 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS ReInvent 2021. Here, theCUBE coverage, I'm John Furrier, your host. We're on the ground with two sets on the floor, real event, of course, it's hybrid, it's online as well, you can check it out there. All the on-demand replays are there. We're here with Sandy Carter, Worldwide Vice President of Public Sector, partners and programs, and we've got Fred Swannaker, founder and chief curator of the room. We're talking about getting the best talent, programming and in the cloud, doing great things, innovation all happening, Sandy, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Great to see you. Okay, so tell us about the room. What is the room, what's going on? Well, our mission in the room is to help the world's most extraordinary doers to fulfill their potential. So, it's a community of exceptional talent that we are building throughout the world, and connecting this talent to each other, and connecting them to the organizations that are looking for people who can really move the needle for those organizations. So, what kind of results are you guys seeing right now? Give us some stats. Well, it's a relatively new concept, so we have about 5,000 members so far, from 77 different countries, and this is, we're talking about sort of the top 2% to 3% of talent in different fields, and as we go forward, we're really seeing this as an opportunity to curate exceptional talent in fields like software engineering, data science, UX, UI design, cloud computing, and really help to identify diverse talent as well from pockets that have typically been untapped for technology. I want to ask you kind of what's the, how you read the tea leaves, and how do you spot the talent, but first, talk about the relationship with Amazon, what's the program together, how are you guys working together? It's a great mission. I mean, we need more people anyway, coding everywhere globally. What's the AWS connection? So Fred and I met and he had this, I mean, the brilliant concept of the room, and so obviously you need to run that on the cloud, and so he's got organizations he's working at connecting them through the room, and kind of that piece that he was needing was the technology, so we stepped in to help him with the technology piece, because he's got all the subject matter expertise to train three million Africans coming up on tech. We also were able to provide him some of the classwork as well for the cloud computing model. So some of those certs and things that we want to get out into the marketplace as well, but we're also helping Fred with that as well. So I mean, I wanted just to add on to that, you know, one of the things that's unique about the room is that we're trying to really build a long-term relationship with talent. So imagine joining the room as a 20-year-old and being part of it until you're 60. So you're going to have a lot of data that you collect on someone as they progress through different stages of their career, and the ability for us to leverage that data and continuously learn about someone's skills and values and use predictive algorithms to be able to match them to the right opportunities at the right time in their lives. And this is where the machine learning comes in, and the data lake that we're building to be able to really store this massive data that we're going to be building on the top talent in the world. You know, that's a really good point. That's a big trend in tech where it's over the life of the horizon of the person. Exactly. And it's also blends community. Exactly. Nurturing, identifying, and assisting, but the same day, not just giving people the answer. Exactly. They got to grow on their own, but some people grow differently. Exactly. So again, progressions are nonlinear sometimes. Exactly. And creativity could come out of nowhere. Got it. Which brings me up to my number one question, because as always what's on my mind is, how do you spot talent? What's the secret sauce? Well, there is no real secret sauce because every person is unique. So what we look for are people who have an extra dose of five things, courage, passion, resilience, imagination, and good values, right? And this is what we're looking for. And you're someone who is unusually driven to achieve great things. So of course, you look at it from a combination of their training, what they've learned, but also what they've actually done in the workplace and feedback that you get from previous employers and data that we collect through our own interactions with this person. And so we screen them through, the talent that we identify, we take them through really rigorous selection process. So it takes, for example, people go through an online assessments and then they go through an in-person interview and then we'll take them through a one to three month boot cap to really identify people who are exceptional and of course get data from different sources about the person as well. Sandy, how do you see this collaboration helping your other clients? I mean, obviously talent cross-pollinates, learnings, what's your, how do you see this leveraging? So as AWS grows, obviously we're going to need more talent, especially in Africa, because we're growing so rapidly there and there's going to be so much talent available in Africa here in just a few short years. Most of the tech talent will be in Africa. I think that that's really essential. But also as looking after my partners, I had Fred today on the keynote explaining to all my partners around the world, 55,000 streaming folks, how they can also leverage the room to fill some of their roles as well. Because if you think about it, we heard from Presidio, there's three million open cybersecurity roles. You know, we're training 29 million cloud folks because we have a gap. We see a gap around the world. And part of my responsibility with partners is making sure that they can get access to the right skills. And we're counting on the room and what Fred has produced to produce some of those great skills. You have AIML and DevOps. Tell us some of the areas you have there. You know, we're looking at business intelligence, data science, full stack software engineering, cybersecurity, you know, IOT talent. So feels that the world needs a lot more talent in. I think today a lot of technology talent is moving from one place to another. And what we need is new supply. And so what the room is doing is not only a community of top talent, but we're actually producing and training a lot more new talent. And that was going to hopefully remove a key bottleneck that a lot of companies are facing today as they try to undergo the digital transformation. Well, maybe you can add some hosts on there. We need some cube hosts. Come on. We're always looking for more talent on the set. We'll produce them to order. You could be there. You know, the other interesting thing, John, Fred and I on stage today, he was talking about how EC2, the first narrative written for EC2, was written by a gentleman out of South Africa. So think about that, right? EC2 talent, and he was talking about, Ian Musk is based in South Africa, right? So think about all that great talent that exists there. There you go, there you go. So how do you get access to that talent? And that's why we're so excited to partner with Fred. Not only is he wicked, impressive, one of time's most influential people, but his mission, his life purpose has really been to develop this great talent. And for us, that gets us really excited because we need great talent. I think there's plenty of opportunities too around new business models. In the US, for instance, my friends started Upstart, which they were betting on people. Almost like a stock market, almost like currency. We'll fund you and you pay us back. And there's all kinds of gamification techniques that you could start to weave into