 Hi, Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in the heart of Silicon Valley in our Palo Alto offices and I'm joining this tech segment by our co-host, Ariana Gradao. Ariana, welcome. Thanks, good to be here. So it's just a couple of days ago. It seems that we kicked off Cube Badness. We talked about all the full 64 and now as of today, we close voting down at noon Pacific time. We're down to the sweet 16. Yeah, it was a tight wire, lots of heat building. People are getting excited, riled up. It's good. It's fun to watch. So it's funny when we talked last time. We talked about kind of activating your social network and getting your social mojo. And I think as you've watched this thing develop over the last couple of days, clearly some people are out in front really getting their crowd going, putting stuff on their front pages and others aren't. Yeah, it's fun. It's definitely, it draws down to the line when people put it on their Twitter handles. They get it on their Facebook page. They really engage their audience, ask for votes. We see the numbers grow. And it's really, it draws down to the wire. Asking your friends, asking your family, getting the votes, putting your interview out there. Yeah, and I think there's some surprises. Some people really make that big push and some people don't, but like you say, we can see the results. So why don't we jump into the sweet 16? All right, let's begin with the Wikibon region. We see Abi Mehta, who had a tight race against Paula Long is going to be up against Pam Murphy, who beat Diane Mueller in the final, in the round of 32. Tight race, what are your thoughts? Tight race, Abi Mehta is always a big fan, been on theCUBE a ton of times, actually been a co-host before. So we know he likes to get engaged. Paula Long, you know Paula Long has a huge following. She is running Data Gravity right now, which is a very hot company, but she herself does not have a Twitter handle. At least not one that we found. So I think there clearly Abi had an advantage. Pam Murphy did not see a lot of direct activity from Pam. So obviously she must have some fans out there that are helping push her over the top. But that should be an interesting race on the one side of the Wikibon region. The other, they are gonna be rival ring, Sanjay Poonan, who is up against Maria, who beat Maria Klaw, Klaway. Klaway, yeah, Maria Klaway, yep. And they are, he is rivaling Allen Nuance. Allen Nance, or yeah, Allen Nance. So Allen Nance is interesting because he is from Royal Phillips. So he's actually one of the few practitioners that we have that's not representing a technology company. But one of the most popular interviews that we've ever had is funny, he talks about people running him down at birthday parties, kids' birthday parties, telling them that they saw that interview. And then Sanjay really got a good outpouring of support from his network, people rallying. So that will be a pretty interesting one. I think Sanjay has been a little bit more active. I think Allen had less competition kind of coming up through, so we'll see if he can step it up and go. But that one, I'd have to say, if I had to predict, I think Sanjay is probably gonna pull out and move to the final four from that group. All right, yeah, that's gonna be a fun window to watch it play out. All right, moving into the Cube region. We've got Bethany Meyer. She competed against Ben Gulab in the last round of 32. And she is competing against Erica Brescia. And Erica Brescia had a sweep over Mark Shuttleworth. Yeah, two great women in tech interviews that we've done. Erica is a COO or CIO. She's really a technical founder of Bitnami and great interview at Google Cloud Platform. And then Bethany, actually, longtime HP veteran. She's been around the Valley, self-prescribed veteran of the Valley when we interviewed her last for a woman in tech segment. And so, again, those are two really powerhouse, really great representatives of women in tech, which, again, ironically, we're shooting this on women in tech Wednesday, so that only makes sense. That's gonna be an interesting battle. Neither of them has really totally activated their network, so we'll see what happens in this round if one of them really kind of takes the charge. Yeah, ladies, go at it, go after it. All right, other side of the Cube region, they will be competing against Jim Whitehurst, who had a close race against Nicky Acosta. Super close. I think it was only 16 or a very small number that Jim Whitehurst won the advance to the sweet 16, and he is up against Teresa Carlson, who beat Eric Herzog. Eric Herzog, so Eric Herzog has a pretty active network. He, I think he was out a little harder, a little faster in the first round, didn't really have the sustainability in the second round, so that's a great win for Teresa to move on. Again, we've got three of four women in tech in the Cube region, which is terrific. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat really got behind his campaign. In fact, one of their pages, their internal blog pages, they have Vote for Jim, Vote for Jim, so the whole company really getting behind his candidacy, and so we're excited to have him move on to the next round. Nicky last round was losing for quite a bit and was able to come in and grab victory from the jaws of defeat right at the last minute. Didn't happen this time, so this is a good, good region, the Cube region, three of four represented by women in tech, and then of course Jim with Red Hat. It's a good, it's a good region. That's gonna be exciting as we move to the final four. Mm-hmm, definitely. All right. So we go to the tech athlete region. Yeah, let's get to the tech athlete region. So one was to start out, we got Lone Jaffe, who compete, who beat Debra Norville, which was a great, great defeat or great feat. Great victory, yeah. Victory, and Jack Norris, who competed against Maribel Lopez. Yeah, so Debra Norville, again, this was when we talked about at the beginning of the show, just because you have a huge Twitter following, if you don't activate it and get behind the contest, and not necessarily gonna do a lot for you. I would imagine if Debra had tweeted once or twice, it probably would have moved her, moved her vote a little bit, but that's okay, Lone Jaffe and the team at SingSort are into it. They have fun of these types of things and really know how to get leverage out of their CUBE interviews and promote them over and over again. Jack Norris, great to see him moving on to the sweet 16. Jack was not in the contest last year. I was wanting to make sure that he got into the contest this year. So Jack, glad you guys are getting behind it. And interesting to see that you moved on to the sweet 16 and best of luck now moving into the elite eight. Yep. And they will be up against Mike Cardano, who beats the puppets and Alan Cohen, who had a nice victory of a flow, Lee Burt. Yeah, so Alan Cohen is the, again, we like to have props and fun, interesting things on interviews. The only guy that brought a kraken onto the interview at AWS re-invent last year. A lot of enthusiasm again, really activated their social network at Alumeo, looking for those votes and obviously they came through for him. And Mike Cardano, again, HGST, really activating his network, reaching out. He's actually expanding into some other areas that HGST is involved with. I think the CrossFit crew is something that they're passionate about, Mike's passionate about and good for him for using that passion to also then get involved in Cube Madness. So that should be, that's gonna be a tough matchup. Mike and Alan to see who moves on to the elite eight. Yep. And we moved to the last one, Silicon Angle Region. Silicon Angle Region. All right, Charles Phillips, who had a victory over Joe Hellerstein and is up against Jesse Proudman. That was a close one, Jesse Proudman and Bill Schmarzo were head to head. That was Battle Royale. Yeah. That definitely is the Battle Royale award for the round of 32. If Bill, if you'd been in just about any other region, I think you would have taken that one. But Jesse got it. Jesse had a really great article. It's gotten a lot of buzz on Twitter just the last couple of days talking really about being an entrepreneur and really the only job that you could ever have and really actually going through a dark time in his life doing entrepreneurship and how he turned that around. And good for you, Jesse was a great post on mediums, getting a lot of buzz in the Twitter sphere. On the other side, Charles Phillips, obviously Tech Rockstar, Goldman Sachs, Oracle, now at N4, coming out of that against Joe Hellerstein. So Jesse versus Charles Charles, gonna have to do a little bit more activation. I think it's gonna be a little bit more active than just relying on his status, because Jesse's into it. He was just going through this process with the OpenStack Society trying to get, the OpenStack Foundation trying to get on the board. So he's into asking for votes right now. He's pretty comfortable with that position. Yeah, great. All right, Katie Lindahl is up against Lou Tucker. We saw Katie Lindahl just beat Carl Gentry and it was a sad match because I saw Carla out there pushing her numbers, asking for the vote. So I think it was