Welcome back to JSATV Live, the newsroom for tech, telecom and data center professionals. I'm Buffy Harakitas, and we're back in fabulous Las Vegas for Channel Partners 2023, right here at the entrance to the Expo floor. And joining me today is Roy Hillard. He is the SVP, Sales and General Manager of Extenet. Roy, welcome. Great to be here.  We've tracked through kind of our rebranding and our move to Frisco, Texas. So it's great to be talking to you about everything. It's exciting about 2023. So great to be here, Buffy. It's so great to have you here in Las Vegas at the Venetian for the biggest channel partners to date. So how's the show going for you so far? It's great. You know, I could see it certainly being the biggest one. I mean, we've talked into all sorts of different ideas and partners around what we can do to help them build their business and obviously help our own. And so it is exciting. It's great to see what's going on here and there's a lot, a lot of happening, a lot of creativity. And so we're excited to be here. So it's been, been great. And we're excited to have you here. And there's been so much news coming out of Extenet over this past year. Like you said, the rebrand and representing big names like the San Antonio Spurs. It's really hard for me to say. I was going to say, you're going to say it. But I'll say it, the Dallas Cowboys, I am an Eagles fan. But they did do some damage in the draft the other night, right? They did. They did. They did. They did. Well played. Well played. My wife was happy as well. You know, so it's good. Flyagos fly. And the NGM here in Las Vegas. Yes. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about that? Absolutely. So we talk about connections for life and Extenet. And for us, it's really where we live, work and play. And so that, when you look at all those venues and things like that, it plays into that. So for us, from a telecom infrastructure team that I lead, for us, and it's what the conversations we're having around here in terms of the live part of that, it's, you know, we're so digitally dependent, right? So it's the applications and services that we're dependent upon. We help enable that.  So that's great. And on the work side, it's the same thing. The public, private, you know, on-prem connectivity that they need, and we're able to work through that. And so it's been fantastic to be able to be a part of that. And that's ever-changing and what's going on. And then, as you mentioned, you know, the third pillar that play. And there's some neat venues, some of which are easier to say than others. But there's also venues that aren't venues, such as the F1 race that's coming here in November. So that's another big play for us. So it is, when you look at those three pillars, and what we're doing in the telecom group is really looking to pull that together, not only from across the Exynet, but the players that are here, that their end users are looking for unique opportunities. And so that's what we're doing. So it's great to be a part of that. It's ever-changing. And it's only, Bandwidth's only going up in needs. And we're perfectly positioned to help not only the end users, but certainly the partners here. Yeah.  Yes. The roads here are being completely gutted and repaired and everything else for this big event that's coming in November. November, yep. So what is Exynet doing? The next 10 years. So, yeah. So we're part of, it's all dubbed part of a lot of things we've done with the MGM properties and other activities in here. So yeah, we're positioned to help folks out. And we're putting some unique fiber solutions in the ground and around here. And it's been great for the city and F1 signed up for 10 years, which is fantastic. So it's going to be a mainstay and we're perfectly positioned to help not only the content providers and the applications and the players around the world come experience what this is going to be a unique scenario for the U.S., certainly the road race in here. And so it's exciting. It is. Everyone's talking about it. It is, yeah. Here in Las Vegas. And you can see it everywhere. Good timing. So yeah, next year for Channel Partners, I'm sure there's going to be even more exciting things to talk about. So let's go to the East Coast now to Manhattan, one of my other favorite cities just north of there. Correct. What is Ethernet doing there? Making some noise there, too? Indeed. So there's a lot of activity going on in Orangeburg, New York. It's becoming really a data center hub onto its own. It's far enough away from Manhattan and New York, North Jersey area to be diverse, but yet it's approximately enough for applications and be it edge plays for the large financials and healthcare and corporations. So seeing that we are building a unique and diverse route up into that area. It's an ability to not only serve that data center to our large breadth of data center activity in North Jersey and New York, so that connectivity, high bandwidth, reliable services that we're able to put together, but then also help other providers and players up along the route. So it's exciting build. It's underway right now. So we're getting there and soon to launch, you're coming into early 2024. And that's one of the biggest things we're talking about here, obviously, as partners are looking for other opportunities, because that's the thing is everyone comes to them with unique solutions. What about or how do I get to their area? That's one of the things that Exynet in general can help these channel partners and others work on, but Orangeburg's a prime example of putting that to practice and what we're doing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Channel partners are definitely looking for the most unique solutions and the best types of partners to work with that can help enable their downline of partners. Absolutely. And that's what we're seeing. And I think when you look at us being one of the largest builders and operators and networks and that dense metro connections that we have, it really have the folks come to us and, hey, your client is reaching for something different. We're perfectly positioned to create those bespoke opportunities and maybe challenges that others won't work on where you lead an equal position to do that, because we are so good at building around things, in case of point where you're seeing going on here in Las Vegas right now. That's so exciting that you guys are a part of that. Yes, absolutely. So why should the channel, I mean, you do talk a little bit about it, right? The bespoke solutions, the unique opportunities that Exynet has, but is there any other reasons why channel partners should engage? Absolutely. So I think the biggest issue that we're large enough to have that huge dense network and have that depth and breadth, we're also small enough to be nimble and be flexible on how we work with you. And so I think as this whole digital infrastructure continues and all the AI growth and all the challenges coming through, we're not quite sure what the next thing is and clients are challenged with, you know, how do I go to an edge scenario or a public cloud or a private cloud? And so that bandwidth has to go up and down and has to be reliable. We're uniquely positioned to help them, especially in these large metro networks or network cities. And so that's probably the biggest thing and that's what we're talking about today. And then also, you know, with new things going on in Dallas as well as Vegas and New York, New Jersey and other cities to come that I'm sure we'll talk about later on in the next phase of these milestones, you know, we're there. And so as your client is challenging them, you know, help us and we'll help you help them. So that's really what we're doing. That's the message that we're delivering this week. Well, that's a strong message for sure. Is there anything else you want to add? No, I think, you know, like I said, we're trying to do all we can to be a part of these folks in infrastructure. And I think that as they're expanding their portfolio and doing different things, we're here for them. And certainly reach out to xcnet.com. Certainly through the app here, reach out to me, we've got a hospitality suite that's been buzzing with folks coming in and out. So it's great to meet the agents and the partners and the suppliers. And so we look forward to it and we're excited for the great 2023. We're excited to be a part of it with you. And thanks again for joining us, Roy. It's been an absolute pleasure having this conversation with you live here in Las Vegas from Channel Partners 2023. And thank you viewers for tuning in to another episode. And Roy, thanks again. Thank you. And happy networking. Indeed.


