 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Four o'clock, four o'clock rock, four o'clock block here on Think Tech. It's Think Tech Tech, but it's also Community Matters. It's Brian Dote, Dote again. Yeah, Dote, perfect. And he's the innovation officer at Mid-Pak, which is a very important job because Mid-Pak is a very high tech school and Brian has these incredible credentials. Can you talk about your credentials and don't be modest. Oh, OK, sure, sure. I'm a former Silicon Valley software engineer. I worked at some of the big tech companies in the Valley. I worked at Cisco. I worked at Apple. And I worked in the, I was fortunate to work in the first iPhone, so I was part of the iPhone launch team, worked on some software for the first iPhone, worked on the second iPhone, worked on what is now iPod. It's been that long. It's been up for a long time. I remember when there was no iPhone. But I worked on some of the sync services at the iPhone users as well. So people are familiar today with iCloud, for example. I worked in the precursor to the precursor to the precursor of iCloud. Wow. Back in the day. Tell me how to use it. So I mean, you came back. This is kind of remarkable because there's not many around like you. I was always impressed with the fact you came back. There must be something really Hawaii driving you, Brian. Well, I mean, one of the primary reasons is Hawaii and its family and its the community. Once you've grown up here, it's hard to leave. It's hard to stay away. And it's such a natural fit for us as a family to come back to. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Is it meeting your expectations? You're back now. I want six or seven years. It's been 10 years. 10 years already. I'm giving myself a time flash. It's been 10 years now. And it's worked out really well. Yeah. Yeah, OK. It's a very innovative space, a very welcoming community in the tech industry and in all industries. But I've been able to sort of shoehorn myself right back in and get my feet running. Perfect, perfect. Well, I was waiting for you. It was a pleasure waiting for you. I made you wait too long. No, you needed to come back. But Hawaii needed to have you come back. That's the reality. We need 10,000 more like your friends in California. So mid-pack. Well, I mean, last check in the mid-pack, it was kind of remarkable. Harry Weinberg gave them a lot of money to buy iPads. And they did buy iPads for every student. And then the students began teaching the teachers. And the teachers got really, really excited about it. And you built this sort of extraordinary modular science room, tech room, where they could work in groups and do all this really high-tech collaboration. It was impressive. It was as much as anything I've seen in any high school here in Hawaii. And then you, you're right there. You make that happen. Yes. That's your environment. What's it like these days? It's sort of what you describe. It's an amazing environment. It's with students and iPads, you know, you're not tethered to a desk. So the learning can happen anywhere. And if learning can happen anywhere, then it can happen in the lab. It can happen outside in the field. It can happen on the football field or in classrooms. Anywhere you want, our students are capable of accessing the internet or doing work in their iPads. And so the modular design of the space, as well as the fluidity of the classes, makes it a really interesting environment for learning. And I think it's the right environment because we don't want kids in rows and rows and rows with the teacher in the front, right? We want people to float around and experience other things in the area. And the space should be fluid and dynamic. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful thing. Well, don't you wish you were a student? I looked for back. Can I sign that every day? They must have the most fabulous experience, you know? And the world is their oyster. And, you know, I was telling you before, I get these tech journals like the MIT Bulletin or whatever it is, a daily thing, and some others, too. They're a high priority for me, so I do look at them. And first of all, they don't talk about Trump, which is a good thing. They talk about science. And they titillate you every day with these fantastic discoveries happening in information technology, happening in medicine, happening in all kinds of research. I mean, we may be short on research funding, but we are not short on research. There are people, you know, it's like a momentum thing. They started doing heavy research. They started getting engaged with science before we got into political trouble over the, you know, funding of research. And they still do it, and they still publish about it. And we have a juggernaut of research in this country, in this planet, I think. So you're delivering this. So, yeah, so what I always envision is the gap between research, or R&D, and the MIT information that you're consuming, and education space. The gap is too big. You know, there's such a long divide between when something is discovered and something is taught, and then when something reaches consumer adoption. And so what I really strive to do is shorten that lead time. So as new technologies come out, and you hear about it or I hear about it, you know, why not bring that into the educational world now? Why wait 10 years? Why wait 10 years? Why wait for a mass consumer adoption? Exactly, they can handle it. And it may not succeed. The technology may sort of wither and die because it was just the wrong time in the wrong place, but we should be willing to take those chances. We should be willing to, that's innovation. Like you don't innovate on something that's a done deal or a guaranteed success, right? That's not innovation, it's the opposite. You try things that are risky that are, you have to be a little agile, you got to be willing to sort of be on that bleeding edge and take a chant. And so that's what I try to do is find those technologies and bring them in early. And we have the teachers and the faculty that are willing to try that out and really run with it and they love that stuff. And so, you know, that combination is perfect. I'd