority of the world isn't looking. And in parallel, we should also make this accessible, which should enable people that don't need to learn all of that before they can be productive. So that's two sides of the argument that can be true at the same time, a lot of people get caught up. And everything should just be server-less and everyone learning about distributed systems, and contributing and collaborating is wasting time. We can't have a world where there's only one or two companies providing all infrastructure for everyone else, and then it's a black box. We don't need that. So we need to do both of these things in parallel so I just want to make sure I'm clear that it's not one of these or the other. >> Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. So we'll just hit the final topic. Chris, I think I'll ask you to help close this out. COVID-19 clearly has changed how people work and collaborate. I figured we'd end on how do you see, so DockerCon is going to virtual events, inherently the Open Source community is distributed and is used to not face to face collaboration. But there's a lot of value that comes together by assembling a tent where people can meet, what's the best way? How do you see things playing out? What's the best way for this to evolve in the face of the new normal? >> I think in the short term, you're definitely going to see a lot of virtual events cropping up all over the place. Different themes, verticals, I've already attended a handful of virtual events the last few weeks from Red Hat summit to Open Compute summit to Cloud Native summit, you'll see more and more of these. I think, in the long term, once the world either get past COVID or there's a vaccine or something, I think the innate nature for people to want to get together and meet face to face and deal with all the serendipitous activities you would see in a conference will come back, but I think virtual events will augment these things in the short term. One benefit we've seen, like you mentioned before, DockerCon, can have 50,000 people at it. I don't remember what the last physical DockerCon had but that's definitely an order of magnitude more. So being able to do these virtual events to augment potential of physical events in the future so you can build a more inclusive community so people who cannot travel to your event or weren't lucky enough to win a scholarship could still somehow interact during the course of event to me is awesome and I hope something that we take away when we start all doing these virtual events when we get back to physical events, we find a way to ensure that these things are inclusive for everyone and not just folks that can physically make it there. So those are my thoughts on on the topic. And I wish you the best of luck planning of DockerCon and so on. So I'm excited to see how it turns out. 50,000 is a lot of people and that just terrifies me from a cloud native coupon point of view, because we'll probably be somewhere. >> Yeah, get ready. Excellent, all right. So that is a wrap on the DockerCon 2020 Open Source Power Panel. I think we covered a ton of ground. I'd like to thank Chris, Kelsey and Michelle, for sharing their perspectives on this continuing wave of Docker and cloud native innovation. I'd like to thank the DockerCon attendees for tuning in. And I hope everybody enjoys the rest of the conference. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube Conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios today, having a Cube Conversation, you know, with the COVID situation going on we've had to change our business and go pretty much 100% digital. And as part of that process, we wanted to reach out to our community, and talk to some of the leaders out there, because I think leadership in troubling times is even more amplified in it's importance. So we're excited to be joined today by two leaders in our community. First one being John Chambers, a very familiar face from many, many years at Cisco, who's now the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. John, great to see you. >> Jeff, it's a pleasure to be with you again. >> Absolutely. And joining him is Umesh Sachdev, he's the co-founder and CEO of Uniphore. First time on theCUBE, Umesh, great to meet you. >> Jeff, thank you for having me, it's great to be with you. >> You as well, and I had one of your great people on the other day, talking about CX, and I think CX is the whole solution. Why did Uber beat cabs, do you want to stand on a corner and raise your hand in the rain? Or do you want to know when the guy's going to come pick you up, in just a couple minutes? So anyway, welcome. So let's jump into it. John, one of your things, that you talked about last time we talked, I think it was in October, wow how the world has changed. >> Yes. >> Is about having a playbook, and really, you know, kind of thinking about what you want to do before it's time to actually do it, and having some type of a script, and some type of direction, and some type of structure, as to how you respond to situations. Well there's nothing like a disaster to really fire off, you know, the need to shift gears, and go to kind of into a playbook mode. So I wonder if you could share with the viewers, kind of what is your playbook, you've been through a couple of these bumps. Not necessarily like COVID-19, but you've seen a couple bumps over your career. >> So it's my pleasure Jeff. What I'll do is kind of outline how I believe you use an innovation playbook on everything from acquisitions, to digitizing a company, to dealing with crisis. Let's focus on the playbook for crisis. You are right, and I'm not talking about my age, (John laughing) but this is my sixth financial crisis, and been through the late 1990s with the Asian financial crisis, came out of it even stronger at Cisco. Like everybody else we got knocked down in the 2001 tech bubble, came back from it even stronger. Then in 2008, 2009, Great Recession. We came through that one very, very strong, and we saw that one coming. It's my fourth major health crisis. Some of them turned out to be pretty small. I was in Mexico when the bird pandemic hit, with the President of Mexico, when we thought it was going to be terrible. We literally had to cancel the meetings that evening. That's why Cisco built the PLAR Presence. I was in Brazil for the issue with the Zika virus, that never really developed much, and the Olympics went on there, and I only saw one mosquito during the event. It bit me. But what I'm sharing with you is I've seen this movie again and again. And then, with supply chain, which not many people were talking about yet, supply chain crisis, like we saw in Japan with the Tsunami. What's happening this time is you're seeing all three at one time, and they're occurring even faster. So the playbook is pretty simple in crisis management, and then it would be fun to put Umesh on the spot and say how closely did you follow it? Did you agree with issues, or did you disagree, et cetera, on it. Now I won't mention, Umesh, that you've got a review coming up shortly from your board, so that should not affect your answer at all. But the first playbook is being realistic, how much was self-inflicted, how much was market. This one's largely market, but if you had problems before, you got to address them at the same time. The second thing is what are the five to seven things that are material, what you're going to do to lead through this crisis. That's everything from expense management, to cash preservation. It's about how do you interface to your employees, and how do you build on culture. It's about how do you interface to your customers as they change from their top priority being growth and innovation, to a top priority being cost savings, and the ability to really keep their current revenue streams from churning and moving. And it's about literally, how do make your big bets for what you want to look like as you move out of this market. Then it's how do you communicate that to your employees, to your shareholders, to your customers, to your partners. Painting the picture of what you look like as you come out. As basic as that sounds, that's what crisis management is all about. Don't hide, be visible, CEOs should take the role on implementing that playbook. Umesh to you, do you agree? And have fun with it a little bit, I like the give and take. >> I want to see the playbook, do you have it there, just below the camera? (Jeff laughing) >> I have it right here by my side. I will tell you, Jeff, in crisis times and difficult times like these, you count all the things that go right for you, you count your blessings. And one of the blessings that I have, as a CEO, is to have John Chambers as my mentor, by my side, sharing not just the learning that he had through the crisis, but talking through this, with me on a regular basis. I've read John's book more than a few times, I bet more than anybody in the world, I've read it over and over. And that, to me, is preparation going into this mode. One of the things that John has always taught me is when times get difficult, you get calmer than usual. It's one thing that when you're cruising on the freeway and you're asked to put the brakes, but it's quite another when you're in rocket ship, and accelerating, which is what my company situation was in the month of January. We were coming out of a year of 300% growth, we were driving towards another 300% growth, hiring tremendously, at a high pace. Winning customers at a high pace, and then this hit us. And so what I had to do, from a playbook perspective, is, you know, take a deep breath, and just for a couple of days, just slow down, and calmly look at the situation. My first few steps were, I reached out to 15 of our top customers, the CEOs, and give them calls, and said let's just talk about what you're seeing, and what we are observing in our business. We get a sense of where they are in their businesses. We had the benefit, my co-founder works out of Singapore, and runs our Asia business. We had