 Welcome to ThinkTech on Spectromosi 16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Keisha King. In our show this time, we'll attend the Tech Force Hawaii Conference and Expo at the Hawaii Convention Center. It featured three important afternoon business panels covering media, communications and co-opetition in Hawaii. Jay Andrews of OceanIt made a short promotional video for the conference in our ThinkTech studio. If you are an employer, a job seeker, or a student, join us for Tech Force Hawaii Conference and Expo September 26 at the Hawaii Convention Center. Tech Force Hawaii is a first-of-its-kind conference that puts the spotlight on technology-based workforce development solutions and successes. Join us for thought-leader discussions in our speaker hall starting with a keynote by Jamie Kassup, chief education evangelist with Google. In our exhibitors' hall, interact with nearly 40 exhibitors, experiment with cutting-edge technology, and engage in design-thinking activities. The conference covered many things about technology that is changing the way we work, learn, and live, and about facing our challenges as a state squarely in the face. Can we lead with agility and adopt tech changes and disruptions? Are we giving our students sufficient survival skills and the mindset to meet the challenges of our time? When will we stop being ashamed to tell our tech success stories? Can we think big enough and act boldly enough to finally stop the brain drain? If this conference was about one thing, it was about statewide collaboration by motivating people to develop STEM and cyber skills. These issues shaped the multidisciplinary panels in the program. Bert Lamm of ByteMarks was the master of ceremonies. Governor David E. Gay made opening remarks. Jan Boyven of HPU introduced the morning keynote, which was presented by Jamie Kassup, chief education evangelist at Google. This was followed by a morning competencies panel featuring Brooke Conner of DOE, Scott Godwin of the GM National Security Directorate, John Gotanda of HPU, Christina Kishimoto of DOE, and Stephen Schatz of Hawaii P20, moderated by Steve Auerbach of PCAT. In the afternoon media partner presentation, we heard from Rick Blangiardi of Hawaii News Now, Ian Kitajima of OceanIt, and Ian Schuring of Hawaii News Now, moderated by Bert Lamm. Though I was inspired by those videos, I'm also inspired by the fact there's a conference like this and you're in the audience today and it's an honor for me at any chance I get to represent the men and women of Hawaii News Now. We were all fighting for life support. The stations themselves were heavily funded. There's always been a tough advertising market. Really, quite honestly, the way the businesses evolved through the islands nearly never really left anybody with a lot of money. So the point being, when we saw this opportunity to consolidate, what we saw in it was a chance to provide and build for Hawaii a 21st century multimedia company. Despite the economic woes, if you know, this thing here became a game changer. Jobs introduced this in 2007, I think it was June 2007. So at that point, we began to see some of the traction in mobile technology. None of us could have predicted in 2008, 2009 what was going to happen for us as a people. None of us saw that coming. But we did think that, you know what, this distribution is very different. This is going to create different expectations, hence our name, Hawaii News Now. So that being the case, we really made the decision that we were going to do that. So the genius of the name was, well, we knew we had to call ourselves Hawaii. We knew that if we were going to aggregate an audience, it would have to be through news. The little three-letter word now was the brains of the and and that equation. Because what that did was it dictated to us if we were going to live up to that brand, is we'd have to learn how to digitize who we were. It used to be only yesterday, for all of you, I'll make that statement. If you heard about something, you had to do something somewhat proactive to find out more about it. Today, the expectation is very different. If it's something newsworthy, and it could be international, international, certainly local, the expectation, it comes to me. And that's our ability to meet that expectation. That's a very different delivery system. And it's a very much now kind of a thing, and especially the world that we live in. So that really required a whole lot of different thinking, a whole lot of different kind of people, and really, quite honestly, a lot of strain and growth in that part. Let me just tell you one really kind of nice story. I can tell you a whole lot about the stories. We mentioned the Hokulea up there. We were involved with the Hokulea before its sale, and we were involved with the Hokulea throughout its sale. So much so that we were excited about its homecoming, and we decided, you know what, it's unscripted TV, but we want to do a really good job out of reverence, out of respect for what that voyage was about. And so we decided to throw everything we had at it. 11 cameras and two drones in the air, a kind of wired K.I. Tucker. I said, you fall in the water, you die, brother. So don't fall in the water, but we want these pictures on the canoe coming in, and this is the only way we can get