Good evening everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you to tonight's event, heading to the point, A Journey Through History, Exploding the Black Urban Experience in Pittsburgh. I'm Keith Webster, the Helen and Henry Posner Jr. Dean of University Libraries. Here at the libraries, we are committed to recognizing the importance of representation and diversity. We have a number of initiatives centered around growing diversity throughout the campus community. One of them is this annual event, which we are pleased to present for the third year. I'm grateful to those at the libraries who've been working hard to prioritize this important work. Tonight, I especially acknowledge Sonya Wellington, our events manager, looked after all of the logistics for this evening's event, as well as the many others who contributed. It's now my pleasure to introduce you to this evening's host, Dr. Wanda Heading-Grant. Dr. Heading-Grant is Carnegie Mellon's inaugural Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. She also holds a faculty appointment as Distinguished Service Professor in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Throughout her 30-year career in higher education, Dr. Heading-Grant has established programs, policies and practices fundamental to the advancement of inclusive excellence. This year, CMU received its first-ever insight into diversity, Higher Education Excellence in Diversity, also known as the HEAD Award, which annually recognizes colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion. This is a testament to her leadership and the progress she and her team have moved forward in just a few short years. Joining Wanda this evening in conversation is esteemed scholar, Dr. Joe William Trotter-June, the Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice. Professor Trotter is a former Chair of the History Department at CMU, and is also the Director and Founder of Carnegie Mellon's Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy, CAUSE. He is also President-elect of the Urban History Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Trotter teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in African American and U.S. Urban Labor and Working Class History, and has served on the boards and committees of numerous professional organizations, including Services Vice President of the Board of Trustees, of the H. John Hines III Regional History Center, a Smithsonian affiliate, and past President of the Labor and Working Class History Association. His latest publication is Workers on Arrival, Black Labor in the Making of America. Professor Trotter recently delivered the presidential address at the Urban History Association's conference in Pittsburgh, and he has just finished work on his next book, Building the Black City. He was honored earlier this year with the John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice from the American Historical Association. The University Archives is currently processing Professor Trotter's academic papers, and they will make his research accessible for a new generation of scholars working to build a more equitable future for all. Thank you again for joining us this evening. Without further ado, I'll turn things over to Wanda and Joe. Thank you. Thank you so much, Keith. I really appreciate that warm welcoming and also opening us up to heading to the point. So thank you for your partnership and your leadership. I am so pleased. Hey, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the third annual heading to the point event and collaboration with the amazing, amazing team of Shannon Riff and Sonya Willington at the libraries. You are in for a treat.  I am so glad that you can be witness to this. So I am especially excited to introduce even further our guest, the great, the brilliant, the accomplished and cultural changing, Joe Trotter, to talk to you about exploring the Black urban experience in Pittsburgh. But first, let me say a couple things about who this man is. From the moment I came here to CMU, when I came in, folks kept saying to me, Wanda, you have to meet Joe Trotter. And after a while, I was like, well, who is this Joe Trotter? And I started Googling. And I'm like, I want to know who this person is. And from the moment things started popping up, I was like, oh, he's amazing. I already can tell. And so it was very early on of my arrival, I had to start to plan with some great colleagues here and partners, our Juneteenth event. And we did not have a lot of time. And someone said, well, I think Joe might be able to help somewhat with that. And I was finally introduced to Joe. And when I was introduced to Joe, Joe made himself not really knowing me from, you know, the pin that's on my desk right here. He immediately made himself available to introduce me to some folk to talk about how the program could look and align it with our values and our goals. And I quickly learned that this is why folks thought Joe, and is, and is certainly thinking he is amazing and the person that I should have known a long time ago. And so I'm very excited about being able to have this conversation with Joe and to have him open himself up even more to everyone. So not only is Joe is brilliant and accomplished scholar and author who has published multiple books. He has also created the Center for African American Urban Studies, aka Cause, C-A-U-S here at CMU. And not to mention that he is nationally renowned. He's a nationally renowned figure and is filled and has played a vital role in shaping national organizations. And I'm sure we're going to hear some more about that. He'll be talking to us more about his recent and incredible honor that Keith mentioned, that was bestowed upon him by the American Historical Association. Folks, on this call, we are in for a treat. And I'm going to have him say a little bit more at the right time, or I'm going to have a question about winning this award, the John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice from the American Historical Association. This is huge. Yes, let's wipe our eye. I am one of those people, like many people who might be on this call, who have had the chance to not only meet John Lewis, but to really be in conversation with him a couple of times where he has given me, he gave me a couple of tips about staying in this effort to make the world society better for all of us. So I can't wait to ask you about how that feels. But before we get really started, I think it's important that I would like for you, Joe, my guest, my friend, to lay a little foundation for us. Take a few minutes, several minutes, to share an update about what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about what's going on. I know you have a book that's coming out and share some thoughts with us. So then we'll take that and dive into a deeper conversation about Joe Trotter and looking at, you know, when exploring Pittsburgh and the city. So I'm turning it over to you to get us started. Okay. Okay. Very good. Well, thanks very much, Mando, for those extraordinary remarks, introductory remarks. I really appreciate it. But I also appreciate the work that you were doing.   So I've been here for a long time. It was good to see you come on board. Okay. But yeah, let me just say a word about the John Lewis award. I just have to say this to get this out. You know, I've been married John Lewis, like so many of us for years and years. And what really strikes me about his career is that he got into the struggle early. He paid a heavy price in terms of attacks on his body. And of course, you know, you could expect that he might have even been somewhat, you know, dispirited by his experiences, but he never relented. And over the long haul, he continued to be the same determined John Lewis to break down barriers, eliminate inequality to the end of his life. And so I am just delighted to be named in after that award after John Lewis. So it's just a great honor. But there's another reason I want to say I'm honored by this award because when you go into academia and, you know, you go into higher education, there's a way in which the discipline of research and writing can actually take away from time that you might want to spend in the community organizing and working with people one on one. And so some ways I'm really pleased by this award because I had to make a decision about the way I sort of distributed my time between the archives, the libraries, the writing, the teaching and the research and the kind of on the ground community to organizing that I had been engaged in in the earlier years. And for a while back in graduate school, I actually thought that, you know, this might not be the route for me, you know, that I don't know if I can be separated, you know, in the library too much from our people's struggles. So when I decided that, well, this is another front of the struggle and that this can really add to the struggle, then I came to reconcile myself to this career that I cut out, carved out for myself. And so this award sort of certifies me in a way that I feel very good about. So thank you. Yes, it did. Yes, it has. