The digital zone
well, hello X, YouTube, LinkedIn,
Twitch, Facebook. And
we're actually streaming this to two YouTube channels at the same
time. The Data Driven channel and I mean sorry, the Frank's World TV
channel and the Impact Quantum YouTube channel. And because this
is kind of a hybrid show, I'm going to post the audio feed for this
on Data Driven and as well as Impact
Quantum, I have with me the most quantum curious person I know,
Candice Gahooly. How's it going, Candace? It's great. I'm really excited to talk
today. I just got all jazzed up by the song. So there you go. That's
why I like that little kind of like early Spice Girls kind of Euro pop
mix, right like that. I actually made that
with AI and that was the prompt like kind of like if you, if you
remember familiar with that era of music. Venga Boys,
the, the tool I use like I'm sorry I can't use that name but I
can substitute like the, the keywords for that. So yeah,
there's actually an extended mix too so. Which I might put on Spotify
one day. I don't know. So yeah. So the big news
and you can tell by my My hat is Nvidia GTC was
this week. I have my, my badge, it's
still going on but the Expo 4 is closed and sadly
I only have an Expo floor pass.
So which, you know, I mean I, I like being on
the Expo floor. I was as someone called, you know, booth
babe, which I suspect is, I think is a compliment.
But you know, I worked a booth
for a lot which was cool because I got to meet a lot of interesting
people, you know, coming to the Red Hat booth and talking about
our solution and product and getting the word out that we're not just a Linux
company. Right. Jensen Huang. And the
keynote, Jensen being the CEO of Nvidia, in case you didn't know,
he and co founder. There's actually a very interesting
book called the Nvidia Way which I highly recommend you
list. I listen to it on Audible. Speaking of which,
Audible is a sponsor of all our shows and if you go to
thedatadrivenbook.com you can get one free book I
recommend it's called the Nvidia Way. I think the guy author's name was Tay Kim.
T, A, E, K, I, M. And you'll get one free book. And
if you decide to get an Audible subscription, which you should, because it's freaking awesome.
I. I live and die by audiobooks mostly because
I'm always. If I'm not traveling for work, I'm driving the
kids around. So it's definitely a safe way to keep
up. I also have wicked cool headphones,
so I can listen to this while I'm walking around and still be involved in
what's going on around me. So, yeah, it was an exciting
week. I think this is the first GTC conference, so I think
it originally stands for Gamers Technology Conference, which really shows kind of
the origin story of Nvidia being primarily a
video card. And what's very interesting
is how that
from. Whoops. There we go. I'm having some equipment
issues, although it is nice to be in the studio because this way,
this way I have full bandwidth and a full screen, so I can have
all the cool bells and whistles and stuff. Yeah, so
I was talking to you, I was texting you, I was messaging you, like, oh,
my God, there's a lot of quantum here, right? So the couple of things really
stood out from, from. From the keynote on day one, and I think really kind
of set the whole tone for it. Obviously, it's in dc, right? So he kind
of talked about the importance of American innovation, the importance of America staying ahead
on AI. He talked about the importance of open source, and he
talked about quantum computing, which I'm like, there you go. I
mean, GTC used to be primarily known as, you
know, the hardware conference. Right now it's about,
you know, AI ecosystems and industrial transformation
and robotics and AI and quantum. Quantum hybrid
computing. I mean, it was. It was. It was cool.
Like, there was something for everyone, right? There was a lot of robots on the
floor. I don't think this one was as kind of crazy manic
as the California one, because as I'm told, the California one,
there's the. You can't walk because it was just so crowded with people. This one
was a little more. I didn't have problems getting places,
although I think some sessions had overflow rooms.
But it was cool. Like, you know, it was nice because it's just that, you
know, it's. It's a relatively short drive for me to go down to
dc, so
it was definitely a lot of fun. You
know, the, the bandwidth situation in the
DC Convention center definitely could have benefited from some of
Nvidia's tech. Well, that's right. Didn't you, you, you,
you, you create a couple shorts, right? I did, I created. So what I ended
up doing, I, I, I, I had a live stream walking,
you know, from. Basically I parked at the Westin and
I walked over to the convention center and I used to work there. Right. So
the Microsoft Office on K Street is like right there. So I kind of know
the area and I kind of. The normal
parking garages I would use back when I worked there were completely full.
So I had to scramble like, oh my God, where am I going to park?
Right. And parking in D.C. is miserable. In fact, the only thing more
miserable than then the parking in D.C. is the
metro in D.C. or for me to Metro in. So
a lot of people like, wait, you drove? And I'm like, yeah, because I can
be, I could be miserable in traffic in my comfort of my own car as
opposed to being miserable like on the train. But
I would choose my car too. I would choose my car. Yeah, you, you and
I, you know, we grew up in New York and like, we did our time
on mass transit. Yeah, I'm done with it. Like,
the only mass transit line I really liked was when I lived in Germany and
then as far as the US Metro north was pretty awesome. Yeah.
Compared to everything else. But like, yeah, Metro north, it's not as good as that.
But I'm also, I also don't live off of
a mark line, which is kind of like the Maryland version of Metro North. Okay.