them. I mean, we really went all out. And for six and a half hours, we did live TV, and we did a really good job. We had a great team on the beach, as well as, you know, out in the water. And we covered it in every way we possibly could. And, you know, it was a Saturday, and I think a lot of people in Hawaii got to watch it, and they liked it. Certainly the beach was packed, but the thing that was really great about that was we put that on Facebook Live, and over two million people watched that. And we really got to share Hawaii with the world. When I started in this business in 1977, if we were over in Kailua, and we were taping any one of you in an interview, the reporter would literally have to shoot that, get in the car, drive over it, hopefully get through the poly, get the Capilani Boulevard on time, do the edit, and try to get it on TV. Maybe then we couldn't even get a signal over the mountain range. OK? Today, we go global. Normally, what happens is that, you know, we go on and they will drill us with a bunch of questions. What do you think about the new iPhone? Well, you know, it's super pricey, but it's got great camera. If you get the pro, it's like three cameras, you got wide angle. And this goes on for three and a half performance. But now we get to reverse the roles and we get to ask Ian, not this Ian, this Ian, some questions about some of the technology that's now available on the newscast. Ian, you want to start? Maybe that could be part of the question. Well, I think one of it is you guys are doing so many amazing things. Maybe you can share some of the things you guys are doing right now. The backpacks that you mentioned already, if we were to narrow down the biggest technological advancement that we have at our disposal, it's that. They really are backpacks. You wear them, they're connected to a camera, and inside that unit, you know, about this big or so, are cell phone modems that connect to every major cell phone carrier. So if you're in a place with, you know, great AT&T service, but poor sprint service, it's going to transmit your video back to the station using whatever receiver you're getting the best signal with. I think the one thing that has really helped us the most, especially when you talk about immediacy and relevancy, you know, this morning there are these people getting arrested at Waimanalo Bay Beach Park because they're opposed to this development and we're streaming the whole thing. And at this point, you know, it's not even just a Facebook Live on your phone, it's a complete news operation that is being brought in through a backpack. So that's really exciting for us. The need to cater to, you know, what Rick was talking about, the expectation that news is going to come to you, even that expectation I think is evolving, where, you know, a year ago it was that news is going to find me somehow and the expectation now is I'm using this platform and I'm expecting this news to reach me on this specific platform and so trying to deduce what those platforms are and where the viewers are and where they're expecting that news to reach them is the next most exciting challenge that I think we're looking at. That sort of guides our day-to-day strategy, you know, is taking what's happening now in Waimanalo or wherever it can be and not just delivering it on the news, which is what we're known for, but delivering it to people where they are in the medium that they're choosing to consume it. There are a lot of kind of cool sort of visual gadgets that are being implemented like the Weather Channel. And I'm just dying to see Gai Hagi in a, you know, a six-foot tsunami surge. And so is that just too much eye candy and is the technology too expensive or when do you see perhaps white news now incorporating that? I think there's a very real potential for augmented reality in news. As we tell stories every day, the question we ask is, how can we most effectively help our viewers understand what's happening right now? And if augmented reality is presented in such a way that the viewer knows that it's augmented, which is not so much of a challenge now, but as that technology progresses, we will get to a point where you're going to have to differentiate, right, when this augmented reality becomes so good and so precise, you'll have to find ways to make sure your viewer knows what they're looking at. But with that not being such a big problem for now, if, you know, that six-foot tsunami wave in studio is the best way to help the viewers at home understand that story, then I think that's something we should all look for. It would have been now, I know there were no deaths or injuries last year during the volcanic eruption, but if there had been an AR way to the question that I kept asking myself, the majority of the people who were interested in that lava eruption story last year aren't especially familiar with the geographic layout of Hawai'i Islands in general and of lower Puna specifically. And so how could we, you know, you hear about how many homes have been destroyed and how many acres of land have been covered, but how can we translate that to people in ways that they understand? And the two that I tried to explore without, you know, the very short answer to your question is we don't yet have the graphical capabilities to pull off augmented reality