Hello and welcome back to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Cedric Hughes, and today I'm joined by two special guests. Hi, I'm Joseph Hendricks. And Zoe Poppingay. Today we'll be discussing the question, should people be held accountable for their past posts on social media? Now we go to members of the community and see what the people of Davis have to say. To what extent should people be held accountable for their past social media presences? Okay, that's an interesting question because in general I believe that people do change and people do evolve and develop and we should allow people to mature and evolve and develop. So to an extent, for example, if it is for a job interview for something you did at 18, that would be unfair because we all grow up and change. However, if it's the highest position in office, certainly people should be held accountable, especially for things that they say, especially there's discrimination and racial bias, then you'd want to look into that to say how much of that do we really need in the highest place of office. I would say probably the last six months to a year, you should probably look at their posts because anything past that they were probably misinformed, they've grown, they've matured, their opinion might have changed. But anything between six months and a year out, they're probably still along the same line of thinking, personally. I do agree with that, but I also would expect somebody to be immature and responsible enough to say like this post came from a previous point of view that I had and I have grown and matured and I apologize for that. I think they should be pretty accountable. Honestly, if you know that you've made some questionable tweets or made some questionable posts online before, if you've noticed that that doesn't represent who you are anymore, I think they should be responsible for deleting them. And if somehow people are retrieving these social media posts after they've deleted them, because I don't know how the internet works, I think that people should understand that people are able to change and that even though they might have tweeted or posted something kind of questionable in the past, yeah, they might be a different person now. As you go through life and experience different things, there could be something that happens to you or to someone else that might change your mind about something like instantly.  I guess maybe like a year back, like, yeah, within a year, maybe a little questionable. Yeah, after that I feel like people have the opportunity. Well, today we saw a lot of very interesting opinions ranging from impacts that past posts will have on people in their job interviews and their lives as well as the level of accountability that people need to be taking. Zoe, what do you think? I really feel like with social media like Twitter, it's a lot easier to get in trouble for this kind of stuff because I know on Instagram and Facebook it's very filtered. If it's to fit in aesthetic or it's just to fit how you really want to be perceived, it goes through several stages before you say, okay, I'm going to post this.  So what I was trying to say is I guess I just understand where this comes from, but I also understand that people change really quickly. And I know it's such a massive amount of media at our fingertips and just it's never going away. It's really easy to pretend like that person still exists. And so I also feel like lately there seems to be no correct way to apologize or get back from this because I know YouTube communities or politicians, it's not just in politics where people have been getting in trouble for this and people in masses have been doing this thing called cancel culture. I guess it's the new name for mob mentality and so there seems to be no proper way for people to apologize for this. And I feel like that's what really concerns me, that it's just, it's so, with social media, it's so easy to rally behind this one opinion and absolutely shut someone down.  But there are some other more minor schemes where they're totally drowned out by like an angry audience. And it's, yeah, it's not even, maybe not even because they believe in it, but just because it's an excuse to get angry at this person who they never liked in the first place. Yeah. I think that's really interesting. Joseph, what do you think? Yeah, I definitely agree that it's like, you know, past situations, you know, they're totally uneducated about certain topics.  So I think there is like a difference between like the age, because, you know, we're teenagers, so we just, we've changed very quickly, we go through different phases. So I think as teenagers, we shouldn't be held accountable as much as like, you know, adults who are saying these like awful things. Yeah. So do you think that there might be a bright line in terms of speech put forward on social media where one should accept accountability from a younger age and where one should not accept accountability? So different things that might have been put forward.  Is one necessarily worse than the other in society's view? So are you asking is like the, is the extremity, does that differentiate between how much they should take accountability for something? I definitely think it should because, because to say that one small thing is just the same as one really large thing. I feel like that's way too much of an oversimplification of these issues. And I feel like if we really care about the subject, we should carve out time to take account for each, for the individual cases as we so care about. And also if you also really care about it, not if you're scrolling through social media and you see something that makes you angry, so you hop on the bandwagon and then move on to something else, move on to the next post. I feel like people have every right to care about, I feel like people have every right to care about these things. And it's really great that we have access to all this information, but with the access to all this information is the same ability to take that information, briefly react to it and then dismiss it, just with a swipe. Yeah, and I definitely agree with a more like, when you're, give a more like aggressive approach to, you know, something that you're angry at, rather than just being like, well, here's why you're wrong, like just like widely educating this person. I feel like that's way, like they're not going to apologize as well, if, you know, you come at them all like, you know, itch works and stuff like that. Yeah, and I guess what I really want to know is from people, from the people who demand a cancellation of a said celebrity or an apology, like what would be the correct apology? Like I'm genuinely curious. Well, I think that's a really good, you know, question to put forward, you know, how does one atone for what they've put forward on social media? You know, if it happened so many years ago and at such a young age, you know, what is the correct course of action for one to take? Yeah, I think definitely apologizing for their actions. I've seen recently a celebrity said a slur on their Instagram and they apologized by saying, I'm sorry if you got offended, which is, you know, that's just apologizing for someone else's emotions to it rather than, you know, I'm saying I'm sorry to for my actions and what I said. Yeah. Yeah. Zoe? I know that I've heard a lot of people say, well, I guess prove that you've changed by like capitalist things like donate to charities that you believe in and stuff. But I guess but then when people show that it's also like you're showing off your being a good Samaritan for clout or for something like that. So I guess that's just that's just where I'm kind of confused, like how you prove that you've changed if you ever get caught up in these situations or not. Yeah. Yeah. So do you think that there is a way to prove that you've changed? Oh, wow. I understand. It's no easy question. Yeah. Sorry. It's a really tough question. Yeah.  And when confronted about it, a lot of the times we see or at least in very public cases that an apology isn't forthright, you know, they try and cover it up and defend it. And oftentimes that makes the situation so much worse than it actually needs to be. You know, so, and I think you were touching on that with, you know, with why can't people just come forward and say, you know, I'm sorry, and you touched on this as well. And I think that if, you know, politicians or celebrities or anyone who came for or anyone who had made those past mistakes on social media actually, you know, came forward and took accountability for that. Then I think that we would see the political process going through a lot more in their favor than the lashback that they receive when they try and cover it up or deny it. So moving forward, you know, with the idea of social media posts, we heard in those interviews a lot about age. And Joseph, you talked about this a little bit. So do you think that there again is this fine line between when one should be held accountable and when one, you know, matures enough to be held accountable for the opinions that they express? Yeah, so I think a good maybe baseline is, you know, when you turn 18, when you become an adult.  So, you know, you get the ideals of the community that you're in.  So I feel like maybe turning 18 would be good.  Of course, yeah. Zoe, what do you think? Yeah, I guess in junior high and high school, we're still trying to find our own like groups or our own individuality. It's really easy to fall into that rabbit hole of maybe being on the, maybe not some morally correct side of things. Or, of course, that does not excuse when someone does something like that. But I'm just saying it's, when someone says something like that, when someone says hate speech, I believe that they need to address that they have said that. But I also understand that in high school, there's a lot of stuff about social conformity. So that's all I'm saying. I can understand where it comes from. I'm definitely not excusing it though. I just would like to make that clear. But in college, yeah, when we are trying to find your own individuality, again, that makes things messier. But yeah, when you're an adult, 50s, 60s, you've had a significant amount of life experience. You should have the maturity to know that what you say matters on the internet and stuff. Yeah, and I think that that's a really interesting point to bring up. That taking accountability doesn't necessarily excuse what you've done, but it does count for something. It does show that you are trying to be more mature and that you are trying to learn from those past mistakes. Because I think that everyone has said something at some time that they're not so proud of. And there are those where whatever that view expressed ended up online or on social media. And politicians, celebrities, they're the ones that get dinged for it. So I think that with that idea of taking accountability, it doesn't necessarily mean that we excuse it. But it does mean that we need to acknowledge that people do go through changes. And that those changes are important to their character. And it's important to recognize that when evaluating their character. So do you think that, say in a job interview, like was brought up in the interviews with the Davis community, that an interviewer would be able to fairly assess that change of character? I guess it is, like I said before, it's not just black and white. But I feel like if it's from like five years ago or something like that, like a really long time. I feel like they can be able to see like they can differentiate. Well, like maybe their most recent social media posts show like a different story. Or like maybe when you actually meet them, you can talk about it and stuff like that. So now looking towards the future. So you talked a little bit about call out culture. And I think that that was a really interesting idea to bring up. So in an era of evolving politics and evolving political correctness and the way that we go about having discussions. What do you think is the future and what do you think is going to be the future of civil discourse and the way that we handle changing viewpoints and changing societal standpoints on different issues? I think the importance of the internet in this conversation is so significant because with the internet with everything sticking, it's a lot easier to quantify that this person once existed. Like me, like a past me once existed. And when I put that in social media, it's a lot easier to say that she was once there. And I might have changed, but I know psychologically that doesn't really help when it's there set in stone that maybe once I was there as someone I was not so proudly once before. I wish I could say that better, but yeah, that's my main take on it. I think I understand. Well, thank you, Joseph. Thank you, Zoe. My name is Cedric Hughes and this has been Teens on Topic.


Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live with theCUBE here at Bahrain for exclusive coverage for AWS Summit and the opening in early 2019. Just announced previously a few weeks ago. Amazon's opening a region here in the Middle East. It's going to be super impactful in the sense of entrepreneurship, business coming together. I'm John Furrier, we have two guests here. Benos Kanarath, who's the AVP head of cloud at Data Science, engineer at Mindtree Global Company and Snehal Zavri, server delivery manager of Computer World here in Bahrain, partnering. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming. Thank you, thank you Jeff. So, talk about Mindtree first. What do you guys do? Cause you now are doing business here. The cloud's here, not new to you guys, but this is an interesting time. It's extremely interesting time. So, we've been doing cloud for 10 years. So, we do a lot of digital transformation work. And it's a great time that the government of Bahrain has really decided to go all digital. And I think this is a great, great time for us to be really engaged and we're very happy to be engaged with the Computer World. And what do you guys do? What's your main fraud? You're doing data science, big data analytics, cloud DevOps? Yes, that's right. So, to give you a sense, if you look at India as a country, so the core citizen identity for India, for all the governance initiatives, which you could say either it's a big data, the data science piece, the entire piece is actually done by us. So, what that really gives is, gives identity to citizens and is the base for all governance initiatives going forward. So, building systems like that, where truly touching the lives of folks through digital transformation, where it's fundamentally about cloud. It's a big part of data. And really about how do you drive insights to make this happen is something that we are really working towards. So globally, we work with all the two, global 2000 companies doing substantial work. So, the role of Jade is a big advantage for Bahrain. They're going to make that a center of advantage. GDPR, it's a nightmare. One knows how bad that is and you're living in Europe. People have stopped investing in some cases because of the requirements. So, there's some data problems that are hard to solve. Easy to say, hey, let's create data sovereignty. Let's protect consumers. Sounds good, but is a hard technical problem. Most people don't even know where their data is. Never mind removing, having all these things happen. But, the cloud is an opportunity. So Bahrain has identified data as a major advantage. Your reaction to that? Viable? Will they do it? How will they do it? Your thoughts? So, I think having a region here is the first step. And I think the Data Protection Act that has really been launched, I think used the firm legal foundations to do that. Once you get on to that, after that, the technology pieces of how to put together, you're exactly right. Cloud is a great way to start, get the data together, design the right foundations to put that together. So, I think it is just the right foundation for anything to start. They should give a hall pass for everyone prior to cloud. I know guys like doing storage. Wait a minute, where's that data? Because storage is hard. If you're provisioning storage. So, incredibly more hard in GDPR is the right to forget. So, once somebody says forget me, then going back to all the storages and removing information is even more difficult. Snail, talk about your role with MindTree, in Bahrain, Amazon. How do you feel about this? Great, I think I would love to answer this question. So, first of all, we as a computer world, we are three decade old company, more than three decade. And we have legacy. We started with traditional data center and then moved ourselves to virtualizes and to public cloud, private cloud to public cloud. And from there, we have moved ourselves to digital transformation. Although it is a big buzz word today. But then, we actually doesn't like disruption. We want people not to be a victim of the disruption. So, we always do that. That we always innovate ourself and keep a pace with industries, where industries goes. Now, as Bahrain is a company, when government of Bahrain has chosen AWS, a very strong platform. Now, what is missing is the best innovative solutions. You need skills, resources, knowledge to actually leverage this platform, which is chosen by government of Bahrain. So, I think as a strategic alliance is must. And we have chosen MindTree, looking at their global presence, their IP. And we would like Bahrain customers, especially in the public sector and non-public sector, leverage their expertise as working with computer world. So, this is all about, we as in computer world, what we do. And with respect to this government of Bahrain initiative, I think we as in, we are not citizen, but as in residence of Bahrain, it is really a proud for us that this is not a data center or a region for Bahrain. It is a regional data center. We have to definitely look into them. So, that's- That's a great opportunity. And the thing I want to point out is this big demand from government to move faster, because they're slow generally. But in Bahrain, they're fast compared to other governments, but the private sector is where the action's going to be with entrepreneurship. So, I got to ask you guys question around cloud native. Yes. How do you guys see cloud native architectures? Because you got Amazon's cloud native. Got it. This hybrid cloud, sure, I can get that, but cloud native is what everyone's going to be using. Perfect. So, before he starts from my side, I will go to the foundation and then I think he will take on from there. So, very great question. So, we see cloud journey in four different phases. The first is migration, which might be the first step, which might not be. But that migration doesn't solve any purpose. We have to move beyond. So, that's where the optimization phase comes. Whatever you have hosted on cloud, how you can optimize it. Maybe one of the example is you can move your database as an infrastructure to the RDS or any other services and so on. From there is the innovative solutions, what you have to think beyond. Whatever you have today, do it better, do it fast, and help, it should extend to the smart city concept or smart governance concept or something which is beyond the normal data center what can deliver. So, this is how we visualize. And from there is the time where you have to start developing native applications, cloud native. You should not think traditionally by hosting and then migrating. You change your mindset, start thinking cloud and living cloud. That's where we are and that's where I think they are. You got to jump in. You don't want to do a little bit of cloud. You got to go all in. Because cloud operations is what everyone will end up doing. Exactly, absolutely. Yeah, so globally any application that you're working today, I think fundamentally we have to think about how it runs in the cloud. So, it's inevitable that any new architectures that we do today are fundamentally cloud native. Whether those are containers or serverless applications. What's the consequence for people watching that they don't do cloud native because this is super important. Smart money, smart entrepreneurs and smart engineers and smart business people are doing cloud native because there are specific things that they benefit from. Yes. What are the consequences of they don't do cloud native? So, I think more than consequences, Bahrain has a great opportunity to leapfrog. Because in many places you have decide somewhere, you start with a legacy, then you kind of optimize. And today when you speak about and you're starting applications fresh, I think if you're directly starting on cloud native, the overall operational efficiency of how you build your applications to be more self-feeling. Starting fresh and leapfrogging, I think is a great opportunity that Bahrain really has. And certainly one of the consequences might be data impact. Because if you put everything in the cloud, if you're thinking cloud, you're thinking horizontally scalable. You're thinking asynchronous. You're thinking parallel. You're thinking auto scaling. Containers, microservices. Fundamentally, service meshes. They're thinking about data discovery because you talked about GDPR and the point of resident data. So, how do you apply machine learning to really understand the quality of data? How do you discover the right information? And then really expose that to the different places. Do you think machine learning is a great weapon against GDPR or helps GDPR? It helps identify, classify and identify the information. And even when you're sharing that information, it's a great way for you to actually get a sense of where is the classification. To do it humanly is not possible.   