 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you're hailing from, welcome to a very special edition of In the Clouds. I am Chris Short, host with the most here on Red Hat Live Streaming and show run into the stars. I am joined today by the one and only John Chapman. John is the director of, I forget your title exactly. I'm sorry, I probably should have notes or something. That would be a great idea. Director of Business Systems at Red Hat and advisor of the Red Hat Blacks United in Leadership and Diversity, also known as Build Community. How are you doing today, John? Feel free to introduce yourself in your own way, right? Like I'm sure your title and positions are, you know, they are awesome, but you have more of a story than just that. Thank you, Chris. Yes, my name is John Chapman. I'm director of Business Systems and I know you probably had it. What does business system represents? That could mean a lot. Well, from a Red Hat perspective, I work in the enterprise application group of IT and business systems deals with our financial applications. Also, I work the applications. My group is responsible for managing all of those applications from a support standpoint, from a platform, from an upgrade standpoint. We're kind of like the engine inside a Red Hat IT that is supporting Red Hat as a company. And you do a fantastic job of it. I routinely brag about Red Hat IT and how good it is. They genuinely mean that it's the best IT org I've ever worked with and the 25 years I've been in tech, seriously. And some of those IT orgs I ran. So, yeah. Yeah, I've never walked into the office there at the walk-up desk and not left with a smile on my face. Apologies for the dog, folks. But y'all do a fantastic job and the idea of this conversation was to talk a little bit about how you make Red Hat IT successful. And I'm gonna shut my door real quick just to, while you answer that. Yeah, we are a organization of about 700 employees in IT located around many offices globally. And our CIO is Mike Kelly. And I work in the enterprise application who is led by Grayson Williams, who's the vice president of enterprise applications. In our organization, we're right about 135 employees supporting some 18,000 Red Hat employees around 60 different offices around the globe. Yeah, and we were talking in the pre-show about how decision-making happens and it has to happen at scale because it's one Red Hat, right? Like 60 offices across a globe, 18,000 people. The decisions you make, even the little ones, have big impact, right? Yeah. Yeah, the selection of software for VPNs, for example, is important these days because now we're all remote. So talking about the times we're in, how did that transition go from that kind of hard shift from you're in the office one day to the next Monday, you're not in the office? Yeah, so let's kind of go back in time. Let's go back to like March to 10th, 2020. What we're watching, the NBA decided to shut down the ACC tournament shutdown, the Big Ten tournament shutdown, the NHL shutdown, and now there's a shock of all sports. And so when you think about sports, okay, that's kind of like one of the entertainments of Americans. So now when you see that shutdown, companies are also starting to look at what do they need to do? And so Red Hat, the rumor was going through the office, we're gonna shut down soon. Oh, we're gonna shut down soon, what does that mean? Because a lot of people work in offices around the globe. So now from an IT perspective, wow, IT now is on the hook for how do I enable some 17,000 employees to move from their office to move to their house? And so that was a lot of collaboration. And this just thinking of, do we wanna connect our employees in a secure way? Yep, so if you think about something called a VPN, you know, private network, that is a way of securing it. So you gotta think, how do we support that number of employees? And so our IT team got the idea of, let's make sure we get this going, let's get a global VPN so that when individuals go home, the first thing you would do is, you don't want that customer experience to be challenging. You want that customer experience to be a smooth transition. And I have to give a lot of kudos out to the team that manages the network. They made it a streamless process. So come when that Monday started around, you know, March to 16th, everybody was able to connect. There was multiple networks that you didn't hear of complaints about, hey, I can't get on. I didn't, my network is slow. Now, when it talks about never been slow, there's a lot of variables. Your house might work, so many different things. There's like so much you can troubleshoot there. Yeah, so they were able to make that a smooth transition for our teams. Yeah, I mean, and I work remote already. So like I saw no change in experience, which was shocking to me having gone through like, oh, a snowstorm shuts down the Raleigh, Durham area, and all of a sudden everybody's VPNing into a VPN that hasn't been fully tested for like the entire staff to have to tune into it, right? So for me to have a seamless transition from people in office to not in office, like mad kudos, like, because that is just phenomenal work. You know, keeping people that weren't in the office connected was just as important and you pulled it both off in my opinion. So good stuff, good stuff. So, you know, what makes Red Hat's IT department so awesome? Can you explain how our IT services are built around Red Hat products and how we drink our own champagne to an extent? Yeah, so when you hear about Red Hat products, we talk about Red Hat on Red Hat and that's not like putting one hat on top of the other hat. That's really around running our own products. So if you think about OpenShift, you think about, you know, those products, but you think about, you know, some of our certificates, we use our own certificates, we create our own certificate. And when you think of that in the industry, a lot of times they don't, they don't say, well, I don't know a Red Hat authentication certificate. So we can go back and say, yes, we do our own certificates, we create our own tools. And also there is, you know, we have our own middleware solutions that we have available, that instead of us having to go out and purchase those middleware solutions, we're able to use those middleware solutions. Not only do we use those, but we go out and brag about them. We actually go out and tell our other customers that we are actually using our products. And that's a