in a meaningful way yet, but the two numbers or the two maps that it would have been useful for, if you lifted up the lava field from Hawai'i Island last year and transported it, you know, just laid it flat on the island of Oahu, that lava field goes from Manoa to Diamond Head to the edge of Kaka'ako. The communication panel went on to feature Isla Young of STEMWorks Ian Kitajima of OceanHit and Tyler Iokepa-Gomes of Elemental Accelerator, moderated by Christine Sakuta of Transform Hawai'i Government. All of our 10 campuses is all about properly preparing the graduates and giving them the pathways to get from and through their undergraduate degrees, be it two-year, be it four-year, be it continuing education, and really developing those skills that we're working on today. So the communications piece is absolutely critical to make that happen. We've got a lot of great success stories, but really one of the things, and this is all about Hawai'i, one of the things that we don't do very well is we don't tell the story. We don't talk about the stuff that we do. We don't talk about our successes. And that's the other part of communications that I think our panel is going to be really great and enlighten us about this morning. I think one of the first questions to ask the panel is, you know, we have talked a lot and heard a lot today about technology and innovation. What does technology mean? Since it changes so quickly and so rapidly, and what does innovation mean? So our STEMRx program is actually quite layered. We've got a lot of pieces of heavy focus on our teachers and making sure our teachers throughout the state are inspired and have the tools that they need to really educate and make sure that their students have the opportunities that they need. We do all kinds of software camps and gen cyber camps and partnership with UH and PCAT. We provide the Hawai'i STEM conference, which was mentioned, which is a really engaging way to bring together our educational system, teachers, students and industry here. And we're really trying to connect the dots between what they're learning, what they should be learning, and then how that equates to an actual job. So innovation is and the technologies are always changing. So we're no longer growing our young people for a specific job. We're looking at what skills do they need. And the soft skills was mentioned this morning. We call it power skills. How are we helping them to have the hard skills, but then also the skills that they need to be very productive, meaningful and then find jobs that they absolutely love. One of my mentors one day, just really quick, I was I was presenting in front of like a group of students at the office in our Duke design lab. And she was there for some reason. I can't remember why she was there. This is actually Poonani Burjins. She was sitting there, I think waiting for me for something. And she was listening to me explain what we do at OceanEd. And I would I guess what I was I was sharing with all these various innovations or technologies. But I think the way I was doing it was to explain first, what is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the human problem we're trying to solve? And then I would talk about the technology. And then as I was doing this in the middle of all of this, she would she just burst it out and just said stop. You know, she said stop. And I was like, what? And she said, ah, I understand what you guys do or what you're trying to do, which is when most people talk about innovation or technology, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about some widget or an iPhone or some technology. And she said, when you talk when you talk about innovation, you're talking about people. Talking about people. And that's actually where innovation comes from. It actually comes from people and the way they think and the cultures that get created. And through that process, the outcome is some gadget widget, some cool thing that helps people's lives. Ian just set it up really nicely for me. We don't really define technology as being a single thing and innovation either. We think of it about people and we're thinking about solutions and climate is one of the greatest threats that we're all collectively facing right now. And so when we're thinking about what innovation and technology look like together for us, it's about what are the solutions that are most creative and how can we help them move the fastest to solve these problems for us? And so as an accelerator, we're dual-emissioned in that obviously we want our companies to succeed, but we also want to offer transformative change to a place. And so in doing that, we've actually really spread out what we do to create the most impact and the most change. So we work with ILAW in the educational sector. And we're trying to figure out ways to create better opportunities for interns. We launched something called Root and STEM, which is the first interactive STEM map for the state of Hawaii that includes every single STEM opportunity, K through 12, and then post-grad. We work with the business community and we really turn to think about how we can help impact bottom lines because at the end of the day, there are still entities who see cost as a barrier to adoption and integration and that's what we want. The whole point of an