That's the AI that could help you. That's where AI comes. And the second big piece of how the government of Bahrain is really looking at it. When they liable with the FinTech companies and the banks, there's going to be a lot of APIs. And I think serverless programming with exposing APIs is just the right way for this collaboration to really happen. It's really easy. Makes it easy, makes it easy to try new things out and fail very, very quickly. If you think in terms of services and there's a collection of services, it's a simply API management. And then you got the future of orchestration with Kubernetes. Kubernetes, yes. And this is where you start to get into the state, stateless applications. That's where it gets a little bit difficult and some work to do there. But you can really have some fun with stateless. You can really have some fun with states and build some stuff up. And with ever increasing stability of the database in AWS, even the stateful applications are much more easier these days. Yeah, more work involved on the microservice side, especially across, yeah. Yes, that's right. Kubernetes has got some work to do. All right, final question. What do you think is the impact of Amazon coming to the region? In the short term, medium and long term, what do you think is the impact of Amazon's region? Not to go first? Yeah, definitely. So if you talk about the short term, first of all, this is a change of mindset, I'd say. And when government of Barin and the top, I mean, his highness is supporting this initiative. So the benefit is the lower cost, operation cost has to go down. See, this is not something at the one ministry or one enterprise level initiative. This is national level initiative. So end of the day when you consolidate 70, 80 ministries and you shut down the data center and host the data into AWS, then you are going to save a huge cost and that's what AWS is bound for. So with that strong commitment from the cost optimization, then you get the latest technologies. You don't need to keep spending money behind your upgrades and so on. That's fine. By as you go. By as you go. By as you go. Security, by the way, people always complain about security. Oh, cloud is never going to make it. I heard this right out of the gate. Security is more- In the cloud. In the cloud than it is on premise. We hear CSOs, chief security officers, saying my worst day of security in the clouds better than the best day on premises. Absolutely, that's true. And I think really in the short term, I think this is a statement of ambition. I think it really changes the complete mindset of the region itself in terms of wanting to have the cloud here becomes the region for all new businesses to come in. And I think given in the medium term, the number of banks that actually operate in this region, I think it's going to give a great fillip to really make this the key center of all Vintec companies going forward. I think the startup initiative with the presence of all the banks with a much more open government, I think is the right set of factors for more startups to come in, for more innovation to really drive in this region. And I think from a long-term perspective, it really sets a difference in terms of how things actually are going to change and move in this particular place. I think you're right. I think there's going to be some pull. Yes. And that pull is going to be multi-dimensional. Got it, got it. Economic, social, political, and then societal. And a change of mindset. And as Mr. Mohammad Alqad has mentioned in his keynote, during the keynote, the procurement process has reduced by 60%. That's unbelievable. You know, government with their own. It's going to create a whole new movement from the youth. It's going to be the summer of love, summer of cloud. Exactly. Because when the young people get a hold of the cloud. Yes. We're talking about young kids now. They've never provisioned Linux. Correct. They've never had a server under their desk. Yes. They've got new developers. Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you mean? What do you old guys have to do all this stuff? Exactly. They go right to machine learning. They go right to AI. They're like, no configuration, no rock fetches, no mundane tasks. Yes. They want it just to be elastic. Serverless is like. Serverless. They go right to serverless. And code nine is just the right way to go. Creativity will come from that speed of development. Creativity. So once that's set, he is setting it up. Yep. And two years down the line, you will see, Bahrain might be setting up a very right example for AWS to be given everywhere. Yo, what we're going to be doing? I mean, that's for sure. We're the old guys who are going to be the investors. We are all aligned. We are all aligned. That's a good deal. That's a good deal. There you are. We are not aligned absolutely with the government policies and we will commit and there is a success guarantee. I wish I was 18 again. What I know now, I'd be killing it in the cloud. Yep. We've been through the tough days. Guys, thanks so much for coming on, sharing your insights, great conversation. It's really about what's happening in innovation. It's about cloud computing. It's about scales, about new things. Certainly bring a lot of change and positive change with challenges as opportunities. Huge here for the first time. Bring in to you. Stay with us for more after this short break.


think tech away civil engagement lives here that's Lenora mollison she's a special guest here today on community matters and she is a prodigy we've had her before in March of 2017 where Ian Davidson interviewed her on think tech on the go I think it was and she's taller and smarter and even better today you're later you're more later so that was one song okay and I like to ask you what the name of that song was that was eruption by Eddie Van Halen I wish I wrote that I'd be so sure that that song is the best I so fine I'm gonna have more songs what other songs are we gonna have today well we're gonna be having the Steve Harvey look that I played on his show we're also gonna be having an original by me called has a boom it's about a kid that thinks he's a like nerd outside this his mind but inside he's really the hero and then lastly I'm gonna be playing some Metallica before horsemen okay wow so I want to know more about you I know that you're a student in what late junior high school at Myron L Thompson Academy which is right down the block I know you study or rather practice two hours a day every day yeah I know if I did that I could play like you right yes sure thank you and you've been playing for what most of your life now huh yeah seven years now I started when I was six hopefully I can play until I retire well that not whenever that might get a long way to go don't rush it yeah and and you're you're playing what kind of music we know a little already but could you define your genre my genre consists of original shredding fast songs you know like event sevenfold Metallica of course Eddie Van Halen that basically the top shredders sinister gates as well you know those people is that is that why they call you the Lenore the shredder yes that is correct okay could you help me cuz I'm really out of this and I think you're talking about what is a shredder exactly a shredder is when you play very fast single notes or whole notes depending on what type of shredding you like well not shredding playing chords and playing shredding is different shredding is more fast tempo and playing chords is like slower blues is more typical playing chords and shredding is more like double double fast like I saw that yeah that's not easy I mean you have to have a certain amount of virtuosity yes move that fast but they also call you the ghost girl of underage thinking I suppose that's different from underage drinking okay yeah what is the ghost ghost girl of underage thinking what is that why do they call you that back then I used to do auditions for TV and movie there was a show called the river on ABC it's canceled now which is sad I know why they canceled it they cancel all the best shows yeah that's true yeah I played a dead Victorian girl who drowned her victims because she's searching for her mother I tried to drown a lot of people oh I don't I don't think you're like that at all actually little my character does did you have to just have to go to the Los Angeles or something good to make the movie oh no it was here stationed in Hawaii it was out and down west side I think oh no kidding right so you have experience on the screen then you want more of that yes okay all right so what's the connection between the ghost girl and the music I just figured it work I mean I I kill myself because I'm super fast my hand follows off because I'm super super fast yeah not to brag no I don't want to brag but how did that happen how did you get super fast I mean you know people aren't necessarily born that way are they but you had to go through some kind of training and familiarity process way you got comfortable enough to get that fast right tell us about it there's something called endurance drills that you do every single day and you use a metronome to to pace yourself so you play chords like I said before to the metronome and it speeds up more and more until you are able to play really really you just turn it a higher a higher tempo and you have to keep up with it mm-hmm yeah and you have like five minutes a day or you increase your speed and time then yeah that's that's how you go yeah like wind sprints it's really rushing yeah so what are you studying in school in the Myron Myron L Thompson Academy down the block I am studying math I'm doing computer literacy I'm doing slope and graphs I'm also doing science and I'm learning about sharks more specifically what's inside the shark doing well yeah I'd say I am considering only got one C so that's good okay we don't talk about that we're gonna talk about that yeah what was the C in English okay everything else you're doing well yes that's great what about music is music in the program I it is in the program but not the type of music I like typically enjoy you know when I want to learn something I go to the web I go to YouTube I look it up I watch other people do it and when I really want to learn something I get a teacher and the teachers one-on-one with me the teacher is my mentor my teacher and in music when I was a kid I had a little music nothing like you have but and I had a teacher and he would come and see me and we would show me stuff you have what do you do to learn this stuff what do you what do you do on the web for example what do you do in terms of personal mentor coach counselor person I actually have two teachers Tommy Osuna and I have Aaron Kerry who is in charge of Kyla in the sixth school where I play with my band mate Noah for the web I look up solos and then I just try a piece of mountain then I take them to Tommy and he really helps me put some more technique into them what is technique I mean for you technique for me is putting more flair into it like putting more bends more flourish more more pacing like I said before for more technique give us an example of flair or flourish one thing is like like that yeah impressive yeah thank you so you have to but you have to listen to you know you have to be mainstream you are mainstream no question about it you're following what's going on out there I wish I could say the same for myself but how do you do that how