the benefit of picking up the sign probably a month before everyone else did it in the U.S. I was with John in Australia, and I was telling John that "John, something unusual is happening, "a couple of our customers in these countries in Asia "are starting to tell us they would do the deal "a quarter later." And it's one thing when one of them says it, it's another when six of them say it together. And John obviously has seen this movie, he could connect the dots early. He told me to prepare, he told the rest of the portfolio companies that are in his investment group to start preparing. We then went to the playbook that John spoke of, being visible. For me, culture and communication take front seat. We have employees in ten different countries, we have offices, and very quickly, even before the governments mandated, we had all of them work, you know, go work from home, and be remote, because employee safety and health was the number one priority. We did our first virtual all-hands meeting on Zoom. We had about 240 people join in from around the world. And my job as CEO, usually our all-hands meeting were different functional leaders, different people in the group talk to the team about their initiatives. This all-hands was almost entirely run by me, addressing the whole company about what's going to be the situation from my lens, what have we learned. Be very factual. At the same time, communicating to the team that because of the fact that we raised our funding the last year, it was a good amount of money, we still have a lot of that in the bank, so we going to be very secure. At the same time, our customers are probably going to need us more than ever. Call centers are in more demand than ever, people can't walk up to a bank branch, they can't go up to a hospital without taking an appointment. So the first thing everyone is doing is trying to reach call centers. There aren't enough people, and anyways the work force that call centers have around the world, are 50% working from home, so the capacity has dropped. So our responsibility almost, is to step up, and have our AI and automation products available to as many call centers as we can. So as we are planning our own business continuity, and making sure every single employee is safe, the message to my team was we also have to be aggressive and making sure we are more out there, and more available, to our customers, that would also mean business growth for us. But first, and foremost is for us to be responsible citizens, and just make it available where it's needed. As we did that, I quickly went back to my leadership team, and again, the learning from John is usually it's more of a consensus driven approach, we go around the table, talk about a topic for a couple of hours, get the consensus, and move out of the room. My leadership meetings, they have become more frequent, we get together once a week, on video call with my executive leaders, and it's largely these days run by me. I broke down the team into five different war rooms, with different objectives. One of them we called it the preservation, we said one leader, supported by others will take the responsibility of making sure every single employee, their families, and our current customers, are addressed, taken care of. So we made somebody lead that group. Another group was made responsible for growth. Business needs to, you know, in a company that's growing at 300%, and we still have the opportunity, because call centers need us more than ever, we wanted to make sure we are responding to growth, and not just hunkering down, and, you know, ignoring the opportunity. So we had a second war room take care of the growth. And a third war room, lead by the head of finance, to look at all the financial scenarios, do the stress tests, and see if we are going to be ready for any eventuality that's going to come. Because, you know, we have a huge amount of people, who work at Uniphore around the world, and we wanted to make sure their well being is taken care of. So from being over communicative, to the team and customers, and being out there personally, to making sure we break down the teams. We have tremendous talent, and we let different people, set of people, run different set of priorities, and report back to me more frequently. And now, as we have settled into this rhythm, Jeff, you know, as we've been in, at least in the Bay area here, we've been shelter in place for about a month now. As we are in the rhythm, we are beginning to do virtual happy hours, every Thursday evening. Right after this call, I get together with my team with a glass of wine, and we get together, we talk every but work, and every employee, it's not divided by functions, or leadership, and we are getting the rhythm back into the organization. So we've gone and adjusted in the crisis, I would say very well. And the business is just humming along, as we had anticipated, going into this crisis. But I would say, if I didn't have John by my side, if I hadn't read his book, the number of times that I have, every plane ride we've done together, every place we've gone together, John has spoken about war stories. About the 2001, about 2008, and until you face the first one of your own, just like I did right now, you don't appreciate when John says leadership is lonely. But having him by our side makes it easier. >> Well I'm sure he's told you the Jack Welch story, right? That you've quoted before, John, where Jack told you that you're not really a good leader, yet, until you've been tested, right. So you go through some tough stuff, it's not that hard to lead on an upward to the right curve, it's when things get a little challenging that the real leadership shines through. >> Completely agree, and Jack said it the best, we were on our way to becoming the most valuable company in the world, he looked me in the eye and said "John, you have a very good company." And I knew he was about to give me a teaching moment, and I said "What does it take to have a great one?" He said a near death experience. And I thought I did that in '97, and some of the other management, and he said, "No, it's when you went through something "like we went through in 2001, "which many of our peers did die in." And we were knocked down really hard. When we came back from it, you get better. But what you see in Umesh is a very humble, young CEO. I have to remember he's only 34 years old, because his maturity is like he's 50, and he's seen it before. As you tell, he's like a sponge on learning, and he doesn't mind challenging. And what what he didn't say, in his humbleness, is they had the best month in March ever. And again, well over 300% versus the same quarter a year ago. So it shows you, if you're in the right spot, i.e. artificial intelligence, i.e. cost savings, i.e. customer relationship with their customers, how you can grow even during the tough times, and perhaps set a bold vision, based upon facts and a execution plan that very few companies will be able to deliver on today. So off to a great start, and you can see why I'm so honored and proud to be his strategic partner, and his coach. >> Well it's interesting, right, the human toll of this crisis is horrible, and there's a lot of people getting sick, and a lot of people are dying, and all the estimations are a lot more are going to die this month, as hopefully we get over the hump of some of these curves. So that aside, you know, we're here talking kind of more about the, kind of, the business of this thing. And it's really interesting kind of what a catalyst COVID has become, in terms of digital transformation. You know, we've been talking about new ways to work for years, and years, and years, and digital transformation, and all these kind of things. You mentioned the Cisco telepresence was out years, and decades ago. I mean I worked in Mitsubishi, we had a phone camera in 1986, I looked it up today, it was ridiculous, didn't work. But now, it's here, right. Now working from home is here. Umesh mentioned, you know, these huge call centers, now everybody's got to go home. Do they have infrastructure to go home? Do they have a place to work at home? Do they have support to go home? Teachers are now being forced, from K-12, and I know it's a hot topic for you, John, to teach from home. Teach on Zoom, with no time to prep, no time to really think it through. It's just like the kids aren't coming back, we got to learn it. You know I think this is such a transformational moment, and to your point, if this goes on for weeks, and weeks, and months, and months, which I think we all are in agreement that it will. I think you said, John, you know, many, many quarters. As people get new habits, and get into this new flow, I don't think they're going to go back back to the old ways. So I think it's a real, you know, kind of forcing function for digital transformation. And it's, you can't, you can't sit on the sidelines, cause your people can't come to the office anymore. >> So you've raised a number of questions, and I'll let Umesh handle the tough part of it. I will answer the easy part, which is I think this is the new normal. And I think it's here now, and the question is are you ready for it. And as you think about what we're really saying is the video sessions will become such an integral part of our daily lives, that we will not go back to having to do 90% of our work physically. Today alone I've done seven major group meetings, on Zoom, and Google Hangouts, and Cisco Webex. I've done six meetings with individuals, or the key CEOs of my portfolio. So that part is here to stay. Now what's going to be fascinating is does that also lead into digitization of our company, or do the companies make the mistake of saying I'm going to use this piece, because it's so obvious, and I get it, in terms of effectiveness, but I'm not going to change the other things in my normal work, in my normal business. This is why, unfortunately, I think you will see, we originally said, Jeff, you remember, 40% maybe as high as 45% of the Fortune 