 Live from the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's The Cube at AWS ReInvent 2014. Brought to you by headline sponsors, Amazon and Trend Micro. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas for Amazon ReInvent. I'm John Furrier, I'm the founder of The Cube, SiliconANGLE Media, and this is The Cube, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal and noise. We go out to all the different events. We bring the game to the events and we extract that signal. Sports center of tech, whatever you want to call it, it's really about catcher, getting in the moment programming and bringing it to you. John Furrier, I'm my co-host, Jeff Frick here. Our next guest, Eric Bellows, SVP of Las Vegas Sands. Not a tech company, but a tech company because this place is the home of pretty much every tech show. It's our home away from home. I wish it was the home of every tech show. Okay, first question I have to ask you is, can I get like a good deal on like a penthouse suite? You know, we come here so much, Jeff and I live here, Dave Vellante, and I room together. I think I just told you about $20,000 for the penthouse tonight. You got to do so, that's a deal. Well, welcome to The Cube. I mean, one of the things we love about the events is the events have morphs. And I really want to get into this. It's a really good conversation to have is that you start to see events take on a whole another life. One is a physical event, which has got logistics up to Wazoo. You know, also now with the internet and social media is a virtual event going on. And that's what we do. We bring that to the virtual event. So I got to ask you, what has evolved? And what have you seen in a Sheldon's vision of this place? It really is really well done. I mean, the events are smooth and Vegas is home, but this place in particular is great venue for events. What's changed over the past decade? Look, I think it's maybe more than a decade. I mean, this is my 2050 year with the company. We are a company that's morphed. I mean, so yes, we have our origins in IT in that we produce trade shows. Our largest trade show was Comdex. It was an acronym that stood for a computer dealer exposition. It was the largest trade show in the United States at one point, that and consumer electronics. But it was that background in trade shows. Really, the background in IT trade shows that led us to where we are today. So if you look at the genesis of the Venetian being our background in trade shows, IT trade shows, we saw what was developing at that time was companies needing to do their own proprietary events. Now at the time, we didn't have the property. We had built the Sands Convention Center. This is going back to 1990 for the expansion of Comdex. We had just bought the Sands Hotel a couple of years earlier. We had very little meeting space. What we found over the years, mostly through Sheldon Adelson, who was our founder, his relationships with a lot of the IT gurus at the time, Andrew Grove, the founder of Intel, Larry Ellison, you know, Bill Gates, Steve Bomber, there's no doubt. Every single one of them, Michael Dell, still remains a close friend of his. Getting the feedback from them on what they wanted designed even during the days of Comdex, especially toward the end, as we knew we were going to build another hotel and finding out what they needed. It was consistent across the board that they needed ES general session space, and we do have the largest ballrooms in North America, but most importantly breakout space. Lots and lots and lots of breakout rooms for tutorials and workshops. So, you know, today you got over 300 meeting rooms in this facility. You have more meeting space in this facility, this one hotel, then the top 50 hotels in San Francisco and Moscone combined. So, And you get around easily, so it's not, it's its own little town. And that's it. I mean, look, you know, when we did at the time, we did focus groups, we listened to the IT industry in particular, not to say it's for the IT industry only, but we listened to them and this is a master built, master planned hotel, if you will, facility for products that are complex and require education demonstration. That's what the meeting space is all about. That's why we built this space. When we saw companies beginning to leave Comdex and do their own proprietary events, IBM was maybe the first big company to leave Comdex in 1994. We started to see they did their own proprietary events that involved not only competent meeting space, but an element of concrete space, which they give, like you see here with Amazon, where they're using third parties, people that are suppliers, developers, not only that they're part of the event, but it also helps subsidize their event. We provide all those elements for them and we really listened to the community and built them a product they wanted to have. So, Eric, talk about the transition from really industry kind of horizontal shows, and then now companies are all doing their own shows. Now their own shows are growing so big because they've got kind of the same industry kind of coming in and sponsoring each other's show. So it's almost like a proxy for a big industry show, but now you've got