 Hi, I'm Jay Fidale. This is Monday morning at 12 noon. And we are, we are living in the past here in the sense that this, this is Jeff Bloom today. And he's the president of Waimanalo Blooms, of course, his name. And I think the important things, say hello, Jeff. Say hello, Jeff. There you are. Hello, how are you there? He's calling us, or we're calling him from Waimanalo. And what's interesting about Jeff is that he was our first guest on Think Tech. So if you have been watching Think Tech for the past, what, 18 years, you would know Jeff because he was the first guy, I remember we were setting up the show was Gordon Bruce and me and on Manjurelli and Laurier Cow. The four of us we did on Hawaii Public Radio and, and Jeff opened the whole series. He was the first broadcast we ever had. And look at him now. He looks terrific. Hi, Jeff. Hey, Jay. Yeah, you should do it. Where are they now, segment? You remember that show? Remember what we talked about? I do. I do. We talked about workforce development. Okay, okay. Before STEM was STEM. I remember. I remember that. Yeah. So why don't you compress the last, what, 18 years into a minute or so and tell us how it's been for you? Well, it's been great. I actually own my company CTA Solutions for about 20 years, sold it off in 2007 approximately. And then I've been consulting and working on other projects ever since, but I've been in Hawaii for over 30, probably closer to 40 years. So obviously going back to their mid 80s technology and workforce development and other things around growing a third segment within Hawaii, it's always been important to me and our youth is an important component of that as it is today. There's no different. I mean, finding people today with skills are just as hard as it was 30 years ago and different skills, but the same problems exist. Yeah, you've seen it all. You've seen the training issues. You've seen the investment issues. You've seen the human resources issues. I mean, this has been a very important period. I would say it's because your period from then 2001 till now is it's my period too. And I and I have lived in this period and sort of a parallel universe with you all this time. So that's why we're calling this show think tech tech talks, because we're talking about tech. It's our double middle name. So let's talk about one another blooms just to know what what that's doing and where that's taking you these days. So after I sold, I like say had four companies, and after I sold them all off in 2007, I took a break for about a year but I kept getting phone calls, and I've been consulting and overseeing projects, both in Hawaii but also on the mainland with companies doing business in Hawaii or in and out of Hawaii, since then so I like it because I get to work from home. I'm not having to go into an office, don't have, you know, lots and lots of employees and all the things that come with having employees and running a business and all of that so it's less stressful, which is good when you get an age or your age it's always good to have less stress. And, and I enjoy it. I picked the projects I like and something I don't like doesn't fit. I don't do so. Yeah, it's a good thing. Okay, well let's talk about the the big piece of news for you and that's tech net, which is coming soon. And that's a major tech conference here in Hawaii can you talk about it. Yes. So, among other things I am president of FCA Hawaii, and FCA Hawaii is a government is an organization bringing industry and government folks together obviously academia, as well as to, you know, together as a place to meet and discuss things. FCA Hawaii has been in existence I want to say it's 30 some odd years so this is I think a second or 30 third tech net that we do every November. And this year it's at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Over the years has been a couple different places, we get probably over 4000 people attending we have a probably over 150 exhibitors. It's the largest technology show in Hawaii and has been I mean it's huge if you've gone to it. A lot of people don't because again it's more geared towards government and industry and people that work in that area. It's it's huge and you'll see the latest greatest the largest companies in the world, you know, anyone you could think of in technology are probably here, whether it's the cloud folks was the cyber folks what you know, whatever it is you think of the largest International multinational corporations you can think of doing business and it's they're usually their government folks that come because of large companies, you know they'll have different verticals. So these are the government folks usually that will come So so can I come. Of course, it might bring your camera now I might take a footage you know there's it's it's free of your government if your academia it's free. If your industry. There's a cost if your student gets free. If you can go to if you just do tech net into Pacific. Just do a search, you'll find the link or obviously you want the 2019 version there may be some older ones still out there. And it runs on the 19th to the 21st of November so that's a week from tomorrow. There's a golf tournament that again FC Hawaii is nonprofit. We also have an educational foundation, and we give away probably one of the best kept secrets in Hawaii. We give away anywhere from probably $75 to $100,000 in scholarships every year. So this is our one big fundraiser of the year we