 Live from Houston, Texas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Hello everyone, welcome back to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This is SiliconANGLE's exclusive coverage. Now we have CNBC here for doing one segment. Joining us is CNBC on the ground for the Grace Hopper Celebration. This is theCUBE's SiliconANGLE and Wikibon's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal noise. This is day two of three days of wall to wall coverage. We're going to do 20 plus interviews with leading women, leading ladies, leading tech athletes, winners in tech. We're so excited to be here. I'm inspired day one. I'm joined by my co-host Jeff Frick. Jeff, really exciting time here in Houston, Texas, where we're live. CNBC joined us with a day. They're going to do one segment. All that work for one segment. Come on, CNBC, do more work. Anyway, we love that they're here. Great to see them with the reach, pumping out the message about gender inequality. Again, the top story for mainstream America and the world is gender inequality for pay, in tech, and opportunities. That seems to be the top issue. But underneath that, there's layers and layers of feelings, of people, of interests, of just history, of people who have made it. And we're going to talk to a lot of people who have made it, people who are in their mid-careers at the peak of their game. And we're going to talk to them and talk about the process, how they feel, how they're operationalizing the opportunities for diversity for women in tech, for ladies in tech. And this has been an amazing story here at Grace Opera. And then the second big story is just the overall talent of women. Here, we're seeing a huge recruiting event. So this is not about getting women into tech. It's to accelerate the women in tech momentum, Jeff. And I think that, to me, is the key story. Certainly, the CNBC, Main Street, Joe Sixpack around the world wants to hear about the equality. Certainly, there's work to be done there. But right now, there is real action, real talent, real recruiting, real players in tech. And that, to me, is the big subplot. And then the journey of people who have made it through. Like Eileen Fagan, who we're going to speak with, who is a passionate computer science major, worked at IBM, has worked at the big companies. She's our age, she's been through her career. She's at the pinnacle of her game, if you will. And she's had to work through that process. And now she's mentoring others, operationalizing the role of women. Yeah, and just to follow up with some of the keynotes this morning, there are a lot of conversations about education and the fact that not that many schools teach computer science and not that many schools require computer science. And is it time, John, to make computer science part of the core, to make it part of the general ed as kids move into the 20th century? They got to take chemistry, they got to take biology, they got to take physics. Should they be taking computer science? And really looking at computer science in the context of other STEM subjects, and really computer science is the one that's suffering. And some great stuff on the keynote on how they're inspiring really more education of computer science at an earlier stage. A couple of award winners from foreign countries. We think it's tough here. Well, before I get to get this right, my Abubis Temeraz is from Gaza. Trying to get women in tech going in Gaza. And another award winner, Maria from Buenos Aires. So talked about really, her father passing away a very personal mission to empower women. And I think one of the really key things that comes up over and over again with software is you can change the world with lines of code. You can write a piece of station like Google Maps or YouTube and really impact the world. And it's an interesting way to go. And then finally, today's keynote, Susan Wojcicki from YouTube, talking about the personal story when her 10-year-old daughter told her mom, computers aren't cool, I don't want anything to do with it. This is a girl that had been going to Google since she was born as a little baby. And really kind of the splash of cold water in the face that there's still a lot of cultural things to get over. And I think that was good for Susan to kind of personalize it. Here she is, one of the top leading women in the world. I think the fortune introduction, listed her as the ninth most powerful woman in the world. And even she, who goes to Google, which is a cool place, it's a fun campus. They got food on her daughter, said, mom, it's not cool, I don't want to get involved in my, and my brother is basically Bo Garni, the PC in the house. So, you know, a lot of action, but still she's had a long way to go. Yeah, well computer science to me is mandatory in my opinion. And this is not about men versus women, boys versus girls. Certainly this natural biases that are part of the gender, men versus women, girls versus boys. But computer science is now gender agnostic. And what I mean by that is, is that we now live in a world where computers are touching everyone. And what we're seeing is, people taking computer science, football players, cheerleaders, everyone touches computer science. So the