love to see you, the Hawaii's kids get involved in science and technology. You know, every year we go to the science fair, we follow the Hawaii Academy of Science and all that, we go take a lot of video and whenever people are presenting there. We have a lot of research people from Manoa come over here and talk in this very chair that you're in, yeah? Every week, actually, we cover science. And the question I have is, are these kids as dedicated to science as you and I might be, were we in that modular room as students today? Are they telling you they want to spend their lives in science of one kind or another? I don't necessarily hear them saying that they want to spend their lives in science. I don't think that they are discipline oriented. It's not that I want to be in science, it's more I want to solve this type of problem or I want to learn this type of technology to do this kind of thing. And so, they're very, I don't want to say outcome oriented but they're very oriented in terms of like projects and sort of meaningful work. And so, it's not that I want to be a scientist, it's I want to solve this problem in the community using virtual reality. That's really the essence, man. That's really, yeah, exactly, exactly. We had, I shouldn't say a student, I was there when he was this tall. He was a very rolly-poly kid. And now he works for Google. Okay. And he's doing work on the Pixel. Okay. He couldn't tell me too much about it but he could tell me what he does for, and it runs right along the line of what you were talking about. What does he think about? What he thinks about the Pixel? He thinks about its effect on society. Oh, wow. Its effect on the quality of life. Its effect on how we work and think and walk around all day. Interesting. What an interesting job to have. Yeah, and it's an interesting take on technology that can impact society. I mean, you're talking about influencing the lives of hundreds of millions of people in ways that are so ubiquitous at this point. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty exciting. I want that job. That sounds cool. Yeah. You're too old. Oh, sorry. You've got to be less than 30. Anyway, so I'd like you to give me some examples of some of the projects they have and you have in these modular science kind of situations where they're exploring not only the science but their own problem-solving abilities. I'd love to tell you. So I have two that I'd love to mention. One we're doing right now and it's with eighth graders and it leverages our virtual reality work that we've been doing. And so we have two virtual reality spaces on campus and we have an immersive technology program. And what we're doing is we're trying to use virtual reality as a means to gain empathy for a real world problem. And so when you think of what virtual reality really means, it means immersing yourself into an experience that you may not otherwise have been able to experience. And so the one that we've been working with over the summer and just this past few days with eighth graders, every single eighth grader, is what's it like to be homeless? What does homelessness mean? Very interesting. And how slippery is that slope? How quickly can you go from a situation where you're not homeless to a situation where you are homeless and what is life like? And it's a short experience run from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. And so it's a game engine based experience and you go through phases of homelessness and students go through that and they come out with a deeper understanding or if not deeper, a different understanding of what that really means to be homeless. And right now it's part of a module that every eighth grader is going through. And so it's amazing. It's amazing to be able to really show someone something in a very engaging way that they may not otherwise have thought possible. Because it's one thing to see a two-dimensional movie or to hear or read stories in a book, but it's different to experience it firsthand inside of a virtual reality environment. And it's a very engaging way to showcase something like that. And so we did that as a study in partnership with Stanford over the summer. And now we're using the same content as a means to teach a greater module for the whole eighth grade. And so we've been doing that. And we continue to sort of try and expand the virtual reality program at Mid-Pacific. So we've been doing a lot in that space. And what's it like though if I'm a student and I have the virtual reality and you don't want to learn about this, I want to integrate this experience into my thought process, how does it work? So what we've done is we've taken virtual reality, if you think of it like what you guys do here, part of it is sort of content creation and part of it is content consumption. And so the experience that they went through as eighth graders are consumption. They're consuming media. But at the high school level, we're teaching how to create that media. So we're teaching 3D game engine design. We're teaching 3D design. We're teaching storytelling through digital tools. We're teaching all of these things so that our high schoolers can create experiences like this for other people to experience. And so content creation versus content consumption is important for us. Because that's really where the magic happens. Yeah, well, I mean you talk about content creation, consumption, it's an awareness thing. You're in touch, you're not in a silo. You're actually engaging with the world. You're sympathetic, empathetic with people who you need to understand. Because you're trying to get the audience to be sympathetic with you or your viewpoint or to understand what you are trying to portray. As you tell your story, what are you really trying to gain with the audience? And so it's important to sort of be behind the camera in that sense. Okay, now I'm pushing it a little further. Okay, through the technologies and through the innovation encouragement that you provide, are you asking them to solve the homeless problem? And are they engaging to the point where they come up with solutions or at least proposed solutions? So this part that I'm not quite sure