raise a lot of money, and then we give away that money every year to students both high school and college also teachers other folks you know we have different scholarships and you will go to FC Hawaii Education Foundation. You can see that we just finished giving away all of our scholarships from obviously we're now into a brand of school here. So we usually give away in the spring and summer. And I think this year we had over 250 applications for scholarships. Are any of those applicants going to be at the conference? You're going to have kids there or just corporate. As you know with Hawaii we have a lot of students who don't go to school at Hawaii. They're from Hawaii and then they go to school in the mainland. So we actually just had an event last Thursday night with University of Hawaii and the different colleges there where we do a professional mixer with some of the different schools and we had about 40 students and 20 professionals. Both from industry and government interfacing with the students so the students that are here. How do they know about what job and opportunities are available to them in Hawaii so we do that as a again part of what we do and it's a free event. And we partnered with HICTA, the Hawaii Information Communications and Technology Association and then FC Hawaii. But some of the students that were there on Thursday night are all coming because again it's a great place for them to see some of the largest companies that they would never see on island probably that will be there with again big exhibits and some of the companies bring like 20 or 30 people with them. It's a big deal. Can you give us an example of some of those companies and likewise an example of some of the presentations that I might see if I come down. Sure. So, of course, I don't want to slight anybody but as I say like so let's talk cloud because everybody wants to talk cloud so I mean Google AWS, Microsoft, you know companies like that will be there. All the big systems integrators so companies like Dell or Prospecta, which used to be you that Packard, or again companies if you go like on telecom I was noticing Verizon, Samsung, you know companies like that companies like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, I mean it's huge so all the way from the smallest companies like the local companies in Hawaii will be presenting all the way to the largest, as I said, multinational. Why do they come Jeff? Why do they what attracts them here? I mean aside from the weather. Again, it's an Indo-Pacific conference. It focuses on the regional issues around military and government leaders that they have identified. Our theme this year is enabling a more effective combined force through digital modernization. It's a lot of words, but it's basically again, how do we fight things like cybercrime other things that happens in there using digital modernization so new tools and the new tools as you know and technology going back to Moore's law, Jay when you and I were young kids and Gordon Moore was just starting with Intel. It was basically and it hasn't changed on Moore's law, which is technology completely reinvents itself every 18 months, and that has not changed. So if you step away for two or three years you come back it's like you're in a time zone. So again, what's happening now, obviously cyber security is a very important piece of it, but there's other things going on. And so a lot of these companies will come and talk to their government customers here and again all across the Pacific. It's not just Hawaii even though we do have a large obviously federal Department of Defense and other federal agencies in Hawaii. You also have state and local government and you have folks that are scattered across Pacific. And so they'll come here and that's why we call it Indo-Pacific. Yeah. Well, when you say Indo you suggest India is it go as far as India. Yep, because India is a United States partner ally now and they signed some treaties a year or two ago and that's why the Pacific command is now changed their name about a year ago to the Indo-Pacific command. Because of India and the other countries in that zone, what we call the Seven Sisters, so there's Sri Lanka, there's India, there's, you know, Nepal, on and on. Plus there are, in this region there is 36 countries in the Pacific, in the Indo-Pacific that have agreements, treaties with the United States on sharing data. Well, how are we sharing data? It's all around technology and you know, we have, I mean going, you know, looking at the big guys obviously you look at Australia, Japan, Korea. We have all countries, you know, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, you know, on and on. Well, there's 36 countries including all the island nations, you know. So this is like a Pacific telecommunications conference which happens, PTC happens every January, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Yes. PTC, you know, the most important thing to a lot of the people who come, a lot of these multi-nationals who come around is making deals, making deals in telecom. So do you have the same kind of experience with the Indo-Pacific, was it TechNet, Indo-Pacific, are there deals made in this conference? Yes, I mean, again, depending how you're dealing with some of the countries and how some of those happen, obviously dealing with the United States, they're all through federal acquisition, you know, large contracts. I know if your viewers are familiar, but