Techstrong Gang – November 5, 2024

Hey, everyone. Happy Election Day. Stay tuned for who Wins Here on Techron Gang.

Hey, everyone. Happy Tuesday at Talent Shimmer. Textron.

No, we don't know who's gonna win today's election. Come on. You think it's fixed or something?

Um, but I'll tell you what, no one else does either, and you can stay up till three or four in the morning tonight watching the returns if that's your thing. But I doubt we'll know who actually wins this election till sometime this weekend, maybe. Um, and that's just the facts, and that's the way of it.

And maybe it's right because they're doing a good job of counting votes and, and tabulating in spite of the crazies out there. So, but do go out if you haven't voted yet, do go out and vote today if you can. It's, it's important.

It's your duty and, and our country may depend on it. Um, that being said, we have a lot to cover, including the Politics of Tech today, and we have a great gang to bring it to you. Let me introduce you to them.

First of all, from Fufu, from the Futurum Group. She's been on a lot lately. She brings an there class to the show.

Mm-Hmm. Kimberly Bates. Hi, Kimberly.

Welcome. Hey, well, we'll see what happens this week. Everybody's gnashing at their teeth here.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hurting.

Well, I don't know if he's gnashing at his teeth, but yeah, that's kind of ashing Join us. I don't know how to mash. He doesn't know how he do the Monster Nash.

Oh, that different one. Yeah, the Monster. Um, anyway, he is the c he's the CEO of Tech Field Day, another Futur company and a stellar gang member here.

Steven FoST. Hey, Steven. Welcome.

It's nice to be here on this beautiful election day. Absolutely. I hope it's beautiful where you all are.

It is here. Good weather means high turnout. Um, joining us.

Speaking of high turnout, no, no. The Colorado. Oh no.

Kimberly's from Colorado, but she's not the usual high turnouts from Colorado. Um, but joining us from Harrison, New York, still licking his wounds over his Yankees gonna be tough off season two. Mike Ard.

Hey, Mike, how are you? I'm good. Suddenly I put on a flannel shirt and I'm not classy enough for this show.

Huh? Is That how that goes? That's how it goes.

That's how it goes. Mike's the from the Flannel shirt crowd joining me here, live in our book of Ratone headquarters. She is our sustainability analyst and editor, Bonnie Schneider.

Hey, Bonnie. Welcome. Thanks, Alan.

Great to be here. Great to have you on, as usual on our Tuesday shows. And, uh, look, guys, let's jump right into it.

So, Mike, it is election day and you know, more than in recent elections, the tech industry has been very, very involved in this election from the amount of money they've put into, let's face it, outwardly. I, they're bankrolling a lot of election stuff here. There's different segments of the tech industry that are bankrolling different pieces of it, but let, I'll throw it to you to set the table.

Yeah. If you look at it, at least in my memory, I've never seen tech so involved. We got the Crypto brothers are throwing in cash to drive.

Uh, It's Crypto bros, not Brothers Green Bros, bro. Bro, I guess there's no women involved in that whole thing. No, Of course there's not very few.

Well, look, I think there Should be some That's a whole nother, but don't worry, they will protect them whether they want it or not. There you go. And the AI folks are, you know, throwing in their weight behind a couple of candidates here and there.

And we've also seen Big Tech itself is now a political subject where people are worried about the influence of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, apple, and all those folks. And I don't know Alan, in my experience, I don't think I've seen tech, as you mentioned so heavily involved in political issues. But I wonder, is this the new normal?

Is this what we're gonna see for every election, no matter what? It's Where there's billionaires, there's undue influence in politics in America until someone gets the Keone here to overturn Citizens United. And where there's billionaires, there's usually tech companies or tech.

So it's, but there's, there's a co there's different flavors of tech influencing politics in this election. Typically, tech Tech was kind of like Saudi Arabian princes. They give everyone a little money, they want no one that at them.

And, and, you know, make it, make it all good this year, very clearly, certain factions within the tech industry have picked their favorites. Right. The crypto bros.

Clearly. Well, look, JD Vance is a child of the crypto bros. How two Bros can have a child.

I'll leave it to you to figure out. But JD Vance is their loved child. And, and Moreno, his, the the guy running there is, is right behind them.

Right? So the crypto bros have clearly made their choices. The AI people look, the AI people, they just wanna have fun, right?

And they're scared to death of the government putting the brakes on their ai, um, you know, on their, on their ai, uh, adventurous. And so, you know, they're gonna want a back, a candidate that says, you know, no rules as long as it's here in America until the AI does something that may upset that candidate. And then we'll see how quickly, you know, that turns.