500 wouldn't exist in a decade. And perhaps 70% of the start-ups wouldn't exist in a decade, that are venture capital backed. I now think, unfortunately, you're going to see 20-35% of the start-ups not exist in 2 years, and I think it's going to shock you with the number of Fortune 500 companies that do not make this transition. So where you're leading this, that I completely agree with, is the ability to take this terrible event, with all of the issues, and again thank our healthcare workers for what they've been able to do to help so many people, and deal with the world the way it is. As my parents who are doctors taught me to do, not the way we wish it was. And then get your facts, prepare for the changes, and get ready for the future. The key would be how many companies do this. On the area Umesh has responsibility for, customer experience, I think you're going to see almost all companies focus on that. So it can be an example of perhaps how large companies learn to use the new technology, not just video capability, but AI, assistance for the agents, and then once they get the feel for it, just like we got the feel for these meetings, change their rhythm entirely. It was a dinner in New York, virtually, when we stopped, six weeks ago, traveling, that was supposed to be a bunch of board meetings, customer meetings, that was easy. But we were supposed to have a dinner with Shake Shack's CEO, and we were supposed to have him come out and show how he does cool innovation. We had a bunch of enterprise companies, and a bunch of media, and subject matter expertise, we ended up canceling it, and then we said why not do it virtually? And to your point, we did it in 24 different locations. Half the people, remember six weeks ago, had never even used Zoom. We had milk shakes, and hamburgers, and french fries delivered to their home. And it was one of the best two hour meetings I've seen. The future is this now. It's going to change dramatically, and Umesh, I think, is going to be at the front edge of how enterprise companies understand how their relationship with their customers is going to completely transform, using AI, conversational AI capability, speech recognition, et cetera. >> Yeah, I mean, Umesh, we haven't even really got into Uniphore, or what you guys are all about. But, you know, you're supporting call centers, you're using natural language technology, both on the inbound and all that, give us the overview, but you're playing on so many kind of innovation spaces, you know, the main interaction now with customers, and a brand, is either through the mobile phone, or through a call center, right. And that's becoming more, and increasingly, digitized. The ability to have a voice interaction, with a machine. Fascinating, and really, I think, revolutionary, and kind of taking, you know, getting us away from these stupid qwerty keyboards, which are supposed to slow us down on purpose. It's still the funniest thing ever, that we're still using these qwerty keyboards. So I wonder if you can share with us a little bit about, you know, kind of your vision of natural language, and how that changes the interaction with people, and machines. I think your TED Talk was really powerful, and I couldn't help but think of, you know, kind of mobile versus land lines, in terms of transformation. Transforming telecommunications in rural, and hard to serve areas, and then actually then adding the AI piece, to not only make it better for the front end person, but actually make it for the person servicing the account. >> Absolutely Jeff, so Uniphore, the company that I founded in 2008. We were talking about it's such a coincidence that I founded the company in 2008, the year of the Great Recession, and here we are again, talking in midst of the impact that we all have because of COVID. Uniphore does artificial intelligence and automation products, for the customer service industry. Call centers, as we know it, have fundamentally, for the last 20, 30 years, not have had a major technology disruption. We've seen a couple of ways of business model disruption, where call centers, you know, started to become offshore, in locations in Asia, India, and Mexico. Where our calls started to get routed around the world internationally, but fundamentally, the core technology in call centers, up until very recently, hadn't seen a major shift. With artificial intelligence, with natural language processings, speech recognition, available in over 100 languages. And, you know, in the last year or so, automation, and RPA, sort of adding to that mix, there's a whole new opportunity to re-think what customer service will mean to us, more in the future. As I think about the next five to seven years, with 5G happening, with 15 billion connected devices, you know, my five year old daughter, she the first thing she does when she enters the house from a playground, she goes to talk to her friend called Alexa. She speaks to Alexa. So, you know, these next generation of users, and technology users will grow up with AI, and voice, and NLP, all around us. And so their expectation of customer service and customer experience is going to be quantum times higher than some of us have, from our brands. I mean, today when a microwave or a TV doesn't work in our homes, our instinct could be to either go to the website of the brand, and try to do a chat with the agent, or do an 800 number phone call, and get them to visit the house to fix the TV. With, like I said with 5G, with TV, and microwave, and refrigerator becoming intelligent devices, you know, I could totally see my daughter telling the microwave "Why aren't you working?" And, you know, that question might still get routed to a remote contact center. Now the whole concept of contact center, the word has center in it, which means, in the past, we used to have these physical, massive locations, where people used to come in and put on their headsets to receive calls. Like John said, more than ever, we will see these centers become dispersed, and virtual. The channels with which these queries will come in would no more be just a phone, it would be the microwave, the car, the fridge. And the receivers of these calls would be anywhere in the world, sitting in their home, or sitting on a holiday in the Himalayas, and answering these situations to us. You know, I was reading, just for everyone to realize how drastic this shift has been, for the customer service industry. There are over 14 million workers, who work in contact centers around the world. Like I said, the word center means something here. All of them, right now, are working remote. This industry was never designed to work remote. Enterprises who fundamentally didn't plan for this. To your point Jeff, who thought digitization or automation, was a project they could have picked next year, or they were sitting on the fence, will now know more have a choice to make this adjustment. There's a report by a top analyst firm that said by 2023, up to 30% of customer service representatives would be remote. Well guess what, we just way blew past that number right away. And most of the CEOs that I talked to recently tell me that now that this shift has happened, about 40% of their workers will probably never return back to the office. They will always remain a permanent virtual workforce. Now when the workforce is remote, you need all the tools and technology, and AI, that A, if on any given day, 7-10% of your workforce calls in sick, you need bots, like the Amazon's Alexa, taking over a full conversation. Uniphore has a product called Akira, which does that in call centers. Most often, when these call center workers are talking, we have the experience of being put on hold, because call center workers have to type in something on their keyboard, and take notes. Well guess what, today AI and automation can assist them in doing that, making the call shorter, allowing the call center workers to take a lot more calls in the same time frame. And I don't know your experience, but, you know, a couple of weekends ago, the modem in my house wasn't working. I had a seven hour wait time to my service provider. Seven hour. I started calling at 8:30, it was somewhere around 3-4:00, finally, after call backs, wait, call back, wait, that it finally got resolved. It was just a small thing, I just couldn't get to the representative. So the enterprises are truly struggling, technology can help. They weren't designed to go remote, think about it, some of the unique challenges that I've heard now, from my customers, is that how do I know that my call center representative, who I've trained over years to be so nice, and empathetic, when they take a pee break, or a bio break, they don't get their 10 year old son to attend a call. How do I know that? Because now I can no more physically check in on them. How do I know that if I'm a bank, there's compliance? There's nothing being said that isn't being, is, you know, supposed to be said, because in a center, in an office, a supervisor can listen in. When everyone's remote, you can't do that. So AI, automation, monitoring, supporting, aiding human beings to take calls much better, and drive automation, as well as AI take over parts of a complete call, by the way of being a bot like Alexa, are sort of the things that Uniphore does, and I just feel that this is a permanent shift that we are seeing. While it's happening because of a terrible reason, the virus, that's affecting human beings, but the shift in business and behavior, is going to be permanent in this industry. >> Yeah, I think so, you know it's funny, I had Marten Mickos on, or excuse me, yeah, Marten Mickos, as part of this series. And I asked him, he's been doing distributed companies since he was doing MySQL, before Sun bought them. And he's, he was funny, it's like actually easier to fake it in an office, than when you're at home, because at home all you have to show is your deliverables. You can't look busy, you can't be going to meetings, you can't be doing things at your computer. All