Michael Waters CTO of Duuzra

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Today, we are talking to Michael Waters, the CTO of Duuzra, and we discuss when to be afraid of artificial intelligence, how blockchain is being used in government elections, and the blurred line between public and private data. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Michael Waters at 00:00:20) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:21) This is the Modern CTO podcast. Michael, we're here. We made it.

(Michael Waters at 00:00:34) Great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:36) What are you up to today?

(Michael Waters at 00:00:38) Oh, putting out fires, dealing with the GDPR.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:42) Oh, no. You're a firefighter.

(Michael Waters at 00:00:44) Yeah, and dealing with the GDPR, which is a real giant pain in the butt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:50) Tell me about it. I don't know a whole lot about it other than everyone's talking about it.

(Michael Waters at 00:00:54) Okay. So the GDPR is the European Union's version of HIPAA and FINRA for everyone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:01) Sounds horrible.

(Michael Waters at 00:01:03) Yeah. Yeah. So the premise is good, and the idea behind the GDPR is simply that if you are investigating a crime or you're investigating something that happens and digital information is involved, if some investigator in France, per se, is investigating something that occurred in Spain, he doesn't want to find out that the server is in Uzbekistan and the company won't give him the data. And how do you cross the international lines of dealing with maybe, say, a Uzbekistan or a Nigerian court or wherever you're trying to get the data from? So the GDPR says if you're going to do business with somebody in the European Union, their data has to reside on European Union jurisdictional soil.

(Michael Waters at 00:01:54) Whoa. Yeah. So that's basically the rule. And that way, if someone is in, like, I gave the example, if someone's investigating somebody that's doing something in France, they can go to the data host in the European Union and demand the data, and it would be respected by the European courts. And the fine is pretty steep. It's about $1 million a day if you don't comply. So everybody's scrambling to comply.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:23) Wow. So, all right, so let's just, so I understand. So I'm doing business with someone in the EU, yes, right? And I'm an app company.

(Michael Waters at 00:02:33) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:34) And so copies of that data have to live in the EU?

(Michael Waters at 00:02:39) Well, that's what they say, but let me tell you, put on my CTO hat. If I was CTO somewhere else, let me just put it to you this way. Really, what they're just saying is they want to be able to get the data. The actual physical residence of the data, they say they want on European soil, but really, they're not going to complain if they come to you and say, give me the data, and you give it to them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:04) I get it.

(Michael Waters at 00:03:05) So they're saying it has to be on European soil, but the reality is if they came to you and said, we want this data, and you said, sorry, it's in Uzbekistan, that's the point that they could come back and say, okay, we're going to penalize you and we're going to beat you up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:21) They're closing a loophole.

(Michael Waters at 00:03:23) Yeah, they are. They're closing a loophole. And so the reality is the data for most companies will not reside on European soil. That is exactly how cloud services do not operate. But by acknowledging GDPR compliance, we're saying if you come to us for data, we'll give it to you, and we're not going to give you any bureaucratic red tape.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:47) Yeah, for your people.

(Michael Waters at 00:03:49) Yeah, for just Europeans. And then there's a few other things, like in the United States, there's a law they passed in California called the Shine the Light law. So there's an element of that which basically says you have to tell people what data you're storing, and you have to give people the right to have that data deleted. So we have to do that too, which, you know, that's going to soon be known as the Zuckerberg rule, because, you know, Facebook's tent is under heat for the exact same issue. So, you know, what data are we storing on you, and do you have the right to remove that? And so, basically, we're putting together forms on the Internet where people can say, here's my name and email address. What data are you holding on me? And I'd like it removed. And then we have to have a removal process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:41) Wow.

(Michael Waters at 00:04:42) So the reason the GDPR is such a big issue, aside from the fact that the European Union is an emerging sector for technology, is that the United States Congress has already said that they're looking to model the GDPR, and Asia-Pac is also looking to do the same thing. So this is going to be a standard operating procedure for the Internet. So everyone's moving towards it now, aside from even if they're not doing business in Europe, just because the writing is on the wall between what the European Union is doing and the Facebook scandal. It's going to be a standard operating procedure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:24) It is. You're going to have to say, this is the data I'm holding on you, and you're going to have to let the people delete it. Google kind of was ahead of that a little bit because I remember about six months ago, I saw some article that says check out all the data that Google's holding on you. And I went and looked at it, and you could actually see across all the services everything that Google had on you. I didn't know if you could delete it, but at the time, you could definitely see it.