Um, but then you look at big tech, the Googles, the Facebooks, or meta Google Meta, Microsoft, apple, they have come under the, the microscope of government regulation like never before, with the exception of maybe poor old IBM back in the eighties, nineties. And so how long do you think they were gonna stay under that microscope microscope until they started spending some money on lobbyists and everything else? Really what this is, and I hate to get all Hoover from Delta House on you, but really what this is, is an indictment of the whole American system.

If you wanna have a say in our government, you gotta hire a lobbyist and lobbyists cost a lot of money, but if you put together a lot of money and get your lobbyists and make a lot of noise there, you'll get some favorable treatment. I think that's the lesson unfortunately, that tech has learned. It's almost like this 800 pound baby grew up, at least into an adolescent this, this cycle.

So I lived in DC during the, the nineties, and uh, it Must have been just a teenager. It was, yeah, I was just a kid. Um, the lobbyists were alive and well then, so Oh yeah, the, the lobby.

I think the difference here is what you're talking about is that somewhere along the lines, in the last 10, 12 years or so, industries started to get into and hold positions, whereas bef up until, in my perception, and I don't have any real data on this, my perception is up until a certain period of time, other than lobbying around specific rulings that would impact them, they started weighing in on things that were beyond their, probably their business scope or primary purpose of their business. And once that happens, you've got a, an interesting dynamic that starts happening into the market. But I think that having lobbyists running around or any influence is nothing new.

I mean, FDR had all the melons and the Rockefellers and everybody else running around and influencing what he was doing that 1930s, forties. Um, that's not a new thing. Having billionaires doing that is not a new thing that's been going on all along.

It's just that I think now it's so visible now to me it's so visible, especially with this environment that we have and the social media that goes around. So it just, it's just that much noisier and in our face. Yeah.

Maybe we didn't see it as visibly as as it was going on. No, It was always whispered. Right?

I, I think there was always an understanding that people bought influence with money. Yeah. But it, you know, it was a small percentage like the doc, the, the Rockefellers, the, the, the Carnegies or what have you.

Now it is, every industry has their lobbying group, and you're right, it goes beyond just their narrow interest or, you know, business scope as you called it. Steven. Looks like you have something to say.

Yeah, I, I actually wanna refute what you said. Go ahead. Um, here's the thing.

If you look at it, companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google, they're, and Meta, they're still not spending much money on lobbying. In fact, they're not doing much political activity at all. If you look at the dollars, they're spending very, very small dollars on this stuff now.

They certainly are weighing in on issues in their industry. And as Kimberly points out, I think it's become, uh, acceptable now for big companies to weigh in beyond their traditional industrial, uh, concerns. And so you have situations where some of these companies are espousing progressive, uh, political beliefs, or at least acting on progressive political beliefs.

But that being said, the dollar amount is actually fairly small. Where you see the impact of tech on this election, especially in terms of dollars and influence, is in, um, political action committees by actually not the big tech companies. You would think that in an environment where Apple and Microsoft and Google and Meta are constantly having attacks thrown at them from all sides, people saying they should be broken up, they should be subject to antitrust, they should be muzzled, they should be restrained.

You would think they would be spending a lot of money. But look at the dollars, they're not, who's spending the money? Money are individuals, tech billionaires who have, uh, basically a bone to pick with Washington on one aspect or another, whether it is taxation, which is obviously a huge thing if you're a very rich person, or crypto, which is a big deal to a lot of these people, as we said, the crypto bros.

This is, um, you know, the, the, the, think about it this way. Um, the, uh, lobbyists behind, I don't know, like the number four or five cryptocurrency in the market have outspent, Microsoft, Google, meta and Face and, and Apple combined in this election. Right?

And that doesn't say anything about the, uh, the people that have a lot to gain, who are spending huge amounts of money on, uh, political action committees. As you said, JD Vance is very much a child of the, not, not Silicon Valley writ large, but specific, a specific segment of Silicon Valley. But it's interesting to me that it is not the attack of the corporations.

It is once again, the attack of the billionaires, which is what we've had, well, maybe not with a B, but an m for 200 years in this country. And that's a super good point, Steve, because what we have now is if you look at the billionaires, many of them have made their money on tech and or, you know, significant amount. And those are the face we see.

Whereas before the ones we just cited, those were the people that were making their money, you know, back either at transportation, oil, the banking industry. And so the visibility of tech now becomes the face of some billionaire name them name the folks, but Pick of one you could Probably, I mean, you could pick up, you could pick up like 20 of them that, that we've seen and and their spouses as well, you know. Yeah.

That are very active. So, you know, the, um, I think We're getting, they're also getting a lot more visibility just individually, um, because of the media coverage, because media has changed so much, you know, through the years. And now there's so many opportunities with independent media and podcasts that we're seeing these, um, tech bro, millionaire billionaires, I should say, um, just getting more exposure than they did to wait, One of the tech bros is running a a million dollar lottery if you vote.

