 ThinkTech Away, Civil Engagement Lives Here. Good afternoon. This is ThinkTech. I'm Jay Fidel. That's David Benau. David is an intern here with us at ThinkTech. And we thought we'd expose him to the stum in the drum of doing a talk show with us. OK. And David is a senior. And he's graduated from Command Mayor Schools this coming May. Yeah, this May. So this is his last semester, exciting, yeah. So we really like having you as an intern. And you've been helping us, and we really appreciate that. And we really appreciate Command Mayor Schools. They're one of our underwriters, which we appreciate a lot, you know? So David, tell us about life in school. Tell us about where you are. We want to sort of get inside your head, your skin, and see how it looks from your point of view. All right? And I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions about that. Right. So tell me how it is. Personally, I've had a bit of an interesting journey through school. Through intermediate, I've kind of started off, like kind of at the top of my class. And I was moving through everything really fast. But once I came to Command Mayor High School, my whole world was flipped. Honestly, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to expect. But I knew at some point that things were going to be different. And then as I got older and bolder, I kind of learned more about the world, you know? When did you enter Command Mayor? I came in freshman year. Oh, okay. So you've had at least the full Heisman experience anyway, yeah. So older and bolder, my goodness gracious. Tell us about the transition. I mean, I really appreciate you being candid with us and telling us about your life and telling us about your student experience because I am actually going to apply to Command Mayor myself. Oh, really? I want to have the same experience. I want to learn from you. You can always be on the wait list. After a while, yeah? So what has it been like? You say you've changed. This is a remarkable journey, as you said. Tell us about that journey. I guess one of the greatest things that I've learned was definitely perspective. I was able to see a lot of different viewpoints. But specifically, my viewpoint towards school has changed a lot. I'd say I definitely see a lot of things wrong with just school in general, with the way how it is, and I'd like to see it different. I'd like to change that. In what way? One of the biggest ways are the grading system and the content learned. I feel that the grading system doesn't really support learning. I feel like it supports memorization and regurgitation, and I don't like that. I'm learning throughout just authentic learning experiences, like chasing a project or doing something that you're really interested in. There's always failure throughout the entire process. From beginning to end, there's failure. But the success comes when you look towards that failure and you learn something from it. I feel like school doesn't truly support the whole process, they just support the end result. The success. Right, the success. But you get a depth out of failure. It's like every entrepreneur, we'll talk about that in a little while, has to have some failures to be a successful entrepreneur. It's part of the program. Take a moment, I should tell you how we met. We did meet. So Commitment of Schools had a partnership program with Oceanit, which is across the street. And Oceanit wanted to do some public familiarization with AI, artificial intelligence. So they publicized this program, which is at the Halao property, right near Teddy's better burgers. Right. Halao and Ana. Which is really a beautiful space. And that's where they had this AI program to familiarize people who wanted to know more about it. And I decided how to go, because I need to know more about AI. I still need to know more about it. I mean, every time you look at these tech journals and newsletters, they tell you about things that AI is doing and how it's going to affect our lives and change our world. So I wanted to go down there and learn. And the guy sitting next to me in this program, which was very good, was David. And I'm stumbling and bumbling around the computer. I forget why I was just stumbling and bumbling that day, and I would turn to him and I would say, can you help me? I can't follow these guys, because there was a hands-on discussion. This was one of those programs. It was very good. Oceanit did a good job. Ian Kitachima, other fellow from Oceanit, talking about AI. And you had to follow along on the computer. There's a best way to learn, really. And so David helped me through that, and I appreciated that, and I said, this is an unusual person. Let's do more of David. So I suggested he come down, take a look at the studio. And the rest is history. Now he's an intern with us. So your interest, I mean, you have to have some interest if you knew that much about computers and AI. Where does that fit in your life? Where has that fit in your life? Well, personally, this kind of goes back to that throwback that you called to entrepreneurship. Eventually, I want to run my own company. And I know that if I want to run my own company, I have to be able to do everything from the bottom to the top, at least at some point. So I figured computers and all these different aspects of technology are essential to a business in the modern day. Okay. So you took it further than that, though. You're more than just a budding millennial. You have, I don't want to say an academic, but a practical interest at the least in knowing how this stuff works and being good at it. You are good at it. I can tell you that. I can tell you that. How deep