But, but it was cool. It
was great. So the, the, some of the big announcements. For me, what
really stuck out was kind of the national security angle of it,
right? Yes. And if you look here, I have some pictures that
I took. Like there were sections that were reserved for
congressional staffers. Right. There were a
couple of cases where. Let's see if I can change
up that scene. There we go. Congressional staffers had their
own seats, which I think was very
telling. I think a couple of the panels had elected officials. I think that
senator from Indiana was there. And also Jensen
Wong has kind of figured out kind of the DC kind of
ecosystem pretty well for a tech company.
I mean, he, he basically hit all the right notes. And I've
sat in a lot of these kind of government focused technology conferences. This
was interesting because it was kind of a lot of non government people, a lot
of government people, a lot of armed, a lot of uniformed service walking through.
A lot of people walking through, worked for various departments
of the federal government. And a lot of us were surprised because, you know, they're
all on furlough. So like, what is that? You know, how do you do
that while you're on furlough? And people were like, well, you know, we cannot get
paid and go to the office or not get paid and come here. Right. So
this is way more interesting now. I don't know, I'm not going to
say what, what agency that, that gentleman worked for, but you know,
I thought that was an interesting thing. So there were a lot of feds there.
It was also very interesting from a.
If you haven't watched the keynote, the actual live stream keynote that he gave, it's.
It's very inspiring, right? He kind of puts us in, into perspective.
And the Nvidia creative team really had a good kind of storytelling,
right. Like one of the clip, one of the segments starts from, you know, this
was like, you know, the first video game that shipped that used
an Nvidia accelerator. And then kind of through the years,
like what those video games look like. And also
just a lot of good stuff there. And
they had hardware out on display. If you go here,
this is me on a. Admiring the,
some of the graphics cards. That card there is about, I
think about 300 watts of power on its own.
And the systems that were displayed along next to it all had
like four of them in a row. Right. So these were serious
metal. Right. And I have a lot of YouTube shorts out there and maybe, maybe
I'll show them here. But where I kind of go through all of these things,
there were robots everywhere, Candace. I never seen so many robots
in one place. So,
um, and if you go to Frank's World TV on YouTube, like there's a
lot of shorts I have. So what I ended up doing ultimately was since I
wanted to live stream from the actual convention center, I
couldn't because the band was just miserable. Like you'll see in the live stream, as
soon as I get inside the building, about 50ft inside the building, it just goes
dead. So rather than kind of suffer through that,
I was like, you know what, let me, you know, I'll record some video and
I'll try to upload it. When I tried to do anything kind of like long
form, like horizontally, it took forever to upload. So I'm like, you know what, let
me do just a bunch of shorts. So that's why I got. So whenever I
saw something cool, I capture a couple of like, you know, quick 30 second
minute long video. And this here is
Booze Allen's
platform, I guess, because the robot, everything in green
basically is a bus in robotics. Um, thing.
Everything on top of that is
proprietary thing that Booz Allen big consulting firm here in
the D.C. area, you know, has kind of put on top of
it. So in, in here, which I, I don't know why I'm pointing with my
mouse because you can't see it. But if you look, there's a lidar sensor,
there's a, another thermal
camera. It's a FLIR camera up in the front. The gray thing you see there,
the round thing is the, is the lidar.
And in the back, in that little box right behind
it, the big box in the back is a tactical radio. And
the little thing inside of that tan kind of rectangular
box is a Jetson nano.
Right? So they've taken extra intelligence and put it on top of that.
And there's a lot of, A lot of cool stuff like that. One of the
funniest things to happen is that people are actually cosplaying, walking around
the convention center as Jensen.
Okay. And I got, I gave them. We, you know, at the
booth we had these hats, but we also had red fedoras. So it was giving
that out and we ran. Those were very popular. We ran out of those
within I think the first 45
minutes to an hour. Yeah, that's good swag. That's good swag. We went through
like, like, I think 200 of them. And then we found like an extra 50
on the second day and they were gone in like 10 minutes. So people kept
coming by like, hey, can I get some of that? Can I get one of
those? We're out. And but it's also great
marketing from. Because like, you know, literally the company name
is, you know, the product. Right. So it was pretty cool. And these
guys are funny. I actually did a short video with them and he was
walking around pretending he was Jensen. So the shtick is that the guy on the
right is, you know, they were both his digital
twins. That was basically it. Okay. And they were looking for his third.
So the. What makes us really funny is, is that Jensen is, is as
a, as, as the CEO and co founder of a 5 trillion
dollar company. He's supposedly really down to earth.
I never met him in person, but like, he'll walk around the expo floor
and like introduce himself. And there's always like, he was a few.
He was like, I saw him from about 20ft away and I'm like, please come
here. So we had everything ready, but he didn't. But at
the, at the one in March though, he did come by the red hat Booth.
And he's like, you know, he, he's
like, hey, Red Hat. Like, you know, and one of my team members handed him,
like, we had a scarf and he's like, this is awesome. And he put it
on. He's like, he goes, I remember installing you guys way back in the
day. Like, it was kind of cool. And
so this was pretty funny. But my favorite is the person I met
was. Well, this guy was cool. This
is. He. He lives in Raleigh. This guy. Oops.
