 Oh, hi. How are you doing? Welcome to Hibachi Talk. Gordo the Texar here and I'm here with my good old buddy Andrew, the security guy. I'm back. Nice to see you, man. You've been gone for a long time. I've been missing this little chair. I almost forgot what you look like. Anyway, we do not have a guest today because Mr. Lanning has been traveling around and going to some very interesting conferences. And I thought, you know, this would be a good idea to catch up on all the things that you were edumacated on. Lifelong learning lives here. Jay taught me that. So please grab yourself a chair, grab yourself a libation, sit down and join us here for another exciting and thrilling episode of Hibachi Talk. So you were at, we'll just jump right into it because I don't care where you go to school or any of that kind of stuff. You don't want to know where I went to school, where I studied anthropology, psychology. You've been abandoned us forever. So, but you were at a couple of conferences in the past couple weeks. I did. So we went first to the business leadership conference, which is put on by the National System Contracts Association. Okay, that's what I was, NSCA. Yeah, a really good group. They lobby on behalf of the industry as well as they've got a variety of grant programs, Ignite program, which I'm the Hawaii ambassador, you know, to bring youth, high school youth into the industry. Into what industry? The low-voltage security. Oh, into the security, into your industry. It really not even so much low-voltage security because they definitely span into the AV world. And then there's a group called... Audiovisual world. Audiovisual world, right, which is the guys, you know, they do displays in the hotels and all that. And they also do the traveling shows. So there's those kind of that group of AV professionals. And there's also the home integrators with the Crestron, the PLC controllers, you know, the advanced home assistants. You sort of acronyms again. PLC. PLC program or logic controllers. Thank you for that. Keep coming in there, dude. Yeah, so there's there's all these groups that sort of mesh under the National System Contractor Association. Okay. Definitely it's low-voltage systems, which is generally considered anything under 40 volts. Okay, so give our viewers an example of things that are low-voltage, you know, because not everybody knows what a low-voltage would be. Camera systems. Cameras. Intercom systems. Intercoms. Video screen systems. Video screens. Like digital displays. Okay. Audio systems. I think of audio conferencing, you're in a room, you have a microphone, people pass the microphones, all, you know, the amplification. Public address systems. PA systems are typically low-voltage systems. Sure. Are phone systems now low-voltage? Mostly SIP, yeah. Yeah, so they're low-voltage at the handset, you know, not necessarily a server side unless it's cloud, but low-voltage at the handset. Yeah, if there's a server, that's probably a high-voltage piece of equipment. Right. The devices are all low-voltage, so that would still be low-voltage industry. So all of this low-voltage stuff that we're all using now so much of, it's all being looked at from an industry perspective and as an integratable perspective, or how is that? Yeah, and a lot of talk about that. I mean, the industry has been around, as an NSA has been around about 40 years. Okay. They really work on standards and standards development. How long does it take to put in a standard camera? How long does it take to put in a standard microphone? How long? So they have all that kind of metrics as well that they compile from all, they have about 600 dealers that subscribe, that supply this information. So from a global or a national perspective, they're able to gain a lot of insight into how much of a crew size do you need to perhaps install a hundred camera system in a week? Okay. Or a conference room with 400 microphones on a screen. So they've got a lot of great metrics on best practices and what it takes to do that properly. So essentially, they're building numbers so that when you are a developer or a builder of a system or doing something of that size, on the low voltage size, you can get to see what typical costs would be. Yeah. It used to be pulling a rabbit out of the hat in the past. Yeah. And you should, so when you get around these guys, these are some of the tools that you get from them as an integrator, which makes it a great organization to be a part of. The business leadership conference is another thing that they put on that brings us all together. This is a once a year, you know, they have these best practices and they do webinars and a lot of that stuff. But the leadership piece is really good for the owners of industry to kind of understand what's going on in the industry, what's going on in the future of the industry, how do we plan for growth, how do we connect with our millennial workforce, all those types of things that the business ownership has to pay attention to, the