 Hi, welcome everybody. This is Jeff Frick and you're watching the Cube. We're in the Palo Alto offices in the heart of Silicon Valley And I'm joining this segment with Ariana Grada. Welcome. Hi. Good to be here. We're pretty excited to announce the final four of Cube Madness It's been quite a journey We've been out this for a couple of weeks now and just like the the March Madness tournament which big congratulations go out to E.J. Florial former football player behind at the University of Kentucky Going up against Wisconsin and then of course the Duke Blue Devils going against the number seven seed Michigan State, but we didn't have seating in Cube Madness, but we do have winners from each of the regions So we'll we'll kind of go through each of the winners set up the final four and let the next chapter of Madness begin Yeah, so the winners are Jim Whitehurst from Red Hat Pam Murphy from N4 Jesse Proudman from Blue Box Group and Mike Cordano from HGST Yeah, so what do you think pretty exciting and each of these each of these contestants had kind of a unique formula For really getting out the vote So I think we'll kind of step through and talk about each one. We also have to address I guess the bot issue We had an issue with some bots Kind of swamping actually they they took down our website last Friday night We had to we actually had to turn off all the polling So we've we've instituted some new things hopefully that will mitigate the bots But we we asked that all the technique techies out there because I know you guys are proud of your Execs that are in the contest and you can probably write really sophisticated bots Please keep the bot to a minimum. We're in the final four Anyone has suggestions for better polling software for next year. We're happy to hear Apologize to everyone who thinks they got kind of wiped out by the bots Really the again the intention of Cube Madness is really to highlight some of our great guests and our great interviews that we do Every year again over 900 interviews last year to highlight Those people and their story and get those interviews back out and two to have some fun And I was glad to see in the Twitter sphere even in some of the heated battles You know some of the exchanges between people both in in the heat of the competition as well as after the results were We're so we're very good spirited and good fun So that was good to hear and then as I always tell my kids whenever we're in a tournament situation I've coached a lot of youth sports Unfortunately in a tournament only one team goes home with a win. Everybody else goes home With a little bit of a disappointment. So hopefully again keep it all in fun That's really what the objective is and and we're to the final chapter. So here we're gonna go So let's talk about kind of the individual processes first off Pam And in for really just kind of a straight-up grassroots nothing real special just kind of The tortoise the tortoise that wins the race with kind of just a slow meticulous roll Yeah, so tell me why you think a Pam made it to the final the next level and Charles Phillips didn't they're both an M4 and What are your predictions on that? What are your thoughts on that? It's a good question. I just wonder maybe Maybe Chuck just didn't have the time to really get involved in getting cage I don't know that we saw him really kind of participating it and secondly Pam's got the women in tech angles She's been featured in our women in tech ironically the first interview that we had Pam Was actually at AWS summit which will be at again next year for our our third year in a row So I think I think it's a kind of a combination of that again didn't didn't see a huge mass outpouring didn't see really a crazy Kind of activity or the bots or anything else just kind of a kind of a slow roll and and here she is Yeah, I agree. I think she had the woman in tech angle really down She'd be Alan Nance in the last round and he was definitely out there asking for votes. Yep. He's pretty active So good job Pam. Good luck. Good job Pam So then next up is is Jim Whiter's from From Red Hat and Jim I have to say in terms of rallying a company has got to win the award If you haven't seen it, it's pretty cute the people at Red Hat put on their red hat They printed out signs for team Jim and Jim to the final four and they're and they're tweeting all these signs and Taking pictures all over offices at all different points of the world. So really a fun campaign Yeah, there are a few hashtags you can follow to check out Jim's tactics It's team Jim hashtag team Jim right hashtag get to Jim to the final four so And we did get the word from the red hat that apparently our voting system doesn't work on Firefox on Fedora So see if we can address that next year makes sense coming from the from the red hat crew and the Linux crew Yeah, so now we flip to the other side of the bracket and Jesse Proudman blue box group. What do you think? Blue box group. They're really great campaigning. He's he's got some fun little Gifts going on and some videos Amy hair harems was at posting a picture of From, you know, it's both for Pedro and switched it out for Jesse So that was pretty funny and we saw some interesting campaigns with that Yeah, and he's coming right off his campaign to be on the board of the open stack committee So he made some cool posters for that and again great great time with Jesse Just happened to interject with with again We talked about it before really meaningful post about what it means to be a startup entrepreneur and it's not all fun and games And you know, there's a dark side to it sometimes and I think that Post was enjoyed by a lot of people. So that's a Jesse not surprised to see him there And then on the on the final the final four that the fourth is biker Donna from HGST And you know HGST is not a company that really makes a lot of noise. You know, they're building hard drives They're in infrastructure. They're part of what makes the cloud the cloud But the team has really gotten behind this this campaign and I think what's interesting about them is they took kind of a tangential promotional approach With CrossFit and the CrossFit exercise craze and really promoting it within the CrossFit community Which is something that's important to Mike. It's important HGST and again He like many of the other contestants even, you know, personally thanking people for their votes on the Twitter sphere So you can really kind of see the activity on the Twitter stream. Yeah, and once again that goes back to engaging with your followers You know really interacting with your community and putting yourself out there. Yeah. Yeah, and and so again So that's that is the the final four Jim and Pam and Jesse and Mike Congratulations to the final four and what are your predictions? Wow the next round What are my predictions? You know? If I want to go there, I think good and the in the tops of me final I think you know with what Jim has going on at Red Hat and really how the team is embraced that we If an in four jumps into their good company as well, we'll see if they can slow that down I don't know if they'll be able to slow that down. I think Jesse and Mike. That's going to be a bit of a dog fight So we'll see we'll see who comes out. But again all great participants. There's really no losers in this contest You know the voting is open. I will run the voting for the next day and a half Then it'll close we'll get the semi-finalists will run it to the end of the week and then on Monday Just like the real final four We will we'll open up the voting for one day is to hit the finals and and then all the social media teams can take a break Winner of Cube Madness will be announced next Wednesday. Is that correct? No next I think I think Monday Tuesday Monday or Tuesday Greg's not here. He's the guy running the show. So but we'll find out next week Yeah, keep an eye on the website keep an eye on the Cube keep following keep having fun I've got a couple events to next week that will be at AWS Simon and San Francisco and an MIT IDE event in London Talking about the next machine age, which is something that you're gonna want to see so stay tuned to the Cube Yeah, Jeff Frick Ariana grad Al at the Cube power out the offices. Thanks for watching