you have to show is your output. He said it's actually much more efficient, and it drives people, you know, to manage to the output, manage to what you want. But I want to shift gears a little bit, before we let you go, and really talk a little bit about the role of government. And John, I know you've been very involved with the Indian government, and the French government, trying to help them, in their kind of entrepreneurial pursuits, and Uniphore, I think, was founded in India, right, before you moved over here. You know we've got this huge stimulus package coming from the U.S. government, to try to help, as people, you know, can't pay their mortgage, a lot of people aren't so fortunate to be in digital businesses. It's two trillion dollars, so as kind of a thought experiment, I'm like well how much is two trillion dollars? And I did the cash balance of the FAANG companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, just looking at Yahoo Finance, the latest one that was there. It's 333 billion, compared to two trillion. Even when you add Microsoft's 133 billion on top, it's still shy, it's still shy of 500 billion. You know, and really, the federal government is really the only people in a position to make kind of sweeping, these types of investments. But should we be scared? Should we be worried about, you know, kind of this big shift in control? And should, do you think these companies with these big balance sheets, as you said John, priorities change a little bit. Should it be, keep that money to pay the people, so that they can stay employed and pay their mortgage, and go buy groceries, and maybe get take out from their favorite restaurant, versus, you know, kind of what we've seen in the past, where there's a lot more, you know, stock buy backs, and kind of other uses of these cash. As you said, if it's a crisis, and you got to cut to survive, you got to do that. But clearly some of these other companies are not in that position. >> So you, let me break it into two pieces, Jeff, if I may. The first is for the first time in my lifetime I have seen the federal government and federal agencies move very rapidly. And if you would have told me government could move with the speed we've seen over the last three months, I would have said probably not. The fed was ahead of both the initial interest rate cuts, and the fed was ahead in terms of the slowing down, i.e. your 2 trillion discussion, by central banks here, and around the world. But right behind it was the Treasury, which put on 4 trillion on top of that. And only governments can move in this way, but the coordination with government and businesses, and the citizens, has been remarkable. And the citizens being willing to shelter in place. To your question about India, Prime Minister Modi spent the last five years digitizing his country. And he put in place the most bandwidth of any country in the world, and literally did transformation of the currency to a virtual currency, so that people could get paid online, et cetera, within it. He then looked at start-ups and job creation, and he positioned this when an opportunity or problem came along, to be able to perhaps navigate through it in a way that other countries might struggle. I would argue President Macron in France is doing a remarkable job with his innovation economy, but also saying how do you preserve jobs. So you suddenly see government doing something that no business can do, with the scale, and the speed, and a equal approach. But at the same time, may of these companies, and being very candid, that some people might have associated with tech for good, or with tech for challenges, have been unbelievably generous in giving both from the CEOs pockets perspective, and number two and three founders perspective, as well as a company giving to the CDC, and giving to people to help create jobs. So I actually like this opportunity for tech to regain its image of being good for everybody in the world, and leadership within the world. And I think it's a unique opportunity. For my start-ups, I've been so proud, Jeff. I didn't have to tell them to go do the right thing with their employees, I didn't have to tell them that you got to treat people, human lives first, the economy second, but we can do both in parallel. And you saw companies like Sprinklr suddenly say how can I help the World Health Organization anticipate through social media, where the next spread of the virus is going to be? A company, like Bloom Energy, with what KR did there, rebuilding all of the ventilators that were broken here in California, of which about 40% were, out of the stock that they got, because it had been in storage for so long, and doing it for all of California in their manufacturing plant, at cost. A company like Aspire Foods, a cricket company down in Texas, who does 3D capabilities, taking part of their production in 3D, and saying how many thousand masks can I generate, per week, using 3D printers. You watch what Umesh has done, and how he literally is changing peoples lives, and making that experience, instead of being a negative from working at home, perhaps to a positive, and increasing the customer loyalty in the process, as opposed to when you got a seven hour wait time on a line. Not only are you probably not going to order anything else from that company, you're probably going to change it. So what is fascinating to me is I believe companies owe an obligation to be successful, to their employees, and to their shareholders, but also to give back to society. And it's one of the things I'm most proud about the portfolio companies that I'm a part of, and why I'm so proud of what Umesh is doing, in both a economically successful environment, but really giving back and making a difference. >> Yeah, I mean, there's again, there's all the doctor stuff, and the medical stuff, which I'm not qualified to really talk about. Thankfully we have good professionals that have the data, and the knowledge, and know what to do, and got out ahead of the social distancing, et cetera, but on the backside, it really looks like a big data problem in so many ways, right. And now we have massive amounts of compute at places like Amazon, and Google, and we have all types of machine learning and AI to figure out, you know, there's kind of resource allocation, whether that be hospital beds, or ventilators, or doctors, or nurses, and trying to figure out how to sort that all out. But then all of the, you know, genome work, and you know, kind of all that big heavy lifting data crunching, you know, CPU consuming work, that hopefully is accelerating the vaccine. Because I don't know how we get all the way out of this until, it just seems like kind of race to the vaccine, or massive testing, so we know that it's not going to spike up. So it seems like there is a real opportunity, it's not necessarily Kaiser building ships, or Ford building planes, but there is a role for tech to play in trying to combat this thing, and bring it under control. Umesh, I wonder if you could just kind of contrast being from India, and now being in the States for a couple years. Anything kind of jump out to you, in terms of the differences in what you're hearing back home, in the way this has been handled? >> You know, it's been very interesting, Jeff, I'm sure everyone is concerned that India, for many reasons, so far hasn't become a big hot spot yet. And, you know, we can hope and pray that that remains to be the case. There are many things that the government back home has done, I think India took lessons from what they saw in Europe, and the U.S, and China. They went into a countrywide lockdown pretty early, you know, pretty much when they were lower than a two hundred positive tested cases, the country went into lockdown. And remember this is a 1.5 billion people all together going into lockdown. What I've seen in the U.S. is that, you know, California thankfully reacted fast. We've all been sheltered in place, there's cabin fever for all of us, but you know, I'm sure at the end of the day, we're going to be thankful for the steps that are taken. Both by the administration at the state level, at the federal level, and the medical doctors, who are doing everything they can. But India, on the other hand, has taken the more aggressive stance, in terms of doing a country lockdown. We just last evening went live at a University in the city of Chennai, where Uniphore was born. The government came out with the request, much like the U.S., where they're government departments were getting a surge of traffic about information about COVID, the hospitals that are serving, what beds are available, where is the testing? We stood up a voice bot with AI, in less than a week, in three languages. Which even before the government started to advertise, we started to get thousands of calls. And this is AI answering these questions for the citizens, in doing so. So it goes back to your point of there's a real opportunity of using all the technology that the world has today, to be put to good use. And at the same time, it's really partnering meaningfully with government, in India, in Singapore, in Vietnam, and here in the U.S., to make sure that happens on, you know, John's coaching and nudging, I became a part of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, which is truly a premier trade and commerce body between U.S. and India. And I, today, co-chaired the start-up program with, you know, the top start-ups between U.S. and India, being part of that program. And I think we got, again, tremendously fortunate, and lucky with the timeline. We started working on this start-up program between U.S. and India, and getting the start-ups together, two quarters ago, and as this new regulation with the government support, and the news about the two trillion dollar packages coming out, and the support for small businesses, we could quickly get some of the questions answered for the start-ups. Had we not created this body, which had the ability to poll the Treasury Department, and