And he, he doesn't work for Red Hat, but he does a lot of
videography type stuff. So he had the most impressive rig
and he had what you don't see. You see obviously the big
camera that is a stabilizer. And then below
him he has a 360 camera. So he's able to kind of capture literally everything
from that one rig. So definitely, I
feel like I have to up my equipment game.
Wait, you just got, you just got a new toy? I did just get it,
yeah. My budget is blown for a while. Like, you know, it's the DGX Spark
is what you're referring to. Yes, yes. So they actually had some
giveaways of those and it was definitely like, you know, the hotel thing that people
were excited about. So it did feel kind of good to be one of the
cool kids and be like, I have a DGX bar. Like, you know, and everybody's
like. And the funny thing is a lot of people didn't know you can buy
them at Micro Center. Like,
you know, that's where I got mine. A lot of people were waiting on theirs
to get delivered. Although at the conference, you. They actually had a store
and you could buy them. Wow. Yeah. Though I would imagine with DC
sales tax being what it is,
you know, the sales tax on mine was about 250. I think in D.C. it
would be closer to like 350. Right? But, you know, hey, you know,
you know, you have it right then and there, right?
So this person here, this is Maria Shah. She is a
the YouTuber behind the channel Python
Simplified. And
you know, she goes to a lot of these Nvidia events. So I'm like, you
know, I'm a big fan. So I was like, hey, you know, stop by the
Red Hat booth. And she didn't stop by the Red Hat booth, you know, so
that was cool. Like, it was cool to meet her. She is taller in person
than I thought, which is kind of funny. But
she's super cool and she has like a mini entourage and they were all like
super cool. Like, you know, one guy was like, no, no. Like I pictures
her, picture her wearing this hat and he's like, no, no, you got to get
the right angle. You got to get the right angle. The guy was doing that.
Like I was like one of her people and I was like. And he was
super cool. So
the, yeah, that was, it was a great conference. And
see if I have any other pictures. Oh yeah, there she is. This is the
one that he was like, no, no, you got to get like, you know, with
the branding and stuff like that. So very cool.
But she's really, she's really awesome. And I only recently found out that she
started her career as. And she's relatively young. I didn't
ask her age because that's totally in polite, but she's definitely younger than I
am and she's already changed careers. I think she originally was.
And she only recently shared this. She was originally a graphic designer,
which is interesting. Yeah. And then she's made the switch into. I think originally if
you look through her like her older stuff on YouTube, it was mostly Python
development. Right. Kind of like web development with Python and stuff like that. And then
gradually you've got more as the AI kind
of data thing. So, you know, good on her. You know, like, I think
career changes are going to be kind of the new norm. Right.
Yeah. I mean in every aspect of your life you have to
be adaptable, you have to be flexible. Absolutely. That,
you know, you know, you say that just to, just to handle social interactions.
It has to also do with your profession. You have to, you have to change
and you have to be willing to and, and know that it's scary
and do it anyway. Right, right, right, right. I
mean, I'm actually coming up on the anniversary of when I got
laid off Microsoft. So most people don't know. I did two
stints at Microsoft. One five, five and a half year stint and another like three
and a half year stint. So the first
stint ended because they were like, you got to move to Seattle or else. And
speaking of Microsoft, I saw some folks I used to work with at
Microsoft. So that was cool. They were working the Microsoft booth. Yeah. So we got
to catch up and stuff like that. And
you know, the nice thing about being a red hat is that people really like
red hat because we don't have, you know,
we work with everybody. Right. So like the one, the Microsoft guy was saying
like how crucial red hat is to a lot of his deals. Right.
He makes a lot of money, he's you know, he's a, he's what they call,
they used to call it tsp. And he's like, yeah, like, you know,
Red Hat helps me make my number. Right. AWS people will say that too,
right? It's a very rare kind of company where virtually everybody will work
with us, you know, which is kind of nice.
And so I was faced with that, right. I was a Windows Phone developer, right.
And I made the transition into data science almost
ten years ago now. And yeah,
and I, I wanted, I didn't really want to move to
Seattle, but the real thing that blocked me from like wanting to relocate
was the fact that my family is all on the east Coast. My in laws
were on the east coast. My mom stubbornly stayed in New Jersey way
longer than she needed to after my dad died. And
so I think I made the right decision for my
family. Plus my wife has her own career here in the D.C. metro as a,
as a fed. So it just made a lot of sense.
But we know what's really funny, Candace, is the whole.
Let me share this. This is a little bit of
self promotion, I suppose. This
here is the blog post that Plural site did
on me. Well, that was very cool though. I mean, we can take. It was
cool. Thank you, thank you. It really was cool and you deserve it because like,
it really, it came from your,
your love of lifelong learning and
who can't respect that, you know, that's what's so
fantastic about it. Like, and you could tell we're recording live because you have like
a film.
So they did this really nice story about like, you know, kind of like, you
know, the situation I was in was I really was a Windows Phone
developer and it was just kind of like not,
not a good time to be in Italy. I was the only company that would
had any kind of thing related work to that was Microsoft.
And every single job I applied to that year at Microsoft, they're like, you have
to move to, you have to relocate to Seattle. And I'm like, that's not happening.
So they did a really nice story, kind of like, you know, really
talking about career shifts and changes, you know, although some
people would argue I'm still an engineer, right? So I didn't really change radically.