there was just one called Jedi and it was a large cloud contract that was awarded, it's been going on for over a year and it was like a $10 billion contract over 10 years for cloud services for the federal government. Actually, for the Department of Defense. So with that said, yes, there's lots of things, but it's not just, oh, you come out here and decide to deal with whatever, but you have to be out here and talk to your customers and know what's going on. They also have a full array of speakers so we have lots of different panel discussions and other individual, probably as many as five running simultaneously at different times. A new piece that's going on during this conference is what the Pacific Command calls the Coalition Interoperability Forum and that will be co-located at the Hilton running simultaneously with TechNet, Indo-Pacific there together. That's fabulous. Yeah, and there, again, that one is really how do you strengthen the community of interest around, you know, between commercial, academia, government and military to discuss the major challenges and accelerate the efforts to achieve effective and efficient coalition interoperability. Well, this is strategically valuable to the United States to have this and be able to show this and develop relationships. Yes, and again, you would think the same things are done in Europe for that half of the world, so it's not just things that are done in the mainland, but as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned, Hawaii is the center of the world for Indo-Pacific. Yeah. What about some of the subjects that are going to be presented? I mean, for example, comes to mind, I'd want to hear a lot about AI. Everybody wants to hear a lot about AI. I mean, China is rolling up its sleeves on AI, and I think U.S. is too, and the world is rolling up its sleeves on AI. I would imagine you're going to have plenty of presentations, information, discussion over AI, no? Yes. So you have folks like AWS and Microsoft that are presenting. You also have other panels where you have a group of folks like we have a coalition panel, people from different countries, you know, not just U.S. military, but from other, you know, Australia, UK. Let me think, Canada, I'm trying to think, Australia are all on that panel to discuss, and of course, you know, machine learning and artificial intelligence crosses a lot of the discussions the same way coalition interoperability, you know, crosses the discussions. And there's a lot of pieces within there. And there are things like how is industry responding to some of these things, or hearing from the Pacific Command has a four-star Admiral, Admiral Davidson, he'll be doing the keynote on the first day. So again, welcoming everybody. And then there are a lot of other military folks that will be speaking as well as industries. I'm really bowled over by this, Jeff. I didn't know all this. What was the website again, was Technet Indo-Pacific? Yes, if you look at Technet Indo-Pacific, it'll come up. That's the easiest way to find it. And if you go to the agenda, it's way too long for me to discuss all the different pieces. But I mean, you know, as I was saying earlier, even that the cloud computing program from the Pentagon, the director is coming out, she'll be speaking about what's going on there. So there's lots of different things. I would say AWS, Microsoft will speak, but then other chief security officers, other folks like that. There's a lot of discussion about coalition C4 resiliency, which again is all about how we are communicating, you know, command and control and communications with different people, both industry and government on panels, things like that. There's just so much. It's hard. We also have an Asia Pacific Center for security studies. I would imagine they'd be involved, no? They are. And they have, you know, one of their PhDs is speaking on that about cultural sensitivities to enable effective information sharing. Because when you're sharing information across country, there's also cultural sensitivities that you have to be aware of where it's like where the U.S., we don't think everybody knows a certain way. That may not be the same for other countries. AWS is perfect for that, because they are sensitive. Yes, they are. And they do a lot of that. So that's what I'm saying. It brings together all of that, what we call the community of interest, not just government, not just industry, not just academia, you know, everybody. Okay, Jeff, I am bowled over. When I get bowled over, I need to take a break. So we're going to take a one minute break. We'll be right back with Jeff Bloom of One in Allo Blooms and the TechNet Indo-Pacific Conference coming soon. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on ThinkTech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With ThinkTech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay, and aloha. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech TechTalks. And we have Jeff Bloom, who joins us by VMIX Remote from Waimanalo. So, Jeff, you know, I'm really curious what this means. This is really a blockbuster conference. I'd love to see that. I'd love to see the Pacific Telecommunications Conference in January. But what does it mean to Hawaii? I mean, is it happening within its own silo or is it connecting with the state? Is the state connecting with it? And are we doing, you know, are we, is it stimulating activity in this area? Is it stimulating a future in tech or whatever we have in tech because the conference takes place here? Yeah, it's probably the chicken and the egg, right? So is it because the conference takes place here, or is it because there's so much activity here that 34 years ago we decided to have this conference and it's still going as strong today. I mean, years ago it was in, I can't remember where, small area. Then it moved to the Sheraton for like 20-some odd years and then outgrew that and now in the Hilton with both in the Tapa Tower and the full convention suite up on the sixth floor and taking every room that's available. And they're probably about to, you know, conceivably outgrow some of that for space. So you can see the demand is there. When you say, how is that being done from a, you know, me, I always look at it from workforce because a lot of things, again, I'm owning my own company for 20 years. It was all about, even if I find all the work, how am I going to find the people to do the work? Do I qualify people with the skill set to be able to do the work? And as you were talking earlier, I've been doing this since the mid-80s. When we first started, we were using, you know, DOS, there was no Windows, there was no Internet, you know, I mean, there was no connectivity. You think about that, no cell phones, you know, think about how work was done, but the challenge for people with skills to do the work and the requirements that are there have not changed IOTA. You know, we're doing what we used to call IA, Information Assurance. Now we call it cyber or cybersecurity, but it's no different. Well, is this conference result in jobs for local companies, local startups, local tech, you know, tech people? How does that process work? There's a lot of local companies who will come and show their business as other small businesses across the country who will come and, you know, do business with the federal government. And so they'll come and show as well, hoping to get some business from here. You have to go out, you know, it's like anything else. You got to go meet your customers, right? You can't sit in whatever, you know, California or Virginia and try to get customers over the Internet. I mean, that may work at some, you know, for some types of selling product, you know, more retail, but you're not going to go out there without seeing your customers. And Hawaii is a long way for some people to go, but it's important. And as I say, we probably have over 4,000 people attend this conference and over. If you go up to that website and just, as I say, do a search for Technet into Pacific, you will see there's a listing of even all the exhibitors and there's 150 or more. And some of them have huge exhibit. And when you go up to the Hilton, I mean, some of them are like, who knows how much it cost them even just to, you know, ship all the equipment that they ship in and do a booth that's like, you know, 50 feet by 50 feet square. I mean, there's, you know, huge, but again, it's an investment. If you're Boeing or you're, like I say, Microsoft or AWS or, you know, whatever, you know, Dell or any of these companies, they do that. They bring a lot of people. They have a lot of discussions while they're here. And this is the biggest conference that doesn't mean they only come in once a year. They come multiple times. Does the press come, will you have a representation from the mainland press here to cover the conference? It depends. It's covered, you know, FCA does. They have something called Signal Magazine. They cover it just depends what gets picked up. Obviously, if you're in the Beltway or other places, you know, in California, you can get more, you know, press because the funny part about Hawaiians, we all know if you tell your boss and you're on the mainland that you're going to Hawaii to cover a conference, no matter how big the conference is or what it is, it's like, wait a minute. You just want a free trip to Hawaii. I'm not going to write that check. No. If you tell your boss you're going to lose, you know, in the winter for a conference, sure, go ahead, you know. All the more reason that I'll be there, Jeff, I want to see what happens. I want to be your press. Anyway, let me go to the next item I want to discuss with you. And this is really reaching all the way back. You know, you've been working on workforce since workforce was discussed back in the early old years. And if not before that, and you've been training people. You've been in touch with who's getting trained in what areas and so forth. And, you know, we had the benefit of Act 221 through most of the first decade of the century. Then it went away, and I think that was a bad blow for Hawaii. And here we are now. It's almost 10 years after the, what do you call it, the sunset or the early sunset of 221. And you've been following this ever since. And I would really like your comments on how the workforce is doing and what we can do for the workforce right now. So, again, back to what I said earlier, one thing is there's always a demand for people with skills. And unfortunately, when you live in a set of islands that are the most remote islands in the world, you know, from any continental landmass, it's not easy just to track people from the next state over, you know, 100 miles down the road or 200 miles down the road or whatever. And we have a definitely our challenge with what we call the tyranny of distance. So in order to get a workforce, you can do one of two things