do you follow what's going on how do you follow what other musicians are doing how do you get to the center of the track a typically go well I look at the top charts like the top 10 man's and all those YouTube videos like hey maybe I could do that and then I look up one of their solos and then those it's rinse repeat and swash yeah okay so do you play along with them no you just listen oh I do try and play along with them and if I really keep at it I might be able to try and do the backing track and then play along with the drum beat okay okay now what about what about other instruments at the same time do you at home when you practice for those two plus hours a day are you playing with a recording of somebody else playing are you playing with another musician do you have a group that you play with how do you sort of bounce off other musicians I do play with other people were underage thinking our band for the backing tracks and for the other instruments I do try and play along with other people on the web but it's usually recordings like on YouTube sometimes Facebook if they put it out so if I'm if I'm you and I go on YouTube and I want to see something that appeals to me as a learning experience what do I search for guitar chords top easy for the beginner no or like top 10 best solos and bands and how to play this specific solo so you're looking for excellence yes how I mean that's really important you decided you wanted to be excellent you wanted to be a virtuoso you why why is that what what happened to you that made you feel that you had to do that well for one parents yeah I started out because my parents had a role you have to pick one instrument for a year and if you want to continue doing it then we'll pay for it we'll do whatever you want and I chose guitar yeah trying to get a like right step in the direction so I picked guitar and then I discovered shredding a couple years ago and I was like giving a close up of that one more time so you know I told you I was going to ask you how has it been since March of 2017 a year and some months ago for you and how have you changed how has your world you changed if you could talk about that and how has your music and your learning music changed in that last year I have been going to more shows with my band underage thinking we've had a very good streak so far last year we played at the kidney foundation for walking the wild side we've also have been playing down in Kailua for the habilitat which plays a special heart like place in my heart because I was actually the first gig we played there like first actual full on gig and then for me I've been playing at the MMA events like down in Honolulu like by the park over there yeah what's that you go with the band and sometimes alone sometimes with the band yeah sometimes with that how many people are there for okay yeah and I use a leader yeah okay all right good good I want you to tell me all right so we have a couple of minutes before our break here in the show and I wonder if you could play song number two this is actually the look I played on the Steve Harvey show so get ready okay I'm ready we're gonna take one minute to recover from that it will come back and you play still another tune for us yes be right back here on think tech all around the city they tell me they're making music so I do it want to see how big it is it's a little smaller than mine but you reach right around that you got it all so Lenore um that's the kind of song you play in a gig yes how long is a gig where is a gig the average we typically play is at bars restaurants um sometimes we'll play at a festival um all over all over why basically are you are you recording also a recording in music we are in the progress of recording some of our music really so far we've got one song down okay you're making an album is that it yes oh wow okay we're trying to trying to okay well when will we know when when can we find out not yet not you'll come back on this show play some more songs yes and then you'll tell us so I guess so what I wanted to ask you about in this part is you know where this fits in your life because obviously your progeny project you a prodigy and you're a virtuoso and it's only going to get better even with small hands like that they'll get bigger and so I guess the question I would ask is so where where does it go for you you're studying something in school it's not the same thing and you may do that veterinary medicine was it that was your other goal yeah yeah go ahead I'm hoping that this can become a backup plan just in case if for some reason veterinary school doesn't work out it's gonna be long and hard I'm hoping that I could actually use guitar to try and open up a place a veterinary place and then me work as the head doctor a head surgeon you mean music yeah yeah in the veterinary yeah you know I there was a movie not too long ago about a camel in Mongolia and the camel was albino it was a baby camel and the mother didn't like that because it was unusual so the mother wouldn't let the baby camel nurse and the baby camel was wasting away okay and they tried so hard to keep the baby camel alive and ultimately they found a secret in this wonderful movie and the secret was guess music and it somehow gave comfort to the mother and the child camel and then they bonded up and the child survived all about music so there's a relationship between animals and music don't you think yeah that'll be a really interesting veterinary clinic you open I think so if you had your druthers would you pick the one or the other or the Bose where does the music fit if you had your you know your druthers on this music would fit I'd make my own hours and music would fit like in the morning and then at night and then maybe along the way I could host like an animal festival and then I could play there is like hey I was to play guitar so is it a career for you you think you think it might be yeah it could I think it could definitely be a career and how do you see it unfolding I mean you're you're not even in high school yet there's a lot there's a long way to go I can tell you I I sat in my in my class and in New York where I grew up in junior high school us Simon was over there and Garfunkel was over there and I knew them both and who would ever have thunk that they were going to be what they became to be and it was because they kept on doing it is what they kept on working together because you you learn a lot you learn about your own music and make it better so I mean is that the kind of plan you have that you can keep on doing this until you get so good that it becomes you know a career yeah I really really hope that guitar really works out with me because it plays a big part in my life I've been doing it for seven years so took it away it's kind of like taking something out of a heart or something yeah what do your parents prefer Lenore but they give you direction on this at all sometimes women must have some way to practice like longer is like hey I did this no you have to practice more but I was like no wait three foot seven years into this is like okay fine how about the neighbors what the neighbors say because some of this equipment you can't see it here with the cameras but makes a fair amount of noise how do the neighbors feel about it they are they behind you are they supporting it yeah they are supporting me I try to keep it low because we live in a valley and then if you put one noise out of that it's just gonna bounce around the islands to the other side yeah yeah yeah I wonder about your band how long you think it'll last it's I guess they're all your age in school together are you all in in my right now Thompson together are they in different schools to they're all in different schools I'm my drummer Noah and my bass player Callahan they both go to KIS and then my other singer so be as she goes to another online school oh good so everybody's in this kind of innovative schooling system one kind of another yeah so that's pretty good you think you'll stay together and just so how long because you know it's hard to stay together as you get older yeah you know family and then growing up and all that stuff I really hope that we stay together for a long time but I don't really want to like try and say we're staying together for this long I don't care what you guys are up to but yeah I hope we stay together until we get famous how will you get famous how how do you see the path to fame I think it's just putting stuff out there and that's just putting stuff out there and like try and be more hey look at me I'm doing this then just like oh I play guitar but I want people to think that I do this like I don't be insecure just like trying to be yourself and put your talents out there well I want to make one thing clear Lenore you have to come back here we have to pepper the internet with your music and and you know sort of watch you grow into a career on this you know that would be really fabulous yeah I think that really should be in your future and if so I mean would you make a career choice for college for example to go to a school where they were going to teach you music would you try to get into Juilliard or some other performing arts school so you know to be exceptional or to find an education which can make you even more exceptional I just want to get into college like yeah yeah okay well but if you go you know to college and I'm sure you will um will you will you want to study music there as well as veterinary medicine for example yeah definitely because you know I mean if like I said before our music is a very big part of me yeah and if you go to college and you do a little music of course you would anyway whether it was studying it or not would you you think you try to establish another band yeah yeah I think I could handle it yeah what's it like to be a band leader because that's different than just being in a band is that you have to be the center of it somehow yeah well it's kind of it's kind of difficult a little bit because you have to like sing and then play and like announce what you're doing without like completely falling down and then like yeah yeah so so you you have to lead the music yes and then you