Yeah. And so they get a bigger platform. But There's another aspect.

Yeah. There's another aspect you're missing. Some of these people are doing it because they derive substantial revenue from government contracts.

But if they were, see, okay, let, let's just say it, let's say Musk. Okay. If he was smart, he wouldn't be doing it the way he is because he seems to be undermining his own, um, his own, uh, industries.

I mean, you know, Musk's, um, of revenue. He's saying Elon Musk isn't smart, Steven, I'm saying that. I thought he was, but I'm beginning to wonder, hey, Far be it for me to, should be supporting contradict you.

He should be supporting, um, motherhood and apple pie to get his, Well, he does support having more children, Space communications. These are industries for all people. He should be the most middle of the road, boring, bland dude, trying to push forward giant government bureaucracy instead of small government that's gonna just cut the knees off of all of his companies.

I don't get it. Well, look, I think Doesn, I think Steven has it right on the head. The issue billionaires aside, is the tech industry collectively is gonna come to regret all this because it's inviting a level of participation from DC and all kinds of decisions and issues that the tech industry was better off when it was left to itself.

And now we're gonna have a lot more, uh, Partisanship and partisanship On, on both sides, and it's just gonna get uglier from here. I, so I'm gonna disagree with that in terms that this is not new. Again, I mean, we have a new, we have a brand, we have an industry that's evolved over the last 10 years.

And when we have new industries, when we have new tech, tech that comes out manufacturing, whether it was, again, I wanna go back and, and think historical, you know, we had the industrial age, we had all of those rules coming around the industrial age. Um, you had, um, you had the big banking industry. We've had all the banking stuff going around the big banking industries, you know, between the eighties and the nineties.

And, and where we are now, the tech industry and the social media is a new industry. And so therefore, we start to look and saying, somebody starts saying, okay, so should we be regulating some of these things? Is it part of SCC?

Is it part of, you know, you know, the first amendment? And then the next thing is the AI and AI has such an impact or potential impact on our world that we are obligated as citizens to take a look at what that looks like. You know, and I'm, you know, I'm not an advocate of regulation, I'm not an advocate of any of that, but I am an advocate for us taking a look at there and saying, what do we need to do as a society?

You know, whether or not that is a global society or an individual society, to look at how that has an implication and, and where, where are the tweaks that we need to make to our rules and our laws that make sense for looking at this and governing it? You know, it's the same thing with, you know, the FDA and, and our food system, those kind of things. So that's as, as the we evolve, we need to address that new, those new things that come up as a society.

I think you need the political, I, I don't disagree with you. I agree a hundred percent Kimberly, but you need the political will to do such a thing. And, and quite frankly, I'll be honest, our, the present Supreme Court and judiciary has taken a very hands-off approach when it comes to any sort of regulation like this, because they deem they've equated spending money with freedom of speech.

Right. And I don't think it's, and I don't think it's equated freedom of speech. I think what they're equating it to is saying that new regulations, the powers of regulation, the power of commerce, the power of those areas resides in the legislature.

And the legislature is the place for us to have that debate about what we want to do around ai. And that is the appropriate place for us to look at that and to come together into that conversation. It is not the rules of a person that has not been elected by us as people in our speaking and sitting down and saying what that means.

So I'm very, very pleased to see what we've done in the government in terms of bringing together the tech guys, bringing together all the different people together to say, let's talk about what AI is and what we need to have. And so we get those voices, those, those, those people. They're not necessarily in the back rooms, but this is in the forefront of us talking about that and creating that conversation so it doesn't become somebody that's not elected.

It becomes our elected voices that have to go through Congress, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. And how strange is it that AI is not a major topic in the election this year? Who would've, who would've had that?

I mean, I would've put that on the middle of my Bingo card, and instead, I haven't heard those two letters from either of the major presidential candidates. I haven't heard them from the Senate races. The only term you hear it is as a boogeyman or, or like a, a weapon of, of business fake.

Right? You know, oh, oh, yeah. You know, like, could use AI for deep fakes or whatever.

No one's really talked about what regulating, no one's really talked about what regulating tech in general is. Right? Occasionally one guy will say, oh, we gotta keep those people in line.

You know, they have undue influence. No one's really talked about doing anything like that. But nevertheless, hey, we're, we're almost outta time for this block.

I look, this election's gonna come and go. Right? I think this issue of what is tech's influence role, you know, tech victim or, or, you know, controller of this little of both, probably.