say here are questions, can start-ups do A, B, and C? What do you have by way of regulation? And I think as a response to one of our letters, on Monday the Treasury put out an FAQ on their website, which makes it super clear for start-ups and small businesses, to figure out whether they qualify or they don't qualify. So I think there's ton that both from a individual company, and the technology that each one of us have, but also as a community, how do we, all of us, meaningfully get together, as a community, and just drive benefit, both for our people, for the economy, and for our countries. Wherever we have the businesses, like I said in the U.S., or in India, or parts of Asia. >> Yeah, it's interesting. So, this is a great conversation, I could talk to you guys all night long, but I probably would hear about it later, so we'll wrap it, but I just want to kind of close on the following thought, which is really, as you've talked about before John, and as Umesh as you're now living, you know, when we go through these disruptions, things do get changed, and as you said a lot of people, and companies don't get through it. On the other hand many companies are birthed from it, right, people that are kind of on the new trend, and are in a good position to take advantage, and it's not that you're laughing over the people that didn't make it, but it does stir up the pot, and it sounds like, Umesh, you're in a really good position to take advantage of this new kind of virtual world, this new digital transformation, that's just now waiting anymore. I love your stat, they were going to move X% out of the call center over some period of time, and then it's basically snap your fingers, everybody out, without much planning. So just give you the final word, you know, kind of advice for people, as they're looking forward, and Umesh, we'll get you on another time, because I want to go deep diving in natural language, I think that's just a fascinating topic in the way that people are going to interact with machines and get rid of the stupid qwerty keyboard. But let me get kind of your last thoughts as we wrap this segment. Umesh we'll let you go first. >> Umesh, you want to go first? >> I'll go first. My last thoughts are first for the entrepreneurs, everyone who's sort of going through this together. I think in difficult times is when real heroes are born. I read a quote that when it's a sunny day, you can't overtake too many cars, but when it's raining you have a real opportunity. And the other one that I read was when fishermen can't go out fishing, because of the high tide, they come back, and mend their nets, and be ready for the time that they can go out. So I think there's no easy way to say, this is a difficult time for the economy, health wise, I hope that, you know, we can contain the damage that's being done through the virus, but some of us have the opportunity to really take our products and technology out there, more than usual. Uniphore, particularly, has a unique opportunity, the contact center industry just cannot keep up with the traffic that it's seeing. Around the world, across US, across Asia, across India, and the need for AI and automation would never be pronounced more than it is today. As much as it's a great business opportunity, it's more of a responsibility, as I see it. There can be scale up as fast as the demand is coming, and really come out of this with a much stronger business model. John has always told me in final words you always paint the picture of what you want to be, a year or two out. And I see Uniphore being a much stronger AI plus automation company, in the customer service space, really transforming the face of call centers, and customer service. Which have been forced to rethink their core business value in the last few weeks. And, you know, every fence sitter who would think that digitalization and automation was an option that they could think of in the future years, would be forced to make those decisions now. And I'm just making sure that my team, and my company, and I, am ready to gear to that great responsibility and opportunity that's ahead of us. >> John, give you the final word. >> Say Jeff, I don't know if you can still hear me, we went blank there, maybe for me to follow up. >> We gotcha. >> Shimon Peres taught me a lot about life, and dealing with life the way it is, not the way you wish it was. So did my parents, but he also taught me it always looks darkest just before the tide switches, and you move on to victory. I think the challenges in front of us are huge, I think our nation knows how to deal with that, I do believe the government has moved largely pretty effectively, to give us the impetus to move, and then if we continue to flatten the curve on the issues with the pandemic, if we get some therapeutic drugs that dramatically reduce the risk of death, for people that get the challenges the worst, and over time a vaccine, I think you look to the future, America will rebound, it will be rebounding around start-ups, new job creation, using technology in every business. So not only is there a light at the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel, I think we will emerge from this a stronger nation, a stronger start-up community. But it depends on how well we work together as a group, and I just want to say to Umesh, it's an honor to be your coach, and I learn from you as much as I give back. Jeff, as always, you do a great job. Thank you for your time today. >> Thank you both, and I look forward to our next catch up. Stay safe, wash your hands, and thanks for spending some time with us. >> And I just want to say I hope and pray that all of us can get together in Palo Alto real quick, and in person, and doing fist bumps, not shake hands or probably a namaste. Thank you, it's an honor. >> Thank you very much. All right, that was John and Umesh, you're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto Studios, thanks for tuning in, stay safe, wash your hands, keep away from people that you're not that familiar with, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

yeah so that talks sort of stemmed out of the TED talk that I gave on owning your body is data and it's really challenging people to think about how they can use data that they collect about their bodies to help make better health decisions and so ways that you can use like air temperature data or your heart rate data or what is this data say over time what does it say about your body's health and really challenging the audience to get excited about looking at that data we have so many devices that collect data automatically for us and often we don't pause long enough to actually look at that historical data and so that was what the talk was about today like here's what you can find when you actually sit down and look at that data what's the most important data you think people should be collecting about themselves well definitely not your weight it depends you know I think for women who are in the fertile years of life taking your daily waking temperature can tell you when your body is fertile when you're ovulating it can so that information could give women during that time period really critical information but in general I think it's just a matter of being aware of of how your body is changing so for some people maybe it's your blood pressure or your blood sugar you have high blood pressure or high blood sugar those things become really critical to keep an eye on and and I really encourage people whatever data they take to be active in the understanding of an interpretation of the data so it's not like if you take this data you'll be healthier you know you live to a hundred it's really a matter of challenging people to own the data that they have and get excited about understanding the data that they are taking so I think there's a lot of ways to get into data science math is one of them but there's also statistics or physics and I would say that especially for the field that I'm currently in which is at the intersection of machine learning data science on the one hand and biology and health on the other one can get there from biology or medicine as well but what I think is important is not to shy away from the more mathematically oriented courses in whatever major you're in because that foundation is a really strong one there's a lot of people out there who are basically lightweight consumers of data science and they don't really understand how the methods that they're deploying how they work and that limits them in their ability to advance the field and come up with new methods that are better suited perhaps to the problems that they're tackling so I think it's totally fine and in fact there's a lot of value to coming into data science from fields other than math or computer science but I think taking courses in those fields even while you're majoring in whatever field you're interested in is going to make you a much better person who lives at that intersection so I think one of the key things about the ethics panel here at woods this morning was that first of all it started the day which is a good sign if it shouldn't be a separate topic of discussion we need this conversation about values about what we're trying to build for who were trying to protect how we're trying to recognize individual human agency that has to be built in throughout data science so it's a good start to have a panel about it at the beginning of the conference but I'm hopeful that the rest of the conversation will not leave it behind we talked about the fact that just as civil society is now dependent on these digital systems that it doesn't control data scientists are building data sets and algorithmic forms of analyses that are both of those two things are just in coded sets of values and if you try to have a conversation about that at just the math level you're gonna miss the social level you're gonna miss the fact that that's humanity you're talking about so it needs to really be integrated throughout the process