 Hello, and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm delighted to present our special guests for today's program, and they are Kyle Hines, VP Strategic Accounts at Presidio, as well as Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Thank you. Terrific. Well, delighted to have you here. We're going to discuss the key award of best partner transformation, most impactful nonprofit partner. Of course, now highlighting some of the technologies now being leveraged to help preserve the Cherokee language as well as its culture. Now, Chuck, I'd like to start with you, and if you could describe some of the challenges that the Cherokee Nation is now faced with in terms of preserving the language and its culture, and how you see technology being able to really help preserve it. Well, thank you, Natalie. It's really good to be with you all today. The Cherokee language and culture is what makes us unique as a people. It's the link that links us back to time and memorial through generations. And over those generations, there have been many threats to our language and culture. There's been disease after European contact. There's been dispossession. There's been our forced removal on the Trail of Tears. Other pressures in more modern times have continued to erode our language and culture, including boarding schools, the public school system through most of the 20th century, as Cherokee Nation has gotten back on its feet. That is to say, when the government of the United States has allowed Cherokee Nation to do what we've always done well, which is to govern ourselves, chart our own destiny, and preserve our life ways. We've been able to make preservation efforts. But those generations of eroding our language and culture has come at a steep cost. We're the largest tribe in the country, 392,000 citizens. And by the way, we're mostly in Northeast Oklahoma. We have Cherokees living all over the country, even all over the world. And we only have 2,000 fluent speakers left. So it's a great challenge to save a language that's truly in danger. And if we don't save it, generations from now, we may do a number of things exceedingly well as we do today, business, providing education and housing, creating a great healthcare system. But we will have lost that thing that makes us a unique people, that thing that links us back to our past. And so what we're doing today, working with great partners like Presidio, is just indispensable to what's really our most important mission. Yeah, terrific. Well, thank you so much for those insights. I'd like to switch it over to Kyle and hear about the technologies now being utilized to preserve the Cherokee language and culture. Sure, happy to Natalie. And thanks for having us this morning. So yeah, when we started to work with the Cherokee Nation, it was very clear to us that there's obviously a higher power or a higher mission here. And so it's really been an honor to work with the chief in the nation. And what we've been able to do is take what the Cherokee Nation is trying to do in terms of language and cultural preservation, and build solutions in really a very modern way. So between Inaugay, the 3D mobile open world game and the virtual classroom platform, it's entirely a cloud native serverless solution in AWS, using a lot of the most modern tools and technologies in the marketplace. For example, in the mobile game, it's built around Unity. And the virtual classroom platform is built around the Amazon Chime SDK, which allows us to really build something that is very clean and light and focused on what the nation is trying to achieve and really cut out a lot of the baggage and the other sort of plumbing and various other technologies that this type of solution would have taken just a few short years ago. Yeah, terrific. Well, Kyle, staying with you, what do you think were some of the factors behind the development of this solution? Yeah, so I think flexibility was key, was maybe the biggest design goal in building these solutions, because you learn a lot when you originally set out to build something and it starts to impact real users, and in this case, speakers of the Cherokee Nation, you learn a tremendous amount about the language and how it's used and how people communicate with each other. And so the main design goal of the solutions was to allow a sort of flexibility that lets us adapt. And every time we learn something and every time we find something that works or perhaps doesn't work quite as well as was imagined, we have the flexibility to change that and kind of stay nimble and on our toes. Terrific. Well, Chuck, now switching over to you, why do you think that some of these, you know, platforms like the virtual classroom are so effective with Cherokee speakers? Well, a couple of reasons. One pandemic related, you know, during COVID, the worst public health crisis that the world seen in living memory, we have had to adapt quickly to continue on our mission to save this language. We couldn't afford a year off in terms of pairing speakers, by the way, most of our fluent speakers are over the age of 70 with young people who need to learn the language and be the new generation of speakers. So it's been really important that during those difficult times, we could connect virtually and the technology we've been using has worked so effectively. But the other is really irrespective of what's going on in terms of having to isolate and social distance and things of that nature during COVID. And that is just making sure we can make this language accessible, particularly to young people in a manner in which they are becoming accustomed to learning things throughout the rest of the world. And so using platforms that they're familiar with is very important. But it also has to be something that an older generation of these fluent speakers, as I say, most of them are over 70 can use. And that's what really has been so effective about this platform. It's so usable once you introduce it to people, whether it's a young person who can adapt pretty quickly because they're growing up immersed in it, or it's someone who has not been familiar with technology, with just a little bit of showing them how to use it, suddenly this classroom becomes just like you're in person. And that makes all the difference in the world in terms of connecting these young people with their elders. That's the other thing is Cherokees are, by nature, very much part of a big extended family. And so that personal connection that you can maintain through this platform is really important. I think it's going to be the key to how we save this language, because as I say, we