(Michael Waters at 00:05:49) Well, and this is the real problem because people who, and in fact, it was one of the best lines I heard. I watched the entire Zuckerberg hearing as it happened on CNN. Yes. I do actually watch boring things like that. But as you see, that's our job, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:09) It is.

(Michael Waters at 00:06:09) So I watched the entire Zuckerberg hearing. And probably my favorite response out of all the congressmen was the guy out of Kentucky who said, Congress has only two modes of operandi here. We either do nothing or we overreact, and we're about to overreact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:25) I saw that, that exact post that says that they either do nothing or they overreact, and then he was encouraging them not to overreact, but to take logical measures.

(Michael Waters at 00:06:35) Yeah. And so that's what's happening is all the tech companies are saying, yeah, please do not overreact, because the reality is the average user uses their cell phone, and as much as they say, I want to be private, if we actually took away all the stuff that they say they don't want us to have, they would go, my smartphone doesn't work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:54) Yeah. It's not smart.

(Michael Waters at 00:06:56) It's not smart anymore. And so people have to understand there is this two-sided thing to a smartphone. It's only going to work if we have data on you the way you want it to. So I sit on both sides of the fence. Yes, I should know what data is being held on me, but I also go, if you want to do business with these companies, there's a tax. There is a price of admission, and that is you're going to need to give up some of that data. So it's legitimate across the board.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:23) Well, it also shouldn't be a binary. It shouldn't be I get all the features of the concept of algorithms and personalization or I get none of them. I like the middle thing, and I know it's more work, obviously, because I write these systems. But I do like the ability to be able to see what general points are being stored about me so I can decide. The personalization of them knowing, you know, my last doctor's visit is not something I care about. Like, I don't want that. Like, I want them to know my YouTube watch history so I see relevant videos, right? But I don't want them knowing, like, certain items that they may have figured out, like my travel patterns from, like, my Verizon data. Like, I don't want you to know that. Like, you can design your algorithm well enough where I am on demand, like, where I am in this moment. You don't need a six-month history, trailing history of where I've been.

(Michael Waters at 00:08:12) Well, yeah. In fact, a company I was involved with, a startup years ago, we were a social networking company. And so we used to sponsor events where we'd bring people to teach them about social media because it was still emerging technology. And the most common question was, how do I participate in social media without having my information be public? And my response was, don't get on social media.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:35) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:08:36) I mean, the nature of it is sharing. But to your point is exactly right. We have to find the middle ground. And, you know, in fact, my second favorite quote on those congressional hearings was right out of Jurassic Park, and I don't know if the senator intended to quote Jurassic Park or not. But he said, your data scientists were so obsessed with what they could do, they didn't stop to think what they should do. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's right out of Jurassic Park. But that is another point right there that needs to be addressed, is just because we can do it with data doesn't mean we should do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:14) We're going to have these same conversations as AI emerges and we start to be getting into the, like, I was watching Westworld. I rarely watch TV, but, like, I saw, one of the shows I do follow is Westworld. And I'm just thinking, like, this is so close. Like, we are so, I will see this in my lifetime, and so I'm less interested to know if it will happen or not because I know it will. And I'm more interested in the act of it unveiling itself and how all the countries respond and react.

(Michael Waters at 00:09:42) So the biggest thing, my kids were asking me, and I have five of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:47) You have five kids?

(Michael Waters at 00:09:48) Yes. Five kids. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:50) Congratulations.

(Michael Waters at 00:09:51) What I was afraid of with AI. They asked me, are you afraid of AI? And I said, as it sits right now, I'm not afraid of AI. And they said, well, is there a point that you will be afraid of AI? And I said, yes. However, I will never know when that point has happened. And they said, why? And I said, because to me, the point at which AI becomes scary is the point at which AI would lie to me deliberately. That's the point that I get scared.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:19) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:10:19) But how will we know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:22) Yeah. I don't know.

