 from Houston, Texas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Now your host, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Hello everyone and welcome to Silicon Angles theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal and noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles. I'm co-host Jeff Frick, general manager of our CUBE. We are live in Houston, Texas for the Grace Hopper 2015 celebration of women in computing, an amazing event. Really, this is ground zero, the epicenter of innovation around women in technology, women in science, STEM, everything else. And I got to tell you, it is the most incredible scene here. We'll be here for three days, wall-to-wall coverage, two full days, kind of an end of the day here in Houston, Texas. I'm here with Jeff. Jeff, you were here last year, did a fly-by. We did it on the ground. We weren't live. We didn't have the big stage that we had this year, but last year was the Satya Nutella comment. But who, as is the breaking news, he's not showing up here. Yeah, I heard that. I thought he was coming back with Maria Clavé again to kind of readdress. He kind of put his foot in his mouth and he apologized for it. And as I think in our interview with Maria, after that, she said it's good news because it really brought the issue to the table. But we're really excited, John, to be back in full force. We got the CUBE here for three days of wall-to-wall coverage. It's really like no event I've ever been at. We'll cover about 70 events of the CUBE this year. And I've never seen one with quite the energy, quite the range of ages. You've got a lot of college students and you've got a lot of more seasoned citizens, as we like to say, as you and I join that class. It's a huge breath. And the range of representatives here in the Expo Hall, everything from Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan on the finance side, all the tech names you would expect to see, like Google and Microsoft, Avanade has a giant booth into it. And then you've got a bunch of government. I saw the NSD has a space over there. So there's a ton of government representation. And then you have the academic side as well. Every university under the sun who has anything going on is here. And it's really all about, as we talked to Elizabeth Ames last year at the Anita Boer Women of Vision Awards, this is not about women getting marketing jobs at tech companies. It's not about women getting PR jobs or HR jobs or any of those types of jobs. It's about engineering. This is an engineering show. And from the recruiting point of view, I don't know that there's any show where you've got this many qualified candidates that people can look out at. Yeah, Jeff, it's impressive. The range of companies is really impressive. Goldman Sachs to government and everything in between. We're now at the big stage here at the ground floor of the Grace Hopper big stage. Next to us is an exhibition that points out, it says, post your most proud moments. And it's a wall where people are posting their achievements. This is about women leadership. This is about women empowerment. This is, to me, someone my age in the computer industry over the past few generations, an historic moment because the tide has shifted completely down to a new generation where there are a lot of ladies, women, girls in tech. STEM is huge and it's not a male driven culture anymore. Certainly there's some male dominance that's a hangover from previous generations but you're seeing conversations where it's inclusive. It's a male, they're including the males of the conversation, women taking leadership roles. So to me, it is a super exciting as a father called DoD, dads of daughters. We both have daughters, we could be proud to say the DoD's out there, dads of daughters, will know that the opportunities for our girls and for women in the business are tremendous. More importantly, there are a lot of mentors, Jeff, out there who are mentoring the young ladies coming up through the ranks. So it's certainly an empowerment time, it's very cultural, community-driven, and it's super exciting. What's your take? You were here last year for the big Sophia thing. You were here for the last year's celebration. What's your take? I mean, my observation is very clear. There's women everywhere and the men's line through the bathroom is like, there's no line. The ladies line is long. It's- Well, you know, John, just the energy, like I said, is amazing. Just a couple of observations. You know, people getting their goodie bag, again, we go to a lot of conferences, you get your goodie bag, it's usually filled with a bunch of stuff. You don't spend a lot of attention. People were sitting down and going through it because there was a lot of good stuff in there. I mean, people really care. The excitement and the enthusiasm is pretty phenomenal. But I think too, John, we're in the middle of our fall tour. We were just at AWS. We've got a bunch of shows coming up and we talk a lot about that every company today is really a software company. It's just wrapped around whatever product and service that they may or may