>>Hello, and welcome to today's event, dealing government emergency responses beyond the pandemic. This is Bob Wooley, senior fellow for the center for digital government and formerly the chief tech clerk for the state of Utah. I'm excited to serve as moderator for today's event. And just want to say, thank you for joining us. I know we're in for an informative session over the next 60 minutes before we begin a couple of brief housekeeping notes or recording of this presentation will be emailed to all registrants within 48 hours. You can use the recording for your reference or feel free to pass it along to colleagues. 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We would like to hear what you think if you're unable to see with us for the entire webinar, but we're just like to complete the survey. As much as you're able, please click the survey widget at the bottom of the screen to launch the survey. Otherwise it will pop up once the webinar concludes at this time, we recommend that you disable your pop-up blockers, and if you experiencing any media player issues or have any other problems, please visit our webcast help guide by clicking on the help button at the bottom of the console. >>Joining me today to discuss this very timely topic are Karen revolt and Tim Burch, Kim Berge currently serves as the administrator of human services for Clark County Nevada. He's invested over 20 years in improving health and human service systems of care or working in the private public and nonprofit sectors. 18 of those years have been in local government in Clark County, Las Vegas, where you served in a variety of capacities, including executive leadership roles as the director of department of social services, as well as the director for the department of family services. He has also served as CEO for provider of innovative hosted software solutions, as well as chief strategy officer for a boutique public sector consulting firm. Karen real-world is the social program management offering lead for government health and human services with IBM Watson health. Karen focuses delivering exciting new offerings by focusing on market opportunities, determining unmet needs and identifying innovative solutions. >>Much of her career has been in health and human services focused on snap, TANIF, Medicaid, affordable care act, and child welfare prior to joining IBM. Karen was the senior director of product management for a systems integrator. She naturally fell in love with being a project manager. She can take her user requirements and deliver offerings. Professionals would use to make their job easier and more productive. Karen has also found fulfillment in working in health and human services on challenges that could possibly impact the outcome of people's lives. Now, before we begin our discussion of the presentation, I want to one, we'd like to learn a little more about you as an audience. So I'm going to ask you a polling question. Please take a look at this. Give us an idea of what is your organization size. I won't bother to read all these to you, but there are other a range of sizes zero to 250 up to 50,000. Please select the one that is most appropriate and then submit. >>It looks like the vast majority are zero to two 50. Don't have too many over 250,000. So this is a very, very interesting piece of information. Now, just to set up our discussion today, what I want to do is just spend just a moment and talk about the issue that we're dealing with. So when you look the COVID-19 pandemic, it's put immense pressure on States. I've been a digital state judge and had been judging a lot of the responses from States around the country. It's been very interesting to me because they bifurcate really into two principle kinds of reactions to the stress providing services that COVID environment present. One is we're in a world of hurt. We don't have enough money. I think I'm going to go home and engage as little as I have to. Those are relatively uncommon. Thankfully, most of them have taken the COVID-19 pandemic has immense opportunity for them to really do a lot more with telework, to do more with getting people, employees, and citizens involved with government services. >>And I've done some really, really creative things along the way. I find that to be a really good thing, but in many States systems have been overloaded as individuals and families throughout the country submitted just an unprecedented number of benefit applications for social services. At the same time, government agencies have had to contend with social distance and the need for a wholly different approach to engage with citizens. Um, overall most public agencies, regardless of how well they've done with technology have certainly felt some strain. Now, today we have the opportunity to go into a discussion with our speakers, have some wonderful experience in these areas, and I'm going to be directing questions to them. And again, we encourage you as you hear what they have to say. Be sure and submit questions that we can pick up later at the time. So Tim, let's start with you. Given that Las Vegas is a hub for hospitality. An industry hit severely as a result of this pandemic. How's the County doing right now and how are you prioritizing the growing needs of the County? >>Thanks Bob. Thanks for having me. Let me start off by giving just a little, maybe context for Clark County too, to our audience today. So, uh, Clark County is, you know, 85% of the state of Nevada if we serve not just as a regional County by way of service provision, but also direct municipal services. Well, if, uh, the famous Las Vegas strip is actually in unincorporated Clark County, and if we were incorporated, we would be the largest city in the state. So I say all of that to kind of help folks understand that we provide a mix of services, not just regional services, like health and human services, the direct and, and missable, uh, services as well as we work with our other five jurisdiction partners, uh, throughout the area. Uh, we are very much, um, I think during the last recession we were called the Detroit of the West. >>And, uh, that was because we're very much seen as a one industry town. Uh, so most like when the car plants, the coal plants closed back East and in the communities fuel that very rapidly, the same thing happens to us when tourism, uh, it's cut. Uh, so of course, when we went into complete shutdown and March, uh, we felt it very rapidly, not just on, uh, uh, tax receipts and collectibles, but the way in which we could deliver services. So of course our first priority was to, uh, like I think you mentioned mobilized staff. We, we mobilized hundreds of staff overnight with laptops and phones and cars and the things they needed to do to get mobile and still provide the priority services that we're mandated to provide from a safety standpoint. Um, and then we got busy working for our clients and that's really where our partnership with IBM and Watson, uh, came in and began planning that in July. And we're able to open that portal up in October to, to really speed up the way in which we're giving assistance to, to our residents. Um, re focus has been on making sure that people stay housed. We have, uh, an estimated, uh, 2.5 million residents and over 150,000 of those households are anticipated to be facing eviction, uh, as of January one. So we, we've got a, a big task ahead of us. >>All of this sounds kind of expensive. Uh, one of the common threads as you know, runs throughout government is, ah, I don't really have the money for that. I think I'd be able to afford that a diaper too, as well. So what types of funding has been made available for counties, a result of a pandemic, >>Primarily our funding stream that we're utilizing to get these services out the door has been the federal cares act. Uh, now we had some jurisdictions regionally around us and even locally that prioritize those funds in a different way. Um, our board of County commissioners, uh, took, um, a sum total of about $85 million of our 240 million that said, this will go directly to residents in the form of rental assistance and basic needs support. No one should lose their home or go hungry during this pandemic. Uh, so we've really been again working through our community partners and through our IBM tools to make sure that happens. >>So how does, how does, how does the cares act funding then support Clark County? Cause it seems to me that the needs would be complex, diverse >>Pretty much so. So as you, as folks may know him a call there's several tronches of the cares act, the original cares act funding that has come down to us again, our board, uh, identified basic needs or rental assistance and, and gave that the department of social service to go to the tunicate, uh, through the community. We then have the cares act, uh, uh, coronavirus relief funds that have, uh, impacted our CDBG and our emergency solutions grants. We've taken those. And that's what we was going to keep a lot of the programs and services, uh, like our IBM Watson portal open past January one when the cares act dollars expire. Uh, our initial response was a very manual one, uh, because even though we have a great home grown homeless management information system, it does not do financials. Uh, so we had 14 local nonprofits adjudicating, uh, this rental assistance program. >>And so we could get our social service visitor portal up, uh, to allow us to take applications digitally and run that through our program. Uh, and, uh, so those partners were obviously very quickly overwhelmed and were able to stand up our portal, uh, which for the reason we were driving so hard, even from, uh, beginning of the conversations where after going into lockdown into contracting in July and getting the portal open in October, which was an amazing turnaround. Uh, so the kudos that IBM team, uh, for getting us up and out the door so quickly, uh, was a tie in, uh, to our, uh, Curam IBM, uh, case management system that we utilize to adjudicate benefits on daily basis in Clark County for all our local indigent population, uh, and high needs folks. Uh, and then that ties into our SAP IBM platform, which gets the checks out the door. >>So what, what we've been able to do with these dollars is created in Lucian, uh, that has allowed us in the last 60 days to get as much money out the door, as our nonprofits were able go out the door in the first six months pandemic. So it really has helped us. Uh, so I'm really grateful to our board of County commissioners for recognizing the investment in technology to, to not only get our teams mobile, but to create ease of access for our constituents and our local residents to give them the help they need quickly and the way that they need it. >>Just to follow up question to that, Tim, that I'm curious about having done a lot of work like this in government, sometimes getting procurement through in a timely way is a bit challenging. How were you able to work through those issues and getting this up and provision so quickly? >>Uh, yeah, so we, we put together a, what we call a pandemic playbook, which is kind of lessons learned. And what we've seen is the folks who were essential workers in the first 60 days of the, uh, pandemic. We were able to get a lot done quickly because we were taking full advantage of the emergency. Uh, it may sound a little crass to folks not inside the service world, but it was, uh, you know, don't want you to crisis. It was things we've been planning or trying to do for years. We need them yesterday. We should have had them yesterday, but let's get them tomorrow and get it moving very quickly. Uh, this IBM procurement was something we were able to step through very quickly because of our longstanding relationship. Our countywide, uh, system of record for our financials is SAP. Uh, we've worked with Curam, uh, solution, uh, for years. >>So we've got this long standing relationship and trust in the product and the teams, which helped us build the business case of why we did it, no need to go out for competitive procurement that we didn't have time. And we needed something that would integrate very quickly into our existing systems. Uh, so that part was there. Now when the folks who were non essential came back in June and the reopening, it was whiplash, uh, the speed at which we were moving, went back to the pace of normal business, uh, which feels like hitting a wall, doing a hundred miles an hour when you're used to having that, uh, mode of doing business. Uh, so that's certainly been a struggle, uh, for all of those involved, uh, in trying to continue to get things up. Um, but, uh, once again, the teams have been great because we've probably tripled our licensure on this portal since we opened it, uh, because of working with outside vendors, uh, to, uh, literally triple the size of our staff that are processing these applications by bringing on temporary staff, uh, and short-term professionals. Uh, and so we've been able to get those things through, uh, because we'd already built the purchasing vehicle during the early onset of the crisis. >>That's very helpful. Karen, IBM has played a really pivotal role in all of this. Uh, IBM Watson health works with a number of global government agencies, raging from counties like Clark County to federal governments. What are some of the major challenges you've seen with your clients as a result of the pandemic and how is technology supporting them in a time of need and give us some background Watson health too. So we kind of know a little more about it because this is really a fascinating area. >>Yeah. Thank you, Bob. And thanks Tim for the background on Clark County, because I think Clark County is definitely also an example of what federal governments and global governments are doing worldwide today. So, um, Watson health is our division within IBM where we really focus on health and human services. And our goal is to really focus in on, um, the outcomes that we're providing to individuals and families and looking at how we use data and insights to really make that impact and that change. And within that division, we have our government health and human services area, which is the focus of where we are with our clients around social program. But it also allows us to work with, um, different agencies and really look at how we can really move the ball in terms of, um, effecting change and outcomes for, um, really moving the needle of how we can, uh, make an impact on individuals and families. >>So as we look at the globe globally as well, you know, everything that Tim had mentioned about how the pandemic has really changed the way that government agencies operate and how they do services, I think it's amazing that you have that pandemic playbook because a lot of agencies in the same way also had these set of activities that they always wanted to go and take part on, but there was no impetus to really allow for that to happen. And with the pandemic, it allowed that to kind of open and say, okay, we can try this. And unfortunately I'm in a very partial house way to do that. And, um, what Tim has mentioned about the new program that they set up for the housing, some of those programs could take a number of years to really get a program online and get through and allowing, uh, the agencies to be able to do that in a matter of weeks is amazing. >>And I think that's really gonna set a precedent as we go forward and how you can bring on programs such as the housing and capability in Canada with the economic, uh, social, um, uh, development and, and Canada need that the same thing. They actually had a multi benefit delivery system that was designed to deliver benefits for three programs. And as part of the department of fisheries and oceans Canada, the, um, the state had an emergency and they really need to set up on how they could provide benefits to the fishermen who had been at that impacted, um, from that. And they also did set up a digital front-end using IBM citizen engagement to start to allow the applications that benefits, um, and they set it up in a matter of weeks. And as I mentioned, we, uh, Clark County had a backend legacy system where they could connect to and process those applications. And this case, this is a brand new program and the case management system that they brought up was on cloud. And they had to set up a new one, but allow them to set up a, what we used to call straight through processing, I think has been now turned, turned or coined contact less, uh, processing and allowing us to really start to move those benefits and get those capabilities out to the citizens in even a faster way than has been imagined. Uh, pre pandemic. >>Karen, I have one follow-up question. I want to ask you, having had a lot of experience with large projects in government. Sometimes there's a real gap between getting to identified real requirements and then actions. How do you, how do you work with clients to make sure that process time to benefit is shortened? >>So we really focus on the user themselves and we take a human centered design focus and really prioritizing what those needs are. Um, so working with the clients, uh, effectively, and then going through agile iterations of brain, that capability out as, um, in, in a phased approach to, so the idea of getting what we can bring out that provides quality and capability to the users, and then over time starting to really roll out additional functions and, um, other, uh, things that citizens or individuals and families would