great story to tell when you have your own IT organization using your own products. And not only is it efficient, but it's also cost effective that we're able to use our own products and not only our own products, but they also work too. That's one of the key pieces of our products. Right, like it's a, A, it creates feedback loops and to improve products. And then B, it shows us the people that are working on the products, the products and technology teams where we can make improvements. Because if you're adopting it and you're having problems, that means everybody else could have that same problem, right? So, going back to my notes here, a lot of red hat blogs and content are highlighting DevSecOps lately. We had Kirsten Newcomer and Jamie Scott on the last episode of In the Clouds to talk about shifting left or shifting right if you're from a society that reads right to left. Can you tell us about how you envision shift left within red hat or how you see the importance of DevSecOps occurring in your own day to day? Yeah, so when we think about shifting left, and so I'm gonna use the context of, if you're a support team, you wanna shift that left to some other team. So that's one way of a term of a shifting left. And so when I think of the basic support that you have to do, kinda like tackling and other minor issues with respect to a laptop, that would say, okay, instead of having a L1 person take care of that, let's shift that to somebody else who can handle that from that perspective. So you can look at that as a way of shifting left. Now, when you think about DevSecOps and we think about DevOps, DevOps is just continuation of updating. And when you think about Spotify, think about Netflix, they don't have an opportunity to shut down their applications to do a maintenance. So you gotta think of that, okay, now how do you ensure that I'm gonna do this DevOps on a continuous basis? So you have a model where you can do this. But now, as we know, when we think about ransomware, we think about security, now you gotta think about how you embed your security as part of that, now what they call it the DevSecOps. And so that is around how you ensure that you're not only creating a continuous improvement, but also you're making that a security continuous improvement. So I think that is where you think about the DevSecOps. Right. When you sit down and you're about to put a new tool in the place, right? Like I am sure there is a long checklist of things that's what has to like meet, you know, to A, beyond and available to all Red Hatters. But I feel like you spend up new services all the time, right, like you make things more accessible to us on a regular basis. Like I know you have, you know, 100 plus people, but your productivity exceeds that. So how do you make that scale happen, right? Like it seems like you have thousands of people working for you, but you don't. Right, if you look at the ratio of a 18,000 employee company service by 700 IT members. And then when you take 700 IT members and you start breaking them down into groups, you know, you start talking about very small groups of people. So one of the ways that we work through that is a lot of collaboration. You know, we, you know, being Red Hat being open source, there's a lot of ideas that we get externally from, you know, people that tell us, hey, here's some best, you know, opportunities. And so we start looking at applications and how we start to roll those out. We started thinking first, you know, in my area, when I think of enterprise applications and that we support a global organization. So the first thing we look at is can it, you know, can it, you know, meet the compliance rules that we need to have? If there's some regional or localization rules around it, can it meet some of those? Then, you know, then you gotta go to your, you gotta go to your, always go to your InfoSet guys and say, hey guys, I need to just check this, verify that this is a good tool. And then if you're also looking at a supplier product, then you gotta look and see, is that supply a worthy supply that you can do business with? Right. And then, you know, if you're an accountant person, okay, I don't know how much is it gonna cost. You look at those things. And so when you put all of those factors together, then you start thinking, okay, now I got a viable solution. Now the key thing is, how do I put that solution in place real quick? How do I get that out in the market real quick? And so part of that is building a framework that allows you to replicate that framework over and over and over. And so in my group, one of the things we've been able to do is we expanded to global regions around the world. You know, we've got a playbook. And that playbook is very creative that you can now, you can add pages to that playbook. And then that playbook is what we able to use and do over and over. So that is just another way of how IT is able to kind of scale with a small organization, but also be impactful. Right, that playbook is not an answerable playbook to be clear, right? Like it is a procedural guide, we'll call it, for implementing that. Having that instantiated in your organization brings great benefit. And it is shown clearly through your work. But you've been at Red Hat for how long? 17 and a half years. Like A, congratulations, that's awesome. But your team started at 17 and has grown to 700, right? Like how, I mean, that amount of growth and change, how did you kind of come to grips with that just occurring? Like it has to be a continuous cycle of just, you know, add-ons, right? Cause I remember when I joined three years ago it was 12,000 people. So there's 6,000 more people here than when I joined. Now there's like, compared to you, there's so many more people than when you joined. Yeah, that's a good point. And so kind of kind of talking, I'll give you kind of a little history of that, but as Chris said, I joined Red Hat in 2003, very small company, you know, 500 plus employees and IT kind of set in one corner of the office in the building. And at that time, you know, things were very fluid, you have a small IT organization, some rules were very loose. And so everybody just, you know, the thing you do is you come to work to get things done to make sure that you can come work the next day. So that was a continuous process. Then, you know, I've been part of an, you know, organization where I've had an opportunity to travel to places like Brazil, Singapore, all those places where when I started, Brazil was