 Okay, we're here at theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle. We're here at AT&T Park for the San Francisco Giants, Bill Schlau, CIO of the San Francisco Giants here at AT&T Park. CUBE alumni have been on theCUBE before at our big sports data SV event. Welcome back, great to have you back on theCUBE. Good to be here, John. So tell us about what the latest innovations are on the geek stuff here, and we just talked about the speed test. You got a massive wireless, give a little bit background on some of the wireless, some of the capabilities, the speed test, et cetera. I mean, for us, the commitment to enabling our fans to stay connected at AT&T Park goes all the way back to 2004. So it's been going for a long time when we've put the Wi-Fi network in to enable our fans to stay connected from the gates of Willi May's Plaza to the shores of McCovey Cove. And each year we have to continue to enhance and push the envelope. So right now we have 1,289 Wi-Fi access points, plus a full distributed antenna system that supports AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as well. And we're just enabling our fans to stay connected, give them the content they want, as well as delivering our app, and they'll be at the ballpark to the fans as well. Wi-Fi has been kind of like one of those physical needs, like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs in technology these days. People want their Wi-Fi, and you got the LTs. Talk about the benefits of how this came about and how long you've been running the Wi-Fi, and what are some of the things you've heard from customers, complaints, kudos, what are you hearing? Sure, and it's definitely, we've been through a roller coaster over the past 10 years. And I agree that as you think about ballparks today, and in the past, you used to think, okay, when you come to a game, what do you need? You need to have the event on the field, of course, and you want to have compelling action on the field. You need a video board, unless you're at Wrigley Field where they're not quite there yet, they're still with the tradition with no video board, but they'll get there at some point, I think, with the renovations. You need a seat, although in a lot of soccer games, people never actually sit down, they stand up the whole time. And maybe you need food and beverage as well. And today, I would argue that Wi-Fi or connectivity is right there on the list. And different people could rank it differently. Some people don't need food at a ballpark, some people don't need to sit down. But pretty much all of our fans need to stay connected. And so that's a decision that we've made, again, 10 years ago, and we've been continuing to invest in that infrastructure. Back 10 years ago, the only folks who would bring Wi-Fi-enabled devices to the park were the geeks from Silicon Valley, who would bring up a laptop and plug a card into that laptop. And they would be heckled by folks around them, but fast forward to today, where typically a typical game, 33 to 35% of our fans are getting on the Wi-Fi. I'm sure more than that percentage actually have Wi-Fi-enabled devices, they probably just haven't turned Wi-Fi on because they're not used to doing that, they don't expect that. But we've had this here for a long time, 33 to 35%, and we augment that with the LTE connectivity also. So we wanna make sure that anyone in the ballpark can access the content they want and share content as they see fit. So share photos, share videos, stay connected. That's been a commitment here for a while. In terms of the level of connectivity, we'd like to see 10 meg either through LTE or Wi-Fi anywhere in the ballpark at any time. Of course, when there's nobody here, you're gonna see 30, 40 meg. We just ran a speed test, what were the numbers? 30 meg for LTE? 30 meg LTE and 40 meg plus for Wi-Fi, but that's not relevant when there's, fans aren't quite here yet. It's like the cable mode works great when everyone's sleeping on the street. Right, right, so that's not fair. That's not a fair test. A fair test is when the park is packed, like this Dodger series is past homestand, we see 35% of the fans on the network and everyone can do what they need to do through their mobile devices. The key to Wi-Fi is people realize that it really takes the weight off their data bill for their LTE, so like backhauling through the Wi-Fi is really what people now do at home. It's really a common practice, so that must be really good for you guys to get that feedback from customers. It's a lot of fun and like I say, it's been a roller coaster over the years, so it hasn't always been so great. Back in 2009, before distributed antenna systems were commonplace, it was the first year, opening day when we first started to really feel it in terms of the cellular service and on that day, opening day was a crunch. We had been fine in 2008, but 2009 comes a long opening day. People can't make phone calls and that's not acceptable, so that's where we put the distributed antenna system in place and now fast forward to today, instead of getting complaints, I have people sending me images of the speed test, bragging about how great the network is here at this ballpark and so that's expected, of course, at AT&T Park. I'm sure you're gonna see that similar level of service at other facilities in the area, like lead by stadium and the new Warriors facility when it comes out. Here in the Bay Area, it's not an option not to be connected. Folks, when you come to the game here, look at the seats, you'll see the little boxes underneath some of the seats perfectly spread out and that is gonna be an amazing way to keep the cloud and the radio frequency gup for your Wi-Fi, so congratulations. Great stuff, it's a little bit of a nuance. Look at the