are you involved in this sort of thing with computers, computer programming, coding, with learning as many products as you can find, and studying AI as well? Well, earlier you just mentioned practical experience, and that's actually where I gained everything from, and that's through different experiences that I've gained throughout internships and just different shadowings. One of the most remunercent ones was the Altino coding classes. Oceanit also had Altino programming where they teach teachers how to code so that they can teach their students how to code. I first started off in the program, but then eventually I became one of the student instructors there. Ah, hence your title on the lower third of our movie here, Student Slash Instructor. So you're a student instructor at Kamehameha Schools in general, eh? I guess you could say that. All right. What are you a student to the extent that you major in anything, and what are you or instructor in? For a student, I'd say that more of a broad term where I'm just really interested in learning things, and when something captures my interest, kind of just dive into it, and I really just get lost in it. As far as the instructor point is, I said earlier that I taught coding to teachers and students and all this sort of like. I've also done some work with, have you heard of design thinking? Sure, absolutely. Oceanit, you didn't get the GM, a kid of GM had been doing that, you know, and publicizing that for years, yeah. Right. Out of Stanford, it's important. Just last summer, I did a couple of the sessions with them, and I helped instruct it. Oh, really? Yeah. That's not easy. Okay, design thinking is a way of thinking, it's a way of solving problems. It's a way of analyzing the problem to the point where you really understand what the problem is, and then taking certain specific logical steps to solve the problem. It's very important in entrepreneurial activity, but it's also important in life in general actually. Why don't you give me your definition of design thinking? To me, design thinking is instead of working around a solution, you work with a problem and each step creates a more effective solution. So it's incremental. Right. One of the biggest aspects of design thinking is empathy, and that's being able to connect with your consumer base. The person who has a problem, and you help him understand the problem, because otherwise he may be overcome, overtaken, overwhelmed by the problem, and he doesn't know what his real problem is. Right. A lot of times that's the case where someone thinks they have a problem, but actually the problem is in a completely different direction. Very valuable. Very valuable to have that. Wow. So you teach that? Yes. Wow. Okay. So around this has got to be a world view, and I want to know what the world view is. We're going to delve into that. We're going to ask you hard questions about that right after this break. Dave and Brunow will be right back. You'll see. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii, and on our show we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hello. I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on Think Tech Hawaii called Konnichiwa Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha. Dave and Brunow, never forget that name. He's here with us. He's in our intern. He's a senior in Kamehameha schools, and he's here to answer and to allow us to understand him better. Okay, so I'd like to know how you see the world. How do you see the world? Do they say that these days they say that the problem is that in the past kids always thought that they would do, and their parents always thought that kids would do better than they had done. Now, it's not so clear because the world, the economy, the system in general, this doesn't seem to be as promising as it used to be. How do you feel about that? If you're asking from my perspective on the world and how I see it, I think I see it kind of exactly in the way of coding and design thinking where there are problems and there are solutions, and you have to use different skill sets, different tool sets like empathy to reach out and find new problems and solutions. Yeah, okay. So what are the problems that you, I mean personally, what are the problems you think you're going to have to cope with? What are the problems that you feel you have to get over in order to get into the next chapter of your life? I think one of the biggest problems, and this applies everywhere, is sustainability. And this could be the environment, this could be the economy, this could be education system, it's everywhere. Sustainability just means being able to do something over and over again. Yeah, but you want to do it over and over better, don't you? Yeah, roving over better. You know, our motto here is every day better, we really mean that. And we're not happy unless it's better tomorrow than it is today and better today than it was yesterday. And it's not a bad model to follow, I think. So okay, so let's break that down, unpack that as they say, climate change, big threat to Hawaii. Right. Sea level rise, you have the possibility of extreme weather that could really bust us up good, you have the possibility of a changing environment where a couple of degrees temperature in the ocean or on the land could affect the ecology in such a way so the place is not the same anymore. But there's not much we can do about it, we can contribute a little bit to less fossil fuel and less carbon emissions, but we are somehow vulnerable, very vulnerable to climate change. How do you feel about that? Does that affect your decision, ultimately, the decision you're going to