 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering Red Hat Summit 2019, brought to you by Red Hat. Welcome back to our coverage here on theCUBE of Red Hat Summit 2019. We're live in Boston right now and I'm joined by a couple of award-winning professionals and we're looking forward to hearing what their story is because it's fascinating on both fronts and also by Delyssa Alexander who has a great job titled Red Hat. Chief People Officer. I love that title. Delyssa, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Also with us, Lamore Freed, who is the founder and lead engineer of Adafruit and Solana Garg, who is an undergrad student, third year student at the LNM Institute of Technology and that's in Jaipur, India. So Solani, glad to have you with us and Lamore, a pleasure as well. Thank you. And you're all lit up. You've got things going on there, right? I'm just glowing, we're going to get all into that. We'll get into that later. Let's talk about the award. There are two women in open source. Our winners this year are the community side, Lamore won on the academic side, Solani won. So talk about the awards, if you would Delyssa, the process and really what you're trying to do with recognizing these kinds of achievements. Well, this is our fifth year for the women in open source awards. So after this period of time, I can tell you what we want to do is make an impact by really fostering more diverse communities, particularly gender diversity in open source. And so that's the whole goal. Five years into it, what we've discovered is that when you really focus on diversity and inclusion within a community, you actually can make an impact. And the thing that's so exciting this year is that our award winners are really evidence of that. So talk about the two categories then, if you would please. Community on one side, academics on the other. It appears to be pretty clear cut what you're hoping to achieve there by recognizing an active contributor and then somebody who is in the wings and waiting for their moment. But go ahead and fill in a little bit about Lamore and then Solani too about why they're here. Why am I here? Why are they here? Yes, well, what we are trying to do is create role models for women and girls who would like to participate in technology but perhaps are not sure that that's the way that they can go and they don't see people or like them so there are less tendency to join into those type of communities. So with the community award winner, we're looking at a professional who's been contributing to open source for a period of time. And with our academic winner, we're looking to spur more people who are in university to think about it. And of course, the big idea is you'll all be looking at these women as people that will inspire you to potentially do more things with open source and more things with technology. We've been hearing for many, many years that we definitely need to have more gender diversity in tech in general and in open source. And Red Hat has kind of uniquely situated to focus on the open source community. And so with our role as the open source leader, we really feel like we need to make that commitment and to be able to foster that. What makes perfect sense? Obviously a great perfect sense. Solani, if it would, let's talk first about your work. You've been involved in open source for quite some time. I know you have a lot of really interesting projects that you're working on right now. We'll get to that in a bit. But just talk about, I guess, the attraction for you in terms of the open source and really kind of where that came from originally through your interest in STEM education. Okay, so when I first came to college, I was really encouraged to contribute into open source by my seniors. They were already selected in programs like Google Summer of Code, Outreach, and all. So they actually felt empowered by open source so they encouraged me to join it too. I tried open source and I feel really like I'm a part of something bigger than myself. And I was helped greatly by my seniors. So I feel it's my duty to give it back to my juniors and to help them when they need it so that they can do wonders, yeah. Great, and Lamor for you. I know you founded the company, 100% female-owned. I'm like, yeah, 100% me. Yeah, right. 100% you. It's my fault. Yeah, right. I'm not gonna blame you, I'll credit you instead. No, yeah, actually that's our big thing. We want to change, get blamed to get credit. Right, it's all about credit. More positive. So 100 employees, is that right? 100, 150, yep. Okay, talk a little bit about kind of the origin, the genesis of the company and where that came from and in your connection on the open source side. Well, yeah, so I grew up actually in Boston. So I've lived here a very long time. You said like a block from here, two blocks from here. I used to live actually at Sintel Station nearby. I used to live by my group in Brookline. So Boston has a very strong open source community. FSF is here and that's kind of the origins of a lot of this free software and open source software community. And when I went to school, I ended up going to MIT and open source software and open source technology is kind of part of the genetics there. There actually isn't even this thinking that you wouldn't do it. It's just kind of by default, people write code, you open source it, you release it, there's a culture of collaboration, scientists, engineers, students, researchers all working together and sharing code. And when I was in school, so I had this like thesis and I really didn't want to do it. And so instead I started building like MP3 players and video games, taking all the engineering that I was studying and like not doing the work I was supposed to be doing, but instead of having fun and building cool electronic parts and I would publish these projects online. I had like a Media Lab webpage and I would publish, you know, here's all the chips and the schematics and the layout and people had sort of started coming up with the idea of open source hardware. Let's take the philosophy of open source software where you release a source code but in here you release CAD files, firmware, layouts, 3D models and so I did that and I was publishing, you know, here's how you make this like light break toy for Burning Man or an MP3 player or a cell phone jammer, all these fun projects and people would end up contacting me and saying, hey, these are really cool projects. I would like to build this project myself but unlike software where you just like type in like make config and compile and all that, you actually have to buy parts you have to get these physical things and so they said, you know, could you sell me a kit, like a box where I would get it and take it home and be able to build it and I was totally like, no, I'm busy, I have to like not work this thesis. That's not what I do. But eventually I did work this thesis and then I was really stuck because I'm like, now what do I do? So I ended up selling kits so I sold the synthesizer kits and such and I did our fellowship and