 Live from the Mandalay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE at IBM Insight 2014. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back, everyone. We're here live inside theCUBE at IBM Insight. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We go out to the events, extract the signal noise, we go wall-to-wall, covers what we do here, and of course, we're excited to have awesome guests. We talk to the executives and entrepreneurs, and we get media stars in here, like Katie Lundendahl, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. You are with CNN, the Today Show, you're a tech correspondent, you get a lot of energy. I can just tell it's going to be fun. Yeah, so it's been fun here the last few days. So, I mean, Watson is the geeky story. What are you seeing? Let me get to Watson in a second, but outside of Watson, what's the coolest thing you've seen? I'm constantly on the hunt for the latest innovations in technology, and I think that's probably the best part about my job. And always chasing down high-level stories, I recently just came back for a dive with NASA. I learned that NASA astronauts actually train underwater to simulate microgravity, and I'm like, oh my gosh, no way. And they're like, do you want to come down to the world's only marine underwater habitat? I was like, yes, please. So, went down to the Florida Keys, it's an hour off the coast, and was diving literally with NASA, European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, underwater, and again, it's the world's only underwater marine habitat, and seeing how they train in everything from asteroid mining to underwater surgery, to actually seeing how the body responds to exercise. I guess water simulates one-sixth of gravity, so it was a pretty dynamic shoot. I was doing that for NBC News, and it's just, those are the types of stories that I look for. Are you a diver? I am a diver, I actually was doing a story on big data last year, and it required me to get my dive certs, and the island of Bermuda feel very bad. It was a presentation that I was speaking on here at Insight. There was all this crowdsourced information about how the lionfish, if you've ever heard of the lionfish, has been, it's an invasion in the Atlantic Ocean. I took all of this information and metrics, and made a story for CNN, and it required me to get my advanced dive certs. So now I'm getting all these dive stories, because there's not a lot of us dive reporters, so the lionfish story for CNN too, another good example of a piece that I go after. So, you bring a lot of energy. What do you see here? I mean, you see a lot of stories, and you get pitch stories. I can imagine that your email box. In flux. I mean, it's like, oh, you got to cover this. I have 78,000 unread emails right now. I'm not proud of that, but yes, constantly being pitched. 40,000, I'm a little bit blind. I'm going to CNN, so I'm going to give that to you. And then the Today Show, not too shabby. But what, you know, you get pitched all the time, and so you get to vet stories. What's your formula for vetting stories? I mean, what gets your attention in the little, and how do you go outside your comfort zone to select good stories? What gets your attention? It's funny, you know, so I've been in television for the last 10 years, and I feel like now I have this internal barometer and knowing when something's very good. And the scope of the things that I cover from, you know, in the past month alone, I was talking about the NASA piece, and then I'll flip to the next day and do top Halloween gadgets on Today Show. So it's very vast, but I can instantly tell, and it's come through experience in being in a background in technology, knowing what's going to work for the consumer, and knowing a hot product when I see it. And I've gotten pretty good, I think, at spotting a product that a consumer's going to love, but also finding a story that is, maybe it's super nerdy, but my job is to take it and to bring it down to a level that's entertaining for any kind of audience, whether it be CNN or whether it be Today. So it says you're a Guinness Book of World Record holder. Share that in little nugget with the folks, in what? That is a true story. I am a Guinness World Record holder in the most high fives in one minute. Okay, so this probably solicits some like, how the heck did that happen? I've always been fascinated with Guinness World Records, and I always wanted one, and I've always been obsessed with a high five. Like, I am paranoid of huggers. There's nothing that scares me more. This pump, high five? Just go for the five. Go for the five, okay. I don't want to bring it in. I don't, okay, it's a little OCD. I won't clump, completely aware. So anyways, I found that this Guinness World Record was held by a clown in England for the most high fives in one minute. So I convinced, I was hosting a show on Spike TV, and I convinced them to allow me to break this record. So we had all these people line up in the MTV cafeteria, and you have a Guinness World Record adjudicator come onsite, you get two tries. And if you win, you get a plaque and a formal ceremony. We've seen it, we haven't had another queue before. We should do the most consecutive interviews today without having a drink of water. This has got to be a record, we could break something. We covered that show, they had the plaque, they had the adjudicator, like you said. It's intense. It's official, yeah. And you start to get like real nervous and like hot, and yeah, so I had two tries. And what kind of sneakers were you wearing? Oh, I was, I was, I'm a big athlete, like a big fitness person, so I was like ready. I'm going to, and if a clown beats me at this point, it's over. Oh my God, you, your career is over. And his name is still a vision, you'll never work again. Game over. So I beat it on the first try and then I advanced it on the second try. Single hand? There's a whole process, as you can imagine with the adjudicator, and she's like real intense. She's like counting with her clicker on the high five. So I go down this line of people, and it has to be over. There can't be like a mailed in like, you know, like do do do do do. It's got to be over, like a high five. You got to go for the five, man. How many? And then I got a couple that were disqualified. You know, like a couple