costs and all that of building. So, but I get the impression that in your industry, this typically has not what's been going on in years gone by. I mean, your industry was, I would call it a gorilla industry. People were selling cameras and access controls out of the back of their truck. So, that's my impression of what used to be in the past. So, there aren't, there are, I don't know if there's, I've never met another member of NSCA from Hawaii. Okay. And maybe they find it too much to travel to become involved and get engaged. But again, it's been around four years. So, there's not, there's not really an excuse not to get yourself engaged with a group like this because of all the value that you get. But it is expensive. We have the travel costs. There's an annual fee to be a member and all that kind of stuff. So, if you, say if you get all this information but you don't use it, well then what value is it, right? So, my question would be is like, so why would I not just go to Costco and buy a camera system and drop it into my office building? Wouldn't that be kind of cool? It's a whole other episode. But I can, in some instances, that may really be an appropriate level of technology. In other instances, perhaps not. Okay. That would be my short answer. That's your politically correct answer. Oh, okay. Did you learn that at the conference? I shop in Costco. No. But I did learn out that I'm not a great listener. I could have told you that a long time ago. So, some of the stuff, you know, some of the stuff that we got into, so they always start off with an economics briefing. Okay. And the guy we've had, these are think tank economists. He, the guys up to many, for many years have retired last year and finally retired from us too. So, we had a new guy, Chris Cuell, who was really funny because they give it a, they give economics a spin. And I loved how he opened it. He said, it's just kind of like meteorology. He said, he defines economics as the science of explaining tomorrow why the prediction you made yesterday didn't come true today. Yeah. No kidding. I mean, although I just, I use, I'll use, and this is not economics, but I'll use Donald Trump's election as an example. Everybody said the stock market was going to go into the tanker. Sure. And it went the exact opposite way. Still is. And so, it still isn't. You know, unfortunately, I listened to the pundits and I took a fair bit of my money out of the market. So, you got hurt. Half. Yeah. And I went, oh man, I sure wish I'd listened there. That's the reverse negative. So, I've got some stuff on that. He, he just said for sure next few years, rates are going to go up three and a half to four where they'll kind of peak out for the interest rates. Inflation is going to level off and drop a little during that same time, but it'll level off under two and a half. And we're talking about the guy that's going to explain later why he was wrong. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, he said that with tongue in cheek. And the fall of the euro, which is falling kind of is going to help the dollar a little bit. Right. That's a kind of be a problem for us because of inflation. Anyway, the likely Trump winners. So, some of the Trump initiatives that are winners, he said likely, energy. What do you mean by winners? Sector. So, these sectors should win under what Trump says he wants to do. Oh, those, okay. So, the energy sector, Keystone's going to go forward, investment in nuclear should be strong, offshore drilling, and the climate's not going to be an issue anymore, right? So, coal burning, all that kind of stuff in energy is going to make energy a strong sector. Domestic manufacturing. So, the automotive, the aerospace, there's a little bit of import sensitivity there, but by and large, those sectors are going to be in demand and going to be supported. So, do you really think that we're going to build a manufacturing sector in this country? Again, like we were in the past? I don't know. Those guys are already big. So, I think just that reinvestment, I'll get to another reason why. Infrastructure was another one. He said roads, airports, seaports. Well, good. We can do it. How about our roads here? Yeah. Well, the question is how to pay for it, which is what we always have. Yeah. Well, I tell you, if our roads get any worse, I tell you, I can't believe it. Now, I'm going to go with spray paint. I'm going to put giant fluorescent circles around the potholes everywhere because they are now... Well, the election's passed, right? We know how that works. It's over. It's over. So, now we're doing it. They paid him before and went empty him after. Brutal. So, some of his losers, the tariff battles, he said, that really hurts import, export businesses due to that uncertainty. Yeah, yeah. Health sector, obviously, he's attacking ACA. Oh, because of a little uncertainty there about what's going to happen. A little bubble care? Well, attacking it, right? So, that whenever there's uncertainty, it's going to hurt that