internship is to experience. And so sometimes they absolutely love it and they're like, oh, good, I'm on the right track. And then sometimes they're like, okay, wait, hold on, I got a pivot here. This is not for me, which is a beautiful thing to learn at a young age. How to do that, yeah. But I want to say even the most basic things too, you know, one thing that we notice sometimes, and again, as adults we do this too, you know, is there's someone speaking or there's, you know, even like our CEO speaking and the interns are looking at their phones the whole time. You know, it's these, and these things, they don't realize that a lot of people are actually watching them too. They think, oh, because I'm an intern, no one's watching saying, no, absolutely, you're going to get talked to about this after. You know, it's like these things, right, that they, I don't know if they're not aware that, you know, there's a certain level of, you know, respect that you should give someone when there's, you know, the attention should be there and not someplace else. So this is part of, you know, because of the social media piece of it, whatever, it's just part of, sometimes they may not be fully aware, so part of it is to coach them through that and then the guys and the team are really good, the mentors are part of that as well. I mean, we're at fault too, right? We're like the leadership team and, you know, the boss is talking and I'm looking at my phone, you know, right? It's like, you know, they pick it up from somewhere, right, they're picking it up from us too. So I shouldn't say it's just them. Well, that's the best of both worlds, I guess, because you mentioned, you know, when going back to this idea of why don't we brag and why don't we share more? And your comment, Ian, was that, well, innovation's just sort of a normal part of what we do that we don't think it's innovation. And I think maybe that we cut ourselves short because, I mean, I think in Hawaii, we collaborate quite a bit and because we collaborate and we're so community focused, there's this sort of natural innovation that we sort of take for granted. So I don't know. I just wanted to know if you find that as well and how do we recognize that and communicate more and brag more about that. But that's why too, we need to get out of Hawaii too. Yeah. You need to have your students or yourself, you need to go out, you need to have customers in other parts of the world and go there and go, wow, you know, we're actually pretty good. Like, wow, we really keep butt, you know? I think part of it is if you only stay here, we only know what we know and then when you go out, you go, wow. Cause I used to work on the other side of the world and I worked with, like, these are the best of the best in mobile technologies. And I thought to myself, you know, I actually have lots of friends in Hawaii that are just as good as these guys and gals. But I didn't know, you don't know that until you go there, until you get out, I think. And that was the part that was a big kind of moment for me was, okay, it's time to come home. Because of that, I was like, I always was, well, if I'm really good, then I should be somewhere else. Like, if you're really good, you wouldn't be here. And that's just, you know, yes. Finally, the co-opetition panel featured Brennan Morioka of the College of Engineering at UH Manoa, Peter Dames of Therv Co., Mike McCartney of D-Bed, and Alan Oshima of Hawaiian Electric, moderated by Anna Alinta-Sneed. There was also an expo at the conference with some 50 exhibitors, including Ocean Itz, quote, petting zoo and strategy mapping activities that ran every hour in what they called the design thinking playground. The presenting sponsor of the conference was HIPAA, the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, along with a number of what they called Disruptor Sponsors. If you want to know more about the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, see HIPAA online.com. And now let's check out our ThinkTech schedule of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. most weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links or sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. ThinkTech has a high tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows, contact shows at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHI. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. Thanks to our ThinkTech underwriters and grand tours. The Atherton Family Foundation. Carol Monli and the Friends of ThinkTech. The Center for Microbial Oceanography, Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. Dwayne Kurisu. The Hawaii Community Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Hawaiian Electric Company. Integrated Security Technologies. Gailin Ho of BAE Systems. Kamehameha Schools. MW Group. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. Volo Foundation. Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Okay, Kisha, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC 16 several times every week. For additional times, check out OC16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness and of course the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important ThinkTech episode. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Kisha King. Aloha everyone.