David McCall - VP of Innovation at QTS Data Centers

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we're talking to David, the VP of Innovation at QTS Data Centers, and we discussed the balance between privacy, security, and convenience, new innovation in the area of data storage, and the challenges of extending culture in a remote work environment. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(David at 00:00:25) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:26) This is the Modern CTO podcast. There he is.

(David at 00:00:38) What's happening, handsome man?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Oh, dude, look at that shirt. That is Hawaiian.

(David at 00:00:44) Yeah, I'm trying to channel my—actually, I think there is some power in the shirt, Joel, because the sun has come out this morning. When I went to the gym, it was about 45 degrees and raining, and now it's about 68 degrees here in Atlanta and a beautiful, sunshiny day. And so I'm going to have to respect the shirt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:05) Respect the shirt. I love it. And when I heard that I was going to get to talk with you and hang out with you again, I was so pumped up. I was like, this is going to be a great conversation.

(David at 00:01:15) It is going to be a great conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:18) What have you been up to, man, since we last talked?

(David at 00:01:21) Let's see. Well, this holiday I had relatives of mine from Texas. We visited them at Thanksgiving. They came up over the Christmas and New Year holiday, and they brought this diabolical activity with them called disc golf. Have you ever discovered disc golf?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:41) I've heard rumors, but no, I've never partaken.

(David at 00:01:44) All right. So there's an age gap between us. So when I was a kid, probably mid-seventies, late seventies, Frisbee—it's what I thought when they said disc golf. Frisbee golf was the size of a trash can lid made by Wham-O. You know, if you threw it with a certain velocity and you hit somebody, you could cause not as much damage as lawn darts, but significant impact damage, blunt force damage, as my D&D friends are telling me. And so they came up—my nephews and my brother-in-law and my sister—and took me out disc golfing.

(David at 00:02:18) Evidently a bunch of the parks around us have these disc golf courses, which I knew they were at the park, but who goes playing Frisbee in the woods or whatever? I'm addicted. I'm addicted for a few reasons. One, they're little discs, they're not big discs, and just like golfing has different clubs for different distances unless you're terrible, then it's all the same, right? You just hit the ball wherever. If you hit the ball, that's kind of me. I throw them all over the place, but I'm learning.

(David at 00:02:39) It's getting me out and active. The other thing, the undeclared benefit, though, is I'm six-foot-three, 295 pounds. I'm working on it. By the time we talk at the end of the year again, hopefully I'll be down to a trim 250—that's my goal. But when I come stomping out of the woods holding a disc and the people on the walking paths aren't expecting it, they're pretty sure they just had a Sasquatch sighting, and they scatter like quail.

(David at 00:03:10) It's an undocumented feature, but not going to lie, I'm kind of liking it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:15) It's a feature, not a bug. I enjoy that.

(David at 00:03:17) Exactly. As a software developer would think of it, that's exactly right. Not a bug, it's an undocumented feature. You're welcome.

(David at 00:03:24) And no extra charge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:26) No charge. No. I was so glad that you had me on your podcast. We'll put the link to that in the show notes because people are like, "I haven't heard him on here before. What are you talking about?" So you were gracious enough to invite me over to your awesome podcast. And—

(David at 00:03:48) Thanks for coming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:48) I got to do prep on you with my team and learn all of this great stuff about you—

(David at 00:03:48) Uh-oh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:48) Like how you're interested in grilling. And I was just talking to my brother last week because I have a birthday coming up, and there was this new meat market thing that opened up where they had really high-end cuts of meat. And I was like, you know what? I should buy some steaks, and then I should go over to my brother's, and he should teach me how to grill, because that's something I feel like I should know how to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:07) And so I need some beginner grill tips, but you have to use some software analogies to make it relevant.

(David at 00:04:17) All right. Let's see. Software analogies. So I'm less software, I'm more IT hardware, so I would say reboot right off the bat. But when I first started grilling, I figured out pretty quickly how to burn very expensive pieces of meat. I was pretty skilled at that. I've gotten a lot better because I'm an ADD person, and grilling and ADD don't go well together, especially if you're cooking food. If it's slow cooking, if it's smoking, not really a big deal. If you're trying to sear food and, you know, lock in the juices or whatever, I have to really pay attention.

(David at 00:04:56) I can't wander away, I can't pick up my tablet and read it. So I would say steaks in particular—set it out, bring it to room temperature, read the instructions. How many coders have I talked to when somebody goes to run—right, especially in beta—run the code, and then what they're saying is look for these things as you run it. Will people run it? They never check the instructions, and then they come back and they say, "Dude, your stuff's not working." Did you do this? Did you—just like Jake was doing off-camera—did you uncheck your mic? Did you do these things?

(David at 00:05:28) Are you prepared to go? Because then I just want to shake my fist at Zoom or the application that's not working correctly. Same thing with grilling. Is your grill clean? It's ready to cook. You have all of your supplies laid out, ready to go. You've read the directions two or three times. If it's something that you're new at, watch a video or two. Be able to phone a friend.

(David at 00:05:53) One of the things that I discovered—we have a butcher shop near us, and as I'm experimenting with more expensive pieces of meat or food that I'm not experienced with, I ask them. What a novel idea! How would you do this? And invest—one of the first things they taught me was use a thermometer. Invest in a good, quick-read digital thermometer and use it. What?

(David at 00:06:19) Use the tools that they're giving me? Are you crazy? But that's it. And once you get good at it, also, what grill works for what? So I have a gas grill, I have a charcoal grill. I don't have a smoker yet, but I have a friend that does a lot of slow cooking and smoking. So those are—I mean, I think that's probably the big idea. What am I trying to cook? Do I have the tools that I need?

(David at 00:06:42) Have I read the instructions? And what's my—and pay attention. If you do those things, it's probably going to have some success. Everybody likes it when you make food for them, so you're probably not going to get a lot of complaints even if it's not in the perfect window.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:56) Right. Now I got to talk with the founder of this company called Wild Type, and what they do is they take salmon—right, salmon, the most perfect salmon in the world. Right? And then they take the cells of the part of the salmon you would eat, and then they clone them, essentially, and they make more salmon. Currently it's at a very affordable $400,000 a pound. But—

(David at 00:07:26) All right, I think—

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:27) It's like a—I don't know. I think that might have been the old price from three years ago. I think they have it down to like $100,000 a pound.

(David at 00:07:33) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:34) But they're doing it as sushi. But man, to me, that was just so cool because we're using technology. And now, you know, I'm such a geek, and some people will say, "Oh, the salmon thing, growing that in a lab, that's not necessarily technology." Do you know the amount of compute and systems required in order to make that habitat operate and to actually manufacture that salmon? It's just mind-blowing.

(David at 00:08:00) Yeah. I've heard people talk about this—reminds me of quantum computing. And what they talk about is you take some of the simplest molecules on Earth and you try to model them and do things with them and deconstruct and reconstruct. It brings even a quantum computer to its knees, these theoretical systems that we're spending a lot of time and energy on. The simplest things around us are mind-blowing.

(David at 00:08:27) Having said that, though, I just had a guest on the podcast the other day. His name's Jack Ossa. If you get a chance to listen to it, we'll publish it here in a few weeks. Just his immigration story from Colombia, South America to the United States is one of the most amazing, beautiful stories I have ever heard on the subject. This guy is really cool. Anyway, when I was talking to Jack as an architect, one of the—you know, in the age of COVID, one of the businesses that has been hit the hardest is office space, commercial real estate. Not so much the business that I'm in, data centers, but the whole world's reimagining how we're going to go to work and/or if we go into a physical facility. I love remote working, although I'm in my studio today. I'm going to be more of a hybrid model. The option's 100% for me. I love the hybrid, but I will not be 100%, as long as my company allows it, back in the office.

(David at 00:09:19) And as Jack was talking about the way that they're inventing space and reimagining what space is going to look like, I said, "Jack, how are we—besides space, what about the tools and the resources? How are we going to do this in the future?" And he said, "We're going to 3D-print office buildings." I was like, "We're not going to—what? What do you mean we're going to 3D-print office buildings?" And I'm a tech nerd. I've seen 3D-printing organs, I've seen 3D-printing implants, I've seen 3D-printing in a number of spaces. And he said, "Yeah, we're starting to learn how to, in massive facilities, 3D-print buildings." And he went through all the reasons why.