didn't count because it wasn't like a full on five. Four. Is that like a film re-posed? Oh, really? Super slow motion. I like argued a few. I was like, no, I was for sure up on that one. I want to replay. Through the flag. I mean, it was sponsored by Purell. It wasn't, but it should have been. But it was fun. So I have a plaque. How many? 107. I've heard rumors that it's been broken, but I didn't care. As long as I got a plaque in that plane, at one point. No adjudication, not official, it's not a broken. Okay, let's talk about IBM because Watson is the coolest thing. Obviously it's pretty mainstream. It hits your wheelhouse. Obviously for them, they seem jeopardy. Absolutely, yes. How does that translate into a mainstream story for some of the stuff going on here? What do you say? So what's very cool about Watson, I call him my boyfriend because I've had a relationship with Nehim now over the last few years. A few years ago on CBS, I actually got to challenge Watson on a full game of Jeopardy. And I think that was of course the most, the most memorable part of Watson when he took on the two, you know, Jeopardy champions. But so this is like a lifetime moment for me. I got a full game of Jeopardy. Me, Watson and another individual smoked me. And actually I was doing okay. And then it was like tennis vocab. I was like, oh, I got this, you know, I've been in sports my whole life. I've been worked at ESPN for seven years. I got this in the bag. I was doing good. And then they were like, oh, we had him on the low setting. I was like, all right, really, like, really, like I was just feeling good about myself. I finished with $2, two bucks. And I thought it was so cool how gimmicky it was, you know, and- Did he beat you in the tennis category? Oh, he smoked me in every category. On the low setting? For sure. I got a few, but it was the few I actually got. That's like me losing hockey. In tennis vocab, yeah. In tennis, you're going to have it. You've been watching tennis your whole life. Right. ESPN, right? It was embarrassing and disappointing. And then I weighed you too much and then the double jeopardy. Anyways, I digress. So how cool is it that I got to play Watson, but then now years later, seeing the power in it in many different developments. And most notably, I work over at, as a volunteer at Sloan Memorial Kettering Cancer Center, for a small group called Candlelighters. It works with individuals that come in from around the world for cancer treatments. Now Sloan is one of the most powerful cancer centers in the world is actually using it as predictive analysis. So here, and I work with these kids and it's very complex when they go in for a diagnosis. There's lots of different problems that they have. And really, it's guesswork for a doctor. Now they can put all of these things that are happening with a child into a machine and they can pump out a hypothesis. Of course, you're going to have to have a human interaction tailored with that to have the emotional side. But I've been fascinated, especially on the medical side. And you consider Watson your boyfriend at this point. I do. Okay, that's interesting. In the world of Facebook, it's complicated. I heard rumors that he's- Watson talks back and will listen too. It's a true statement. He's a lot smarter than I am. I'm intimidated by that, but- What's the coolest demo with Watson that you've seen? Besides Jeopardy. Any geeky ones? Well, I actually learned something new from a few developers that I met yesterday about the new Chef app. So being able to go into your pantry and to do some recipe from what you have, the ingredients you have inside there. I think that's a little more consumer friendly. So I was kind of like, I'm excited to check that one out. Okay, so look at the tech landscape. What are you most excited about? I mean, what's the coolest kind of consumer meats, like gadget and door, tech, cloud, if you could pull a few favorites out? What's getting your attention? One that we actually had here that's probably popped into mind. There's so many to choose from, but in the world of Oculus Rift. And the reason I say that is not for the gaming aspect, but more for the potential in the landscape of physical therapy. The first time I got on Oculus Rift, I was actually training on a Navy boat and I was doing a segment where all my cameramen were all around me. I lost track of reality. And I got so immersed into virtual reality and being there. And even as a huge diver, I get very motion sick. And I got motion sick on the boat, being in this physical, this augmented reality world. We were actually shooting this at the birthplace of Oculus Rift. So we were really diving behind the scenes into the actual software and hardware. And it was such a cool immersive experience that it realized that what this could do for physical therapy or even at the dentist at a lower end, I think the capabilities for augmented reality and taking yourself out of that moment are huge. So I think that's very exciting. How about drones? Oh my gosh. My nephew, I was visiting my nephew the other day and he said, you want to see the drone that I built? And I said, he's got this four or five quadcopter. It's a quadcopter. I said, would you get the software for it? He goes, I downloaded it. It's all open source. I hacked it a little bit. I actually have several drones. Tell me about the drone phenomenon because this just blew me away. I probably have what I consider as the best prosumer drone. It's a DJI Phantom 2. And I have got some incredible aerial footage over the mountains of Montana and also over Bermuda, the island of Bermuda. I send it up, put it over a shipwreck. Gorgeous. And for me, as of like being in photo and video and going out and getting my own video, not having to rely on a copter for, you know, that would be thousands of dollars worth of footage or relying on a cameraman. I just sent that baby up. I'm like, please don't hit anybody. It's a little hard to operate when you get one of the higher end models. I have a couple of the parrots too. They're a lot easier to operate. They do it right for my iPhone. But I am just like, I'm so into it. Now, I think it's a little gimmicky when we talk about Amazon and pizza deliveries and taco deliveries and beer deliveries with a drone. Skeets shooting for prizes as they say in Texas. Maybe, I don't