HPC Dutchess Radio, welcome back. Conversations with distinguished leaders from the historically black college university community today, friend of the show, dear brother of mine and the distinguished president of Paul Quinn College, Dr. Michael Sorrell, one of a handful of private HPCUs to recently announce that they will continue online and distance learning through the fall 2020 semester with the cancellation of events and athletics over the same period. But a few other things that Paul Quinn is announcing in the way of investment, particularly in students, as we adjust to what is soon to be, if you haven't realized it yet, a new normal. So, brother president, we appreciate your time as usual, man. Oh man, it's always good to be with you, man, always. The big question is how do you arrive, you and your board, at the decision to continue this? Because I think that a lot of presidents, a lot of alumni and students and faculty, everybody is going to be interested in hearing what one school or what data set that one school looks at and says, we can't bring people back, which may be a challenge for other schools to look at and draw the same conclusion. Well, I think the first thing to keep in mind is that many of the schools share a different perspective on a shared reality. And what I mean by that is, if I am at a publicly funded institution, I may understand that I'm dealing with the threat of COVID-19, but I also understand that I've got to, I'm part of a system, perhaps. And that system leadership dictates that I do something else. Others may look at it and say, we're all dealing with a COVID reality, but I'm in a rural location. And maybe my risk profile looks differently. The one thing, though, that we all share is to succeed in this new environment. You literally have to say, I have the ability to restrict the behavioral patterns of 18 to 22-year-olds and my faculty and staff every day of every week, every day of every week for, at a minimum, the first semester. And, you know, from our perspective, we just, we didn't see a pathway to doing that consistently and successfully. So with that in mind, we looked at it and said, we didn't see a route to success. We only saw a route to maybe not losing as much. And that just didn't sit well with us. Unfortunately so. There is a certain flexibility that a private institution like yours has. And there's a certain flexibility that being stationed in Dallas, Texas affords you. And I don't mean that in a morbid way, but it is what it is. Numbers are high in Texas. What do you think is a, I guess an adequate point for a president who may have the same philosophy that you have, that we just physically can't do this, but has a harder road to hold in that they don't have the backdrop of some of the highest positive rates in the nation. And they don't have the context of, we are private so we can be flexible. Yeah. So I think some of this also has to turn on just what is the culture that you share with your community? What's your, how do people perceive you and what have they come to expect from you? Now, if there was ever a time to strike out a different relationship, it's now because we're in the midst of a global pandemic. So if you want to say to people, you know what, we're going to do this differently. This is the time. This is the time to say that. This is the time to do that. And, you know, as I look at this, I would tell them, number one, look at the science. I mean, look at the fact that effectively colleges and universities are at the perfect breeding ground for the spread of this virus. And again, you know, not to be overly simplistic, but do you have the ability to get people to behave the way you're going to need them to behave not to spread this? And putting them all together. Now, I think the argument you have to make with folks is when we put all of our students back together, when we do all of these things, and we still aren't successful, what is it going to do to our budget? Right, because a lot of the reason why people are making the opposite decision we made is because of financial considerations. So let's talk about the finances or the financial implications of this virus. Number one, you're going to have to have a COVID-19 department. You're going to have to have some people on your staff that are going around campus monitoring student staff behavior and forcing it. You're going to have to have people who are running testing centers. And see, we run a testing center most of the summer. But we understand what's involved in that. So you're gonna have to have people who do that, who manage the testing site. You're gonna have to have people who are doing contact tracing. So it is no small undertaking to devote significant staff resources to your COVID department. Then you're going to have to have money for PPE because you're gonna have to provide the students them. You're gonna have to provide the staff them. You, I mean, all of this stuff is expensive.  And then you're going to have to lay out a residential option for people who test positive because you have to then remove them from the general population. So how are you going to pay for that? So these are all things that we have to pay for, or that the institution is going to have to pay for. And even with all of that, there's still the high probability that at some point in the semester, you'll have to send those students home and return the money. That was unused in residence halls and board, right, women board charges. So when I look at this, I just have to ask myself, is it really, is it really better financially to make the decision to return to people living on campus? And no, I forgot one other thing. To make it work, you're going to have to reduce your density in your residence halls, which means probably by 50% or more, you have to reduce your residence hall revenue. So then you've got to find some place else for those students to live. This seems really very expensive to me. And we know for the private schools that we try not to do expensive, if ever possible. So what has been the reaction? Obviously you got to work with your stakeholders to make this decision, right? There's a board, faculty staff, students, and we know that there's representation from each stakeholder group, but it would seem like the two that have the most, or the three that have the most to say something about it, faculty, students, and then one that we commonly leave out, your community partners. Paul Quinn has a lot of them. So what was the reaction or what was the feedback you were getting as you were making this decision and what have you heard now that it's done from those groups? The faculty's voice on this matter really hasn't been, probably has engaged as much as it should be, because we're asking them to essentially become frontline workers. That's a lot of stress. Right. So our faculty is supported by it. In terms of the community, it's interesting the community colleges here in Dallas aren't reopening in the same way that they had in the past. University of North Texas in Dallas down the street from us, isn't, to my knowledge, isn't going to return to in-person classes right now. So in this community, there seems to be some higher level of understanding of the magnitude of the challenge. Now the students, I mean, this is difficult for the students because, and I want to look at this to a different lens, 80 to 85% of our students are on telegrants, which means that they are coming from backgrounds of poverty and scarcity and economic resources. If you grow up in that environment, you are traumatized. You are traumatized by lack of resources. You're traumatized by poverty. We spend a significant amount of time in our colleges and universities, especially our HBCUs, trying to help our students heal from those traumas or at least, you know, it's difficult to do that in just four years, right? So what you try and do is give them a path forward out of the trauma and teach them habits that they'll be able to use.  So we have a unique understanding of the trauma they're dealing with.  Right at the moment that you've given people a reason to think that they can move past that trauma and then to re-traumatize the students by bringing them back, sending them back home. I just don't think that from a mental health standpoint, enough is known about the impact that all of this is going to create. You know, I just, I don't. And so from that standpoint, what we are saying to the students is that we believe it is in your best interest to remain at home. Now, in doing so, we have to acknowledge that their lives are defined by incredible financial pressure. But one of the things that, you know, on our call today with our faculty and staff that we talked about was the need for everyone to be flexible this semester because what the data is showing us, what the surveys are telling us is for our students, they are working significant hours and they're working during the day. So they're working during the day and our classes are going to have to be set up differently and they're working jobs where the hours aren't necessarily predictable. Right. So now you're saying, well, on Monday through Thursday, I'm working eight to four. But for Friday and Saturday, my shift got was changed to, you know, four to closing. And you can't predict that week to week. And, you know, can they really go to their employer and say, listen, I'm in school and I need a more predictable schedule? No, not in the midst of an economic downturn and a global pandemic. You are just trying to keep your job. Yep. Right, just trying to keep your job. So, you know, when you look at it from this perspective, what you hope you can establish is a relationship built on trust with the students and with your community. And to say, you know, this is what I wrote about in my letter, I said, the number one priority to us was your health and safety. That's what we care about the most. So we're going to act in a way to try and keep you safe. And that's what we try to do. And with that, it's not just about keeping the students safe, obviously, as the priority, but it's trying to redefine and enhance the distance learning experience. So you guys have rolled out in that announcement about online learning continuing through the fall. You also debuted information about a new scholarship program, a new technology program that students will be able to get laptops and wireless connectivity. And other new programming. Talk a little bit about that strategy to enhance the distance learning program and enhance the, you know, the Paul Quinn experience, even with a new norm. Yeah. So here's what we decided to do. We looked around and we said, since March, it is entirely