(David at 00:09:57) And so as you talk about essentially 3D-printing salmon, if I can get the right peptides, amino acids, and chemical compounds together and I know the cellular structure of salmon steak—the great mystery, what really will kill quantum computing, is Twinkies, because that is magic. There is no cellular structure to it. I think the Klingons just left a supply and Dolly Madison repackaged them and sent them. But other than that, for the other real foods, I can't even imagine. And what gives me hope is—I remember, so this is probably even before you were born or maybe shortly thereafter—I came home with my first computer, my sure-enough computer that I bought through American Express, for I think—I'm still paying on it. I mean, it's like a bazillion dollars. And I brought this thing home, and my dad worked for NASA but wasn't employed by NASA. He worked for IBM at the Johnson Space Center.

(David at 00:10:54) Our claim to fame was we were three or four houses down from the astronaut in Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, in the Houston area. And I called my dad up and said, "You're not going to believe this. I just bought this unbelievable computer," and I was going through its attributes. And I said, "Dad, this sucker has a 40-megabyte hard drive." My dad's like, "You'll never use 40 megabytes. What? You've lost your mind." So flash forward, you know, almost 30 years later, and it is—you know, my little zip drive or whatever it is over here. Not zip drive—zip drive, that was dating me. My key fob is, I don't know, 128 gig or something crazy like that.

(David at 00:11:37) And so exponentially, as we figured out how to do things in miniature, as we've learned how to write things and create the technology necessary to do that, we're now working on glass storage and all these other really cool tech to deal with data storage, data gravity, data tonnage. I have no doubt that probably in the next decade, because there's so many advantages for the environment, for our health, if you could just walk over to your device and say, "I want something with this many calories that has a taste setting of this," meaning, you know, savory or whatever. "I want the texture to be like this. Go." And you come back and it's in your microwave or whatever.

(David at 00:12:25) I don't know that the original experiments will be all that great, but I think we're going to get there, and I can't wait. And hopefully at a price point that, you know, we can all afford, but we for sure will. And it's an—you know, as crazy as the world is right now, things like that are some of the most amazing things out there. It's a great time to be alive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:45) Oh yeah. And the—it's like replacing the microwave. I had this vision in my head as you were talking where my grandkids were, you know, asking us about—they have that machine where you can press all those options and the food just materializes there.

(David at 00:13:00) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:01) And I tell them stories of the day when they could only heat things.

(David at 00:13:05) Right. That's right. Well, they wouldn't even press buttons. They would—"Computer, I want," you know, they would just speak to the room. They live in a holograph pad, and, you know, they just call out to the device and it just makes it for them. You know why? There's no pushing or pressing anything. I—you know, technology brings challenges with it, but it brings so many great benefits and opportunities that it's really cool. I can't wait to see it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:32) My kids—so Aria's almost four, Lachlan's almost two. I get that wrong sometimes, by the way. We're like—

(David at 00:13:38) Oh yeah, I do too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:39) Because I'm like, I think they're about this age. She's four going on 14 with her attitude.

(David at 00:13:43) That's right. Wait till you're like, "Hey, you, number one, number two." We get their names—you've got to call them by a number. It's going to happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:49) I know. I put their birthdays in my phone. I made an Evernote of, like, here's their birthdays and their information, so I don't—

(David at 00:13:55) That's why it's burning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:58) But man, are they in love with Alexa, my friend.

(David at 00:14:02) Oh yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:03) So Aria can say it and summon her sometimes, but Lachlan's only two, and he calls her "Alexa," right? And he gets so frustrated. I'm telling you, from the moment this kid wakes up, he's like, "Alexa, Alexa, Alexa." He's trying to say it, and then till he goes to bed. And he's so frustrated and stubborn. And I said—my wife's like, "He gets that from you." And I'm like, "Yeah."

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:28) Because I latch on to something, I just don't let go until I achieve it. And I was like, "Look, it's really frustrating to parent through this, but you'll probably be pretty successful when you grow up."

(David at 00:14:36) Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. I—as much as I love technology, I don't flagrantly flaunt listening devices in my—I know there's all kinds of devices in our house, but we do not yet—I keep trying to tell my wife and kids. So I have a senior in high school, a sophomore in college, and a part-time—I'm not sure where she'd be in the rank. She thinks she wants more money than she wants school right now, so she's dabbling in both. But anyway, three daughters. And I just don't want them to have easy access to, you know, Alexa and Amazon and all the other shenanigans that they can get up to. But I was over at a buddy of mine's house the other day. He's got it tied into his thermostat, he's got it tied into his flight travel stuff, he's got it tied into everything. And forever I was resistant to the idea, and I'm like, I'm all in. Whatever. You know?

(David at 00:15:41) I'm not Gene Hackman in, you know, Enemy of the State anymore. Whatever. I'm all in. Listen to whatever you want to hear. At my age, if you find anything exciting, God bless you, because it's really, really—the worst that they would bust me on, I think, here lately is, my wife sucked me into watching this show called Downton Abbey that everybody watched 10 years ago with her. We just saw the season ending—I think it was season five—the other day. Cried like a baby. If that comes out, the audio of that, I may have to be out there. Yeah.

(David at 00:16:11) Thank you. But, you know, not a lot of excitement. But privacy and security is always back in my mind balanced with convenience, and I love the idea of tools that give us the option. Right? You get to set the threshold where you want for privacy and security with convenience, and you adjust it for yourself.

(David at 00:16:35) But everybody should know the tools. They should know the power of the tools, you know, how great of a tool. There are a number of people that are working on a much more advanced version of, not really Alexa, but voice activated for people of a certain age that want the privacy of living by themselves, but they have certain health risks. And so they want something that they can either call out to that doesn't violate their privacy unless there's an emergency that can listen to the home. And are their breathing patterns normal?

(David at 00:17:07) Is their movement patterns normal? So between a combination of listening devices, infrared, and wearables, you know, they're experimenting with how do we do that so that I can live by myself if I'm at age or a certain health risk. But if something happens, if my activity changes or something about my biomedical information changes or something about my movement, I'm not moving or I'm moving too much or I'm in a certain posture that could be construed as dangerous, I can alert the neighbor. I can alert a family member.

(David at 00:17:41) I can alert the authorities. So there's all these really cool things. We just have to get comfortable with how do I make sure that only people who should have access have access? And that's, you know, you and I work in technology, all of the guests that you talk to. There's many, many.

(David at 00:18:01) In fact, the overwhelming majority of cases are great cases of security with the occasional not great case of security. And so that's the world we live in, but it's cool that your kids are learning how to interact with their environment and manipulate the tools, hopefully, in a healthy way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:17) So far.

(David at 00:18:19) Have you seen The Social Dilemma?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:21) Oh, yeah, man. That hit home because, yeah, I'm gonna be facing those challenges in the near future here.

(David at 00:18:28) Yeah. We're facing, we have kinda gone through those. And as I've talked to a lot of, I guess, peers, it's really about the algorithms. It's not so much about the hardware or the tech. It is, and I think it's accidental.

(David at 00:18:44) One of the great things I loved about that show was there's no great conspiracy, in my opinion, of organizations. You know, this Machiavellian, how do we take advantage of human beings and cause them to harm each other? But it is the consequence of algorithms if you're not paying attention. It gets you into a narrower and narrower focus to hear just what you wanna hear. The people that oppose you, whether it's sports or politics or any topic, really, it doesn't matter. The tendency that would be used towards shopping, hey, let me help you see all the things that would really benefit you over here. When those algorithms are applied because people use them into other areas of interest so that you'll stay on the page so the ads will run, can get you into an echo chamber that is not healthy.

(David at 00:19:38) We've seen it in our family. We've seen it in our friend groups. And so we're not removing ourselves from all the platforms, but we are definitely checking ourselves to make sure that we're conscious of these tools that are trying to do that. And I really hope that over the next eighteen to twenty-four months, in light of what's been going on in the political scene and some of the other stuff, that we as a people say, look, we have our sincere beliefs, but let's make sure we're checking in with each other that we're not misconstruing the people who disagree with us on some things. And, oh, by the way, we love each other.