But you know, even if you're in one field, even a field that's, you know,
quote unquote, a, you know, great career path like
software or development, your career, what, what
it looks like is going to change from the moment you get your degree
or, you know, graduate from a boot camp is Radically going to change.
Right. When I look back in my classes, like, you know,
the one that the. The basically was
Introduction to Relational Databases. Right. SQL and all
that, that's the one that has probably changed the least.
Right. Everything else is kind of like, you know, the language, no one uses Pascal,
no one uses fortran, no one uses prologic. And what was the other one?
There was some AI course I took. I'm blanking on whatever language that was.
But that is completely irrelevant to today's AI. Right.
So it's, I mean, it's just cool. And basically pluralsight has this, you know,
whole thing. And today, candace, is day 1100, if you can believe
that. That's fantastic. I mean, but
legitimately finding how much time a day?
5 minutes, 10 minutes. Today, today I managed to put in like
30 minutes. But just to say I'm going to learn something new.
Right. You know, and you know, that's, I mean, that's really been,
you know, my entire last year, you know,
with, you know, impact quantum and, and data driven. Just
learning something new every day and figuring
out what's useful and what, you know, is
just a lot of hype and I can kind of not really worry about it.
Right. But being willing to learn. Yeah,
I mean, that's, that is going to be the adaptability. And
particularly this is even before kind of people are freaking out about AI taking
away all the jobs. Right. Even before that you really needed to be
adaptable. Right. And I know people that. I mean,
honestly, for me, I wish I could say I started off with that mindset, but
it really took major life crises.
Crazy. What's the plural crisis.
But it took multiple things like whether it was the
dot com bust followed by 911 for me to go from being
a Java developer to a. NET developer and then
going from basically being Windows Stack, Windows
admin developer, engineer to data
science. And AI also took a major
crisis. It's one thing. The previous time I was
laid off, I had no wife, I had no kids, I didn't have a
mortgage. Right. You know, the second time it happened, I did have
all of those. Right. So it was definitely a. You know,
sometimes panic and fear and loathing can lead to
motivation. Look, I mean, my
career started, you know, I was, I was a, I was
an English women's studies communication major.
I graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University,
which is kind of a big deal. I worked very hard. Thank you.
It's legit. Ivy League. Legit. Legit. And I
went into publishing. I just, that's where I landed My first job
and I, I loved being around books. That was pretty
obvious. I remember one of my, one of
my experiences was when Bridget Jones's
Diary came out in, in, in, in
paperback and I was at Penguin Putnam at the time and
you know, just figuring out how to keep all the, all the stores in stock
to keep it, you know, riding that best seller wave. And then finally,
you know, publishing was condensing and then I, and then I, I
immigrated to, to, to Canada and
I knew publishing. But that's when I started in technology
and went into tech publishing. Tech edtech, you know,
pub ed tech. And I was selling, you know,
all kinds of technology to every developer that I could find.
Evolving, just evolving with the market. I think that's where I first
met you. You were like at Silverlight Conference or something like that. At the
Manning booth or was it. Yeah, it was Manning
and that's what it was. I mean I had to, I had to you know,
learn and understand everything. You know, talking about Silverlight to Python
to, you know, and then it became to understanding, you know, machine learning
and TensorFlow and PyTorch and now
you know, just delving into quantum and
being a little bit obsessed with
quantum biology. That's all in quantum chemistry and
quantum consciousness. That's really
tickled, tickled me. Recently we have a great show on in the
queue about quantum where we kind of, we don't go into
it in detail but we do talk about it with, with
a legitimate researcher, right. Who does like, you know,
we get into a good conversation with her about space satellites and stuff like that
and kind of like what's the logistics of that? Like, because like, and I
was, I, I got, I got the answer to my question of like why Laser?
Like, you know what the acronym behind laser means? Like for me I never got
a good answer until that show. So. Right. If you're not already subscribed, do
subscribe. That was a cool conversation and how we're, we're going. You know, you
can connect up in space. It's very different than connecting here down at
Earth, right? Well, yeah. Plus the, the notion of you have like
she didn't give it in freedom units, she gave them in kilometers. But like, you
know, it's actually if you have the
longest subfloor sub ocean floor cable is like
40,000km and
it's actually faster to go up to a satellite and
then back down because that's more of a,
it's, it'll, it'll, it'll end up less than 40,000 kilometers.
Right. Plus there's also. And this is the part I have to listen to it
again because I understood it when she said it
and now I can't describe it. Like. But, but there's a. There's
a. Some quantum phenomena that would get lost through going
through all the repeaters on terrestrial cables.
Whereas if you bounce to the satellite, the satellite is only the only
repeater. So you have one repeater. Right. I remember that. I
remember we were really blown away by that. I don't remember why that mattered. I'll
have to listen to it again. But. But it did matter. It did. Oh, it
absolutely mattered. It had to do, I think with the distance.
I thought it was the repeaters. Well, that they brought
down the distance that it had to. I think it was distance, but it was
also repeaters because you need to repeat. You need to have a repeater, even for
fiber, which I didn't know that. So basically the signal will
lose strength over a certain amount of time. Right. And then you have to
amplify it every time. So because
it's 40,000km and it has to go through a tube, basically
the cable, you need repeaters every so often.