sector, right? Because people aren't going to invest. I don't know about that. I think he would be wrong on that. Based on my experience. He said that the immigrant-dependent sectors, which is ag tech, construction and food service, are probably going to... What about your sector? What about the tech sector? Yeah. So, I think tech at my level probably is not so bad, but tech, you know, advanced programmers and all the H1B visa guys that they bring into the country, right? Right. So, that I think is what he's talking about. So, that, yeah. Because I think that's going to suffer. So, the H1B visa guys are going to not be able to come in. However, I think what will happen in the reverse is going to be, well, we won't bring them in, but we'll just be sending that tech work offshore. Well, that's what we've been doing. Which we've been doing without bringing them in. And so, and that's really not manufacturing per se. So, it's not like I'm buying a widget. Buying code. Sure. Coders. So, he said that most of the economic indication, I didn't want to get into all that because I PMI and all these, but he said they're favorable for really slow extended growth. But we've got to manage inflation, but that the Fed has tools to do that with. So, he didn't see that why that wouldn't continue. Just this protracted growth since the 08 recession. All the way through. Mind you, this is not a financial advisor show. Oh, no. I'm just regurgitating. Just regurgitating with someone else. You know, we can get this guy in Hawaii. And he is a think tank type of guy. Yeah. So, we can bring him on. So, here's what I'll get in. I'll tell you why. You don't listen, do you? You just talk. No, I'm going to give this. I got, I wrote all these notes. So, I'll try to get through this in the second. So, the workforce and millennials, he got to that, which was always good. We've had shows on this. Yeah. So, this is interesting. So, 99% of the millennials be over 18 by 2020. And 30, they'll be, they will equal 30% of the adult population at that time. By 2020, 30%, okay, let me think about it. By 2020, 30% of the adult population will be millennials. Will be millennials. Heaven help us. Now, here's the thing. Overall, they're about 30 more percent positive in economic improvement than the baby boomers on local U.S. and global economy improvement. Because of them. And they're just, they're just that much more optimistic as a group. As a group. So, local, global and about 30 points higher than the boomers. Now, the Gen Xers in between them, but they don't count. Yeah. Apparently. Gen Xers now just turned the channel off. Yeah. Now, here's that thing that optimism that they have is great, but they are the most indebted ever. Who are? The millennials. Indebted? Yeah, 2015 graduates have doubled the debt of 2000 graduates, your 2000 graduates from college. Double. Double. Double the debt. And they're carrying that. And more of them live at home than ever. I couldn't. And that hasn't hasn't corrected since the 2008 recession. In fact, it's continuing to get more and more of them live at home. Right. So, that's interesting. No, okay. And so, a couple more trends to worry about. There's real relatively low workforce participation. This isn't particularly the millennials. What does that mean? Workforce participation. Um, so. I go to the job and I don't work. People aren't working. Right. So, there's, so I'll tell you there's a, and there's probably a reason why. And there's been steady decline since the 2008 recession. Okay. There's also low, our labor productivity. People who do work are the least productive in decades. Wow. So, that's a bit of an issue. But there's a skills gap. So, 7 million jobs are available. There's 9 million people out of work. Right. So, there's plenty of jobs, but these guys can't, they don't have the skills to do. They don't have the skills. Well, you, well, we both know that because we know how hard it is to find qualified people to do the work that we need them to do. Yeah. And the other, the final thing, he said that these trade battles are really going to hurt everybody. But the U.S., we just have to watch the inflation because it's going to make the dollar stronger. And so, inflation is kind of the thing that we have to watch in all these trade battles. Well, that's the way I think that, you know, I believe the way, look at how, you're a carpentry worker, you're, Europe does their work where they have apprentices. There's always an apprentice who comes into the job and then learns the job. They've been educated, but they learn the job when they're on the job. Because we all know that, you know, doing it in school is one thing, but when you get it in the field, it's another. Sure. And this is where I think we're lacking. We need to bring back that kind of apprenticeship. Vocational training, sure. And get you in the field, and get you doing some of the work that you get to see how it really works as Rodney Daniel was saying. I think it's a great approach. And, you know, that