reasonable for students to feel that all that's happened is they've lost things. Things have been taken away from them. The normalcy that they come to count on, that's been taken away. Their, the creature of comforts, those things have been taken away. How about instead of framing this as yet another thing that you are losing, we focus on the 11 things that you're gaining. Yes, you are absolutely not coming back to classes this semester. Okay. But let's talk about what you are going to get in both the short term and the long term. All right. So in the short term, you're, we've partnered with Minerva Project out of San Francisco, which by the way, is the most difficult school in the world to gain admissions to. All right. I mean, and people are not so that familiar with it. They have a global student body. They have this incredibly innovative learning platform and that, that gives them, that gives their students an ability to engage. Right. Because probably the reasons why people don't like online learning is because it's not engaging enough. Right. Well, this is a proven commodity. Okay. It is absolutely been established that, you know, the Minerva learning platform is phenomenal. So we partnered with them so that we're going to beta test it with our honors college students this fall is let's try it as a broad based tool for our student body. And since, you know, we already engaged the hybrid learning as a right of, you know, just what we do because of the, you know, the work college format, we already knew about hybrid learning, but we also knew that we had to consistently look for ways to improve it. Minerva gives us the ability to do that. So we'll have a portion of students beta tested for the fall and then going forward, that will become our online delivery platform. Then we took a look around and said, you know, what if we offer students a way to complete school faster, but engage immediately on the issues of the day?  So you know that as an institution, we believe that we have an obligation to engage in the issues of the day, but never have those issues that as critical as they are today. And so we started this urban scholars program where, you know, students will double major in business and in public policy, because you need to understand the finance of reform as well as the policies of reform. And you can finish in 36 months. And we already had a pathway to finishing in 36 months. This is just a far more robust way of doing it because you're going to engage both, you know, academically, but community-wise, right? And you're going to graduate and the first year you pay. The second and third year between your Pell Grant, other sources of aid and the money from your work assignments, you won't pay anything. And you'll be using them another platform again. So all of a sudden in 36 months, you pick up two majors in public policy and business and you have jobs and you're working in three subject matters. Healthcare disparity, criminal justice reform and welfare disparity. So then we also took a look at it and said, okay, what else can we give the students? Well, we know that the first new buildings in 40 years will be done this semester. So they'll come back to those. We thought since we aren't bringing students back to campus, let's change the fee structure. So we reduced the fees by $2,300. We knew that one of the barriers to success was causing tremendous anxiety was access to technology. So in addition to making sure everybody had computers or laptops rather, we're making sure everyone has access to Wi-Fi. Then we looked around for what else can we do? You said, well, our website needs some work. So let's redo the website. We've got PQCX, which is our take on adult education. That debuts this fall. We're gonna restructure our entire enrollment management operation because we felt there was some other opportunities for improvement there. We have been studying and love the potential for e-sports and given the fact that we're going to expand our institution to locations throughout the country, creating an e-sports program that is easier to replicate than traditional competitive athletic makes all the financial sense in the world. And then we're in discussions to bring a K-12 presence to the campus as well. So these are all the things that we're adding to the students lives, either in the short term or in the next year. And we thought that was just a really, really important message to convey to our students. And then the final question I'll ask you, man, with all that you're mentioning to say, to give value to the students to create resonance even from a distance. Do you think at this point that you're designing for, I guess an expanded resumption of the norm when this is over?  We're not going back there. We're not going back to the way we used to do it. We don't know when the vaccine is coming. We don't know when these things are gonna change. Let's prepare for what the future looks like. Obviously you're looking at the future no matter what. But is it a future to expand what you did before this? Or is it a future to say, let's build something new after this? Well, I think, I mean, one, it's a great question. I mean, from our perspective, we took a look at this and said, what would we do if the gloves were completely off? Like, why should we, there are inefficiencies that we can improve upon? That let's dream a different dream. We know what our students have said that they're concerned about. We know what we need to improve on. How about we improve on that? And then while we're doing it, why don't we be anticipatory? Because even if we get a vaccine in the next year, the scars of this moment will be present for the rest of our lives. Right. So we can go back to campus physically. We'll never go back mentally to where we were. And so we think you have to be able to offer more and offer it differently. And but to be honest with you, that's how we've always thought about this. You know, now we just have a little bit greater clarity because we understand the need that we need to meet. And that's the difference.


and welcome back to tomorrow. Now, before we get started with the show, I did want to give a quick notice, actually, to everyone. Tomorrow is a worldwide show, and as such, we have chosen a worldwide time standard, which is coordinated universal time. This show is always at 1800 hours, coordinated universal time, that's six o'clock PM, UTC. And UTC does not honor daylight saving in neither do we, which means if you are in the A European time zone, you've probably already set your clock back, which means this show is at a different time. For those of you in the United States, tomorrow you're going to be setting your clock back, which means if you change your clock, this show's time changes with it. So it will be one hour earlier for those people who change their clock, nifty little factoid, not everyone changes their clock. So if you're in an area that does not change your clock, the show time for the show does not change for you. So again, always 1800 coordinated universal time for a good chunk of the United States that will actually be adjusting for you unless you're in what? Arizona, areas on the East Coast. So all right, I did want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who have helped to make this specific segment of this episode happen. These are people who've contributed $10 or more to the show. We've also got our Patreon producers. These are people who've contributed $5 or more. They get free worldwide swag, store shipping, and of course the premium members get the access to the Slack channel to find out more information on how you can help crowdfund the shows of the tomorrow. Head on over to patreon.com slash T-M-R-O. All right, we are joined by the CEO of Vector Space Systems, Jim Cantrell. Jim, thank you so much for taking time out of your Saturday to join us. Yeah, you're welcome. So we're space nerds. We've heard a lot of space companies, but Vector, that's not one that we talk about too much. You guys are fairly new on the scene. Tell us a little bit about who Vector is. Well, so Vector is the company that's putting together a set of technologies that are really designed to, we like to say democratize space by lowering the barriers to getting there. And I'll get into a little bit of what those are, but basically the problem with space exploration over the past 50 years has been, it's been very expensive and very time consuming to get there. You mentioned earlier that ULA was offering this rapid launch capability. That's a really big part of the problem. That's where we're starting is this whole business of actually getting assets to orbit. And so with that, we're building a launch vehicle system, which we call the Vector R and the Vector H, two different vehicles, basically the same family, to focus on the microsat community. And then the second part of our business plan is to place our own constellation of satellites in orbit that allow people into essentially escape this whole business of building the satellites and launching them and be able to directly access them and put their own apps directly on our satellites, much like you do on cell phones. So that's the innovation model that we think is going to play into the next century, where people are not having to put out $100 million and wait four years to get their ideas in space. So let's talk about the launch vehicle. You've got SpaceX focusing on reusability. We've got Electron Rocket, who's focusing on just rapid production of the rocket. What kind of camp are you guys in? And the reusability or rapid low cost production? Also it's interesting, both SpaceX and Rocket Labs personally had things to do with. That was one of the founding team of SpaceX. And their model is interesting in the sense that what Elon's doing and they're doing as a whole company is paying for their capability to get to Mars on the geo-stationary market. And when one of the other vector founders, John Garvey and I, we're working with Elon in the early days, we urged him to start with a small vehicle because it's easier to build, it's less costly. And at the point that that was in 2002, the market wasn't really there for the microsats. But what SpaceX has decided as a business decision is to chase the geo-stationary market to go after those mature revenues and at the same time developing a capability that allows them to exploit that technology to go to Mars. It was clear from the beginning that that was what Elon wanted to do. And we're starting to see that for 10 years. People thought I was crazy when I told them that the goal of SpaceX was to go to Mars. But now we're starting to see that I wasn't so crazy. Rocket Lab is more in our