And each one of those repeaters would have to
have special magic hand wavium
to preserve the quantum space.
Quantum. Quantum information input that it gets and then on
the output. And there's a whole lot of
barriers. She explains it really well. I'm not going to,
but there's a whole lot of barriers that, you know, how do you. Preserving that
information is not trivial. So it's just easier to throw something in orbit that can
do it just once and then back down. We. So you also get the distance
benefit too. Right. And that pesky speed of light thing keeps
coming up. So. But this is going to be an upcoming.
This. It's an upcoming show. Yeah, it's very exciting.
I think two shows from now. It's brilliant. Brilliant.
Yeah, she was cool. But yeah, speaking of
quantum, I'm. There was a lot of quantum
companies there, like out on the expo floor. So it was really cool.
So I bumped into and I invited. I gave everyone
like, you know, my contact information. I was like, hey, you know, we got
this and you know, impact Quantum. And so I
bumped into. Not. The display thing is not cooperating with me there it
is. So inflection was there.
Quantum machines was there,
Quero was there, Yuval's
company was there. He wasn't there. But like the people knew him.
So there's a lot. So I introduced myself to everybody there, like hey, you know,
because we're always looking for guests. So that's
a plug for if you're a quantum company. If you're listening, it's
ditto for Data Driven. Right. I mean, it's, it's. What's interesting
is, and I kind of suspected this like a couple years
ago, like, people always like, why are you, why are you interested
in quantum? Right. Because I'm like, there's going to be an overlap of AI and
quantum. Absolutely. And like, and I
also kind of, like, I also kind of like a year ago kind of said,
you know, it's looking like Nvidia one day will be thought of more of as
a defense contractor and critical to national defense. When I said
it, I looked like I was a lunatic. But if you watch the keynote,
I highly recommend you go do that. Like, it's not that hard of a stretch.
He didn't say it in so many words, but it was pretty clear. Like the,
the writings on the wall. Like, this is a national security issue.
Right. And, and, and, and props to Jensen
Huang for
setting the stage for who the adversary is without saying that said
adversary by name. Okay. And since his, I think his
family's from Taiwan, so like, he's probably, it's pretty close
to home in a lot of ways. Right.
And now it's just very impressive. Kind of like
it's these emerging to emerging intersections. Yeah. That
are what's really the most exciting. Like when you, when you think about robotics
and about AI and then you think about quantum
hybrid. Yeah. I mean, these are not
isolated silos of technology. These are very closely
integrated. And you know, my
advice to anyone out there is, you know, get good at one.
Right. Because it's very easy to look at all this, get overwhelmed. Right. But get
good at one silo and then at least have a passing
understanding, conversational understanding of the other ones. Right. Think of it
like human languages. Right. You obviously have your native language and if you can, you
don't have to be totally fluent in a second language. But as long as you
can kind of like have a base understanding and kind of ability to get around,
that is going to open up more doors for you. And I think the same
is true in tech. Right. Like, you know, obviously my home base is
data science and AI, but you
know, soon, maybe one day quantum, Right. I'll be able to explain
why the satellites are better
than, than the landlines. But, you know,
but I think it's also interesting to realize, like, how much
we do know about quantum more than the
average Technologist. Right. Because people are asking me like, why is
quantum a big deal? And I was explaining it and those people like, oh, okay.
You know, and it's like, it's hard. I'm like, yeah, it's very hard. Like,
you know, when I first learned, heard about it, like, I would go 15
minutes, I'd get a migraine, I'd have to stop. Right,
right. Break it down. And you understand that, you know, quantum is
important. It's important for certain businesses,
certain sectors way more than others. It will
affect all sectors, but. And some are more
obvious than others. Right. Like there's going to be some sectors that are going to
immediately be impacted. Right. Security. It. Security being probably
the most obvious. I think health is another, really. Health is another
one. Anything where you have to simulate chemistry.
Yes. Oh my God. I spoke to a
phenomenal woman yesterday. We're gonna have her on the show
and she is this molecular
chemist and she is just
fascinated about the intersection of
chemistry, biology and quantum. And
just, and it's just so important to understand the intersections there. And
that's going to be a great conversation as well. Sorry. No, no, it's a
very exciting time to be like, you know, I mean, honestly, like, if I,
you know, one conference had robots, had AI, had
quantum computing, like all in one place, man, it doesn't get much better than that.
What was really interesting though was a, this was kind of
talk about in the keynote where he talks about, you know, one of the server
racks that they have for their supercomputer is like over 2 million parts. Right. From
like hundreds of different suppliers. So you have to give it
props to Nvidia's like, logistics, plus also
the electrical systems that they need. The cooling system, like they had one, they had
like a couple of exhibits were talking about like different cooling system, liquid cooling,
high efficiency air cooling. There was MCD
and Schneider Electric, a couple of electric companies were there.
Not like electric company kids show when we were kids, but,
but electrical engineering companies were there because it matters. Right? Like all of this
stuff has to happen somewhere in the physical world. And
you know, very often that's in Loudoun County, Virginia. But you know, that's, that's,
that's, that's a topic for another show. But yeah,
so this is some of the swag. So in the keynote room they had T
shirts, so
which was pretty cool. And then we have this bag which
I'm gonna see if I can get my kids to nerd out and trick or
treat with this.