a bunch of them. With kind of one headline. I mean, we had Splunk come on today. We were at the Splunk show and God for Sullivan came on. They're a big sponsor of this show. So it's this kind of cross pollination, but under now, really a banner. It's unbelievable because, yeah, you're right. I mean, you think about it. The days of the large horizontal shows, it's tough to say they're over because CES today is still horizontal. It covers everything. Conducts at the time, okay? The emerging PCS, if you go back to the origin, 1979, but as it goes, it encompasses everything, including emerging multimedia, things like Sound Blaster when Creative Labs came into it, networking, and you had hubs, routers, switchers, it encompassed the end. Those days of a broad horizontal event, it became just too much. So, you know, you say to yourself, yes, the fundamental thing about trade shows is reaching those buyers. Now, the buyers are all across the board. It's become too big and broad of a show, and it becomes very difficult to accompany to achieve its objectives. As you begin and have your own proprietary show, boy, they can sculpt that out. They want to have a developer meeting. They're able to target that. But you were exactly right. I mean, what's happened is, look, CA World's been around for a while, but I don't care if it's CA World or this, or Hewlett Packard's Discovery, or EMC World, or VM World, you've got an element of that with all of them. So you do see some cross-pollination because, I mean, the developers, they're developing on multiple platforms across multiple technologies, but it's created this type of hybrid event, is what we call it, an event that acts and squeaks like a trade show, but it's a corporate event. I mean, take a look at this. This is taking up the whole expo. If I go back to when we opened up Venetian even, those horizontal events were dominant, and there was only a handful of proprietary IT events. And then talking too, as the technologies changed, now there's all this online community and online contact of working from home and people are going to the office as much, and yet there's still the draw of coming together and the benefits of coming together, but now you're even adding all the technology components on top of it. And you can't look. I mean, I think that even with you guys, you're extending this, and it's great. You're extending this out to a virtual audience that's much larger, but to sit there and think that you can replace face-to-face, it's simply impossible. And especially, I got back to, I started it when I talked about education. Products that are complex, that require education and demonstration. It's not only IT in the pharmaceutical community. When you get a new drug, it's complex, it's something that you can't do. I mean, this is a great setup, okay? You could do it to somewhat of an ability, but it doesn't take away from what you need to do and have the face-to-face to be able to demonstrate, educate, be able to have an interactive discussion of question and answers. You can do some of that on the internet, but to touch and feel the product that you weigh that you have to do, you know, and to do it in such a way that has the human element, you can't escape that face-to-face. So what's next? I mean, obviously, the vision played out beautifully, built it from the ground up, cleaned sheet of paper. He did all the right things. Talked to the people that were his customers, Sheldon's vision. Now, the world is not only about the face-to-face, which is the most valuable piece. We know, because we go where the faces are. That's what we do with theCUBE. But outside, people are tied together now with internet of things. Mobile devices is a whole nother virtual venue. Are you guys looking at, like, virtual realities, Oculus Rift, always new technologies? We do. I mean, I think that first of all, you know, you look at it and you say that none of these are one-stop events, okay? Amazon happens today. Hewlett Packard Discovery happens in early June every year. But these are year-round communities. So we've never looked at it as, say, a one-trick pony breaking up, taking it down. Sure, at one point we did. You know, the days of Comtex, you bet. It was like the Super Bowl. Super Bowl's over. I'm from Boston. I was like, Red Hour back, I smoke my cigar. I'm switching sports to basketball. But I'll tell you what, it was over. I didn't worry about it for long. It's not that way. Red Hour back's a legend. I mean, come on. Smoking that stokey and go to Florida, right? Yeah, right. I can be Sheldon Adelson as a legend because of what he's doing these days. I would say it's time to light up the cigar because we're successful. We believe in a year-round community and we're constantly exploring new technology. It's funny you mentioned Oculus Rift, okay? You know, and I just mentioned it to somebody out there, but do we embrace new technologies to try to give the customers? Look, ideally I bring the customer face-to-face for a site visit, but if I can't, I have to bring this hotel to them. We're working with a multitude of technologies now so that I can present and effectively give them a site visit when they're on their road. Oculus Rift is