need >>Very helpful. Tim, this is an interesting partnership. It's always good to see partnerships between private sector and government. Tell us a little bit about how the partnership with IBM Watson health was established and what challenges or they were brought into assist, where they brought into assist with back to requirements. Again, within the requirements definitely shifted on us. You know, we had the con looking at, uh, Watson on our child welfare, uh, side of the house that I'm responsible for and how that we could, uh, increase access to everything from tele-health to, to, uh, foster parent benefit, uh, kinship, placement benefits, all those types of things that, that right now are very manual, uh, on the child welfare side. Uh, and then the pandemic kid. And we very quickly realized that we needed, uh, to stand up a, um, a new program because, uh, a little bit for context, uh, the park County, we don't administer TANIF or Medicaid at the County level. >>It is done at the state level. So we don't have, uh, unemployment systems or Medicaid, 10 of snap benefits systems to be able to augment and enroll out. We provide, uh, the indigent supports the, the homelessness prevention, referee housing continuum of care, long-term care, really deep emergency safety net services for our County, which is a little bit different and how those are done. So that was really our focus, which took a lot of in-person investigation. We're helping people qualify for disability benefits so they can get into permanent supportive housing, uh, things that are very intensive. And yet now we have a pandemic where we need things to happen quickly because the cares act money expires at the end of December. And people were facing eviction and eviction can help spread exposure to, to COVID. Uh, so, uh, be able to get in and very rapidly, think about what is the minimal pelvis to MVP. >>What's the minimum viable product that we can get out the door that will help people, uh, entrance to a system as contactless as possible, which again was a complete one 80 from how we had been doing business. Um, and, uh, so the idea that you could get on and you have this intelligent chat bot that can walk you through questions, help you figure out if you look like you might be eligible, roll you right into an application where you can upload the few documents that we're going to require to help verify your coat would impact and do that from a smartphone and under, you know, 20 minutes. Um, it, it, it is amazing. And the fact that we've stood that up and got it out the door in 90 days, it's just amazing to me, uh, when it shows the, uh, strength of partnership. Um, I think we can, we have some shared language because we had that ongoing partnership, but we were able to actually leverage some system architects that we had that were familiar with our community and our other products. So it really helped expedite, uh, getting this, uh, getting this out to the citizens. >>So, uh, I assume that there are some complexities in doing this. So overall, how has this deployment of citizen engagement with Watson gone and how do you measure success other than you got it out quick? How do you know if it's working? >>Yeah. Right. So it's the adage of, you know, quick, fast and good, right. Um, or fast, good and cheap. So, uh, we measure success in this way. Um, how are we getting access as our number one quality measurement here? So we were able to collect, uh, about 13,000 applications, uh, manual NRC, manually folks had to go onto our website, download a PDF, fill it out, email it, or physically drop it off along with their backup. One of their choice of 14 non-profits in town, whichever is closest to them. Um, and, uh, and then wait for that process. And they were able to get 13,000 of those, uh, process for the last six months. Uh, we have, I think we had about 8,000 applications the first month come into the portal and about an equal amount of folks who could not provide the same documentation that it was needed. >>And self-selected out. If we had not had the, the tool in place, we would have had 16,000 applications, half of which would have been non-eligible would have been jamming up the system, uh, when we don't have the bandwidth to deal to deal with that, we, we need to be able to focus in on, uh, Judy Kenny applications that we believe are like a 95% success rate from the moment our staff gets them, but because we have the complex and he was on already being dependent upon the landlord, having to verify the rent amount and be willing to work with us, um, which is a major hurdle. Um, but, uh, so w we knew we could not do is go, just reinvent the manual process digitally that that would have been an abject failure on our behalf. So, uh, the ideas that, uh, folks had can go on a very, had this very intuitive conversation to the chat bot, answer some questions and find out if they're eligible. >>And then self-select out was critical for us to not only make sure that the citizens got the help they needed, but not so burnt out and overload our workforce, which is already feeling the strain of the COVID pandemic on their own personal lives and in their homes and in the workplace. Um, so that was really critical for us. So it's not just about speed, ease of access was important. Uh, the ability to quickly automate things on the fly, uh, we have since changed, uh, the area median income, a qualifier for the rental assistance, because we were able to reallocate more money, uh, to the program. So we were able to open it up to more people. We were able to make that, uh, change to the system very quickly. Uh, the idea that we can go on the home page and put updates, uh, we recognized that, uh, some of our monolingual Hispanic residents were having difficulty even with some guidance getting through the system. >>So we're able to record a, a Spanish language walkthrough and get done on the home page the next day, right into the fordable, there'll be a fine, so they could literally run the YouTube video while they're walking through their application. Side-by-side so things like that, that those are how we are able to, for us measured success, not just in the raw dollars out the door, not just in the number of applications that have come in, but our ability to be responsive when we hear from our constituents and our elected officials that, Hey, I want, I appreciate the 15,000 applications as you all, a process and record time, I've got three, four, five, six, 10 constituents that having this type of problem and be able to go back and retool our systems to make them more intuitive, to do, be able to keep them responsive for us is definitely a measure of success and all of this, probably more qualitative than here we're looking >>For, but, uh, that's for us, that's important. Actually the qualitative side is what usually gets ignored. Uh, Karen, I've got a question that's a follow up for you on the same topic. How does IBM facilitate reporting within this kind of an environment given the different needs of stakeholders, online managers and citizens? What kinds of things do you, are you able to do >>So with, um, the influx of digitalization? I think it allows us to really take a more data-driven approach to start looking at that. So, as, as Tim was mentioning, you can see where potentially users are spending more time on certain questions, or if they're stuck on a question, you can see where the abandoned rate is. So using a more data-driven approach to go in to identify, you know, how do we actually go and, um, continue to drive that user experience that may not be something that we drive directly from the users. So I would say that analytics is really, uh, I think going to continue to be a driving force as government agencies go forward, because now they are capturing the data. But one thing that they have to be careful of is making sure that the data that they're getting is the right data to give them the information, to make the right next steps and decisions. >>And Tim, you know, use a really good example with, um, the chatbot in terms of, you know, with the influx of everything going on with COVID, the citizens are completely flooded with information and how do they get the right information to actually help them decide, can I apply for this chap program? Or should I, you know, not even try and what Tim mentioned just saved the citizens, you know, the people that may not be eligible a lot of time and going through and applying, and then getting denied by having that upfront, I have questions and I need answers. Um, so again, more data-driven of how do we provide that information? And, you know, we've seen traditionally citizens having to go on multiple website, web pages to get an answer to the question, because they're like, I think I have a question in this area, but I'm not exactly sure. And they, then they're starting to hunt and hunt and hunt and not even potentially get an answer. So the chocolate really like technology-wise helps to drive, you know, more data-driven answers to what, um, whether it's a citizen, whether it's, um, Tim who needs to understand how and where my citizens getting stuck, are they able to complete the application where they are? Can we really get the benefits to, um, this individual family for the housing needs >>Too many comments on the same thing. I know you have to communicate measures of success to County executives and others. How do you do that? I mean, are you, do you have enough information to do it? Yeah, we're able to, we actually have a standup meeting every morning where the first thing I learn is how many new applications came in overnight. How many of those were completed with full documentation? How many will be ported over into our system, assigned the staff to work, where they're waiting >>On landlord verification. So I can see the entire pipeline of applications, which helps us then determine, um, Oh, it's, it's not, you know, maybe urban legend is that folks are having difficulty accessing the system. When I see really the bottleneck there, it got gotten the system fine, the bottlenecks laying with our landlord. So let's do a landlord, a town hall and iterate and reeducate them about what their responsibilities are and how easy it is for them to respond with the form they need to attest to. And so it lets us see in real time where we're having difficulties, uh, because, uh, there's a constant pressure on this system. Not just that, uh, we don't want anyone to lose their home, uh, but these dollars also go away within a December. So we've got this dual pressure of get it right and get it right now. >>Uh, and so th the ability to see these data and these metrics on, on a daily basis is critical for us to, to continue to, uh, ModuLite our response. Um, and, and not just get comfortable are baked into well, that's why we developed the flowchart during requirements, and that's just the way things are gonna stay. Uh, that's not how you respond to a pandemic. Uh, and so having a tool and a partner that helps us, uh, stay flexible, state agile, I guess, to, to, to leverage some terminology, uh, is important. And, and it's, it's paid dividends for our citizens. Karen, again, is another up to the same thing. I'm kind of curious about one of the problems of government from time to time. And Tim, I think attest to this is how do you know when Dunn has been reached? How did you go about defining what done would look like for the initial rollout with this kind of a customer? >>So I think Doug, I guess in this case, um, is, is this, isn't able to get the benefits that they're looking for and how do we, uh, you know, starting from, I think what we were talking about earlier, like in terms of requirements and what is the minimum viable, um, part of that, and then you start to add on the bells and whistles that we're really looking to do. So, um, you know, our team worked with him to really define what are those requirements. I know it's a new program. So some of those policy decisions were still also being worked out as the requirements were being defined as well. So making sure that you are staying on top of, okay, what are the key things and what do we really need to do from a compliance standpoint, from a functionality, and obviously, um, the usability of how, uh, an assistant can come on and apply and, um, have those, uh, requirements, make sure that you can meet that, that version before you start adding on additional scope. >>Very helpful. Jim, what's your comment on this since I know done matters to you? Yeah. And look, I I've lived through a, again, multiple, uh, county-wide it implementations and some department wide initiatives as well. So I think we know that our staff always want more so nothing's ever done, uh, which is a challenge and that's on our side of the customer. Um, but, uh, for this, it really was our, our experience of recognizing the, the time was an essence. We didn't have a chance. We didn't have, uh, the space to get into these endless, uh, conversations, uh, the agile approach, rather than doing the traditional waterfall, where we would have been doing requirements tracking for months before we ever started coding, it was what do we need minimally to get a check in the hands of a landlord on behalf of a client, so they don't get evicted. >>And we kept just re honing on that. That's nice. Let's put that in the parking lot. We'll come back to it because again, we want to leverage this investment long term, uh, because we've got a we, and we've got the emergency solutions and CDBG, and then our, uh, mainstream, uh, services we brought on daily basis, but we will come back to those things speed and time are of the essence. So what do we need, uh, to, to get this? So a chance to really, um, educate our staff about the concepts of agile iteration, um, and say, look, this is not just on the it side. We're gonna roll a policy out today around how you're doing things. And we may figure out through data and metrics that it's not working next week, and we'll have to have that. You want it. And you're going to get the same way. >>You're getting updated guidance from the CDC on what to do and what not to do. Uh, health wise, you're getting the same from us, uh, and really to helping the staff understand that process from the beginning was key. And, uh, so, and, and that's, again, partnering with, with our development team in that way was helpful. Um, because once we gave them that kind of charter as I am project champion, this is what we're saying. They did an equally good job of staying on task and getting to the point of is this necessary or nice. And if it wasn't necessary, we put it in the nice category and we'll come back to it. So I think that's really helpful. My experience having done several hundred sheet applications also suggest the need for MBP matters, future stages really matter and not getting caught. My flying squirrels really matters. So you don't get distracted. So let's move on to, let's do a polling question before we go on to some of our other questions. So for our audience, do you have a digital front ends for your benefit delivery? Yes, no. Or we're planning to a lot of response here yet. There we go. Looks like about half, have one and half note. So that's an interesting question. What's going to one more polling question, learn a little more here. Has COVID-19 >>Accelerated or moved cloud. Yes, no. We already run a majority of applications on cloud. Take a moment and respond if you would, please. So this is interesting. No real acceleration was taken place and in terms of moving to cloud is not what I was expecting, but that's interesting. So let's go onto another question then. And Karen, let me direct this one to you, given that feedback, how do you envision technologies such as citizen engagement and watching the system will be used, respond to emergency situations like the pandemic moving forward? I mean, what should government agencies consider given the challenges? This kind of a pandemic is brought upon government and try to tie this in, if you would, what, what is the role of cloud in all of this for making this happen in a timely way? Karen, take it away. >>Okay. Thanks Bob. So as we started the discussion around the digital expansion, you know, we definitely see additional programs and additional capabilities coming online as we continue on. Um, I think, uh, agencies have really seen a way to connect with their citizens and families and landlords, um, in this case an additional way. And he prepared them like there were, uh, presuppose assumptions that the, um, the citizens or landlords really wanted to interact with agency face-to-face and have that high touch part. And I think, um, through this, the governments have really learned that there is a way to still have an impact on the citizen without having a slow, do a face to face. And so I think that's a big realization for them to now really explore other ways to digitally explain, expand their programs and capabilities. Another area that we touched on was around the AI and chat bot piece. >>So as we start to see capabilities like this, the reason why Clark County was able to bring it up quickly and everything was because it was housed on cloud, we are seeing the push of starting to move some of the workloads. I know from a polling question perspective that it's been, um, lighter in terms of getting, uh, moving to the cloud. But we have seen the surge of really chatbots. I think we've been talking about chatbots for a while now. And, um, agencies