 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Barb Mitchell coming to you from virtual PTC 21. Joining me today is Felix Sada, general manager of NJFX and Sarah Kurtz, business development manager for NJFX. Welcome to JSA TV, both of you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Barb. So for any of our viewers who may not already know, I mean, you guys have joined us so many times in the past, we're great friends of NJFX, but for any of our viewers who may not know, could you just tell us a little bit about NJFX as an organization? Sure, so NJFX, we own and operate a purpose-built tier three cable landing station slash co-location facility. It's located in Wall, New Jersey, with direct access to multiple subsea systems going across the Atlantic to both Europe and Latin America. So as NJFX, we sit right in the middle and we play a prominent role in connectivity between the three continents. Obviously, we have other partners who take you out to the West Coast and the Far East as well, but yeah, that's a little bit of NJFX. And Felix, you know, here we are, we're back at PTC. I say back, it's a little different this year, although it feels like you're there. I mean, it looks like you're sitting on the ocean front there. But you know, it's a new year, with the new year comes new goals. What's the latest for NJFX this year? Yeah, so 2020 was obviously a weird year for all, but for NJFX, you know, we did great. We had a wonderful year in terms of growing out, continuing to grow out our ecosystem and gaining new strategic partners along the way. And 2021, that's the same continued focus. You know, 2020, we had the new Hapu AEC2 cable that went live and that cable goes to Denmark, Norway and Ireland, providing a bypass from New York City, interconnecting directly from NJFX to Europe. And that was a big milestone for us in terms of creating the connectivity hub that we've always envisioned at NJFX. Yeah, nice. Things never slow down for you guys, do they? They're always moving forward. I love it. No matter what, they always seem to be moving forward. Always, yeah. So just another question on a sort of a different note, but I'm curious about your work with PTC's membership committee. Can you tell us what that looks like? Absolutely. So last year at PTC, I did, along with Sarah, we did an event called Millennials on Telecom and it was our first time doing it at PTC. And it was really to create a informal environment for a lot of the members in the industry. You know, one thing that we, I think many people have started to realize is that we need a new inner flux of talent and people looking at our industry as a whole and wanting to be involved in our industry. And so Millennials on Telecom, we did it alongside the PTC committee. And we did an informal session at in our meeting room suite in Hawaii where we invited everyone who wanted to be a part of it and who was interested in, there were younger people in the industry who joined who wanted to, I guess, learn more about how they could be more influential leaders and have more of a voice in the industry. And then we also had a lot of experienced veterans in the industry who wanted to be a part of it and sort of be mentors to the young town that wants to be developed along the way. So we had a good sort of symbiotic relationship of both sides of the industry. And so this year we're looking to continue the same thing. I'm working closely with the PTC membership committee to help bring in new members as part of the PTC organization and also our industry. And I'm also alongside Sarah, we're also doing something with the sub-optic committee. And we are part of this group called the Diversity, Belonging and Inclusion Working Group. That's similarly focused on a lot of the same issues that we try to target with millennials and telecom. And we're actually speaking as part of the sub-optic committee, our working group at this year's PTC. So it should be interesting and we encourage everyone to join. The focus on this particular workshop is going to be on mentorship. And we're establishing a mentorship program and we'd like everyone in the industry to be involved, whether they want to be a mentor or whether we have people who want to be mentees. Yeah, great. Sarah, I'd love to hear you weigh in on that. Sounds like you're involved in both PTC and sub-optic. Can you talk about sort of just your thoughts on that? Absolutely, yeah. So kind of to reiterate what Felix said, and since I'm one of the younger ones, probably that you're interviewing, I'm this year's PTC. Yeah, last year I was lucky enough to go to Hawaii with Gil and Felix and the NGFX team. And it happened to be this inaugural millennials and telecom event, which was great for me to be a part of, obviously, I fall more into the mentee category, being only in the industry for about a year, year and a half now. So seeing whether it's the industry leaders or the younger talent that was able to join us at PTC, all come together. I think there's a great push right now for, again, young talent in the industry. And I'm happy to be a part of it. And then, again, in hand with that goes the sub-optic diversity inclusion and belonging working group, which is, again, industry-wide. It seems like everybody kind of has the same mindset. And I'm very happy to be a part of it from the NGFX standpoint and the industry as a whole. Yeah, it's so great to hear from someone like yourself who is not only involved and benefiting, but can also sort of comment on the importance from your perspective, really who these groups are targeted at and how it can really benefit the whole industry for years to come. I mean, it's such an important initiative. It was great to see PTC doing that this time last year, as you said, the inaugural. And great to see that you're part of it and NGFX is part of it. So back over to you, Felix. Can we talk a little bit about how interconnection has become so critical recently? I mean, obviously it's, we've said, it's been a big year that's driven a lot of these things, but how's NGFX addressing that for the global community? Yeah, I think we touched on that a little before, right? 2020 has been such a crazy year for everyone involved. And obviously it's presented its challenges, but I think with that came opportunities as well, right? And I think those opportunities have presented itself on the connectivity side. And we're starting to see a lot of networks become a little bit more strategic in terms of how their network connectivity basically is assembled, right, on their end. And I think for 2021, you're starting to see a lot of these networks who have done things. I would say, you know, it's, I would say the old antiquated way of connectivity going back to a lot of these legacy data centers that have been around. And I think what you're starting to see is a major shift away from a lot of these legacy data centers that are located in urban environments. And for these networks to be a little bit more strategic in terms of their network diversity and resiliency. So we're working closely with all of our partners. You know, we are focused in the beginning in terms of our ecosystem was on developing a legitimate marketplace between terrestrial and international subsea carriers. And we did that. And now our focus is mainly on that next level, the CDNs, the enterprise, the financials of the world. And Sarah is doing a great job for us in terms of working with all of the different financials for them to be a little bit more educated and understand all of their different options when it comes to connectivity. Yeah, and if I could snowball on top of that with my work with financials, you know, they're really trying to get a hold of how exactly their network works to ensure that, you know, they never go down. And as they start to do that, the hope is, you know, maybe next year when we're all back in Hawaii, we can start to bring some of them into this group more formally and they can join us in Hawaii and have these conversations as they figure out the next level of their networks. Right, yeah. Everyone's looking forward to that next elusive moment where we can all get together and talk face to face, right? And, you know, until then, you know, we wanna make sure that people can connect, you know, virtually, so where can we direct our viewers to connect with you or to find more information? Yeah, if you're at PTC, Felix and I are both registered so feel free to ping us on the platform. We're always happy to catch up with old friends and make some new friends. And then obviously you can visit our website, njfx.net or shoot us an email over to info at njfx.net and we'll be in touch. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Felix and Sarah. It's always such pleasure to speak with you and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Happy networking. Thank you.