have to be the center of the group so they all come around when they're supposed to come around yeah you know I when you played the first song that was that was without singing and the second song that was with singing so where does singing fit are you are you getting coaching on singing also are you making special efforts to develop your voice because you know voice training not so easy and having a voice that you know is memorable that's not so easy what are you doing on that score well I have had one lesson before but we haven't really gotten back to it I've just been like trying to do scales and like trying to get my voice more confident a little bit because you know I'm getting older and then my voice is getting so sorry for you yeah yeah so right now I'm just trying to figure out how like strong my voice could be and like how low it could go and high you know you have you have the perfect pitch a little rusty with the higher notes and but I've got a I think I could do a pretty good scale yeah so which is more important to you that the singing or they were the playing guitar definitely playing because if you you can sing but playing and singing is kind of hard you know singing and playing you have to worry about the lyrics and you have to remember what pitch it is and you often have to worry about wait am I on the seventh fret am I on what wait what chord am I playing yeah now what kind of guitar is that this is a floating bridge hell razor shector it's got a locking system right here and that helps the tuning you don't have to tune it every minute that way yeah yeah this is fine tuning as well down here to try and help if it goes like a little off what did you call it again a hell razor yes you know this is a family show Lenore and you have another one too right mm-hmm what's the other one the other one is a Ivan is it's also a floating bridge it's got the same locking system the neck is actually quite thinner so there's differences as well like the pickups are a little different there's three in them instead of two and also the locking system and the other fine-tuning is much more harder to do and your favorite this one okay yeah all right okay but you can do you can do virtuoso on both of them yes so I'm gonna ask you to sing one more song going out is it going to be a voice and instrument or or or just instrument it's just gonna be an instrument cuz and what's the name the name is four horsemen by Metallica okay well thank you so much for playing for us Lenore thank you so much Lenore molasses you're gonna play us out


Turn with me to the book of Isaiah and the first chapter and follow along as I read verses 10 through 16. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord.  I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity in the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of burying them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear.  Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean.  Seize to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow. Now just to summarize where we have been thus far today, the worship of God is the ultimate priority. We worship God because he deserves it and because he demands it. Worship is unacceptable to God when sin separates man from man or man from God. There's any theme in my opinion for this conference. It is a call back to reverence for God in worship. The church in my opinion has lost for the most part any sense of reverence. And I believe that's because we've lost sight of the otherness of God. We've become too familiar with God. And it's unfortunately true that familiarity breeds contempt. Now if the worship of God is the most noble act of which man is capable, then great preparation must go into it. It's a sign of our low esteem for worship that we spend so little of any time at all preparing for it. Think back to last Sunday. What was involved in getting ready for the worship service? And how much time did you spend preparing for it? For most folks, the entire routine consisted of getting out of bed, having something to eat, showering, dressing, crimping, and driving. But none of that is in any way related to spiritual preparation. John Willison, not Wilson, but Willith's son was a great Scottish preacher. He said, if we consider the nature of Sabbath work and our unfitness for it, preparation for it will be found very needful. We are called upon this day to make solemn and near approaches to that God who is a glorious spirit and a whole communion with him who is infinitely holy. And is it not very necessary that we, who are naturally carnal and involved in worldly business throughout the week, should endeavor to abstract our thoughts from worldly things so that we may not draw night as so great a God on this holy day? For holy performances, God requires us to make holy preparations. When Christ prepares a table for you in the gospel and furnishes it with all the dainties of heaven, pardon, peace, love, grace, and eternal life, should you not empty your stomach, cleanse your heart, adorn your soul, and make ready to feast with your Redeemer? End quote. So in this session, we want to look first at the why of preparing and then secondly at the how of preparing for the worship of God. First, the sanctity of worship demands that we prepare for it. In Exodus 19, the people were to be consecrated inside and cleansed outside before meeting with God in His worship. In that passage in Exodus 19, the people spent two days preparing for one day of worship. Now we don't need to make a neat little formula and say we should spend twice as much time preparing as we do worshiping. That wouldn't be a bad idea or formula. First Chronicles 22 shows that great preparation was made to build God's house and shall not just as great preparation be made to worship in it. Think of the plans, the drawings, the architect's work that went into nothing more than building a place to worship God. Architect put in the most minute details and that just for a building. And yet this building is nothing more than wood, nails, plaster, and carpeting. The only thing that makes this building significant is the activity that takes place here. There's nothing at all holy about the building. What is holy is what happens here. And if that much time and preparation goes into a building that's only useful when it's being used for the worship of God, how much more time and more preparation should go into the actual act of worship that makes this building worth anything at all? First Chronicles 22 tells us to set our heart and soul to seek the Lord. The Hebrew word that we translate set literally means give yourself. Give yourself to seek the Lord. It's to be an obsession. It's to be a passion. It's to be a lifelong pursuit. I mean didn't the Apostle Paul say I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified? Think of that. Here's the Apostle Paul who had by the age of 21 the equivalent of two doctors degrees. He's considered by even secular minds as one of the greatest minds of ancient world. He saw things most people couldn't even dream about. He went to seminary personally with Jesus for three years. Wow, Paul. You could have made a killing on TBN. Man, you could have charged a ton. I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I don't think it's any stretch to say if that's what he determined to know, that's what we ought to strive to know. I hear preachers on the radio who are experts in eschatological things and I've never heard them give the gospel. And I wonder if they know what it is. Paul was an example of someone who said his heart and soul to seek the Lord. That's an example of someone who gave himself to a worthy pursuit. Second, the purity of worship demands that we prepare for it. As we saw in the last hour, no worship takes place until we are clean. So if there's no purity, we can't be said to be seeking him. And according to that Psalm 24 passage, there's only one type of person who has any business and a worship service, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. And the passage identifies such people as those who are seeking the Lord. So if our hands are not clean and our hearts are not pure, we will not receive a blessing from the Lord and we are not seeking the face of the Lord. But we're commanded to seek the Lord. Therefore, we must cleanse our hands and purify our hearts. One of the most impactful things I've ever done, and this was years ago, I made an effort to call or contact somehow everyone I knew I defended and asked their forgiveness. And I remember when I put the phone down after the last call, I just leaned back, put my head down and sobbed for at least 30 minutes. It felt so good to be clean. 1 Peter 2 tells us to lay aside all malice and guile and slander and envy. And it says, only then will we desire the pure milk of the Word. Have you ever felt like I don't have any spiritual appetite? Now you know what's wrong. It's not the preaching. It's not the scripture text that you didn't care for was preached this morning. You don't have an appetite. It's because your sin has squelched that appetite in you.  Now notice the order of things there in Peter were first to lay aside all of these sins. And I hope you notice that those are all sins of the heart, not sins of the flesh. And only then will we desire the pure milk of the Word. As we read in Isaiah 1, we trample God's courts because of our uncleanness. And it would be a legitimate question to raise. Well, how do I do that? I'm never anything but sinful. Everything I do seems like it's sin. How do I clean myself up, so to speak? Well, there's a difference between being a sinful creature and having sin on us that we will not deal with.  That doesn't mean that you have to pile up and amass sins that you don't deal with. Listen to what God says. I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. There's one nice thing about being a Christian. It's that being a sinner is an absolute prerequisite for membership.  