about. I'm not sure what the rest of this track is in terms of the homelessness part. It's not over. It's not over, it's actually, and again, it's an eighth grade wide project. So it's every single eighth grader through social studies I believe. And so I'm not super savvy on what the outcome of that will be, but that's perfect. Those are the types of things that we aim to do. So you gain empathy and then you solve real world problems in the community, in your community, in your local community, in the global community, and possibly, and it is my hope, that you solve them through some technology that was provided or that can enhance your product or your solution. You wanna make them good citizens. Exactly, that's what it's all about. We need good citizens in this community and everywhere in the country really. So it seems to me, and I'm sure you feel the same way given your background, that science, especially computer technology, information technology, can address nearly any problem. It can do amazing things. You walk into the studio, which is fairly tech, I must say, I'll give you a tour later. I like it. But you could think of 27 things right away to improve what we do. Information technology kinds of things, life is just bristling with issues that can be resolved that way. Are these kids coming off with that idea? Are they incorporating that into their thinking? I think so. What we strive to do is we provide what I like to call a toolbox of technologies and skill sets that the students are using and combining in novel ways to solve problems. And at the older grade levels, they do independent study where they might be spending the whole year tackling a specific issue that's important to them, and they're doing it through the technologies that they've learned in the earlier years, and they're mixing and matching. They're learning virtual reality, 3D design, or they might be learning artificial intelligence or other things, and then combining those things into novel solutions that solve problems in the community. So they're doing that. They're exactly doing what you mentioned, because a lot of our classes are project-based, and so the projects are designed to solve problems like that. Instead of building the next Instagram, it's about solving things like homelessness or sustainability or food safety. Not just theoretical. No, it's not theoretical. It's relevant, and it's relevant to them and their community. Oh my goodness, I want to go back to school. I want to meet some of your kids. We should both go back to school. Can you? We're in the same class. It will be still on. The best thing is to be a lifelong learner. Lifelong learning lives here. And as an employee and being able to have the opportunity to bring the technologies in, I'm about as close to being in the classes that can be, right, so it's rewarding. Well, I want to ask you about your day, how you spend your day, because I want to sort of live inside your skin and enjoy your experience, because I know you do. Right after this break, I also want to ask you about AI. Okay, perfect. I'll make sure where it fits, that mid-pack and where it fits in our world. Be right back after this very short break. You'll see. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Raising Public Awareness. Aloha, I'm Caroline Lee. Think Tech Hawaii is Volunteer Chief Operating Officer. And occasional host, and this is Minky. For the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Your thanks to Think Tech will run only during the month of November, and you can help. Please donate what you can so Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website, www.thanksforthinktech.cozvox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus weekly shows, thank you, mahalo, and shesher for your generosity. I told you, I told you we're coming back. Like MacArthur, we came back. Anyway, Brian Donte from Mid-Pack Institute, which is a wonderful school for tech, and every contact I have with it, I'm so impressed all the time. So, how do you spend your day? Can I sort of just let you know about my brain and show you what I do during the day? You know, it's a, gosh, it's a symphony of different things. Every day is different. A lot of it is understanding and finding new technologies. A lot of it is building partnerships, partnerships in the community, partnerships with folks like you in the tech industry. I spend a ton of time meeting with people, both on campus and off campus, either to see something new and understand how that could fit into the educational environment, or share what we're doing in the educational environment and see how that can fit into the technology industry or the different industries. A lot of networking, a lot of being in the community. And, you know, I think having a big footprint in the tech community here in Hawaii is what I strive to do, and I do that every day. That's great. That's a lot different than geeking out at Silicon Valley, huh? But I really enjoy that too, though. That's a lot of fun, too. I don't know what confused about which one is better, but hey, it's a personal thing. Life is about balance. So, AI. You know, I caught a little piece the other day about AI, and some company, if it doesn't matter which one, one of the big ones was hiring AI experts. Okay, okay. And they were looking for, you know, top expertise, and they were paying a million dollars a year to these guys. How do we apply for that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, not a bad job, yeah. But I mean, that's what's happening with AI. I mean, it's a big promise of the future, and it's all the most sophisticated possibilities, including autonomous vehicles and the like. And I wonder where these, I wonder if these kids realize, you know, that that could be a terrific career. And it's within reach, especially with a teacher like you, you could show them the way, what it really means, and how you kind of change your brain cells around to deal with it. Is there a discussion about that? How do you feel about that? I, AI is the future, artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, autonomous cars. I mean, those things are right around the corner. And kind of