here. You can either build them, actually three things. You could build the workforce or you need to continually build the workforce, which has been going on for 30 years that I've been involved in technology here. You can steal people from other companies who are here that have people and offer more money, or you can move people from elsewhere here. We all know that the third doesn't work very well because of the cultural changes, the cost of living, you're a long way from home. You know, families are pulled apart. So over the years that I've done, as I said, as Tapping Company for 20 years, I understand the challenges when you move somebody, and especially the cost of relocating somebody to Hawaii, and then you find out six months later they hate it and they want to go back and they're gone. You know, we don't have indentured servitude anymore. So, you know, that's what happens. Secondly, yes, you can steal them, but now you're in a limited pool, which means you're never going to grow. Or the third thing that I started doing in the mid-80s when I started, we had a company called Computer Training Academy. And again, those days it was like Novell. People want to become a Novell certified systems engineer, right? Or you wanted to be, there was like a couple of different certifications. And Microsoft in the 90s came out with their certifications around all the Microsoft products, both their systems engineering and their software development. Well, no different today. Today we have, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but CSISP. Certified cyber, let's see, CCISP. So certified cyber, I can never get the acronyms right. But anyways, anybody that's cyber, you need to have one of these different certifications. And at the conference to keep your certification, you have to have continuing education credits. And so we have a number of briefings that qualify for CEU credits. So again, a lot of people in the workforce will come because they want to sit through these, but they also get CEU credits to keep their certifications current. So it's just like if I was a lawyer and you need to get, you know, or a CPA in Hawaii, right, or any place else. In order to keep my certification and my license, I need to get so many CEUs every year by attending accounting seminars. Or again, if I was a realtor, I'd have to send, you know, no, state seminars. Same thing for the cyber side. So a lot of certifications, but the demand has always grown. The problem is, as you know, and we've talked about this for years and years, is the brain drain. We've lost some of our best and brightest over the years that grew up here very strong, but scholarships to go to schools in the mainland, went to school in the mainland and never thought there was any work for them here. Whatever, maybe met a spouse or something got married, had kids, and they've stayed in the mainland. That's why you see all the Hawaiians all over the West Coast, but all over the whole country and around the world, you know, why there's so many Hawaiian communities elsewhere. Because these kids, and I say kids, but they're not kids anymore. Some of them, you know, are in their 50s, 60s that left and never came back. So what, when the studies have been done, it's how do we keep it? As you say, we have some of these good programs that we've done, but when they've been sunsetted, you lose your momentum. And in order to create a generation of young people with skills, it's generational. It's not like I can go to two classes and now I can be a, you know, CCISP, right, and get a certification. You know, these are very high-level skilled jobs, you know, and skills that take time. And you've got, you know, it does when we see things like the robotics, we started bringing in all the engineering and robotics programs. They now have first robotics that goes back to like the fourth grade, even though the one you see it at UH, when they do the big one in, I want to say, March, it's all the high school kids. And there's even, obviously, thanks for college, but these kids have been working some of the stuff since they were in elementary school. Well, you know, everything changes. It certainly changed in the time we've known each other, and it continues to change. And the trick is to keep up with it. And certainly, if you're in the tech business, you have to keep up with the latest tech. That's why this conference is so important. So the good news is the jobs are high-paying and there's plenty of them. Right now, the latest studies that I've seen on the cyber jobs is we're probably 500,000 cyber jobs, high-paying skilled cyber jobs in the country open right now. They can't find anybody to fill them. And the projection is in five years to go to over a million open positions. So it's kind of like, okay, do we want to prepare young people for these jobs that are there and they're good jobs? Of course we do. Of course we do, Jeff. But we have to have the ability to keep on it. You just can't say we're going to do it this year, and then next year we're on to something else. You've got to keep on updating your education like everything else these days. Okay, Jeff, we have to leave it there. Sorry, there's no more time, but I will see you at the conference. I'll come down, we'll take some footage. I'm really looking forward. You've painted a very, very favorable, attractive picture. And I can hardly wait to see it. Thank you so much, Jeff Luhn. TechNet. In the Indo-Pacific. Aloha.