So we're not saying by coming to worship that we're not sinners. What we are saying is that I'm coming here because I need cleansing. But it doesn't follow that we can come to worship with sin that we do not desire to have purged. We're to deal with the sin before we come to offer any sacrifices of praise. And anything else God considers trampling his courts. Now you can begin to see what constitutes a great part of preparing for worship, self-examination, prayer, seeking pardon from those we may have offended, purging sin from our lives, reading and meditating on Scripture so that the Spirit and the Word can convict us of sins of ignorance. I didn't know it was a sin. Well, it was in the Bible. Why didn't you know it was a sin? In Leviticus 16, Aaron the priest had to cleanse himself before he could approach God. In Psalm 26, David cleansed his hands before he approached God's altar. 2 Timothy 2 says we must flee youthful lusts before we can pursue righteousness. You can't be pursuing God when you're chasing sin. And according to James 1, we must put aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness before we can receive the Word implanted in us. Before we can receive anything from the Word preached, we must lay aside all filthiness and remaining wickedness, for we can't have any expectation that the Word will lodge on us and have any effect on us. I'm sorry, I didn't get anything out of that. I wouldn't go around telling people that. You just admitted to quite a bit. 2 Chronicles 29-5. Now, sanctify yourselves. Sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers and carry the rubbish from this holy place. That's how we sanctify ourselves. When we carry the rubbish of sin out of our lives so that we can worship God with clean hands and a pure heart. Or let me put it in reverse. You don't bring uncleanness into this place. You don't bring sin in. And if there is sin, you take it out. That can be done on a personal level or a corporate level. I often say if there were more self-discipline, there'd be less need for church discipline. You can't tolerate sin in yourself as an individual. And the elders can't tolerate sin in the membership as a corporate body. Discipline, whether it's self-discipline or church discipline, is the best way to deal with sin and carry the rubbish from this holy place. The very name for the room where people meet for worship would suggest that what I'm saying is true. It's called a sanctuary. It's different than a sanctuary city. Obviously the root of that word is the same we use for the word sanctified. It is a place set apart, a refuge from the world and from sin. Think back to your own conversion. Now this probably isn't as true today as it was years ago. But how many came to Christ in a church building? How many of you were baptized in a church building or had your children baptized in a church building? Doesn't that alone make it a special place for you? I grew up in a Baptist church where every sermon was ended with an invitation and an altar call. And we sang 291 verses of Just as I Am or the Billy Graham thing. If you came on a bus, the buses will wait. You come down here. I do have to tell this story. When I was much younger, I went and volunteered at a Billy Graham crusade in Fresno, California. And they told us that when Mr. Graham gives the invitation, you volunteers come down first. They said, that'll do two things. One, you'll be ready to counsel people. And secondly, if somebody's on the fence and not sure if they want to come down or not, they'll see all you people coming and they won't know that you worked for the Billy Graham crusade. Okay, I won't be the first one and they'll come on down. And they call that priming the pump. I don't know if you've ever worked on a farm, but we had a pump. We wanted water. We had to do it. Sometimes we had to pour water down to get water out. And that was called priming the pump. I call it manipulation. And so the first two, 300 people you see coming forward at a Billy Graham crusade all worked for Billy Graham or volunteers. And then you have these other people.  It was on Father's Day in Pasadena, California at a Christian Missionary Alliance Church. That doesn't matter what brand of church it was, it happens everywhere. And the pastor had preached the typical Father's Day stand up, stand up for Jesus kind of message. And at the end we sang that song, faith of our fathers. Faith of our father's holy faith. We will be true to thee till death, which I find very interesting because the man who wrote that hymn, Frederick W. Faber converted to Romanism about a year later. He wasn't true to that faith till death. But anyway, at the end of this sermon on being a good father for Jesus, the pastor said, there were probably four, five, six hundred people there, fairly large church in Southern California.  He says, all right, you've heard the word. All you fathers who want to stand up and be counted for Jesus, stand up now and make your declaration. What father in the world has enough guts to not stand up for that? Not me. I don't want to stand up for Jesus. Well, they all stood up, probably 150 of them. And that's spurred on the pastor. And he says, look at this. This is great.  Why don't you stand up with your husbands and say, I'm with you, honey, we're going to live for Jesus. Stand up now. And so we kept singing, faith of our fathers, faith of our friends. All these women stood up. Well, of course, he wasn't going to let it go there. Kids, look at your parents. I'm glad we didn't have any golden retrievers in the audience. We'd have gotten to them eventually. Children, look at your parents standing up for Jesus. Let's make it a family thing.  I'm not a father, a mother or a kid. I'm the only one seated in the auditorium. And then the pastor does this. He puts his head down. He says, Spirit of God is speaking to me.  I'm the only one. I mean, he couldn't have been any more obvious if he'd call me by name.  I said, I'm not given into this nonsense. So finally, after, like I said, 291 verses of faith of our fathers, he finally closed in prayer and then he went to the back. And when I walked out, I shook his hand and smiled. It looks good kill. But that's not ministry. That's manipulation. George Swenick said, suppose you were a person of great quality and estate. And the King sent you word that he wants to dine with you tomorrow. What preparation would you make? I know how it is for you ladies. You have to clean the house before you let the cleaning service in. I'm not letting anybody in this house looking like this. No, that's why they're coming. So the house won't look like it. Nope, not doing it.  Wouldn't you endeavor to have everything suitable with so great a prince?  Can you do anything less than sweep out the dust of sin, wash the room of your heart clean and adorn it with the graces of the Holy Ghost? Truly, unless this is done, Christ will not think himself worth a welcome. All your pretended entertainment will not only be infinitely unworthy of, but provoking to, so jealous and glorious a prince. Now this is not a new idea. It might be new to us, but it's not new for God. Mark 1542 speaks of the preparation day, the day before the Sabbath. And that wasn't a cultural thing. The day before the Sabbath was given completely as a day to prepare for the holy duties of that sacred day. There was a man named John Wells in the 1600s who wrote a book called The Practical Sabotarian, 942 pages on how to rightly conduct yourself on the Lord's Day. He said the Jews gave very solemn honor to their Sabbath. The Jews began the Sabbath at six o'clock the night before, and the Hebrews called it the entrance to the Sabbath. Their preparation for the Sabbath began at three o'clock in the afternoon, which the Hebrews call Sabbath Eve, borrowing the phrase from the pagans whose religion taught them in their sacrifices to their gods and goddesses to prepare themselves by a strict kind of holiness. Among the Jews the whole day before the Sabbath was a day, it was a kind of preparation. They went into the synagogue the day before the Sabbath.  Does the knowledge of Christ influence us no more than this? Let us blush to be outdone by those who rejected Christ. How much is God worth? That's the question. How much is he worth to you? So third, to not prepare our hearts to worship God is a great sin. Jeremiah 7, sin and then come to God's house and say we are delivered. Job 11, do not let wickedness dwell in your tents. Now there's an important distinction there that needs to be made. He doesn't say there will never be sin. What he says is don't let it take up residence. Like the old saying goes, you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can't keep them from building a nest in your hair. Same thing here. He's not saying you won't sin. What he's saying is don't let it live there. 2 Chronicles 12, he did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord. The word translated prepare there is the same word as was used in 1 Chronicles 22, where it was translated set. According to this passage, the man did evil. What was the evil he did? Drunkenness? No. Adultery? No. Life of use? No. What possible evil did he did? He didn't prepare his heart to seek the Lord. Wow. So the sanctity of worship demands that we prepare for it. The purity of worship demands that we prepare for it. But preparing for worship does not begin Sunday morning. Turn to the book of Nehemiah. Happiness is sitting next to someone who knows how to find Nehemiah. And if you have trouble, find that other book in the Old Testament, the book of contents. I saw a couple of you turned back to find it. Beginning in chapter 13 and verse 15. Nehemiah says, In those days I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaves and loading donkeys with wine grapes figs and all kinds of burdens which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. Men of Tyre dwelt there also who brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day? Did not our fathers do thus and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. So it was at the gates of Jerusalem as it began to be dark before the Sabbath I commanded the gates to be shut and charged that they must not be open till after the Sabbath. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day. Here preparation began Saturday evening.  