camp. They started with the idea of mass production of the rockets. When they started, it was several years earlier than us. And what they ended up doing was sizing their vehicle so it's a little bit bigger. They're about three times, no, sorry, four times the size of our vector R and about twice as big as our vector H. And so that was because that's where the market was really active at that point. What we're seeing is the market for the satellites is getting smaller and smaller over time. And there's more and more of the smaller ones there. And nobody's really serving that market. And so that's what we set out to do as a start is to build that original. We joke it's the Falcon Zero, that small vehicle that we tried to talk you on into building in the beginning. And so what we're doing is building a vehicle that can be mass produced truly on 100, 200 a year and hopefully launched at 100 to 200 a year so that we can get the service to the Microsoft community something that's specialized. We're finding our customers like owning the entire shroud of the launch vehicle, whether that's a big vehicle or small one, that's a very key factor in their choosing of launch vehicles. So what we're finding so far when we signed up about five customers, totally about 100 launches is the thing that's really brought them to us is their ability to own the shroud environment, which you really can't do with the Rocket Labs because you end up putting more vehicles, more satellites on a single launch and then that's a risk profile issue. So pound per pound to orbit, we're about the same cost as Rocket Labs. We're quite a bit more than SpaceX because as the vehicles get larger, the cost to go to orbit goes down, but it's like everything else in life. Very few economic decisions are made on the cost per pound of the things you buy in the store or homes, the cost per square foot. What we really find is the price point is driving the customers to look at buying something that meets their needs and they can own the shroud. So the big differentiator for you is that actually you're quite a bit smaller. So that allows you as a customer, because we're seeing the satellite market, as we were talking about in the last few weeks, the satellites are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and now we're at small sets, nano sets and pico sets. So you actually have a launcher where I can, if I have a nano set and I don't wanna have to wait to be a secondary payload on something else, I can just buy your Rocket and because the Rocket is smaller, it costs less, there's not as much stuff that has to go into it. It's a lot easier from a ground system standpoint. That's the main differentiator here? Yeah, that's getting down into the technical ways, but that's really what makes us technically different. We're very small. It's about a 45 foot tall rocket for the Vector R. It weighs about 5,000 kilograms wet and it's launched literally off the back of a trailer. So we have a mobile launch system where it launches off of a concrete pad and it's very simple. The fueling is all liquid so you can launch it pretty much from anywhere. The explosive siding requirements are fairly minimal. You can see here where it's going through Tucson. This is exactly, illustrates our point. Not everybody can drag a rocket behind their one ton Dodge truck and you can see how literally small the vehicle is. The blue strong back there is what lifts the vehicle up. You can see part of the launch pad structure on the back of the rocket there. And we don't have to have the huge $100 million infrastructure to launch from. And if we have a bad day like SpaceX had, it's a matter of getting the bulldozer out and clearing it off and starting all over with a new pad. So everything's built to be mass produced. Everything's built to be launched easily. We're thinking the whole problem through really from a manufacturing and operations point of view. One of the things that allowed us to do that and be going so quickly is we acquired Garvey Spacecraft Corporation when we began Vector and they've been in business for 15 years. So we have an unfair advantage in that we have a head start. They developed all the propulsion, the proprietary fuels and so forth that has really got us very rapidly at this point. Our first launch of the Vector R is gonna be the end of next year about 12 months from today. And what about reusability? Is that something that you're gonna try to reuse the rockets? Are they just small enough where it doesn't make sense? You just take it and throw it away? No, we'll reuse the vehicles. To date, Garvey has flown 30 of these flights. We've flown one and they've all been reused. And it's sort of an ironic circumstance. Everybody makes a big deal out of reusability. We did it out of economics just because we didn't see a reason to replace the engines. And so we've demonstrated the vehicle itself as reusable even with the composite tanks. They're pretty durable on a parachute landing scenario. Our intent is to have an aerial recovery rather than a flyback of this booster so that the first stage comes back and we can recover at the very least the engines and the composite tanks which are a good portion of the cost of each vehicle. So to wicked in the chat room asks, the website doesn't really clarify are the vehicles reusable launch land launch or are they refurbishable launch land fix launch? Yeah, the reason we're hedging our bets on that is because we don't know for certain whether they'll be just plainly reusable like SpaceX is looking like they're gonna say we think they will be. But until we get a little more experience with it, we really don't know. Ideally, we could take them, clean them out and put them back on the launch pad. We do have some service items on the engines themselves that are a little different than SpaceX would probably swap out an engine pack and send the engine pack back to the factory to be rebuilt. The nozzles themselves are ablatively cooled. So once we get a little more experience in the flight and know how the ablatively cooled nozzles disfigure with time, we'll know whether or not we need to service that. We know the injectors, for example, are all fine. We know all the valving and all that works fine. So it's really gonna be a question of how we see how this operates. And that's a down the road capability that we haven't factored into our pricing. But down the road, once we can demonstrate this capability and get comfortable with it, it can help our pricing quite a bit. Which brings up the next question. You say down the road, how long out until you think you'll start launching some of these NanoSats? So our first launch with a paying customer is scheduled for early 2018. We have what we call our block zero vehicles gonna launch in the end of 2017. And that's what we're currently working on is to get that going. It's very close to what you saw there in the videos you were showing. Except that's an engineering model made out of aluminum. This block zero will be an all composite vehicle. And we'll launch it out of Kodiak, Alaska. And it'll be proving all the major orbital systems. We probably won't have a satellite on that one. The block ones, we'll start launching in 2018. And we have people who were so enthusiastic about getting into space who've bought our first three test vehicles from the block one series. So we've given them some advantage pricing for that. But we'll be flying either our satellites or customer satellites on the first three. We like to say we'll be in a full operational situation by the end of 2018. And like I said earlier, we sold almost a hundred of these launches. So the Vector H, which is a bit heavier than this, it's about 50 feet foot tall. We'll launch on the same basic platform, the Mobile Tel, has five first stage engines instead of three like the R does, and slightly longer tanks. And it's got a full diameter second stage, same second stage engine, same avionics. It's basically the same vehicle with bigger tanks and more first stage engines. That one, we're looking at the block zero launch in 2018 and 2019 and being in service probably mid 2019. Many storage has an interesting question, which is why fly from Alaska? Well, so one of the high demand orbits is polar. Sunsacran is sort of just plain polar or high inclinations. You can do that out of Cape Canaveral because you'd be flying over land and that's more of a policy issue than anything else. I think the highest you can get out of Cape Canaveral is about 57 degrees, something on that order. So Alaska has a commercial launch range, the Pacific Spaceport Alaska is, I think the official name of it, we always call it Kodiak. And they have launched into orbit out of there a number of times. They've been doing a lot of suborbital launches for missile defense agency and so on. They're good folks to work with and it's a little logistically difficult to get there but we don't have overflight concerns. The whole safety regulations with respect to the FAA are easier to deal with. And so what we're planning on doing is both cutting our teeth there, plus servicing our high inclination orbital customers there. And being that it's not a majorly busy spaceport right now, the idea of being able to launch 50 to 100 a year works very well out of a place like that. So you mentioned you had five customers covering over a hundred launches. Are you allowed to say, Phelps is asking who are some of those customers? Sure, I think all but one of them I can mention, well actually two by name, I can give you some generalities just because we haven't agreed on the press releases yet. So our first customer was ISI and they're a Finnish radar satellite company and they're building microsats to use SAR radar imaging to look at all of the various shipping activity all over the world, ice flows, environmental kinds of imaging. So if you are familiar with that particular world, SAR imaging is a very popular data and it's very expensive. And so these guys are building a constellation of about a hundred SAR satellites over time. We've got a contract with them for 21 of those satellite launches. Their first one is going to launch at the end of next year on a Falcon 9 but they're caught up in this Falcon 9 failure investigation. The chances are that we may actually beat those guys to orbit depending on how things fall out for them. But the rest of them, they've contracted with us. The second one that's out there is York Space Systems and York is an interesting company that builds microsatellites primarily as a sort of a turnkey solution for payloads and they've purchased a combination of the vector Rs and the vector H is based on some of the customers they're working with