But we need, we need to evolve. I think Kimberly earned something. We need to evolve our process around this if we're going to, you know, have, be able to get a handle on, on things like AI and or quantum or whatever else, the next big thing.

Um, anyway, you are watching Textron Gang. We're gonna come back and talk a bit. We we're just revolutionary day disruptive it two, if by land one, if by c you're watching Textron Gang Cloud native now is the web's leading resource for the growing cloud native ecosystem.

com is your destination for news, thought leadership, features and webinars on cloud native architecture, Kubernetes, serverless, cloud native application development, microservices, service mesh, cloud native security, and more. Stay on the cutting edge of modern application development at Cloud native now. All right, folks, we're back and we're gonna shift the gear or two and talk about, well, traditional IT issues.

com from New Relic that seems to find that IT professionals are spending about a third of their time just keeping the stuff working and troubleshooting. And that's time. It's not spent on more valuable things like building new software and driving new opportunities for companies.

But Kimberly, I know you looked at this report. Does it surprise you? Do you agree with the numbers?

I mean, and if I'm on the business side, I gotta ask myself, what the hell are these people doing all day? Uh, it doesn't surprise me at all. Um, and in fact, you know, they're talking, they're saying that the 30% interruptions, um, of their business, I, I, I was surprised that it wasn't higher actually.

Um, that, you know, we look at how much we they spend on maintenance on the systems that they have in place. Um, and it's significant. It's always been a significant amount.

We've never been able to get out from underneath it. Um, and frankly, you know, we like new stuff versus maintaining the things that we have. Um, you, you build your house and, or you live in your home and, you know, you spend the next whatever years maintaining it as opposed to something new.

And every once in a while you redecorate or whatever, but the majority of the time is maintaining what you have in place. So, um, it doesn't surprise me. Um, and then when we look at the complexity that we are in now, which is a hybrid cloud for, for almost everybody of some sort, um, and that hybrid cloud is multiple clouds.

So we used to think about saying, can I find, figure out a root cause of what's causing a performance problem or a, you know, a somewhat of an interruption, et cetera. You know? And now, now you've got some real big, big stuff that you've gotta drill into.

Bigger stuff that you have to drill into than we did in the past. Um, and that's why New Relic is, you know, doing this study is because they're in the observability space. And that ability to see and perceive what is happening in a more of an automated process is really, really significant in terms of our ability to continue to support this massive growth that we're getting.

And, you know, the first section, we talked about ai, but that's what we're going into. You know, AI becomes part of the core business, innovative business transaction. So I'll stop there and let you guys hop on.

Alright. So Kimberly, you had me till the New Relic piece. Okay.

I, I personally think the New Relic piece is clickbait, Right? It probably is. I didn't go through the study, you know, actually, You know, I'll give them credit.

They did a very extensive job and they put a lot of research into that space. And it is not, you know, I talked to 200 people kind of thing. It's thousands.

So here's the deal. My issue though, Kimberly said, new relic's an observability company. Well, today they are, today they are.

I mean, new Relic was a public company very early on in the a PM space, right? And, and they, they had a, you know, a distinct, I mean, small for a public company, but they had a distinct market. They, my feeling is over the last five to seven years, they've been a bit adrift trying to latch on.

'cause as the a PM market has changed to the observability market, first open source got very hot in observability. So when they first decided they were gonna be more observability and less a PM, they had a big open source put all of a sudden open telemetry Prometheus, sunny boy, where you been my whole life, right? And they, they embraced those really hard and then, but they didn't really gain a lot of market share.

Now, the next pretty girl walks down. It's like that meme, you know, when you walking with the girl. Yeah.

Another girl walks by and the guy looks, now they see this AI walking by and Oh, yeah, ai, we're going to use this to be big observability. I get AI will do it, but I don't know if it does it today. I don't, I Don't.

Well, I'm talking about ai, I'm talking about observability in a much broader context. Yes. There's a segment there that is saying observability, and there's a zillion observ.

I'm Gonna, I'm, I'm gonna bring this back to the point which isn't New Relic. The point is, Steven, Is Is it broken? Is what we wanna know.

I'm the point. Okay, sure. Um, How come he gets to decide this?

Because I am clearly, no, I don't Knowed the room. Go ahead. Because this art said so.

Um, so I, I would say it has always been broken in this aspect because as Kimberly said, we are all fans of shiny new things. And yet, as she said, we have to live in this house for the long term. I think that we are all, I, I think most of us, it nerds are looking around and realizing, well, I wish that I could just play with shiny new things.

I wish I could tear the metaphorical shrink wrap off of a new toy every week. And I wish I didn't have to try to keep this thing up. Um, months, years, maybe decades after it was developed.