talking about the values of what you're manipulating and the values of the world that you're releasing these tools into yeah so into it we are a champion of gender life diversity and also all sorts of diversity and when we first learned about wig we said we need to be a champion of the women in data science conference because for me personally oftentimes when I'm in a room going over technical details I'm often the only woman and not just I'm often the only woman executive and so part of the sponsorship is to create this community of women very technical women in this field to share our work together to build this community and also to show the great diversity of work that's going on across the field of data science so first of all having doing we which should I believe in the vision that we are working towards which is really creating you can mount an economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and if you're kind of starting from that and thinking about that is our sort of the the the the axiom that we're working towards and I thinking about how you can do that and obviously the sort of the table stake or just the the the the fundamental saying that we have to start with is to be able to preserve the privacy of our members as we are leveraging the data there are members in trust with us right so how can we do that we have some early effort in using and developing differential privacy as a technique for us to do a lot better ways regarding preserving their privacy as really leveraging the data and but also at the same time it doesn't end there right because you're thinking about creating opportunity it's not just about its preserve the privacy but also when we are leveraging the data how can we leverage the data in a way that is able to create opportunity in a fair way so so there is also a lot of effort that we're having with regarding how can we do that and what does fairness mean what are the ways we can actually turn some of the key concepts that we have into action that is really able to drive the way we develop products the way that we're thinking about responsible design and the way that we build our algorithms the way that we measure in every single dimension you

>>live from Stanford University. It's the queue covering Stanford women in Data Science 2020. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >>and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host Sonia category, and we're live at Stanford University, covering the fifth annual Woods Women in Data Science conference. Joining us today is Tilapia Williams, who's the associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and host of Nova Wonders at PBS to leave a welcome to the Cappy to be here. Thanks for having me. So you have a lot of rules. So let's first tell us about being an associate professor at Harvey Mudd. >>Yeah, I've been at Harvey Mudd now for 11 years, so it's been really a lot of fun in the math department, but I'm a statistician by training, so I teach a lot of courses and statistics and data science and things like that. >>Very cool. And you're also a host of API s show called Novo Wonders. >>Yeah, that came about a couple of years ago. Folks at PBS reached out they had seen my Ted talk, and they said, Hey, it looks like you could be fund host of this science documentary shows So, Nova Wonders, is a six episode Siri's. It kind of takes viewers on a journey of what the cutting edge questions and science are. Um, so I got to host the show with a couple other co host and really think about like, you know, what are what are the animals saying? And so we've got some really fun episodes to do. What's the universe made of? Was one of them what's living inside of us. That was definitely a gross win. Todo figure out all the different micro organisms that live inside our body. So, yeah, it's been funded in hopes that show as well. >>And you talk about data science and AI and all that stuff on >>Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, one of the episodes. Can we build a Brain was dealt with a lot of data, big data and artificial intelligence, and you know, how good can we get? How good can computers get and really sort of compared to what we see in the movies? We're a long way away from that, but it seems like you know we're getting better every year, building technology that is truly intelligent, >>and you gave a talk today about mining for your own personal data. So give us some highlights from your talk. Yeah, >>so that talks sort of stemmed out of the Ted talk that I gave on owning your body's data. And it's really challenging people to think about how they can use data that they collect about their bodies to help make better health decisions on DSO ways that you can use, like your temperature data or your heart rate. Dina. Or what is data say over time? What does it say about your body's health and really challenging the audience to get excited about looking at that data? We have so many devices that collect data automatically for us, and often we don't pause on enough to actually look at that historical data. And so that was what the talk was about today, like, here's what you can find when you actually sit down and look at that data. >>What's the most important data you think people should be collecting about themselves? >>Well, definitely not. Your weight is. I don't >>want to know what that >>is. Um, it depends, you know, I think for women who are in the fertile years of life taking your daily waking temperature can tell you when your body's fertile. When you're ovulating, it can. So that information could give women during that time period really critical information. But in general, I think it's just a matter of being aware of of how your body is changing. So for some people, maybe it's your blood pressure or your blood sugar. You have high blood pressure or high blood sugar. Those things become really critical to keep an eye on. And, um, and I really encourage people whatever data they take, too, the active in the understanding of an interpretation of the data. It's not like if you take this data, you'll be healthy radio. You live to 100. It's really a matter of challenging people to own the data that they have and get excited about understanding the data that they are taking. So >>absolutely put putting people in charge of their >>own bodies. That's >>right. >>And actually speaking about that in your Ted talk, you mentioned how you were. Your doctor told you to have a C section and you looked at the data and he said, No, I'm gonna have this baby naturally. So tell us more about that. >>Yes, you should always listen to your medical pressures. But in this case, I will say that it was It was definitely more of a dialogue. And so I wasn't just sort of trying to lean on the fact that, like, I have a PhD in statistics and I know data, he was really kind of objectively with the on call doctor at the time, looking at the data >>and talking about it. >>And this doctor was this is his first time seeing me. And so I think it would have been different had my personal midwife or my doctor been telling me that. But this person would have only looked at this one chart and was it was making a decision without thinking about my historical data. And so I tried to bring that to the conversation and say, like, let me tell you more about you know, my body and this is pregnancy number three like, here's how my body works. And I think this person in particular just wasn't really hearing any of that. It was like, Here's my advice. We just need to do this. I'm like, >>Oh, >>you know, and so is gently as possible. I tried to really share that data. Um, and then it got to the point where it was sort of like either you're gonna do what I say or you're gonna have to sign a waiver. And we were like, Well, to sign the waiver that cost quite a buzz in the hospital that day. But we came back and had a very successful labor and delivery. And so, yeah, >>I think >>that at the time, >>But, >>you know, with that caveat that you should listen to what, your doctors >>Yeah. I mean, there's really interesting, like, what's the boundary between, Like what the numbers tell you and what professional >>tells me Because I don't have an MD. Right. And so, you know, I'm cautious not to overstep that, but I felt like in that case, the doctor wasn't really even considering the data that I was bringing. Um, I was we were actually induced with our first son, but again, that was more of a conversation, more of a dialogue. Here's what's happening here is what we're concerned about and the data to really back it up. And so I felt like in that case, like Yeah, I'm happy to go with your suggestion, but I could number three. It was just like, No, this isn't really >>great. Um, so you also wrote a book called Power In Numbers. The Rebel Women of Mathematics. So what inspired you to write this book? And what do you hope readers take away from it? >>A couple different things. I remember when I saw the movie hidden figures. And, um, I spent three summers at NASA working at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And so I had this very fun connection toe, you know, having worked at NASA. And, um, when this movie came out and I'm sitting there watching it and I'm, like ball in just crying, like I didn't know that there were black women who worked at NASA like, before me, you know, um and so it felt it felt it was just so transformative for me to see these stories just sort of unfold. And I thought, like, Well, why didn't I learn about these women growing up? Like imagine, Had I known about Katherine Johnsons of the world? Maybe that would have really inspired Not just me, but, you know, thinking of all the women of color who aren't in mathematics or who don't see themselves working at at NASA. And so for me, the book was really a way to leave that legacy to the generation that's coming up and say, like, there have been women who've done mathematics, um, and statistics and data science for years, and they're women who are doing it now. So