(Michael Waters at 00:10:24) Right. That's the scary point. That's the point where AI is like, no, I have no idea how to do that. We totally know how to do that. You know? That's the point that I go, okay, AI has crossed that bridge into dangerous territory. Well, you know, Westworld's a great example.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:40) That's exactly the thing. So now my brain's processing. So many things will be happening for AI to actually be working in that capacity that you were describing that we would not be able to monitor all the items happening at the same time in the sense that, like, yeah, we just wouldn't be able to monitor all of it happening to know if they're lying to us or not. And then now they realize that they could keep information from us. It's really interesting.

(Michael Waters at 00:11:04) Right. And once that happens, now you have a problem that is no different than, you know, the U.S. talking to Iran and saying, can we trust you? You know, fundamentally, the same problem, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:18) Yeah. We have this false sense of security. Like, you know, you have kids, right? So you think both because you made them, you can control them, and that thought works until you realize you can't.

(Michael Waters at 00:11:29) I got teenagers, and that point has already happened. And it's like, oh, you're supposed to do what I say. Not really. And you're like, okay, big problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:37) Exactly, and that's exactly what's going to happen with AI. We're going to build them to do what we want, and eventually, we're going to be like, oh, no. We can't control them.

(Michael Waters at 00:11:46) So what happens to AI when we say, I want you to move this money into this account, and it goes, no?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:51) It'll probably just say yes and then not do it.

(Michael Waters at 00:11:55) Well, or that. See, that's the point that I'm scared of. I don't mind the no, but I do mind the, yeah, okay, and then not doing it like a teenager. And it's like, well, we have a problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:04) Clean your room? Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:07) Did you sign the peace treaty? Yes.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:10) So to me, the AI, and Elon Musk was right. He said, you know, the time to write laws on AI is now, and it's not going to happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:19) They couldn't even, I was watching clips. I did not watch the full hearings, but I did see clips, and I was just blown away by some of these people that we have making decisions having no capacity of understanding. I feel like they live in a cabin in the woods.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:34) Oh, not to mention, I live in Utah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:36) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:36) And our glorious, worthless Senator Orrin Hatch asked Mark Zuckerberg, how do you guys make money? Your service is free. And I just face-palmed it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:45) Oh, that clip was yours.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:48) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:49) I love it.

(Michael Waters at 00:12:50) I'm just going, oh my gosh. This guy is making decisions. He doesn't even understand the Internet pricing model of free, and he's the one going to pass laws on how Facebook shares data. Unbelievable. We have such a problem on our hands.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:05) And that's our oldest model, like, for the Internet. Like, that model's been around since the late nineties. Like...

(Michael Waters at 00:13:11) Right. Right. If he doesn't understand that one, how's he going to understand some of these crowdsourcing and crowd-sharing models that are coming out? And, you know...

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:19) Unless he was so smart that he was just raising the question to raise it for everyone.

(Michael Waters at 00:13:25) No. He basically looked like a moron on TV.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:28) No. That's not possible. No. This guy...

(Michael Waters at 00:13:32) I'm from Utah, and I know Orrin Hatch, and he has...

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:35) I was just slipping the positive there. Hey. So when we were talking about overreacting, I have a friend who has a company over in Russia, and they, a few weeks ago, there was an issue with the encryption keys for Telegram. The government wanted Telegram to, like, give them over so they could see the data. And, ultimately, the end result was they shut down, like, 12 million IPs, the government did, which ended up causing massive outages in all sorts of commerce, online commerce services in Russia. And then a bunch of the heads of the companies all got together and then went and complained to the committee. But I don't know if you, but that's what I was thinking about when we were talking about overreacting. They didn't know what to do. They just shut down chunks of IPs.

(Michael Waters at 00:14:28) Well, exactly. In fact, in the U.S., we had a similar issue. We had a congressman who said, we can't allow encryption. We can't allow it. We've got to be able to get into encryption. It's just not a good idea. And he was spearheading. And then three months later, he had this look on his face, almost like he'd been pulled into a room and had the sense kicked into it, where he's like, you know what? We need to keep things encrypted because that is the ultimate double-edged sword. That encryption issue is the ultimate double-edged sword on society. The minute we get rid of encryption, everybody's secrets are out. Everybody. And that's a problem nobody wants to deal with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:08) Well, everything's, yeah. There's no security if there's no encryption. Yeah. Everything's just publicly visible.

(Michael Waters at 00:15:13) Yeah. And so I think it was funny because the congressman was wanting to overreact. Let's shut down encryption. Let's stop it. And, ultimately, as nice as that sounds on paper, nobody wants that. Yeah. The government doesn't want it. They think they do, but they don't. And so there's a real, you know, there's a real problem for the ages.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:32) There's no Internet banking if there's no encryption.