words, dork, nerd, geek, actually don't even play. In fact, those are self-referring biases. We've talked about that on theCUBE. Those words, geeking out, are actually self-referring biases. Basically, everyone is a geek these days. So the thing that's happening is that computer science should be a core, Pat Gelsinger said on theCUBE, CEO of VMware, that like science and math and writing, computer science should be a mandatory curriculum. I personally believe that it's not hardcore, take Java. It's just touch the technology, whether it's gaming, virtualization, whether it's visualization, whether it's Oculus Rift, technology can render itself in a lot of educational formats. And I think that's the key thing. Jeff, other highlights here this morning that's notable besides all the top stars around inequality, which is kind of the headlines for the CNBC broadcast, is there's a huge fear of missing out factor. In fact, one tweet I'm reading here is from Lauren Frazier, experienced an extreme FOMO right now. FOMO meaning fear of missing out. There is huge gravity around Grace Hopper, around the world and people are want to be here. I've been debt back channeled by a lot of my friends that are women and they're like, I wish I was here. I'm so bummed on that I didn't make it. And then another quote that's worth sharing is that from the keynote today, it says, men don't, let me tell you a secret. Men have no special skills that enable them to run technology companies, Susan Wojcicki. And Susan's a very special person. Her mom is really changing the moonshot in education at Palo Alto High School. I'm a big fan of her work. And obviously Ann is on the cover of Forbes Magazine this week. So really the family is doing a lot of great things. Wojcicki as she's known, Esther Wojcicki, the mom of Susan, again doing great things. So it starts at the top. And I think that is a culture that we're seeing around the world. Families, the DNA of computer science, education really comes down to family and community. And I think Grace Hopper represents, to me, the best community that really gives them support and encouragement and also shows the path for computing. Yeah, another story that Susan told this morning was being left out at a big convention, a big convention, exclusive event, invitation only, and she was left out. She said, you know, I deserve to be here. It's important for my business. It's important for me professionally. It's my peer group. How did I get left out? And she basically started pounding on doors, eventually found somebody that could help her open the door and she got in. She got her invitation, but really the message was, you know, be an advocate. Fight for yourself. Don't feel bad about being an advocate. You have to be an advocate. You have to fight for yourself. And again, that's, again, an important message about being assertive and not accepting basically a closed door thing and that thing don't. There's a lot of things that I worry about. One is people using stats and data to kind of misrepresent and push a political dogma. And I think ultimately there's a huge growth in computer science. There's a quote here from Susan Wojewski. Female representation in tech was higher in the 80s, declined now, unique only to computer science. And that's a really narrow definition. If you know the computer science world, I have a computer science degree. Eileen Fagan, who we're going to speak to as a computer science degree. Well, it used to be very, very narrow. You broaden that definition, it's actually increasing. In fact, Stanford University just announced that for the first time, computer science is the most popular major in the entire institution for women. Computer science is leading at Stanford. I think that is a bellwether, Jeff, in terms of what is going on in computer science. The broadening definition, certainly men like to code certain ways. That's maybe a male's club, but the women, role of women is expanding to coding and beyond. You're seeing that here today. And like I said too, it's not a STEM problem. There's plenty of activity going on in biology and a lot of the other sciences. It's a computer science problem, which is ironic because as we talked about yesterday, every company in this room, which represents every sector of our economy, is really a software company. So it's really a computer science and a software issue. And again, highlighting, as you just said, we don't like to go and learn Java. It's just getting started with a basic, it's writing, it's problem solving, it's collaboration, get the bug, get the feeling. And Susan made an interesting point about the stereotype. Computer science looks boring. Well yeah, when you look over the shoulder at somebody coding, it doesn't look like they're doing much, but it's just like writing or being engaged in any other activity. If your mind is the one that's stimulating and you're problem solving, and you solve that problem, it feels so good, right? That's the buzz, that's the thrill. So coming up with ways to make it easier for people to get started, to get engaged, to have simple UI, simple ways to, just like kids, play on their video games on their phones. Get them involved early, get them addicted to the feeling of