a lot of the about 1/3 of the book are women who were still here and, like, active in the field and doing great things. And so I really wanted to highlight sort of where we've been, where we've been, but also where we're going and the amazing women that are doing work in it. And it's very visual. So some things like, Oh my gosh, >>women in math >>It is really like a very picturesque book of showing this beautiful images of the women and their mathematics and their work. And yes, I'm really proud of it. >>That's awesome. And even though there is like greater diversity now in the tech industry, there's still very few African American women, especially who are part of this industry. So what advice would you give to those women who who feel like they don't belong. >>Yeah, well, a they really do belong. Um, and I think it's also incumbent of people in the industry to sort of recognize ways that they could be advocate for women, and especially for women of color, because often it takes someone who's already at the table to invite other people to the table. And I can't just walk up like move over, get out the way I'm here now. But really being thoughtful about who's not representative, how do we get those voices here? And so I think the onus is often mawr on. People who occupy those spaces are ready to think about how they can be more intentional in bringing diversity in other spaces >>and going back to your talk a little bit. Um uh, how how should people use their data? >>Yeah, so I mean, I think, um, the ways that we've used our data, um, have been to change our lifestyle practices. And so, for example, when I first got a Fitbit, um, it wasn't really that I was like, Oh, I have a goal. It was just like I want something to keep track of my steps And then I look at him and I feel like, Oh, gosh, I didn't even do anything today. And so I think having sort of even that baseline data gave me a place to say, Okay, let me see if I hit 10 stuff, you know, 10,000 >>steps in a day or >>and so, in some ways, having the data allows you to set goals. Some people come in knowing, like, I've got this goal. I want to hit it. But for me, it was just sort of like, um and so I think that's also how I've started to use additional data. So when I take my heart rate data or my pulse, I'm really trying to see if I can get lower than how it was before. So the push is really like, how is my exercise and my diet changing so that I can bring my resting heart rate down? And so having the data gives me a gold up, restore it, and it also gives me that historical information to see like, Oh, this is how far I've come. Like I can't stop there, you know, >>that's a great social impact. >>That's right. Yeah, absolutely. >>and, um, Do you think that so in terms of, like, a security and privacy point of view, like if you're recording all your personal data on these devices, how do you navigate that? >>Yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, because you are giving up that data privacy. Um, I usually make sure that the data that I'm allowing access to this sort of data that I wouldn't care if it got published on the cover of you know, the New York Times. Maybe I wouldn't want everyone to see what my weight is, but, um, and so in some ways, while it is my personal data, there's something that's a bit abstract from it. Like it could be anyone's data as opposed to, say, my DNA. Like I'm not going to do a DNA test. You know, I don't want my data to be mapped it out there for the world. Um, but I think that that's increasingly become a concern because people are giving access to of their information to different companies. It's not clear how companies would use that information, so if they're using my data to build a product will make a product better. You know we don't see any world from that way. We don't have the benefit of it, but they have access to our data. And so I think in terms of data, privacy and data ethics, there's a huge conversation to have around that. We're only kind >>of at the beginning of understanding what that is. Yeah, >>well, thank you so much for being on the Cube. Really having you here. Thank you. Thanks. So I'm Sonia to Gary. Thanks so much for watching the cube and stay tuned for more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Announcer: From London, England, it's theCUBE! Covering Coupa Insp!re'19 EMEA. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground in London at Coupa Insp!re'19. Can you hear all the buzz around me? You probably can hear it, it's electric. The keynote just ended, and I'm very pleased to welcome, fresh from the keynote stage, we have Rachel Botsman, author and trust expert from Oxford University. Rachel, welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you for having me. >> Your talk this morning about the intersection of trust and technology, to say it's interesting is an understatement. You had some great examples where you showed some technology brands, that we all know, and have different relationships with: Uber, Facebook, and Amazon. And the way that you measured the audience is great, you know, clap the brand that you trust the most. And it was so interesting, because we expect these technology brands to, they should be preserving our information, but we've also seen recent history, some big examples, of that trust being broken. >> Rachel: Yeah, yeah. >> Talk to us about your perspectives. >> So what I thought was interesting, well kind of unexpected for me, was no one clapped for Facebook, not one person in the room. And this is really interesting to me, because the point that I was making is that trust is really, really contextual, right? So if I had said to people, do you trust on Facebook that you can find your friends from college, they probably would've clapped. But do I trust them with my data, no. And this distinction is so important, because if you lose trust in one area as a company or a brand, and it can take time, you lose that ability to interact with people. So our relationship and our trust relationship with brands is incredibly complicated. But I think, particular tech brands, what they're realizing is that, how badly things go wrong when they're in a trust crisis. >> Talk to me about trust as a currency. You gave some great examples this morning. Money is the currency for transactions, where trust is the currency of interactions. >> Yeah, well I was trying to frame things, not because they sound nice, but how do you create a lens where people can really understand, like what is the value of this thing, and what is the role that it plays? And I'm never going to say money's not important; money is very important. But people can understand money; people value money. And I think that's because it has a physical, you can touch it, and it has an agreed value, right? Trust I actually don't believe can be measured. Trust is, what is it? It's something there, there's a connection between people. So you know when you have trust because you can interact with people. You know when you have trust because you can place their faith in them, you can share things about yourself and also share things back. So it's kind of this idea that, think of it as a currency, think of it as something that you should really value that is incredibly fragile in any situation in any organization. >> How does a company like Coupa, or an Amazon or a Facebook, how do they leverage trust and turn it into a valuable asset? >> Yeah, I don't like the idea that you sort of unlock trust. I think companies that really get it right are companies that think day in and day out around behaviors and culture. If you get behaviors and culture right, like the way people behave, whether they have empathy, whether they have integrity, whether you feel like you can depend on them, trust naturally flows from that. But the other thing that often you find with brands is they think of trust as like this reservoir, right? So it's different from awareness and loyalty; it's not like this thing that, you can have this really full up battery which means then you can launch some crazy products and everyone will trust it. We've seen this with like, Mattel, the toy brand. They launched a smart system for children called Aristotle, and within six months they had to pull it because people didn't trust what it was recording and watching in people's bedrooms. We were talking about Facebook and the cryptocurrency Libra, their new smart assistants; I wouldn't trust that. Amazon have introduced smart locks; I don't know if you've seen these? >> Lisa: Yes. >> Where if you're not home, it's inconvenient for a very annoying package slip. So you put in an Amazon lock and the delivery person will walk into your home. I trust Amazon to deliver my parcels; I don't trust them to give access to my home. So what we do with the trust and how we tap into that, it really depends on the risk that we're asking people to take. >> That's a great point that you bring about Amazon, because you look at how they are infiltrating our lives in so many different ways. There's a lot of benefits to it, in terms of convenience. I trust Amazon, because I know when I order something it's going to arrive when they say it will. But when you said about trust being contextual and said do you trust that Amazon pays their taxes, I went wow, I hadn't thought of it in that way. Would I want to trust them to come into my home to drop off a package, no. >> Rachel: Yeah. >> But the, I don't know if I want to say infiltration, into our lives, it's happening whether we like it or not. >> Well I think Amazon is really interesting. First of all because so often as consumers, and I'm guilty, we let convenience trump trust. So we talk about trust, but, you know what, like, if I don't really trust that Uber driver but I really want to get somewhere, I'll get in the car, right? I don't really trust the ethics of Amazon as a company or like what they're doing in the world, but I like the convenience. I predict that Amazon is actually going to go through a major trust