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. But in terms of things that I'm working on now, you want me to say a little bit about that? A little bit about what you're working on now and what else you would like to share setting the foundation for our conversation about exploring the Black Pittsburgh and as well as your work in terms of in a more of a broader level. Okay. Well, I just want people to know that I have been at Carnegie Mellon since 1985. So I have a long history at this university. And during that time, I have tried to retain a commitment or focus on creating scholarship that addresses not only the academy and learning, but also enhances the fight and the struggle for social justice on the ground. And so in recent years, I've started to do a little bit more on that front. And over the last two and a half years, I want to share later on some work that we're doing on reparations. Because I've been around long enough to know when reparations was a great part of our movement during the Black Power era and how it came into focus and then it dissipated. And then later on, it came back into focus during the late 20th century when Randall Robinson produced that book called The Debt. We thought we were on our way toward a more dynamic reparations movement. And then 9-11 hit. And I think all bets were off for some people who wanted to support this movement, feeling that it was time to really prioritize the nation in some way. So that movement dissipated again. And now in the wake of COVID and George Floyd and all of these changes, reparations is back on the agenda. And it is really moving forward, as you all know, across the country. People are forging different kinds of reparations movement locally. And all of those movements have some role to play in the broader national push for reparation for African people who experience enslavement. So that's where I am now. And I can talk more about that later. Okay. Thank you. Well, you know what? What I'm going to do is set up a little bit of the current. Take us back a little bit. Tell us a little bit more. Where are you from? How did you get to this path? I mean, I've heard a few things from you before about your journey and where you're from and how you ended up in this career. Can you share with us a little bit about your upbringing and what led you down this path first? Yes. I'm happy to share with you. First of all, I want people to know I'm a product of Southern West Virginia coal mining country. I came from a family of 14 siblings in Southern West Virginia as far south in West Virginia as you can go without being in Virginia. And so that experience was pretty informative for me. It really created a sensibility about working class life that I carried forward. But there were some other ways in which that environment, it didn't predict at all that I would ever, ever aspire to be a university professor. That was not in my environment at that time. I want to throw you off, Joe, but where did you fit in those 14? What number were you? I'm number six. I'm number six. There were 10 girls, five girls older than me and five younger than me. And then I have three brothers who were younger than I am. I was the oldest son, which meant that in terms of packing order, I've got a lot of privileges within that context. But anyhow, just to let you know, actually, I intended to become a brick mason, a skilled brick mason in West Virginia as a young person, teenager. We had a trade school that I attended to learn the art of brick making. I'm brick masonry. And my parents decided that my mother decided that she was going to move her family away from West Virginia to Ohio and sort of the northeastern part of Ohio. And they didn't have a brick mason course or training. And so I decided to move into much more of an academic kind of curriculum. But I still wasn't bound for a college. I was planning to go into the Air Force. That was going to be my career. And as it turned out, my mother took me to recruiting station during my 11th, no 12th grade year, about three months before I graduated to sign me up for the military. And that office was closed. And I went back to class that next day. And I happened to have been on a class that my football coach taught. It was a class in geography. I never missed class. And on that day, he said, where were you, Joe? I missed you yesterday. You weren't in class. I said, I know I wasn't in class. I went to sign up for the Air Force. And he had this worried look on his face. And he said, the Air Force, he said, if at all possible, you should go to college.  I decided to go to college. And my aunt lived in Evanston, Illinois. And so that's where I migrated the day after graduation, in fact, got on a Greyhound bus headed to Evanston. And I went to school there to a two-year college, not to Northwestern. I know everybody think, oh, Northwest, no, I worked in the cafeteria at Northwestern and put myself through junior college on the edge of the Northwestern campus. So that's how I got into the academic realm. And then I went on to get a degree teaching history, taught history in a high school for six years before going to graduate studies. Why history? Why history? Even as I was studying Brigh Masonry in West Virginia, I was always very, very interested in, of course, they call civics, which had a lot of history embedded in it. And I got interested in that and it stayed with me. And in West, in Ohio, a town called Newcomers Town, that's where we moved. We were the newcomers. There was an extraordinary history teacher there who sort of encouraged my interest in history. And so I did very well in my courses in Ohio. And it positioned me to actually, you know, apply for college, something I hadn't intended to do.   You're here. How'd you get here and you're still here? Like, I'm gonna assume you really like CMU. Yeah, that is a story to tell. I know it's too long for me to tell you all of it. But actually, I took my first job as a University of California, Davis. I went to Davis after earning my PhD at the University of Minnesota. But that was in 1980 when I went to Davis. I stayed there about five years. I received tenure at Davis and left the year I received tenure for Carnegie Mellon. I'll have to admit to everyone on the screen that it wasn't my intent. My wife, by the way, I want to say my wife and I, we were married for 49 years until she recently passed away two years ago this month. And I just want to say that because all of the things that I might say about I did this, I did that, you guys can read into it that she was there. She may have done more of it than he would ever admit. But that's the way it was. She was really supportive of everything I undertook in my career. And she was supportive and helped to move things forward. But anyhow, we didn't expect to stay in Pittsburgh. You probably kept you in check a little bit too. You probably kept you in check a little bit, that's what I said. But some things changed in Pittsburgh for us and we decided to stay. And let me tell you one of the things that made it possible for me to stay was Carnegie Mellon's history department. Many of you know that during the period that I came to Pittsburgh and just shortly before I came, history was undergoing a tremendous change. And we were beginning to talk about it's time to really look at history from the bottom up. That was the big push. That was the wave of the future. We've had enough with presidents and corporate leaders and all of that. We need to get down into the grassroots and look at life from the vantage point of the steel mills, the lumber camps, the coal mine, the railroad track and all of that. And so that and it was very prominent in our department. That history was welcomed with open arms. And so I found a place to do African-American labor and urban history in sync. And I had colleagues there, Joe Tarr, who was a senior colleague who just retired, was a pioneer in the development of urban history and even later technology and the environment. And he was very supportive in my career here. But also fortunately for me, one of my mentors at the University of Minnesota had moved to Pittsburgh and took a job at Carnegie Mellon. And so there are a lot of factors that played a role in me staying here. But I'll just underscore this. The opportunity to launch a center for the study of African-Americans in cities, that was the real hook that made it possible for me to stay here. And I'd like to say more about that later. But those are the factors. Well, you know what? We're not even going to go with the later. I actually want you to go into talking a little bit, because I'm moving us closer to where we're at. Tell us a little bit about the center. Can you talk a little bit about cause? Share. Okay. Let me tell you, when I got here, I think there was one other African-American historian on the faculty. And he specialized in French history, but was teaching African history. And so when I looked around the university, frankly, there weren't a lot of people doing African-American studies across the board. And so one of the factors in creating this center is that if I'm going to have a life here, then it looks like we're going to have to create some new programs and opportunities. And so the center was created strategically with the idea, well, there was several objectives. But one of the objectives was to launch what we call a speaker series and a postdoc tool fellowship. And what that meant is that although we didn't have a lot of scholars working in this field, we could bring them to Carnegie Mellon and we could introduce them, you know, to our students, to graduate students, faculty, and we would open it up to the public. And so from the beginning, we believed that it was essential that we create a mailing list that brought people to Carnegie Mellon from a broad range of community-based organizations, institutions, and walks of life. So we merged our community work with our scholarship by making this groundbreaking scholarship that all of these people were doing, making it available for everyone to come in, listen to the