 Live from Houston, Texas, it's The Cube, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Welcome back, we're here in Houston, Texas at the Grace Hopper Conference, 15,000 women and men, the best and brightest minds in technology, converging here. I'm joined today with the Junior Fellows, part of the Cube's Ground Truth Reporting Project. First we have Alicia Meese, who is a senior at Palo Alto High School, also the co-editor-in-chief of Verde Magazine, also Peter Maroulis, also a senior at Palo Alto High School, one of the best journalism programs in the country. He's the co-editor-in-chief of the Campanile, which is the high school newspaper. So thanks so much for joining us, and congratulations on the fellowship. Thank you, thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So I'll start with you, Alicia. Talk to me about what you're seeing out here, you're on the ground at the Grace Hopper, it's your first big conference. What are your thoughts, what are your impressions? Yeah, sure, it's been so amazing so far. We've gotten the opportunity to talk to just so many ambitious young women. We recently did a verbatim, and we just talked to, I guess, random people who are at the conference, and each of them kind of have this unified goal of getting more women into tech. So it's really nice to be at a conference where everyone is just so determined to make this happen. Great, great. And you, Peter, so this is 15,000 people, but a thousand of them are men. So you're now in the minority. Let's hear your perspective. What are you seeing? Sure, yeah, I mean, it's great to be here. As Alicia said, so many driven people, doesn't matter if they're women or men, it's totally fine. And we're getting such great perspectives for our articles. It's really terrific. As Alicia said, we did the verbatim, and we're currently working on a profile about working mothers. They've got a little corporate daycare center up there, so we're taking a trip up there, taking some photos and checking it out. Great people. So yeah, so you're each doing a project while you're here. Talk about that. So you're looking at the struggles that women and men have to balance their work, their professional lives, as well as their home and family lives. What are you finding? So before we came here, we actually did some research and talked to some sources about, because we live in Silicon Valley, so obviously we're very much interested in that. Yes, to pronounce problems. Exactly, so we have access to that. So before we came here, we talked to a bunch of sources about the disparity that they face in Silicon Valley, and when we're here, we see that even more. A lot of people here are more hopeful, I've noticed. They think, or they believe, and they should believe, that women are going to make more of a place in the tech industry. Okay, okay, and then talk a little bit about the daycare that you're observing, you're talking to people there. What are you seeing there? Sure, so yeah, as Alicia said, everything's moving in the right direction in terms of closing the gender gap, and I think that's especially noticeable in the daycare. Parents, mothers in particular, aren't afraid to bring their kids with them to this event and house them up at the daycare there. We just walked up yesterday. It's a completely free daycare for attendees of this conference. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. And there are so many kids there. Oh my God. Zero to 12, they've got this whole room of cribs for the infants. So it's really incredible to see working mothers coming here and bringing their kids and feeling totally comfortable to walk around and everything. It's a very interesting culture. Like, it's in the hotel, so it's obviously, I guess, far away, kind of far away from the actual conference. So there's like zero through two rooms, two through four rooms, six through 12. So it's just interesting to see kind of like, where the kids go when the moms are at work, you know? Are you working on any other projects? I mean, in particularly right now, at this moment in time, sexism, sexist language is part of the national dialogues, the sexism in the workforce, in the workplace. Are you looking at that as an issue at all, too, and hearing stuff on the ground from young women in this industry? Something that we like to explore, possibly, is this idea of woman of color in tech. It's something that I've noticed has been kind of on the periphery, possibly not at this conference, but in the general workforce, you know? So we'd like to talk to women of color in tech and kind of get their perspectives, which may be different from just general women in tech. Okay, yeah. Okay, and how about you, Peter? I mean, you're offering the male perspective here. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we should not just work and intend them on that project in particular. Anita Borg Institute, which I think is somewhere over there, they've got some great initiatives going. I think Latinas, Latino women encoding, Black women encoding, South Asian women encoding, really great stuff. So we paid a visit to the booth yesterday and got a really good perspective from, I think, Maybelline. She was really nice. She helped us out with a couple of quotes. Yeah, we're just trying to get as many perspectives and as many diverse perspectives as we can. Let's talk a little bit about the future of journalism. So this is an industry, my industry, but it is an industry under fire, under pressure, difficult to monetize. Where do you see yourselves fitting in, in terms of the future of this industry? Yeah, we've talked about this before, but we'd both like to go into journalism, but we kind of recognize it as something that may not be sustainable, which is obviously an unfortunate thing. Just the future of journalism, parade media is dying out. So I personally see myself more on the online realm, possibly making interactive maps and elements that can be seen from people throughout the whole world. And Peter, in terms of you, what makes you want to be a journalist or do you want to be a journalist? Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think, especially this conference, is a perfect example. As a journalist, you just float around, talk to a bunch of different people. That's obviously an oversimplification, but it's a whole lot of fun. And obviously it's a really important thing to have in society. If you don't have journalists, you don't have a lot of social change and efforts to keep the government in check, things like that. But obviously, yeah, print media, it's got a limited number of days, so online and digital, that's the way to go in the future. And then in terms of technology, I mean, Palo Alto High School is one of the top high schools in the country. You already have programs like computer science and robotics and coding. It's really part of the DNA of your neighborhood. And yet, so many other parts of the country don't have those programs. I mean, how do you think your life is different in the sense of how you are coming of age in Silicon Valley, seeing these things, having your friends' parents work at these big companies, your friends no doubt have startups of their own too. I mean, how do you think that has shaped you and then also how you want to tell stories about this industry? Yeah, it's definitely shaped my perspective of really everything, just the fact that young people like us can actually make a difference and come to conferences like this, right? I'm currently doing a story about the disparity of education between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, which is just 10 miles away yet, doesn't have like, they're at the same resources, pale in comparison to ours. And one problem is just the cyclical cycle. They don't, their parents don't have money to pay taxes to make the education system right. So they don't, they just don't have those opportunities. I think the way that I see it is that us, Palo Altens, and people who could actually enact change need to be inclusive and need to bring those people in and give them the opportunities to come to conferences like this and to partake in journalism, okay? Peter? Yeah, obviously we're blessed to be here at this conference. We're the only high school kids here and we're very thankful for that. But it's really important education. It can't be overemphasized. And there was a keynote speaker yesterday who was talking about her initiative to get girls to code more in low income areas. Those kinds of things are terrific and we really need to spread more of that. Obviously we have a lockdown in Palo Alto but as Alicia said, in East Palo Alto, in Redwood City, very close in proximity, but in terms of educational levels, unfortunately, yeah, it's a different story. So it's really important to really spread the word. Great. Well thank you so much, Peter. Thank you so much, Alicia. Thanks for having us. And thank you for joining us. This has been theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Houston, Texas. We'll be back after the short break.