 From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's coverage of AWS Summit in Bahrain, the Middle East where cloud computing is changing the game from startups, business, government and society. And of course training and skill development is job number one. We've got two great guests here. Issam Hamad who's the director of partnerships and customer engagement at Tamkeen. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. I'm head Ahujuri, CEO of ThinkSmart for development and training. Welcome back. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Last year we talked, we talked about training being important. Guess what? Number one talking point here this week has been cloud computing degree, certificates, more training. This has been a real enabler, a real focus area. You guys have been actively involved. Correct. Helping, subsidizing, creating incentives. So this is a real push. Is it just the growth? Is it the needed part? Give us an update. So in terms of our mandate in Tamkeen, one of our key priorities is to actually upskill Bahrainies and make them the number one choice for the private sector. And obviously when you consider the future of jobs, there's a huge digital element. And so far we've been able to sort of adapt to market requirements, the growing industry requirements. So with the setup of AWS and Bahrain, there is an obvious need to build that knowledge and know how within the market. So we've been able to introduce programs to actually develop that knowledge within the market, both in the private sector and to some extent within the public sector as well. Whereby we've been able to provide these sort of vendor specific certifications. In this case, provided by AWS, whereby we are able to subsidize completely the cost of training for any Bahraini that is looking to get a certified in various fields such as system architecture, for example, where there is going to be a greater need. If we are really going to be positioning ourselves as a cloud nation, that is really going to be required for the individuals that will drive this sort of revolution and migrate onto the cloud. It's certainly, certainly relevant. You've got done a great job. But I'll tell you in the hallway, conversations that I've had, it's trickling down to startups. Some side conversations I've had has been, wow, this is really great market. I can find great talent from the university. And I get credits, Tam Keene's been involved. You guys are also trickling down, not just for education. It's hitting the accelerator piece. So there's kind of like it's a crossover. Absolutely. And is that part of the plan? Definitely. I mean, part of developing our entrepreneurship mindset and capability is really to drive forward our agenda to actually make the private sector in Bahrain the engine of growth. And given the size of our economy, startups are required to sort of have that expansion mentality from day one. They just can't afford to be limited. So there are cloud technologies that really enable companies to scale fast. And part of this building, this sort of know-how in cloud technologies will really help our entrepreneurs get there faster. I love this, it's just like a chair. You need all the legs to sit on it. And that's the economies, sit on these legs. Cloud computing, regions up and running, capital markets, they're doing a good job there, peddling as fast as they can, getting better and better. The training and support, this is critical because it's not just for this private. There's also the public sector as the cloud nation. All the ministry's got to be cloud by 2020. That's next year. Yes. You guys got to get people trained. This has been, and people are excited by this. But training has continued. I've had, what's your take on this? Because how much training do you give? When is there a crossover? Is there ladders? Is there a gamification? How do you keep track of all this? We try to have a little bit of, let's say hybrid training. So usually when AWS was on Bahrain and the cloud is there, we started with awareness. Not certified training, no exam. So that started and we looked at students. We looked at current IT employee who are not sure what is the AWS cloud for them. So there is a little bit of fear, whether it's government, private sector, startups, and with the support, of course, of the existing programs of Tamkeen, that made it very, very, very easy. So through awareness program, we got people excited and we had our team, I think, smart at the universities, at the job places, doing road shows. So it took a while for people to see it. Then we started getting the demand. So people started getting the basic certification, the awareness for business people, and then it jumped to more advanced training. So people who were at the beginning reluctant to go for even normal certification, now they say, no, we want to be advanced. We need, they need to know more. So there is excitement. But at the same time, AWS has all of this also online. So if somebody does not want to go to a classroom, he's too busy, especially like people like startups, you can go online. And that's where we, our students sometimes go online, come to the classroom. And one of the things that we have built in is that you have challenge with time. The instructor is available. Put him an email, give him a call, you come and have, you don't have to attend with a batch. So that kept building up now for a number of Bahrain and we have, we are on a very high numbers in terms of number of people we got trained and certified. We are proud of it and we see the demand. So we are now in September and already we have exceeded our target. So we're looking forward for a very successful year. We were talking before we came on camera about education, training, food for your brain. Yes. Build up those technical muscles. We had his excellency on minister of youth, social programs, talking about tech athletes. They got people running triathlons. Where's the tech athletes? You got to get those muscles going. You guys are providing that kind of capability. This is the new competitor, I mean, all joking aside, this is real. Yes. The technical talent is like sports. Yes, that's correct. This is a mindset, not a freebie, free education, sink or swim. This is the ethos in the culture. Correct. How is the young generation responding to this challenge, opportunity? It's actually been interesting to look at sort of, let's start with a gap between academia and industry. So we're narrowing in and we're actually closing in that gap. So the new generation is actually very proactive and not depending on academia to provide what is required for the future of jobs or to actually develop a business. So they are actually very active in seeking out this information and it's readily available today. Now, the examples I use from Tamkeen, these are very sort of formal platforms available for any Bahraini, but as you know now, it's very easy to find this information to actually upskill yourself. And this is what we're saying. You know, the younger generation is very proactively in seeking this information online, anywhere. I think you guys are smart. I think you're on it because one of the things I see in the U.S. at least is some old reliance, old dogma or habits or bad habits around thinking of education as a linear thing. Digital is different. You can certainly take whatever path you want and if you can augment say education in university or training with a non-linear progression. You either educate, you got YouTube, all kinds of things happening around learning. The younger generation, they want that. They don't want to sit there, computer-based training, press one to continue. Correct. If that's over, those days are over. Yes, especially since we're pushing for a