the problem solving. And it's going to be a challenge, certainly. As I talked to a lot of women, it's like, hey, you know, the Gamergate thing was a big problem. People had death threats, there's a lot of harassment and bullying. And I don't want to say get a thick skin. I think what I say is get coping mechanisms. And what we need around the world is, men and women both are bullied and harassed. Women more than men, certainly online because of the nature of the demographics. But community matters. This is why this event is so important. There's going to be a rough public environment out there. And it's going to be tough, but the good coping mechanism is having a good community. The second thing, Jeff, that I want to point out is that there are a lot of women in computer science that go beyond coding. For instance, we're going to talk to Eileen Fagan here from Intuit, again, a senior leader there, unsung hero, in my mind, in the women in tech world in Silicon Valley. And another friend of mine, Margaret Stewart Gould, who's an executive at Facebook, who works with Sheryl Sandberg. She's a product designer, and she has been in the tech business since the beginning of the web, great leader. These are examples where women actually have the better skills than men in certain areas. And I would say that creative, and certainly on the art side, whether it's user design and coding, is now taking into user experience. And that has always been a big advantage, in my opinion, for ladies in tech and women in tech, is there's an opportunity in programming when you start talking about UX design, user experience, user interface, these are things. I mean, Mercer Mayer made her claim to fame. Her story is that she designed the first Google homepage. Now that was pretty straightforward. But she obsesses about it, because that is a user experience. The empathy involved in that is pretty important. So the skills in computer science aren't just blocking and tackling coding. It's architecture. It's a lot of other new things. And I think this is going to open up the field significantly for women. Yeah, and then too, it's moving into a leadership role to start to make a change. You know, we talked to Robin Matlock, the CMO at VMware earlier this year, and she talked about, you know, she was very fortunate. She was doing her thing. She was working hard. She was making moves in her career, she had some great mentorship and wasn't really kind of paying attention to the women in tech thing, if you will, John. And then finally, she became more aware of the issue and said, hmm, you know, I need to take advantage of my leadership position here to help others. It's not about me necessarily. It's about really helping on a much broader scale and started to embrace and get more involved. So, you know, I think we got a number of guests coming on today that are really in positions of leadership to help their companies overcome this bias, to recognize the bias, overcome the bias, take actions against the bias, to defend at the end of the day, John, it's about bottom line. It's about getting more good people to help move your company along, develop better products and make more money. Yeah, and I think one of the things that we heard yesterday from one of our guests who's giving a keynote here is from Brian, Brian Nosex. He's going to give a talk now. He's a computer scientist at University of Virginia has been doing a nonprofit open, doing open source and providing free tools. But he specializes in interactions and gestures and relationships. And since 94, he's been looking at the interactions between people and groups. And now online, there's going to be a huge opportunity in computer science to explore with predictive analytics and machine learning, to explore the relationships involved between people and machines. Internet of Things is a huge trend right now that we're covering. So the future, in my opinion, in computer science will be actually favored to me, I mean, let me be a little bit biased here, towards women because they have that natural ability, okay? Men have certain abilities and women have, and there's a room for everybody. The point is there's a beach head out there, a lot of fruit on the trees for everybody. And I think that's to me the big opportunity again. The gender pay thing, that's minimum table stakes. That has to get fixed. Women should not be paid less than men for the same positions. That's just, it's outrageous that that even happens. I think that will change pretty quickly. Putting the data out like GoDaddy did, certainly notable. But I think the big thing for me is the opportunities. They're out there, they're everywhere. Data science to stem across the board. So we're excited to cover it. We're inspired. We're going to have some great conversations here on theCUBE. We're going to get the data. We're going to share that with you. Join the conversation with us at crowdchat.net slash ghc15. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick. We're going to be breaking it down, having all the conversations about what's going on and what's the feeling, what's the vibe and what's the opportunities and what's trending. So stay tuned. We'll be right back with more after this short break.