what I alluded to earlier, I want us to shorten that gap. So these things are right around the corner. We shouldn't wait 20 years from now to start teaching AI, or 10 years from now. We should start teaching it soon. We should start teaching it now. I mean, maybe we're too late already. And while I'm at a teacher personally, we have some amazing faculty that can teach AI, or that we're trying to build in the professional development so they can teach AI. We are starting with autonomous cars. So we have this Altino platform, which is brought in from South Korea through Oceanet and Ian Kitajima. And these Altino cars, our students are learning to program them. So eventually, they'll be able to do self-driving, self-driving tasks, parallel parking, starting and stopping at the right place. Right now, they're just kind of getting the bearings and learning a little bit about the platform. But these programmable cars are miniature Teslas. Self-driving is going to be a reality very soon. Self-driving is right on the corner. Autonomous vehicles picking us up and taking us everywhere we need to go. That's literally years away. It's happening. And so our students will be, many of our students are not going to even get their driver's license by the time this happens. And so we're preparing them today for those types of careers, those career paths through AI and data science. And while they may not be the million-dollar hires in terms of the AI expertise, they will have a fundamental understanding of how to combine these frameworks in AI to be able to solve problems. Like, how do you get a car from here to there? It's the same. It's the mental. It's the mental. It's the confidence. Exactly. And an understanding and a familiarity with what's possible at a smaller scale. So this little Altino car can do what that big car outdoors can do. And I can map the two because I understand fundamentally at the root level this. So when I see that, I'm like, I get it. I know how it's doing that. I know what sensors they're using, and I know how to determine distance. And so that's the skills that we're teaching today. And we have discussions with the academic technology teachers, and we really want to blow that up in the future and do even more. And so as the tools become more accessible, as the technology becomes more accessible, and something that we can have in the school environment, and then we'll definitely adopt those. Yeah, yeah. And what did I see also that there's a city, I think it's in Arizona right now. They've got the self-driving cars over there. Right now. Yeah, right now. It's the beginning of middle of October. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing. Right now, and you could get in and tell where it went. And it'll take you there. Yes. That's it. No safety driver or anything like that. Yeah. That's the future. I mean, the future's here. Right? The future's already here. And once legislation and cities and everyone else catches up, that'll be the reality our students will have in literally in a few years. And so it's important as an education institution to prepare our students for that future and not teach them things that are going to be left by the wayside and shelf life at that point. But skills and technologies that are going to be there when they get out into college, when they graduate from college. And so AI is hot for many reasons. And then that's a great one. Just recall, and I heard this within the last couple days, is there's a professor by the name An-O-N. OK. I don't know his first name. At UH, do you know about this? No. And Stanford has a program for development of AI. OK. And Stanford wants him. It brought him here. He's here now. It brought him here so he can develop a little lab for AI right here in Hawaii. In Hawaii through the Computer Science College of Engineering? I think so. But I'm not sure. We must visit this place. Exactly where he is in the middle. Wow. That is amazing. This is a big opening for us. Wow. We could be, I mean, we should be, innovators and leaders in that area. Well, that's what I wanted. So these kids, they're Renaissance kids. I've met them, a lot of them. And I'm just so impressed with them. They're fun. They've got great interests. In fact, now that I think about Craig Wagner, his son, Peter Parker Wagner, student at Mid-Pak, he spent the summer here. Oh. He was a great intern, of course. Oh, cool. Good to hear. He's in the eighth grade or the ninth grade, very high in technology. Anyway, you know, and Renaissance persons, on the other hand, where do you see them going? Where are they going? Are they going to go to U of H? Are they going to leave town? What are they going to study when they get out of Mid-Pak? What are you shaping them for? Or better put, how is it working out for them? I mean, where are they heading? Where are they going taking themselves? So when you think of Renaissance men and women, when you think of the Renaissance person, they have this gamut of skills that crosses many different things, right? The fundamental understanding of what a Renaissance is. And so they can do many things well. They can do a lot of different things well. But what we try and do is we find the best fit for that student. So it's not about the top three big name colleges spread out across the United States, but it's how many students go to how many different places. That's an important metric, because that's the best fit for each student. So you don't necessarily want 60% of your students to go to three colleges. You want a student at 60 different colleges, right? Because you found the best fit for each student. And through the college application and the college counseling process, you found the schools that may not be the top three schools, but it's the right fit for the student that wants to put together a bioengineering degree with a minor in AI that is built on storytelling and empathy. I mean, these majors or these degrees or these programs that are so esoteric, but that are a big draw for students that have this breadth of understanding and knowledge. And so it is more about finding the right fit wherever that college may be, as opposed to finding these premier top