 Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE. Covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Women Transforming Technology Conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by Lily Chang. She is the VP R&D Office of CTO VMware. Thanks so much for joining us, silly. Thank you for having me. You're also a board member. You started out as on the advisory board, but now you're a board member on Women Who Code. Yes, recently. What is that organization? I mean, it's such a powerful and important organization. Can you tell us a little bit more about it? Woman Who Code has a mission, which is very similar like today's conference you're seeing is to propel the technical woman and R&D woman across the globe, basically no boundary of region, cities, or countries. So they're spanning about 50 plus country and many cities. And we being a founding partner, we VMware having a founding partner since middle of 2015, they have gone through a rapid growth. I think we bet on the right horse using the business term. And interestingly, they have gone through in the past 18 months a tremendous growth of a membership and because it resonates with a lot of the technical woman across the country is all over the world. In China, in India, in Eastern Europe, in basic United States, in Europe as well. And basically right now, their membership is about 87,000. They started with 10,000 members back about 18 months ago. So it's propelling the women who are already in the industry, but also bringing in new people, new young women into the industry too. It's more than that. We focus on very much mid-range and early stage career as well. But the professional bell curve, that golden bell curve where you're in the middle of your career or you're in the career for about two, three years, you're thinking about expanding your career horizon to be a different technical area. You just need that technical skills. And you need a way to be in a non-intimidating environment in a very gender-friendly environment and a very supporting and sponsoring setting where you're learning from each other and sharing all the knowledge, like different programming languages, big data, algorithms, mobile technology, how that's involved. And that's really the key value proposition from Woman Who Could. And that's what we subscribe to as well. Well, Lily, you talked about that sweet spot of a woman's career. Right. And that also, it also happens to be when a lot of women get stuck. Or they leave, or they have children, or they pull back and work part-time. What will it take? I mean, what are you doing with Women Who Code to get them over that? And as you said, help them gain those next skills to help them move up. So we basically established a strategic partnership with Woman Who Code. And we offered together with them monthly meetup or sometime bi-weekly meetup. We actually opened several countries in the world. That's where we believe R&D innovation are also key. For example, we opened China. We basically expanded India and elevated it. In fact, Woman Who Code has an annual technology conference for tech women in that particular region, like US is coming in April. We VMware are working with the Woman Who Code in later this week to actually launch the first international connect conference in India. And basically, we got huge support and passion and commitment. And we also find it's a very good thing for women to basically learn about leadership and basically be able not to share their, just their technology with one another about what they're good at. It's also a way for them to do networking, to learn how to communicate more effectively, and how to basically build a team, sustain a team. So we work out a global leadership initiative through this collaboration with Woman Who Code. So we are driving China, we're driving India, we're driving Sofia. We collaborated on the Silicon Valley as well. And are the issues the same across the board? Yes. We have found the issue is very similar globally. It's where women needs encouragement and women needs a very specific setting about how they learn from one another. And these technical meetup and these chat over the woman technology community basically are helping that. And then we're also in a nonprofit way sponsoring Woman Who Code to their job board. And that's a nonprofit way helping opening opportunities and possibility for technical women that basically want to expand their career of finding different avenue in their progression as well. So basically for you early on talk about this is the age where you're choosing between do I want to have kids? Do I want to focus more on that? These are real things. There's a sense of guilt, right? Like am I going to be so selfish and not to be a working mother? And what we found is that these technical meetings or conferences is not only just a way for women in an appropriate setting to learn about new technology without a very unnecessary peer competition. And they also can basically start sharing what they know. And they can learn together and grow together. And so for example, we offer all this with no charge. And so if you're a mom, I still remember with young kids basically you will probably want that one or two hours to just spend... In a bath. Not that you don't love your kids, right? But it's just you need that one or two hour. It's your brain needs that kind of a chemistry balance as well. And you're more rejuvenated. And then when you go back to work, you don't feel like God, I am missing so many months of work, right? Reality is you're spending a lot of time rejuvenating your knowledge and you're keeping pace with the industry growth. We find a lot of other companies that are basically sharing the same vision as we are. And that is exactly what this conference is doing. There is a mix of technical breakout sessions, the hard skills mixed in with the professional tips of how to give a better presentation. Exactly. So in some of the media, for example, if you're a woman that has an upcoming conference and there's usually this stage fright, right? And I get you not. That men face it too. It's not... Exactly, but then how can we create a more nurturing environment to help the woman to curate her contents without fear and without intimidation? So that's basically the, some of the times the meat of is devoted to do things like that. Or to just do a programming hackathon, but you're basically collaborating across the genders and the age group to base and your career span as well. Basically it created a lot of this more collaborative and nurturing environment. One of the stereotypes about women in the workplace is that they are very competitive and don't help each other and there's a real queen bee syndrome, a bitchiness that takes place. Yes, I'm aware of that. Yeah, well, what's your experience? Because it's, there are some women, sure, but what's your experience? My experience is a matter of perspective and how you actually set up the environment. If you set up the environment where women can actually collaborate, I believe that is actually one of the genders' strengths. A lot of the woman leaders are into details and some of the women's are into strategic thinking and orientation. We found that if you can blend that together, especially in the global sense, that helps not only learning technology and advancing technology, like one of the most popular thread of technical discussion is algorithms. When you're talking about innovation and when you talk about creativity, when you talk about the science and that's where things has no boundary and it's only yourself is imposing that kind of thing. So we believe the sponsorship on this or like the conference today is breaking down a lot of those barriers. That's the theme of the day. Bringing the more kind side of the gender onto the table. And a camaraderie to around solving problems. Exactly. So let's