NSEA Ignite program is a great example that it's really targeted to high schoolers, you know, like, hey, here's an industry that can teach you without maybe don't necessarily need to go to college, but you could do it at the same time or whatever. Right. Okay. Well, good. We point and pause because you've shut up. Because I can see the clock. Because you can see the clock. I know how it works. Okay, good. You didn't forget how this works. Anyway, I'm here with Andrew. He's talking about the conference he was at and what he's learned. He's passing on his words of wisdom. And we'll be back in a minute after we pay some bills. Hi, I'm Jay Fidel. That's Ted Ralston. You know, Ted is the host of Where the Road Leads. It shows every Friday from 4 to 5 p.m. It's about technology. It's about how people collaborate and solve problems with modern technology. It's Where the Road Leads. We all know that. We should all be listening. Join us there. 4 to 5 p.m. every Friday. Now, what about that you agree with? All of it. I knew we'd say that. Aloha. Say Aloha. Aloha. Good. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hey, welcome back to Hibachi Talk. We found Angus down on the beach, where he's always at. Angus, what's up, buddy? Hey, Drew. Welcome back. Welcome back to our live. How are you, man? Good to see you. Great to see you. It's really good to see you. I've been gone too long. You've been gone way too long. You died. Your bags under your eyes are so heavy, you're going to charge you extra when you get on the plane. Anyway, I got a couple of things. You know, my cell phone died yesterday. Oh, hey, sorry. It killed me. It just broke my heart. It just died. I was like, oh! That's why you could call me. Couldn't it call you? Couldn't it call you? Anyway, I got myself a wee new phone. But what I found was a really cool gadget. A really neat gadget. It's a new case. But the case has a battery in it. Oh, a charger. It's a charger. So the battery charges your phone while it's in the case. But here's the cool thing. When the phone is operating, it uses the charger first. And then your phone second. And can you just slide your phone out? And just slide your phone out. It's kind of permanent. No, it slides out. You see, I got two pictures out there. One just shows you how it slides right in. Oh. So the cool thing, again, like the cool thing I said, right, it charges, it uses the charger first and then your phone later. My wife would have needed that. You met Christine. Her phone died in, what, brick? It just broke. Broke. Broke. But anyway. Well, that's good. How much longer does it run? 40% more time. That's awesome. Is it heavy? No! Is it thick? Hey, I can cut it with my little hand. It's this nice. So I like that. So there, that was my gadget. But then I do this. I want to save it now. I'm getting ready. I'm really getting ready. P.O. Another segment. How long have I been going? How many segments do you have? Too long. And if you've gone much longer, we're going to replace you. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, anyway. Just up around here. Anyway, I'm getting ready. P.O. with people. We did the sharpen cut last time, right? People leave their carts everywhere. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had one. A picture I took a couple weeks ago where the guy was like 50 feet away from where the cart should go. But this was killing me. You know, we have bulky item pickup in Hawaii. Oh, yeah. You know, bulky item. Oh, that can be a mess. But you know, I tell you, people are putting stuff out like I've never seen before. I mean, you can fill one truck from one house. That's a house? Are you kidding me? Oh, you think they moved. I have no idea what they did. But look at this. Come on, people. You can't even have that much stuff that you leave out on the sidewalk. For your bulky item pickup. Maybe they thought other people could use it. That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff. Anyway, I just, you know, it's driving me crazy. Anyway, people, please treat yourself like you want to be treated. And don't treat us like we don't want to be treated. It's a fact. Anyway, this is Angus McTek. We'll see you again next week. And remember, let your wing gang free, where area be. Aloha. Angus always helping us out with some good advice. Remember that I always treat other people the way you want to be treated. Yeah, what goes around comes around. So I was going to have a security minute, but I think I'll skip until next week. Okay. Just because we got, because this is, so I got some good stuff. Okay. So you got some more good stuff. So let's just kind of re, re, re, re, wait, wait, wait. Oh. Try wait one second. How's this work? Obviously, remember we did a show, we did about 110 shows ago. We did this show. We did? Let me restate something. I'm the host and you're the co-host. I'm the co-host. Okay. Remember, that's how it works. Gosh, I got to learn how to take orders. Man. My wife will be happy. I'm getting trained on that