(Michael Waters at 00:15:35) Right. Right. Unless you go to blockchain. You know?

(Michael Waters at 00:15:38) But they don't want to do that either. Speaking of blockchain, I know you're a fan of cryptocurrency. What did you think about that election using blockchain? Wasn't that fascinating?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:47) No. This is news to me. An election using blockchain. Where did this happen?

(Michael Waters at 00:15:51) Go look in—it's over in Europe, and they did a blockchain election because they wanted to make sure that it couldn't be hacked. They wanted to do—it was Sierra Leone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:07) Yep.

(Michael Waters at 00:16:08) Okay. So Sierra Leone did—the citizens of Sierra Leone went to polls on March 7, and they did a polling election for the country using blockchain. And the idea was that if you have an election machine or some kind of an election device, then it could be hacked at some level unless you use blockchain, and then it can't be hacked.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:33) That's really interesting.

(Michael Waters at 00:16:35) Yeah. That really got my head spinning because I'm thinking, you know, I didn't support electing in the US online for that very reason. I thought, you know, someone's going to hack it or control the election, then it's over. But using blockchain, I might rechange that idea.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:55) Yeah. You know what's interesting is I was having this conversation two years ago with a local government official in my town, and I said, hey, you know, it's just a matter of time before we have this concept of—I'm not sure how it's going to roll out. I'm just not sure, but there's going to be some sort of way where you can transparently monitor the code base, or it's going to be some sort of group system. There's going to be some way or fashion in order to allow me to pick up my phone and have an election coming up, and I just say, yep, I want this. Right? Because the whole reason we have elected representatives is to go represent us because we physically couldn't be there. Like, historically, we would—our whole town would say, they're the person that's going to go there and represent us because we can't take our whole town there and raise our hands and vote. And we don't need to do that anymore. We can all vote in real time now because we all have these devices.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:46) I mean, they do—

(Michael Waters at 00:17:50) In fact, people don't realize our elector system stems from the ancient Roman Empire, and what they used to have is the Roman Empire was so gigantic that the sections of the Roman Empire would put an elector, and they would send him to Rome to vote for him because to get a message to Rome would take six months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:10) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:18:11) And so this was like, okay, you're an elector. Your job is to go to Rome and represent us. And our founding fathers said we have the same problem. How do you get somebody halfway across the country able to—so the elector system was put in place. Well, I think blockchain can eliminate all of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:29) Yeah. That's—and, you know, it's—I was describing, I wasn't thinking of blockchain at the time, but the bullet points of the properties that I described of the system that would make this possible—this transparency, this shared code base, this common understanding—I mean, that's blockchain.

(Michael Waters at 00:18:46) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:47) I just didn't realize that the conversation I was having was about, you know—I was imagining something different. I was imagining a open source project where we know the code is running in the servers, but then we could actually have some sort of window into watching the code run on the server so that we know. But we would have to invent things and these concepts don't necessarily exist. And now that we're talking about blockchain, I'm like, nope, that's the way that it's going to happen.

(Michael Waters at 00:19:10) Yeah. And so this is—I sent a link in the article on the group chat. You can check it out. To me, if nothing comes out of the Bitcoin revolution but blockchain, that is it. That can be the way—imagine a congressperson being able to say, how do you guys feel about this issue, and have people be able to vote through a blockchain system and know that he's actually looking at data that's real and not hacked. Right. And that's really what it's about. Right? Non-hacked data. And blockchain is the only—and there's too much temptation to try and rig an election either way. And blockchain might just very well be the salvation for that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:48) Oh, I want to know about your company. First of all, I want you to pronounce it for me.

(Michael Waters at 00:19:52) Duuzra. Duuzra. D-U-U-Z-R-A, Duuzra.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:58) How did that name come about?

(Michael Waters at 00:20:00) It's actually—it has to do with rugby.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:05) Oh, rugby.

(Michael Waters at 00:20:06) It's a rugby term.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:07) Oh, gotcha.