lecture, and participate in the discussion. So that was one of the factors driving the development of CALLS. But on the intellectual side, though there's an intellectual side, and that is when I mentioned this history from the bottom up, this working class history, that was one reason we wanted to bring the center into being is so that we could really showcase a lot more of this scholarship to the local community. And intellectually, and I'm going to make this point then we can go forward. But when I arrived in Pittsburgh, historians had already started to produce a substantial body of urban research. But as historians, we didn't always take our story forward into the present and help people grapple with their lives on the ground. And because Pittsburgh was undergoing this tremendous change from the industrial to the post-industrial period, we believed that we had to create mechanisms for us to really merge historical studies with more contemporary investigations of the Black experience by sociologists, by anthropologists, and by a variety of other disciplines. And so we were committed to bringing historical research into conversation with people who were working on the ground to understand the changes that were transforming the city and its African American community. Now, thank you for sharing that. And without even knowing it, you have really set me up for my next question and really starting to dig into sort of this exploring the Black urban experience in Pittsburgh. I mean, you're here. You've just sort of teed us up in terms of what was happening in terms of your interest, your arrival, and what work you were working on. Sure. Sure. Sure. We're the folks who are watching and listening in at this moment. What might be some key thoughts or key points that you want to share about the Black urban experience in Pittsburgh? What did you notice? What did you feel? What were people talking about? What do you want us to think about in terms of this topic, this experience? That's an excellent question. I didn't come to Pittsburgh to work on African American life in Pittsburgh. The truth is I came to Pittsburgh to work on Alabama. I had already started a book that was researching the experiences of African Americans in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile during the period between the First and Second World War. It's like war and the Depression years. I wanted to do that in Alabama. Why did I want to do it in Alabama? Because I had just completed my first book, Black Milwaukee, the Making of an Industrial Proletariat, was published in 1985 when I came to Pittsburgh. I wanted to use that understanding of a Northern urban Black community and a Northern urban Black working class. I wanted to use that to understand how it may have functioned differently if we look at the Deep South. I was interested in going to the Deep South and studying those cities and comparing those cities to Milwaukee. But along the way, however, it occurred to me that working on the Deep South would produce a set of results that were based on the Deep South. That might look very different if you looked at the Upper South, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia. For the second book that I did, I actually decided to do coal miners in West Virginia as a way to look at Black life in an Upper South environment. But in this case, I had to come to grips with the reality that life in West Virginia for most Black people was life in a sort of a rule setting, but industrial work, so that you know you got this sort of mix. Coal miners were industrial workers in a real way, but at the same time, they were situated in a rural environment. And so I had thought trying to make sense of that experience. And then the effort would be once I understand better something about the Upper South, the Deep South, the North, I would write a large book that looked at the experiences of Black people in across the United States, especially on the East Coast. I wasn't interested in necessarily going West and adding that Western piece because that seemed like it was going to take a lifetime. So I thought I would let my friend do the Western piece. And by the way, when I was on the West Coast in California, I actually helped organize seminar series on Blacks in the urban West. And so I felt that my colleagues on the West Coast were taking care of that part. And so the national study that I planned to do was going to be a study that took advantage of this research and talk about Black life in comparative terms and not assume that African American life across the nation was the same. Even though we wanted to know the connection between what was similar, I also was interested in what was different. So that I'll stop there. You know, I have another question here that kind of continues with this, but I also want to, this is a great time for me to now just remind the audience to submit some questions. I see some coming in, but it's a good time to start thinking about what your questions are. You don't get every day to be able to kind of have this kind of conversation with Dr. Trotter. Am I correct? You're in the process of publishing a new book? Yes, I am. And, you know, I use that book as the foundation for my urban History Association presidential address. And the book is in preliminary form right now. But I use that address to sort of put the ideals in that environment and larger environment so that people can respond to those ideals before I actually revive this whole thing and put it into the, you know, the public realm. And by the way, the Journal of Urban History, the editor there was very, I would say forthcoming generous. He's going to allow six major scholars in the field of African American urban history to read my address and to respond to it in the journal. And so he's going to publish a form around that address. And it's going to be around the notion of the Black City and how do we understand the Black City and why are we talking about a Black City? You know, as one of my colleagues said, Black people don't control very many cities at all. And especially historically, so the power was always predominantly in the hands of white elite urbanites. So why are we talking about building the Black City? What are we talking about? So that form is an effort to define what we mean when we say the Black City. Many of you already know the term Black Metropolis. I mean, St. Claude Drake and Horace R. Cayton, famous sociologists, anthropologists of the 1930s and 40s wrote this book called Black Metropolis on Chicago. And they defined the Black City in different ways. But fundamentally, they emphasized that the Black City was a city within the city, within a particular space. You know, it was kind of a physical space that they documented at one level. But at the same time, they flipped that space over on his head and talked about Bronzeville, a sort of cultural phenomenon within the context of this creation of a city within the city. And so I'm trying to historicize this whole thing by taking the story from the beginning of the colonial period when cities in America and colonial British America in many ways started and how they developed to this present day. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I am feeling, I want to follow up on that, but I am feeling like my own pressure. I see these questions coming in. So I want to share a few questions from the audience. So some of their questions can be answered. And it might mean we're kind of jumping around a little bit, but we're going to be also responding to the audience as well here. So here's a question that I think that is folks would like to have an answer to. I would like Dr. Trotter to explain his vision of how structural racism remains a crucial strength of CMU's history department, even as the university continues to emphasize science and technology in every college, how the study of structural racism remains a crucial strength. In our department. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, I appreciate that question a lot because Carl has, I think, played a role in this over the years. And I think the one reason I mentioned already is that our department, when I came here, it had actually turned the corner on the kind of history that would be taught here and the kind of scholars who would be recruited into the program. And so during my time here, we'll recruit scholars who pretty much endorse this ideal that class matters. Not everybody endorses it in the same strength or way, but that class and racial dynamics matter and that we should be paying attention to those things in our research. But let me say that the struggle continues even within the context of our own department, but we're doing better now. We've lost a few people, then we recruited some people. Right now, we'll say that we'll position pretty well because our department head, Nico Slade, there's a specialist in South Asian, India, civil rights struggles, politics, culture, and African American civil rights struggles in politics. So we have a strength there, and he is doing an amazing job training on the next generation of young graduate students, and his graduate students are quite diverse. So we know that and now we got a new recruit, Isael Sanford, that came on board a couple of years ago, and Isael is on the cutting edge of finishing a new book that has to do with African American healthcare in historical perspective, focused on Homo G Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, one of those historic black hospitals that played an amazing role in working on issues of healthcare and training of doctors