But some of the swag in here was really good. Like, my favorite bit of
swag was this thing.
See if I can see that. It's basically like a. An adapter.
So it also has this. So this is the probably the most useful bit of
swag. There's other cool stuff in here, too. There's what I think
is a luggage tag for F5 Networks.
And this is just the other stuff I collected.
There's. Whose socks are these? AWS
socks. Okay. With the DC
Skyline. That's kind of cool.
Guardians of the AI keychain, or is that a pin
keychain? Hand
sanitizer, but like in a business card type
thing. Okay. But that was pretty cool. And then
I did get quantum machine socks. They're upstairs.
You know, pens, the usual kind of swaggy type stuff.
Google Cloud pen. And so,
yeah, it was. It was definitely a very productive,
you know, couple days. I definitely am
gonna kind of binge watch all the sessions because as far as I know, everything
was recorded. So that'll be kind of nice.
And yeah, it was awesome. And I thought it would be cool
to kind of share this across both shows, right, because these are two very related
fields, right? AI and quantum computing.
Because, you know, whether you're using actual quantum
computers or simulated ones, it's
all going to be some form of linear algebra, which happens to be what
these GPUs are really good at. And the keynote really
did a good job of putting it all into perspective in terms
of, you know,
oh, we, you know, it was a little. Little braggadocious, but, you know, I guess
when you're worth $5 trillion, you know, you can. Yeah, I guess
so. Right? You know, I would. Dear Lord, please give me that problem.
Oh, my God. Honestly, making trouble today. Okay,
now it's Murphy's Law, man. As soon as I crack open a book or start
a call, guaranteed somebody exactly
like. So the.
See, folks, we really do record these live
today, folks. We really do. But these are. These are.
These are interesting times in terms of.
There we go. Cool. Sorry about that, folks.
It really is live. So also, you know, we're streaming this on multiple YouTube channels,
so if you. If you. If you're a lot of channel growth on both channels,
both Frank's World and the Impact Quantum Channel. So wherever platform
you're liking, if you can, like, share and subscribe, that'd be great. Leave a comment
if you have any questions, but there's definitely a lot to digest from
this show in terms of, you know, from robots to
quantum computers. The big thing that they released was The
NVQ link, which is an interesting,
I would say little project, but it's not little.
It is basically like a network bandwidth. I totally want to geek out on this
and I would be lying if I said I knew that much about it, but
everybody was just going crazy over it,
right? Yeah, there's a lot of potential there,
right. I mean, a lot of potential to just kind of
set the pace for quantum networking 100.
Right. And just the high speed bandwidth because hang on a second,
my wireless headset batteries were low when it was beeping at me, so I had
to take those off for a second. But no, like, I mean
just kind of, even if you don't use it, it's basically a
high speed, low latency interconnect
between both quantum processors as well as
GPU based ones. Right. So this is,
I mean the stat was just unbelievable. Like it
could, you know, this thing could house, I mean, terabits of information
could be shared across this. Right. So the whole notion of what it takes to
build a computer bus speeds can
be completely reimagined now because of this. Right? And the idea is that, you
know, when you do have a, you know, you'll see in the picture, right, there's
the chandelier.
Those are going to need some kind of controller system. So you have these hybrid
systems that are both GPU super clusters and an actual quantum
computer. So I think that the. And, and you'll notice that they did a really
good job here of showing now at least three different types. Right? There's this
one, I think that's the Rigetti.
This one, I forget the name of it, but they had these all out on
the floor. Okay. And you'll have to go to watch the
YouTube shorts to kind of see me walk around them and stuff like that. But
I mean it was just, it, you know, and this is just, just so much
going on in so many different directions. One of the
companies there was a robotics company and
they're. I overheard the pitch.
Basically the too long didn't read of the pitch was
you don't buy the robots from them, you pay them $20 an
hour basically per robot. That was basically the
idea. So don't quote me on
that over that. That makes it much more competitive, right?
Yeah. Because I gotta spend how much money to get one
robot. Right. And whatever the, the
accounting magic you need to make that make sense. Right, Right.
You don't. That, that doesn't really apply anymore. Right. It's completely.
Right. I don't even know if that's and. Minimum wage in some
places is 15. Right. So, like, it's not,
you know, and these workers could work 24, 7. They don't get sick.
I mean, they'll break down, but yeah, I mean, the labor market is about to
get seriously disrupted.
Yeah. And, you know,
speak. You know, I think everybody over the
next five, 10 years is going to have to experience some kind of career disruption
and retraining. Right. So if
you don't like learning,
get used to it. You know, Eat your
vegetables. Right? Is kind of like the thing. Learn to like the vegetables. That makes
it a lot easier when you eat them. But it's fun, Right. And I think
I enjoy some of. The stuff that I've learned, like AI tools. I mean,
I. I have. I'm having the best time. I mean, I'm like, is this even.
Am I working right now? I don't even feel like. I feel like I'm enjoying
what I'm creating. I'm enjoying what I'm sharing,
and I'm doing it in a way that's incredibly digestible to
all kinds of folks, and that's what I'm looking to do. And people
need translators, Right. People that can understand
the deep technical side of it and explain it in more human terms.