(David at 00:20:13) Right? We're in this thing together, and so we gotta find a way to have common discourse. But The Social Dilemma, what I love about it is that it points out it's hard enough for mature people. Hopefully, my wife's not listening to this when I say mature, but it's hard enough for people that are thinking about it to make sure that they're on guard. Children unchecked.

(David at 00:20:33) You know, we protect them from images and things that we don't want them to see for sure. But sort of this thing that came in unintended was it can get them into social media stuff primarily that is just an echo chamber for them, and they believe, you know, the things that are not for them in these other areas are, I don't know if I wanna say the word evil, but that they're, you know, they're really to be resisted. And it's hard to grow friendships and understanding with anyone or anything if you label them as evil or wicked or whatever. So I'm hopeful that we get really smart. There's some really smart people working on this to just sort of, you know, check ourselves, help us to check ourselves as we use these tools. I don't wanna get rid of the tools. I just wanna get better at using them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:21) My takeaway from that and talking with people across the spectrum of it's the end of the world to, hey, everything's gonna be fine.

(David at 00:21:29) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:30) Was that it puts a premium on parenting. Like, that's what it does. You're gonna have to be a better parent. You're gonna have to spend more time with your kids. You're gonna have to understand what they're into.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:42) You're gonna have to walk them through these things that you can see that they might not be able to yet see. And I mean, half the problem is solved just by being able to have that conversation of, hey, these algorithms will put you in an echo chamber. It's important that, you know, you limit your time that you're spending in this space and that you go check things with, like, I've got people in my life that have a wide, like, everybody, like, spectrum. I like it. I like going to this person who I know is, like, far more on this side and, and it's kinda how I calibrate some of the ideas I have and check the temperature of what's going on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:17) But, yeah, the my whole takeaway from everything until I kinda, like, relax from the stress of trying to wrap my mind around it.

(David at 00:22:24) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:24) Was you're just gonna have to be a better parent. We're gonna be a better parent. We're gonna need closer communities, and we're gonna need just everybody doing their part and stepping up.

(David at 00:22:34) I agree. That tablet can't be your kid's spirit advisor. Right? You've gotta use it for the really cool, great things. I mean, just think about it.

(David at 00:22:45) If I heard somebody say this, it might have been the sci-fi writer, Clark, who said that if Sir Isaac Newton saw our devices today, he would think it was magic. Like, the deep colors, the things that you can do with them. There's no explanation for somebody from the fourteenth or fifteenth century on what this thing is. It's mind-blowing. And we've turned these over that are sort of the first. I was part of that first wave of cell phones and later tablets and devices.

(David at 00:23:20) Right? It started off with the music, the music players, pre-iPod, then the iPod. Then the iPod could do apps and then phones, etcetera. And my kids didn't get smartphones until they were about 16 years old. They're starting to drive, starting to work part-time or athletics or whatever.

(David at 00:23:41) So they already had some, you know, it wasn't 10. It was 16. And I'm not, I'm not judging anybody. Everybody parent however you wanna parent. But in the beginning, ten years ago, twelve years ago, I don't think nobody recognized the risk of the significant potential downfall of some of these platforms and unsupervised attention.

(David at 00:24:05) We knew the risk to seeing adult themes that we don't want them to see, things like that, but not just communicating in their peer groups or sharing ideas. And now we know. And so I don't, as a technologist, I'm a firm believer in the value of technology. Technology, you know, technology has no morality to it. It's just technology.

(David at 00:24:26) It's how you use the hammer. It's how you use the tool. And the same thing with the technology that we're talking about. But it's an interesting time. I do hope that we as a people group, to your point, we get back into parenting.

(David at 00:24:38) Don't just turn it over. Don't make it the babysitter. Use the tools that are built into it. Seems like the technology companies are trying to add screen time tools and, you know, not just DNS tools on where you can go to, but how long you can be on it, what are the activities you can be on it. And using that way, I think they're amazing, amazing tools.

(David at 00:24:58) And our children should take advantage of every opportunity they have to expand their options, I think, for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:07) Yeah. They're really useful. We've got these Amazon Fire tablets for kids. So it's like a special version of the operating system that it ships with, and it puts into, like, this kid operating system. And so it's a safe thing, and you have to know a lengthy password to get out of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:23) And that is really great because there's just, like, learning apps and puzzles and things. So it's good for, like, one of the big changes I had since we actually last talked is I started spending much more time with my family.

(David at 00:25:35) Oh, wow. Okay. Great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:36) Yeah. Nights and weekends I started spending with my family where the past three years I worked every night and every weekend.

(David at 00:25:42) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:43) So I got really bored really fast. I was like, no wonder my wife's so frustrated. All you're doing is sitting here at home.

(David at 00:25:51) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:51) So I got, like, a travel camper thing that we can, you know, pull behind in the truck.

(David at 00:25:57) That's what we did.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:58) Yeah. And so I took the kids actually, like, last weekend to NASA, Kennedy Space Center.

(David at 00:26:05) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:06) And the rocket launch didn't happen. Like, it got canceled three days back to back, and then we left Sunday, and it happened Sunday morning. Right. That's how it goes. But I kinda like it because it gives us another opportunity to go back, and it's only, like, two and a half hours away.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:20) So, but going there and, you know, them being able to use the tablets and stuff, that was really great. But the space and everything that's happening, you mentioned earlier that you were, like, living down the street from NASA, and you also mentioned, like, glass storage. Have you heard of the DNA storage yet?

(David at 00:26:39) It doesn't ring a bell. Tell me that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:42) Oh, man. Okay. So the company that, one of the companies that's doing it is called Catalog.

(David at 00:26:47) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:48) And I guess the way the first area that's interesting is the amount of servers that would fill like a stadium or like a Walmart distribution center, like, fitting down and imagine all of that storage, because you have these giant servers. But just imagine it's all storage. It could fit down into, like, smaller than the palm of your hand. Wow. Because they're storing data inside of DNA.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:12) Like, the same DNA.

(David at 00:27:13) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:14) You would find from dinosaurs millions years ago. It lasts a really long time.

(David at 00:27:19) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:19) And the big crux to it was how fast that they could write it reliably. So it was, like, project, I believe, out of MIT lab. And then I've been watching it for, like, three or four years, and they were at a certain number of bytes they could write a day, and now it's, like, I think a terabyte. But I had been watching it, and then about six months ago, I think I saw one of the executives at IBM, like, left IBM to go take this product to market because I've been watching it. I'm like, they're taking it to market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:49) This is so exciting. And so I had him on the show, and, man, that episode, it blew my entire mind apart on how to even think about computing and biology. It is insane.

(David at 00:28:02) For sure. And I got to meet one of the, I believe I've got this right, one of the original creators of Watson. We were in Austin. We were at a panel. And while we were in different panels, we sat at the same table.

(David at 00:28:16) And the things they're working on. I mean, the intellectual capacity. I every now and then, I fool myself into thinking, man, you're kinda smart. You know, you're kinda smart.

(David at 00:28:28) Absolutely not. There's otherworld smart. So, anyway, they were talking about some of their projects and what they're working on with their AI project, what they're working on in radiology, what they're working on in data storage. Data storage is one of, I mean, there's so many huge problems we're trying to work on. But data storage to me, this guy named, Dave McCool, I can't remember his last name.

(David at 00:28:53) He was, I think he was at GE. McCool yourself right now? No. No. No. No. No. No. McDork would be me.

(David at 00:29:00) No. What was his name? Anyway, he was at GE. I can't believe I can't remember because I even wrote an article about this a few years ago, but this idea of data gravity. And so what I'm curious is we should work on the storage challenge.

(David at 00:29:13) I mean, we throw data away. We have to shred data because we can't put it to use, and we can't keep it. We just can't, you know, you turn on a jet engine, the amount of data that it's generating that to fill in traditional data storage methodology, you just can't do it for any length of time. So how we're actioning the data, the data that we don't use, how do we destroy it? And while they're creating really cool, whether it's glass or within the DNA, the ability to store tremendous amounts of data in little bitty sections.

(David at 00:29:47) What I'm interested in is how are we going to move it? Because that's the other challenge that you've got. If you've got this massive amount of data, how do you move it from one spot to the other? And that's the idea of gravity, which is once a mass achieves a certain size, it pull things to it. So you pull apps to it.