today. I don't know what to do anymore. Anyway, we're talking with Andrew because Andrew's been traveling and he's been at a couple of conferences. The NSC, the NSCA, the National Systems Contractors Association. So National Systems Contractors Association. Business Leadership Conference. Business Leadership Conference. And you learned a lot about economics. You learned about what's happening in the industry. So what other words of wisdom do you want? You know, what, what key, key points came out of, you're working on for like almost two weeks. Well, we're not even going to get to all them conferences. It was a lot of work. Okay. I mean, I've been busy. But I got, I got some more good stuff. Okay. What's, okay. You're allowed to talk now. Can I talk now? All right. I'm going to give you this one. This one looks really good. And I'll get through this one quickly because the other one's cool. But anyway, this author, James Keynes, got a book called The Elements of Loyalty. Okay. And this was the big picture about his presentation was how to build loyalty with your workforce. Okay. Right. And inside your company. Loyalty to your clients. Loyalty to your people and to your staff. And there's a thing they've done a lot of work about how, so tribes, primitive tribes initially competed with each other until they learned to start cooperating, right? Okay. And they learned to kind of watch each other's back and they became stronger in social groups. So kind of this is the gist of where all of this comes from. And he kind of summed it up into these three questions that he investigated. Do you make my life safer? Do you make my life easier? And then do you make my life better? Okay. So when you got staff, you got a customer, you might think, give them, think about that. So that's what you have to, that's what you should be doing from a managing your staff and managing your customer. Perfective, yeah. Have those three. Or your customer's probably looking at you with that perspective too, right? So it's, you know, it goes both ways, right? That's interesting. And the whole competition versus cooperation thing, and cooperation ultimately yielded better results. And you know, people thrive. Co-operation we used to call that. Sure. So as our brains got rewired, he kind of distilled that down to what he called these elements of loyalty, right? And ultimately, there are three. Trust, being the first one, kind of built on competency, consistency, character and capacity. Belonging, which was the idea of recognition, the idea of foresight, insight, identity, and also inclusion. And this is what corporations should be doing? Or everybody should be doing these things, I think for sure. After reading it, he would have felt that was amazing. And then purpose, that final one being intention, fellowship, and commitment. So these three elements of loyalty and those components of that all build to this place where, you know, I become someone that if I'm your provider of services perhaps, hopefully I'll make a security guy, make your life safer, easier, and better. So is this a millennial thing? No, not like the old days when the bosses used to just yell at you and say, get it done. Yeah, that was my style of management. It doesn't work anymore. Yeah, so we didn't work then actually. Yeah, well, it definitely didn't work anymore. It was just the way it was. I got a bigger one. Okay. This stuff broke my brain. Okay. All right, digital transformation. James Kozlowski, big thinker. He has a book on digital transformation, which is this age from 2000 to 2050. Okay. 2000 to 2050. Yeah, 50 year age. Humanity is going to change more in the next 20 years than it has in the past 300. Okay. The digital transformation is going to give way to digital maturity and then to digital readiness. Okay, so define for me what you believe digital maturity is. So digital maturity is going to occur when we kind of, we're almost there now, but we're beginning to enter what he calls the age of entanglement, right, where humans and technology converge. Oh, we're doing it all day long. Yeah. I mean. Well, so let me, so in 2000. Give me your iPhone for a day. Give me your iPhone for a day. I'll give you the, I'll give you the sort of the breakdown. So in 2000, we sort of had these disparate systems, the world you and I sort of learned in. Yeah. In 2010, we started to get connected systems, right? Right, exactly. Which we all, we let's network everything. It was interfaced and now it's integrated. Yeah. And so by 2020, you know, a few years from now, we're starting to see the rise of cognitive systems like Watson, for example, at IBM. And that's where he says we're starting to enter this age of entanglement, where humans and technology sort of converge. And then by 2030, he's looking at the idea of collective intelligence and that being, that those cognitive systems are now connected. So you get the power of all of that connectivity. It's just like along the lines of artificial intelligence, like one of our previous