not even an office at all. It was just a, it was selling products to a distributor. So we had to go there and set up Brazil. Now you think of Sao Paulo supporting, you know, Argentina, all those countries are there, then Singapore. And so when you think about that, it goes to a transformation. That transformation is around how you scale. And so, you know, we went from, we hit our first billion dollars in 2012. Now we're around a four and a half billion dollar company. And that's only nine years later. And so you can think about it that is continuously to, you know, to expand. It's actually moving faster. So it's rotating much faster. And so for us to go from 17 to what I've done at that time to now 700, that's a major thing. And that's 700, man, you might, we've probably lost hundreds of people in between. So you can see- Oh yeah. So it's churned too. Yeah. I mean, it's, you have to have that capability kind of ingrained in your operations, right? Like scaling is what you do day to day. And having that kind of adaptation to the changing environment, how do you kind of like drive home the continuous learning that has to occur within the organization as a result of the constant change? Yeah, great question. And if you think about it, changing is happening much faster today than what it was. And so, you know- It's exponential, not linear. Yeah. It's just an exponential. So now one of the things we have to do is we have to ensure that our teams take time to learn new applications and new school sets. They have to be open to that. And so there are tools like LinkedIn Learning, other things that you may have. And then Red Hat is very good about having lunch and learns where we have a lot of experts within Red Hat that give you an opportunity to kind of talk about different products. I'm not talking about just Red Hat expert. I'm talking about world leaders experts in their field. And it's so great to get an opportunity to hear from those individuals when they come and be able to present. And so each day you got people having great ideas, people collaborating, talking about how we can make changes in Red Hat. And at the same time, how do we scale from an IT perspective for us to continue to be awesome? We have to actually scale faster than our business. We have to be actually scaling faster than the business. And the business is coming up and saying, I want to do so. We have to be providing them a customer experience that's ahead of their time. Yeah, you have to think ahead because you got to be ready for the next thousand people to come on board before the first thousand did, right? Like it's one of those things of, I'm looking at chat here. Got a couple of questions I'll ask you in a minute. It's one of those things where continuous learning is important, ability to adapt and change is important. And then like having that culture is vital, right? Of learning, just constant learning, not resting on your laurels kind of thing. Don't feel obligated to answer this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because we're open here. What advantages or challenges did we go through when we became part of IBM? Oh, okay. No, no, that's not a hot one or anything. No, so there you go. Great question. So as I mentioned, my organization is responsible for enterprise applications. So if you think about enterprise application, that's all your application that is responsible for all your financial information. So come day one, when we became part of IBM, you can imagine all of the complexity we had to go through and ensure that we actually shut down Red Hat on July the 9th and you come up as IBM on July the 10th. So that was one of the things that we had to kind of work through. And being both of those companies are public companies, imagine that you've got shareholders making sure that, hey, when Red Hat shuts down, I want to make sure that Red Hat shuts down as a compliance and a risk averse company. You want to make sure that you did that. And then at the same time, now you've got this big company name IBM that is coming over to be able to arch into Red Hat and then still saying, hey, Red Hat, we're going to leave you in your neutrality. We're going to still leave you alone. So that was one of the things. So now let's fast forward to today. So Red Hat still has its neutrality, it still has its own independence, but also Red Hat is a part of IBM. So things that you could usually see it in the news, you don't really see that. You see a lot about from IBM, but also you see a lot of things from Red Hat. And so I can say, one of the challenges probably was, Red Hat was very open and we're still open, but now we're part of a bigger company of an IBM. And so that's just some of the things that we see as Red Hat as well. We're part of this big company, but also we're still Red Hat. And I think that's the problem. So the challenges could been around, making sure that we are doing all the due diligence to be a part of a large organization. Even though we did, I do due diligence as a small organization, now you have to kind of do those as part of a bigger organization. And then I think also the beauty of that is that when you hear about Red Hat, when you hear about IBM earnings, you always hear a note about Red Hat because people are interested in seeing Red Hat. So even though we're part of that, we're still influential into IBM's information. Yeah. I mean, for me, nothing has really changed, right? I go to an IBM event or speak in an IBM event every once in a while where I could have before, but didn't maybe, you know? I mean, we still have a very, very kind of neutrality based relationship. As our CEO of Red Hat has said, we have a completely different culture. He has said that numerous times in the press. So, Sonny, I see your question about Red Hat certificate, but I'm not sure what you mean by end market. So if you could ask that question another way, I would appreciate that. Thank you. Let's see, what else can we talk about? Oh, so I mentioned the walkup desk in the tower, right? Virtualizing that experience had to be a challenge because it was literally like a person and a computer and you brought your problem to it and it was solved either right there on the spot or within, you know, a reasonable amount of time shortly thereafter. How did we accommodate that as an organization? Right, so, you know, when you think about that, so when Chris talks about a walkup desk, that meant in the office, there was a help desk you could actually walk up to. And