(David at 00:30:08) You don't pull the data to the app. The app is pulled to the data because it's too big to move. And that is one of the challenges that the world is working on, whether it's autonomous vehicles that have tremendous amount of data or it's all the 8K video or whatever. How do I free up the glass? How do I free up the fiber networks so that I'm able to manipulate and move data while I'm creating these amazing storage methodologies and the security that goes along with it?

(David at 00:30:39) How do you interact with it? How do you move it around? That's as big or bigger because it is more expensive to move a packet of data than it is to use it where it lives. And so, I mean, there's just so many, I keep trying to get, there's so many opportunities, I guess, where I see these things as we talk about them, Joel. I get geeked out because what, where do you wanna, you wanna go help build the network infrastructure of the world?

(David at 00:31:01) You wanna go help build the storage infrastructure of the world? Do you wanna go help build the data center infrastructure of the world where the ideas of the whole world live? Do you wanna build the software applications that manipulate the data that bring you Stranger Things at 8K down at the soccer field while you're, or at the, or where you're able to have a 5G experience while you're watching the launch, which, by the way, I've been to Kennedy and watched the second to last shuttle launch. I was at the second and third shuttle landing and I was at the second to last shuttle launch. It was one of the most, if you ever get an eye, if you have not seen a rocket launch, it's primordial.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:39) Rubbing it in. Rubbing it in.

(David at 00:31:42) It's unbelievable. I can't even describe it. I cried and laughed the whole time that thing went up, but I do that at board gaming too. So, but it was pretty—where did you watch from?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:52) We drove, my sister at the time lived in Cocoa Beach. Okay. I think that's what it was, Cocoa Beach, and we drove down and—

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:01) You watched the beach?

(David at 00:32:02) No. Actually, we parked it where it was, like, oh dark thirty. So I'd say second or third. When the very last one was an early, early morning launch, we just happened to be down there, and we went over there. We got up at four in the morning, out there by five. I want to say it launched at, like, six.

(David at 00:32:18) It was still pitch black when it launched, and we were across the bay from, you know, the bay, and you could see the pad. And we're just there in a common area where they kind of let everybody crowd around, and it was like the sun lit on that pad. I've watched hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rocket launches and shuttle launches and whatever on the screen. Yeah. There's nothing.

(David at 00:32:47) There's no, even though we're, what, it's, I don't know what that distance is. Got to be a mile or maybe more, three miles, whatever it is. I mean, it's not right there. You could see it. It's a little dot, but you feel it in your chest. Like, every fiber of your body feels it really as it launches and it goes up into the sky. It just inspires me, human beings. And now Elon's got them coming back and landing and doing it inexpensive, and pretty soon we're going to be 3D printing rockets. And it's just, you know, we live in some of the best times. In spite of the news, we live in some of the best times in the history of our world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:25) That stuff off. Yeah. I disconnected. Tim Berners-Lee, one of the guys that's, like, credited with creating the Internet, he was talking about in this decentralized Internet movement. And we're doing, like, a three-part series on it, so we've been researching and getting nerdy about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:42) But it's funny because he talked about data in a sense that we have this pod of data. Right? And then the apps, like, come, like, it's your data. It's your pod. It's disconnected. No one owns it, but you're the only one that controls the access in and out of it. And then you allow applications that you want into your life, and that sounded exactly what you were describing with this data gravity. That's like this new decentralized Internet Tim Berners-Lee has created.

(David at 00:34:09) Yeah. It's, you know, there are a number of people that have, they're trying to apply blockchain to this. So blockchain is used for cryptocurrency. It's the same idea. How do I use, it's not the same idea, but they're closely aligned. How do I, if I have this ledger entry, this is my unique data, my healthcare data, my whatever, I can choose to have access and I can reclaim access. And when I reclaim it, you, the technology, by the way it works without getting into the details of it, you no longer have access and you can't have any copies. It's the same thing with Bitcoin and these other things. They solve what's called the double-spend problem. If we took a screenshot right now, there's no guarantee of our conversation. There's no guarantee that that would be the only screenshot in existence, that that would be the only picture in existence. You can copy it. You can duplicate it. You can share it. You put it on the web. Your friends can snap it, whatever. But when you use blockchain, it's, or cryptocurrency anyway, and blockchain's the technology that lets cryptocurrency work, is it prevents what they call the double-spend. So you can't share. There's one unique entry. You're the only one that has that picture or that file or that Bitcoin or whatever it is.

(David at 00:35:25) And so I feel like these technologies are coming together. They're all, we're working towards this thing. How can I reclaim my privacy? How can I reclaim or get security? Now there's some concern, is quantum computing going to break that? I don't know. It's pretty freaking hard, at least theoretically, to break that stuff. Who knows? But it is, there are a number of people that are, how do I solve that and then bring it with me? But at the same time, data gravity, what it says is, as gravity accumulates, or I'm sorry, as data accumulates, wherever, however it accumulates, it eventually gets so big it becomes this mass that it's very, very difficult to push it around, or the apps get pulled to it. Gravitational pull is kind of the idea, and it's been expanded upon since then. But all of these things are working together towards, how do I have security? How do I own my own data? How do I make sure that whoever I want has access to it, I can reclaim it. And there are problems to be solved for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:33) Yeah. It kind of already happens a little bit. Like, I pull apps down into my iPhone where all my photos live, and then I can, you know, I don't send my photos off to the apps that aren't on my iPhone. That's interesting. You know, I was talking with the creator of, like, XRP, like a token.

(David at 00:36:50) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:51) And I think that's right. It's a cryptocurrency. But my big question for him was, are you concerned about the quantum computers breaking the encryptions? He assured me that, like, it's a ten-year-out type problem, and only some of the type of cryptocurrencies, are only some were affected. Like, there are quantum-proof algorithms, like, ones that would be cracked by quantum computing and ones that would not. And the ones that would not currently that exist just happened to be slower. Right. So they could switch to, all switch them over to ones that wouldn't be broken by quantum, but they're staying with the ones they have because it's a ten-year-out problem. It's not something they're facing today.

(David at 00:37:31) Yeah. And who will be still, you know, the locks that we use today are not the locks, in many cases, that we used fifty years ago. You know, once upon a time, you go around Europe and you see all these high walls, all these high walls and these castles and all this other stuff. Because in that day and age, how did you defend yourself? How did you protect the things of value? You had high walls and you had small openings, and that worked great until we got artillery, and we rendered walls useless. And so, oh, no. Now we have artillery, and you can't defend anything ever. Not true. We come at, it's a constant evolution of security and risk and, in the vein of this conversation, algorithm and applications.

(David at 00:38:18) And so quantum computing, normal, regular quantum computing, whatever that looks like when it's here in the mainstream, could it break some of older technologies and security? Absolutely. For sure. But so could, you know, my phone is more powerful than that 40-megabyte hard drive that I brought home thirty-plus years ago. Heck, we don't even use, I was laughing with my dad the other day. We have a, we're talking about when he brought home his first computer from Computerland, and it came with a dot matrix printer. I don't know if you had any experience with dot matrix printers, but if a dot matrix printer went off in our office today, we would invoke the drive-by active shooter protocol here in my office. The sound of that noise, people hitting the deck, people would be screaming. Right? We just, technologies change, threats arise, tools are created to overcome them.