boxes, don't spill any beer on it, that's what we were just talking about. What about the mobile? They're sealed, they're sealed, John. You can't get the beer inside here. What about the mobile app? That's a big push now, mobile is a mobile economy. How are you guys looking at that market? Everyone has their phones here and iPads. What are you guys doing for the mobile customer? So the functionality of the app has really evolved over the years. For us, it debuted in around 2005, 2006 before folks even had iPhones and we were creating more of a web-based experience that was customized to the screen. And today, it is an app and it's consistent across all of Major League Baseball. There are two apps, MLB at Bat, which is really the gold standard for sports apps. It's the highest grossing and highest downloaded sports app of all time. And then the companion app to that, which is called MLB at the ballpark. And that's what we promote here at the park. It's more geared toward folks who are physically at AT&T park. And it has a lot of functionality that's relevant to your experience and it continues to evolve. So it might be maps, it might soon, it might ultimately be food ordering, which I know other facilities are looking at doing and evaluating as well. And so it's something we've been talking about for years, several teams do that. It could also be a replace of exciting events at the park. It could be the opportunity to upgrade your seat, which is key for us as we're looking at 303 straight sellouts at this ballpark, but that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities for people to upgrade because there are no shows. And so if you're sitting in the upper deck and you see a seat that you want down in the lower deck and you have that app, you can pull it out and potentially upgrade that seat. So there's a lot of different things we can do with mobile that we couldn't do before. And I want to be clear, it's not that every fan necessarily is going to use the AT&T ballpark app. Some of them may be using Instagram, some of them may be using Facebook. It doesn't matter to us. We want to give the fans what they want and give them the opportunity to enhance that experience at the park. And if that's through our app or if it's through their traditional social media channels, it's all good for us. We just want them to enjoy this experience, share it and stay engaged. So in-game experience and also in-game service for the app, that's the key focus, right? Sure, absolutely. And continue to come up with whatever those pieces of functionality might be to enhance the experience for the fans. So what is the craziest innovation thing that you've seen here from a fan standpoint? You see a lot of geeks coming through here, Silicon Valley, San Francisco. What are some of the crazy things you've seen from fans here, from a technology standpoint? What are they bringing into the game? Crazy things. I mean, laptops are crazy these days, back in the early days. I mean, people have, just because of where we are physically, people will bring all kinds of different devices into the park. Trying to think it. You've got these. Has anyone tried to bring a drone in? Well, we have used drones at the park, but we have never had to shoot down a drone because they've all been our drones. I don't know that I'm not aware of any fan bringing a drone in, but we have used drones ourselves to actually video the park. We use the blimp, but we've also deployed our own drones out over the Levi's landing area to get a different perspective there. So we're always experimenting. Of course, we experiment with Google Glass and Oculus and all these different concepts. We're evaluating them all and see what, throw it at the wall, see what sticks. What's the update since we last talked? That was a few months ago for you in the park here and within the Giants Organization. What new innovation you guys watching? What are you eyeing? What are you looking at for? That's going to be coming out right around the corner. I'd say, you know, I can't really reveal all of our secrets. You know, when we look at innovation... Our best practice. Yeah. When we look at innovation, we're looking at driving three things. One is, you know, propelling the business forward. Two is enhancing the fan experience and three is improving the product on the field. And we're always making investments in each of those three areas. And I know you guys are going to talk to a few of the folks who are experts in some of these areas and so you'll hear about some of the innovations in those areas, but, you know, this could be anything from finding a better way to keep the grass green to improving our ability to scout and evaluate talent on the field to, again, enabling our fans to stay more connected and giving them functionality that they can't get anywhere else. So I don't want to get into too many specifics. We are toward the tail end of this season and we're starting to explore what we're going to deploy for next season. So we're kind of in the exploratory stage right now. Great. Well, Bill, great to see you. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Great innovation on the Wi-Fi. It's awesome in the mobile app. Anything else you'd like to share with the folks out there? What do we have you here? No, John, I'm excited to be here and glad to have you guys here at AT&T Park today. And, you know, we're looking forward to finishing strong and it's an even year. So hopefully, you know, we've got another ring in our future. All right. World Champion Giants here with the CIO perspective about technology here and baseball, tech fans, baseball fans kind of merge together, great organization, real winners on and off the field. I'm John Furrier, Bill Schlau here at AT&T Park with San Francisco Giants.