then also the organization that I lead, we also had, when we're in an office, people are like, hey, I got a problem. Can you just walk up to my desk and see what the issue is? So when you're in the rally tower, you're like, welcome to there. So right before the shutdown happened, we actually implemented something called an enterprise application IT chat. Now, if you're familiar with Slack and you're familiar with other types of tools, Red Hat uses Google chat. That's the process right there. So we started a enterprise application chat and what that was was, it's kind of like ask me anything but we didn't know really what it was gonna be but when we opened that chat, you started getting people asking all kinds of questions. Everything from, hey, my laptop has a black screen and it won't come up, what can I do? When I'm a system person, I'm like, well, I don't know, but I can get you in contact with the right person. And just the fact that you can get them in contact with the right person was more than enough. And so really we focused on using a walkup chat to become more of a virtual chat. And at the same time, even the help desk, you had to figure out how to make that much easier. And so from a help desk perspective, they also have a phone if you can call. Now, to our team, we don't have a phone. We're not gonna have people just pick up their phone and call. But we made that process very seamless. We made it where as a customer focused at, even though you can't physically touch me, you can virtually touch me. You can reach out to me and I can respond to you. And that was another way we were able to make that kind of virtual help desk work very well. And it did, right? Like I onboarded an intern this summer, Bobby, as people, if you watch the channel on a regular basis, you've seen him on, and his experience was just stellar, right? Like if he had a problem or I needed a laptop issued or I had to open a ticket for him once and I would get a chat message. It wouldn't be an email from, yeah, I got the email from service now acknowledging, but like 10 minutes later, it's a chat message. Hey, did you mean XYZ? Yes, that's exactly what I mean. It's like, okay, hang on a second, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I just sent him an email. He should have what he needs and it's like, done. And I'm like, wow, that's a level of experience that you normally don't get from, oh, I submitted a ticket kind of thing. You get that immediate feedback and it's very, very helpful. And there are some people you can't give their phone numbers to. There are some individuals that say, okay, hey, if you do have an important one, you can give me a call and when you give me a call, I will respond to that. So I do have a couple of people that can reach out to me, do phone and I will respond to them. And then I think the key is building trust, having that trust with that virtual chat itself. Exactly, trust in the process too, right? Like knowing that you have the best intentions and I have the best intentions from the get-go is incredibly important, right? And that's kind of how we build all of our relationships here in Red Hat is we assume positive intent, you know? And making that a cultural thing helps the IT discussion, right? Cause it's not a throw over the wall to IT kind of problem solving thing. Like we're all vested in a problem that solves it for the company or for my team or for whomever my intern, for example, right? Like we're all invested in that. So very refreshing. Sonny, I'm still confused by your question but we do have another question from Mazen. What do you look for in graduates? And I'm assuming that means like people coming out of college for new hires kind of thing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Cause you know. Yeah, so Red Hat has a very active intern program. As you heard Chris talk about his intern. We have students that are, you know, that are undergraduates as well as graduates that are into, you know, that we come in and get up an opportunity. And one of the things we're really trying to focus now on is that interns come in, how can we get them to be a repeat intern? How can we get them to come back the next year? And at the same time, how can we get them to come into Red Hat? So in regards to your question, what do we look for graduates? You know, we look for graduates who are open-minded, graduates who are willing to learn, graduates who are willing to also produce, obviously produce and be able to, you know, commit to Red Hat. And also be able to understand that you're going to come into a corporate environment. Even though Red Hat has an open source and you hear all the great things, Red Hat still is a company. It is still a corporation. It still has rules. It still has regulations. But if you're coming to work in an exciting company, and yes, we're not in, we're not in Silicon Valley, downtown Raleigh. We're in a couple of the offices. We're 18,000 employees. We are the world leading open source. We're open source. We're a software company selling open source products. That's where you need solutions. And so now we're moving product. We actually selling solutions now. So if you're excited about an interesting coming, that's what things will we look for from a student. You know, those things that I kind of talked about what we look for from them. Yeah, I mean, the level of openness, I think a lot of people straight out of college don't expect, right? And then I do often wonder once they graduate, and you know, let's say they stay at Red Hat for a little bit what they think of the next company they go to. I would love to get some feedback on that someday, but you know, let's talk about the other thing you do for us here at Red Hat. And let's talk about Build for a second. Can you tell us about your role as a Build Advisor and explain for our audience what Build is and how it started? Okay, yeah. So I am an advisor for the Build Organization, which represents Blacks United and Leisure University. So if you are familiar with ERGs, Employee Resource Groups or Diversity and Inclusion Groups, Build is one of those groups within Red Hat. And so as advisor, I meet with the chair and the co-chair on a regular basis. We talk on a monthly basis or sometimes twice a month, just kind of talking about what Build is, you know, activities is doing. So that's what the advisor, so let's talk about the history of Build. And I have a special part in the history of Build. I'm one of the founders of Build. And it all