have to make about whether to live here or somewhere else, decision you have to make about occupation, about how are you going to invest your time, your life, your aspirations? How important is it for you? I think it's both directly and indirectly vital to, I think, the future of Hawaii, the future of me, the future of everyone, because climate change is like our climate it's everything that we live on. And one of the things that I think we should focus on is changing things, not on just a small scale level, not just the personal level, but actually at the industry level. I think that's the biggest demographic or the biggest target audience to hit. On a small scale, one person can only do so much, but when you have a whole industry making that change, making that effort, I think that you can really push for a better future. So you're talking about community and community building, organizing people to do the right thing. And that always has an intersection with technology these days, you know. So what is your thought about technology for you and for solving these larger community problems? Where does it fit? How do you say, how do you see yourself becoming, you know, a purveyor, a consumer of technology in order to create community? I think one of the biggest things that technology does is bring people together. And I think that is what we can use technology for one of the main parts. By bringing people together, we can unite for a common cause. So what might those causes be? I hang on every word. Common causes, again, one of the biggest ones, climate change, by bringing people together with technology, we can have more sustainable mindsets and more sustainable lifestyles that can more positively impact our environment. So that does raise the specter, I say specter advisedly, of dealing with government, because we're in a kind of perpetual crisis these days over government. And I want to know your view of government, state and federal, if you distinguish them. And I want to know how all of this interacts, you know, the technology, climate concerns about climate change, the need for community to deal with these things, and government in general. What do you think of government, David? Well, I think government inherently doesn't have to be as messy as it is now. Personally, I think government kind of gets in the way of itself a lot, because there are lots of rules and regulations and they are there for a reason, but I feel like sometimes that can inhibit sometimes the right course of action. So how is a young fellow from Hawaii trained in a very good school, Kamehameha schools, going to make an impression on these things, either statewide, nationally, or globally? Do you have a sense that you could have an effect? I think everyone has an effect to some degree. It's just what you aspire to do and how that impacts the world. Okay. Do you have an idea about what you would do to have that effect? I mean, what course, what path would you want to take to play out, you know, your engagement with the world? Part of this is occupation. Right. It's a hint. A hint. I think I have to take the road least traveled, the most unconventional path, and I feel like entrepreneurship would be probably the best course of action for that kind of impact. Let's talk about that, entrepreneurship. You know, when I asked you a few days ago what you want to talk about, you talked about entrepreneurship and business education or entrepreneurship education. This is really sophisticated stuff. That doesn't come easy because, you know, the notion of an entrepreneur kind of assumes that you don't have a business, that you have to create a business. Exactly. Okay. How did you get involved in that? What drew you to the subject of entrepreneurship and, better yet, educating people in entrepreneurship? Well, I'd like to say that it all started when I went to this networking event hosted at Halloween Anna. There, I kind of mingled a little bit, but after the event ended, I kind of stayed behind the scenes, and I saw some problems with, like, how everything was going, so I asked if I could help out a little bit. And eventually that turned into an internship, and I got to learn a lot from my bosses and mentors and job shadowings and everything. Through it, I was exposed to a lot of local companies and businesses, and I kind of just got this spark that I wanted to get involved with it. Have you noticed yet that David is a really good listener, and he's listening to you. He's completely aware. And then, you know, all this activity in his mind, he's able to articulate it. These are rare talents, you know. Listening is so important, but so is being able to articulate a position. So, okay, so this is not easy to be an educator in entrepreneurship. And frankly, in this community, there aren't that many people who want to do that or can do that to help people build businesses that will have an impact, a positive impact on the community. How do you plan to do that? Well, by planning to do that, I would have to incorporate certain ethics or morals, but really just I need to put the idea of sustainability into whatever I'm creating. And that applies to all aspects of it. Through marketing, through product placement, through everything that the business is involved in, sustainability can be found. Okay, sustainability going beyond climate change and all that environment, but keeping this business going, making it bigger and better all the time. What kind of business? You must have a business. You must ideate a kind of business. Tell me in your imagination what kind of business is this. I want to create a business, essentially a school. And this school