and nurses in that 20th century era before it closed during the late 20th century. So we've got some strength, and we've got Etta Field who works on African history, but who is also shading over into US history, US African American history with her parent's study on Harriet Tubman. So thanks for that question. I think we have to continue to be vigilant and think about the ways that we need to continue to build around this area. And one of the things we lost when Tara Hunter left Carnegie Mellon, she was a leading figure in the history of black women in the industrial period, the Jim Crow era, and we never quite recruited again in that gender capacity. We need that. And I think that probably is one of the things that we'll need to put on the horizon is to really sort of bring that coterie of specialists together at Carnegie Mellon. And I think this could be a really attractive place for young people seeking to go into these fields. Thank you, Dr. Trotter. I also like to think the fact that you're here, and of course, I'm here, and many others are here. So, you know, I'll add that in there, you know? I'm going to take another question too from the audience that's here because I want to be able to get some of them in. This question says, Professor Trotter, I have been so excited about how African American studies have become so prevalent in today's schools and society over the last few decades. Recently, there has been a movement to devalue the importance of African American history to the US. What is your advice on what we can do as individuals, parents, and community members to ensure this does not continue to happen? Yeah, I think we just have to fight to retain, you know? We made some progress, but we, even in the midst of this reaction against what we've been doing, you know, instituting more rigorous understandings of the Black experience into the curriculum. We hadn't gone far enough yet, and then you have to face these kind of challenges. So, I would say take good stock of where things stand at this moment, and just determine not to let it slip any further, and then get on the offensive instead of the defensive, and to begin thinking of ways to advance this project of diversifying the curriculum, making all people's voices visible and heard, and acknowledging that there are diverse communities in the United States that have actually helped to build the country. Thank you. I'm going to pause for a quick second from the audience question, and I want to take us back to something you said in thinking about this Black city and the Black metropolitan, or just thinking about this in the terms of Pittsburgh and the environment, the community that we're in. Is there a Black city within the city of Pittsburgh? Yes, my definition of a Black city definitely Pittsburgh has a Black city, and we are actually collaborating with a number of colleagues. We're working together on a study that we're calling the new history of Black Pittsburgh, and this new history of Black Pittsburgh that we're working on was really inspired by the reparations movement. And so we're looking back at Pittsburgh's Black history from the vantage point in many ways of how were African-Americans disadvantaged, exploited, and exposed to systems of inequality over the long period from the colonial beginning to the present. But yes, I do argue that we, and see, this is the argument. Let me back up. One of the reasons that I'm pushing this Black city idea, and I've got company, by the way, there are some other scholars who have been pushing this Black city idea. That's right, do tell, do tell. Marcus Hunter and Zendriel Robinson, two scholars who are sociologists with a historical orientation. They have produced a book called The Chocolate City, that they say something like the Black map of America. And so they also make the argument that we have to start uncovering the dynamics of this Black city. And the way in which I define the Black city is that there are two things. When you think of reparations, something we need to make sure that everybody gets this. When we think of reparations, and we're trying to make a strong case for redress and for Black people getting compensated for past wrongs, we almost always have to show the most difficult and most painful and the most destructive side of African-American life, right? So what I'm saying about the Black city is that even as Blacks endure all those painful, what we call impacts from racial capitalism, they did not sit still. They marshal the megal resources that they had at their disposal, and they launch movements to build their own city. And the way I define it is that the building of the Black infrastructure and I'm talking about churches, eternal orders, all kinds of voluntary renewal, your enterprise. When you look at the history of Blacks creating institutions, almost all of those institutions set as an agenda item, the building of their own building. And if they didn't build it themselves, they occupied or bought buildings and occupied those. I'm saying that this history of building the Black city is not something that we should dismiss lightly. Building Black churches impacted the landscape. It shaped the way we see the city. And most often we have privileged the large corporate elite kinds of structures, government, business, social service activities. And we have underplayed the degree to which Black people built on that environment and impacted that environment in a way that shaped the lives of many African-Americans. And in fact, the lives of many whites to tell the truth, because we have to think about the resources that Black people invested into building these institutions. And so that's where I am on the Black city. But I argue that it wasn't just the physical building that was important to African-Americans. It was also the virtual dimensions of those enterprises. And in fact, if you look at the church, it was sort of a double impact. They were in some ways rejecting a religion of white supremacy by building their own church, their own independent church movement. And by rejecting white supremacist religion, they were also building a physical infrastructure for their people, which in turn impacted questions of economics, employment, and all of that. And so now I just want to call people's attention to a new book that I just ordered. I'm giving you guys this, this is Fresh Off the Press. It's a book by James West. And it's called A House for the Struggle, the Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago. And it talks about this entrepreneurial impact on the Black city. And so we have, I think, now beginning to develop a literature that allows us to look at the Black community in a different way. And you know, when I wrote about the ghetto back in 1985 in Black Milwaukee, we couldn't even think about the Black urban experience without thinking about all the wrong things that had accompanied Black migration into the city. There was all about segregation of Blacks in the worst housing and all of that. That's true. But then we missed a big picture, how Black people were carving out a space and all of that. That's right. You know? And so that's where I am. Okay. Well, my heart is like, my heart is like beating really fast because so many things are coming up in my mind. Like for instance, you know, I often talk about Trevion Trotter's work and talking about asset framing. And from the standpoint as framing it's linked to how folks describe Black African American men. And I sort of transfer that to the idea or that thinking about how we as a group, and this can be transferred to other groups, but very specifically Black African Americans, sometimes the idea folks are starting with the most negative or the things that don't, you know, feel as good rather than the things that we have done well. And the things that have assisted this society, this country and other countries to flourish, to thrive, that the footprint of Blacks and African Americans are all over this place from whether it's music, food, religion, you know, the sciences, the technology and all those kinds of things in which it kind of goes back to, you know, earlier question about, you know, how do we make sure that people don't devalue history and are unwilling to listen and read and hear about history and thinking about our current climate and how things are going on and what's going on. And so it's all linked and it's also really helping people to have an understanding that this is so important to know and understand in order to get to the place of belonging and inclusion and unity. And it's also important in education for those who don't know to understand how much it has cost them of not knowing about others more than, you know, about others other than just themselves. And so someone wrote in terms of the question, you know, just this, you know, about Black music being important on the scene as you were talking about, you know, the Black church and how important Black music is. And I'm not sure if you, you know, have any thoughts, but I also, in thinking about time, I wanted to also make sure I gave you a moment here too if there was more that you wanted to say about your address that you did. And it may be all wrapped up around the reparations, but music and then it's, is there more that you want to shape your about your work? Yeah, I really appreciate your comments that you just made all of that, you know, music to my ears. Okay. And the reason let me tell you why, because I think that, you know, the reparations argument, we have to keep it upfront, you know, exploitation, inequality, all of that. And I