hadn't really had the ability to start to implement that and really put it into effect. But with the pandemic, they were able to bring things up and, you know, very short amount of time to solve, um, a big challenge of not having the call center be flooded and have a different way to direct that engagement between the citizen and the government. >>So really building a different type of channel for them to engage rather than having to call or to come into an office, which wasn't really allowed in terms of, um, the pandemic. Um, the other thing I'll touch on is, um, 10 mentioned, you know, the backlog of applications that are coming in and we're starting to see the, um, the increase in automation. How do we automate areas where it's administratively highly burdened, but it's really a way that we can start to automate those processes, to give our workers the ability to focus on more of those complex situations that really need attention. So we're starting to see where the trends of trying to push there of can we automate some of those processes, um, uh, uploading documents and verification documents is another way of like, trying to look at, is there a way that we can make that easier? >>Not only for the applicant that's applying, but also for the caseworker. So there's not having to go through that. Um, does the name match, um, the applicant, uh, information and what we're looking on here, and Bob, you mentioned cloud. So behind the scenes of, you know, why, uh, government agencies are really pushing the cloud is, um, you heard about, I mean, with the pandemic, you see a surge of applicants coming in for those benefits and how do we scale for that kind of demand and how do you do that in an inappropriate way, without the huge pressures that you put on to your data center or your staff who's already trying to help our citizens and applicants, applicants, and families get the benefits they need. And so the cloud, um, you know, proposition of trying, being able to be scalable and elastic is really a key driver that we've seen in terms of, uh, uh, government agencies going to cloud. >>We haven't really seen during a pandemic, the core competencies, some of them moving those to cloud, it's really been around that digital front end, the chat bot area of how do we start to really start with that from a cloud perspective and cloud journey, and then start to work in the other processes and other areas. Um, security is also huge, uh, focus right now with the pandemic and everything going online. And with cloud allows you to be able to make sure that you're secure and be able to apply the right security so that you're always covered in terms of the type of demand and, um, impact, uh, that is coming through >>Very helpful. Tim, I'm going to ask to follow up on this of a practical nature. So you brought this up very quickly. Uh, there's a certain amount of suspicion around state government County government about chatbots. How did you get a chat much and be functional so quickly? And were you able to leverage the cloud in this process? Yeah, so on the trust is important. Uh, and I'll go back to my previous statement about individuals being able to see upfront whether they believe they're eligible or not, because nothing will erode trust more than having someone in hours applying and weeks waiting to find out they were denied because they weren't eligible to begin with, uh, that erodes trust. So being able to let folks know right up front, here's what it looks like to be eligible, actually help us build some of that, uh, cause they don't feel like, uh, someone in the bureaucracy is just putting them through the ringer for no reason. >>Um, now in regard to how do we get the chat bot out? I will say, uh, we have a, uh, dynamic it and leadership, uh, team at the highest level of County government who we have been already having conversations over the last year about what it meant to be smart government, uh, the department of social service and family services that I'm responsible for. We're already, uh, hands up first in line, you know, Guinea pigs volunteering to be on the front end of, uh, certain projects. So w we have primed ourselves for, for some of this readiness in that aspect. Um, but for citizen trust, um, the timeliness of application right now is the biggest element of trust. Uh, so I've applied I've I feel like I put my housing future in your hands. Are you going to deliver and having the ability for us to rapidly scale up? >>Uh, we typically have 120 staff in the department of social service that, that are adjudicating benefits for programs on daily basis. We've doubled that with temporary staff, uh, through some partnerships, uh, we're, we're gonna, as of next week, probably have more temporary per professional staff helping an adjudicator applications. No, do full-time County staff, because again, this rush to get the dollars out, out the door. So having a system where I can easily, uh, ramp on new users and manage them without having to be solely dependent upon an already, uh, overworked it staff who were trying to support 37 other departments in the County, um, around infrastructure needs has been greatly helpful. Sounds to me like a strong outcome focus and one that seems to work. Let's move on now to our audience questions. We're getting close to the end of our time. So let's jump into some questions from the audience. A number of you have been asking about getting copies of today's presentation within the next 48 hours. Government technology will provide all attendees with the link to the recording for your reference, or to share with colleagues. Well, let's go to our first question. So this is an interesting one. And Karen, this is for you did IBM work with other counties and States to provide digital engagement portals. >>We did Bob, uh, we've worked, um, so globally we've provided guidance on this. We work closely with New York city. They've been the integral part of the development also with our citizen engagement offering. Um, we work closely with the States. So we worked with New York city. Um, North Carolina was also another state who, um, improved their, uh, citizen engagement piece, bring up their Medicaid and snap, um, applications along with Medicaid. COVID testing along that. And I mentioned, um, the economic and social development in Canada as well. And we also work with the ministry of social development in Singapore. So a number of our customers had put up, uh, a global, uh, or sorry, a citizen engagement frontend. And during this timeframe, >>Very helpful. I don't know how much did you hear your mom provide you, but how much did it cost for initial deployment and what are the ongoing costs in other words, is this thing going to be sustainable over time? >>Yeah, absolutely. So total, uh, to date, we've spent about a $1.8 million on development implementations and licensure. A big chunk of that again has been the rapid extended of licensure, uh, for this program. Um, I think over a third of that is probably licensing because again, we need to get the dollars out and we need staff to do that and making the short term several hundred thousand dollar investment in a professional support staff and having them be able to work this portal is much cheaper than the long-term investment of bringing on a staff, printing a job, uh, during a financial difficulty that we're facing, uh, the single largest fiscal cliff let's get into that us history. Um, so it's not smart to create jobs that have a 30 year, one way to retirement, uh, inside our in unionized government environment here. So having this, the staff that would come on and do this and get out the door on these federal dollars was critical for us. Um, and there is a $800,000 a year, I believe so ongoing costs associated with licensure and, and the programming support. Uh, but once again, we're going to be moving, um, our traditional services into this digital front end. We'll be continuing this because we're, we're, we're facing, it took us, I think, six and a half, seven years to come back from the previous recession. Undoubtedly, take a little longer to get back >>From this one. Here's another interesting question, I guess really primarily Tim Tim was the solution on primarily on premise or in the cloud. >>So we'll, we've done a mix. Uh, the, and I'm starting a lot of feedbacks. I don't know if you all can hear that or not, but the, uh, I think we went on prem for, uh, some people because of the, uh, bridge into our service case manager system, which is on prem. So we did some management there. I do believe the chat bot piece of it though is in the cloud. So we're bringing it down to, from one system to the other. Uh, and, and part of that was a student negotiations and costs and worrying about what long-term is that we have a very stated goal of moving, uh, our Curam platform, which is on-prem, this is the backend. So how are we? We, we set our IBM Watson, uh, portal up, uh, and moving all of that on cloud, uh, because I mean, we've got, uh, a workforce who, uh, has the ability to retire at a very high rate over the next five years. >>And, uh, having 24 seven support in the cloud is, is as a, someone who would be called to respond to emergency situations like the is, is a much better Cod deal for, for myself and the citizen. So migrating, uh, and, um, our typical on-prem stuff up into the cloud, uh, as we continue on this, uh, evolution of what IBM Watson, uh, and the plug into our Curam, uh, system looks like Karen related question for another user is the portal provided with Clara County and others linked to other third-party backend office apps, or can it be, >>Yeah, the answer is it can be it's interoperable. So through APIs, uh, rest, uh, however, um, assistance that they need to be integrated with can definitely be integrated with, uh, like, uh, Tim mentioned, we, we went to the case management solution, but it can be integrated with other applications as well. >>Tim, did you use some other backend third party apps with yours? Uh, we did not. Uh, again, just for speed of getting, uh, this MVP solution out the door. Uh, now what we do with that on the go forward, it is going to look different and probably will include some, another practical question. Given the cares funding should be expended by December. Can this application even be employed at this late date? And you want to take a cut at that? Yeah, for us, uh, once again, we brought up earlier, um, the emergency solutions grants and the community development block grants, which have a Corona virus, uh, CV traunch, each one of those, and those have two to three year expenditure timeframes on them. Uh, so we were going to leverage those to keep this system and some of these programs going once again, that the housing needs, uh, will outstrip our capacity for years to come. >>I guess probably I should have said upfront Las Vegas has one of the worst affordable housing inventories in the nation. Uh, so we know we're going to be facing a housing issue, um, because of this for, for a long time. So we'll be using those two traunches of dollars, ESE, ESPs, uh, CV CDBG, CB funds, uh, in addition to dollars earmarked through some, uh, recreational marijuana license fees that have been dedicated to our homelessness. And when you consider this housing, uh, stability program was part of that homelessness prevention. That's our funding mix locally. Very helpful. So questions maybe for bolts for you on this one, you can probably also teach respond is the system has been set up helping the small business community. Um, this user's been canvassing and the general feeling is that small businesses have been left behind and they've been unable to access funds. What's your response on that? Karen, do you want to take that first? >>Um, yes. So in terms of, uh, the security and sorry. Um, but, uh, can you repeat the last part of that? I just missed the last part when you >>Behind it, but unable to access funds. >>Uh, yeah, so I think from a funding perspective, there's different types of, I think what Tim mentioned in terms of the cares funding, there was different types of funding that came out from a government perspective. Uh, I think there were also other grants and things that are coming out one, uh, that we're still looking at. And I think as we go into the new year, it'll be interesting to see, you know, what additional funding, um, hopefully is, is provided. Uh, but in terms of creativity, we've seen other creative ways that organizations come together to kind of, uh, help with the different agencies, to provide some, some guidance to the community, um, and helping to, uh, provide efforts and, uh, maybe looking at different ways of, um, providing, uh, some of the capabilities that the, either at the County or at the state level that they're able to leverage. But Tim happy to maybe have you chime in here too. >>Yeah. So I'll first start with my wheelhouse and I'll expand out to, to some of my partners. Uh, so the primary, small business, we knew the idea was a daily basis inside this realm is going to be landlords. Uh, so actually this afternoon, we're doing a town hall with folks to be able to roll out, uh, which they will go to our portal to find a corporate landlord program. Uh, so that I seem a landlord for Camille the application pack and on behalf of a hundred residents, rather than us having to adjudicate a hundred individual applications and melon a hundred checks. Uh, so that is because we were listening to that particular segment of the, uh, the business community. Now I know early on, we were, we were really hoping that the, the paycheck protection program federally would have, uh, been dispersed in a way that helped our local small businesses. >>Uh, more we did a, our economic development team did a round of small business supports through our cares act. Uh, our quarterly unfortunate was not open yet. It was just about 15, 20 days shy. So we use, uh, another traditional grant mechanism that we have in place to dedicate that. Uh, but on a go forward board, willing to Congress passes something over the next 30 days, um, that if there's a round two of cares or some other programs, we absolutely now have a tool that we know we can create a digital opening for individuals to come figure out if they're eligible or not for whatever program it is, the it housing, the it, uh, small business operations supports, uh, and it would apply through that process and in a very lightweight, so we're looking forward to how we can expand our footprint to help all of the needs that are present in our community. This leads to another question which may be our last one, but this is an interesting question. How can agencies use COVID-19 as a proof point providing a low cost configurable solutions that can scale across government. Karen, do you want to respond to that? And then Tim also, >>Thanks, Bob. So I believe like, you know, some of the things that we've said in terms of examples of how we were able to bring up the solution quicker, I definitely see that scaling as you go forward and trying to really, um, focus in on the needs and getting that MVP out the door. Uh, and then Tim alluded to this as well. A lot of the change management processes that went into re-imagining what these processes look like. I definitely see a additional, you know, growth mindset of how do we get better processes in place, or really focusing on the core processes so that we can really move the ball forward and continuing to go that path of delivering on a quicker path, uh, leveraging cloud, as we mentioned of, um, some, some of the capabilities around the chat bot and other things to really start to push, um, uh, the capabilities out to those citizens quicker and really reduce that timeline that we have to take on the backend side, um, that that would be our hope and goal, um, given, you know, sort of what we've been able to accomplish and hoping using that as a proof point of how we can do this for other types of, uh, either programs or other processes. >>Yeah, I think, um, the, you know, the tool has given us capability now there, whether we use local leaders leverage that to the fullest really becomes a coming upon us. So do we take a beat, uh, when we can catch our breath and then, you know, work through our executive leadership to say, look, here's all the ways you can use this tool. You've made an enterprise investment in. Um, and I know for us, uh, at Clark County, we've stood up, uh, enterprise, uh, kind of governance team where we can come and talk through all of our enterprise solutions, uh, encourage our other department head peers, uh, to, to examine how you might be able to use this. Is there a way that, um, you know, parks and rec might use this to better access their scholarship programs to make sure that children get into youth sports leagues and don't get left out, uh, because we know youth suicide on the rise and they need something positive to do when this pandemic is clear, I'm there for them to get out and do those things. >>So the possibilities really are out there. It really becomes, um, how do we mind those internally? And I know that being a part of listservs and, uh, you know, gov tech and all the magazines and things are out there to help us think about how do we better use our solutions, um, as well as our IBM partners who are always eager to say, Hey, have you seen how they're using this? Um, it is important for us to continue to keep our imaginations open, um, so that we continue to iterate through this process. Um, cause I, I would hate to see the culture of, um, iteration go away with this pandemic. >>Okay. We have time for one final question. We've already addressed this in part two, and this one is probably for you and that you've used the cares act to eliminate some of the procurement red tape that's shown up. Well, how do you somehow that's been very positive. How do you see that impacting you going forward? What happens when the red tape all comes back? >>Yeah, so I think I mentioned a little bit, uh, about that when some of the folks who are deemed non essential came back during our reopening phases and they're operating at the speed of prior business and red tape where we had all been on this, these green tape, fast tracks, uh, it, it was a bit of a organizational whiplash. Uh, but it, for us, we've had the conversation with executive management of like, we cannot let this get in the way of what our citizens need. So like keep that pressure on our folks to think differently. Don't and, uh, we've gone so far as to, uh, even, uh, maybe take it a step further and investigate what had been done in, in, in Canada. Some other places around, um, like, like going right from in a 48 hour period, going from a procurement statement through a proof of concept and doing purchasing on the backside, like how can we even get this even more streamlined so that we can get the things we need quickly, uh, because the citizens don't understand, wait, we're doing our best, uh, your number 3000 and queue on the phone line that that's not what they need to hear or want to hear during times of crisis. >>Very helpful. Well, I want to be respectful of our one hour commitment, so we'll have to wrap it up here in closing. I want to thank everyone for joining us for today's event and especially a big, thank you goes to Karen and Tim. You've done a really great job of answering a lot of questions and laying this out for us and a special thanks to our partners at IBM for enabling us to bring this worthwhile discussion to our audience. Thanks once again, and we look forward to seeing you at another government technology event,