started back in 2015 when we had an opportunity at that time, there was no Build Organization, there was no Black Resource Groups within Red Hat. And so within IT, we started having a conversation about how could we start that initiative for Blacks. And so I was fortunate to bring together several Blacks within Red Hat. We came together and started meeting on a regular basis. And then after we started meeting, it was like, okay, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna move forward? You know, what some programs are there? And so it became more of a, not like a lunch club, but then it started growing from a lunch club to now having like, let's go out together and let's go out and figure out how we can do other things that impact Red Hat. Around 2016, Red Hat started looking at an opportunity of developing and formalizing the DNI communities. And as part of that formalization process, Red Hat came to what we call as our Blacks and IT. We were a small group. And what was also going at that same time, we were getting people asking, can we join? We're like, well, we don't have an infrastructure to support, we don't have any type of guidelines. So around 2017, Red Hat of Build was the first group to formalize through the DNI process. And when we formalized through the build process, at that time, we had a different name. We didn't know our African-American alliance. And so we just had a name, but the name didn't really gel with people. So what do you- It wasn't global, right? Yeah. No, Red Hat has come together and they collaborate. So the Build group came together, collaborated, came out and said, Build is the name. We like it, it resonated. And Build formally launched in 2017. I served as the chair for three years. And since we started, wow, you can name things. We've had book drives. We've had, now what is called Dr. Martin Luther King Day of Service, which is the day of service for Red Hat. All over the U.S. and globally, you can do that. And so Red Hat, Build is continuous to have that. We have executive sponsors. Our executive sponsor now is CFO, Ms. Lori Krebs. She is our executive sponsor. And our chair is Clarence Clayton. And our co-chair is Corin Townsend. And we have a very strong leadership committee. And I think our Build Medalist somewhere is around 500 people. You know, what is it? And the thing about Build is always about a shirt. We always, our shirts are something that stands out. So I have one of here today, you see here. Okay. This is our- It's a great shirt. This is our community shirt. And this shirt right here is one that, this was our first shirt. And we still continue to get people that request shirts. That shirt is like the seller. So we get that. And so that's a little bit about the history of Build. And, you know, Build is doing a lot today with Red Hat. And I can say this year, we have 16 Blacks interns at Red Hat this year, which is the highest that we have. And I think part of that has been Build's impact on diversity and inclusion at Red Hat. So that's a little bit of history. My role about Build and, you know, how Build is impact in Red Hat? I mean, I got to say like the day of service, the first one we did, you know, when Jim Whitehurst pops up on the screen and is like, hey, we're doing a day of service today. It's like, you know that this is for real. This is not just some fluff that we're talking about to bring in people. This is a real group. And like y'all make an impact. Can you talk about what are some ways the organization can foster more diverse populations and inclusive team dynamics in general? Yeah. You know, when I think about fostering more diverse, you know, organizations, we think about now at Red Hat, you know, we have the LBGTQA group. We have, you know, we have- I'm part of the veterans group. Yeah. Yeah, the veterans group. We have a new Latinx group. You know, we've got- AAPI is in there. Native American, indigenous Indian group. So we've got all these groups and now, all these groups are now becoming, you know, formalized groups. That's just great to see Red Hat investing into those groups. And now we have a DNI vice president. We've got a center of excellence around DNI. So I would say for cooperation, it has to be a commitment. You can't talk about DNI and diversity if you're not willing to commit into it. I think that is what these communities push Red Hat to do. These communities are pushing Red Hat leaders to say, okay, we're a community. We want to formalize something. At the same time, we want to actually ask Red Hat leadership to invest and commit to that. And I think that's how the communities can really have an impact on the organization. Exactly. And there's a question in chat here. I just answered, of course, are there opportunities for Africans at Red Hat? Of course. Yes. Yeah, we're remote, you know? I mean, I think when I joined, it was like almost 50% was remote. Obviously right now, we're pretty much all remote. So... That's correct. And, you know, the guidance right now, everything's still remote. So if I drop the link to the, I'll redrop it cross-channel wide to the jobs page. If you see a job there that you think you can do or you have some questions about it, feel free to ask me. You know, you can reach out to any Red Hatter that you might know. They will tell you anything you want, you know, question-wise. So check out that page. If you have questions, feel free to hit me up. But yeah, it's... We are a global company. You can work and sit in Kenya or, you know, any country on the planet really. And just as long as you have an internet connection that's pretty stable, you can work for Red Hat. You can. Yes. Matter of fact, I was a snack that most of my team, I have about six people in the US and then the rest of my team are located in India in different places. And as Chris mentioned, everybody's pretty much remote 100% right now. So now that people are now living with their parents, they've moved to another country. Yeah. I'm just gonna get up and move now since I'm working remote. So we've had all those opportunities. And definitely if you're in Africa, all the opportunities are available. As our business actually is expanding into Africa into different parts of Africa. I know in South Africa and other parts of Africa, we are expanding our business model there. Awesome. So we mentioned how to build diverse populations and inclusive dynamics. But how do you instill in people to be aware of the problems that we're trying to solve with the DEI groups or DNI