 Live from the Mandalay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE at IBM Insight 2014. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for IBM Insight. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's independent broadcast. We go out to events, extract the signal from noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm like co-host Dave Vellante, chief founder at Wikibon, also the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. And we're excited to bring you Chris Brown, who's involved an investor, speaker, CEO of STEM Resource Partners at Craig Brown PhD. I was assuming you have a PhD, so there's PhDs in the, in your Twitter handle. Chris, welcome to theCUBE. Craig. Craig, Craig, right? It is Craig. Craig. It's okay. It's okay. Sorry. Thanks for updating the teleprompter. That's teleprompter, Chris. Oh, there's no teleprompter. The old teleprompter. Craig Brown, so sorry, you know. Get those teleprompters fixed. Oh, we don't have teleprompter. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So you're investing in companies. We want to get that in a second. Obviously STEM is hot right now. You're seeing a lot of things. Women in tech. You're seeing the democratization of entrepreneurship. And Dave and I love talking about this topic because we love this internet of things connected network where humans are part of it. And now you're seeing a humanization. IBM calls it cognitive computing, an element of some of the tech involved. But really the humanization of tech is moved from a geek culture, male dominated, computer scientists, guys, to everybody now. So this is really a cool shift in our world right now. It is. What are you seeing and what are some of the things you're working on? Talk about the STEM resource program and your investments and what you're working on. What we try to do with STEM is identify resources. The resources may be enthusiasm. Folks that have an interest, that don't have a background in STEM. Or experience STEM resources that have previous job related background or education and connect them to real job opportunities because there's quite a few out there. What we try to do to bridge the gap is offer training if that's necessary. And now I'm a big proponent on certifications. I actually require 25 IT certifications over a 25 year period in my career. So I'm a big proponent of that as a testament of knowing the technology that they were interested in learning about. The other programs can be more simple. It could be associated with just letting them touch the software, the hardware to get some familiarity with it. But the key is generating interest. Hopefully the youth and or senior citizens in some cases or somewhere in between are interested in just basically finding a way of life for themselves and using technology as a way to get there. You know, Dave, we talk about this all the time. People who have seen the movie as a social network. It's also kind of a pun, but it's also fun to talk about, oh, you know, I want to be Mark Zuckerberg. This younger generation, Dave, they see this and they go, wow, I could be a billionaire too. And what the reality is, is that, you know, Amazon Web Services is now with Blue Mixed The Cloud. It's really easy to boot up a venture. So that really creates an opportunity for anybody to do anything cool. And then we're living in an age of drones, gaming cultures. There's a maker movement that we've commented, Craig, in the past, that looks like the Apple Computer Homebrew Club where there's a lot of tinkering going on. But it's very cool. It is very cool. What are you seeing? What's the coolest thing that you guys see? I mean, you probably see these fresh ideas. We have taken, and for example, kids that are into gaming, and they don't know anything about technology from the perspective of an IBM or a software company or hardware company. And, but they have that gaming and their reflexes are good and their interest is there. And, you know, we introduced them to the programs. There's some online programs that allow them to learn how to develop games. So I say, hey, you know, why don't you come up with your own football game or your own basketball game and maybe make it look, maybe make all the players look like your friends when you plan to pick up basketball and run around the corner or at the church and make it more realistic to your experiences playing basketball. Because no, you're not an NBA player, but you fantasize about becoming an NBA player. So how do you turn that into a career from a development standpoint? And so I bridge the interest in something they already know how to do with a new world and it tends to work. You know, Craig, one of the things we love about the internet is it really shows that the middleman is gone. And whether you're talking about old line businesses to just access to markets for opportunities, the middleman's gone at democratize this thing. That's the big buzzword. But like, even take about the NBA, for instance, like the athletes themselves and people are going direct to the audiences. You're seeing even on ESPN, you're seeing tweets now there because the power of the individual is really in the hands of what their creativity. That's correct. So this is a massive trend. It's really changing some of the old guard kind of things from funding and everything else. So let's talk about the access to funding. So let's talk about your investing in these ideas. And Peter Thiel is controversial in Silicon Valley where I live around, he's paying people not to go to college. So like. I don't know if I agree with you. And yeah, I would tie with him with you on that. However, but he's highlighting and it's a pretty radical idea. He's kind of a radical, but he's kind of out there. When you've got a billions of dollars, you can do whatever you want. But he's making a point, which is you don't have to go institutional linear past. There's a lot of different alternatives. Khan Academy is another phenomenon we love, which is learning is a big data thing as well. So you're seeing people can have the world that their world is their oyster if they can apply themselves. I agree. So what are you guys investing in? Talk about and share with the folks out there the fund, the kind of things you're doing and what you're investing in. The primary investments are in software or hardware and in most cases, in reference to bringing, like I said earlier, introducing the youth into technology or stem or other stem areas, the investments are primarily in the equipment and or the software to get them started. In most cases, I make the investments out of my personal income. I take a set aside money out of my personal income and I use it to get back. In most cases, it's five or $6,000 contribution. In some cases, it's a little more. I rarely sought out help because I found that when you start asking for donors, then there's a factor of return on investment that needs to be applied. And I don't