Right. And, you know, I gave my stump
speech yesterday. Somebody was like, you know, how do I get one of the. There
was a recent graduate. Was there. A lot of university students were there,
too, which I think Nvidia gave them like a sweetheart
deal to attend. Oh, I think it's so important, though. I mean,
it really is. Right. Well, it's smart, too, right? Because one, it's, you know, you
know, eth. You know, it's the right thing to do. Right. But it's also going
to build out their talent pipeline. Right. It's the next generation of talent.
Get them out there, get them all. They're. They're excited.
I met students from Morgan State dmu,
University of Maryland, University of Kentucky. They actually
drove from Cincinnati area to here.
And though, I mean, it was just
a bunch of universities
and Virginia Tech was actually a sponsor of the conference, which I thought was
interesting. Oh, that is interesting. Their logo is up there. And I was
like, oh, that is interesting. And probably a bunch of other universities just didn't notice
it. Their logo is very stands out. Okay,
well, then they did the right way. They did it the right way. Yeah, exactly.
Right. So it was. It
was a very. It was one of the more unique conferences
I've ever been to. Right. Because
it really was at the confluence of national security Fed type
stuff, cutting edge robotics, cutting edge
AI, quantum computers. You had students, you had federal
employees, you had uniform service manager, you had congressional policy
makers pipeline showing up. It was a, it was a unique mix
that you don't see a lot of places. Right, right.
So it was really cool. I'm hoping to go to the one,
the big one in California which is going to be. Suppose somebody told me that
it's wall to wall people and increasingly over the last few years world
of war robots too. So. Right, right. More of that in California. I mean
that's the thing. You wanna this kind of set the stage for you. Yeah,
yeah, expect for the next one. Right? Yeah, exactly. I mean
and, and Nvidia's really got a lot of things figured
out. Right. Like it's not just the hardware, they have the software layer with
Cuda. Jensen does a far better job of explaining it in the first 10
minutes of the keynote. But
I mean no wonder why they're worth 5 trillion. Like it's no
surprise.
It'S always live, it's always. Things are always going on.
Someone came into her, her home office while we were. So
if you're listening, you didn't see it, but.
I found the pod. But so thanks for joining us live.
I don't see any active question questions in the queue but
if I met you at the conference. Very nice to meet you. Definitely
looking forward to getting hands on with the spark
that was also cool. Everybody's like do you have a spark? Do you have a
spark? Well that kind of puts you on different echelon. I know I was like
one of the cool kids. I got a spark that was like. Rolling up the
high school and like you know, a Beamer or my neighborhood is really an
Irocol. But
that date, that, that puts me in a very interesting time and place in
history I suppose. But, but yeah, no it was
really, it was really cool. I think the future looks
amazing and I think there's just so much
opportunity in this space. Oh the one last thing was like there was this.
Nvidia had like a whole startup area. So apparently Nvidia has like a startup program
and stuff like that out. Really cool stuff, a lot of innovative stuff there.
One of the best signs I saw, which was behind the red hat booth, it
was kind of like the next aisle over was they had this huge sign that
said AI took my job right in big text
and the little text to another level. Oh
like that's clever. Right? You know, I mean that's
It's. What did someone say? It's not that AI is going
to take away your job, it's that the person
who knows how to use AI. Is going to take over your job. Is going
to take away. And I'm like, well, I was like, you know,
look at the stuff we do. Right? We're not a big team here. Right? We're
not, you know,
look at what we're able to accomplish. Yeah, absolutely. You
know, and that would not have been, it would have been
doable, it wouldn't have been feasible without AI. Right,
right. Because sadly I do have to sleep sometimes
and. You got three. You got three kids. I got three kids. Yeah. There you
go. Well, I'm really happy that we talked about this because
honestly, the conference looked really exciting. It was awesome. Always nice to
hear from somebody who's there, get them to download, you know, some of that information.
Absolutely, absolutely. Fun fact. We actually re recorded this.
We were, we pre recorded something a day before, before I went and I was
like, no, so much was there that we have to redo it.
So let us know in the comments if you want to hear. Kind of like
the original, It'll be like the original cut of Star wars and kind of
like the remix, you know.
But yeah, I mean I'm, I'm super
excited. It was cool to connect with former people
I work with at Microsoft and these are people that go way back.
Like back to when it was called dpe Developer Platform Evangelism. Like it was
like, you know, he was talking about like, you know, we had some interesting war
stories we could share and stuff like that. Back in 1900 in Hootelie. Hoo.
No, it was 2000 something. But yeah, yeah, I'm right there with you. This was
this, this was when Windows Phone still was a
thing. So way, way back.
But yeah, plus it was really cool to meet like
Maria. Maria Shaw from Python. Simplistic. She's awesome. Shout out to you, Maria.
You know, you know, not only have you also
career transition, you've done it very well. And I think your, your videos are
always positive and helpful to help other people follow that path too. Right.
You know, and that's what we try. To do here, right. Being
quantum curious, we're saying, you know, you don't have to have a PhD. No,
but that doesn't mean that you can't be in the conversation. It doesn't mean you
can't understand. I gave that some speech yesterday. I was like, you know, look, you
don't have to be a PhD in this. So I, you know, they're going to
need, they're going to need customer solution architects. They're going to need. Or Customer success,
whatever they're called now, CSAs. You're going to need people to rack and
stack this stuff. You're going to need people that you know can market
it. You're going to need business development, you need sales leaders. You're going to need
all of that stuff. You are going to need. Yeah. And not
every one of them is going to need a PhD. In fact,
one of the guests said there's already too many PhDs in
this field, which is kind of funny, right?