Um, and, and so maybe, maybe we got some hope here. Maybe, maybe AI can help us with some of the drudgery of keeping the lights on so that we can focus more on, uh, on doing cool new stuff. Uh, maybe So Mike, I disagree with your whole premise.

And Steven, with all due respect, disagree with you too. Right? Right.

On saying it is broken is like one candidate staying up here telling me I'm in a recession. Immigrants are eating my cats and dogs and everything else. B******t.

Boom. Right? It's not broken.

It does just what I, you know what, most people get into it 'cause they're problem solvers. They like fixing things. Security people a little weird.

We like breaking things then fixing them. Okay. But that's why people do it.

And at its core, that's part of the job of it. Fixing things with fixers. I came in today, I took out a power screw.

I hung something up. I got some wifi stuff working that wasn't working in the office. I felt good.

I felt good. That's what it does. Don't tell me it is broken.

It fixes things for a living. We try to make it better, faster, more secure. But what we don't do is keep an eye on it and do the daily grind of well, Thing.

Right. I disagree with that, Steven. Oh, they do keep their d So I'm gonna go back and I know, Mikey, you said, let's get back to the core thing.

What I was talking about when I talked about observability, I was like looking at every tech part that we have in the data center. You know, whether it's observing within the storage system, whether it's observing in the security system, whether observing into the DevOps environment, et cetera. They all have their process of how do we look at this?

And we have to look at it. We're gonna have to use a level of ai, whatever you wanna call that thing, for suggestive, because the environment has got so big, we can't possibly just, you know, rely on justice people. And we've been doing that for all along.

It's gotten more and more automated as we go. And we're just con continuing to pick up the automation in order to kind of keep tapping down on that 30% or 50% or 60% number that we're using to maintain the operations that are there. And, and, and I absolutely agree with you, Alan.

It's, they, they, they love to fix stuff. I mean, I got guys here in the lab and, you know, they just, they just love to play with things. Well, that's how Cynical, cynical business people would say that basically they're spending a lot of time fixing stuff that they broke.

So they're gonna be like, Hey, this isn't Quite, but they fix, it's better. They make you better in fixing it. That's the, but I, I, I gotta digress.

Like, 'cause I never digress, but I've gotta digress for a moment. I saw a great movie this weekend. You, you know, you talk about like staying in the same house and, and renewing and you know, fixing up the house.

Think I Know what movie it was Here. Did you see it? What movie?

No, but I saw The ad. It's called here. Oh, HT RE Okay.

It's That one. Yeah, it's Tom Hanks. It's a Roberts.

It's actually the, like, almost the whole creative team behind for Gump. Oh. Is, and it's also based on a novel, like for Gump was, and the premise was this piece of land where this house is built on the movie op.

I don't want to give away the whole movie, but the movie opens its dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are walking on this land, and then the dinosaurs disappear and there's ice and that goes away. And then, then there's Native American Indians on this piece of land, and then Colonial turns across the street. Ben Franklin's illegitimate, not Ben.

Yeah. Ben Franklin's illegitimate son lives across the street. Do do we have to, do we have to put a spoiler alert here?

Are you gonna No, that's it. That's what I'm saying. But what, it's interesting, it's a real filmmaker kind of, you know, very filming.

It's a single camera shot from one view. And it happens to be the view of the living room with this house is built on. And this house is built in the 18 hundreds, probably.

Well, no, 17 hundreds late 17 hundreds. And it shows how this house changes. Yeah.

And the people who lived in it over the course of those 250 odd years. And it's amazing the how everything changes except the, the house stays, the house different wallpaper, different colors, different things, but the house isn't the house. And so it was just reminding me of that.

I highly, highly recommend the movie. Good. Is AI applied to it?

Excuse me. I don't know. No.

Apparently, apparently they used AI widely in the production itself. Yes, they did. Because they made Tom Hanks and I forgot who the lady actor is, but she was in Forest with him.

Um, she Wasright was hippy. Robin. Rick.

They, they, um, princess Bride. Come on Man. Princess Bride.

Alright, all right. All right. What do you, but anyway, they used AI to, to make them look, you know, younger.

'cause they followed them through their whole lives. And it was, and, and the AI was very good. I might add, 'cause Tom Hanks, we remember him when he was KIPP or whatever.

Yeah. That show. Mm-Hmm.

Um, yeah, it highly, highly recommend the movie. Another great movie to me. Well, I, I would just say that I think our little it house is on fire and maybe we should look up and think about it.

You sound like another candidate. I, let's get, let's get the EU to pay for it. Um, all right, we're going to take a break here on Text Strong Gang.

Let's come back and we've got a a, a Bonnie Schneider special. I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Techstrong Group. I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Techstrong Research, the sustainability pulse meter.