(David at 00:39:12) And so I'm not saying we shouldn't be sincere about it, but we've been doing that since the beginning of time. The Comanche aren't still roaming the Texas prairie, terrorizing each other and all these other things. Technologies and things adjust. Now they have an amazing casino that's making a heck of a lot of money, and they probably are running the whole world out there. So, you know, they're doing great. But my point is just that threats come and go, come and go, come and go. I don't want to be dismissive of quantum computing at all. I think we're going to spend way more time putting it to solving, how do we get to Alpha Centauri, how do we build colonies, how do we expand. You know, human beings, it is in our nature. We're the only things on Earth that have to be constantly innovating. It's in our DNA, and I think we're going to mostly, what we're going to do is figure out, how do we apply that for good? Also, quantum computing, it's not like it's in a little box. Like, states have to do this. Nation-states and governments and academic. It'll be a while before it would be, let me just log into my little quantum computing instance in here and go hack somebody's phone or something. I don't think it's a risk anytime soon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:24) We are definitely, like, explorers in our DNA. I was, I get up really early. Sometimes I like to just drive around the town or just, I like to get up early. And when I was over at NASA, so I got up early, I didn't really have anything to do. So I was like, all right. I'm going to go scout some spots. It's like 05:30. I'm going to go scout some spots that we can watch the 09:00 launch at. And so I'm just driving around, you know, getting lost and, you know, it's like 140,000 acres of this, like, land out there, and I end up in a restricted, restricted area, you know. And so all swatted-up-looking guy gets out and, you know, comes into the car and he was like, hey. He's like, ID and everything, and he's like, what are you doing out here? I was like, oh, I'm, like, I was just looking for spots. He goes, okay. This is like restricted federal land. And I was like, I guess I was like, I guess we're all explorers, aren't we? And he goes, he goes, ah, funny guy. He's like, I'll follow you until you, you know, you go this way and when you're off the land, I'll hand you your license. So he, like, took the license from me and made me go and then he gave it back and, they're super nice because everyone's out there, like, you know, they're all out there working shifts and stuff because they want to be in Rocket Land. That's the whole, the whole, I told my team. I said you should go out there. I could go out there long enough to where you go to the grocery store because the people, the energy there, it really feels like a whole different environment.

(David at 00:41:51) It's amazing. It is, it is, you know, because it's populated with people, there will be some people that don't, that don't think it's amazing. It's just a gig. I get it. It, you can get anything would be normalized. I fly, well, before the pandemic, probably about 100,000 miles a year domestic. That's a lot of flights. That's 50-something flights a year out of Atlanta. And if it's a two-hour or shorter flight or if it's coast-to-coast, I like to sit next to the window even as big as I am because I am constantly amazed. Louis CK has a really funny bit about that he did on Conan about, you know, being in the plane and being amazed. And that just gave me exactly, I look, have you seen that before? Oh, dude. That was so funny. I cried. Those people that he complains about are the ones sitting next to me like, you know, my thing's not working. You know, I can't use the language he used, but it was very funny. But I am one of those people that I love to be amazed. It is a miracle. As he said, we're in a chair in the sky. We're doing 500-and-something miles an hour.

(David at 00:43:05) It is safer to do that. You took more chances going to the fast food restaurant in that airport than you did in that plane. And it's, and you get to see this whole world and, you know, maybe more people should fly, so they see, nope, there's not flat, kind of has a curve. You know, you, you know that science is soft, but you could be up there and you could see these things and you could see the mountains. You see the, you see the Mississippi Delta, and it, like, it constantly blows my mind. And where I went to high school in Southern California, we were right on the edge of the high desert. So right over the mountains at that time, I don't know about now, but at that time, it was one of the best places to live in the country. Forty-five minutes away, you're in Six Flags Magic Mountain, maybe sixty minutes away, you're at the beach. It snowed. I worked as a chairlift operator every winter at the ski area. We rode horses and dirt bikes across the desert. It was a really cool place. But what you could do is go out into the desert, Joel, at night, and you get away from a lot of the light pollution. We were far enough away from LA because of the mountains that a lot of that pollution was gone. And then when I was in the Army, we did some training out there.

(David at 00:44:13) And when you, I think all Americans should, at some point, get to an observatory or something that's away from a lot of, dark sky and see the world, the heavens above you. It will humble you. And it's majestic and it's unbelievable. And I just imagine mankind since the beginning of mankind has looked at that and seen these sights and seen these things and experienced that. Soon it will be Elon's, you know, constellation that he's building overhead, but that's for another day. But it's so cool. And to see that we are accelerating our ability to get up to the outer orbit of Earth and pretty soon, I have no doubt, economically to break Earth orbit. I just think it is fascinating and is going to lead, you know, space exploration. But even before space exploration, transatlantic ocean exploration on the big galleons and ships. As human beings explore, we invent technologies that inevitably come into the general population and help change the world for the better overwhelmingly. Sometimes there are consequences.

(David at 00:45:24) Diseases get introduced. We just went through a pandemic and those things. But when measured against the benefits that we get, I don't think there's any comparison. When we invented the plane, we did invent the plane crash, but how many incalculable benefits have we gotten from the ability to fly or, soon, the ability to go to space or automobiles or whatever? It's exciting, and I think there's an energy around those people. When I was a kid, I came home from leave, and my dad was working on the first shuttle. His team at IBM, among other things, they were responsible for, if I remember correctly, whatever we do when we're in orbit, they wrote the code. They were programmers to get it all back under the shuttle, closed up, and come back in. And he got me to, Dan, I'm sorry if I'm ratting it out, but he got us into one of the original shuttle simulators. So it wasn't the one that we went to, wasn't, like, on hydraulics or anything. It was just a mock-up. But sitting in there were the two were Young and Crippen, the two original pilots, and they were going through the checkbooks or the check logs and the books and doing all this other stuff. And there was so much excitement around by everybody. The person who brought the beverages, the person who printed the books and the manuals for them to go into the pool, the person who got the suits ready for them to go into the pool. My brother worked in the Astronaut Building. My mom was a headhunter for the federal, you know, for the aerospace industry.

(David at 00:46:51) Everybody, Joel, around that, I say everybody. The people that I ran into had such a level of enthusiasm. We were making a difference, leading the world, innovating. Very few places have that much energy around them. I think around certain biomedical exploration that we're doing and how can we use AI and machine learning to, in radiology and other things like that, or, you know, same kind of exploration, DNA, you know, DNA sequencing. So, hey. You can go get your DNA test. And if you're in this demographic, we know from the 70 other million people on the planet, you should take these medicines, avoid these foods and do these things, and you'll live to be 90. So you'll age, but you won't decay. That's where we're going with this stuff.

(David at 00:47:35) So I just think we're in an amazing time of exploration.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:40) How do you make money? What do you do? We didn't even talk about, like, what is QTS? Tell me, tell everybody, like, what do you do?

(David at 00:47:48) So QTS is a data center company, and I think it's one of the coolest businesses to be in. So a data center, so this is what my company is, and I'll talk about my role in a second. A data center is where the ideas of the whole earth live. There is probably a written-down formula for Coca-Cola somewhere, but it also lives in a data center. In fact, I would argue that there is no idea on Earth, Fender guitars, you're wearing a cool Fender t-shirt. I guarantee you their notes, their designs, their practice videos, the things that they stream on the web, it all lives in a data center somewhere. Your test results, your young cat video that you're sharing across your two, whatever. It all lives. Ecommerce, cloud, social media lives in a data center.

(David at 00:48:36) If we didn't have data centers, this pandemic would have been a much worse disaster than it was. So my company is a data center company, and we host the apps and the algorithms that run the world. And then we partner with connectivity providers so that people can be connected. I don't know. I'm doing this. My hands are Italian.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:57) Wait. Way too modest right now. How many million square feet of data center do you guys have?

(David at 00:49:04) Oh, my gosh. Millions upon millions. My Atlanta data centers, 1,500,000. Dallas is 1.1, 1,200,000. We have some of the largest data centers on Earth. Yeah. So that's what we do. QTS is a data center company, which really is, you know, we're all about human flourishing. We just do it in the world of data centers. And so we strive to bring the world together, the world that uses the Internet together and bring connectivity and the apps and the algorithms that we all use. So that's our role. That's what we do. And then within that, I've worked for the company. I'm one of the founding employees for almost sixteen years, over sixteen years. And for a long time, I was an engineer with that organization. I was in operations and solution engineers, and then I led our national teams for those things until 2017 when our CTO came and said, "Hey. I want to start an office of the CTO." What's an office of the CTO? Among other things, and you've had guests on your show I know that have worked in the office of the CTO. And so John Graves, our CTO, is a visionary, I think, in this space. And among other things, he wanted an evangelist. I want somebody that can go out to the world and talk about what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and help just educate the world, not specifically on my company. It's not an infomercial, but about our industry, about our role in the future of the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:39) Works better.