(Michael Waters at 00:20:08) We're a UK-based company even though I'm the CTO in Utah. We are—our US headquarters is on the Silicon Slopes in Utah. So that's where we're based out of, but our headquarters is in the UK. We are—we operate in an extremely specific niche. We are in the seminar and event industry, but we do something that no other event can do. And that is we provide you real-time accurate data, both unidirectional, omnidirectional data points. So for example, if you're at a seminar and you're showing a PowerPoint presentation and you're running through the slides, how do you know of the people in the audience who's looking at that slide, who has questions, who doesn't have questions, who finds the slide interesting, who doesn't find the slide interesting? You know, all of that information, we capture with our company. And what we do is we provide—whether you use your own smartphone or you use an iPad or you use an Android tablet—as the slides change, they change on your tablet or phone, and we monitor that data of you looking at the slide. And if you want to ask a question, you can type it in right there on your phone, ask that question, and it goes up live, either anonymously or non-anonymously to our speaker, who then can answer the question real time as they talk.

(Michael Waters at 00:21:36) We can also push data up and downstream. By the way, Joel, for what you do, we'd love to host an event too. And I'll say we'll do that for you for free just to get our technology out there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:47) Dude, your technology sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

(Michael Waters at 00:21:52) So on top of that, the big issue is I just got done with you at my seminar, and I want to make sure you retain the information. So we have polling where we'll say, here's a question, answer it. People can touch their screen and answer it. The data is captured real time. We can throw it up on the screen. We can see how many people think this way, how many people think that way. We have lots of pharmaceutical companies that use this to train doctors. They ask about dosage, when they're going to use it, and how they're going to use it. And then the answers are posted on the screen, and they can say, okay, the people that answered this got it right. The people that answered this got it wrong, and let me tell you why.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:28) Wow. That's really smart. So is medical conferences—my brother and stepmom are both physicians, and I was actually having a conversation with him the other day. He was at a continuing education conference, and that sounds like it would be super useful there.

(Michael Waters at 00:22:41) Oh, that's one of our biggest clientele. We already are dealing with so many pharmaceutical and medical companies that do their conferences, and it's expanding quickly there because people recognize these pharmaceutical companies say, we want to know that when we teach the doctors how to use this pill, that they're really getting the information. And so that's where you can't do that with a normal seminar. You can't say, here's the dosages recommended, and know that when the doctor walks out the door that he got it right. But with our technology, the doctors answering the questions on the screen, the data's going up there, the presenter's able to say, okay, everyone who answered B got it correct. Answer C and answer A are incorrect. And they're able to correct the doctors right there. And after the fact, after the seminar, we can send that data to the provider, and then they can send synopsis of that information over to the doctor and say, just for your records, we noticed you got these issues wrong. We can then correct you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:36) This is brilliant.

(Michael Waters at 00:23:37) It's absolutely amazing. And it doesn't have to be for medical. It can be for anything. It can be for tech support. It can be for new product launches. It can be for anything where you want to make sure that the information goes from your mouth to the head of the client and in a fun and interactive way. I mean, we have contests where you say, you know, the first answer gets a reward. We have hotspots where there'll be a picture and say, where are y'all from? And people touch on the United States or the world where they're from, and it shows up on the screen. So it brings interactivity to seminars. It's fascinating technology, and we operate in an extreme niche that really nobody's in. And so our technology is just—I'd like to say we don't have competition with what we do because we really don't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:22) No. And your website looks awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I was looking through right now from the training and the client list. How many people do you have at the company?

(Michael Waters at 00:24:31) We're growing fast. We are actually a virtual company. So we have just under 100 employees, and we're all over the world. We've got them in Dubai, UK, Germany, Netherlands, which makes my job as CTO one that never gets sleep. Yeah. I got—I mean, I had a conference call that was my time, three in the morning. I had another one that was my time, six in the morning. And then I had one that was later in the afternoon, and then one that was later in the evening. So I work a wild and wacky shift. I work in two to three hour segments broken up by two to three hour breaks, and I work that way all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:07) But the company is growing, and things are going well.

(Michael Waters at 00:25:09) Yes. Like I said, in the pharmaceutical world, we're growing like gangbusters. We're signing companies up on a regular basis, but we're reaching out into all conferences, the tech conferences. That's the new big thing. Hey, we want to teach you about a new type of technology we have, a new server type or a new server configuration, and then we want to be able to poll the audience. Did you learn what we had to say? What did you find most valuable? What did you find least valuable? And later, we can say, of this slide presentation that was 75 slides long, this slide that we thought was rather uninteresting, everybody was looking at and staring at and going, wow, that's interesting information to me. So now we know that our next tech conference needs to feature information about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:52) Oh, you know, actually, you can do scroll position and field and view, and you can actually tell what people are skipping past, how much time they're spending on a slide. Dude, that is really brilliant.