(upbeat music) >> From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here in Palo Alto, California at the CUBE studios. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. For a special CUBE conversation, a preview of the upcoming KubeCon, Cloud Native Con in San Diego. Where theCUBE will be there, as well as a bunch of other folks. The New Stack will be there, a lot of other media producers, as well as the big conference. KubeCon, in it's fourth or fifth year, depending on which year you count. Its a super exciting conference, this is where the Kubernetes and the Cloud Native communities come together to set the agenda to talk about all the great things that are going on in the industry and how it's changing tech for good. We're here with Vicki Cheung, who is the Co-Chair and also Software Engineer Manager at Lyft. Vicki great to see you, thanks for coming in. >> Thanks for having me. >> I'm so proud of KubeCon and the community because when we were there, in the early days, when it was kind of forming and created. There was a big vision that it would play a critical role. A lot of people haven't really seen how big it's become. And it's really become so important that the big companies are now moving towards Open Source, the CNC has been very successful. Both on getting vendors in and end user projects. You're setting the agenda. You're setting the table for this year's KubeCon. >> Yeah. >> Tell us what's going on. >> Yeah, I think we're seeing the maturity of the community coming together. It's sort of continuing on this trend where, as you said, the adoption is growing exponentially. I think, that two years ago if you surveyed the room and asked people, "who is using Kubernetes and Docker in production, you'd maybe get, like, a hand. I think you're seeing this thing where, this trend, where this year, I think, if you surveyed the room, it would be like maybe half the room were raising their hands. >> And the acceleration is interesting. You're seeing in, I mean, huge acceleration of the adoption of Kubernetes and other projects. And I think what's interesting to me, and I think commentary that we've been reporting on is that Kubernetes can be that unifying point. And you're seeing this, de facto standard emerging and a lot of people talking about that de facto. And that has accelerated the Production Use Cases. So, the End User Projects are increasing. Is that going to be a focus or main focus of this year's KubeCon? >> Oh yeah, definitely. I think we're seeing, maybe even last year, we've had a lot of end user talks from, you know, early adopters start ups, like tech giants. But this year we're seeing a lot more enterprise use cases. And that's driving a lot of content as well. So, I think when it comes enterprise use cases, we're seeing a lot of talks around security and governance. We're seeing a lot of developer productivity talks, and we're also seeing a lot more focus on how to scale operations. >> So, take me through the focus this year. Let's get this out on the table, because this is a big event. What can people expect this year, when you guys sat in the room, with the teams, and said, "Okay, here's going to be the Con and agenda, "we have a form of that's not broken, let's not fix, what's not broken, so the format's good." What was the focus, what was this year's focus. What's going to be the focus of this year's KubeCon? >> Yeah, I think Bryan and I, when we sit together, we have all the tracks that we've been using, for the last couple of years. And generally we, sort of stick to them, because they're pretty good. But the way we, I think the interesting thing is, we see over the years how the distribution across the tracks have changed. So, for example, I think this year, operations is a super big track, and it's very competitive to get into. And that's because we're seeing a lot more adoption at scale, and different Use cases, different types of companies and production. So, I think that track have been a main focus. And also, I think customizing Kubernetes is another one, as people's use cases got more sophisticated. And in the serve use case track, I think we see a lot more enterprise, like even banks adopting Kubernetes. >> So, essentially the same game as before, but weighting them differently based on adoption? >> Exactly, I think it's a shift, like earlier it would be maybe more like earlier adopter and serve experimental use cases, and now it's like, people are actually going into production now. So, the shift has been into like, how do we get this running reliably, at scale. So, that's what we're seeing. >> In terms of the industry, if you look back, and again you guys went public at Lyft, and you guys are growing, and you guys have a great open source product with Envoy, I'm sure you guys are going to do the Day Zero thing again this year, last year was a big success. Is there any projects that you see coming out of the woodwork that are going to evolve up? And what can people expect in terms of project growth or emerging projects. Is there any indication, from your standpoint? What's going to come out of the community? >> Yeah, I think there's a lot of projects that are growing, like Helm continues to grow. I think one thing that I'm seeing, from this year's content is there's a lot of focus on, OPA. Like I said, the security is sort of a growing focus. And OPA is certainly one of the things I think people should expect at this year's conference. Another area that I'm personally very interested in, and I see, I'm happy to see it popping up more this year, is developer experience and developer productivity. As we're, even just personally witnessing at Lyft, adopting Cloud Native Architecture, microservices and Kubernetes, comes with a lot of benefits, but also a lot of new challenges into how people should develop in this ecosystem. So, there are projects like Telepresence and Tilt that are coming up more. And there's a few talks around that, in application and development as well. >> How about the developer's side? What's the general sentiment in the community these days? If you had to kind of, put a parameter out there, what's the general vibe in the community, from a developer's stand point around Cloud Native and Kubernetes? >> I think there's, I think it depends on who you ask. Generally, you know, people are very very excited to be sort of moving in this direction. And I think it allows people to be a lot more flexible in how they develop their applications. But I also think that there's a lot of open questions, that we still have to answer. And this is where, I guess some of these new projects come into help fill the gap. >> Well first of all, you guys have, always have a great conference, theCUBE will be there, as well media producer will be a lot on digital. So, folks not going to the event, they should go and see the face-to-face. I want to get the take on some of the submissions. You guys have an interesting dynamic and CNCF and KubeCon and Cloud Native Con, you have a ton of end user projects, A lot of end user focus, obviously it's an end user focused show. But you also have a lot of vendors, suppliers that are also in the community. So, you have an interesting balance going on. Talk about some of the numbers in terms of submissions, because I know, everyone's got submissions, not everyone gets accepted, like the operations you mentioned is a hot track. What's some of the numbers? Can you share any, kind of statistics around number of submissions versus acceptance? >> Yeah, I think typically CNCF will publish some of the numbers, in a blog post. So, I don't know all the numbers off the top of my head. But for example, in operations, I think the acceptance rate was maybe less than 10%. I think, it wasn't that competitive, maybe two years ago, but certainly as everyone moves to deploying Kubernetes on their own, that's sort of a hot topic. >> What's the relationship in the community, with the big vendors? Obviously you see, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, are big players in there, and they're investing heavily in Kubernetes. And VMware, as well, is also investing. Is that good, bad, is it just balancing? What's the communities view on the participation of the big guys? >> Yeah, I think it's actually been really great to the community and I personally would not have expected Microsoft, ADBS to be as active in the community as they are now, if you asked me five years ago. So, I think it's this interesting thing that Kubernetes and CNCF hasn't managed to do, is instead of having the tech giants having to suck out the energy and the technology into their private ecosystem. It's been the other way around. Where Microsoft and ADBS and Google have been contributing a lot of their integrations and other tooling and projects that they've built on top of the projects in CNCF. And just enriching the community. >> So, you're saying that they've been pushing more towards open source, not pulling out of it? >> Yeah. I think that's, obviously I'm super happy to see that. But I think that was not obvious at all from the beginning. >> Yeah, it's super exciting, you know we've been tracking the business model's evolution. And open source is more powerful than ever before now. And it's growing so fast and changing. Let's talk about the Enterprises now, because I think you're seeing adoption on the classic IT Enterprise moving in. We've interviewed many CSO's, CIO's and practitioners, they all have the same kind of reaction, "Oh my God, this is so good for our business, "Kubernetes what Containers are doing, "will allow us to manage the life cycle of our applications. "The same time bringing Cloud Native, "without a lot of disruption." What's your reaction to that, are you guys seeing that same dynamic? And if so, what is some of the use cases of Enterprises, within KubeCon? >> Yeah, I think one thing is, the earlier pitch is the, of course allows you to have that flexibility to move from your data center to Hybrid Cloud, and maybe to different cloud vendors. So, I think that's super appealing. But another thing that we're seeing this year is, as people adopted at scale they're also seeing a lot of cost savings from adopting Kubernetes, just because it allows them to be a lot more flexible in how they deploy things. I think that, in general as you move to serve a community standard, an Open Source Platform, it does help your developers a lot, because now they don't need to build their own in-house thing, which is, for example, what Lyft had before Kubernetes. So, I think it's generally a productivity win. >> So, on Envoy real quick, while I got you here. Lyft has been involved in donating that project and driving it last year, one of the most notable news, at least from out observation was, that the Envoy did that event the day before. And it was really popular. >> Yeah >> Is it going to happen again? What's some of the views on that? >> Yeah, so EnvoyCon is happening again this year, right before Kubernetes. I think it's even more popular than last year. So, there's going to be a lot of talks around, running Envoy at scale, and also on top of Kubernetes. As people sort of integrate the two technologies more. >> Okay, so I got to ask you the personal observations, you can take your Co-Chair hat off and put your KubeCon community hat on. What dark horses are out there, that you think may surprise people this year? What do you think might happen? Because there is always something that goes on, that's just a surprise, a dark horse, if you will, comes out of the woodwork, what do you think might happen? >> Well, I think there's of course going to be a few new Open Source projects that are launched there. And I also think there will be a lot of, maybe more than usual, interesting people that people can meet at the conference. >> I heard there's a rumor that the original gangsters, or the OG's or the original members, the seven original members are going to be there. >> Yeah, I don't-- >> Confirm or deny? >> I don't know if I can confirm or deny, but-- >> Okay, I think that's a yes, possibly. We'll be tracking that, okay, final question for you. What do you think will be the most important story for people to pay attention to this year? What do you think is going to be, evolving out on the stage? Out on the tracks, out on digital? What do you expect to see this year? What is some of the top stories and top notable points that you think is going to happen this year? >> Yeah, I think one thing that maybe, for me, and for a lot of people is this message that Kubernetes is ready. I think it's been sort of building up in this hype for the last few years. And we've seen adoption, but I think this is truly the year that I see a lot of Enterprise end user cases and I can really say that Kubernetes is ready. >> So the new criteria is proof points? Scale, operationally seeing some operations, real proof points, customer adoption, enterprise and hyperscalers? >> Yeah. >> All right, Vicki thanks for coming in and sharing this preview on KubeCon, Cloud Native Con. It's theCUBE covering the KubeCon, Cloud Native Con preview with Vicki Co-Chair, who set the agenda with her fellow Co-Chair Bryan Liles, as well. Great to have her on and share upcoming conversation around KubeCon. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(energetic, playful techno music) [Voiceover] - Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> We are live here at the Sands Expo, one of eight venues that are actually here for AWS re:Invent this week as we continue our three day coverage here with you Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well, live from Las Vegas here on the CUBE. Along with Justin Warren, I'm John Walls, and we're now joined by Phil Tee, who is the CEO and co-founder of Moodsoft. Phil, good to see you this afternoon. >> Great to be with you, thank you for inviting me along. >> You bet, nice to have you. In fact, I'm going to be the only guy without a charming accent on this set as a matter of fact. A UK and an Aussie here. Your world's data, right? And it kind of reminds me of the old movie Jaws when Robert says we're going to need a bigger boat, right? AI ops, is that your bigger boat? Is that how you're handling this world of data? >> I think that's exactly spot on and one of the things we observe at Moodsoft with our customers is just this crazy complexity that they have to deal with. I mean, we cover everything from large financials, telephone companies, e-commerce businesses, and the drive to adopt agile and cloud and software defined in the the enterprise has driven complexity to the point where the poor old human brain is just out of luck, right? The unaided "I'll figure it out by myself" approach, dead in the water, and you've got to use this artificial intelligence approach precisely as your "bigger boat" to go catch that shark. >> Right. So tell us, there's a lot of hype around AI, and machine learning, and all of these different buzzwords are getting thrown around. Dial us in a little bit. Explain what you mean by AI in the context you're talking about things with Moodsoft. >> So, I think that's very perceptive. There's a tweet going around at the moment which describes the difference between machine learning and AI as, if it's written in Python it's probably machine learning, if it's on a Powerpoint deck it's probably AI. Which is kind of funny, but to the point. And there is a ton of hype going around artificial intelligence. There are some purists who claim there is no such thing as AI and everything we talk about today is really machine learning or data driven algorithms. And there's some truth in that. Really, what we mean by AI is the full panoply of both feature detection, you know, looking for patterns that are not obvious to the human eye all the way through to deep learning, neural nets, convolutional neural nets, where you are training a system to recognize features of the data as representative of something underlying that you're hunting for. So in the case of AI ops it's looking for the cause of, or looking for the presence of, a potential service-impacting outage in the data that we monitor, in the events. But one thing it's not going to do is, it's not going to unplug itself from the internet and come and kill you anytime soon. It's really quite benign and very useful to our customers with what they deal with. >> So, to that point, because you have so much data, and it seems like, I hate to say, most of it isn't needed or most of it isn't of value, but a lot of it isn't, if not most. How do you then decern, how do you assess value and assign value to what really is important and then, put it to use today, when you're getting so much more information than you were even a year ago? >> So just to put a little bit of context on the amount of data, way back before the cloud and virtualization, a typical enterprise, a high event rate would have been 100, 200, events a second. Nowadays, in an average customer of ours, you add a zero or two to that rate, maybe even three. And it's one of the reasons why the legacy systems really struggle with that data. So, job one is, if you accept, and I certainly do, that most of that data is junk. Most of it is inconsequential. You've got to have an algorithmic way of getting rid of that. You know, the old-fashioned way was creating lists of "ignore it because it's a certain severity", "ignore it because it comes from this list of hosts", you know, the whole listing approach. What we do is we use information science. So we can measure the semantic content, and the informational content, of an event to work out whether it's telling us something of import. And we use that technique with great effectiveness to eliminate as much as ninety, ninety-five, percent of the inbound data as effectively affecting nothing. So that narrows the data lake, you feel, down to a point where we can process it in real time through much more computer-intensive AI algorithms to kind of get that high-quality indication of an instance or a potential instance. >> A lot of machine learning and AI is based on learning from history, so, "we've seen all this stuff before and we know what that means", or, even encouraging the machines to go and look at the historical data and then pull out the details as you said. Even things that a human might miss, you'll look at that data and then learn new things. How does that work when we're doing all of this innovation? When there's all of this change and novelty coming in, how does the AI system cope with that kind of environment? >> So, you have to have a dual approach. I mean, I guess everyone's familiar with Mikolas Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swans. He was trying to explain why it is that you can get a bunch of Nobel Prize winners in a room to design a hedge fund and it can still go bankrupt in the blink of and eye, like the long-term capital management. And the truth of the matter is, yes, an awful lot of the techniques that are supervised and based upon a training set are vulnerable to the "unknown unknowns" to misquote Donald Rumsfeld, and that's why we use a combination of unsupervised feature detection and supervised learning. The unsupervised feature detection just knows something as an unusual, highly correlated, pattern or feature in the data and needs no prior understanding of what's going on. Now, interestingly, there are some hybrid techniques now. You may have heard of something called transfer learning, which is the idea that you partially train a neural net on some kind of standard corpus. It'd be like the stuff that you already know and adapting that sort of partially trained net to something that is literally very, very, very adapted to the system that it's monitoring, it does that very quickly rather than having to wait for a certain critical amount of data before the net is converged. And so those sort of techniques, which we also experiment with at Moodsoft, I think are going to be interesting directions for us in the future with our platform, but there's maybe a hundred PhDs a week given out in AI and machine learning these days. It's definitely getting a lot of focus and there's a ton of innovation that's coming down the line. One thing that we're particularly committed to is shortening the distance between when something's invented and when we can get it into our customer's hands. >> There's usually quite a lag, historically, it's about ten years before someone discovers something and then it actually makes it into the business world so if we could shorten that cycle that would be quite useful. >> We know an academic called professor Maggie Bowden who's just getting ready to retire and she was one of the original authors of the neural net papers in the 1960's, so that kind of gives you an idea of the lag, it could be many, many, decades and it's a shame because the truth of the matter is the pressure on all the people coming to a show like this that want to benefit from the public cloud, new ways of thinking about the application development toolchain, they don't have time to wait around for that innovation to come to them. We've got to drive it a lot faster and, certainly, we view that as one of our missions at Moodsoft, as being passionately involved and sort of shortening that gap between innovation and a production implementation as something really cool. >> So what have you seen at the show so far that you think you want to take to your customers and say, "oh, actually, this is happening and you need to get on to this now"? >> One thing I've observed here is, I guess if we would've been here two years ago, nobody was talking about AI ops. I mean essentially the entirety of how people looked at the cloud was "same old stuff, just lives somewhere different, we can use all of the old techniques". You walk around here, there's a bunch of startups, more established companies, recognizing that a new approach is necessary and my sense of it is that this market which, I mean, let's be honest, we were pretty lonely in it two or three years ago, is starting to feel like it's a little more populated and that's goodness, we're very happy about that, so that is definitely a take away. You know, to go to customers and say "this is no longer bleeding edge, it's simply leading edge". >> Not just a gap in the market, there is actually a market in that gap. >> You're the bigger boat. >> Well, we hope so. >> Phil, thanks for being with us. We appreciate your time here on the CUBE and once again, have a great show and we do thank you for your time, sir. >> Thank you very much indeed. Great talking to you both. >> Phil Tee from Moodsoft joining us here on the CUBE. We're at AWS re:Invent and we're at the Sands, and we're in Las Vegas. (energetic, playful techno music)

(clicking) >> I am Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Google for the sixth annual Top Women in Cloud Awards event with CloudNOW. Very excited to be joined by next guest, Ajit George, the Managing Director of the Shanti Bhavan Children's Project. Welcome to the cube. >> Hi Lisa, it's great to be here. >> So, I was so excited to have a chat with you. The Shanti Bhavan Children's Project is incredible. Tell us about it, 20 years now, tell us about what that is, how your family is involved, and what it's helping to do for these young children in Bangelore, India? >> Sure, Shanti Bhavan was founded by my father, Dr. Abraham George, 20 years ago, and its goal is to educate children, but also to eliminate poverty and change entire systems of communities and governments. It, the way we achieve this goal is by taking children from the poorest communities in India, giving them a high-quality, boarding school education, from the age of four until they graduate from 12th grade, and we cover everything during that period. So, their healthcare, their clothing, their boarding, food, all of that is taken care of, as well as training in soft skills. So, debate, interpersonal and interview skills, leadership skills, and the whole nine yards. While we educate them in the highest curriculum, the toughest standards in India, and then we pay for their entire college degree afterwards. So, that is 17 years of a high-quality intervention per child from the very first day they start school to the very first day of work. >> That's incredible and you have a very high college graduation rate, isn't that correct? Yeah, that is correct. If they pass out of high school, their high school graduation rate is about 77%, University graduation rate is 98% and so- >> Wow, 98%. >> It's been pretty exciting and they go on from those, from college to multinational companies, like Mercedes-Benz or Amazon, or Goldman Sachs. So, our kids who come from urban slums or rural villages with huts with no running water or electricity are making more in their first five years, than their parents make in a lifetime. So, it's a quantum leap, it is a genuine breaking the cycle of poverty, and the ability to become both, either the primary or the sole breadwinner for their entire family. So, four or five other people are dependent on them at the age of 21. >> And that's incredible, I was watching, there is a Daughters of Destiny, Netflix Original Docuseries. I saw the trailer of it today, incredibly profound. One of the things that, a couple things that really stuck out to me was, this is taking children from poverty to possibility. And also, one of the young girls that was in that trailer had said, "I've got a lot to lose, it's now or never for me." These children seem to really understand the gravity of their situation, and genuinely recognize the opportunity that they've been given. >> Yeah, sure, every single Shanti Bhavan child understands, it's almost like they've won the lottery, they've had an opportunity that no one in their families have ever had, but no one from their communities have had either. They're the first person in their family for generations to get any kind of education, and so that's a powerful opportunity, but it's also an important obligation or duty to give back to the family and to make an impact for the community because they are given this golden ticket, and they want to do something important with it. If they don't succeed, nobody gives them a second chance. Kids from that kind of community, and from that kind of circumstance, don't really have a second chance if they aren't able to make the most of it. So when you hear those stories they're talking about, "hey, I really need to seize this moment." "I need to seize this opportunity," maybe, "my mother's back at home and she needs my help," maybe, "my father's bedridden." A lot of these kids have generational debt, so they owe money to, like a money lender, which is an illegal lender and that's a couple generations back. Maybe their grandparents have taken out this debt, so they have all these debts piled up on them, and they have healthcare bills piled up on them, and they've got housing and all of these other problems. Then they have to educate their younger brothers and sisters and pay for dowries for their family members. It's the enormous responsibilities on one child is huge, but they're able to step up because they're given this powerful education, this great opportunity, so there's a lot of pressure, but there's also this great knowledge that they have a horizon out there that no one in their family has ever had before. >> That's incredible and so in the last couple minutes here, CloudNOW, where we are at the awards event tonight, they've teamed up with Intel, Apcera, and CB Technologies, to launch the Daughters of Destiny STEM scholarship. So exciting, what's that going to mean for current students, at Shanti Bhavan or the future students? >> Right, I think I'm really, really thankful, first of all to CB Technologies, Intel, and Apcera, as well as the CloudNOW. This scholarship is the first of its kind within our program and it allows these three young ladies, who are the first recipients of the scholarship, and hopefully there'll be many more recipients, but these young ladies to get a high-quality college education in the STEM fields, which is their passion. So, it opens doors for them for their education, potentially for internships and maybe job opportunities after college. So, I think this is a gateway to something bright and beautiful. >> Oh, I love that and how you described it for these children as a quantum leap, is as profound as what's been shown in the Netflix series. So, Ajit, thank you so much for joining. I wish we had more time, this is such an incredible project that you're working on, but we thank you for stopping by theCUBE and sharing it with us. >> Thank you so much, Lisa, it's great to be here. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google for the CloudNOW, Top Women in Technology Awards. Bye for now. (closing music)

>> SiliconANGLE Media presents ... theCUBE! Covering AlibabaCloud's annual conference. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier... >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE, Wikibon, and theCUBE. We are here for an exclusive Cube conversations at the Alibaba Cloud conference here in Hangzhou, China. We're here with Dr. Wang, who's the chairman of the Alibaba Group Technology Committee as well as the founder of Alibaba Cloud, here in the new Museum of Inspiration at the event. Thanks for spending the time with me. >> Thank you for coming. >> So before we talk about Alibaba Cloud and all the goodness going on here at the conference, talk about this Museum of Inspiration. It is new, and it has kind of a display theme. You kind of walk through time. What was the motivation and the inspiration for the museum? >> Yeah, I think the keyword for the museum, inspiration, is really the inspiration that started the museum. I would say that there's two, really the artists thinking about that. The first thing is really about when people, people take a lot of things for granted. One of the goals for this museum, it just shows the people they probably see every day. But just let them, just, wow, okay, that's different from what I thought. I think a lot of people take for granted, but it's really a great invention, a great human contribution to the whole society. I think that one thing is really about that people understand why we got here today. So that's the first thing. The other thing is really about science and technology. When people are talking about science and technology, people often will say, whether we can combine science and technology. But I don't think that's the right way to describe the relationship between science and technology. I would say science and technology, really the two sides of the coin. I really want to see, let people to see two sides instead of mixing together and got one thing. So that's two things that's parallel, just like zero and one. They are two things. When they're put together in a computer, amazing things happen. If you mix the zero and the one, like half something, then it's just not that fun. So I really want to make sure it's the museum of science and art instead of the mixture of science and arts. So that's the one thing. The other thing is really about the inspiration of future. Most of the museum is really about the past, to show how we have in the past, and with less on the inspiration to help people to think about the future. This museum is really, when we think about everything over here, we did talk about the past, but we want to make sure people think about the future. That's the whole idea about the museum. >> And the computer industry is fairly young, if you go back to modern computing. But you kind of have a take here about how technology really is embedded in life. Talk more about that impact 'cause that seems to translate to the conference here at Alibaba, that technology isn't just about the speeds and the feeds, it's about the integration into life. >> Yeah, and I think that from this museum we can see actually I trace back the origin of all the technology. When people are talking about the computer technology, I really want to talk about the computing technology. And then we can trace back, see actually the human is the first signal computing device. Our Mother Nature created for us. If you look at the same things differently, you really can see the origin of that. I think in this museum we talk about two really original things. The first is about the nature origin of the Internet. When talking about Internet, people talk about our current technological infrastructure of Internet. When you look at the human history, how is when people walk, you create an Internet for Earth? You can see a lot of things can trace back. Then, with this kind of trace back, you can help us to think about what's going to happen next. The trace of the original idea is actually very important if you're thinking about technology. >> Talk about the story of Alibaba Cloud. That is not, It's new, Amazon has had it