and I don't actually know who they're in customers are at this point but I know they've got a couple of them sold early on so that's more of a bulk buy with some options on it. The third one is Planet IQ who's looking at weather satellites for the global coverage of the earth and so what Planet IQ uses is the GPS signals and as the signal passes between the GPS satellite and the Planet IQ satellite it goes down through the Earth's atmosphere and so it provides a sounding of the atmosphere all over the earth 24-7. So essentially, if you want to think of the earth as a grid of knowns and unknown atmospheric temperatures and profiles, what they'll do is densify that grid of known profiles and so they're gonna build upwards of 100 satellite and fly them and we'll fly them three at a time on our vector Rs and they've got into the second generation satellite they're looking at our vector H and so we have two more constellations one's an imaging constellation that's looking at this and then another one which is not gonna orbit the earth that's gonna go beyond earth and so I can't mention their name yet but we just signed the contract last week and that'll be one of our very early launches so standby watch for the press release on that that'll be very interesting. That actually sounds really cool which brings up an interesting question from Anno Nim which is will there be live launch coverage of these? Yeah, so what we wanna do is to have as much public engagement in what we're doing as possible and when we say we wanna democratize space we really mean it because this is where the innovation is it's not at the government agencies it's not in the big companies at the individual level so part of our mission is to broaden the DNA pool if you will of people who are really truly doing stuff in space and most of us who got interested in space got there because we had some experience where we saw some activity we had almost a religious experience watching a rocket or something of that nature I myself never intended to get into the space business but I got involved back in the 1980s when I was in college because I saw a sign in the hallway for a design course taught by NASA to design a Mars rover and so I ended up actually working for the French Space Agency on a joint French Soviet Mars program because I followed my nose on that and I was gonna go in the automotive industry I would have never done it so the long way to answer the question yes we wanna get as much public engagement of what we're doing as possible it's gonna take us a little while to get the infrastructure together but in Alaska it's gonna be a little tougher we have a deal signed for Launch Complex 46 out in Cape Canaveral for operations out of there through space Florida and we're working with the Kennedy Space Center visitor center to work with them to engage the public on tours and so forth of our operations so we're still working all those details out I probably shouldn't go into too much detail but we definitely see the public interest in this stuff as a very important part of what we're doing so you mentioned you were kind of doing some space stuff in the 80s which means you had an opportunity to see we'll call it New Space 1.0 kind of come and go and a lot of people forgot about that era of like Beale Aerospace and things like that does that scare you that there was this kind of bubble of new space we had people trying to buy them your space station and build their own vehicles and they all disappeared we were left with the general like Boeing and Lockheeds and now we've got New Space 2.0 coming along do you think there's gonna be a repeat of that or is it a totally different market now? Yeah it's completely different let me sort of suggest to you also maybe I'll call it New Space 0.0 but there was a whole bunch of activity that I was personally involved with that happened a long time before New Space I mean obviously commercial space has been around for a long time with the commercial commsats what really sort of started the modern space era in New Space is everybody calls I've got on records here I don't like that term but okay fine we'll leave it What term would you use? Is there a better term? I would say it's entrepreneurial space so it's non-government space you can call it commercial space I mean really what we're seeing now today is investor funded where it's done by more entrepreneurs than big companies so looking at things that are possible with smaller dollars and that's what I find interesting so let me just go back as far as history if you've got a moment when we first did this mission to Mars I actually did it through the Planetary Society and that was citizen funded space now if you look at the Planetary Society which was founded by Carl Sagan and Lou Friedman and Bruce Murray they were all frustrated with the lack of progress that NASA was making this was post-fiking and NASA seemed to be shutting down and so on they formed the Planetary Society to advocate citizen space and what that ended up being and what was really one of the first people that did it was people who were Planetary Society members believed so much in making things happen even if it wasn't our own government that we gathered up citizen funds and I went to France on that money and so my involvement in this Mars mission was funded by individual donations and it was something that our government would never do because it involved the Soviet Union and that's back when the Soviet Union still existed with France and so we made a real honest contribution to that with citizen funding and then what's came after that though is the Beals and all these other things that happened about 2000 about the time SpaceX started by the way and that happened that all fell apart in my opinion because the capital expenditures were too high there was a few companies that survived that Iridium's one of them but they barely survived it they went bankrupt and they almost took Motorola with them and then when somebody finally bought them for $50 million and recapitalized it's a very profitable business I think our modern era is much better off because what we see is a lowering of the cost of capital to get there and that's the whole point of vector is we wanna see that continue and our idea is taking what today is arguably a $20, $30 million expenditure to get your constellation or your business in space and four years we wanna transform that to single digit million dollars in weeks or months so that literally the people in the basement with their computer can come up with the idea write this off or for it and then demonstrate on our cloud that it will work and then go find the money for it whether it's VCs, investors or family and friends that invest in it and they can upload this to our constellation and it works that's where the real innovation will come and if we can get the capital and the time down to that level we can ensure that this will not only become a trillion dollar industry but it will draw the best minds to this business and that's really why I'm doing this the rocket part is easy the hard part is making this thing sustain itself and we really wanna change the space industry the way that Apple changed the computer industry it went from an industry where it was specialists who could use it, you had to go to college to use a computer and all that sort of thing where my 80 year old mother was using her Mac up until the day she died and that's a fundamental change that's a fundamental change in taking the power of this technology and putting it into the hands of the people and it does enormous good for the world too it's not just something that's for the technical it's something that allows the world to advance you think about how differently things happen geopolitically today things like Facebook and Twitter and this instant news everywhere and here we are doing a television broadcast on the internet and I'm in my office in the backyard of my home and it's a major revolution and how things are done and we wanna continue that we wanna make that whole model transform into space and we think that we don't even know as we sit here today as Vector we don't know what people are gonna do with it but we know if we give them the tools to do it that that innovation will follow so you talk about an entire space economy it seems like hearing you talk you've kinda got the launchers this phase one lowering the cost of getting things to space then phase two kind of low cost constellations in space is there phase three, what's beyond that? Well phase three is really just putting together the virtual machine technology that enables these people to put their software on our satellites and to develop that capability that operates on the satellite so by the time we get there now there's no phase four after that but this turning the whole space problem into one of software that I'm too old to be doing a startup I guess I'm in my fifties but I started programming on card readers and my kids today I've got a 15 year old's my youngest and they can make computers turn on their head and what we wanna do ultimately and our success will be had when even kids can put together space apps and put them up there and run them on our constellations that we will consider our job done. That sounds pretty awesome I'm very excited for that. All right I did wanna end on a couple of interesting questions that we're trying to start to ask all of our guests and these can be really quick, short one answer type of things or as long as you want them to be so the first one is Moon or Mars first Mars of course. Liquid or solids? Liquid's always. Always liquid's interesting. All right, what should the name of the first vehicle sending humans to Mars be? Apollo. Apollo, when do you think humans will set foot on the Moon again? I don't think that'll be until 2030. 2030 for the Moon and when will they set foot on Mars? I will go on the limb and predict that Elon will be there by 2025. Oh, so we'll go to Mars before we go to the Moon. Of course you were Mars first, so yep. And why space? Space is a unique perspective that gives humanity the ability to see the world as a whole that there's no other way to do it. You could think of it as a cell phone tower in the sky that doesn't need permitting but it's really about more than that. It gives us a view of ourselves. This is our fragile little blue planet and that's why we go there. There's something that draws us there. All right, thank you so much for your time. Where can people go for more information on yourself or vector space systems? Yeah, VectorSpaceSystems.com and if you wanna know more about me personally JimTacanFell.com and you'll read a lot about racing there.