colleges and getting as many students into their doors as possible. Well, this takes us back to you, because you had a successful career in the very headquarters of technology and came back. How are these kids dealing these days with the old conflict of staying versus going and going and then sort of ideating about how they're going to come back when they're at a certain point in their lives? How's that issue going? I mean, we've been talking about and thinking about that for years and years. How is it happening in mid-back? I think that the issue remains today. I think it's not so different than when it was my turn to go through that turnstile. I think that there's still a high concentration of tech opportunity elsewhere. And we are building up the community, as we've always done, and it's continuing to grow. I mean, the startup community is a lot hotter today. There's so much more opportunity in the startup world with these great accelerators, building out these great companies that are very agile and small and doing amazing things. So there's more. I see more opportunity back home now, but there's still not the opportunity to work on projects that impact 300 million people. Or there's still not that you can't work in the pixel here in Hawaii. You don't have that kind of opportunity. So I still see the migration to the mainland, to Silicon Valley, to other places to get that kind of experience and that kind of relevant real-world work experience and bringing that back home. And then finding opportunity here to bring it back. And it seems like we continually try and make it enticing to come back. But it's still the message of coming back. You're not staying. Let's make it good for people to come back. Let's provide the infrastructure for people to come back and start companies here. But I still see and experience the engineering, or at least the stem flow away from Hawaii in terms of chasing those types of jobs and then coming back. I don't think that's fundamentally changed, in my opinion, in the last 10 years. Well, ideally we can build a place for them to come back to. I mean, if there's no jobs here, they're not going to come back. They've got to have a decent living. They've got to be able to buy a house. They should be the ones that create the jobs here. They should be the ones that go through the accelerators and start an entrepreneurial endeavor in technology or something else and build that. That's key. And then as you get more and more success in that area, that starts to form gravity and critical mass. And then more starts to pile on. And when you have one or two knockout successes in that way, then a little ecosystem starts to grow up around that company or those few companies. And then the ecosystem grows and grows. And the next thing you know is you have a community. And so I think. And the community will bring it back. We need that. We've been talking about that. But you feel right now there's a number of accelerators and incubators and the like. And there's even mainland money coming and funding, elemental energy accelerator is now beyond that, down the block over here. It used to be just energy. Now it's entrepreneurship in general, innovation in general. I'm sure that kids would like to see that. And I wonder if they will take your kids and whether the kids can engage with some of these accelerators, incubators that are developing here in Honolulu. Not only information technology, but in anything. It's a perfect segue because what we've started this year is an entrepreneurs lab. And if you think of an accelerator, it's very much an accelerator. Students are going through the first half of the year learning the lean startup method and learning about doding companies and how those work. And then the second half of the year, they're going to pitch and go through a shark tank-like process and get real funding. Not Mickey Mouse funding, like real funding to start a real company. And so it is sort of a microcosm of an accelerator right on Mid-Pacific's campus. And so this is our first year in a two-year pilot. We're super excited. We've got people from Blue Start-Ups and other areas, China School of Business that are helping us get this program off and running. And our students have this crazy co-opportunity to do just that right now, as a 11th or 12th grader. You mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. Well, if they get excited about that and people around them in the community, the legislature, for example, and organizations that could fund and encourage development of these incubators and entrepreneurship, business plan competitions, what have you, we can build that community. And then they can go to the mainland and learn important expertise, but also there's a cloth mother for them here that they can go back to. Or if they can be successful here, then they can start that community, like I mentioned. You need one or two sort of beacons of these lighthouses that attract all that other talent. And as those grow and become successful, the community will just grow around it. Lighthouses would want a great, great word there. You start an entrepreneurship organization called Lighthouse. Exactly, that's what it is. So that's sort of how I view it. And I think at Mid-Pacific, I think we're right in the cusp of that with this entrepreneurs lab. And maybe in six months, we should come back on the show and see what they've done. Absolutely, and bring some of them around. I'm happy to have them here. We'll give them a dollar-half tour, the full tour. Okay, that sounds awesome. Well, thank you, Brian, and great to see you at the workshop from time to time. I really enjoyed these discussions. You know that it's European. You know what I'm gonna say that? Because in Europe, you go to Europe and you talk to somebody and they talk to you, and then you find you're both talking at the same time. And you're both listening at the same time. You're one of the few people I know who can do this. You must be European. Don't think it's European. You didn't know, right? Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Brian does the Mid-Pac. Wow, my hero. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you.