the system as you get the flywheel going. You can look at it holistically and say, hey, how do we get more people in and harvest the value of knowledge? That's exactly. One of the elements of the technology platform that we developed with Amazon, with AWS, is the Room Intelligence Platform. And in there is something called legacy points. So every time you, as a member of the room, give someone else an opportunity, you invest in their venture, you hire them, you mentor them, you get points, and you can leverage those points for some really cool experiences. So you want to gamify this community that is essentially crowdsourcing opportunities. And you're not only getting things from the room, but you're also giving to others to enable everyone to grow. Yeah. What's the coolest thing you've seen? I mean, this is a great mission. First of all, it's a great model. I think this is the future, because I'm a big believer that communities, groups, as we get into this hybrid world, is going to open up the virtualization. What the virtual world has shown us is virtualization, which is a cloud technology, what Amazon started with Zen, which is virtualization technology. But virtualization conceptually is replicating things. So if you think hybrid world, you can blend and connect people together. So now you have this social construct, this connective tissue between relationships, and it's always evolving. You know this, and you've been involved in community from the early days. When you have that social evolution, it's not software as a mechanism, it's a human thing. Exactly. It's organism, it evolves. Exactly. You can get the software to think like that and the group to drive the behavior. It's not community software. Exactly. I mean, we say that the room is not an online community. It's really an offline community powered by technology. So our vision is to actually have physical rooms in different cities around the world, where this talent gathers. But imagine showing up at a room space and we've got the technology to know what your interests are. We know that you're working on a new venture and there's a venture capitalist in that area investing in that venture. We can connect you right there in that space. Powered by the room intelligence. And then you can have watch parties. For instance, there's an event going on in US. You can do some watch parties and time shift it. Exactly. And then replicate it online and create a localization. Exactly. But yet have that connection. In person, exactly. Exactly. So what's the learnings? What's your big learnings? Share with the audience what you've learned, because this is really kind of on the front edge of the new kind of innovation we're seeing being enabled with software. I mean, one thing we're learning is that talent is truly evenly distributed around the world. But what is not is opportunity. And so there's some truly exceptional talent that is hidden and untapped today. And if we can, you know, and today with the COVID pandemic, companies all around the world are open to hiring more talent. So there's a huge opportunity to access new talent from sources that have been tapped before. What we're also learning is the power of blending the online and offline world. So, you know, the room is, as I mentioned, brings people together not only online, but also offline. And so when you're able to meet talent and actually see someone's personality and get a sense of their culture fit, the 360 degree view of someone that you can't just get on a LinkedIn. Yes. That your ability to make a decision to hire someone is much better. And finally, we're also learning about the importance of long-term relationships. One of our motives in the room is relationships, not transactions, where you actually get to meet someone in an environment where they're not pretending in an interview and you get to really see who they are and build relationships with them before you need to hire them. And these are some really unique ways that we think we can redefine how talent finds opportunity in the 21st century. We could put a cube in every room. We got a cube. Because, you know, the cube, what we do here is that when people collaborate, whether they're doing an interview together, riffing and sharing content, there's creating knowledge. But that shared experience creates a bonding. Yes. So when you have that kind of mindset and this room concept where it's not just resume, get a job, see you later. Exactly. It's learning, having peers and colleagues and people around you. Exactly. And then seeing them in a journey, multiple laps around the track, if you will. Exactly. And going through a career, not just a job. Yes, exactly. And then celebrating the ups and downs. Exactly. Because in learning, it's not always roses, as you know. There you go. It's always pain before you accelerate. Exactly. And you never quite arrive at your destination. You're always growing. And this is where technology can really play a role. Okay. So super exciting. Where's this go next, Sandy? Next couple of minutes left and we'll just get through the next day. So one of the things that we've envisioned, so this is not done yet, but Fred and I imagine, like what if you could have an Alexa setup? And you could say, hey, you know, Alexa, what should be my next job? Or how should I go train? Or I'm really interested in being on a TED talk. What could I do? Having an Alexa skill might be a really cool thing to do. And with the great funding that Fred's gotten, you should talk about the $400 million too, that he's already raised, yeah, $400 million. I mean, I think the sky's the limit on platforms like this. That's a nice chunk of change there. It is, I mean. You got some fat financing as they say. But well, it's a big mission, so it requires significant resources. Who's backing you guys? What's the, where's the money coming from? It's coming from the Mastercard Foundation. They are biggest funder, as well as some philanthropists. And essentially, these are people who truly see the potential to unlock opportunity for millions of people. For global, on a global scale, the vision is global. Exactly. Starting in Africa, but truly global. Our vision is eventually to have a community of about 10 to 20 million of the most extraordinary doers in the world in this community and to connect them to opportunity. Well, congratulations. And diverse, John. I mean, this is the other thing that gets me excited because innovation comes from diversity of thought. And given the community will have so many diverse individuals in it that are going to get trained and mentored to create something that is amazing for their career as well, that really gets me excited too, as well as Amazon web services. Well, you got smart people and yet identifying the fresh voices and the fresh minds that come with it, all that comes together in the room. Exactly, with the social capital that they need to really accelerate their impact. And then you read the room and then you get the whoever you need. Exactly. Thanks so much, Colin. Congratulations on your great mission. Love the room. Thank you so much. You need to be in Cuban every room. You got to get those fresh voices out there. Sandy, congratulations on a great project. Super exciting. Thank you. And SageMaker AI is all part of it. It's all kind of, it's a cool wave. It's fun. Can I join? Can I play? Okay, I need a room. I think he's top talent, right? I think we could work with him. We could work with him. Cuban every room. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate your insight. Great stuff here bringing you all the action and the knowledge and insight here at Reinvent with theCUBE. Two sets on the floor. It's a hybrid event. We're in person in Las Vegas for a real event. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. The leader in global tech coverage. Thanks for watching.