actually talk about what you're doing at VMware. You are leading a joint venture in China. Can you tell us more about it? Yeah, China is full of myth and it's a very mythical country. And so there's a lot of talk about how Chinese does business. I was born and raised in one part of the greater China. And so I was very fortunate to be brought up by a very loving father and a mother. My mom, in those days, women have to really fight for anything, even education. And there wasn't really good career for any technical woman that graduated from the best university in the island, right? So the job I was kind of a really encouraged to look for was like a secretary job or an airline stewardess job. My mom is not one of those types. She believed I need to come overseas and study and propel myself. She believes in life on learning. She's a career woman. And she coached my dad and owns his own business and he cultivated me a lot about this business best practice. How do you do business in China? And how do you work through the generation gaps and communicate more effectively? So I'm very blessed that I'm bilingual and logically I can debate and think basically in both language and both cultural mode. And so that helps a lot in terms of doing a successful job in China. And the joint venture is really VMware's way to do it the right way in China. And we're not trying to brag about we're multinational company. We're trying to basically say this is a good economy and a good part of the world that we want to be able to have our technology to make a difference. So we collaborated with a local China company called Shu Guang and formed this private joint venture that's focusing on basically cloud management system and we're bringing a lot of the virtualization and combining the technology and innovation from both culture together. So that's really the mission of this company. And would you say that the Chinese customers are similar to the Western customers in terms of what their needs are and where they want their businesses to go? At a very high level, absolutely. Relatively speaking, how do you get to that end target? That's where cultural difference and social difference hand how you orient your habits of doing business is where that difference comes in. But we focus on, we were very fortunate to have this company that worked with us. We have the same mission, same vision and the same strategy. So we're basically co-founding this and marrying the best technology from both sides of the region together to basically offer to advance the data centers for all the China. For example, China has a very major initiative to revamp a lot of their data center across all provinces. That include your very rich town like the Beijing and very, very far away regions, right? And we're very proud that the software can make anything happen. We believe this is a magical combination to basically help the economy and the society. And do you think, because this is so important at this joint venture, and as you said, we're coming in and doing this the right way in China? Yes. Will this be the blueprint from now on for how VMware sets up its joint ventures? Well, this will be the first joint venture we do in greater China and so far has been pretty successful and we are basically writing the blueprint as we go. So one of the key thing I love about VMware is just we love creativity and we choose and battle on the right innovation and we propel and drive and push for that and we inspire all the country and the regions and the people and the teams around us to do it. And so that I think this is showing that spirit, meaning that regardless what the policy maker may say, we believe business and technology, when you marry them in the right way, it's going to make a difference and will make a revolutionary difference. So we're writing the blueprint as to how to do that. How would you describe the differences in the technology cultures of China and the US? Kara Swisher and her keynote took Silicon Valley to task a little bit and made fun of the buzzy words about how people brag about failing and disruptor and the other kind of buzzy things, innovation, pivot. How would you describe the way the Chinese business culture thinks about creativity and innovation? So there are some similarity with Western culture or what you see in Silicon Valley, like what she was talking about. Young generation, they don't understand there's any limit. In fact, that is across genders. I noticed a lot of the technology woman actually are leading companies and starting company. And basically, for example, in November, we did a pitch competition with Woman Wukong in Beijing and we focus only on women sea level in the China startup. And we're basically collaborating with the local venture company and the VC company to basically choose the most innovative woman leaders in the startup industry because the country is so entrepreneur. And to some extent, China is growing and they're basically learning how to basically be really big and scalability is a big thing. And this is where our technology can come in and our culture working with them to basically together make it a better place also comes in as well. So that portion, entrepreneurship is the same. The desire and the aspiration that I'm on dying commitment to basically propel the society, those are all the same. And I do see a lot of young people but I also see a lot of the generation like in my age basically are coming in with very much a mentoring and a sponsoring attitude to basically help cultivate a younger generation and very forgiving on that. And so that is something I see. And it does reminds me a lot about the focus on the family and the focus on this team to working together. And is that having an impact on your Western colleagues seeing? Yes, I think it's a little bit of a culture difference a lot less about yourself, a lot more about how do I make this work? There's a little bit of a pride in some of these young startup or even in age group like me they're saying I am going to help this country to be stronger, I'm going to help the people to be stronger. So they take pride in that as well. And that reminds me a little bit about I heard about Made in USA. So China talk about Made in China but in essence is all the same. You want to take pride with your family. A national pride, yes. Yes, yes. You want to take pride with your family, with your national pride. But it doesn't mean you don't want to do business internationally. You still value your international collaboration. And then the key is how do you go across that cultural boundary and focus on the right business problem and the right social phenomenon to solve the problem and the challenges and just propel the society and the people all together. But that is a good point that the pride that you feel in your country, someone else from another country feels that same degree of pride for their country. And that's the- Exactly. And sometimes I feel that doing this job is not just a technologist's job or R&D job. It's almost like blending the DNA between the two country and the two cultures together and how to figure out working together. I know it sounds like a cliche, but when you go- Or great campaign slogan. Yeah, but it's really something that's actually a big challenge. Especially with some of the political environment nowadays. And but what I notice is when we work together as a group of engineers, we don't talk about those kind of things. We talk about technology and we talk about products. We talk about innovation. We talk about customer problem. We talk about how to make the place better. And that's basically what we focus on day in, day out. Well, Lily Chang, thank you so much for talking to us today. It's been great. Thank you very much for having me. I'm Rebecca Knight and we'll be right back with theCUBE's coverage of women transforming technology.