 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey everybody, happy new year 2022. Welcome to our podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Skidokataya, founder and CEO of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Christel. Hey Evan. Hey everyone. Hey Jamie. Welcome to Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading telco and data center world, supporting the infrastructure requirements of this new normal. Before we jump into the interview, Jamie, you know, I'm a gadget fanatic. Pretty much all of my disposable income goes into tech budgets. And we had CES last week. Don't know if you caught any of it. You know what? Only a couple of highlights, but this pandemic has been taken up most of the headlines, unfortunately. But tell me more. What should I have been paying attention to? Let's play a little game here. I will go through some products that I was excited about. And you give me a yes or no. Would Jamie and family want these products in their home? How's that? We'll wrap it up at the end. Fun. All right. First of all was a color shifting, color changing chameleon BMW. So it goes from black to white, to shades of gray and different skins. So what do you think? Would you want to drive a color changing BMW? Yeah. So can I like choose which, or is it going to change as I'm driving? A good question. I have absolutely no idea. I always wanted like a pink car. Purple car. Something really like girly and just. But I don't think. We're asking way too many questions, but what do you think? A color changing. I would say yay to that. I think that's all right. I think you're a beamer driver myself. The second one that I thought was perfect for you was a smart bathroom where you can control the bathroom, the bath temperature. It's a Kohler smart tub. So you can turn it on or off or raise the temperature lower it via voice. Oh yeah. Yeah. Bring that bad boy home to mama. Yes. Yes. You're a great prospect for that. Last but not least, a smart bed. So this bed adjust itself based on your sleep patterns, raises and lowers based on your breathing can measure heart rate and temperature and cool or warm based on, you know, your sleep. What do you think a smart bed is? That's the future of sleep. Yeah, probably. I mean, I hate to say we're kind of tech gadgets too at home and already I love how cool our bed, like we can lift up, we can have our feet raised, we can add, you know, temperature, but to can it control both sides? Because, you know, I like to be warm. Okay. Well, we'll give it a yes. So I'll say yes. Yes. Yes, yes. True. We want to our guests to get to some practical kind of discussions here. And you know what? It's actually a fabulous transition because when we talk top cutting-edge technology, our guest here is top of the list here. We are excited to announce Jim Hughes, National Sales Manager of Mitsubishi UPSD over to Data Movers. Hey, Jim. Hey, Jim, good to see you and hear you. So in doing my research here, I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile and your headline is that you're the maker of amazing. So that's a very high standard. So what is amazing and what are you making here? Yeah, yeah, this is true. But first, before I get to that, I'm a yes to every one of those gadgets. Right? It's going to make your life better. I'm a gadget head and yes, yes, and yes. So I take titles in general. They're not my favorite. And when I get introduced as Jim Hughes, National Sales Manager, UPSD, it just doesn't do a lot for me. It doesn't say, in my opinion, who I am or why I do what I do. And a few years back, I thought about this and thought about what I do and what I want to do on a daily basis. And really, I think maker of amazing gives me that opportunity to do every day and everything I do to make a difference and to work to make changes for the better in the form of making amazing. So to answer your question, Evan, what is making amazing? It depends what I'm doing and who I'm influencing. I'm a youth soccer and hockey coach and I take that responsibility for what it is and I recognize that I have an opportunity with every interaction, with every child I'm with to make amazing and help them make amazing. And then you look at our industry and what a great industry to be in. It is rapidly changing. Technology in general continues to change faster and faster. And there's a downside to this rapid change and that is the impact on the environment, the impact on the future of our planet. And so not only myself, but Mitsubishi in general, our philosophy is to make changes for the betterment of society, for the future. And so we work to make the most technologically advanced, the most energy efficient, the most reliable solutions. And you just break that down, take reliability. We scrap so many products today. We're a consumable world and there's a downside to that. There's costs in breaking down materials. There's CO2 emissions in breaking down materials. There's islands of plastic floating in our oceans. So we wanna make solutions and products that last so there's less waste. We wanna take energy seriously and we're also focusing on renewables. So that's a lot, but really maker of amazing to me it just says, do your best, make a difference. And if not me, who's gonna do it? And this whole less human touch reducing the element of human touch. It makes me think of, of course, age of resignation in our headlines, but it's really age of resignation is pushing us more forward perhaps to this age of automation. Something obviously Mitsubishi in your division there being really driving a trend. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? Sure, Ken, yeah. So you're right, the automation that we're seeing today in almost every aspect of our lives is growing. And it's interesting because as we build more and more data centers, manufacturing facilities, et cetera, the thought process would be we're gonna need more humans to be a part of these facilities and these processes. And the reality is that's not true. Over the last 10 or 15 years in the data center business we've seen staffs cut by 50, 60% just through technology. And now with artificial intelligence, with robots, you look at a warehouse for delivering product. And some of them may have had 50 to 100 people in the past. Now they have one or two and it's all robots. So definitely the automation side of technology is changing the need for more people. And therefore the age of resignation is not impacting as much as in other industries. Yeah, good point. You look at industries where the age of resignation is really impacting and those are slower to remove the human element. Healthcare is the big one, right? There's only so much we can do and we're doing it. There's robot surgeries and other things, but that pace of growth to automation is much slower than what we'll see in the tech side. So what we are being impacted by is edge computing. Data at the edge is a huge trend we touch on almost every episode, Jamie and I, with our guests. And we've heard that Mitsubishi UPSD is working on several initiatives to really enable data centers to work continuously and effectively at the edge and support this amazing growth. So tell us what's new and different about the edge versus traditional data center power and engineering? Yeah, so this is one of my favorite subjects today. And one of the most exciting parts about it is, it's evolving. We have today's snapshot of what the edge is, but it's evolving and what we're gonna talk about a year from six months, even a year from now is gonna be different. And if you think of IoT in general, the internet of things, often we only go to our handheld devices or our laptops, but it's so much deeper. And you talked about CES at the top of this podcast. The Mitsubishi has a new concept car that is actually using infrared to get into the skeletal situation of the driver's body as well as temperature, heart rate, all of these things. And what that means to the edge is as this car is driving from one side of the block to the next, hundreds of thousands of compute points are going to be needed. And the important part of those compute points are there can be no latency, no delay. In not only in driving cars, but other manufacturing processes, any delay could be catastrophic. So what we're doing at Mitsubishi, today we have products both for the uninterruptible power side of it as well as the cooling side of it, really focused on the increased growth in containerized or modular buildings that are moving out to the edge. In the future, we're developing products that will have more control, more remote control, more remote monitoring, it become really autonomous without the need for a human to be anywhere near it, very often or ever at all. And again, we think about the edge, we'll see edge compute on every major city street, but we're also gonna see it out in the middle of nowhere where it takes hours for somebody to get there. So we have a lot of exciting stuff coming. I'm sure we're gonna see more and more as the evolution of the edge continues which is just incredibly exciting. Great, so I'll take this last question here. You've had a good run at Mitsubishi, I guess 13 or 14 years, very exciting career. What's your advice to younger generations or even your younger self for folks who want to enter this field of data center and cloud tech? Yeah, my first bit of advice is just do it, get in no matter how you start get in because I don't see it slowing down. But as I reflect, when we all do this as we go through our careers, I'm a graduate mechanical engineer, so I came out, I wasn't expecting to get into sales or marketing and I was fairly rigid in my thought processes, very disciplined logical thinker. And now I look back and I say, wow, I screwed up. I could have done things a lot differently and so what I think about, I'm just fascinated by our brains. I recently heard a podcast about how our brains work most efficiently and there's this theory about vertical thinking and most of my meetings, I stand on an elliptical and anytime I get a challenging question, my feet just start moving and one of the things I learned is sitting is not normal for us. So when we sit, our brain is actually taking processing power and focusing on sitting. That processing power could be used for thinking. So how does this roll around to what I tell the younger generation? First of all, be creative. Don't worry about looking weird or being called a disruptor or annoying because you're taking people out of their comfort zone. Be creative, have fun. If you're not having fun, again, you're not at your most creative. And then just, I'm changing. I used to be a workaholic. I used to work seven days a week. That was my life. And I recognize now, letting in other things, personal life, family, walks in nature, it really helps me be more efficient when I am in that position of creative thinking. So just have fun, be creative. That's the advice I would give. Yeah, yeah. There's a real power when you truly embrace balance. And I think that's one of the cooler things that I see sort of evolving out of this post-pandemic reality that we're in. Okay, so this brings us to one of my favorite sections of Data Movers. It is our rapid fire section where we just go ahead and throw you a crazy wacky question and you respond to the first thing that comes to mind. So what is the most used app on your phone? And why? So outside of what I would call normal day-to-day, which is Messenger, email, Twitter, Insta, you know, kind of lump those aside. Right. Fitbit, my health app is probably my most used. And just because, you know, as I've journeyed from this workaholic to sort of this more body-conscious thinking sort of person, I really, I wanna make sure I'm showing up and doing the things to take care of myself so that I can be the most productive. All right, literally greatest answer yet to that question. So starting. Mainly because you mentioned Twitter, so I was very happy. And so on the subject of disconnecting, I mean, what and how do you disconnect? Yeah, so I try, I, nature, there's this Scandinavian concept and it's, I forget, it's free, free, free life fit, but it's a Scandinavian term, but that's kind of how it translates. But what it is, is it's about being outside. And in the Scandinavian countries, the weather is not ideal for being outside, but, you know, they focus on getting outside and, you know, for the last several years, you know, every morning I go out, whether it's 15 below zero or 100 degrees. And I just think there's something so stress relieving and just clears my head, 45 minutes to an hour. And then I try to take breaks during the day too, you know, just to turn off the phone, step away from email, just give your brain a little rest. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we started this conversation with CES, kind of feel like we have to wrap it up there too. What is the next tech gadget you would like to purchase for yourself in line? Yeah, all of them. You know, I'm a tech gadget guy in this last, maybe right before Christmas, I get this magazine called Sharper Image. And I don't know if you're familiar. Okay. I've got an 11-year-old son and we sat down after dinner and he's looking through this. He's like, whoa, look at this. I'm like, had that. He's like, what about this? I'm like, yep, had that, had that. So slowly I realized that I pretty much bought 50% of everything Sharper Image has ever had. So recently I bought a tech shirt that's heated, love it, the Aura Ring. My husband does it. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So, gosh, what's next? I mean, whatever you can throw at me, I want to try them all. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they used to have that magazine in airlines, like, you know, so I would have like bought half of it by the time I landed. It'd be like, this is an addiction, you know? Same, same, same, guilty. I like to unwind by reading history. That's kind of my go-to relaxation, actual books, yes. And, but when it comes to history, who do you find most inspiring and why? Yeah, so I admire, I mean, we've had so many incredible leaders throughout the world over the years. You know, Nelson Mandela, a gentleman who spent 30 years in jail and came out without a chip on his shoulder and continued to fight for what he believed was right. Gandhi, same, Martin Luther King. I mean, we've just had many of them. But, you know, I think we often overlook the strong leaders that we have outside of the big notable famous leaders. And, you know, I was turned onto this book called Extreme Ownership about three years ago now. And it's two gentlemen who were in Ramadi, they were platoon leaders and they've taken what they learned on the battlefield and translated it into a consulting business. And when I listened to that, you know, the thing I thought about was these guys are making decisions in the heat of a battle that literally could be life or death. And I look at myself as a leader and I'm always trying to learn and we should always be trying to learn but I'm not making life or death decisions today. And so from that, I started really trying to think about how many leaders are out there, you know, in fire and police and healthcare, you know, just anywhere. And there's so many amazing people doing so many amazing things that have such leadership qualities. So I like a lot of the well-known celebrity leaders for sure, but I really think, you know, noticing the leaders that are really making small changes, but are resulting in big changes for our world, it's important. Yeah, I think about my cousin Alicia every day, getting up, being a nurse, going in, you know, I mean, that's been, you know, similar, I would say these days to being on a battlefield. Absolutely. And think about the leadership. I mean, they're facing, every day this, the things are changing, right? So every day is different and you're faced with new challenges and you have to be a strong leader to get through it. Yeah, yeah. All right, so what are three words that others may use to describe you? Yeah, so it depends. Is it my wife and my son? People work for me? I think, you know, I often get creative and I'm touched by that because I want to be creative. I also get, maybe annoying's not the right word, but I get annoying because I think creative people tend to push people out of their comfort zones, tend to not settle for status quo. And that's annoying. If you're happy with your day-to-day and you want to stay comfortable, I get it. And then I just think, you know, passion is the other one. And, you know, again, just intent. I mean, I wake up every day just with a passion to make a difference, a positive change. So I think those three would be most common. There's probably a whole bunch of other ones too, but... And three words of a leader for sure. So I love those. Yeah, I love them. Well, Jim, thanks so much for joining us. You're quite a renaissance man. Glad the discussion wasn't about speeds and feeds and amperes and voltage and, you know, current protection, all the stuff that you probably talk about day in day out. It was really good to get to know you. Likewise, thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun. It has been such a great Data Movers episode. Thank you so much, Jim, for your insights, your time. Evan, of course, yours as well. And listeners, viewers, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast as much as I did, go ahead and check us out jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes released every other Wednesday morning. So go ahead and check us out there. And follow us on Twitter at JS Goddow and Evan Kirstel. And leave us a review, like and subscribe to the podcast. That would really be appreciated. Yeah, we want to know how we're doing. And as always, guys, stay safe and happy networking.