Now how do I extrapolate that into this discussion? Well shouldn't we then shut the gates of our hearts and minds for the same reason? I mean can we really be prepared for Sunday morning worship? If Saturday nights are spent at the movies or a party or a Sunday morning is taken up with watching TV, box news even, listening to the radio or reading the Sunday paper. These distractions take away from worship. As I mentioned in Malachi 1 God was asking the people for a lamb as a sacrifice and what they did is they went out into the flock and they found a sickly or disease lamb who was going to die anyway and they'd offer God that one. God said why should I accept that? Offer that to the governor and see if he'll take it. So we give the world and the devil our youth and our strength and we give God our old age, our weariness and our disease sacrifices.  But what do these are necessary to prepare? Let me give you just some practical ones. Spend time meditating on the majesty of God and the greatness and gravity of his worship. Meditation is a lost art. I think you have the book by Thomas Watson in your bookstore here not on the book table called the Christian on the Mount which is his treatise on meditation. When I grew up in the 60s meditation was staring at your navel. Any more I'd have to look into a mirror to find it. Secondly, cleanse your heart and mind from any known sin. James 4 equates cleansing our hands and hearts with drawing near to God. Third, put the things of the world aside and think about holy things. Fourth, be much in prayer to guard your heart. Five, go to bed early so that you're not too tired to give God your full attention in his worship. George Swenick said, prepare to meet thy God, O Christian. Take thyself to thy chamber on Saturday night. Confess and bewail thy unthankfulness for the ordinances of God. Shame and condemn thyself for thy sins. Beg God to prepare thy heart for religious performances. Spend some time in consideration of the infinite majesty, holy, and goodness of God. Ponder the weight and importance of holy duties. The oven of thy heart thus baked in Saturday night, it will be easily heated the next morning. If you leave your heart with God on Saturday night, you'll find it still with him on Sunday morning. I guess we could think of our heart as a crock pot. You put it on simmer and you leave it for 12 hours and you got a meal. Think of your heart like that. Put it on simmer with God Saturday night. Think about him. Think about Christ. Think about salvation. Read the Psalms. Meditate. Read a good Christian book, not fluff. Good Christian books. That's what it means to prepare for Sunday worship.


This is Dave Vellante, I'm with Wikibon.org and I'm with my colleague Stu Miniman, who's also with Wikibon. This is SiliconANGLE.tv's continuous coverage, live coverage of VMworld 2012. This is our third year here. We're in the hang space, come by and see us. Very relaxed atmosphere, play some foosball, play some shuffleboard, and we got a great segment here. We're here with Praveen Akiraju, who's the new CEO of VCE, the virtual computing environment company. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, glad to be here. Great to see you, this is kind of a coming out party for you, isn't it? Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful, great technology, great people, customers, partners, having a ball. So we spent obviously a lot of time at Cisco, which at one point was the C in VCE.  Yeah, I think this, it's obviously an amazing space, as you saw today over the last couple of days, actually. Data center is going through a phenomenal transformation, new technologies, new ways of deploying, and new business models. And I think, from my perspective, my career has been at Cisco in the networking space, but while at Cisco I'd spent a lot of time in the service provider space, my last job actually was in the BYOD space, around the mobility business. And we used to define a lot of the architectures that connected into the cloud. So a lot of the access infrastructure that you saw actually Steve had to talk about the ISRG2 and VMware view, that was actually my product. That was the work that I did with him before we came here. So from my perspective, I think I really understand how customers, users, and our enterprises actually deploy and roll out the access infrastructure that's key to actually engaging and connecting with the cloud. So bringing that perspective I think would be key to essentially evolving our strategy around how we take the data center infrastructure and differentiate VCE. And so when you think about, well, how did we get here? So you guys announced VBlock, and at the time it was a relatively new concept, although a lot of people have said it, and I generally have said it as well, that converse infrastructure is largely evolutionary. It's not hugely disruptive or radically disruptive, but at the same time what Cisco brought was different. Got into a new market, so we're going to take it from a different angle. So what's your point of view on that? Is converse infrastructure evolutionary or is it revolutionary? Yeah, I think you could, from a pure system perspective, obviously, we're pulling together best in class components from Cisco, EMC, and VMware, and delivering that to our customers.  We're able to cut the time to deployment, time to uptime, basically, for data center infrastructure by five times, cut costs by about three times. And this has been proven out of 500 customers that we've deployed the VBlocks with. The key here really is, as we talked about earlier, data center is in a period of intense evolution. And what we've done at VCE is to establish, converge infrastructure as the basic building block of the next generation data center. Now there's a lot of opportunity for us to build off of that to deliver new innovative capabilities, whether it's deploying solutions, whether it's enabling different management stacks and customer choice on top of this infrastructure. I think that's what we really well poised to do. So I want to just continue this line of thinking, help people understand why you, why now. So I mean, obviously my compelence has been in the queue before, a very senior exec, big business, huge TAM, we want to find a $400 million TAM. Obviously VCE and E are spending a lot of money to go after that, it's well publicized, the investments that you're making here, you're an executive with a lot of operational experience. It's very clear, you look at your resume, this guy knows how to run a business. Knows P&L management, knows how to run operations, why you, why now? I think we are ready to basically take the next step as VCE, and this is just in line with basically how the data center technology and architecture is evolving. As I said, the VCE was a pioneer in establishing convergent infrastructure as a building block for the data center, and the team's done an amazing job of delivering a phenomenal customer experience, tremendous customer loyalty and value to our customers. As we look forward, you saw a lot of innovations rolled out here today, this week, software defined data centers, management orchestration, stacks, new kind of applications. We believe that VCE is at a point where it's ready to take the next step as evolution to be able to deliver innovative capabilities that abstract the convergent infrastructure. We've proven out that convergent infrastructure is deliverable, and we have a lot of other players in the market now, so we want to take the learnings that we have from the experience over the past couple of years, and put that back into our engineering so we can develop software capabilities, service capabilities that are innovative on top of the convergent infrastructure as a platform. So my background in basically scaling up businesses will basically help us drive, take the strategy that the team's been already driving and essentially operationalize that so we can take the company past a billion dollars, which is a run rate we're approaching. Yeah, and so, but profitability thus far has not been the primary objective, it's been growth.  I think the fundamental financial value proposition of VCE back to our investor companies has been the growth that we deliver in their respective segments. So if you look at, for example, at the UCS business, for Cisco, we're able to get them into accounts and a data center level that probably would have been harder for them to just penetrate as a pure UCS business. Because now we enable a different level of conversation of the entire data center, a lot of the V architects are sales teams as well as our professional services are able to have a completely different discussion than what a individual component discussion would be. So the key here financially is to deliver those growth, continue to drive growth for EMC, Cisco, as well as VMware in terms of those respective areas, but more importantly, deliver innovation. And I think that's the key for us to, in terms of expectations for VCE going forward. So I can infer from that statement, though, from a shareholder perspective, you're already delivering value in the form of- Absolutely. Not only revenue, but there's profits that are trickling down into the individual companies that they presumably wouldn't have had otherwise. That's the front of the story. Absolutely, I think we've accomplished three things for our investor companies. One is we've delivered tremendous growth in new markets for companies like Cisco, as well as VMware in terms of some of the larger contracts and ELAs we're able to leverage for them. Secondly, we are meeting all our financial goals and objectives as defined by our investors for us as a company. As you know, we're a private company, so we don't quite publish our financial results, but we absolutely have a very rigorous way of auditing and making sure we have well-defined financial goals that we are delivering. So the goal for us here is to continue to accelerate the growth and drive the disruption. We're in a hyper growth phase as a company at VCE, and I think you can see that from the evolution of our product offers as well as the way that capabilities in the teams have been built up in our customer base. So with the acquisition of NYSERA, there's