have Cherokees all over the country, even all over the world. We're going to harness our numbers, the large population we have, and find those with the interest and aptitude to learn the language. We must use this technology, and so far it's worked well. Yeah, terrific. And now, switching over to Kyle, would love to hear from you how your team developed this technology, how they really thought out what kinds of methods are really going to drive the interaction and the immersion and engagement among these disparate demographics of elderly Cherokees and also the young generation. So how did your team go about developing that? Yeah, it's a very good question, because in a situation like this, there is no shortage of different ways that you could have built a solution like this. There are a lot of different ways that it could have been done. So the tact that we took was a rigorous focus on the user experience and on the experience of the speaker. And that allowed us to detach ourselves to a large degree from what were the exact technology choices that were implemented in terms of AWS services, other open source packages that run on AWS. It's being able to focus completely on what the nation was trying to achieve with the speakers, both through the game and the virtual classroom platform. It led us to take a lot of other design decisions and technology choices sort of into the background and behind a level of abstraction. And so there's always quite a bit of rigorous testing and really making sure you understand how something's going to perform in the wild. But the reality of the situation was the whole reason for doing it was the experience of the speakers both in the game and in the classroom platform. So we stayed very focused on that and made technology decisions sort of second fiddle or lower priority. Perfect. Well, Chuck, how do you think that these kinds of innovations could be applied to other areas of the Cherokee school system? Well, our greatest challenge is preserving language and culture. But we also have as part of our mission to educate this new generation of Cherokees coming up. For years and years, really generations, Cherokees who were able to get a good education, many of them left our tribal lands for new opportunities. And so we lost a great deal because of the economic pressures here in Northeast Oklahoma, particularly on our Cherokee lands. So the task now is to generate opportunity for a new generation coming up. Education is key to that. And so if we want to create a pipeline of young Cherokees who want to get into the healthcare fields, want to get into aerospace, want to get into other professions, we've got to create an education system that is steady art and modern. We have a school that is K through 12th grade, K through the senior year. And so we have an opportunity really to do that. And I think for the first time in our history, in this era, I'm talking like the last few decades, we are able to really craft education in a way that works for us. And using technology and making choices about what that technology is, is important to us. It's a bygone era in which the federal government or the state is sort of imposing on us what choices we make. Now we can reach out with great partners all over the world, like Presidio, and say what solution can work for our classroom when we can identify what the great demands are on the reservation in terms of jobs. And one of the great demands we have is healthcare. So how can we use technology to inspire little Cherokee boys and girls to grow up and be doctors and nurses here in just a few decades when we're building this great health system? Well, we're going to use technology to do it. So the possibilities are really unlimited. And they need to be because we think our potential here in Cherokee Nation is unlimited. Yeah, I mean, that's terrific to hear how technology is really encouraging younger generations to study, learn, and really push themselves further. You know, Kyle, I'd like to switch over to you and hear a little bit about the benefits of launching this kind of platform on AWS. Yeah, there's there are a lot of benefits to building this on AWS. And I think that it spans a couple of categories even. So I mean, from a technological perspective, there was every tool and every service that we needed to build both of the solutions that we built right there in AWS. And when there was a when there was a time where we needed to jump out and use a project outside of AWS running on AWS, such as the Unity engine, AWS makes that very easy. So I would say that the choice was easy, because there are technological realities and the breadth and the depth of the technological portfolio in AWS, combined with the partnership that we get from them. It's really, you know, there's a lot of support when it comes to, Hey, we're working with the Cherokee Nation on something that's extremely important. We need your help. We need you to help us figure this out. It's, you know, it's never been hard to get that partnership. Perfect. And also following up on that little love to hear, you know, how AWS really helped with flexibility and also the cost effect effectiveness of this kind of platform. Yeah, I would take those questions backwards or in reverse order, because the cost effectiveness of the solution is really, it's really something to make note of because when we build something in the way that we built these platforms, they're serverless and event driven, meaning that the Cherokee Nation is not paying for a solution constantly as we would in the, in lives past running things in data centers and such. It really, the services in AWS allow us to say, Hey, let's, let's spin up certain pieces of functionality when they're needed as they're being used. And the, you know, the meter is running during that time and the cost is occurred during the time it's being used and not all of the time. So that really has a dramatic impact on cost effectiveness. And then from a flexibility standpoint, as we learn new things as we evolve the platform, as we grow this out to more and more speakers and to more and more impact to the Cherokee Nation, we have all kinds of different technology choices that we can make and it's all contained within AWS. Yeah, and I'd like to open this now to both of you, you know, starting with Chuck, how do you think this kind of technology could be applied to other cultures or languages that are seeking to preserve themselves? You know, there's so many languages in the world that are now dying out because most of us are only speaking just a few like English, Spanish, just a few others. You know, what steps