>> Voiceover: Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. Live here in San Francisco, this is The Cube's exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference, SDC 2017. I'm John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, and co-host of The Cube. My next guest is Dominic Venuto, who is the General Manager of the consumer division of The Weather Channel, and Watson Advertising, which is part of The Weather Company. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you for having me. >> Finally, I got the consumer guy on. I've interviewed The Weather Company folks from the IBM side, two different brands. One's the data, big data science operation going on, the whole Weather Company. But Weather Channel, the consumer stuff, Weather Underground, that's your product. >> Yes, you saved the best for last. We touch the consumer. >> So, weather content is good. So obviously, the hurricanes have been in the news over the years. Out here in California, the fires. People are interested in whether the impact, it used to be a unique thing on cable, go to the Weather Channel, check the forecast, read the paper. Now with online apps, weather is constantly a utility for users. So it's not a long-tail editorial product. It's pretty fundamental. >> Yeah, we want to be where our consumers are. Fundamentally we want to help people make better decisions and propel the world. And since weather touches everything, we need to be where the consumers are. So now, with all the digital touchpoints, whether that's your phone, or its a watch, your television, desktop if you still have one and you're still using it, as some of us do. We want to be there, for that very reason. And in fact, what we're aiming for, is to move from a utility, because if we are going to help people make better decisions, a utility only goes so far, would be a platform to anticipate behavior and drive decisions. >> So tell me about the Weather Underground and the weather.com consumer product. They're all one in the same now? Obviously one was very successful, with user generated content. This is not going away. Explain the product side of The Weather Channel consumer division. >> Yeah, so we have two brands in our portfolio, Weather Underground, which is more of a challenger brand. It's very data rich, and visualizes data in a number of different ways, that a certain user group really loves. So if you're a weather geek, as we call them, an avid aficionado of weather, and you really want to really get in there and understand what's happening, and look at the data, then Weather Underground is a platform. >> So for users to tie into, to put up weather stations, and other things that might be relevant. >> Exactly so, we started out in 2001, originally the first IOT implementation at the consumer level, connected devices. Where you could connect a personal weather station, put one in your back yard, and connect it to our platform, and feed hyper-local data into our network. And then we feed that into our forecast, to improve that, and actually validate whether the forecast is right or not, based on what people have at home. And we've hit a recent milestone. We've got over 250,000 personal weather stations connected to the network, which we are super thrilled about. And now, what we are doing is, we are extending that network to other connected devices, and air quality is a big topic right now, in other parts of the world, especially in Asia, where air quality is not always where it should be, that's a big thing we think we can... >> That's a big innovation opportunity for you, I mean, you point out the underground product was part of maker-culture, people do-it-yourself weather stations, evolve now into really strong products. That same dynamic could be used for air control, not just micro-climates. >> Exactly, yeah. >> In California, we had a problem this week. >> Exactly, California is a good example, really topical, where cities may have had great air quality, and all of the sudden the environment changes, and you want to know, what is it like? What is the breathing quality like outside right now? And you can come to our network and see that. And we're growing the air quality sensors every month, it's only been up a few months right now, so that's expanding quite well. >> So for the folks that don't know, The Weather Channel back end, has a huge data-driven product. I don't want to get into that piece, because we've talked about it. Go to youtube.com/siliconangle, search Weather Company. You'll see all our great videos from the IBM events, that are out, if you want the detail. But I do want to ask you, what's really happening with you guys, there's two things. One is, it's an app and content for devices, like Samsung is using. And two, essentially you're an IOT network. Sensors are sensors, whether they're user-generated, or user-populated, you guys are deploying a serious IOT capability. >> Absolutely, it's one of the reasons that IBM acquired The Weather Company, which houses the brands of Weather Underground and The Weather Channel, is that we have this fantastic infrastructure, this IOT infrastructure, ingesting large amounts of data, processing it, and then serving it back out to consumers at scale globally. >> What are you guys doing there with Samsung? Anything just particular in the IOT side, or? >> We've got a couple of initiatives going on with Samsung, a few I can't mention right now, but stay tuned. Some really cool things in the connect-at-home, that we're excited about, that builds on some of the work... >> Nest competitor? >> Not exactly a Nest competitor. Think more kitchen. >> Kitchen, okay. >> Think more kitchen. >> We had the goods, cooking in the kitchen, from our previous guest. So the question is, IOT personal, I get that. What else is going on with IOT, with you guys, that you can share? Lifestyle, in the home is great, but... >> So again, going back to how do we help people make better decisions, now that we are collecting data from not just personal weather stations, but air quality monitors, we are collecting it from cars, we are collecting it from the cell phone. We are really able to ingest data at scale, and when you're doing that, we've got hundreds of thousands of data sets that we are feeding into our models, when you do that, we've solved the computing challenge, now we are applying machine-learning and artificial intelligence to process this and extract insights. To validate data sets, in our forecast, and then deliver that back to the end user. >> One of the tech geek themes we talk about all of the time is policy-based something. Programming, setting the policy. So, connecting the dots from what you're saying is, I'm driving my car, and I want to know if it's hot, or the road temperature. I might want to know if I'm running too fast, and my sensor device on me wants to impact the weather, for comfortable breathing for me, for instance. The lifestyle impacts, the content of data, is not just watching a video on The Weather Channel. >> No, it's not. >> So this is a new user experience. It's immersive, it's lifestyle-oriented, it's relevant. What are some of the products you're doing with Samsung, that can enable this new user expectation? >> One of the products that we have right now, we we're one of the initial partners for the Made for Samsung program, is, we've got calendar integration in our app. So now we know, if you've got a meeting coming up, and you need to travel to get there, maybe there's a car trip involved, we know, obviously, the forecast. We know what traffic might be, and we can give you heads up, an alert, that says, hey you might want to leave 15 minutes early for that meeting coming up. That's in the Samsung product right now, which is really, again, helping people make better decisions. So we've got a lot of examples like that. But again, the calendar integration in the Made for Samsung app is really exciting. We recently announced, in fact I think it was this morning, we announced integration with Trip Advisor. So similarly, if we see time on your calendar, and the weather is fine for the weekend, we might suggest outdoor activities for you to go and explore, using Trip Advisor's almost one-billion library of events that they have. >> What's the coolest thing you guys are working on right now? >> Oh, that's a very long list. I say that I'm probably the luckiest guy in IBM right now, because I get to work with millions of consumers, we reach 250 million consumers a month, and I'm also bringing Watson to consumers, and artificial intelligence, which is a unique challenge to solve. Introducing consumers to a new paradigm of user interaction and abilities. So, I think the most exciting thing is taking artificial intelligence and machine-learning, and bringing that to consumers at scale, and solving some of the challenges there. >> Well contratulations. I'm a big fan of IBM, what they're doing with weather data, The Weather Company, The Weather Channel. Bringing that data and immersing it into these new networks that are being created, new capabilities, really helps the consumer, so. Hope to see you at the Think conference coming up next year. >> Yes, we are excited about that, and stay tuned, we may have some more exciting stuff to unveil. >> Make sure our writers get ahold of it, break the stories. It's The Cube, bringing you the data. The weather's fine in San Francisco today. I'm John Farrier with The Cube. More live from San Francisco, from the SDC Samsung Developer Conference, after this short break. (electronic music)