groups and making that awareness, not as hard to swallow for some people, right? Because I know I hear it from some of my friends, like I don't see color and that's a red flag to me, right? And that wouldn't have been a red flag five years ago, which is crazy to anybody and that had my skin color, right? Like that was the predominant way of thinking back then. But that takes away a lot from the black experience, thinking like that, right? So how do you make that awareness kind of spread? Because I've learned a lot from Bill just being here. Right, yeah. So I would say, awareness comes through education and information. And I would say that most of our communities that I know Bill has invested a lot is doing black history month, bringing in speakers to talk about black awareness, doing our build anniversary, also bringing in speakers. So a lot of sometimes is around exposure. When people are not exposed to things, then they don't have the awareness. So a lot of things around, how do you provide more exposure? And part of that more exposure is being very vocal, talk about real life activities, talk about real life issues, talk about things that are concerning to different minority groups so that they can understand. Oh yes, I understand that our numbers are very low, but did you know that if your numbers are 2%, you only got 2% black and you got everybody's 98%. So to me, well, I didn't know that. Well, part of it should be providing statistics, providing more information. And so awareness really comes around kind of like opening your eyes. If you open up your eyes and you start seeing that you're like, in your example, people say, well, hey, I'm colorblind, but then if you open up a look around like, okay, well, I understand, but we are all not the same color here. And that is kind of like one of the first things, yeah. Yeah, I see a lot of benefit from just the awareness of having all these different groups, right? Like earlier this year, the Asian Pacific community, or Asian American and Pacific Islander community, had a lot of tragedy happening in it. So going and supporting that group during that time of need, I thought was an incredible A opportunity, but the fact that I could even do it at all at a company was mind-blowing to me, right? Like I have goosebumps right now thinking about it, to be honest with you. It's, and every year, day of service, I serve in other ways now because I can't necessarily go out to have it happen for humanity or whatever and build houses with my existing injuries and everything, but I give back in other ways. And the fact that we as a company think about the world around us as we're doing our day jobs and the people around us as we're doing our day jobs really does change the culture, right? Like it really does help people understand what it means to be black in America right now or what it means to be an Asian American earlier this year, right now, you highlight things that most people would not see and it's coming from the voices within the company, not outside, and that is so refreshing. Yeah, and Chris, in reference to what you talked about with the Asian community, several months ago, Red Hat Leadership made a statement on their website about who we stand with and that is very important for just not only our community but also for our employees to know that the company is committed to that. We have an Asian population within Red Hat in an Asian community that we are very strong and supportive of them. And I think that is another way of companies around awareness that companies are making strong statements even when we had social justice last year with the death of George Floyd and how Red Hat came out and made a commitment also from also made a financial contribution. But again, that is, I see that as change. You know, 20 years ago, companies probably have been heads under that but I see that as change and I see Red Hat's changing and also being sensitive to our communities and understanding how do we support these communities? We don't want our people employees to be feeling like they don't get support from the leadership and so making those statements are very important. Absolutely, it is vitally important and I have appreciated every blog post around, you know, who we support and you know, where we are as a company as far as supporting diverse communities. Let's, you know, let's rewind it back to the beginning when it was blacks and IT and you know, it was just a small group of folks. Did you experience any skepticism or resistance to the idea that a company culture benefits from allowing people from all backgrounds to be heard and understood and work together productively? Like have people ever resisted that or had some questions about it and like how, you know, for people watching, right? Like think of it in the way, you know, not to tell you what to say, but frame your answer in a way as to like, how can you help them do the same thing in their, you know, communities and companies? Right, so the kind of first thing is that it was very interesting in that kind of talking about in those times how it was going through because when we would come together and if you're not familiar with the Red Hat office, most office all have glass conference rooms. So when our group would come together and meet, it would be like, okay, you've got 12 black people meeting in the room at lunch and it was more like, okay, I don't want people to look in and see us meeting and they're gonna think that something's going on. And so that was the kind of a little bit on the hesitant side. And also, you know, one of the things that you think about is that when we were going through that, sometimes we would hear some from our members that would say, you know, hey, you know, I talked to my manager and even we have our one-on-ones, he never even talked about a knowledge that that was part of this. And so that was, we don't see that as skepticism but we see that as, oh, we don't know if you, you know, are aware of what's going on. And then within Red Hat, we have some open, you know, dialogue solutions that when people can voice their opinions and sometimes you would hear some of those opinions and voice and you're like, okay, are we standing up for everybody or people can make some comments? And so, you know, when you think about those, you know, you have to figure out how do you continue to press on? So you can't let one incident or something like that stop. You have to figure out, I'm gonna commit to this, I'm gonna do it. And