(David at 00:50:40) That works better. That's right. How to be ethical about it. One of the things that is very, very important to us are things around sustainability. Data centers consume more power than pretty much anything in any developed country besides the military and maybe giant government institutions like big airports or something like that. And not just power, but water, waste, all of these other things. And so a big initiative for our industry and our organization in particular, and I want to be an evangelist about it, is how do we partner with organizations to buy clean energy? How do we modify designs of our data centers, of our infrastructures to work with that? And as we've invited guests, my role then shifted into that public speaking evangelist role, and we launched our podcast about a year ago right before the pandemic started. So it was a blessing that we had an opportunity since I couldn't travel and do public speaking to do the podcast, and that's been an amazing run for us. We've got to have leaders in energy storage and Joel Beasley from the Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:47) Well, you got him?

(David at 00:51:48) Well, we got him. He was amazing. It was really funny because his picture showed this nice clean-cut, amazing dude, and we got Duck Dynasty, genius Duck Dynasty. So we loved it. It was great. It worked. But anyway, we get these really cool thought leaders whether they're futurists. The other day, I had a futurist from Sarasota, Florida come on, talk about—Hewell? David Huel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:13) I'm in a group with David. I know him really well. He's been in this office.

(David at 00:52:17) Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. He just came on. Just had him on. Small world. Just had him on the other day. So anyway, we try to open up the conversation in our podcast about, you know, whether it is—there is some data center stuff and there's some industry stuff, but mostly we try to make it about how are human beings coming together to help each other flourish through the world of technology, whether it's protecting ourselves, being wiser, whether it's innovating, developing things, how do we communicate better, what are the technologies behind that? Or I had a woman on the other day, Diane McCabe, who was an IT professional who had a mental health breakdown, and I love—we're connected in one of the social media networks just completely accidentally. And she was very transparent about her journey five or six years ago about how it just came crashing in. Those of us that are around this industry and they felt that pressure before, I know exactly what she is talking about. And then she talked about her journey. The cool side of that story is how she overcame that. So we had her on the other day to talk about mental health and how she not only helped herself, but what she's doing now. She's out of Australia. One of the things that we talk about in COVID, we talk a lot about the pandemic technology, but what we don't talk about a lot is the isolation and loneliness that so many people just fell on them. And when you're not in the office for those drive by meetings, it's hard to realize many times that your neighbor's not doing well. And so how can we be good neighbors and love each other and take care of each other? So our podcast covers those things, things that are of interest to me, and usually people from the world of technology. That's what I'm doing, and that's who QTS is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:02) I love it. I love it. Did you see what Audi did? They got a news article last week for their digital world that they created where all their employees go to work now.

(David at 00:54:11) I haven't seen that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:12) Yeah. It's pretty crazy. It looks like a Second Life type thing, but they basically modeled their facilities, and it's—you get these little avatars, and people walk around. And it's pretty neat.

(David at 00:54:24) Right. Well, I'll check it out. I haven't seen that. I do think one of the things we've talked about a number of times on our show—I don't remember if you and I talked about it—but as awesome as remote work technology is, and it is amazing, we have absolutely ripped ten years from the future into today. What we don't know yet is how are we going to extend culture? So all the things that are working remotely came from companies that already had a culture established. Microsoft, I think, is 100% virtual or as 100% as they can be. You know, facility people are still there, but almost all their employees are virtual, but they built this amazing culture at Microsoft. Well, how do you build culture from the ground up remotely? We don't know yet. How do you adjust when everybody's remote? We don't know yet. And so I think the future of that, to the degree that it's remote, is going to be probably a little bit about what you're describing with Audi and other organizations are going to do, is focus on how do I create an environment that people can access remotely, but the emphasis is on maintaining, enhancing, or creating culture. So that's how companies are so successful, right? They're—you may be the one in a million that has the only product with the only resource, and you have it for a little while. But the companies that survive and really contribute to human flourishing are those that have a culture where people get behind the big idea and really believe in each other. That's what I think the next challenge for us is as we work remotely. Because I do think we're going to be—I don't know if it's going to be exactly the way it is now, but it's going to be some version of what we have now for a very long time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:09) The companies that—because I get to talk to so many different people like you do. And the companies that have the culture, you can feel it. Like, you can just—you can tell. Like, in a one hour interview, you could pick up that they have it. And I actually met this guy. He's—I'm calling him, like, the Elon Musk of robotics.

(David at 00:56:29) Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:30) Yeah. This guy is, like, what they were able to do in a year or two with the money they had, their robots are, like, next generation. They're the coolest thing. His name's David, and the company is called NeuroRobotics or NeuroRobotics.

(David at 00:56:46) I have to check.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:47) Yeah. Yeah. They make this arm, and they have a—it's like, dude, you've seen the arms in the manufacturing world. And then when you see this, he showed me some stuff off the podcast too that hadn't been released. And then he told me the time frame they made it in, like, a year or two, and I was like, whoa. Yeah. That's insane. And he shared, like, all the orders they have already and everything, but the—if we're just going to do it piece by piece, man, the arm's going to be perfected, the legs are going to be perfected, the Alexas and the other AI assistants are the consciousness in their early stages, and everything's going to eventually come together. And I'm excited. I'm excited about it.

(David at 00:57:27) Well, one of the really, really, really—there's been so much tragedy and anger over the last fourteen months or so, twelve months for sure. But one of the really cool things I think that's going to come out of 2020, 2021, 2022 because of all of this, because you can do things remotely, because people are bringing their labs together—I just did a telemedicine call the other day where the doctor was in his home office, the surgeon, the PA was in their office, the nurse was in her—in their home offices, seamless through Zoom. They sent me to a breakout room. Like, I loved it. I loved everything about it. I had to wait for a few minutes. I'm waiting in my house messing around with stuff. I'm not—I didn't drive to downtown Atlanta. But when you describe that about the robotics company, I think there's going to be so many people that have opportunity to do startups or do small experiments. There's going to be so many competitors that are going to shake up the world of traditional big corporate stuff. And I'm not an anti big corporate person at all. I just think that competition is healthy and good. And by the ability to use these tools for people to collaborate—now I'm not restricted to just, you know, when you start a band, it's the three dudes that I went to high school with or were on my track team or, you know, whatever. I was listening to Alice Cooper the other day, and he said, "Yeah. I could—you know, me and the drummer were on the long distance team and this guy." Right? And it was their little nucleus. Well, if you don't have those people in your little nucleus, well, now you can bring in people from around the globe, for that matter, into your world that are like minded, that are in the same chats and thinking as you. Be collaborative and actually create stuff and then put it out there for the world to consume. What time do we live in? And it sounds like that organization is trying to do the exact same thing. I can't wait to see what they develop.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:23) Do you have any talks? Like, do you have any talks prepared or or anything?

(David at 00:59:27) I don't have a talk prepared. I have two things. One, I just presented to the Pacific Telecom Conference, which is a short fifteen minute idea that I'm teasing out, which is, for our industry anyway, how I think the world's going to change. We have $30 something trillion, probably more, being spent towards office buildings, towards traditional schools, towards traditional infrastructure. Some significant percentage of that is going to shift. It has to. These are long term investments. They have to shift to something. So what are they going to shift to, and how are we going to take advantage of that? What does that look like? The other thing that I wrote an article on that I'm not an expert, but I did a bunch of research for about eighteen months that I love is on agritech. It is one of the most interesting areas on Earth to me because it combines robotics, high def imaging, the complexities of the edge and remote connectivity. Just imagine, Joel, if you're responsible for—you have a workforce that is aging. You know, there's a misnomer. People think all the small farms are being put out of business because of these things, but big farms, whatever. Maybe there's some of that that's true, I'm sure. But a lot of it is, who wants to be a farmer today? Nobody wants to be a farmer. They're not signing up to be a farmer. Not only that, you know, the traditional immigrant, migrant worker is gone to other jobs and other things, and so they're not signing up to pick rice or farm—you know, do any of that, harvest almonds. So we have this agritech community that has—the tools that they're going to all need high end connectivity. I need a drone to fly over the field to manage my harvest or robots that can pick faster and more efficiently. And they're not displacing people. They're enhancing people, especially when that's diminishing. But imagine if you have to build the infrastructure for an environment that it grows, it changes, there's moisture involved. It's—in some things you need high def burst images and other things you, like, wearables on your livestock that trickle out data. Six, eight, 10 environments that you have to figure out, and they're dynamic and changing in a hundred different ways every day. And, oh, by the way, they're nowhere near an NFL city. So how do I get broadband out to them? How do I get connectivity out to them and get it back and process all of that? It's one of the most interesting dilemmas and topics of conversation, and hardly anybody not in that community is talking about it. So that's a—

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:59) That'd be good. We want that. I voted that one. You sold that one so much harder than the Pacific Telecom budget adjustment.