So actually, speaking of which, Candace, that is an excellent segue. No
wonder why you're a master marketer. So this is our book here
that we wrote and it is. Can I. I think it's up there.
It says Quantum Sales Playbook. There we go. There you go. Quantum
Sales Playbook. And it's basically a sales playbook
that is for startups, for anyone in
really emerging tech fields. Right. Like, you know, I wrote this
around Quantum based on what I experienced with AI, because
I've been doing AI now about 10 years, right. And majority of that
has either been sales or delivering training
about AI, right. So actually I think eight of those 10
years have been selling AI. Two of those have
been training shout out to Wintelect
back in the day. But, but it's also
part of it. Is from, you know, I don't know, maybe
14 or 15 episodes of, of the first part of the season
of us talking to experts and understanding, you know,
right. All of their perspectives be, be them PhDs, be
them industry, be them, you know, trying to go over the bridge from
1 to 1 to the other, you know, hearing what they have to say and
what's real, what's actually happening. One of the guests pointed out, he goes, he, he
does happen to have a PhD, right? And, but he
realized that he, you know, he sold the system to a company in Japan and
like, they had to fly out a lot of
people like customer success, right. To make sure it up and runs and things like
that. And they didn't, you know, I think it was kind of a learning experience.
That's why I'm not saying the name. If you want to listen to it, you
figure out which. Who I'm talking about because that show has been released.
And if you're really clever, you know, that we said the name of said company
already in this episode. But, but, you know, he's like a learning
experience. Like he Realized like, you know, you know,
you're gonna need people to rack and stack him is basically kind of like the
end result. Right. Like when somebody buys a solution and it's has to
be on prem, you have to set it up, configure it. You have to teach
people how to configure it. So you're going to need trainers, you're going to need
marketers, you're going to need all of these roles. You're going to need
them. Right. Do they have to have PhDs in quantum physics? No.
In fact, it's probably a waste of their education and skills because the people with
the PhDs need to be designing the next version of your product.
Right. So you need people who are kind of not
PhDs. You need people from other disciplines to go in and do this.
Right. And that's really kind of the gist of art. This show.
Right. This impact Quantum. And the book is really about, like, if you. This
is really for business developers, startup founders. That's really who this is really meant for
is like, even if you have a PhD, you can't assume
everyone else will understand why qubits are important, why they're
a big deal. Right. And that's the subtitle of the book is Selling Outcomes, not
Qubits. Right. And it's not just, it's not just for
Quantum. No. This could apply to any emerging tech. Exactly.
That's the point. It's for any emerging tech getting kind of beyond what the technology
is into, why the solution is going to work.
That's exactly the more important, you know, aspect of it. So, yeah.
Awesome. And if you run an incubator
or like a research facility at a university,
we'll give you a copy of it for free. Right. We're not doing this for
the money. We're just doing this to, to help nudge along this. Right. Give my,
give my experience in sales, Candace's experience in marketing. Kind of like
translate that into quantum. Right. It's our contribution to this
emerging ecosystem. Exactly, Exactly.
Awesome. And that's all I got.
Anything else pertinent North?
The Great White North? No, honestly, it's raining. It's
raining here today. And that's. So it's not, it's not white yet.
We're gonna need. I mean, and it's. It's been known to snow by
Halloween, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think we're. Gonna have that this
year. I think it's. My grandfather grew up in Montreal, so whenever as a kid,
I would complain about being Colder. Like the snow. He would tell
me it was the ultimate uphill, both ways in the
snow, being chased by polar bears. Like, that was the exact
kind of stuff I do to my kids now. Because
it's time. We should be doing it. Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Up a little
bit. There you go. Although one of my Weisenheimer kids is like, you know, growing
up in New York City, he's like, yeah, uphill. Both AOAs in the snow while
getting shot at. Like, oh, okay. Now he's just taking it
to the next level. For his credit was it was
the kids taking it to the next level. So I've
raised snarky kids, which is karma, I suppose, coming back to bite me.
Oh, oh, please. I'm from New York, so my kids have a level of sarcasm.
Oh, yeah. That's unnatural that even though they spent. More years in
Montreal, people are like, you're so New York. And,
like, where are you from? Kind of sticks with
you. Yeah. I mean, I understand why it sticks with me, but it's from them,
and. And they. They left there two and four years old, you know, and
now they're 20 and 18. But it's. It's. It's. It's
in the home, too. Right. It's in the heart. Right. Thankfully for me, like, I'm
still in, like, the east coast corridor. Right. So Baltimore is kind of like,
you know, like a Diet Coke for. I'm gonna get so much hate mail for
that. But it's not. It's culturally similar enough,
you know, Kind of got that east coast vibe. Right. Right. So.
All right. So with that, we'll let our AI who is a British
AI from the other side of the pond, finish the show. And if you're
watching this live on the live stream, you get treated to some
extra fancy graphics. So I have my outro
graphics that I will play now,
assuming I can find it. There it is.