think that some people fear that if you accent all this creativity, and in real ways, success of Black people and doing things, that it's going to diminish the case. So if you were so creative in the context of all this, and you were so energetic, then why do you need reparations? You know, some people on the extreme opposite side of the reparations argument might try to undercut, you know, the, the, the case that we make on the basis of exploitation. But for me, I'm beginning to say all this creativity is just another piece that makes the case for reparations, all that much more powerful, rather than diminishing it. So yeah, so I think that there's a lot going on in there. I'm not a musicologist or whatever, in that respect. But I do believe that it fits into what I would call the cultural dimension of the city, Black city building process. And I think it's also closely tied in with the church at the level of gospel music, but it's also closely tied into, you know, jazz and blues and all the others. And when we think about the venues for these particular forms of music, we're looking at another way in which there's a blend of the physical and cultural impact on the urban environment. Because, you know, these clubs where these musicians played became important fixtures within communities and places where people came to invest with a great deal of value, you know, and so that, so when we reconsider out thinking about the way Black people acted in cities, they were not acted, simply acted upon, they were acting and transforming and shaping and moving the city in a way that was really in many ways out of the control of their, you know, of the capitalist in some way. So they were exercising influence that many people would have preferred they didn't, you know, but they did. And so I just think we need to bring all this into much greater prominence in the way we think about the city. The city wasn't made just by elites and the people with money to invest in large numbers, it was made by grassroots people, everyday people, working people who wanted a church, wanted a club, wanted a business, wanted something else. And they went about using what they had to do it. Thank you. I have two questions. One you'll have to answer really fast because they're probably pushing me to finish. But I thought it was an important question and I kind of saved it a little bit next to the last and, and, and because I've heard you speak before, but someone asked the question related to, you know, you know, I like to talk about getting into good trouble, necessary trouble and those things around John Lewis and his and Rosa Parks quotes. And, you know, someone asked, since you've chosen your career in academia to have an impact, and as we are, you know, kind of in front of us around freedom of expression and so forth, have you had any challenges around that and saying what you need to say and telling your stories of what you need to, to tell? Just want to honor that question and think about what's happening in today's world. You know, I am a historian and one of the things we try to do is ground whatever we have to say in some evidence and try to find documentation to help make, make the case. And so I'm, I'm almost, I feel pretty confident once we research, you know, carefully and systematically as we can, we have to use, you know, our perspective on issues to really say what we need to say. And then, you know, the, and by the way, historians, we are always reading and critiquing each other's up and down. And so I'm willing to be exposed, you know, to the criticism. And I invite it because if people are going to make a case against some of the arguments that you make, then they have to make a case. They can't just say it. They have to do the work. And so I think that's an important part of what I would say to all of us who have ideals that we think are unpopular and that people want to resist. If you make your case, support your case and put it out there. Put it out there. As forcefully as you can. Yeah. Thank you. So here's my last question really quickly because it started back to Dean Webster mentioning in his introductory remarks about the university archives and has acquired your academic papers. What does that mean to you? What does it mean about your scholarship and what, you know, in the foundation it will provide for the next generation? How has that impacted you in the hope for the work that your, your papers are being archived? I am delighted that you would ask that question because in my career, as you can see earlier, I said, I never thought that I would be in a position where I thought putting my papers in an archive would serve, you know, some future generations. But now I do feel very strongly about the work that I've done. And by the way, the work that I've done, I feel like it's part of a cohort of late 20th century and early 21st century scholars in my age group. One of the things we need to keep in mind is that Black people became a predominantly urban people later than the country. So we became predominantly urban by the mid 20th century. And, and just to backtrack it from the Civil War to 1965 was a great migration of Black people gradually transforming from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban population. But we're talking about 100 years of history. Now think about it. Most of Black history, most of the evidence, most of the stories, most of the books, all of the print is based upon that first 300 or 400 years of Black experience as agricultural workers, first enslaved and then germ quote, right? And so this period that I and my cohort work on is an important period. And in many ways, when we look back over our lives, we have to believe that we were sort of doing something that was breaking ground. And so that's why I thought that my papers might be interesting because it's sort of documents a moment for people like myself who are taking the city seriously. Nobody did that very much before the 20th century. They thought they could write Black urban history off as being of little consequence. And now because we know something about urbanization, we're beginning to uncover it for every moment from the colonial period all the way to the present. And that's why I think these papers will be important at some level. At least I hope they will be important for people to get a handle on some of this. Well, thank you. I'm sure I know that they're going to be important. They are already are important. Time runs goes by so quick. At this point in time, I just want to thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Trotter, for all that you have done and all that you're teaching us and will continue to teach us. It has been lovely to speak to you. I want to thank the vice provost for DNI and Chief Diversity Officer team for supporting, heading to the point. And what I would say to everyone is have a good evening. And the next time you're in any kind of deep conversation, get to that point. Head to that point. Thank you all very, very much. Good night. Thank you very much.


Hi. This is your music theory video explanation of the dominant seventh. At this point, we've been identifying triads. We've been going through a whole lot of music theory, and you probably have a good idea of the diatonic nature of triads, how a one chord operates, how a five chord operates, and the three notes in the chord. Chances are you're also probably analyzing music and taking a look at music and identifying where in music we're finding those triads. Now today, I want to talk about the dominant seventh chord. Now when we say a dominant chord, we're really talking about the five chord, and when we talk about a dominant seventh, we're talking about a five chord that has the seventh degree of the scale added into it. So now it's no longer a triad, there are actually going to be four notes in the chord. So we're going to get right to work. This doesn't take a lot of time to explain, and you'll begin seeing it in the music that you're analyzing. Now first of all, I've put on the screen here the diatonic triads in a major key, and for today we're really going to use that top line that you're looking at, which is in the key of C, and you can translate this to any other key. For instance, down below that we have the key of D. Now if we take a look at the key of C, you know right away that the one chord is a major chord, and we know that the five chord is also a major chord in a major key. And we know the others, the two is minor, the three is minor, the four is major, but today we're really going to focus on the five chord in a key. Now a dominant seventh chord is the five chord, but it's going to have another note associated with it. We've got the triad of G, B, and D, and now we're going to see a note above that, a fourth note, the F natural. You're going to see that in lots and lots of the music that you're analyzing, but it might get a little confusing. You're going to see what appears to be a five chord, but there's that extra F natural in there, and really what that does is just creates more tug pulling that chord back to the tonic C. So if you're analyzing a piece of music, we're in, let's use another key, let's use the key of D, so we'll have an F sharp and a C sharp, and here we have an F sharp and a C sharp, and you might look at something that has a one chord, we're in the key of D here, so there would be a D in the bass, probably, maybe an A here, maybe something like an F sharp here, and maybe another D here, and that very clearly, if we look at the notes, there's a D, an F sharp, an A, and another D, you're going to tell really quickly that that's a one chord, but when we look at a five chord, chances are very good that we're going to have an A in the bass, and we'll probably have that C sharp and E in there somewhere, creating that triad, so maybe we would have something like an E right here, and maybe we would have something like a C sharp right here, which is in the key signature, but the thing that might throw you off is that somewhere in that chord, you might see a G, and you might go, well, how does a G fit into an A chord? Well, really what we have there is A, C sharp, E, and the G is the seventh step of that A scale, giving us what we would call a five seven chord or a dominant seven chord, so as you do your analysis, when you're looking in there and you find what really looks like a five chord in a key, but that seventh step is represented simply, right, the five and the seven, and we're good to go, you're letting me know that you're seeing a dominant seventh chord, and it almost always resolves to a one chord.  