stuff and then eventually it was kind of like this is, I was just doing, you know, it's you kind of fall into business by accident because if you knew what you're getting into you wouldn't do it in my opinion. So I ended up sort of developing that and that was 13 years ago and now we have 4,000 products in the store. You know. 4,000 products. Yeah, I know, ridiculous. Yeah, all right. It's a lot. Yeah, who's doing that inventory? Well, we have a pretty intense inventory system that I love to talk to you about but it's kind of boring. I'll bet you do. I was reading something about and Circuit Playground Express. Yes. Is that right? So is that what this is all about? Okay. See, I knew you'd ask and that's why I wore this. So it's this kind of an exploratory circuit board of. Yeah, it's open source, open source hardware, open source software and firmware and we had a lot of parents and teachers and educators and camp counselors come to us and say, we want to teach physical computing. We want to teach coding but with physical hardware because we all will all this here coders, right? No, I don't know. But eventually you're like, I'm typing on a screen and you want to take that and you want to make it physical. You want to bring it out into the world whether it's a wearable or a Cosplay or assistive technology or you want to make video games that are like physical video games. And the problem that teachers had were the classrooms, a lot of these classrooms, they don't have a lot of money. So they said it has to be very low cost. It has to be durable because these kids are like chewing on it and stuff. It's just fun. It also has to work on any computer, even extremely old computers because a lot of these schools, they only have a budget every seven years to buy laptops. And so this actually becomes a very difficult, technological problem of how do you design something that's $20 but can teach physical computing to anybody from kids who are not even good at typing all the way to college students who want to implement fast Fourier transforms. And so we designed this hardware in its open source and it's cool because people are like remixing it and making improvements to it. It's open source, circuit playground and I'm wearing it and it's glowing. And I don't know, it's fun. It's got LEDs and sensors and you can just allot a clip to it and make projects. And we've got schools from around the world learning how to code. And I think it's a much more fun experience than just typing at a computer. Absolutely, yeah. So on your side of the fence, so obviously still in your education years, if you will, not that we ever stopped learning, but formally right now, but you're involved among the many projects that you've been involved with, a smart vehicle project, right? So tell us a little bit about that and how open source is coming to play with what you're looking at in terms of, I assume, traffic and congestion and flows and those kinds of things. So what we are working on is basically we'll be fitting cameras and Raspberry Pies on buses, college buses, and then they'll detect lane detection and traffic signal violation and will report the assigned people if there's any breakage of law or any breakage of traffic signals. So that's what basically we are working on and how open source comes into the play is that we actually knew nothing about open CV and all the technology that is before all this. So I looked up some open source projects that have already developed some of all this and I got to learn a lot about how things actually work on the code base side. So that's how open source actually helped me to make this project. And ultimately, who do you report to on that or how's that data going to become actionable or I assume it can be at some point, right? I mean, who's your partner in that or who is the agency or the body that can most benefit from that? Yes, currently this is an academic project and a classmate of mine has been working with me and we are working under a faculty mentor. And so basically we have decided to expand this project and to use it as a government project and the authorities will be reporting to whenever there's a signal or law breakage is that the traffic police, the traffic police department will be notifying them in case of any signal breakage. So if there's an uptick in speeding or red light running in Jaipur, we know who to blame, right? Yeah, we're going to run the report. Solani, why'd you do that to them, right? All right, ladies if you would and I'm going to end with Delisa but I'd like to hear your thoughts about each other. Just about as you look at the role of women in tech and the diversity that Red Hat is trying to encourage Lamora, what have you seen in Solani here over the last day, day and a half that maybe you think will leave a lasting impression on you? I love Solani's energy and her passion and I can just, she has this emanated strength. I can just tell that nothing stops her from achieving what she wants. Like she wants to like do this Raspberry Pi traffic camera, she's just going to figure out what it takes to solve that problem. She's going to use open source software, hardware, whatever it takes and she's just going to achieve her goal. I totally sense that from her from the last few days we've been together. That's great. Thank you. All right, and Solani, your turn for Lamora. Well, what I have done is just a fraction of what she has been doing. She's like inspiration. I look up to her and I also, I mean, I hope I'll start my own company someday and she's really a role model and an inspiration for me, so yeah. I think you've got a pretty good mentor there in that respect. And then, Delissa, when you see young ladies like this who are, their achievements are so impressive in their respects. What does that say to you about Red Hat, the direction of the program and then the impact on young women that you're having? Well, the program has gotten so much more participation. So many people, 8,000 people actually voted to select our winners and all of our finalists were so impressive. We have major contributors to open source and so, along with our finalists, our winners are people who are just role models and I am just so impressed with them and I think that every year we're learning something different from each of the winners and so as they round out into a community, the things that they will be able to mentor people on will just be exponentially increasing. So it's really exciting. Fantastic. Well, thank you all. Thank the three of you, but ladies, congratulations on your recognition, your accomplishments, well done. Say travels back to New York and back to India as well and we look forward to hearing more about what you're up to down the road. I think this is not the last we're going to hear from the two of you. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. And thank you for calling me a young lady. Yeah, absolutely, ladies. I mean, look at the source. Open source, you might say. That was awful. All right, back with more Red Hat Summit, 2019, we're live here on theCUBE in Boston.