then when you get leaders that support it, not everybody sometime is all bought in. So you have to work on getting the buy-in. And so buy-in takes time, it takes time to change. And so if you are someone who's looking to start a new group, you have to be like I was. Someone says, I'm willing to make a change. And I'm gonna make a change and that change is gonna be, I've gotta lead that change. And so that's something that I thought about very own and helping start to build community. And I see our community today is very like, we have to make change. Change doesn't happen overnight, I would tell you. No, man. It's gonna take time. And so if you're interested in starting a community or an ERG within your company, I would say, start it and just continue. Just do it. Yeah, and press on and reach out to friends when you need help, that kind of thing. I'm just gonna drop a link. Well, like we had diversity sessions at Red Hat Summit and that I think was amazing, right? Like from a company perspective to not only say we have these groups internally but to give them an even bigger stage, right? To talk to more people is admirable in a company as opposed to saying, hey, we're not gonna have a diversity track because it's actually part of our culture here. And it kind of defines the way we work, right? So... And also I would say it's all about our products too. Our products are not just geared to one person. Our products are globally. So for us to use global products, we have to have people that when they see our products they have to see the face behind the products. And when they see the face behind the product, it's like, oh, that person looks like me and they sell the product that I'm interested in. Oh, I can now, I have a connection. And so part of it is also around building that connection as Christy mentioned. The summit was the first, you know, that the fact that now we have DNI parts of that summit is also good because you don't know where that person comes to the summit, what they're looking for to figure out, oh, wow, I see a DNI panel. I can go listen to it, take that back to my company and say, hey, I saw this at the summit, which is a sponsored Red Hat event and they made it a part of the event. So let's see how we can make it as part of our company. Right, we try to set the bar higher, right? Like that's something I greatly appreciate about Red Hat. So what gets you up in the morning, right? Like you do a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong. Talking about all the stuff you've done over the years, talking about what you're doing right now, you do a lot. So what like gets you motivated? Get you going. Well, in Red Hat, we have this epic. We're effective, productive, innovative and collaborative. So when I think about epic, I think about how we make a difference. And so for me, getting up in the morning and coming in, well, used to be going to the office, going to the opposite tomorrow, but yeah. Walk down the hallway. Right. My organization, as I mentioned, runs Red Hat Finodra applications and a lot of the compliance applications. You got to think about how we ensure that our company can report financial high company, can entitle customers, how we can send out invoices, how we can tell customers, here's your entitlements that you have. You can download information. Here's your renewal information. And Chris, you have to do that own point every time. It can't be. Yeah, you can't be a little bit off. Yeah, it can't be a little bit off for one of those. You got to be on point for all of them. Yeah. Right. So my organization, we just did a major upgrade to our financial application, or my major one. And when it came up, we had some, as big as the application, they sometimes have some bumps and bruises that they come up and wouldn't do that. But I tell people, if you look at it, the fact of the matter, you could create an invoice, you could take a purchase order, you could entitle a customer, you could close the month and nothing was off by one penny. So when you think about all of that, when I come to work every day, I think about, I'm part of that solution. I'm part of making that happen. I'm part of that thing. And so I started thinking about this question earlier, the day, and I kind of thought about, almost thinking of, we're like the engine inside of the car. When you're driving down the road, you want to make sure that you stop. We're part of making sure that you can get your compliant. When you want to listen to your radio, you want to make sure your electronics works. So we're part of making enabling customers. We want to make sure you get, when you start your job in the morning, we want to make sure that you end your job in the afternoon. So you make out of that. And so when I look at my organization, even though we are, like I said, in our product applications, we're still the backbone of making a lot of things happen. And not only in the US, but in all these countries around the world, we're making all this happen every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And that's really what gets me excited about coming to work, because you come to work and you say, I'm making a difference in Red Hat each day. Right. We do a very good job at Red Hat of telling people about the impact they're making, right? And that was one of the things I was told very early on. Like this was the first summer I ever had an intern and it was like, you know, make sure they understand the impact they're making, right? Like don't just show them the numbers, show them the problems you've helped people solve. Cause, you know, we have a log of everything that's ever been chatted on the channel, right? So, you know, show them that and, you know, identify these things that help them understand the impact they're making. Every manager I've ever had has done a similar conversation with me. And like that is refreshing. Like just to know your impact, that's something I learned in the military was like if you understand what your impact is long term, you will make better decisions, right? Towards, you know, goals that are set for you. So that's something I really, really encourage folks to take away from this conversation is that, you know, showing people that impact and demonstrating to them how what you do contributes to that bottom line is vitally important. So this is my last question before I just kind of open it up for you to say anything you want. What are you excited about in the next month, this year? You know, 2022 is four