can be taken so that, you know, humanity can preserve these important languages? Well, you're right. There are so many endangered languages around the world and indigenous languages are unfortunately dying all over the world all the time, even as we speak, they're slipping away. The United Nations has dedicated the next decade to the preservation of indigenous languages. That's gotten many leaders around the world thinking about how we can save languages here in this era. And I would encourage any tribal leader in particular in the United States, but I think it certainly applies around the world to seek out this technology. I mean, Chair Ganesh is in a position now where we can seek out the best in the world in terms of partnerships. And we found that in Presidio. And of course, they're using AWS, which means they're using the best in the world. And so the technology exists and the willingness to work together exists. And I think generations ago that would have been not something we could have connected well on in terms of partnering with companies that were doing cutting edge things. So if you're looking to connect generations in terms of learning and sharing the language, which is just I cannot stress enough how indispensable that is to language preservation. This type of technology will do it. You know, there are some I think that may think and I don't have a technology background that if you're using this cutting edge technology, I mean, this is the best in the world that you're going to speak only to this young generation coming up and maybe it's inaccessible to an older generation. It's just not the case. This is so user friendly that we've been able to connect elders with young people. And if anyone in the world interested in preserving languages could see this in action, could see a young person sitting next to an elder talking about the technology or connecting virtually, it would change their whole perspective on what technology means for language preservation. Because I promise you all over the world, the great challenge is you have this group of older generations of people who know the language, they have it in their hearts, they have it in their minds, and they're slipping away just from the passage of time. Connecting them with the generation coming up is just what we need to do. This technology allows us to do it. Yeah, you know, Chuck, following up on that when I hear about elderly people being able to connect with the younger generations in this way and share their history and their culture, I'm sure that also, you know, it must have a positive mental effect for them, right? So elderly are often isolated. Do you have any insight on that? Any qualitative insight, what you've heard from people using this? Yeah, absolutely. And I think the last year has proven how valuable it is. I mean, we lost over 50 fluent Cherokee speakers. And I mentioned earlier in the program that we only have 2,000 left, 50 to COVID and more to just the passage of time and old age. But we have many that are active and engaged in language preservation. And they have said, to me, how valuable it's been to be able to be at home and yet still feel like they're part of this great mission that we have at the Cherokee Nation. Understand that this mission that we have is on par with what any nation in history has set as a goal to shoot for, whether it's the United States wanting to land a man on the moon, we're trying to save the language. This is that level of importance. And so for an elder to feel like they're connected and still contributing during this past year, difficult times, that makes all the difference of the world. And even as I say, as the pandemic recedes, and we hope it continues to recede, there is still a need for elders to stay connected. And in many cases, they cannot do the poor health, do the lack of transportation. This knocks down those barriers. And so there's a great deal of joy that has been gained from using this technology. And honestly, just talking to elders about young people getting the opportunity to play this video game, even some elders that were voice actors in this game that Presidio helped us develop. I mean, I can't tell you how important that is for somebody to use their language to make a living. And that's part of how you preserve a language. Presidio has showed us a way that we can do just that. So we're not only training new speakers, we're giving this opportunity, many cases to elders, to do something that is very productive with the wonderful gift they have, which is the Cherokee language. Terrific. Well, you know, that is really inspiring because potentially this technology could be utilized by generations to come. The current young people that are using this will one day be the elderly. So, you know, Kyle, how do you see this technology potentially or this platform being evolved? What's the next step to keep it really, you know, up to date for, you know, future generations as it's evolving? Yeah, there's a lot of plans on where to take this, I can tell you honestly. From the perspective of the mobile game, building on a platform of an open-world game means that the imagination is the limit, quite honestly. So there are a lot of new characters and new levels and new adventures that are planned to further immerse the speakers in the platform. And, you know, I think that will help with reach and it will help with the amount of connection that's built to the chief's point about bridging the older generations into the younger generations over that common bond of the language and the culture. You know, that keeps those connections alive. And so we want to expand the mobile game, the Inagi, to be as accessible and as wide-reaching and immersive as it possibly can. And there are a lot of plans in the works for that. And then with the virtual classroom platform, we started with a very focused constituency within the nation of the language immersion school. And there are many other educational services and even healthcare to the chief's earlier point again, where I think there's a lot of potential for that one as well. All right. Well, terrific, gentlemen. Thank you so much for your insights. Really fantastic hearing how this platform is really making a difference in the lives of people in the Cherokee Nation. You know, of course, that were our guests, Kyle Heinz, BP Strategic Accounts at Presidio, as well as Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., the chief of the Cherokee Nation. And that's all for today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. I'm your host for the Cube Natalie Orlick. Thanks so much for watching.