I hope that explanation makes sense. Go ahead and give it a try. Always be on the lookout for that seventh step of the five chord, giving you the dominant seventh feel or a five seven chord. Good luck, we'll see you the next time. Hello, this is your video explanation for the advanced music theory curriculum in my piano guitar class of the diminished seventh chord and the half-diminished seventh chord. This is not really difficult, it's really easy to grasp, but I just wanted to take a minute to make sure that you understood what was going on with it so you could correctly create half-diminished sevenths and diminished sevenths and identify them when you see them. So first of all, just let's look at a definition. In music theory, the half-diminished seventh chord, which is also known as a minor seventh flat five in jazz, is created by taking the root, the minor third, the diminished fifth, and the minor seventh of any major scale. Now if you break that down a little bit, what we're really talking about is a diminished triad, root minor third and diminished fifth, and then adding the minor seventh above that. Okay, so we're adding a fourth note to the triad and it's essentially the seventh step of the scale flatted by a half step. I'm going to show you that in just one minute, but let's go on to the definition of simply a diminished seventh chord, and that chord is a four-note chord that comprises a diminished triad, the same first three notes that we talked about with the half-diminished, plus the interval of a diminished seventh rather than a minor seventh. So what the distinction between these two is really the seventh step of the chord, alternatively regarded and harmonically as a major sixth, that seventh step above the root. Thus it is the one, the flat three, the flat five, and a double flat seven. Okay, let's just put this into something that you can relate to. Let's start in the key of C. It's really kind of simple to see if we're looking in the key of C. We have a root C, okay, then, and let's start with the half-diminished chord, and it would be a C, an E-flat, and a G-flat. That's our diminished triad, and then we would add simply a flat seven on there or a B-flat, and that would give us a half-diminished seventh chord based on the root of C. Okay, now a full diminished seventh chord would be C, E-flat, G-flat, same first three notes, and then that seventh step would have to be B-double-flat. Now the note that you actually end up hearing with that B-double-flat actually ends up sounding like the note A, and if we go back to our definition, you'll note here alternatively regarded as a major sixth, what they're really saying is that you'd hear it as an A-natural, but you're going to see it as what I previously described here as a B-double-flat. Okay, so this is a half-diminished in the key of C, and this is a full-diminished seventh chord. Half-diminished seventh chord and the key of C full-diminished. Let's go ahead and do one other example of it. Let's do it in the key of A, which would require F-sharp, C-sharp, and G-sharp, and let's create a G-sharp half-diminished seventh chord. Okay, typically the seventh step of the scale gives us a diminished sound, so we're going to start here with the G-sharp, and it is, I'm going to put the sharp in parentheses, because it is sharp already from the key signature. So from G-sharp to B is a minor third, and we would get that just as a result of the key signature. From B to D is another minor third. We would get that as a result of the key signature, and now we're going to that all-important seventh step of the scale. Okay, now the F is sharp as a result of the key signature. Okay, so right away we've got a G-sharp half-diminished chord, because the distance from a G-sharp to an F-sharp is a minor seventh, which is exactly minor seventh from G to F. So right there is our half-diminished seventh chord. Now if we wanted a G-sharp full-diminished seven, we have to do something else to that F-sharp. So we'd have G-sharp, B, D, there's our F-sharp, we make that an F-natural, and now we have a full diminished. From G-sharp to F-natural is a diminished seventh. Okay, hope that all makes sense.  Thanks and we'll see you the next time.


Welcome to Dell Technologies World. It's the premier technology event of the year. Join John Furrier, Dave Vellante, and Lisa Martin as they talk to the trailblazers and trend setters of future technology. Dell Technologies World 2023 and theCUBE, the leader in live and emerging high-tech coverage. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE. We are live at Dell Technologies World 2023 from beautiful sunny, pretty toasty Las Vegas. We're at Mandalay Bay, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, kicking things off. As you called it this morning, tonight, CUBE After Dark, you got the sleeves rolled up, ready to dig in. A lot of news today. We have some great conversations tonight. You know what the highlight was for me today? Michael Dell's a walk-on song. Starman. Did you catch that? It was David Bowie's Starman. It was unbelievable. That's right. I don't know, do you know what you'd pick for your walk-on song? I think it would be something, a really upbeat, maybe celebration. A little cool in the gang. All right, a little throwback. We're speaking of throwbacks. We have a couple of alumni back with us. Caitlin Gordon joins us. VP of product management, cross-platform software installations at Dell. Great to see you again in person. It is so good to see you again. I know. It's so nice. And Sudhir Srinivasan is here as well. SVP Product Development Engineering at Dell Technologies. Guys, it's great to have you here. This place is packed. The keynote this morning, we were commenting on that, Dave. It looked like north of 7,500, 8,000, 9,000. We're hearing lots of good numbers. People were ready to be, well, we were back last year, but it looks like it's even bigger this year. Caitlin, a lot of news. I think one of the words of the day is Apex. Talk to us about what's going on there and some of the great things of the Apex Cloud Platform that Dell announced today. We did make a few Apex announcements today. One of those is a whole new portfolio of the Apex Cloud Platforms. And it's a really exciting, I mean, usually we introduce a new product, maybe a couple new products, but we introduced new portfolios this year. We were very excited to come back this year. And really the Apex Cloud Platforms, it's really built for what we call our cloud to ground strategy. How do we help our customers bring these cloud operating models, these cloud operating environments to their data center and really transform the way that they can run their on-premises infrastructure. It's built on a common set of building blocks of Dell Technologies infrastructure, common compute, common software-defined storage, and automated management and orchestration stack that really simplifies infrastructure. And yet it's also vertically optimized and vertically integrated with our partners. We have announced three new platforms, the Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, the Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, and of course the Apex Cloud Platform for VMware. Exciting new extensions to our partnerships with these three partners. Well, you talked about the portfolio emphasis, Caitlin. Explain the nuance there, portfolio versus what, just product? Yeah. Explain that. I've been here for almost 18 years. I've been launching product, product, product. And this time it wasn't about building a single product for a single problem. It was how do we build a portfolio of products that have common elements and then unique elements with each partner? So it's both supporting this open ecosystem of partnerships and really important strategic partnerships, but also how do we do that in a way that's common across those environments? Ultimately, our customers have a variety of different challenges, including skills gaps. How do we help them have a similar infrastructure, but yet support that choice across the different ecosystem partners? Shadir, thinking about where you allocate your resources, how are you placing your bets? You got $100 to spend, where are you spending it? So you don't get stretched too thin, but you're solving the problems the right place at the right time. Thanks, Dave. I think as you heard today, the hot topic for us is multi-cloud, and that's what we're out of the $100, probably $80 are going into multi-cloud. That's the Apex Cloud platforms, the Project Alpine that's now become a reality with Apex Storage for