one of those companies, and I don't want to go too deep into, you know, confidential discussions, but I'll tell you what, Oculus Rift can provide a way. I just did, thank you very much. Maybe, maybe not. How do I know it's Oculus? How do you know it's not Sega? I mean, Sega, Sony. If you tell me you'll have to kill me, it's vague, it's gonna be buried out in the desert. Okay, so let's go back down to something that's really close to our hearts and minds. Experience-based programming, and you guys are all about the experience. Obviously the way it's built out, all the restaurants are here, the meeting rooms, well done. Bringing the experience, tell me about bringing this to the customers. That's the future. In the moment, in the moment, experiences in programming, what are you guys doing that you can speak to customers about that? What are you doing to constantly innovate? What's your strategy on innovation? Look, I mean, with this business, I got to tell you, especially Vegas, I mean, it's one thing to say hospitality. It's, you know, across the world. It's another thing to be in the hotbed of hospitality, where change is a constant, and the belief that you have to have an experiential, it has to be something that's very unique. Number one, onsite, we're constantly changing to make sure that you're having something that is so unique, that not only do you want to go back, but you want the word of mouth to tell everybody, because we know the power of word of mouth. And in our business, it's through TripAdvisor, as we know, I mean, reviews or everything these days, when you go to a restaurant, you're reviewing. So what are we doing out there? We're doing quite a lot. I mean, we are in so many different ways trying to go out there and get our name across as being the luxury name for group and convention properties. But it's so multi-dimensional that, you know, one element is my area, so one element is doing that. But the other element is obviously the FIT and the Casino Gamer. So when you say, what are we doing in that element? Boy, a lot. So now I'm not sure if you're saying that on a virtual thing or just on a regular stage. Well, in one way, I'll tell you what, we have properties in Asia. They generate a lot of our property. We have a fleet of airplanes. In the old days, hotels didn't do this, okay? You were just a hotel. Today, we have a fleet of airplanes to bring back customers back and forth. That isn't just whale customers. That includes business for what you're in today, Amazon, the presidents of the large IT companies, to make sure that they are having a Vegas-type environment. We're trying to brand Venetian Palazzo throughout the planes, gambling on the planes, Bakara on the planes, Blackjack Tables on the planes. The only thing that we're having an issue with is Nevada Gaming Board controls because it has to be 24-7. You got to fleet of planes, now you need to fleet of cubes. So I got to ask you. So you're a sports fan, right? Huge. So one of the things that Jeff and I always talk about, we love sports, so it's probably ESPN. Game day is a huge popular, you can't, you would go to Bama Games, there's the game day. You go to USC, the game day. They have the big studio there. What do you think about the cube? The innovation of the cube where now people want tech and they want news everywhere, not just like on TV. What do you think about the cube? What's your take? I got to tell you, I think this is excellent. I saw this early. I came down this morning. I love it. I mean, I think that your analogy to Game Day Sports Center is exactly, that's what I said when I, just like you know, that's what I said earlier. Oh listen, you got to understand, I started with Comdex 25 years ago. You know, you're talking, it's not the emergence of the PC, but it's pretty quickly right around the time that the graphical user interface comes into play after DOS. You're talking about a war between OS2, Windows, and Mac. You're old school, man, I love it. Well, so for what I've seen for this, I mean, I honestly think, you know, to have this around in an exciting thing like this, where what's Moore's Law? Every year it doubles its, I mean, this is the type of stuff that you need. All right. I love it. Eric, we really appreciate you coming on. And you know what? Congratulations on all your success. You guys are amazing. I love this place. We go to all the shows. Our favorites when we come down to the Sands. Hotels are great. It's great experience in and out, close to the airport. This is really the best. Come back. We got SAP coming in January. You know, we got HB Discover. We had EMC World every year. IBM's Impact Product Audit Design University. I hope to see you around. You will. I'm not going to show it up at your house. Hey, let's go out. Okay, this is the cue. We go out to where the action is. That's what we do. No story's too small. No person's too small. We've got CEOs, entrepreneurs, experts. We go where the action is. That's what the cue's all about. And that's what the Sands is all about. We'll be right back with more action here, live at Amazon Web Services, where the disruption will continue. This is the cue. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back.