months away. Like that's crazy, right? Yeah. Still March 2020 for me and to some extent, but yeah. Well, I'm an extrovert. So I look forward to being in the office and, you know, I was looking forward to being in the office and now we're not coming back to January. Yeah. So, you know, so that's the thing I look for. But also at the thing I look for is that, you know, Red Hat has so much opportunity ahead of it in the future. If you just look at IBM announced, they're gonna hire 900 success managers to sell more Red Hat products. Mm-hmm. You know, who would imagine a- It's bigger than your team? Yeah, right. Who would imagine that? Yeah, so to think about hiring 900 more people to sell Red Hat products. What does that mean? It means that the IT organization has again has to step up to the plate. We have to be transformative. We have to think out of the box. We have to think about scale. We have to think about, yes, we're 18,000 employees. What happens tomorrow when we're 25,000? We're 30,000 employees. And at the same time, you're still sending invoices. You're still entitling customers. You're still now selling new products. You're now selling what we call as offerings. You ain't giving them a customer one product. You're giving them a whole solution now. A solution, yeah. So when you think about all of those, I think that's what I'm excited about. So much things are ahead of us that where in my 17 and a half years, there's a lot more to come. And as you said, it's exponential with technology is doing. And then we can see that within Red Hat over and over and, you know, tomorrow you may have an office that has 10,000 employees sitting down in Australia, which is kind of unheard of. But that's the reality that can take place in years to come. Yeah, we don't know. So we got to be ready to scale at any point, right? You know, it's amazing to me how adaptive we are as a company. It really is. But with that being said, is there anything else you would like to discuss? Anything you want to say? Let me give you the podium for 10 minutes, you know, if you want. Yeah. You know, I would just say that IT is really a kind of backbone into a company today. When you see, when you hear about, you know, who would imagine that a hack would shut down a whole gas line across the whole east coast and then cause gas shortages throughout that. So when you think of an IT organization, you have to think about redundancy. You have to think about risk. You have to think about protecting your employees. But at the same time, offering employees all the tool sets that they have. As Chris and I was talking about, you know, making sure that your Wi-Fi, whoever thought I'm in the office, I can go from the one end of the building to the next end of the building on my same Wi-Fi connection. Right, no wires involved. You know, it's like magic. It's foodude. Never would have had 25 years ago that would have been nuts, you know. Right. Or who would ever thought that I can approve an expense on my phone or I can go on a tablet and I can do an opportunity for a customer on my tablet while I'm sitting on the beach, I'm still productive. And so, IT now is making it to where we're allowing people to do their job anywhere in the world. It's just a matter of you can, if you can get access to an internet, we can make you productive. And I think that is the thing that, you know, I think about the leader of IT, you know, I see IO Mike Kelly and what he talks about. When you hear about that Epic, Epic is really around just making sure that we are part of enabling our customers. If you cannot enable your own customers internally and externally, soon they'll be like, they'll start looking for another IT solution. And I think that is the thing that we have been very effective to do is be able to provide a solution internally to where we're selling our own, we're using our own products. We're making people available to be able to use, you know, the scale to think about, oh, I'm in, I'm in the Middle East and I'm in Dubai and there's some rules and regulation for Dubai and IT has to make sure that that works or you have to print an invoice in Arabic. That is again, IT making it work or the person that says, hey, I wanna take my PTO and I can't get into workday. That's been IT making it work. And so IT has all of these. And so I would tell anyone, if you're looking for an outstanding, you know, a great career, you can look at IT and I'd say things are changing to where it used to be you had to have a degree to get into IT. A lot of companies that are looking at that as don't need a degree, you can come in, you can go learn the skill, that's the beauty right at open source, learn about open source products. Then you can take that opportunity and so I'm just thankful to be able to work at a company where my organization has an impact and I can see that each day. And I can also say, I work with some very smart individuals and part of that is we're a team. It's not one person, we're a team. If we're a team coming together, we work together as a team. And so I would say, if I leave you with anything join a team because a team is gonna be able to help you. And as a leader myself, you know, one of the things I always wanna do is make sure that my team can be successful. That's the thing that I look for. Awesome. Well, thank you very much, John. This has been an awesome conversation. I wish we had more time or, you know, more questions even. Make sure we got it all. We didn't ask the cheesecake question. Did you wanna weigh in on that? I know you probably- Okay, well yeah, that cheese, is it a cake or pie? Let me think- Is it a cake or a pie, in your opinion? I'm gonna have to go with the pie. Yeah. When I think about the cheesecake, when you go to cheesecake, I think I've got all different types of cheesecakes. And I think that cheesecake has that crust in the middle and the bottom of it. That kind of, I think of a pie of something you have a crust in there. And also I think about, you know, it's got the cheese in it, you can't like put it out, but I'm a pie person. I'm gonna say it's a pie. I'm cool with that. It's whatever you want it to be. There's no wrong answer here. That's right. Awesome, John. Thank you so much for joining us today. Look forward to seeing your work in the future because I know I'm gonna use it every day. All right, well, thank you Chris. Thank you. Stay safe out there, everyone. Up next on the channel is Dev Nation. And I'm gonna make way for them. So stay safe out there.