The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry. Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with a sustainability pulse meter offered exclusively from Techstrong Research. Welcome back to the Techstrong gang.

Well, we talk a lot about how do we deal with all of the hardware, computers, gadgets, devices that organizations use when they're done with it. If they're upgrading, if they are just looking to make some changes. That's a lot of stuff.

Where does it all go? Well, I had the, the pleasure of speaking, um, with Brandon Smith, who, uh, works for this nonprofit organization called Human IT based in California. And it was really incredible to learn, not only are they finding a way to be more environmentally responsible with all these devices, but they're also helping so many young people and, and families across different communities.

You've got e-waste. It's the largest growing waste stream on the planet. You've got one out of five kids here in the us.

They go home after school and don't have a computer or an internet connection. So it's just about reframing people's thoughts. Why recycle when you can reuse?

And I think that's always been our vision. What might not work in an organization after three, four years still has three, four years life left, um, out in a community for a kid to do their homework or a parent to pay their utility bill. That's what I'm grateful to do.

And, and it has been fulfilling over my nine years here, is to work with good people and good organizations that look at this equipment and say something could and should be done with it. And it's aligned with their executive team and their ESG and their sustainability goals. And then I also get to be a voice for those on the wrong side of the digital to divide those that lack digital access as well as for the environment and, and fighting against improper disposal.

How do you coordinate all of that? You have so many companies that probably have all this, uh, like you mentioned, laptops that maybe are in, you know, good condition, they don't need it anymore. But then you're, you're looking for the, the communities that will benefit from them.

What, what is that task like matching everything up? Yeah, It's crazy that we do it all in one house. Um, because we are, there's two sides to the organization, to your, to your point, Bonnie, right?

We're an i a provider doing the logistics, global logistics, corporate grade data sanitization to NIST to 888 HIPAA and DOD compliances being na AAA certified to manage the reporting and documentation for that. Um, and, and making sure that there's ESG impact reporting built into that. So it's everything that everybody would need from an e-waste provider perspective, including the data and asset management, transfer liability and ownership, all of that.

Um, while on the other side of the house, we're also working with, directly with individuals, with families, with veterans, with and, and directly with nonprofits to help them get digital access. We, we'd like to say we're the nonprofits nonprofit. We can help them get the technology to do the good work that they do that empowers their mission.

Can you Talk about digital inclusion? You mentioned this earlier and, and I'm wondering if you could explain it and why it's important. Yeah, so digital inclusion is, is often the thing that we take for granted, right?

It's, it's that digital access. I think covid really highlighted that the, the story that I didn't always agree with, but was certainly floated around there. Um, you know, pre pandemic was, well, can't they go to local library or sit outside a Starbucks and do their homework?

And, you know, very early I met a family, their poor daughter had autism, and then she was in fourth grade and they were putting her on a city bus to go to the local library that had a two hour time limit to do their homework, to figure out on their own how to use the device, but also to, to accomplish their homework. And they'd miss dinner, they'd hop back on that city bus and go back home in the evening hours. And that was a typical Wednesday, you know, typical Monday through Friday, quite frankly.

So for us, it's, it's more than just getting folks a device. You want a laptop, typically you want something mobile, something goes in a backpack, that type of thing. Um, with software fully refurbished, ready to go to support, um, someone's needs, right?

But secondly, you do need high speed internet, low cost internet. 100% of the people that we work with, uh, typically for internet are low income. So you want that same high speed experience that we all get, but you want it for 10 or 15 bucks a month to be that household name of, I've got a cell phone in a drawer at home.

You know, where, where can I get that wiped and refurbished and get back out there? I, I know it still could be used, right? Same questions.

I'm looking at my IT closet, or we're moving to the cloud. What do we do with this stuff? I'd love for us to be that name that comes to mind and, and give folks an opportunity to make a social and environmental impact on behalf of their organizations by working with us.

Also letting nonprofits and organizations and, and, and folks on the wrong side of the digital divide know that there's someone out there that cares. I think it's great. And you could just tell by some of the pictures that you've shared.

And we're, we're sharing now with our viewers the inspiration that you've created, the lives that you're changing, and you are making the planet a better place. Leslie waste, which is always good. So, Brandon Smith, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you Ami. Bonnie, I appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Well, as you can see, this, uh, organization is benefiting, uh, lots of different people and I only see more growth for it. Uh, Brandon started there as an intern, as he mentioned, and in the past decade it, it's grown so much. So, um, I think it's just a win-win situation.

If you had a chance to to watch it, he Probably doesn't know it is broken. Yeah. He's fixing it by, uh, helping the communities in need.