Hey guys it's Leigh Ann and I'm here today with my January TBR. I can't believe that it's not 2020 anymore. So we want to start the year off right. That being said, I am going to be repeating history a little bit because in the in January of 2020 I was buddy reading a Robin Ha book with Mara and in January of 2021 I'm going to be buddy reading Royal Assassin with Mara from Books Like Well. We did discuss this and we accept full responsibility for the fact that if this year goes wrong it's 100% down to the fact that we have buddy read a Robin Ha book in January. So Royal Assassin is the second book in the Farsier trilogy. I'm halfway through it at this point. Mara, well I don't know what I mean I don't think she started it yet. I didn't manage to finish it in 2020 and I intended to finish it in 2021. She intends to pick it up so we're she's gonna catch up and then we're gonna buddy read the second half and I'm really excited about it because I would also like to uh one of the it's on my list of series to finish in 2021 the Farsier trilogy and I kept calling it mad ship in like multiple videos but the Live Ship Traders series is on my list of series to start in 2021 but I can't start Live Ship Traders before finishing Farsier so anyway all that to say I'll be reading Royal Assassin with Mara in January next to our also actually next war we're gonna be buddy reads whoopsie dobsie okay well uh so my friend Shaya uh and I are gonna be buddy reading two books in January um because we kind of pitch this idea to the aether and the aether responded positively of us reading each other's favorite books um but we're also going to read our own favorite over again so these aren't I mean I don't think when I talk to Shaya I don't think either is claiming this is our one and only absolute favorite book all time but it is a major favorite so I will be reading um her recommendation that she will also then be rereading Nosferatu by Joe Hill which I have had on my radar for a while but I didn't actually own it um and I currently as of the filming of this video my copy has not arrived yet it's coming from the UK so hopefully I get it soon so I can read it but I will probably um largely listen to it on audio because she did recommend the audio as well so I'm excited about that she originally was trying to push me to read it on Christmas time but I knew I wasn't gonna have time so I was like well why don't we just just make me read it in January and she was like oh I will um and then the book that I'm making her read that I am also then going to reread is the Wolf by Leo Caru which this will be my fourth time reading this book so I guess you could say it's a favorite she's hurt me bang on about this book for as long as I've known about it so she also I think will be largely experiencing it on audio because I did recommend the audiobook and both of us are avid listeners of audiobooks so yep we will be experiencing those books together and hopefully filming a ramp up together of our thoughts about each other's books so look out for that and then my next buddy read is Elantris by Brandon Sanderson which I'll be buddy reading with Jade from the bedtime bookworm I heard Elantris talked about a couple times on booktube quite recently and it piqued my interest even though I sinned after that heard people say well it's kind of her early work and it's not my favorite and it's kind of boring but the premise still really intrigues me and it isn't terribly long especially compared to other Sanderson books and Jade also wants to read it so we're gonna read it and actually I did buddy read not all but some of the Mistborn books with Jade so it feels appropriate to be reading Sanderson with Jade hopefully we both like it but I haven't had the best track record with Sanderson but we'll see I am intrigued and then the next book is the Black Company by Glen Cook which is my pick for me and Amanda's buddy read of the month and this is the first book in this series although I own Omnibus so um if I was hold I mean I I planned to tell you that because I was gonna be holding up my books but since I didn't have all my books since Nosferatu hadn't arrived I was like well I just won't hold up any for that one book um anyway I have a thick ass Omnibus so it looks really long but it's actually not that long because it's only a third of that that the first book is anyway yeah so the live show will be on my channel at the end of the month and actually this month that will be a buddy read not just me and Amanda but Mara and Bethany and we'll be also joining us in reading that and in our live show which is the last Saturday of the month which is I believe the 30th of January this year so all four of us will be reading it and discussing it so please join us it is grim dark fantasy I mean it's my pick so no one is surprised next up is Northern Wrath by Tilt Cold Holt I think her name's quite tricky looking I think it is a Scandinavian name um this is a Viking-y kind of book like well like literally it's not Viking-y it's about Vikings oh and it was actually sent to me by the publisher in September uh so I have an arc of it um and I just didn't get around to it I've been kind of dying to read it ever since because it's fucking Vikings while Vikings is a really wintry thing to me to be reading about it's not like cozy fall and holidays so I feel like ice cold barrenness of January even though I live in LA so it's really not ice cold but the in my mind January is a cold is a cold and barren month so it feels appropriate to be reading something about Vikings in January so I'm very very excited about that next up I have where the world ends by by Geraldine somebody I can see the book on my shelf right now and the last name definitely starts with an M it's Buck something which is appropriate because the book takes place in Scotland and I get the feeling that it's kind of again this kind of cold and barren landscape um I'm not remembering if it's dystopian or fantasy but it is there's something cold and mysterious and dark about it and that's all that I was thinking about when I put it on my TBR because as previously mentioned I regard January as a cold and barren month keeping that theme going of cold and barren I'm gonna reread The Baron the Nightingale by Catherine Arden I read it when it came out so it's been a minute and I would really like to finish the winter night trilogy but in order to finish the winter night trilogy I believe I do need to restart the winter night trilogy because I tried reading The Girl in the Tower like a year ago and I was like I don't remember what happened in The Baron the Nightingale so it's definitely not gotten better since then so I definitely definitely definitely need to reread The Baron the Nightingale if I ever hope to finish that series so January being the cold month that it is thought it'd be a good time for it next I have the evening in the morning by Ken Follett this is also Viking-y this is a pretty pretty cool to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth it's another ninth bridge no Kingsbridge another Kingsbridge story so he's invented this fictional city of Kingsbridge and and so he's told different years of history told stories in different years of history so it's historical fiction not fantasy but Kingsbridge doesn't exist but he's using it as like playground in which to play out this historical like stories in a historical time period without messing too much with like a real place or real people so Pillars of the Earth was kind of Renaissance medieval Renaissance and then like the prequel to that was World of that End another pre prequel is evening in the morning which again is sort of like viking era viking-ish Viking-y so hence my interest next I have the girl the sea gave back by Adrian Young which is also Viking-y this is gonna be in most excellent month between the wolf and northern wrath and evening in the morning and the girl the sea gave back this is just gonna be a great time where the girl the sea give back is a sequel part two of the duology follow-up to the sky and the deep which is very viking-y and so the girl the sea gave back takes place in the in the world of sky and the deep but it follows entirely different characters so it's not a direct sequel it's not continuing the story of the characters in sky and the deep but it's the universe of sky and the deep I've heard mixed things about it but I own it and I've wanted to read it since it came out because I did I didn't love sky and the deep but I quite liked it and I've heard amazing things about her new book fable but I figure since I've heard amazing things about fable probably better treats girl the sea gave back first and then fable instead of reverse order and be disappointed so yeah like I didn't mean to poop over it so much but yeah uh and last but not least is things in jars by god damn it just kid I got it from book of the month a while ago I actually thought it would be a good fall read because my understanding is that it's kind of like a Victorian gothic magical speculative mystery that's got kind of like magical realism vibes like a yeah like the old curiosities of like the Victorian era where there were literally things in jars and like I'm given to believe that there is something to do with like a mermaid or something there's one on the cover ish anyway it sounds cool and quirky and mysterious which is why I kind of thought it'd be a good fall read but why not January why not hello there after the fact me coming to tell you that I'm also reading the blade itself because I haven't yet filmed video in which I will say this but one of my goals of 2021 is to reread all the first law and if I read one a month um that'll be pretty much right on target for having reread all of it before the new one comes out in September so yeah add that to my cbr the blade itself those are all the books that I will be reading in January please join me in reading any and all of them if you are so inclined but definitely uh join us in reading black company because it's always more fun if you guys come and chat with us during the live show at the end of the month uh so yeah let me know all the things I post videos on saturdays other random times as well but definitely saturdays so like and subscribe and I'll see you when I see bye