public clouds. Those are the big things that we're focused on. Last year we stood up here, we were here, we were talking about multi-cloud by default, and as we talked to our customers over the last year, it's just coming more and more clear that the pain is real, the pain of the complexity of a multi-cloud by default. And I think over the last year, it's also become clear the cost, the cost of having to do that. If you think about the cost of, if we all know that cost is, I mean, cloud is more expensive than owning your own equipment, doing that across multiple clouds is much more expensive. So we set out really to solve the problem of how do you do multi-cloud by design? Can I follow up on that on the cost? Cloud's more expensive generally because you're renting, or maybe it's because there's margins there that AWS charges, but you're now renting. But you're renting it at better economics or sort of like we think on-prem economics or is it something else? Well, so the easiest way to think about it is the, how do you control the blend of on-prem versus rented infrastructure so that you achieve your best cost? If you don't have the ability to move data back and forth or applications back and forth, then you're stuck. So it's like a lot of our customers, they find themselves, they sort of dug themselves into big holes in these clouds because they've just landed there and they have no way to get things out flexibly. And that's what Project Alpine or Apex Cloud Storage for Public Clouds gives them. Easy for you to say. Exactly. So dear, expand a little bit on, we talked a lot, as you mentioned last year, and it was mentioned a number of times this morning in the keynote, last year, multi-cloud by default. Dell really doubling down on multi-cloud by strategy, by design. Talk to us about some of the feedback you're hearing from customers. How are you helping them go from multi-cloud by default and by default there's probably some chaos in there to really shifting and transforming that to a strategic direction that enables the business to not only perform well, but be competitive, new products and services. What's that pathway like? So I think that's what customers want. Multi-cloud by design really is about three things. Customers want, first of all, choice. They don't want to be locked into any one specific solution. To do that, they need consistency. So you could try to do a multi-cloud by sort of balancing and working with each cloud separately, but at that, your cost of operations is going to be much higher, versus if you had a consistent way of operating across all the clouds. And the third is control. They want to be able to control the rate at which they're consuming any of these services. So that's what the Apex Cloud platforms brings to the table, is that right? On the cloud stack side, the cloud platforms bring your choice of cloud, whether it's Microsoft Azure, Red Hat, or VMware. And then on the data side, we bring that choice by having a Dell software-defined storage, which is available both on the platforms, but as well as in the cloud. And that gives them the control, all done with a zero-test security framework, so you get the security part as well. So okay, let's double-click on that, because it sounds good, it's good marketing, choice. Have it your way, Burger King. So what does that mean for Dell's customers, specifically, what are you hearing in the field? Everybody seems to have one of everything, although customers like you guys, they'll make bets. We're going to bet on VMware, we're going to bet on Red Hat, or we're going mostly Azure, not all in necessarily, but so maybe you could take us through what this means to you and your customers. I mean, choice for us is it's an open ecosystem, right? Our customers ultimately, they have on-prem providers that they're making bets on, and they have public cloud providers that they're making bets on. And to date, we haven't all necessarily worked together a lot to simplify what that feels like for a customer. That's what we're changing. It's to be able to still have that choice, be able to choose who are your hyperscaler, most chances hyperscalers that you're working with, who are your on-prem software vendors, infrastructure vendors, but the flip on the script is, we're actually all now working together. Obviously we've always worked well with VMware, but now working with Microsoft, working with Red Hat, working with VMware says, Mr. Customer, you don't have to choose your vendor to get that simplification. You choose your vendor for your workloads, for your transformation, and we'll give you that simplification no matter what. And that really comes down to Microsoft, right? If you are standardized on Azure as your public cloud, you want to enable and provide some of those Arc-enabled services in a data center of your choice. We call it a data center, Microsoft calls it an edge, ultimately means it's not the public cloud, but you still want to have a consistent control plane for that. You still want to have a consistent environment for that, being able to support that, transforming your operations, but do that in a simple way, and from our perspective, do that with the same infrastructure and the same operating model that you could also do if you have some Red Hat, some VMware in the environment, maybe some combination, maybe one or two of the others. Red Hat, obviously the leader in on-prem Kubernetes, being able to really accelerate the developer productivity, something that OpenShift has always brought. Now you combine that with these new Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat, you can accelerate the time to that value for the overall business. One other follow-up, if I may. So talking earlier about the portfolio, my takeaway was it sort of went from the box mentality to more of a cloud service mentality. How has your relationship changed with these partners as a result of that? Because in the past, your goal was to, we can run your software faster. Now I'm sure that's still important, but is that it? Is it that simple just as a service or is there more to it than that? There's a lot more to it. A lot of what we're hearing from customers is just because they could can do something or maybe they even did it in the past, they don't want to anymore. They need to get out of the business of more things. So ultimately that comes down to simplification. And really what we're seeing, and even over the last six months, as we've been working with each one of these partners, our partnership has really evolved in what we can bring, what they can bring, how do we collaborate together? These are truly jointly engineered offers. This is not just Dell or just Microsoft. These are shared roadmaps. How do we come together to bring our customers what they're asking for? Whether it's Red Hat, Microsoft, VMware, and they all have kind of different flavors of what they're focused on, but ultimately each we each see what each can bring to that partnership. And it's not all necessarily even known today. We're exploring that and figuring that out together, listening to our customers together. And it's a very new and exciting space to be because we see our customers struggling with where they are today. And we think together we can solve that a lot better than we could apart. Severe, talk a little bit about some of the challenges that customers have and how the Apex portfolio was really going to help them dial down some of the challenges with skills gap or compliance or security. But I'm particularly interested in IT resources having to do a lot more with a lot less. So that skills gap, how will this help dial that down for businesses? I think the best example, if I may, you actually heard it at the keynote this morning with the customer CVS, right? So he talked about, Roshan talked about how they went in. They had a cloud strategy 1.0 and then they quickly realized that they have to feign everybody on all these different stacks including the stuff that they had on-prem from Dell. And then they realized that having the same stacks on both sides allows them to have that same operational consistency. That saves tremendous amount of cost over time in the operational. So there's the cost of the infrastructure itself we talked about earlier about being able to adjust the mix of rented versus owned. But then the bigger element is that operational consistency and the savings that that brings. And that's true both for the data side or the storage side that we talked about through the Apex storage for public clouds that we offer. But also at the application stack side and that's where the Apex cloud platforms come in is because now whether you're a Red Hat user or a Microsoft user or a VMware user you can get the same operational experience. So we're covering it through the entire stack. That would say that's the biggest element. So, Kailin, I want to get your perspective on something that you and I have talked about this notion of equilibrium. And as you know, I've written a lot about repatriation kind of been a skeptic. But as we were talking earlier the cloud repatriation index which is kind of a tongue in cheek index from this guy Charles Fitzgerald. But it's true. What it is is it's digital realty and equinex revenue divided by AWS. So what you're seeing is those two colos their growth rates are now in the mid teens as AWS so they're converging. I don't know if it's something that's permanent or not which is something that we're watching. It's like hot water gets together with cold water the world reaches an equilibrium. Do you think that's what's happening? Do