more entrepreneurship kind of mindset where you actually go and create work for yourself. So people actually go and upskill themselves. So they don't actually wait for this to come their way, they go and seek it. Okay, so we're back to the stool, got the legs of the stool, got the capabilities with the cloud, got the culture shift happening, you get the training and you got the entrepreneurship. Now you got to sit in the chair. It's got to not break. That's the entrepreneurship. So you got to measure your results. At the end of the day, it's about the results. How are you guys looking at success? What does success look like as everyone starts to level up in the entrepreneurial game of tech athletics? So the program that we developed, and that's why we wanted to make it unique, not more of a classroom training, we gave candidates who joined our program options. They can join and target a career that I'm going to be and take guy somewhere in a government or a private enterprise. And there was also the entrepreneurship track. No, you're going to be a developer. You're going to be a gaming developer. You're going to have your own media company, whatever you want. So we give them soft skill training. We give them entrepreneurship guidance. They have mentors with them available all the time. And at the beginning, when we started two years back, there were less reluctant to take this track, the entrepreneurship track. Now it's changed, the formula is changing, actually. And I need to note something that female were more interested in the entrepreneurship track because they give them the opportunity to work from home, develop solutions. They don't need to go to an office. They have the freedom they need. So we see. Diversity has increased with entrepreneurship. So it has completely changed the mindset going two years back, not 20 years back. We're looking at even generations now graduating from university. And one of the biggest challenge was university because universities are not teaching this. So it took us a while to give the awareness, as I said earlier, to the universities, even to the university president. And now it's all solved. Everybody speaks the same language. And I think this is the success of the leadership in Bahrain where they were able to build an ecosystem, Tamkeen, the private sector, the government, all are speaking the same language. So now the students, the Bahraini individuals start feeling this change. Well, it's hard. You guys, we're talking about, we live this every day. You certainly guys are succeeding. If I'm the government and I'm preaching agility and digital transformation, if I'm not doing it, what kind of example is that? This is really the culture. And I appreciate that. I respect that. I think that's really the way to do it. You got to leap from the top. I got to ask you guys about community, because one of the things that we've been talking about, and not really comparing to Silicon Valley, but looking at success entrepreneurial formulas like Silicon Valley, which can be replicated locally in its own Bahrain way, is about people and community. How is the community development? Because you've got two years going back on diversity's increased, entrepreneurship changing. What's the community like? What's the community nurturing strategy? How do you guys see that culture here? Because this is going to be a community-driven, data-driven, results-driven world. Correct, yes. So we like to say that we have one of the most connected entrepreneurship ecosystems in the world. Now we can say that because we're a small market, Bahraini is a small place, so everyone really knows what everyone else is doing. So in terms of what the ecosystem is providing to the community, I think we have good joint efforts and actually building up the community, and now we are seeing much more participation from the community compared to, I would say, five years ago, for example, where we're actually seeing people pursuing entrepreneurship as a path versus getting employed within the government, within a financial institution, for example. So I think the best testimony to this was the creation of Startup Bahrain. So this was a community initiative, initially spearheaded or initiated by the Economic Development Board, and it is a collective of government organizations, SME development organizations, and startups to actually push this sort of entrepreneurship agenda and startup agenda forward. So we have a very successful case study with Startup Bahrain, and we can actually show for it in terms of participation of startups, and even maybe legacy institutions like universities that are now jumping on board and actually contributing somehow to the community. Yeah, it's been fun to watch. I think you can always do better, as we heard from the folks here on theCUBE all day today, but everyone too much generally agrees, it's going in the right direction. The question I have to ask you guys is, where is the work that needs to get done still on the table? What's the key areas? I think one key element that I think is a must based on what we have achieved now, when we talk about successful startups, successful entrepreneurship, we really need to connect, have a bridges with things like Silicon Valley, because Bahrain market is small, even the GCC market is small. So our startups should have a clearer access to larger market, to big companies. Now they have access to AWS, Intel, HP, whoever within that international market. That's the only way you can take your product from the labs or ideas to the international market. I think this is an area which requires good development and based on the successful gradual success we have seen, I think this is now the most important step moving forward. Is to connect these other hubs. Yes, where there's a lot of collaboration because companies have engineering teams, they have certain teams and you guys will get a bulk of that. This is the plan, exactly. Yeah, so I think you would probably agree that maybe another gap is a private sector investment. So there's a lot of money going around from the public sector to provide grants, subsidized financing, et cetera. We're looking to have more VCs established in our region to have more angel investment, more private sector sort of contribution to the start-ups in Bahrain. And I think going back to something important you mentioned earlier, Ahmad, is the awareness. We still need to build more awareness around what kind of technologies will help companies start-ups scale. There might be the will there, but they're not completely aware of how to get there. What kind of hurdles would you look for in a partnership with a VC early stage? You think in 10 million, 20 million dollar fund? Is there a number? Is there like a filter? Very good question. I would say across the spectrum, definitely early stage. Although we are addressing that gap as public sector through grants and other means of providing capital, but I think we do require some private sector contribution at that specific stage, early stage. Well, we're certainly in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, you need any cross-connection. Definitely. You guys are CUBE alumni now, VIPs. You're in the network now, so feel free to knock on our door. We want to help as well. We appreciate that. Thanks so much for everything you guys are doing. I think this is going to be a historic moment looking back at this time in history, new region, revitalization. This is a theme. It's not just money-making, that's one piece. I like that piece, but it's impact of citizens. Correct. This is a big part of the culture. Yes. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. The CUBE coverage, we are here in Bahrain for AWS Summit. Stay tuned for more coverage after this short break.