always have a way to make that happen because there's no guarantee that the investments will yield a successful student or successful candidate into the field of technology. But overall, that's the goal. And even if they just have fun doing it and they utilize some skills or bring skills to the table that may help them in a different career, then we still win. Technology is a huge proponent of what it takes to succeed in employment and or entrepreneurship whether you're in a technology field or not. So understanding you haven't all been home runs, give us some examples of some successes, some singles, some doubles, some walks, some strikeouts. Sure, I had a really good friend in Philadelphia who was a network engineer some years ago, got away from technology and just basically fell into a hole where he was doing odds and end jobs. He's over 50 now. He just landed his second IT contract after a year and a half, year and a half of mentorship through me. And he is now a SQL Server DBA certified. Now that's a win because his income went from, well I don't know if he wants me to tell his income, but it was lower than $50,000 a year to just under $95 an hour. Huge win in terms of confidence building, what it took for him to get to that point was just to believe that he can do it. It was no magic on my part whatsoever. It was just a matter of showing him that the technology wasn't difficult to learn as long as it was an interest. And from you, what was in it? I mean, obviously the satisfaction of helping out a friend, right? And there was a financial incentive for you as well? Nope, nope, nope. I have been- You're just playing it forward. Playing it forward. I'm a 25 year IT technologist. My career is, I'm not going to say near the end, but I'm closer to the end than I am at the beginning. And so I get a big- Oh man, you're a character here. We're in the grave. I don't know about that. Dial back 10 years and I wouldn't say that. We're in the grave if you're in here. Yeah, come on. But the general thing that I get out of it is satisfaction. I like to see people launch something, whether it's, now I'm a part of technology, so I always have that slight incentive to bring more technology folks into the world, almost like birth. But at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be technology. I just like to see people succeed. What are the skill sets that are scarce right now that you're seeing that are in demand? Developers, administrators, very simple, but necessary skill sets within all major corporations, medium-sized corporations, even mom and pop operations. Everybody needs help with networking, communication, connectivity. These are all scarcities and I do my best to try to introduce. And developers, double-click on that mobile. Obviously. Mobile. What else? Dot net, applications, financial. Mainstream stuff. Mainstream stuff, yeah. You guys do some amazing work, so I think you're on the right track and there's an entrepreneur, a friend of mine out in Silicon Valley, David Gerard, he was the president of Google Enterprise. And so he's got some dough, but he actually raised funding, so he's got a company called Upstart, where it's interesting, he takes stock in students where he invests in people and they pay them back as a ROI on their earnings. So what it is, it's an interesting arbitrage, Dave, and it's similar to what you're doing, I mean, a little bit different level, but I mean, he's just saying, he's betting on people and he's encouraging people to go for their dreams with seed funding to pay for their college bills and or do something. And he gets a portion of their future earnings. He gets a portion of their future earnings. You guys are doing that with athletes now. This was a pretty high risk. Guy blows out his knee. No one comes into Austin to the Cube for our future earnings. Tech athletes. Well, I haven't elevated to that level. I haven't actually sought after any return of anything. Again, my return is just understanding that they got something out of it and the time was well used. Well, we have a term we call, we love ESPN, so we love sports. We call this the Cube, the ESPN of Tech. But there's a tech athlete out there mindset where people just love tech and they love to play with it, not so much to become the zillionaire, but because just to do some good work and like throw some touchdowns, so to speak, and do some good work. You know, what's interesting is that you can become a zillionaire if you come up with a concept or an idea and something you create that the global economy needs, right? Yeah, talk about mentoring because the mentoring is key there. Let's just say you got a kid comes in, hey, you know, 50K, 25K, 10K, get the ramen noodles, our friends work on a project. And that's really all you need. Get some Amazon cloud going or blue mix. And then like, then they're out in the wild. You got to protect them. So is that part of the program? Are you probably some mentoring and other things? The mentoring primarily gets them started. Where they go from there really is up to them. I don't push them into any particular area. I just want them to, one, I want them to have fun with it. Technology was fun to me and I guess that's where it comes from. I thoroughly enjoy doing what I do and I don't have any struggles with it. So that's where it comes from. And as long as they're getting that from it, then for me it's worth the time. But once they get the introduction, what typically happens is they light up and they see the possibilities that they didn't get from school. Not that the school didn't do a good job, but sometimes it's hard to tap into that true interest and they believe they can do it. So I'll give you the final word on this segment. Share with the folks out there on the business side, potential folks to collaborate with for your organization. All for the young kids out there that are watching. What's it all about? What's up next for you guys? What are you going to do next? Well, we're going to continue doing what we do. We're basically looking for youth in any age. It's really not about age. It's really just about thorough interest. If you're interested in learning about technology on any level, any scale. And what I don't do, I have connections to, you know, look you into a portal of people that may help. If you want to learn how to develop code, you know, there's a ton of organizations out there, some non-profits, some for-profit that help with developing code, like Hacker Thousand, things like that. But thoroughly, as long as you are interested in finding your way in a STEM career, give us a call. STEM is hot, Craig Brown, PhD, inside the Cube, at Craig Brown PhD, Twitter handle, worth the follow. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. This is theCUBE, we're live in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE, Extracting the Signal from the Noise, sharing that with you at IBM Insight. We'll be right back after this short break.