Mitochondria are crucial for cell survival, metabolism and death, and their timely removal via autophagy is essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis. The review discusses recent progress on the molecular mechanisms of mitochondrial fission slash fusion and motility in mitophagy, as well as multiple pathways leading to mitochondrial quality control under different conditions. This article was authored by Hongmin and I, Jessica A. Williams and Wenxing Ding.


Welcome back to SuperCloud Six. I'm Paul Gillan here on theCUBE. And at SuperCloud Six, we've been talking about AI innovation. And one thing you've heard through all the interviews, I'm sure, is the importance of data, having your data act together, good governance, good clean quality data, not as simple as it sounds. One company that has been synonymous in the financial services industry with high quality data is Capital One. So a company that had modest beginning started out as a credit card provider and has grown to become one of the largest financial services firms in the world. And a lot of that is because of its innovation in data products, its ability to personalize and target its products to specific people and professions and industries. And one of the reasons it does that is it has very good governance principles. Christina Agia joins us. She is the enterprise, excuse me, Vice President of Enterprise Data at Capital One. And Christina, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. So we've all heard of the term Chief Data Officer. You are Vice President of Enterprise Data. What does that role entail? Awesome question, and I love to start this way. So as a Vice President in Enterprise Data, my team really gets to focus on all of the experiences that support the data consumers of the company. So the analysts, the data scientists, the engineers, the product managers that are using data to power business decisions, they leverage a portfolio of products and platforms that my team gets to build and improve that help them on every step of the journey from finding data to actually understanding it to then using it. And that's everything from our marketplace for all of our available data to platforms like or Lake to our actual consumption tools. Now, one concept I know you have there at Capital One is that of data as a product. This is a concept that emerged from the data mesh concept that you've embraced. What does that mean, data as a product? Yeah, that is one of my favorite things to talk about and data products are so much at the heart of what our team gets to work on for Capital One. So for us, as you said, data products at their core are the philosophy of treating data itself as a product, applying product management principles to data. And what that means at Capital One is that we focus, as you would with any great product on the end customer that's using the data and building and curating data assets, whether those are APIs, real-time data streams, analytical files and tables and curating these reusable high-quality data assets that are ready to use for users across the organization. And the key thing here is that we work backwards from a customer need and package that data up in a way that it will be useful and reusable to break down data silos and just make it way easier to find and understand and ultimately develop our data-driven experiences. A company like yours is dealing with enormous volumes of data from all of your transactions, your customer accounts, just overwhelming volumes of data. How do you get a control of all that, get your arms around it and get it into one usable form? Yeah, gosh. And this is really a place where the cloud changed everything, right? As we've moved to the cloud, we have not only way more data, but way bigger varieties in data. We have increasing volumes of unstructured data. We have a tons of proliferations of formats and we get that data way faster. It's increasingly real-time. And so for us, the foundation of being well-managed is where everything starts. We have to know what data we have and where it comes from, why we have it and who can use it. And as we have scaled our volume of data, we've consistently true back to really managing data at every step of the life cycle and building scaled products and platforms that help the company detect, understand and protect data at every step in its journey. One sort of philosophical discussion we hear often is the merits of centralized versus decentralized data. How centralized are your data stores? It's a great question. So I would say that our philosophy around centralization and decentralization starts with the notion that you have to define central standards and requirements. We have to have sort of the same rules across the company for what needs to be true for that data to be well-managed, discoverable and accessible, but we absolutely subscribe to the notion of decentralized ownership, right? So the idea that across the business, we've got tons of different business owners that are best positioned to own and manage and package their data, build data products that we ready for use. So for us, we have central teams like mine that get to build the products and platforms that support core data management functions like data discovery and cataloging and data storage and access. And we work with teams across the company to leverage those products and platforms to make their data available. And much of the focus in that is one of really standardizing and building platforms that can help us automate and scale the common management requirements for data while letting business teams across the company take ownership and accountability for the actual data itself, curate it in a way that will work for their customers and be accountable for who is using it and for what reason. And you talked about standards and I remember from an earlier conversation we had, you talked about how you standardized the date format across all of Capital One, which it seems like a very small, minute detail, but it's very important to getting consistency. What kind of practices do you recommend organizations apply to maintain data consistency and standardization? Yeah, it's a great question. And on your point on dates, I lost probably weeks of my life to ISO date formats and the many different systems and formats and naming conventions that exist, especially when you're dealing with, as we've talked about right, a company that shifted to the cloud but had previously a lot of mainframe data systems as probably a lot of folks watching this do when you have this proliferation of data sources, even simple things can quickly get really complicated. And so for us, when we think about standards, we're talking about standards really in three different dimensions. One is the date example, standards around our data itself. And so we really strive to establish standards that promote consistency and usability and interoperability for our most ubiquitous data. So we have codified a set of requirements for data itself for that most common, most basic data that everyone across the company can and should be using. The second category of standards are really the requirements around our data processes and setting standards in this case, like data management practices and processes for what needs to be true for data at every step. So standards around how do you record and catalog the data we have, how to capture lineage, how to capture data quality rules and building products and platforms that embed those standards, whether it's the data definitions or the data management processes into the experiences that users at the company are leveraging to find, curate, produce and access data. And all of that is really on a foundation of some actual data management standards themselves. So things like standardizing the underlying formats of data in our lake or driving consistency in the sort of like interface designs and schemas