(David at 01:02:06) Well, one's a big idea that, you know, kind of this—but this one was recently—

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:11) I think that's cool. The—yeah.

(David at 01:02:14) Yeah. It's really interesting, and there's so many opportunities out there for the technology world. And by the way, we've got to figure out how in a teeny tiny slice of the world of the actual arable soil. How do we do that to feed—and I don't think we're—I've been an alarmist. I don't think we're at risk today. But to my point earlier, not a lot of people want to be farmers. So how are we going to take this little sliver of land and have it yield 20 times more, but in a sustainable way, highly nutrient wise way? It's a really interesting dilemma that's not being talked about very much. So that's an area that's really interesting to me.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:55) I like it. I'm going to get a shirt that says, like, it's not my idea. It's, like, in my DNA.

(David at 01:03:00) I love it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:01) All this stuff I end up coming up with, and I think it's, like, brilliant. And then somebody will point out, like, basic principles of, like, how it's how we operate. I'm, like, I'm discovering myself every day.

(David at 01:03:13) Hey. You said something earlier that I wanted to—when you're talking about going to Nashville with your kids. Yeah. When my children were, gosh, seven, nine, and 11 or eight, 10, 12, something like that, my daughter—or my wife said, we need to do something as a family. What are we going to be about? And we went out, and we got an RV, a tow behind RV. We got some little dirt bikes for them. And we went all over this part of the country from Texas to Virginia to Florida many, many times. None of them are interested in doing that now. We still have the RV. It's a guest cottage more often than not, but I will tell you some of the best times of our life. We explored all over the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, this whole part of the country. We learned that driving more, unless you're in a drivable RV that we would rent to tow behind, six to eight hours is probably the max distance. But I cannot emphasize enough, leverage that time. It will be magical time for you and for them, especially once now that they're in college and kind of away and they remember those times fondly. Great, great, great family experiences. I cannot recommend it enough.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:29) No. I—and I think we talked about it a little bit too because I was going out to Texas to see if I wanted to relocate there.

(David at 01:04:35) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:35) We're on the airplane and well, first of all, the trip was like a disaster. It was so difficult. I thought it—I travel so much, but it's by myself.

(David at 01:04:43) Right. Since I—

(Joel Beasley at 01:04:43) Got two kids, man. I looked like full-on papa, like, carrying all the—my wife's like, "We have to bring our own seats. We can't use the rental ones for the car seats." And so we get there and, like, the Airbnb is not what we thought it was. And anyway, so we learn all this stuff. But one of the big takeaways was the kids, like, in the airplane, in the airport, and all of that travel and all of that experience getting out there was so difficult. And the people in front of us, like, both times were, like, just complaining the entire time.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:15) I was thinking of that bit too. I was like, look, we just flew across the whole world. But, uh, that's what, like, clinched the deal for us. We said we can't do weekend trips on airplanes with kids. The setup and breakdown and everything. The only way we're going to be able to get out of the house regularly.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:34) And so I sat down and I was like, you know what? I invested so much in building the business and so much time and so much money. And if you look at the amount of money I invest into my business versus the amount of money I invest into my family, it's depressing. It's the only thing I pay for is, like, food and energy.

(David at 01:05:49) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 01:05:49) And so that's what prompted us to do the trailer thing. But we're loving it. We've done four trips now.

(David at 01:05:56) Yeah. Well, it's got its lumps. You know? None of them don't have their lumps, but what I've learned over time—I didn't know it at the time—but what I've learned over time, I kind of have this, and I'm sure I heard it somewhere: All the things that you invest in your company now, as valuable as they are, and they are valuable, technology changes. Those things change. You may not even own the company in five years. It's, you know, things come and go. But we are both people of faith. And not to put words in your mouth, but what I think about is the only thing eternal for me is these relationships that I have with people that I love. And since I'm probably twenty-something years down the road from you, I'm not morbid, but I really—the value of time, I don't remember except for the funniest stories about diaper bags and changing and doing all of that chaos, which at the time I thought would never end.

(David at 01:06:52) My wife and I, we're about to celebrate our thirty-fourth year of marriage, and we were married almost twelve years before our first daughter was born. And I did not want to have kids. I was like, absolutely not. My wife's half Japanese, half Irish. We lived in a little house just off of Galveston Island. I was working at the University of Texas down there in the IT group. I was like, we got it made. At the end of the month, after all bills, I had, like, $800 in my checking account. Are you crazy? Why would we want kids?

(David at 01:07:22) And she insisted. And then the second that they're born, I can't—how did I not? You know? It's just something changes. But anyway, I have, after spending this time and these tears and this laughter, they remember stuff I don't remember. Trips to Myrtle Beach, trips to all of these places. And I remember I used to get so hung up about money or whatever. They don't remember any of that.

(David at 01:07:48) They remember laughter. They remember—I can sing almost every Pixar, Disney, whatever movie from that era because it was playing behind my head. I don't know what any of the characters look like. We will run through Road to El Dorado, all the Cars, all the whatever. We know all the one-liners, all the songs, everything.

(David at 01:08:11) I even know some of the Elsa stuff. You know? But it's so much in our family DNA culture, and it doesn't really matter whether it's an RV or—I'm not encouraging anybody to go spend money that they don't have or make their lives more complicated. It worked for us. But time, you know, Ben Franklin said, "Empty the coins of your purse into your mind and your mind will fill your purse." Well, you could say the same thing into relationships. And if there's one thing, Joel, we've got to do right now, we're so—you know, even our most ancient documents say human beings like to separate around ethnicity. Human beings like to separate around the things that are normal to us instead of the things that are not normal. And we've got to figure out how we spend time together in our small groups with our families or larger groups in our communities with people that aren't exactly like us so that we can take care of each other so that it, you know?

(David at 01:09:08) Anyway, I don't want to get on that soapbox, but I cannot recommend enough in spite of the tears—instead of the way you break down on the side of the road with your RV and your truck or whatever—but it's, you know, they'll never forget it. And you and your wife will never forget it. It's great investment of time.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:26) Oh, yeah. And we're seeing it already. In the four trips, you know, we've already had the ups and the downs, and this is, like, our first time doing it. And, uh, I'll tell you what, I was so nervous too, like, pulling the trailer because I had never done that before and learning how to back it up and all of this stuff. But I would practice, like, by myself and with my brother-in-law who knows how to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:09:49) Because I was like, I'm going to have to—I'm like a Navy SEAL right now. I'm going to have to do this with two screaming banshees strapped out of my back seat and a hangry wife. I'm like, let's prepare for the worst situation possible.

(David at 01:10:01) Yeah. I probably should have counseled with you before. I just—you know, that's why you're a software developer and, uh, you know, I just jump out of airplanes. I didn't do any of that. I was like, wow, how hard could this be? Let's just hook it up. And I have an F-250 long bed. Look, we look like the Griswolds. I've got a bike rack hanging off the back of my 36-foot triple slide-out.

(David at 01:10:22) It looked like the Tour de Georgia with all the bikes hanging off the back. We've gotten to places missing part of a bumper. Things gone. You know, we could tell plenty of stories for another time. But at the end of the day, what my kids remember, even when they don't even like each other most of the time—they're battling or whatever—is laughter around setting up the movie screen at the side of the lake.

(David at 01:10:49) So—I always got to work in technology—but it was a cool thing because we'd spent a day on the lake and fishing, and I hate fishing, and messing around and doing all this. And at the end of it, we fire up, you know, some of our favorite movies because we're a movie family and just laugh and enjoy. Or other times, it's just quiet. Just quiet. And it's, um, whatever the thing is, my parents and my grandparents were—you know, they had this culture where they would play cards. They would get all the families together. And there's a temptation now not to do that very much, to be caught up in our screen time. And you and I are technologists. We love the screen. Screen is got amazing benefits, but it can't just be the screen, and it can't just be sitting in rows.