for around, early 2000's. But you guys came right after Amazon, 2009. Still young and growing. How does the Alibaba Cloud take the culture of this inspiration? What are some of the design principles of the Alibaba Cloud? >> Actually I would say the Alibaba Cloud is different from the Amazon Cloud. In the sense we have different vision about the future. Unfortunately though, we are put under the same umbrella called cloud computing by media, I will say that. So we are different, in the sense when the Amazon, actually I show great respect to Amazon. When Amazon started cloud computing, they are really talking about the utility. They're talking about how to cut the cost down. So basically, they start with the low cost of IT infrastructure. That's what I understand. When I started Alibaba Cloud, we know that actually cost is important for sure. But we know that actually the computing part is more important than the cost if you're thinking about the big data era. We started with thinking it's the acentric cloud computing. When you look at our first brochure and we put those words over there. That's almost nine years ago. We called it acentric cloud computing. Instead of the IT-centric cloud computing. This actually, it's not just an idea difference. It's actually, eventually, influenced of the underlying technology infrastructure. Our whole underlying technological infrastructure is designed for the data, instead of just for the IT deployment. >> Jack Ma was talking about this industrial revolution, this digital transformation. What strikes me is you guys have that same art and scientist dynamic, art and science coming together, reminds me of the Steve Jobs technology liberal arts thinking that spawns new creativity. Certainly the iPhone is a great example of that as one of the many things. But now the new generation is coming together. You have a big artist focus here at the event. Music festival, not just technology. How is that part of the focus at the event here? What does that mean for new developers? >> I think it's really the crossing behind that. If you're thinking about technology and now e-commerce, what's really the one thing behind that that's really changed the way of peoples' lives? Computing in that sense, computing is not just technology. It's really something that changes the way of life of every people. I think the e-commerce change the way of life of every people. In that sense, they are the same. If you look at the peoples' lives, they won't just live on technology. They won't just live on the arts. They need a life, love means everything. By nature, we have to make sure as consumers, they need something more than just one thing. I think we are very lucky we understand that. If you're thinking about the young people, I will give you a few numbers about this conference about young people. In China, we have a very specific word talking about the young people a couple of years ago. We call the 'badiho'. It basically means the generation born of the '80s. When people talk about 'jodiho', that basically means people born after '90s. And then people talking about the 'leniho' it's basically people born after 2000. I think that most of the visitors for this conference are 'leniho', 'jodiho', and 'badiho'. These are all young, all young people. >> The digital culture. >> It's a digital culture. I would rather use my own word in the book I would say instead of digital. For me, digital generation is already an old generation I would say. I would like to call this the online generation. They do everything online. Even the last generation do a lot of things digital because digital is everywhere. But I want to emphasize it's an online generation. They do everything online. >> Dr. Wang, talk about data. You mentioned that's the key ingredient, the fuel for innovation. That's impacting the city brain project you guys are doing. Talk about the city brain and the role of data and how that's impacting the societal users out there certainly here in China, the traffic is crowded. This is just an example of what else is out there. >> Okay. City brain actually it's, again it means different things based on the perspective. One thing that's probably important is the data. This is first time actually I think instead of using the big data, it's better to using what I call the data results. It's a better word than big data. I think the one fundamental thinking for the city brain is we find a human army. Humans finally realize actually that data results is the most precious resource for the city, instead of land and water supply. Because we already know that the land is limited. The water supply is limited. This is very important. It doesn't view data as a non-essential thing. It's just a part of your IT system. We finally realize that data is part of the city instead of part of your city IT system. I think it's a leap frog thinking, at least for me. When it got to that, and you realize that today all the existing IT systems cannot actually really embrace the data. IT system is just to support the people doing the work they used to do. And then you realize we need an infrastructure to really make the value from the data. Just like we have water supply for the city, then you can use the reservoir. Otherwise, the reservoir is useless for the city. I think city brain is just like a water supply system for the data. The city eventually can consume that. We start thinking it's a new infrastructure for the city just like water supply system, just like power grid, just like any way system. That's how we're thinking about it. This is the first thing. The reason we got to the traffic system is this is the problem every city has around the world. From my yesterday's presentation, I just joked about we build two roads for the city, which is too many. I was thinking a lot of people realize it. That's why Boston had the project. They want to get all the roads under the surface. Under surface. But it's still a road. It's still expensive. You know how much money they spend just to move all the roads. >> The big dig, I remember, that was the-- >> Yes, that's a big dig. I don't think that's, that's good for the transportation system, but I don't think that's the number one way for the growth of the city. I think probably most of the city don't have the money to do that. What the data city brain wants to do whether we can take the resource of data and we can optimize every aspect of the city so we can use less resource to support city growth. When we start with the traffic, it's just to make sure, you know that when we use the data to optimize the traffic lights, the idea behind that actually we use the data to optimize the time. How to just read the time. It's not just lights. And then if you're thinking, when we show the eventually, if you have enough data, then we can have less roads in the city but still got the same. >> So the Internet of Things is the hottest trend. 0bviously machine learning and artificial intelligence are part of that, and the cloud powers this new edge of the network, and the data has to flow. So the question that a lot of technologists who are architecting these solutions ask is how do you make the data go at a very low latency? That takes compute power. That takes a lot of technology. How does Alibaba Cloud think about the architecture? Obviously you have a strategic partner like Intel, Obviously with a lot of compute power. You got to think differently around making the data move. If it's like water, it needs to flow. So real time is really important, but self-driving cars, real time is down to the millisecond, nanosecond. How do you think about that as a technologist? >> I think the, if you go back to the Internet of things, I think it's still the Internet. I would say eventually, if you're thinking about the word cloud computing and people use edge computing and people talking about Internet of things. For me, it's just the computing of the Internet. Cloud computing is the computing of the Internet and edge computing is computing on the Internet. Even the IoT is the computing of the Internet. If you're talking about the data, I think eventually it's really about the data on the Internet. It's not data on the sensor. It's not data on the cloud. Basically it's data on the Internet. I would expect eventually the Internet infrastructure will be improved significantly. It's not an improved cloud. It's not improved edge computing. Or it's improvement of the IoT. But it's really, >> Together. >> it's together. >> So Intel, I was covering them, Mobile World Congress earlier in the year. And obviously five G. You need the mobile overlay, that's super important. You also have the end-to-end inside the cloud. Obviously Intel is a strategic partner. Can you talk about the relationship you have with Intel? And also your philosophy, technically speaking, with the ecosystem? Because it's not just Intel, it's everybody. There's a lot of people here at this event. American companies as well as international companies who are now going to be part of your ecosystem. >> Actually the, we certainly have a very good relationship with Intel. I think we share in some sense the same vision. I think that the number one thing is really about people learning about how important the computing is. For me, the Intel is not that, a chip selling company. Intel is really the provider of computing power. That's what I understand. And we can expect eventually the whole ecosystem is really about who is going to provide the computing power. Who is going to provide the infrastructure to make the data? Instead of just equipment supply, eventually the need for computing, and the need for data, will be the challenge for every company, including Alibaba Cloud. We are not, we are not immune from these challenges. We will feel the same challenge. What we want to do is really make sure that with all these partners, provide enough computing for the next 10 or 20 years. We want to make sure that there's enough data flow for the next 10 years. In that sense, it's not the traditional ecosystem as like you do this and you do that. It's basically how we can work together to really make sure we have the challenge for the data and computing in the next 10 years. >> Yesterday we covered the news that you guys announced 15, building and R&D over the next three years, which is a lot of money. Also it has a very international and global view. Academics with younger folks. Alibaba Cloud is going to be a part of that, I'm assuming. I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see that intersecting. But the question for you is the cloud world today is moving at very, very fast speed. We're seeing Amazon, for instance, has been the best in terms of new announcements every year. Not one or two, like a ton of announcements, a lot. How are you guys going to continue to keep the pace? To move faster because the city brain is a great project, but it's going to have more evolution. It's going to move fast. How are you guys keeping up with the pace? >> I think the only way, that's not just for the next 10 years. Actually when I started Alibaba Cloud, we take the same philosophy. Actually the user moves very fast than us. If you look at the users in China they move very fast probably than anywhere else around the world. If you use the city brain project, I would say city brain project is basically tell the people, we need the computing power more than any other task. You really can see that. People want you. If you can't satisfy their demand, then somebody else is going to do that. It's not something we want to move fast but >> You have to move fast. >> You have to move fast. That's why the China is special. I want to say China is not just a place for the market. China is the place that pushes you to move faster. That's more important than market size. >> You mentioned data technology and information technology kind of transferring to a new world. Software is also a big part of it. Software you have to compute, obviously with Intel and the relationships you have. But software is growing exponentially. Certainly in open source, we see Cloud Native Foundation here. They'll probably have Linux foundation. Open source is going to grow exponentially. Most of the code will be shipping. But you have more data growing exponentially. Software is eating the world, but data is eating software. That means data is greater than software. If you look at it that way, that's super important. As the new architects, you and I were just talking about how we've in the industry for a while. You certainly have an amazing career from Microsoft now at Alibaba. A new generation of architects and developers are going to create new innovations around this dynamic of data. What's your advice and how do you view that if you are 21 years old again right now and you were going to jump into studies and academic and or field. It's a whole new world. >> I think there's probably two suggestions. Not necessarily for the young generation, but I would say it's just a suggestion for the young generation to push that habit. The first thing you mentioned about the data eats software. Well, I would put it in a different perspective. I would say for the last generation, the last two or three generations, I would say the computer era, we are really talking about the computer software. That's pretty much in everything. For this generation, I would say we are talking about computing plus the data. That box is not important, but the computing power is more important. For the computing era, the box is important. >> There's no box. It's the world, it's the cloud. >> That's one thing. The implication for this, I want the young generation to push is, then we need the new infrastructure. Thinking about the build as a great vision, got to have the computer in every home. That's infrastructure. Today when you are in the computing process data era, the infrastructure is not there. I think the vision for the Alibaba Cloud is make sure that we have this infrastructure for the next 10 or 20 years so the young generation can take advantage of that and to do that innovation and inventions, just like computing in every home. >> That's very important. I think that also speaks to businesses, how enterprises, I remember my first start up, I had to buy all this equipment and put it into the telephone closet. Now, start ups and small businesses don't need IT departments. This has been a big growth area certainly for Alibaba Cloud. But now all businesses might have a small closet, not a big data center. This is going to change the nature of business. So work and play are coming together. This speaks to the Museum of Inspiration theme here where you can have work and play kind of integrate but yet still be separate in that analog digital world. What's your vision on this new dimension of everything doesn't have to be just digital? You can have an analog life and mix it with digital. >> Actually I was always sad. It's not, the world never has just one side. It always has two sides. The difference is which side is important at a particular time. Just like when people talk about digital and analog, the analog will exist forever. It's hard for you to kill. The question is whether you can find the most beauty from the digital at the same time you can most beautiful part of the analog. I would say that the people, just like when talking about software, people still loved the hardware. And people still loved the touch. The digital has to make sure it looks good. Will it work versus it looks good? I would say we want to make sure people live in a world with two sides, instead of just giving them one side of the world. >> You mentioned people still love hardware. I always say, a car drives but there's still an engine, and people like to understand the engine. There's a maker culture in the United States that's been growing over the past two decades. And now even more accelerated is the maker culture because of the edge and how technology has become part of the fabric of life. How do you see that maker culture being enabled by more cloud services? Because anyone can make a skateboard or motorcycle or a computer or a device now. Powering that with the cloud is an opportunity. How do you view that? >> I would say that eventually, if we have the broad definition of a cloud, I would say eventually, everything the maker makes will be part of the cloud. When talking about clouds, we're really talking about Internet, so every hardware, every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. I would say, if you look at the evolution of the Internet, Internet, it's just a backbone at the very beginning. Actually the first revolution the Internet made is really to make sure that every piece of software is a part of Internet. That's how we got the world wide web. I would say when talking about the maker culture, I would say eventually that every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. So Internet won't be complete without the hardware. In that sense, the cloud is a really essential part of that. >> There's some really interesting things happening here in China that I'm excited about. One of them is the nature of the user base and how close you guys are to that. In the US a similar scale but it's kind of spread over a bunch of other cloud providers. But the interesting phenomenon as data grows exponentially, as software grows exponentially in open source, things are becoming more decentralized. Without talking about the whole initial coin offerings, I know