that we're building. So we think about standards really across those three different dimensions. And then we really strive to build products and platforms that are gonna bring together and embed standardized definitions, standardized processes and standardized data management requirements to really make data consistent and usable across the company. Very disciplined approach. I imagine there's a lot of automation involved. Where do you apply automation to these processes? Yes. Automation is very much like the mission and vision for all of our teams. And it really starts with standards because you can't automate what you have in standardized. It's really difficult to automate a bespoke, unique, non-inconsistent process. And so standards are where our automation aspirations begin and we work to embed that automation as far left in the data lifecycle as we can. So I think what you have seen and what is true at other companies as well as we've done some research that you and I previously talked about is that companies are increasingly shifting as far left as they can in the data lifecycle to embed that automation and standards enforcement. And so for us, a lot of that starts at the moment data gets created, automating the processes to inventory and register it, to publish it and ensure it's of quality and all that goodness. Data, speaking of data quality, how do you ensure that? Who's responsible for data quality? Is there an individual or a group or a department? Yeah, it's a great question. Data quality, especially at a bank is so much at the core of our business processes. If we don't have quality data, we can't run many aspects of the business. So it's very much the responsibility of every leader in the company to take accountability for their data and its constraints. Now, where our team plays a really big role is in building both those governance frameworks so that we define standards that are consistent across the company data quality rules and also build tools that help embed data quality into all of the experiences that our associates are using. So it's very much a shared responsibility, but our enterprise teams play a key role in building the products and platforms that actually embed those data quality requirements into the ecosystem. And at times, for really important data, we might even step in and set sort of a ubiquitous data quality standard for the firm for some of our most important, most critical data. You spoke earlier about a marketplace. And I know one of the philosophies of Capital One is that data should be accessible. It should be self-service. How do you enable self-service access to data while keeping in mind you're in a regulated industry? There are a lot of constraints on what people can do with data. How are those guardrails applied and how do you make it easy for the people who need data to get to it? Yes, that is a great question. And there is this really important balance that you're teeing up between how we offer sort of seamless and self-service access to data while balancing security and being well managed and this sort of inherent tension that exists between the two. For us, the answer starts with a central self-service platform where any associate across the company can discover all of our available data. And we offer this central catalog is one way to think about it that lets users discover all the data that's available, get recommendations around the data that's most relevant to them. It's the place where we promote those data products that we talked about before and put information in the hands of every data user at the company so that they can find the data most relevant to their use case and request access to it. Now, we do operate this marketplace in partnership with all of the data owners of the company and so we offer them experiences to then manage access to their data and kick off experiences to send users into an actual kind of consumption experience to then integrate and use it when the right access is in place. It's sometimes said that culture eats technology for lunch. One of the competitive advantages I believe you bring to the market is you have established a culture at Capital One where data is a prized asset. For organizations that are still struggling with that, do you have any advice on how they can build a data-centric culture? I totally do and your one spot on that Capital One is very much a company where data is at the core of our founding. It is the founding principle of the company is using data to drive decisions and so it's very much embedded in how we operate and for us and others who want to operate in this way, my best advice starts with being a demanding customer of data as a business leader or product manager or engineer yourself. We should all be using data to guide our decisions and engaging deeply in the subject matter of the data that powers the products and experiences and business decisions that we all get to make. So step one is really like as a leader, be a demanding customer of data for yourself and your team, that's the first thing. And then you have to invest in that culture not just from a leadership level but with training and tools and support. Gosh, the world around us is changing so quickly. I'm sure that's a common theme in a lot of the conversations you all are having here where you have to invest in training and resources so that folks can constantly be upskilling and understanding where the latest innovations are heading and enforcing the importance of that with your teams and associates. And so when you build as a company this combination of real reverence for data in every leader and the supporting ecosystem of trainings and tools for us, we have self-service kind of data academies that folks can attend. Those things come together to really build a strong data culture for your organization. Now, SuperCloud 6 is all about AI innovation of course and you've got a strong data platform to work from. How is Capital One leveraging this data platform as it moves further into AI? Absolutely, it is so exciting, right? As you said at the very beginning at the heart of our AI aspirations is the need for excellent and well-managed data. And so the AI revolution is just raising the stakes on how companies manage and use data and amplifying the need to be well-managed, the need to deeply understand what data you have and where it is and what the source of truth for your data is that you can rely on. And so for us and the rest of the world as we're preparing for this new frontier we are getting ready to unlock all of the value of this increased volume of data we have. And we're doing that principally with really strong data management that is embedded and automated in our products and platforms. And that as we just talked about really great data culture where associates across the company are investing in understanding data, the innovations in data and how to unlock its full potential. So that's like there's a beautiful kind of virtuous flywheel that kind of comes together here of awesome data, powering excellent AI generating even more data, right? That then feeds back into that loop only made possible on a foundation of really strong well-managed data principles and platforms. You said everyone's excited about AI as you look out over say the next couple of years where do you see the big opportunities for AI influencing Capital One's business? Yeah, so as we said previously, gosh, data and data driven decision-making has been at the heart of how Capital One has run its business for a long time. And so as a result, AI and ML, they're really foundational in how we run our business and improve our experiences. And so from that perspective, AI development is no different whether we're trying to help customers shop more safely or giving them more timely insights into their finances. All these advancements in AI and the underlying investments in our data agenda just help us unlock new opportunities to deliver more personalized, more intelligent, more real-time experiences. And that's really at the heart of our vision to just keep making banking easier and better for all of our customers. So AI and ML are almost at the core of how we've always operated in that they are this next iteration of levers to get the most possible value and unlock out of our data to deliver the best possible experiences to all of our customers. Well, I can tell you, I mean, Capital One's slogan is what's in your wallet. And I can tell you that what's in my wallet right now is not one but two Capital One credit cards. And it is the best online customer experience I have ever seen from a financial services company. You really are delivering on your promise. Oh, we so love to hear that. And you can count on it just continuing to get better. Christina Egea, Vice President of Enterprise Data at Capital One, so happy to have you here today. Fascinating discussion and continued good luck. We'll be watching closely what you do in the future. Awesome, yes, thank you so much. And thanks again for including us here. I'm Paul Gellin, this is SuperCloud Six on theCUBE. We'll be right back.