would be different from how school has been shaped since way back when, since the industrial era. I want it to be sort of a modern school, something where you can learn in a way that's authentic. What's authentic learning? Tell me. Authentic learning is a messy process. And it's not about what your result is, it's about the progress from where you begin and from where you ended up. It's outcomes. Right. So what's an outcome that you want to achieve in this messy learning process? One of the most important things that I want are I want soft skills and I want hard skills. Hard skills like coding and editing and all those different things that you can put on paper. But then soft skills are things like design thinking, different mindsets that you gain. Wow, that's pretty interesting. So what really interests me is that you're speaking about teaching entrepreneurs but also being an entrepreneur to develop a school. So which is it? What is the goal for you to be the entrepreneur that builds the school that teaches the entrepreneurs to build more schools? Or to be the entrepreneur who is going to build a business using these principles? Well, I'm still young. I still have a lot of time to figure these things out. But I would like to create kind of a self-fulfilling system where I can inspire more people to think with different perspectives and to have insight to look towards the community, look towards empathy and have that drive their ambitions. How do you inspire people to do that? Inspire me now, David. Say something to inspire me. Something to inspire you? I think inspiring people is not about the words you say. I think inspiring people comes from the actions that you do. So leadership by example. So then you would lead in creating an entrepreneurial activity and show me how to do it. And you would somehow communicate the fact that it can be done. And I should try that same thing too. But as you said before, in any entrepreneurial activity building any kind of organization, you have to have multiple skills, hard skills. You have to know about bookkeeping and accounting. You don't have to know about law. You have to know about computers. You have to know about getting things done, organizing people, raising money. We do all these things here in Think Tech. Maybe that's why he's an intern. He's watching us. So I guess you're going to go to college soon. I don't know if you're going to take a gap here or not, but ultimately you'll go to college. Well, first, are you going to take a gap here? I've been thinking that that will be really important to my growth as a person, as a student, even as an instructor to really take the time to develop more of my hard skills and soft skills and maybe develop even more mindsets. Okay. You haven't decided. You haven't till May to decide. I have a while. We'll be checking in with you. He's going to be an intern for us for a few months so we'll be able to follow up on this. So, assuming now we're past the gap here, whether you take it or not, and we're into college, what sort of view do you have of college? Where does it fit in the development of your world view, your skills, and the satisfaction of your aspirations to do entrepreneurial things to develop education? Personally, I just view college as a means to an end. It's just another tool that I can use. Whether I end up going to college or not, I feel that it's really just a means to an end. Okay. But you'll have to pick a major and probably a minor. What kinds of things would be of interest? Well, I know marketing is really important. It's how you get to your consumer base. It's how you get your word out. So, I'd be interested in majoring in marketing because it's invaluable wherever you go. Okay. You'd be inclined to do that. Any minors, any other courses? How about computer programming and computer science? I was thinking about also minoring in computer science but I would also probably be inclined to develop that on my own spare time. Interesting. It's true because you go to the University of Hawaii, you find a lot of scientists, they learn it on their own time and they use it because it's all about big data now and every scientist has to have that but he's not necessarily going to go take a PhD in the subject. He's going to learn it on his own and indeed it's doable these days. Okay. So, the other thing is where are you going to go to school? I mean, big issue for so many kids graduating high school in Hawaii. Where are you going to go to school here? You've got limited options. Some are pretty good. Or are you going to go to the mainland and seek, you know, mainland top of the line excellent education there? I think one of the big problems that Hawaii has is the brain drain and that's where you have a whole bunch of students graduating from high school and instantly they just leave Hawaii to go to the mainland to go off island to go to college but the problem is that they don't come back. I'm actually more inclined to stay on island for college. I feel like it's just more cost effective and as a wise man once told me you can have a UH experience at Harvard or you can have a Harvard experience at UH. That's going to be on the final exam. We're about out of time actually, David but I'd like to offer you a minute. Face camera one over there. That's camera one. They were just blinking at you and tell them why you are different from every other human being on the planet. What is special about you? What is the essential, David Vanau? Well, most people they walk away from failure but I run towards it. I jump into it. That's what sets me apart. Alright. Thank you, David. Great discussion. Thank you so much. Aloha.