guests, we were talking about artificial intelligence. And the, but the connectedness of all those, right. And then further, that final decade leading up to 2050, he's calling humology intelligence, which is really hybrid human artificial intelligence. So embedded artificial intelligence helping the human live and share. So would it be like this morning when I walked into a room and forgot why I walked into the room? Yeah, which you could ask it. And I still don't remember why I walked into that room. It's hours later. He pointed out for businesses, remember this was about business, that the gap between that really exponential rate of change, right, that you know, that this next 20 is faster than the last 300. And the sort of organizations change more logarithmically, right, a little quite a bit slower. So that gap is what he calls a strategy risk gap, you know, for businesses in between here to identify what they're going to do. Well, I guess, I think examples would be of what happened with the World Wide Web and the internet and who would have believed that Amazon, I'll use Amazon as an example, who was a bookseller when they initially started. And I thought it was a really cool idea, but they didn't make any money. And now look at where they are today, where they, they adjusted, they adapted, they created new opportunities for revenue streams for them. And how many people do you know, especially in Hawaii with Prime, buy stuff at Amazon and don't go to the grocery store anymore or go to the department store? Sure. And I mean, online purchasing, they've already shown us is rising and, you know, brick and mortar is dying. So brick and mortar, I mean, brick and mortar, you go to the shopping center, not necessarily to shop, you go because it's an outing, right? You're there just because it's... There's a lot of other stuff at the mall besides stores, isn't it? Yeah, there is. Isn't that interesting? Movies and eateries and... Alamois is opening a bowling alley. See. See? I mean, just a bowling alley flash, a libation place. So shopping is getting boring. So shopping is getting boring. So they need other interests. Like anything else and I can find it. So he gave us a high beam list for 2017 if you're thinking about, you know, where to place yourself in that gap. And place yourself from an employment standpoint or from a no investment advice? Yeah, I think things to work on. Okay. He fills in that gap. There's leadership legacies that are going to be born. You're like Zuckerberg and Bezos and these guys. Okay. In 2017 anyway, he said just the focus should be really on pervasive simple integration. So making what you have across the board and make it easy. AI, artificial intelligence, cloud delivery. So cloud delivered AI, intuitive interfaces, right? We're tired of this works this way that works that way. Making it in face. Everything's universal. In the same way. Cognitive and collective computing, which we talked about. AI, so conversational assistance, kind of where you were saying, hey, why'd I come in this room and to be able to get that answer? Right. So AI though, cognitive assistance. 3D printing, internet of everything, not IOT anymore, internet of everything. Oh, internet of everything. Yeah. So you think there will be an internet of everything? For sure. Yeah, everything will just flow. Well, you know, my hearing aids are on the internet. So you can't get much more bizarre than that. Perfect. So augmented reality and virtual reality, that's an augmented reality. That's the scary one. Right. And interestingly, he brought up cybersecurity. And he saw Mafia 2.0, something to watch out for. And I don't know if he advised us to get in it or stay away from it. Well, Mafia 2.0, the digital mafia, the cyber mafia. Oh, the cyber mafia. Well, you see what's happening. We got a few other things that happened during the course of this week with WikiLeaks and what could be coming out. Yeah, how's that, huh? What an interesting thing. There's a bunch of stuff, fascinating stuff happening in that space. We'll get to that next week, I think. Yeah, next week he's going to dump something. This is an interesting thing after all this high-tech presentation. You've got to move quickly. Yeah, the last thing he left us with was a quote from Helen Keller. Interestingly enough. Oh, wow. So it was, go hard or go home. Helen Keller said, life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. Oh, I love it. And then, you know, it's a great way to end the show. It's great stuff. That's a great stuff. Anyway, go to the tech star here, end of the security guy. We thank you so much. Remind everybody, April Foolish coming up on April the 7th. I still have tickets available if you want to get it. It's one of the best parties that happens in this town. And we make a lot of money for a good cause and make a wish. Anyway, like we say at the end of every show, you get no cup, by the way. You don't need a cup. Anyway, as we say at the end of every show, one, two, three, how are you doing?