just the sheer reach that Katie Lindahl's and her fan base. And then Lou Tucker beat Merv Adams in the last round. Merv Adrian from Gartner. So Lou Tucker coming on strong with Cisco. I think we had a couple Cisco representatives. I think he's our sole Cisco representative that's still in the game. So good luck to you, Lou and Katie for sure. I mean, Katie's got a huge following. Again, one or two tweets, if she reaches out to her audience, that's a big, big number. And Carla, great effort. Carla's really active in social. She's got a huge fan base. Anytime she tweets or we mentioned Carla, we get a ton of retweets and favorites. She's got a huge fan base for sure. The data geek. Yeah, that's fabulous. And who do you think is gonna, after all this and after people start activating, what do you think it's gonna take to get to the final four? Again, we've talked about it before. I think you've really gotta activate your social network. You can't be afraid to ask for the votes. We'll help you. In fact, anyone that basically tweets from their own Twitter handle looking for votes or in support of the contest, usually will retweet that and will favorite that and really support that effort. But you gotta get them activated and then really you gotta sustain. And it's gonna be difficult. So again, this voting period is about a day and a half. We'll shut it down on Friday at noon Pacific to try to get to that elite eight status. And then we'll open it up again next week to get to the final four. But some brackets have been tougher than others. Some contests tougher than others. It's kind of luck of the draw who you go against and how you can activate your social network. But as the brackets get smaller, those who've advanced just because they haven't had tough competition, that's gonna be harder to do. So who do you think, who's your favorite now? I think Jesse Proudman, he's up there. He's got a lot of activation, a lot of fans. Yes, he does. His network's definitely reaching out for him as well. He's, I think he's gonna advance the final four. Let's see, probably. So Jesse, that's from your Silicon Angle region. So what about from the Tech Athlete region? And I'm gonna concur with you on that one. Silicon Angle region, oh, okay. From Tech Athlete region. I'm thinking maybe Alan Cohen or yeah. Yeah, don't bet against the Kraken. Watch out for the Kraken or Mike. Mike has done a really good job of activating it. We hadn't seen as much of Mike on the social scene until the contest. Maybe we weren't paying a close enough attention, but he's clearly got behind this thing. But that's gonna be a tough battle. You can never count out Longiaffi and SyncSort. The team there is very active on social. So let's move to the Cube region. What do you think about the Cube region? Cube region, I'm thinking maybe Jim Whitehurst. He had some activation as well, and he is all over the media. Yeah, I think Jim is the, I would say, the odds-on favorite to get to the final four. Because again, Red Hat even has it on their homepage, which is great support for Cube Madness. And we appreciate that and glad that you guys have really embraced the fun of what this is all about. And promoting those interviews of us from Red Hat Summit. We're gonna be at Red Hat Summit again this year. It's in Boston. Last year it was in Moscone. We're looking forward to that show. And for the Wikibon region. Yeah, what do you think? Maybe Abhi Metta. It's a close call on that one. I'm not really sure. But what are your thoughts on that one? Abhi Metta, tough to gamble against. Who else is here? Alan Nance. You know, I'm gonna go with Alan Nance. He's one of the most fundamental favorite. Again, the only practitioner in the group. So we'll see if Alan can pull it out. But Sanjay's got a good support too. He had a lot of people behind him. And then, you know, don't cut out, Pam Murphy. So last, the sweet 16, they really have to get on the court. Play their A game, get offensive. You know, let's see them charge. Yeah, it's gonna be a good time. So we'll come back at the end of the weekend. Probably Women in Tech Wednesday again to talk about the final four and who's gonna make it. Hope your regular March Madness brackets are going well. Mine's pretty good. I got 12 out of 16 in the sweet 16. Don't ask me how. It's madness, right? It's not as logical as we wish. But I'm Jeff Frick, Ariana Grattow. We are the Cube, Silicon Angle, Palo Alto offices, Talking Cube Madness. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week when we talk about the- Get your votes in soon. All right, get your votes in. And it's on Friday. Noon. Friday, noon.