not be selling. And as I look out again, GE is here. Target is here. Best Buy is here. You know, a lot of Macy's is here. It just goes to show that those kind of big line retailers that you don't really think of as technology companies, they're really technology companies. And it really supports what we see over and over and over that. Software's eating the world. Everybody's a technology company. Just what is your product or service? Say you wrap it around. I got to say, Jeff, I love women in tech. I think I always have, I love the fact that there's a gender difference between male and female that's been out there, which we all know from high schools growing up through adult life. But women bring a perspective to technology. That's exciting, right? And it's like when you went to school and all the girls you hung out with school from classes that were super smart, they're now having the same opportunities. And I think to me, that's why I love women in tech, not only for the future of my daughter's being a dad of a daughter, DOD, but really is that it brings a diversity. Things get done better that way. I think you're going to see a tsunami of leadership and the Grace Hopper is only one element. There's an event coming up in Stanford that we're going to try to go to, Data Science in Stanford, and that's going to be a fantastic event. And again, some serious data scientists out there, great stuff, so Jeff, to me, my observation is it's a sea of women. Everybody's super excited. When they open up the hall doors here, the exhibit hall, a cheer. Yeah. People were cheering. Yeah. Tech commerce went through with a cheer, except for an Apple show or maybe VMworld. Right. But no one cheers. Go on. And Apple's here. They've got a big presence. It looks like an Apple store. They have nothing in their booth, but really pretty tables. I assume they're getting the iPads out. And I look out behind us, John. I see poster sessions, a very academic way of people presenting their studies and their reports. So it's really a great blending of this academic, the government, the business, the technology or recruiting event. And the other thing that's going to come up a lot and we talked to Lori McKinsey, the executive director of the Claiming Institute at Stanford, at the VM women event at VMware, and they talked about bias. The fact of the matter is we all have bias. We bring bias and that's okay. We've all had life experiences that we bring to everything that we face. Where it becomes problematic is if you're not aware of your bias and you let your bias get in the way. But even in a great conversation that we had with Kim, Stevenson at Intel, when you bring a diversity of opinions to a problem, people look at it different ways. You're going to arrive at a better solution because you simply don't look at the problem the same way somebody else does based on their experience. So again, I think this is a really great event. I think it's very empowering. I think all the companies that are here are obviously excited. And we've got a full day of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. And I think the thing that you mentioned is the biases are natural out there. And there are biases, but the biases also bring diversity. If people are open to the biases, that was interesting. Had a great Facebook thread on my Facebook as I was flying out here yesterday. I put the question out to my Facebook friends in Silicon Valley and I said, real questions, is it not politically correct to say I love women in tech? And so I put that out there. And there's a lot of different comments. Comments do I call, is it better to call someone a woman in tech or lady in tech? Some said lady was worse. Some said women was better. If you're in the cell, people like lady, they thought ladies were better. So all kinds of different biases, even from women and men. So I found that interesting. However, Jeff, the one thing that I'm looking for in this event, in addition to the technology, was one comment that came on my Facebook page and that was, oh, it's all great with women in tech, rah rah, okay, it's rah rah, good stuff. But the real question is who's investing in women? And so what I'm going to be looking for at this event is the kinds of entrepreneurs that are out there. And I think that is still a spot that I have not seen Silicon Valley truly embrace in terms of really giving women an equal opportunity. The male dominant venture capital world is still rampant. And there's now Karitsu's being developed, Eileen Lee and a bunch of others are doing their own thing. But still, if you're a woman entrepreneur, I still think there's a lot of big problems there that need to be eliminated. I think it's way more capital for entrepreneurs and I'm going to be looking for that here today. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're watching, ping me at Furrier on Twitter or comment. If you're here watching, I'd love to talk with you. So. Yeah, and on the big company side, you know at the women division awards that we attended earlier this year, BNY Mellon won the company of vision. And really Elizabeth Ains from the New York Institute talked about a survey that they put out and people filled out the survey and how well they're doing. And in fact, Go Daddy who we're going to have on later today released the results of their own internal process. And really what's important about this is that people document it and start to write it down and see where they are. So even if they're not doing really, really well, at least get a baseline, have something to start to work against. And I know Go Daddy made a big announcement earlier today. We're going to get August Goldman on later to talk about that. And even as Elizabeth Ains said, even though BNY Mellon won the award for the other companies to take the time and effort to fill it out, get a survey, get a benchmark, get a baseline, then they can start working against it. So I think things, you know, continue to move in the right direction. Jeff, what is your observation? What are you seeing? I mean, you were here last year. Again, it's day one, looking out on the floor here, looking at the sessions. Again, a lot of research, a lot of science, a lot of academic, but as you said, a lot of different verticals are here. Just general anecdotal observation. You know, I thought it was interesting on Megan Smith just now, just finished up the afternoon keynote and she made an interesting comment. She said, we really have two missions. We should go to places where there's more of us, like here and talking to some people in the hallways this afternoon. It's really about community and feeling comforting, getting to a place where you're with like-minded individuals. And then she said, the other task is going to places where we're not. And, you know, she's a person who left a private sector to go to government. She's a CTO of the US government. You know, we talked to Michelle Lee, who left the Bay Area and Silicon Valley to go back and be the undersecretary of commerce at the US Patent and Trade Office. So, you know, I think it's an interesting contrast. You want to be with like-minded people so you feel the support, you feel good about what's going on. You're not there by yourself and you're the only woman in a CES class of 30. But at the same time, really, in bolding them to go out and make a difference and ask those questions. There's not a lot of guys here. So, I mean, like, we're, you know, kind of sticking out like a sore thumb, but I think having these kinds of events with women is great. But also, including the male conversation is really important as well. I find that to be really critical. And I think that's your point about going places. Yeah. And again, we're going to be talking to people. We're going to be listening. We're going to be having a conversation. Join us on crowdchat.net slash G-H-C-15. And we will be getting all the chats there. That's our crowd engagement conversation. We'd love to hear from you. On Twitter, obviously, the Twitter sphere's booming. Check us out on Twitter. Still more to come from the Grace Hopper Women in Celebration, Women in Computing Celebration here. And it truly is a celebration. The smartest women in the world are here. Anita Borg Institute. We had Hillary Mason going to be joining us. She did the keynote. We're trying to get Cheryl Sandberg to come on, where it is, so she's got a very tight schedule. And again, Satya Nattella will not be here this year. He was allegedly scheduled to be here, backed out in the last minute. Got cold feet. Well, we'll go to Seattle. I can't blame him. We'll go to Seattle to talk to him. Is that any time you want us to come to Seattle? I can't blame him, because I think he's better off, as he said, the listening and watching. I think if he engages too fast, it might be counterproductive. What's your thoughts on that? I don't know. I think you should have came. I think Maria is a fellow board member. I think that she did a great job with it last year. Hey, he made a mistake. He has a bias. He didn't necessarily recognize it. It was brought to light. And as Maria said, it was uncomfortable. It was awkward, but it turned out to be a great thing because it elevated the conversation. Go back and look at the news for about a month after that interview. That was the hot topic. So sometimes growth is uncomfortable. I think he got slammed and skewered for the comment, but generally I've been looking into this all year, and I don't see Satyantella as the kind of person who isn't for the same celebration of women in computing. He has put out very transparently the numbers. He's gone above and beyond to go really, really he just kind of stepped on himself in the comment, not knowing the impact. And you know, once the grenade goes off, the shrapnel is embedded. So as far as I'm concerned, he took one for the team, but generally I don't think Microsoft and Satyantella are really driving against the trend that we're seeing, which is more women, more leadership, more autonomy, more science, and entrepreneurship. That is going to be the focus. This is theCUBE. You're watching live in Houston, Texas from Anita Borg, Women in Celebration, Grace Hopper event 2015. We'll be right back.