know about that. But I think it's fascinating. I think it's a really cool technology. And again, I personally saved tens of thousands of dollars using my drone. When you flew over these sites, you were proximate, so you had visual contact. Yeah, so the Phantom drone that I have, that's my favorite one, I actually attached a GoPro to it. So I can send it up and I use the gyroscope to kind of move my GoPro around in midair. It goes hundreds of feet high. I mean, you really got to get a grasp on it and know what you're doing. I had it out in a field well before I took it out to an island on a beach. But yeah, it's cool. You got to know how to drive it. It's not something you just throw up there. It's not a remote control car. And did you build it? No, goodness. That's totally on the market. Yeah, I got it at B&H Photo. People are sending them out to San Francisco off their balconies and then they're going out to, you know, Angel Island, Alcatraz. And literally, they're flying out there, unregulated. I mean, it's like, someday there'll be drone collisions. It's like, this is unregulated. This is a huge, people are geeking out with the drones. It's super exciting, Dave. Camera shooting down, you can see them sending them into football venues or, you know, the World Series. Delivering packages to the Amazon. The modern day streaker. I mean, Amazon. Modern day streaker. I like that. Okay, so what else is new for you? Tell us more about some cool behind the scenes at today's show. Yeah. Any Saturday Night Live opportunities for you? I've been to Saturday Night Live. You should host a show sometime. Oh my gosh, by the way, that's like the hottest ticket in New York to get. I've had the opportunity to go to two shows because my friend's a cameraman over there. The rehearsal for it is like amazing. I know that's a huge digression, but talk about something to see in person. That's one of my bucket list items. Phenomenal. Yeah, phenomenal. What else is new in New York and the scene there? Oh, we constantly covering a lot of different pieces. One, I just came back from Africa a little bit ago. I was doing a number of pieces over there from an elephant orphanage to one of my favorite pieces that'll be rolling out soon. I did it for CNN.com and also working on a video piece of it. I went and embedded myself in the second poorest part of the entire world in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. And it was amazing to see that in these very poor areas, 70 to 80% cell penetration. A lot of people don't think that a smartphone would be prevalent, it sure is. And these kids, yeah, absolutely. And there's cell towers everywhere. These kids were, you know, they don't have much, but they have e-reader devices and they can have thousands of books when they're walking 10 miles to school. You walk into the school that doesn't have any electricity. It's 100 degrees, but they all have e-readers, kindles right on their desk. I was blown away. I went to several different schools around Eastern Kenya. Fascinating story to be able to cover. So that was world leader. That's a really good point in mobile penetration. I was talking to a startup that where their business plan is to build, sell, solar, battery recharging stations. As they should. Because they have exact points, like they have all these devices, but it's not, they don't have the traditional electricity and the internet. There was one outlet in the entire school. So fortunately for, you know, with Wi-Fi off, there's about a week charge on a Kindle. So it is, it's a problem. They need to have more solar power. I think they have a great market opportunity, certainly in emerging countries, mobile penetration. So what about the IBM show here? Is this your first time here? I have had luxury and the opportunity to be a part of several IBM events and everyone's so uniquely different. And this one all about developers, obviously. So something I get to nerd out and myself is an IT girl and also a developer. It's fun to be able to learn. I picked up so much new information. So I just kind of like, they're like, you're done with yourself. I'm going to hang out for a little bit longer. So you just take it as much as you can. You know you're a geek when you're geeking out and you're off the clock, you know? Yeah, totally, totally. Dave and I are the same way. We should stop broken. No, let's keep going. So CES, you're a CES every year. Oh my gosh, CES every year, for sure. And for anyone that hasn't been a CES, it's kind of on the bucket list. For anybody that's into technology, 35 football fields full of gadgets. Amazing, yeah. It's always one of my biggest times of the year. So we'll be back here in a couple more months. Now, do you enjoy CES or is it a hard slog for you? Because you must have to really get down and dirty for CES. I mean, a lot of stuff to cover. And I try to make it to the most random boosts. I find some of my best technology products are like the maw and paw type shops that don't have the million dollar booth and like, you know, that are really back in a corner and I'm like, ooh, zero in. So I cover some ground. Do you go into cover, by the way? Do you go into cover? You kind of sneak in there and you go into camera, guys. No, I go for it. You go for it, okay. I'm on full time. Okay, all right, guys. For sure. That's awesome. Well, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate it. Thank you, it was fun. We love the personality, I love the energy. I mean, Dave and I think, you know, first of all, we're huge fans of your work, especially the ESPN part. Oh yeah, big sports girl. Big fans, in fact, we call this the ESPN of tech because it's our kind of version of like, trying to be like ESPN. I like it. But we think technology's going mainstream. People, this new generation, are geeks. And even to you allude to ESPN, even sports and technology, I can't tell you how many pieces I've covered with pro athletes and how tech is entering in that space. Everywhere, disruption in the data, the social media, you know, limiting of agents to go direct to the audience. Just super exciting. I mean, I'm a real big fan of media tech, sports and thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thank you. We'll be right back after this short break here inside theCUBE, live in Las Vegas. I'm John and Dave, we'll be right back.