China has banned it and Russia's going to ban it. Other countries are putting a clamp down on crypto currency. Putting that aside, there's still blockchain as a potential disruptive enabler. You're seeing decentralization becoming a new architecture dynamic because you have to support the growth of these devices at the edge. Distributive computing has been around for a while, but now a decentralized architecture dynamic exists. How do you steer that technology direction? >> You have to separate from the the distributive architecture versus its physical location. I would say I like the blockchain idea very much. I think eventually it would be part of the Internet. It's not just something that sits on top of the Internet. It would be very fundamental, just like TCP and IP. This is low level, so this would be part of the Internet instead of standing on top of the Internet. Eventually, in that sense, Internet would be very distributed. By thinking that it's nothing, there's no decentralization exists. You still need, even though physically, it's in one place. >> It's almost decentralized, not 100 percent. >> Yeah, yeah. Obviously this would be different. Without Internet, without new software, that basically, just like PC. PC is really in a single box, and we use all software in a box. We distribute architecture. We could have decentralized, but everything actually is distributed. You still cannot trace that. You put like a meeting. A service in a data center. It's actually distributed over this one meeting service. In that sense, it's completely distributed. >> That server list too is a big trend where if you talk about the edge of the network, you got to move compute to the data sometimes. Or have compute on the edge. So this is going to be continued growth, you see that as well right? >> Yes, but I still think, if you use Silicon as a measure for this computing power, I would say if you can see there's more silicon on the edge, but I would say when we put one silicon on the edge, you probably have to put 100 silicons on the cloud. It's still kind of-- >> It's a relationship. >> It's a relationship, just like our body is very important but the brain consumes the most oxygen. >> It's important what's in the cloud then. You got to have the computing, have those ratios. It depends on the architecture. >> Yes, yes. >> Final question for you is as the folks in Silicon Valley, where we're based, and Palo Alto want to know is Alibaba, what it means to them? If you have a chance to say a few things about what Alibaba Cloud is to America, what would you like to say? >> I would say that actually they would just put the cloud computing aside. Just look at what it really means behind that. I think the cloud, we do have an understanding of what the cloud computing really means. At the very beginning actually, I wouldn't call the company a cloud computing company. I would call it a general computing company. It's really a fraction of what's thinking in China. Again, my comment is not just to view China as the market to sell your product. To view China as the place to inspire having a new product. >> And it's a global world now, the world is flat. >> Yes, just like United States, it's not, it's a place inspired. All the people around the world together to have a new idea. I think the people in China just love new things. They love to try new things. It really can shoot your size of your innovation. >> And it's a global collaboration, it's interesting. That phenomenon is going to continue. You've done amazing work here. Congratulations on the Museum of Inspiration and the projects you're working on. Personal question for you. What are you excited about now? We kind of joke about how old we are now, but the young people certainly have a great future ahead of them. But you have a lot of experience and you're steering Alibaba's technology committee across the group as well as being the founder of the cloud. What are you excited about right now, technically speaking? What's the big, or just impact? What's the big wave that you like? >> I think it's very exciting in a couple of things, three things I would say. The first is really about just look at technology itself. Just like when I described my book, it's really, really exciting in your life if you can see the Internet plus the computing and plus data, cause they're together. Just like you have this engine, you have the airplane, a couple of things, they're together wherever. This is a very, very exciting era. This is not just about a technology era. It's an era that all things happen at the same time, so that's very exciting. That's one thing. The second thing as you read about the city around over here, I think the the Alibaba the Hanzo, it's just a very special for Alibaba, but I think it's special for the other company as well. So this place is very special. Just to give you an idea where you are, this area has the most networked river in the past. If you look at the map, it's like Internet. I would say, all the people over here, just their mindset. It's just on an Internet mindset. Even goes back 100, 200 years ago because the river is the only way for them to travel, for the communications-- >> That's the data back then. >> That's exactly my point, see. If you look at the map, so this is very exciting. The other thing about that the Alibaba, for me, the Alibaba you know Alibaba, we have a very broad opinions. You can feel that. From a technology point of view, that basically means it's the place you can touch every aspect of technology. You have a very slight, very-- >> You have a great surface area aperture to look at impact of life. >> So you think about these three things together. It's hard to say the, you better get excited. >> It's a great time to be in technology, isn't it? Entertainment, e-commerce, web services. >> For me, when I work on the city brain project, it's just the beginning of machine learning. A lot of people, they are fighting for like, when people talk about speech recognition, they are fighting for the last one meter for the speech recognition. But if you're talking about city brain, it's the world. The most big AI project. And it's just the beginning. We just start with the one percent. >> It must be a lot of fun. You got a lot of data to work with. You have real life integration. It's super exciting. When are we going to see you in Silicon Valley? >> I appear regularly to Silicon Valley two or three times every year. We'll probably see sometime early next year. >> Thank you very much for the time, appreciate it. >> Thank you for coming to the conference and coming to the museum. >> Thank you very much for your inspiration. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.

>> SiliconANGLE Media presents ... theCUBE! Covering AlibabaCloud's annual conference. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier... >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE, Wikibon, and theCUBE. We are here for an exclusive Cube conversations at the Alibaba Cloud conference here in Hangzhou, China. We're here with Dr. Wang, who's the chairman of the Alibaba Group Technology Committee as well as the founder of Alibaba Cloud, here in the new Museum of Inspiration at the event. Thanks for spending the time with me. >> Thank you for coming. >> So before we talk about Alibaba Cloud and all the goodness going on here at the conference, talk about this Museum of Inspiration. It is new, and it has kind of a display theme. You kind of walk through time. What was the motivation and the inspiration for the museum? >> Yeah, I think the keyword for the museum, inspiration, is really the inspiration that started the museum. I would say that there's two, really the artists thinking about that. The first thing is really about when people, people take a lot of things for granted. One of the goals for this museum, it just shows the people they probably see every day. But just let them, just, wow, okay, that's different from what I thought. I think a lot of people take for granted, but it's really a great invention, a great human contribution to the whole society. I think that one thing is really about that people understand why we got here today. So that's the first thing. The other thing is really about science and technology. When people are talking about science and technology, people often will say, whether we can combine science and technology. But I don't think that's the right way to describe the relationship between science and technology. I would say science and technology, really the two sides of the coin. I really want to see, let people to see two sides instead of mixing together and got one thing. So that's two things that's parallel, just like zero and one. They are two things. When they're put together in a computer, amazing things happen. If you mix the zero and the one, like half something, then it's just not that fun. So I really want to make sure it's the museum of science and art instead of the mixture of science and arts. So that's the one thing. The other thing is really about the inspiration of future. Most of the museum is really about the past, to show how we have in the past, and with less on the inspiration to help people to think about the future. This museum is really, when we think about everything over here, we did talk about the past, but we want to make sure people think about the future. That's the whole idea about the museum. >> And the computer industry is fairly young, if you go back to modern computing. But you kind of have a take here about how technology really is embedded in life. Talk more about that impact 'cause that seems to translate to the conference here at Alibaba, that technology isn't just about the speeds and the feeds, it's about the integration into life. >> Yeah, and I think that from this museum we can see actually I trace back the origin of all the technology. When people are talking about the computer technology, I really want to talk about the computing technology. And then we can trace back, see actually the human is the first signal computing device. Our Mother Nature created for us. If you look at the same things differently, you really can see the origin of that. I think in this museum we talk about two really original things. The first is about the nature origin of the Internet. When talking about Internet, people talk about our current technological infrastructure of Internet. When you look at the human history, how is when people walk, you create an Internet for Earth? You can see a lot of things can trace back. Then, with this kind of trace back, you can help us to think about what's going to happen next. The trace of the original idea is actually very important if you're thinking about technology. >> Talk about the story of Alibaba Cloud. That is not, It's new, Amazon has had it for around, early 2000's. But you guys came right after Amazon, 2009. Still young and growing. How does the Alibaba Cloud take the culture of this inspiration? What are some of the design principles of the Alibaba Cloud? >> Actually I would say the Alibaba Cloud is different from the Amazon Cloud. In the sense we have different vision about the future. Unfortunately though, we are put under the same umbrella called cloud computing by media, I will say that. So we are different, in the sense when the Amazon, actually I show great respect to Amazon. When Amazon started cloud computing, they are really talking about the utility. They're talking about how to cut the cost down. So basically, they start with the low cost of IT infrastructure. That's what I understand. When I started Alibaba Cloud, we know that actually cost is important for sure. But we know that actually the computing part is more important than the cost if you're thinking about the big data era. We started with thinking it's the acentric cloud computing. When you look at our first brochure and we put those words over there. That's almost nine years ago. We called it acentric cloud computing. Instead of the IT-centric cloud computing. This actually, it's not just an idea difference. It's actually, eventually, influenced of the underlying technology infrastructure. Our whole underlying technological infrastructure is designed for the data, instead of just for the IT deployment. >> Jack Ma was talking about this industrial revolution, this digital transformation. What strikes me is you guys have that same art and scientist dynamic, art and science coming together, reminds me of the Steve Jobs technology liberal arts thinking that spawns new creativity. Certainly the iPhone is a great example of that as one of the many things. But now the new generation is coming together. You have a big artist focus here at the event. Music festival, not just technology. How is that part of the focus at the event here? What does that mean for new developers? >> I think it's really the crossing behind that. If you're thinking about technology and now e-commerce, what's really the one thing behind that that's really changed the way of peoples' lives? Computing in that sense, computing is not just technology. It's really something that changes the way of life of every people. I think the e-commerce change the way of life of every people. In that sense, they are the same. If you look at the peoples' lives, they won't just live on technology. They won't just live on the arts. They need a life, love means everything. By nature, we have to make sure as consumers, they need something more than just one thing. I think we are very lucky we understand that. If you're thinking about the young people, I will give you a few numbers about this conference about young people. In China, we have a very specific word talking about the young people a couple of years ago. We call the 'badiho'. It basically means the generation born of the '80s. When people talk about 'jodiho', that basically means people born after '90s. And then people talking about the 'leniho' it's basically people born after 2000. I think that most of the visitors for this conference are 'leniho', 'jodiho', and 'badiho'. These are all young, all young people. >> The digital culture. >> It's a digital culture. I would rather use my own word in the book I would say instead of digital. For me, digital generation is already an old generation I would say. I would like to call this the online generation. They do everything online. Even the last generation do a lot of things digital because digital is everywhere. But I want to emphasize it's an online generation. They do everything online. >> Dr. Wang, talk about data. You mentioned that's the key ingredient, the fuel for innovation. That's impacting the city brain project you guys are doing. Talk about the city brain and the role of data and how that's impacting the societal users out there certainly here in China, the traffic is crowded. This is just an example of what else is out there. >> Okay. City brain actually it's, again it means different things based on the perspective. One thing that's probably important is the data. This is first time actually I think instead of using the big data, it's better to using what I call the data results. It's a better word than big data. I think the one fundamental thinking for the city brain is we find a human army. Humans finally realize actually that data results is the most precious resource for the city, instead of land and water supply. Because we already know that the land is limited. The water supply is limited. This is very important. It doesn't view data as a non-essential thing. It's just a part of your IT system. We finally realize that data is part of the city instead of part of your city IT system. I think it's a leap frog thinking, at least for me. When it got to that, and you realize that today all the existing IT systems cannot actually really embrace the data. IT system is just to support the people doing the work they used to do. And then you realize we need an infrastructure to really make the value from the data. Just like we have water supply for the city, then you can use the reservoir. Otherwise, the reservoir is useless for the city. I think city brain is just like a water supply system for the data. The city eventually can consume that. We start thinking it's a new infrastructure for the city just like water supply system, just like power grid, just like any way system. That's how we're thinking about it. This is the first thing. The reason we got to the traffic system is this is the problem every city has around the world. From my yesterday's presentation, I just joked about we build two roads for the city, which is too many. I was thinking a lot of people realize it. That's why Boston had the project. They want to get all the roads under the surface. Under surface. But it's still a road. It's still expensive. You know how much money they spend just to move all the roads. >> The big dig, I remember, that was the-- >> Yes, that's a big dig. I don't think that's, that's good for the transportation system, but I don't think that's the number one way for the growth of the city. I think probably most of the city don't have the money to do that. What the data city brain wants to do whether we can take the resource of data and we can optimize every aspect of the city so we can use less resource to support city growth. When we start with the traffic, it's just to make sure, you know that when we use the data to optimize the traffic lights, the idea behind that actually we use the data to optimize the time. How to just read the time. It's not just lights. And then if you're thinking, when we show the eventually, if you have enough data, then we can have less roads in the city but still got the same. >> So the Internet of Things is the hottest trend. 