(David at 01:11:34) We have to come together in circles, whether it's in our work communities or in our home communities. Yeah. Well, I've also had—we've got many, uh, you know, coming together in circles around the fire pit where we've burned ourselves a time or two. But, you know, it's a great investment. I think you'll really enjoy it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:11:54) Yeah. We actually called 911. The fire pit when we were at NASA—I put the—I put the phone, like, we had these pop-up chairs, and they have these little cup holders, and they're so—I just, like, I was like, ah, it's not fitting. So I just shove my iPhone in there because I had Pandora playing, and then I heard, like, click, click, click, click, and then I heard, like, some voice talking. I'm like, what's going on?

(Joel Beasley at 01:12:15) And it was the sheriff's, like, department, and they're like, "We've been listening to you guys for, like, two minutes." And what they heard was us around the campfire, and my wife having this, like, plate of s'mores, and then my two-year-old son, Lachlan, trying to jump into the fire and then smacking the s'mores out of her hand and going all over the place. "Like, is everything okay there?" And then they sent a police officer out to the campground.

(David at 01:12:36) Yeah. Yeah. And you wonder why they confiscated your license at NASA. They probably pulled it up on the SWAT team. This is the guy from the fire.

(Joel Beasley at 01:12:43) From the campfire.

(David at 01:12:44) This is him. Yeah. We, uh, well, I'm reminded of one where we borrowed—we didn't rent. We borrowed a travel RV from a friend of mine. And while we were getting ready to leave the campground, the door broke from the inside. The handle broke. And these big travel ones, there's only one door. So the emergency exit was this big bay window out the back of the RV. So we pull up to the dump station, as you know, and your listeners probably know is where you evacuate all the bathroom stuff or whatever.

(David at 01:13:15) So it's a long line at the state park. There's probably 20 RVs behind me. They look up and—you haven't seen—you've seen me on here, but not a person—I am a wide giant man. All of a sudden, the people in front of me, I see them looking out the windshield. The window opens. I have to climb out, drop down, wave to them, come over, get all this stuff out, dump all of our mess, clean it all up, climb back in through the back of the RV, and drive away. That was—we got a million of these stories. Not quite Robin Williams in the movie RV, but not far from it. Story after story.

(David at 01:13:51) But we laugh about it now. It was embarrassing at the time, but we laugh and laugh and laugh about all these stories and the places we've been. And the cool thing about technology as it plays into that is we bring our tech with us. I've got technology that tells me what are RV-friendly places to pull into to gas up or for dump stations or campgrounds that are friendly for kids of a certain age.

(Joel Beasley at 01:14:16) Do you have an app to recommend to me, by the way?

(David at 01:14:19) Uh, I don't. We actually, um, I ended up—I would get so frustrated because while the app was fine, the people that service the app didn't keep up with it. And so eventually, I just ditched it, and I would just—I would log into the internet and look at where I thought based upon my gas mileage I was going to be gassing up. And so I would just find RV-friendly places. And after a while, Joel, you'll find you don't care. Every QuikTrip, every—I've got a 22-foot F-250 pulling a 36-foot RV behind it loaded down with dirt bikes and four-wheelers and everything else.

(David at 01:14:57) I can swing that thing into anywhere now. I don't care. It doesn't matter. So in the beginning, I was very worried about it. After you do it—as you'll find out—a dozen times or so, you don't care. It'll be just like, get out of my way. Let me roll.

(Joel Beasley at 01:15:11) Yeah. A lot of fun. I'm getting more comfortable. I was telling my wife when we were driving back from Orlando, I said, I think it's, like, the eleventh time I've pulled this thing, and I'm at the point where, like, I'm not stressed out about it. And my total rig length from bumper to bumper is around, like, 52, 54 feet.

(David at 01:15:28) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:15:28) So, um, it's kind of similar to your setup. But, um, yeah, one of the things I thought of too, I was like—it's like a Chevy truck, and so it's got, like, the Android—

(David at 01:15:39) It's like a Ford, but not as good. I'm with you.

(Joel Beasley at 01:15:41) Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. You're on the same page. So I was, like, backing up, and I was like, why doesn't the trailering app, like, have the ability to direct based on my steering wheel where the trailer is going to go? I was like, I could write an app. So I went online and signed up for their app developer stuff and I was like—

(David at 01:15:59) All right. See?

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:00) Yeah. I was like, I could just write the app. Right? Like, I have a camera feed, I have a video feed, I have access to it through the API, and I can just draw the line on there based off of how the trailer is positioned and it would—yeah. I would just do it for my trailer and, you know—

(David at 01:16:14) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 01:16:15) It would be a lot of work to, like, make it work with any trailer. But, yeah. Yeah. I was like, that's what I love about this life. That's what I love about where we are right now. Like, that was so not even possible, like, ten years ago.

(David at 01:16:27) Yeah. And two generations from now, you'll be able to—not people, but vehicle—you'll be able to plug that into. You know, I love dirt bike racing. It's one of my favorite things, and now they're all fuel injected. They have these maps that you can program and plug into your motorcycle and it changes the characteristics of the motor. Well, there's no doubt in my mind that what you just described at some point, you'll be able to plug that into the app of your truck and you can go hands-free and it will recognize through visual recognition where the ball is, what the height is, and it will back your truck up for you or whatever your tow vehicle is. Whoop. Line it right up, and you just drop the trailer on it and away you go. So I've gotten good at it now.

(David at 01:17:11) The Ford has—and its backup camera has a line on it as long as I make sure, you know, I've got to eyeball the height. But still, I mean, those are the really cool things I think that are coming, and in a way, it gives people more freedom. They think it's more restrictive, but it actually is more freedom. Wait till we have autonomous vehicles. I'm hoping for the autonomous drone, but whatever. My buddy just pulled up in a brand new Tesla, and he had picked it up at three or four in the morning in Nashville, made that four-hour drive down to Atlanta. And he said, "Dude, I slept for—I don't know if that's legal—but I slept for about an hour between Chattanooga and Atlanta." It's a long stretch of road, and the car just—it was on autopilot. You know, it was a light sleep, but he said, "I was tired, and I just let it do its thing. It would alert me," and I cannot wait.

(David at 01:18:01) I used to not see myself in autonomous vehicles, and now I'm like, please bring them on. And it just gives you more freedom. You could drive if you want, or you can let it do its thing, and you could do entertainment or work or whatever. I just think that these tools are going to give us more opportunity. It'll be up to us to choose to use it or use it for good.

(Joel Beasley at 01:18:21) And I was reading on how some of these things work, like, from an engineering perspective.

(David at 01:18:26) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:18:26) They are an order of magnitude, maybe ten, safer than a human. I mean—

(David at 01:18:31) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:18:31) Those cameras and sensors can just—I was trying to explain it to my wife or, like, just other people that are not software engineers or nerds like me. And the best thing I came up with is I was like, it's like if you took every second of your trip and you got to sit down at a table for an hour and analyze frame—

(David at 01:18:52) By—

(Joel Beasley at 01:18:52) Frame with a group of the smartest engineers in the world on what move to make next. And—because that's how fast the computer can operate.

(David at 01:19:01) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 01:19:01) Um, somebody's going to yell at me and be like, that's incorrect.

(David at 01:19:04) That's—I'm sure. I'm sure. So what? We're dreamers.

(Joel Beasley at 01:19:08) Dude, I love to talk to you so much. I really do. I respect you as a person. You're like a role model for me. I always love when I get to talk to you. I've got Jake waving me down because we've got another podcast. But, uh, man, this is—is there anything that we didn't get out that we want to get out? Go buy QTS data center stuff.

(David at 01:19:27) You can always do that. Can't go wrong buying into a data center business. No, man. I think we covered a wide range of topics. You know, my goal when I have an opportunity to talk is just inspire people to check out the world of technology. There are amazing things happening, and we should be about human flourishing, and we can do it in this world. We just have to be proactive to do it. And love your family. I heard recently that great philosopher, Coolio, say at a concert, "Go home and check on your neighbor. Don't text them. Don't FaceTime them. Walk next door. Don't look at the sign in their front yard, who they voted for or whatever, and love them. Help them." And that's what we should be about.

(David at 01:20:14) Do it in the world of technology. Help to improve your life, but also get out in the analog world and check on your neighbor. Help them and love them. Thanks for having me on today.

(Joel Beasley at 01:20:26) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.