you not know yet? What are customers telling you? I don't think we know yet. I think you and I agree that it's not necessarily a broad repatriation but it's certainly a broad optimization. I think customers have moved out of cloud first. I haven't heard that phrase from a customer in a long time and I've really moved into more of what I consider cloud smart. How do I really think about what belongs where? In some cases yes, things are moving back on but in more cases it's the public cloud has informed what IT needs even just for their own efficiency but what they need to be able to deliver deliver for productivity to be able to meet their security requirements. There's a different expectation. Ultimately the public cloud has shifted what we need to be able to provide our customers what they need to be able to provide theirs. Equinex is a great partner of ours. Part of the reason is that customers got out of the data center business and a lot of times that literally just means the building, right? And then Equinex has an important role to play but everything else is the same. They're still managing it, they're still buying it but they needed to get that one step further. You can go all the way the other way which is you don't want to manage it, you want it to be OpEx, you want it out of your data center and that's ultimately what we're trying to support is there's a little bit of a shift in how customers are looking at anything they buy and really reconsidering where do my workloads belong and how do I make sure that the infrastructure and investments I'm making, all of the investments I'm making move me towards getting towards my own equilibrium, whatever that may be, and I think customers have taken a step back to think about what that right balance really is going to be. I'm glad you brought up cloud first versus cloud smart. I've been hearing that a lot in customer conversations. It's definitely a trend, it's a transition that we're seeing but how is Dell going to help customers in the multicloud by default, going to multicloud by design, reducing the complexity and the chaos and actually become cloud smart which I imagine is going to be fine tuned differently for each individual business. Yeah, it's going to really evolve over time. A lot of it comes into these sides we've been talking about is really the trifecta we talked about in the keynote this morning which is helping our customers unlock their workload flexibility, having that ground to cloud so you can have that standard storage infrastructure on-prem and into the public cloud. You have that flexibility, you don't have to compromise the storage service capabilities in the public cloud. It's also transforming what they can do in their data center, that cloud to ground side of things. But also, I like the air traffic control we started talking about this morning and we've been making these products for a while, I hadn't heard that, it was a good analogy but it's really not just the products themselves but then the experience that we've built to go with that. Can I add to that if you don't mind? Yeah, I was just thinking about what we talked about just now and it reminded me, we're actually starting to see with what we are doing here at Dell something you predicted which is the super cloud concept. That's really what's going on here. Yeah, there's a need for it, right? Technically, that's your strategy to me. But I want to come back to this idea of the equilibrium. You guys both lived the VMware ascendancy and there was a lot of skepticism that it could run any workload, anywhere. We looked closely at it and felt like, okay, well the mainframes figured it out maybe eventually Meritz was right and he was right. I mean, pretty much, yeah, you still need bare metal sometimes but generally speaking, broad swath of workloads can run on VMware. Is the cloud different because of latency and other factors? It seems like the cloud is at a really hard time moving those mission critical or quasi mission critical workloads into the cloud. Is it like VMware where they'll eventually get there or technically because of latency and cost? It's not likely that you have an advantage. What do you think about that?  I can start. I think what's been missing quite honestly in the cloud is storage. Is enterprise-grade storage? That's what's prevented. I mean, look at the SLAs you get in the cloud today. It'd be lucky if you get more than three nines, right? You can't run an enterprise workload on that. So I think what we're doing here is for the first time bringing that enterprise-grade storage into the cloud. That's what will start to create that flex. The other thing is, I think customers today would be cautious of doing that because they move something into the cloud, can they move it back? So it's a combination of both of those that I think will be enabling. Normally a storage stack over time would mature. That the new kid in the block has, you know, the snapshots aren't as good, the virtualization isn't as good, et cetera, et cetera, but after 10 years, it gets pretty good. It seems like the cloud says, ah, get put. We're good. Even the EBS stuff, it's like, okay. That's nice. And then if you want to actually do recovery, there's a piece over here or some partner thing here, and it just doesn't seem like the emphasis there on the stack. And that's maybe a great thing for you. It is, right? Especially if you look at both block and file. So you want to, I don't know if you want... Well, I was going to go a similar place, which is I think it's very different from VMware in the sense that VMware was a technology-driven innovation transformation. Yes, the benefits were operational, but it was fundamentally a technology-driven. Public cloud is business-driven, right? It's OPEX, it's agility, it's developer productivity, but it wasn't technology-driven. I think that's... Operational model. Yeah, and it wasn't really deeply rooted in the tech itself, which is why I think now we're seeing the point where the public cloud storage stacks, yes, they don't meet what our customers are asking for, but also that's not fundamentally the core capabilities of what these hyperscalers can provide, which is why we're partnering with them, right? Is that they see that, especially when you talk about block and certainly file, they've tried, and they know that building that enterprise-grade file system is a very hard thing to do, and we've already done it, so why don't we partner together and let us invest in those dollars and they can invest in what they do? And I think that's a difference, I think, that we see versus the two. That customers win. Yeah, yeah, ultimately we all agree on that. Absolutely, take us out, Caitlin, our last 30 seconds or so here, some of the feedback that you've gotten today on some of the big APEX announcements from the customers and the prospects that are here. Customers are very excited. I think we may have overwhelmed people, we made a lot of announcements. So I think there's a ton of to unpack, and honestly, we're in uncharted waters. We're in a unique position as Dell Technologies to be able to go into new spaces, but largely we're defining the playbook as we go. So a lot of the conversations we're having are just about, what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? How is this different than anything else? It's very exciting. It's certainly exciting to have a whole portfolio to talk about, and we have no shortage of more conversations to come. And you're defining it with customers. Caitlin, Tudor, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program tonight. All right, inaugural guests for theCUBE at Dell Technologies World 2023. We have our next guest coming up, Andrea Booker joins us, and Steve Graham. Stick around, Dave and I will be right back with our next guests, live from Las Vegas.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with 2019-2020 Panini Mosaic Basketball Blaster Edition Random team break number 26 which sells out the impeccable the impact the final three spots are being given away here But as always we're gonna do the break itself first. So big thanks to these folks for getting into it There are the teams right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it six and a three nine times for the break and ninth and final time We got Dargan down to Ryan And then we've got six and a three nine times for the teams one and Ninth and final time after nine. We've got the pelicans on top Timberwolves on the bottom.  Thank you. All right, so let's just get right to it So we can get into that impeccable break. We should be pretty nice That Orlando and the brand new Miami MLS team playing right now I have no idea how MLS is It's just a tournament or are they running some kind of season. I forget how they There's the final printout right there. Thanks everyone for getting in NBA debut Kobe white and a green Zion Williamson. Wow There you go Dargan Watts scores nil nil by the way Silver Tyus Jones and D Wade and there you go ladies and gentlemen nice Zion popping out of there So now let's give away the final three impeccable spots So let's grab everyone name everyone's names from Ryan down to Ben and Let's roll it randomize it four to one five times one two three Four and fifth and final time. Good luck. So it's top three after five big. Thanks to everybody right here for getting into the action really appreciated Losing my voice here Excuse me Still have a few more days to go Dargan Ben and Patrick. You're in impeccable Let's see if I have a voice for that. We'll see you next time. Jasper's case breaks.com. Bye. Bye