0bviously machine learning and artificial intelligence are part of that, and the cloud powers this new edge of the network, and the data has to flow. So the question that a lot of technologists who are architecting these solutions ask is how do you make the data go at a very low latency? That takes compute power. That takes a lot of technology. How does Alibaba Cloud think about the architecture? Obviously you have a strategic partner like Intel, Obviously with a lot of compute power. You got to think differently around making the data move. If it's like water, it needs to flow. So real time is really important, but self-driving cars, real time is down to the millisecond, nanosecond. How do you think about that as a technologist? >> I think the, if you go back to the Internet of things, I think it's still the Internet. I would say eventually, if you're thinking about the word cloud computing and people use edge computing and people talking about Internet of things. For me, it's just the computing of the Internet. Cloud computing is the computing of the Internet and edge computing is computing on the Internet. Even the IoT is the computing of the Internet. If you're talking about the data, I think eventually it's really about the data on the Internet. It's not data on the sensor. It's not data on the cloud. Basically it's data on the Internet. I would expect eventually the Internet infrastructure will be improved significantly. It's not an improved cloud. It's not improved edge computing. Or it's improvement of the IoT. But it's really, >> Together. >> it's together. >> So Intel, I was covering them, Mobile World Congress earlier in the year. And obviously five G. You need the mobile overlay, that's super important. You also have the end-to-end inside the cloud. Obviously Intel is a strategic partner. Can you talk about the relationship you have with Intel? And also your philosophy, technically speaking, with the ecosystem? Because it's not just Intel, it's everybody. There's a lot of people here at this event. American companies as well as international companies who are now going to be part of your ecosystem. >> Actually the, we certainly have a very good relationship with Intel. I think we share in some sense the same vision. I think that the number one thing is really about people learning about how important the computing is. For me, the Intel is not that, a chip selling company. Intel is really the provider of computing power. That's what I understand. And we can expect eventually the whole ecosystem is really about who is going to provide the computing power. Who is going to provide the infrastructure to make the data? Instead of just equipment supply, eventually the need for computing, and the need for data, will be the challenge for every company, including Alibaba Cloud. We are not, we are not immune from these challenges. We will feel the same challenge. What we want to do is really make sure that with all these partners, provide enough computing for the next 10 or 20 years. We want to make sure that there's enough data flow for the next 10 years. In that sense, it's not the traditional ecosystem as like you do this and you do that. It's basically how we can work together to really make sure we have the challenge for the data and computing in the next 10 years. >> Yesterday we covered the news that you guys announced 15, building and R&D over the next three years, which is a lot of money. Also it has a very international and global view. Academics with younger folks. Alibaba Cloud is going to be a part of that, I'm assuming. I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see that intersecting. But the question for you is the cloud world today is moving at very, very fast speed. We're seeing Amazon, for instance, has been the best in terms of new announcements every year. Not one or two, like a ton of announcements, a lot. How are you guys going to continue to keep the pace? To move faster because the city brain is a great project, but it's going to have more evolution. It's going to move fast. How are you guys keeping up with the pace? >> I think the only way, that's not just for the next 10 years. Actually when I started Alibaba Cloud, we take the same philosophy. Actually the user moves very fast than us. If you look at the users in China they move very fast probably than anywhere else around the world. If you use the city brain project, I would say city brain project is basically tell the people, we need the computing power more than any other task. You really can see that. People want you. If you can't satisfy their demand, then somebody else is going to do that. It's not something we want to move fast but >> You have to move fast. >> You have to move fast. That's why the China is special. I want to say China is not just a place for the market. China is the place that pushes you to move faster. That's more important than market size. >> You mentioned data technology and information technology kind of transferring to a new world. Software is also a big part of it. Software you have to compute, obviously with Intel and the relationships you have. But software is growing exponentially. Certainly in open source, we see Cloud Native Foundation here. They'll probably have Linux foundation. Open source is going to grow exponentially. Most of the code will be shipping. But you have more data growing exponentially. Software is eating the world, but data is eating software. That means data is greater than software. If you look at it that way, that's super important. As the new architects, you and I were just talking about how we've in the industry for a while. You certainly have an amazing career from Microsoft now at Alibaba. A new generation of architects and developers are going to create new innovations around this dynamic of data. What's your advice and how do you view that if you are 21 years old again right now and you were going to jump into studies and academic and or field. It's a whole new world. >> I think there's probably two suggestions. Not necessarily for the young generation, but I would say it's just a suggestion for the young generation to push that habit. The first thing you mentioned about the data eats software. Well, I would put it in a different perspective. I would say for the last generation, the last two or three generations, I would say the computer era, we are really talking about the computer software. That's pretty much in everything. For this generation, I would say we are talking about computing plus the data. That box is not important, but the computing power is more important. For the computing era, the box is important. >> There's no box. It's the world, it's the cloud. >> That's one thing. The implication for this, I want the young generation to push is, then we need the new infrastructure. Thinking about the build as a great vision, got to have the computer in every home. That's infrastructure. Today when you are in the computing process data era, the infrastructure is not there. I think the vision for the Alibaba Cloud is make sure that we have this infrastructure for the next 10 or 20 years so the young generation can take advantage of that and to do that innovation and inventions, just like computing in every home. >> That's very important. I think that also speaks to businesses, how enterprises, I remember my first start up, I had to buy all this equipment and put it into the telephone closet. Now, start ups and small businesses don't need IT departments. This has been a big growth area certainly for Alibaba Cloud. But now all businesses might have a small closet, not a big data center. This is going to change the nature of business. So work and play are coming together. This speaks to the Museum of Inspiration theme here where you can have work and play kind of integrate but yet still be separate in that analog digital world. What's your vision on this new dimension of everything doesn't have to be just digital? You can have an analog life and mix it with digital. >> Actually I was always sad. It's not, the world never has just one side. It always has two sides. The difference is which side is important at a particular time. Just like when people talk about digital and analog, the analog will exist forever. It's hard for you to kill. The question is whether you can find the most beauty from the digital at the same time you can most beautiful part of the analog. I would say that the people, just like when talking about software, people still loved the hardware. And people still loved the touch. The digital has to make sure it looks good. Will it work versus it looks good? I would say we want to make sure people live in a world with two sides, instead of just giving them one side of the world. >> You mentioned people still love hardware. I always say, a car drives but there's still an engine, and people like to understand the engine. There's a maker culture in the United States that's been growing over the past two decades. And now even more accelerated is the maker culture because of the edge and how technology has become part of the fabric of life. How do you see that maker culture being enabled by more cloud services? Because anyone can make a skateboard or motorcycle or a computer or a device now. Powering that with the cloud is an opportunity. How do you view that? >> I would say that eventually, if we have the broad definition of a cloud, I would say eventually, everything the maker makes will be part of the cloud. When talking about clouds, we're really talking about Internet, so every hardware, every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. I would say, if you look at the evolution of the Internet, Internet, it's just a backbone at the very beginning. Actually the first revolution the Internet made is really to make sure that every piece of software is a part of Internet. That's how we got the world wide web. I would say when talking about the maker culture, I would say eventually that every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. So Internet won't be complete without the hardware. In that sense, the cloud is a really essential part of that. >> There's some really interesting things happening here in China that I'm excited about. One of them is the nature of the user base and how close you guys are to that. In the US a similar scale but it's kind of spread over a bunch of other cloud providers. But the interesting phenomenon as data grows exponentially, as software grows exponentially in open source, things are becoming more decentralized. Without talking about the whole initial coin offerings, I know China has banned it and Russia's going to ban it. Other countries are putting a clamp down on crypto currency. Putting that aside, there's still blockchain as a potential disruptive enabler. You're seeing decentralization becoming a new architecture dynamic because you have to support the growth of these devices at the edge. Distributive computing has been around for a while, but now a decentralized architecture dynamic exists. How do you steer that technology direction? >> You have to separate from the the distributive architecture versus its physical location. I would say I like the blockchain idea very much. I think eventually it would be part of the Internet. It's not just something that sits on top of the Internet. It would be very fundamental, just like TCP and IP. This is low level, so this would be part of the Internet instead of standing on top of the Internet. Eventually, in that sense, Internet would be very distributed. By thinking that it's nothing, there's no decentralization exists. You still need, even though physically, it's in one place. >> It's almost decentralized, not 100 percent. >> Yeah, yeah. Obviously this would be different. Without Internet, without new software, that basically, just like PC. PC is really in a single box, and we use all software in a box. We distribute architecture. We could have decentralized, but everything actually is distributed. You still cannot trace that. You put like a meeting. A service in a data center. It's actually distributed over this one meeting service. In that sense, it's completely distributed. >> That server list too is a big trend where if you talk about the edge of the network, you got to move compute to the data sometimes. Or have compute on the edge. So this is going to be continued growth, you see that as well right? >> Yes, but I still think, if you use Silicon as a measure for this computing power, I would say if you can see there's more silicon on the edge, but I would say when we put one silicon on the edge, you probably have to put 100 silicons on the cloud. It's still kind of-- >> It's a relationship. >> It's a relationship, just like our body is very important but the brain consumes the most oxygen. >> It's important what's in the cloud then. You got to have the computing, have those ratios. It depends on the architecture. >> Yes, yes. >> Final question for you is as the folks in Silicon Valley, where we're based, and Palo Alto want to know is Alibaba, what it means to them? If you have a chance to say a few things about what Alibaba Cloud is to America, what would you like to say? >> I would say that actually they would just put the cloud computing aside. Just look at what it really means behind that. I think the cloud, we do have an understanding of what the cloud computing really means. At the very beginning actually, I wouldn't call the company a cloud computing company. I would call it a general computing company. It's really a fraction of what's thinking in China. Again, my comment is not just to view China as the market to sell your product. To view China as the place to inspire having a new product. >> And it's a global world now, the world is flat. >> Yes, just like United States, it's not, it's a place inspired. All the people around the world together to have a new idea. I think the people in China just love new things. They love to try new things. It really can shoot your size of your innovation. >> And it's a global collaboration, it's interesting. That phenomenon is going to continue. You've done amazing work here. Congratulations on the Museum of Inspiration and the projects you're working on. Personal question for you. What are you excited about now? We kind of joke about how old we are now, but the young people certainly have a great future ahead of them. But you have a lot of experience and you're steering Alibaba's technology committee across the group as well as being the founder of the cloud. What are you excited about right now, technically speaking? What's the big, or just impact? What's the big wave that you like? >> I think it's very exciting in a couple of things, three things I would say. The first is really about just look at technology itself. Just like when I described my book, it's really, really exciting in your life if you can see the Internet plus the computing and plus data, cause they're together. Just like you have this engine, you have the airplane, a couple of things, they're together wherever. This is a very, very exciting era. This is not just about a technology era. It's an era that all things happen at the same time, so that's very exciting. That's one thing. The second thing as you read about the city around over here, I think the the Alibaba the Hanzo, it's just a very special for Alibaba, but I think it's special for the other company as well. So this place is very special. Just to give you an idea where you are, this area has the most networked river in the past. If you look at the map, it's like Internet. I would say, all the people over here, just their mindset. It's just on an Internet mindset. Even goes back 100, 200 years ago because the river is the only way for them to travel, for the communications-- >> That's the data back then. >> That's exactly my point, see. If you look at the map, so this is very exciting. The other thing about that the Alibaba, for me, the Alibaba you know Alibaba, we have a very broad opinions. You can feel that. From a technology point of view, that basically means it's the place you can touch every aspect of technology. You have a very slight, very-- >> You have a great surface area aperture to look at impact of life. >> So you think about these three things together. It's hard to say the, you better get excited. >> It's a great time to be in technology, isn't it? Entertainment, e-commerce, web services. >> For me, when I work on the city brain project, it's just the beginning of machine learning. A lot of people, they are fighting for like, when people talk about speech recognition, they are fighting for the last one meter for the speech recognition. But if you're talking about city brain, it's the world. The most big AI project. And it's just the beginning. We just start with the one percent. >> It must be a lot of fun. You got a lot of data to work with. You have real life integration. It's super exciting. When are we going to see you in Silicon Valley? >> I appear regularly to Silicon Valley two or three times every year. We'll probably see sometime early next year. >> Thank you very much for the time, appreciate it. >> Thank you for coming to the conference and coming to the museum. >> Thank you very much for your inspiration. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.