been a lot of speculation that EMC and Cisco are pulling back from the relationship. Is our EMC and Cisco pulling back from the relationship? Yeah, I think that's an interesting question because when you look at a lot of the things that has been put out there, it's a fair question to say, hey, what does this mean for the broader VCE future? And I can tell you that if you take it from a customer perspective, what VCE delivers in terms of putting together these best in class products and delivering a convergent infrastructure, both Cisco, VCE and EMC are completely committed to VCE as the only path for delivering convergent infrastructure. Now, there are obviously different plays at the lower end of the spectrum that both Cisco and EMC deliver, but we typically find ourselves not competing with the lower end plays, with the more reference architecture type plays because our customers are the Fortune 500 type customers where we're going in there, we're transforming the data center, we're fundamentally accelerating the infrastructure plays. So the other aspect of NYSERA, if you actually saw the press release that came out yesterday from Cisco and VMware, they have committed to joint engineering development and actually called out VCE as a key route to market for the technology that Cisco and VMware would develop jointly in the software defined data center space. So, you know, obviously I think when you look at the technology industry for those of us who've been in this space for a while, they're always going to be areas where the investor companies will have some areas of common investment and common products where they are potentially in the same space. But I think if you look at convergent infrastructure, VCE is the only route to market and all our investor companies are committed to continue to deliver the technologies that they acquire into VCE to deliver to our customers. So, Praveen, I'm wondering if we can dig in a little deeper to kind of that vision of the software defined data center. So when VCE first launched, everybody looked at, okay, we have a V block, it's a convergent infrastructure, but at its core what VCE really looked to do is transform the way IT is consumed. So whether that be to the service providers that you sell to or to the end users is a great kind of as a service platform. If we see the vision that VMware is laying out of the software defined data center and what NICERA is talking about, where does VCE, which still at its core, it's not only hardware, but you have a hardware when I think of a software defined data center. As I said, one of the litmus test is, do I have to run it on this hardware or is it abstracted? So where does a company like VCE fit in a software defined world? I think at the end of the day, when you look at infrastructure, that's one component of what the value that we truly deliver. The actual real value is our ability to abstract that convergent infrastructure so you can enable customers to have the choice of getting applications or management and orchestration stacks or their own customized applications like Hadoop and Big Data to run on this convergent infrastructure in a simplistic manner. So our direction absolutely is to continue to develop software capability that will abstract the convergent infrastructure and be able to offer a much more efficient and faster way for enabling management orchestration and choice for customers. This is kind of what Elasticity, right? This is kind of what the foundation of the software defined data center is. So that is an area where we're driving significant investment. Okay, so one of the things we love to dip in under the cube in our audience likes is what's the competition look like? So I remember if I could look a year ago, I heard the VCE folks saying, it's Oracle, it's HP, it's IBM. I'm curious, there's been a new wave of converged vendors that are coming out. Flash is coming out. I heard some announcements this week about VCE, like the flash card from EMC. So what's the state of the competition? Who are you battling against and what's a little bit of that makeup? Here's the interesting data point. As you guys know, this is sort of my fourth week at VCE. So I've been spending a lot of time on the road with our customers, with our partners as well as with the teams at VCE, understanding essentially our core competencies, our business, and one thing that truly struck me was the claim that our teams made and justified by the customers and partners that every time we go into a proof of concept, VCE always wins, right?  We will do our own tests.  So I feel we have a significant competitive advantage, competitive advantage both in terms of the building blocks that we have are best in class, the storage, networking, or virtualization. And secondly, I think, I call them scars on the back and again, having been in the industry for a while, it takes a lot to actually put together a converged infrastructure play, right? And operational folks in the IT departments would know what I'm talking about. You fundamentally learn a lot by actually putting these systems together, getting them deployed, and delivering on the promise of getting the system up and running within 30 to 40 days for our customers. So that, I think, is a huge advantage for us which allows us to then take that forward from an innovation perspective in terms of simplifying and abstracting the converged infrastructure. A lot of our competitors have recognized the converged infrastructure space. We welcome them to the market. I think they're going to have credible offers, obviously. There's a spectrum of converged infrastructure offers. We obviously are targeting the Fortune 500, right? And we will be coming up with offers for the rest of the spectrum of the market as well. So last question I have for you, if you're focused on the Fortune 500, how does that fit with your channel? So there was a little bit of a rough ride, the first kind of 12 to 18 months with VCE. So where are you with the channel? Who are you seeing your deals from a partner channel's perspective? Yeah, I think we have close to 150 partners who are certified on the V-Block. Partners is a very important part of our strategy and we look at it in a couple of different ways. One is obviously, from a relationship perspective, we work very closely with a lot of our partners as we go to market and deliver our V-Blocks to large customers, Fortune 100 customers, but we're also enabling partners to be able to configure and drive V-Block sales themselves. And I think that's the most exciting part for us. So we're seeing some good traction, particularly in some of the regional parts of the United States and the West and the Midwest where we're seeing pretty good traction from partners. Our longer-term strategy for partners obviously is to ensure that we're able to deliver to them profitability at the same time, deliver to them a product set that they're excited about, that they can go and drive to their customers and explore new markets for us as well. Competitively, you were talking before, it used to be just V-Block was it. And then HP would argue, simultaneously came into the market, you guys would say you were first, we would agree that you were first, but for a while it was HP and DCE, really, it was a two-horse race. And now everybody's in it. IBM has thrown down the gauntlet and brought its expert integrated systems in and the differentiation is this application knowledge. So now my question to you, Praveen, is how do you continue that leadership? Do you bring in sort of similar knowledge? Can you leapfrog that? What's the next vision on the roadmap? Well, I think we have to build on what our core strength is, which is delivering an amazing customer experience. I was at dinner yesterday with one of our customers from SoftBank with whom we just announced a global partnership to deliver the V-Block systems as part of their cloud services strategy. And what he told me was he had close to $7 million invested in a traditional sort of build-it-yourself data center architecture. And it took him almost six months to stand it up. And so this is the COO of SoftBank. And he said, the first V-Block, we were able to get it up and running in 40 days and it just blew his mind, right? And that was really why he was willing to sign, take the leap of faith and sign this huge partnership with us. So really I think that customer experience is what we build our foundation on. Now, as I said, the scars on the back aspect is important because what we do is we actually bring in technology experts, whether they're storage experts or network experts or compute guys, and train them for six months so they're actually able to go into a customer and have a full data center conversation all the way up to the applications. We're absolutely comfortable with the talent that we have on the sales side, on the services side, to deliver that remarkable experience. And I think we've built it from the ground up with the experience of having deployed 500 customers. And I think that's, again, as I said, a key competitive advantage for us. Now, to my correct, most of that activity has been, or much of that activity has been in the US, you guys announced this morning a deal with SoftBank. And first of all, is that the first statement correct that most of the activity and focus has been in the US and is this mark a new sort of chapter? Well, we've been very, we have some pretty key customers in Europe as well. We are sort of starting to penetrate into the Asia-Pak market. SoftBank is one of the most significant deals that we've announced, but as part of some of our customers who are large multinationals, we've had footprint in Asia for a while, but this is clearly one of the most significant announcements for us in APAC. Great, all right, Provinable, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. Congratulations on your new role. Thank you. We'll be watching and good luck. Thank you. Thank you for the great show. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back. Jay Sri Ullal is coming on from a CEO of Arista, and we're live here at SiliconANGLE.tv. We're at VMworld. Keep it right here. We're right back.