Oh, I just wanna mention one other thing that I don't know if I mentioned in the video is that they not only just give the devices to kids and to veterans, but they set them up with it. They'll, they'll call the, um, wifi companies and make, make sure they're completely ready and set up to use it. So it's really full circle.

On that note, Bonnie, I, I thought that was really interesting when he talked about that. 'cause you know, his four parts that you need in order to, uh, to actually make use of this technology. 'cause it's so true.

You give somebody an old computer and say, here, have fun. Well, it, it's not gonna do a lot for them. Um, but as he said, you know, you need to give them training so that they actually understand how to use that product.

Um, the big one, and, you know, I mean connectivity of course too, but the big one was, um, support that they're warranting these things. 'cause that was one of my concerns. You know, you give somebody an old laptop, maybe there's a reason that somebody chucked that thing, you know, maybe it's not gonna continue to run for that person.

It's gonna be more of a, of more harm than good. Um, and you know, I've been going through this myself. We're, uh, moving houses and we've been cleaning out, uh, our tech, uh, we have a, uh, electronics, uh, e-waste recycling program here.

And, um, my better half asked me the other day as I'm loading another load of things for the e-waste recycling. Where do you suppose that e-waste goes? Anyway?

And you know what? I actually couldn't answer that because I wonder where that e-waste goes. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same as a lot of recycling programs and it ends up in a hole in the ground.

No, No. Here It would be cool to see him actually reusing the things and, and giving them a second life. Uh, unfortunately, most of my e-waste, I think I, I, I don't know, they could break it down or something.

I think they're not, if they break it down, if they're not, if it's not something usable, but there's some valuable, like rare earths and metals that they take out of the, you know, that they recycle with those things. I think Steven has a point in that we don't know where all that stuff is going. The truth of the matter is, you can see reports on 60 Minutes and all these other, uh, outlets talking about all this waste is in third world countries.

It winds up in Latin America, it winds up in South America. The Philippines pick a country where regulations are relaxed and then they have people going through these things to pick out that precious metal. And turns out they're getting a lot of exposure to bad things like cancer.

But look, I think there's a difference between recycling pieces, products, pieces of tech equipment versus reusing tech equipment, which is I think more what this organization does. And, and it's good. You know what, for the fact of the matter is for many seniors or for many veterans, or for any, pick a group, Mm-Hmm.

Using a, a Mac laptop that's not an M1 is still an Intel chip more than, is more than adequate for their needs. Using a, an older Windows device, more than adequate, using an iPhone 13 is still a hell of a lot better than two 10 cans and string, right? So there is, there's a lot of, of, of equipment out there that can be used.

You know, armor binder, I got a text message last week from my best buddy from college in New York. He says, remember that laptop I bought with you a while ago? Would you believe I found it in the house?

Do you think it's still good? I said, Tyler, that was like 2001. I I didn't even move to Florida yet.

I was still living in New York. He said, yeah, that one. I said, oh.

I said, well, can you get on the internet with it? He says, well, it's asking me for the modem settings. I said, okay, probably not worth, not worth upgrading.

Uh, maybe consider, you know, donating it, but thinking about it, who are you gonna donate that to? Who's, who has a modem to connect to, uh, Kimberly, maybe for the lab and like some legacy stuff or something. I don't, but Well, you're, You're pointing out something that needs to be done.

I've got a stack of gear that I need to get over to the e-waste or the e recycle. It's actually, they, they do break it down and they do recycle. Um, we've been through this before because we've have had a big, we've got a big a PC here, we've had to recycle batteries.

Yeah, you can imagine. Batteries a big One. It's a big one.

Um, and when you have a huge an A PC, you're talking like some major battery stuff that gets taken over there. Um, and then we've got, I mean, I literally have an old three far box that, you know, it's very old. Um, you know, probably very old being eight years or whatever, but, and, and a tape drive, tape drive system.

So I mean, yes, we have lots of gear that we have to cycle through and we're not gonna use the older ones because A, it's not as, it's not performant. We, we need a higher performing items to go push. Um, we need, you know, the higher speed, the, whether or not it's the network or whatever in order to do the lab work.

So we have to trade it out. Plus the clients, well we're, we're working with, they don't wanna be working with, you know, generations that are four generations back or even two generations back. They want the most current generation here.

So yeah, I mean that, that, that's the world we're in, right? Is It now? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is abandoned wear.

I mean, you know, if you look at, um, you know, apple, um, you know, Google with Android, you look at, uh, Microsoft Windows. We recently talked about the transition to Windows 11. Um, you know, how, how can you use old equipment?

Like, you know, you're, you're mentioning those old Intel, uh, MacBook Pro. We have many of those here in our office. And, um, I am having to decide what to do with them because they're not supported in the new os.