crisis. >> Lisa: Really? >> Yeah. The reason why is because their trust is largely, I talked about capability and character. Amazon's trust is really built around capability. The capability of their fulfillment centers, like how efficient they are. Character wobbles, right? Like, does Bezos have integrity? Do we really feel like they care about the bookshops they're eating up? Or they want us to spend money on the right things? And when you have a brand and the trust is purely built around capability and the character piece is missing, it's quite a precarious place to be. >> Lisa: I saw a tweet that you tweeted recently. >> Uh oh! (laughs) >> Lisa: On the difference between capability and character. >> Yes, yeah. >> Lisa: And it was fascinating because you mentioned some big examples, Boeing. >> Yes. >> The two big air disasters in the last year. Facebook, obviously, the security breach. WeWork, this overly aggressive business model. And you said these companies are placing the blame, I'm not sure if that's the right word-- >> No no, the blame, yeah. >> On product or service capabilities, and you say it really is character. Can you talk to our audience about the difference, and why character is so important. >> Yeah, it's so interesting. So you know, sometimes you post things. I actually post more on LinkedIn, and suddenly like, you hit a nerve, right? Because I don't know, it's something you're summarizing that many people are feeling. And so the point of that was like, if you look at Boeing, Theranos was another example, WeWork, hundreds of banks, when something goes wrong they say it was a flaw in the product, it was a flaw in the system, it's a capability problem. And I don't think that's the case. Because the root cause of capability problems come from character and culture. And so, capability is really about the competence and reliability of someone or a product or service. Character is how someone behaves. Character gets to their intentions and motives. Character gets to, did they know about it and not tell us. Even VW is another example. >> Lisa: Yes. >> So it's not the product that is the issue. And I think we as consumers and citizens and customers, where many companies get it wrong in a trust crisis is they talk about the product fix. We won't forgive them, or we won't start giving them our trust again until we really believe something's changed about their character. I'm not sure anything has changed with Facebook's culture and character, which is why they're struggling with every move that they take, even though their intentions might be good. That's not how people in the world are viewing them. >> Do you think, taking Boeing as an example, I fly a lot, I'm sure you do as well. >> Rachel: Yeah. >> When those accidents happened, I'm sure everybody, including myself, was checking, what plane is this? >> Rachel: Yeah. >> Because when you know, especially once data starts being revealed, that demonstrated pilots, test pilots, were clearly saying something isn't right here, why do you think a company like Boeing isn't coming out and addressing that head on from an integrity perspective? Do you think that could go a long way in helping their brand reputation? >> I never, I mean I do get it, I'm married to a lawyer so I understand, legal gets involved, governance gets involved, so it's like, let's not disclose that. They're so worried about the implications. But it's this belief they can keep things hidden. It's a continual pattern, right? And that they try to show empathy, but really it comes across as some weird kind of sympathy. They don't really show humility. And so, when the CEO sits there, I have to believe he feels the pain of the human consequence of what happened. But more importantly, I have to believe it will never happen again. And again, it's not necessarily, do I trust the products Boeing creates, it's do I trust the people? Do I trust the decisions that they're making? And so it's really interesting to watch companies, Samsung, right? You can recover from a product crisis, with the phones, and they kind of go away. But it's much harder to recover from what, Boeing is a perfect example, has become a cultural crisis. >> Right, right. Talk to us about the evolution of trust. You talked about these three waves. Tell our audience about that, and what the third wave is and why we're in it, benefits? And also things to be aware of. >> Yes! (laughs) I didn't really talk about this today, because it's all about inspiration. So just to give you a sense, the way I think about trust is three chapters of human history. So the first one is called local trust; all running around villages and communities. I knew you, I knew your sister, I knew whoever was in that village. And it was largely based on reputation. So, I borrowed money from someone I knew, I went to the baker. Now this type of trust, it was actually phenomenally effective, but we couldn't scale it. So when we wanted to trade globally, the Industrial Revolution, moving to cities, we invented what I call institutional trust. And that's everything from financial systems to insurance products, all these mechanisms that allow trust to flow on a different level. Now what's happening today, it's not those two things are going away and they're not important; they are. It's that what technology inherently does, particularly networks, marketplaces, and platforms, is it takes this trust that used to be very hierarchical and linear, we used to look up to the CEO, we used to look up to the expert, and it distributes it around networks and platforms. So you can see that at Coupa, right? And this is amazing because it can unlock value, it can create marketplaces. It can change the way we share, connect, collaborate. But I think what's happened is that, sort of the idealism around this and the empowerment is slightly tinged, in a healthy way, realizing a lot can go wrong. So distributed trust doesn't necessarily mean distributed responsibility. My biggest insight from observing many of these communities is that, we like the idea of empowerment, we like the idea of collaboration, and we like the idea of control, but when things go wrong, they need a center. Does that make sense? >> Lisa: Absolutely, yes. >> So, a lot of the mess that we're seeing in the world today is actually caused by distributed trust. So when I like, read a piece of information that isn't from a trusted source and I make a decision to vote for someone, just an example. And so we're trying to figure out, what is the role of the institution in this distributed world? And that's why I think things have got incredibly messy. >> It certainly has the potential for that, right? Looking at, one of the things that I also saw that you were talking about, I think it was one of your TED Talks, is reputation capital. And you said you believe that will be more powerful than credit history in the 21st century. How can people, like you and I, get, I want to say control, over our reputation, when we're doing so many transactions digitally-- >> Rachel: I know. >> And like I think you were saying in one of your talks, moving from one country to another and your credit history doesn't follow you. How can somebody really control their trust capital and creative positive power from it? >> They can't. >> They can't? Oh no! >> I don't want to disappoint you, but there's always something in a TED speech that you wish you could take out, like 10 years later, and be like, not that you got it wrong, but that there's a naivety, right? So it is working in some senses. So what is really hard is like, if I have a reputation on Airbnb, I have a reputation on Amazon, on either side of the marketplace, I feel like I own that, right? That's my value, and I should be able to aggregate that and use that to get a loan, or get a better insurance, because it's a predictor of how I behave in the future. So I don't believe credit scores are a good predictor of behavior. That is very hard to do, because the marketplaces, they believe they own the data, and they have no incentive to share the reputation. So believe me, like so many companies after, actually it was wonderful after that TED Talk, many tried to figure out how to aggregate reputation. Where I have seen it play out as an idea, and this is really very rewarding, is many entrepreneurs have taken the idea and gone to emerging markets, or situations where people have no credit history. So Tala is a really good example, which is a lending company. Insurance companies are starting to look at this. There's a company called Traity. Where they can't get a loan, they can't get a product, they can't even open a bank account because they have no traditional credit history. Everyone has a reputation somewhere, so they can tap into these networks and use that to have access to things that were previously inaccessible. So that's the application I'm more excited about versus having a trust score. >> A trust score that we would be able to then use for our own advantages, whether it's getting a job, getting a loan. >> Yeah, and then unfortunately what also happened was China, and God forbid that I in any way inspired this decision, decided they would have a national trust score. So they would take what you're buying online and what you were saying online, all these thousands of interactions, and that the government would create a trust score that would really impact your life: the schools that your children could go to, and there's a blacklist, and you know, if you jaywalk your face is projected and your score goes down. Like, this is like an episode of Black Mirror. >> It's terrifying. >> Yeah. >> There's a fine line there. Rachel, I wish we had more time, because we could keep going on and on and on. But I want to thank you-- >> A pleasure. >> For coming right from the keynote stage to our set; it was a pleasure to meet you. >> On that dark note. >> Yes! (laughing) For Rachel Botsman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Coupa Insp!re London '19. Thanks for watching. (digital music)