And if they're not supported in the new os, then it makes it real hard to use them for business. So basically we've been donating those to school kids, but there again, should school kids be forced to use an old OS without security, uh, features EE either. I mean, I, I, I just can't tolerate, you know, throwing the thing out or something because it still works absolutely perfectly, but it doesn't support the new os.

What are we gonna do with it? I think what Alison do, I, I think the FoST technology museum should be opened up. You can get tours and I already have that.

If you want to come to the office, you can see some old things. I actually, I got my old, um, HP Omni Book 800, the greatest laptop ever made. Um, I found it in my basement.

It's going on the shelf in the, in the FST services technology museum in Hudson, Ohio. Opened by appointment normally. Um, no, I was just gonna say about the different uses.

One, one of the things that was interesting was, you're right, like depending on the, the technology, the use can be different. Some of the people were using it just to pay their monthly bills. That's what he said.

So, you know, go online. A, a, a Chromebook is what it in essence becomes. Uh, but I, I'll tell you, so, you know, we have multiple sets here in the studio, in the office.

So this is the gang set, this big table. We can have three, four people down, down here in the, I have my single set for when I do my interviews. And I used, I took a Mac, an Intel Mac, and I used that.

'cause the only thing I used, yeah, okay. I used it to code to get on Zoom and what's the big deal? That's the only, you know, and it, it serves its purpose.

Beats the heck out as many 2K on a, on a new M four one or 2,500 or whatever. Um, I, I think that's, you know, you talk about it being broken, I think that is one of the things in it is you gotta have, Hey, I want Apple Intelligence. I need that iPhone 16, right?

I gotta have the new M four chip. I gotta have a Windows 11 box. I, I need the latest.

I have my Aura ring. They just came out with the aura of four. What am I missing?

Right? And that's, it's not just tech. I think it's our society.

We always want the latest and greatest and we tend to cast aside like, like Toy Story, our old toys, right? Not appreciating that someone else thinks they're like new toys. Well, but they're still very functional.

Mm-Hmm. You know, well some of them are velvet rabbits, right? Yeah.

So I, I think, I think you're on your, you're back to your movie theme. So the next, you know, toy Story 15 episode can have all this it gear in it, right? We're only up to Toy Story six.

Okay. I'm gonna pull the dad card on you on that one. Rory's gonna be upset.

And there is, there is a new toy story coming out, by the way. I heard, I don't know if Tom Hanks and much his name Tim Robbins, not Tim Robbins, who plays Buzz. I don't know.

Tim Allen. Tim Allen. Tim Allen.

Thank you. Tim Allen will be in it. Steal the audience from our peanut gallery.

Anyway. Anyway, guys, before we close out here for our election day edition of the Gang, any last thoughts, comments, words of wisdom, advice for our audience? Vote your IT conscience.

That's what I say. I, I, you know, I'm, I'm gonna connect to our last story here and I'm gonna suggest maybe consider using the official trade in when you buy your new gadget because then you know that the gadget is going back to the manufacturer and it's gonna be recycled and upcycled. Um, you know, I sent in my iPhone 14 when I got my iPhone 16, and I am absolutely sure that Apple's gonna do something with that.

I mean, they gave me 500 bucks for it. They're probably not gonna throw it in a landfill. So, so maybe that's a way to, to kind of harness this e-waste because then it's going to somebody who actually knows how to deal with it and is actually going to do something with it instead of just chucking, You know, how to program like that for a long time.

Right? When you would buy a new computer, you gotta take your old computer. Mm-Hmm.

Um, yeah, I mean it, look, it's wasteful to just put this stuff in landfill, whether it's in the Philippines or, Or in my basement. It's, Or in the FST Technology Center. Yes.

FTC, uh, Kimberly, any last thoughts? Encourage everybody to vote? Yeah, absolutely.

All right. On that note, we will be back tomorrow will still be irrelevant, but, um, we'll, we'll have a good time talking about some great topics with a lot of our gang members. Until then, hey, we do have a full tech, strong TV schedule.

I think this might be some field day activity, Steven, isn't there? Absolutely. How could I not mention that?

This week is Networking Field Day. We have an incredible, uh, set of networking companies, including a bunch of, uh, brand new startups and all that's gonna be live streamed right here on Textron tv. Is that Tuesday or is it Wednesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, all day Wednesday, Thursday.

So not today, tomorrow, folks stay tuned. But we have more Tech strong TV today. By the way, you could catch all the, uh, uh, tech Field days on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel, or on Techstrong TV as well.

So check 'em out there. Um, until then though, this is Alan Shimel. On behalf of the Techstrong Gang, as Kimberly says, go vote Until then, bye-Bye.