(Michael Waters at 00:26:06) And it's like analytics, but on steroids. Right? It's at this new level. And, really, what's interesting is everyone said years ago that once everything got virtualized where people can meet from home and do stuff like, you know, Zoom or RingCentral that the meetings in industry was going to die away because people could just sit from their home and have these meetings. Well, what's actually happened is seminar industry has actually increased.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:36) Yeah. It has. A little bit.

(Michael Waters at 00:26:38) It's gone up like crazy. And now there's seminars on everything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:41) Because now I get to meet you, Michael. And we get to meet more. It's just like the mail industry. Everyone's like, oh no, the US Postal Service is going to die because of email. Nope. Everyone started shipping packages, and it's doubling and tripling.

(Michael Waters at 00:26:52) Yeah. Exactly. And so now what's happening is the seminar industry is growing, and now a new problem is emerging. We are at a seminar. We're teaching people about maybe, Ruby on Rails, the new version. Let's say we're teaching all these developers about the new versions of Ruby on Rails. And what our biggest concern is these developers are going to go home and forget what we told them, or they didn't quite understand about the new update. Well, with our technology, you're going to be able to poll the audience. You know, what's the proper command for this? What's the proper way to execute this query? What's the proper way to launch this on the server? And then people are going to be able to answer on their phone. We can give out prizes. We can do whatever to encourage people to answer. But in the end, we're going to see people aren't getting this piece of information or they are getting this piece of information, and then you can interact with them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:38) Well, there's that—there's tension in the audience, so there's a common question whenever you get the dataset. So there's some—if two people aren't understanding it, half the audience isn't understanding it. Right? That's correct. So—

(Michael Waters at 00:27:52) Yeah. Yeah. You're right on. With our technology, we can address that. On top of that, we let them ask the questions anonymously. So no one has to feel stupid. They can just ask the question. And I don't know who's asking the question, but I'm answering it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:04) Right.

(Michael Waters at 00:28:05) So that—and then the other thing that our technology does is we actually pass down documentation. So if we've got PDFs or whatever, we can push those right out to your device at a certain time during the event.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:05) Nice.

(Michael Waters at 00:28:05) Yeah. So we're taking events, and we're taking an event from a level of I went there and I met some people and I learned some things to almost a university grade of an experience where we control the content. We know who got what content. We tested them, and we can now push out to them. And now, by the way, we can go and say, come to another one of our events.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:41) Now here's the thing. Do you offer post-event analytics? Like, can I take that presentation home with me and review it, and then does that keep adding data?

(Michael Waters at 00:28:49) Yes. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:50) Oh, it's so smart.

(Michael Waters at 00:28:52) Yeah. So like I said, we're the only ones doing it the way we do it. And it's such an emerging technology that I'm excited to be aboard it. It's absolutely going to be a new standard. You won't have events in the future unless you have some kind of way to control the content, control the education point of it, and control the analytics. It just won't be smart events.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:14) Yeah. Well, the precursor to all of this was the tweet, the question at me, and then some microservices came out that were $10 a month or $20 a month where you could actually text a question or there would be some poll, some web page you go to. This is a whole other level.

(Michael Waters at 00:29:30) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:31) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:29:31) And that's exactly—and what we're finding is pharmaceutical companies, I can't say because of the proprietary nature of our business, but we're finding that it is a very, very lucrative, very expensive venture that they're very much willing to pay for.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:47) Well, it's there's value—it's a value exchange. You're providing them an incredible amount of value to be able to construct their talks and their data and the way that they explain information. It also now gives you a qualifier. If I'm the conference organizer, I can see which talks did the best.

(Michael Waters at 00:30:05) Exactly. Now you're getting it. It's so funny to tell somebody, hey, this speaker, nobody cared about. They weren't really listening to him. And you say, well, you know, he thought he did a good job. And I say the analytics say he didn't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:17) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:30:18) And then the opposite of that, to say this guy, you need to bring him in on every one of your events. Everybody loved him. Everybody was listening to what he said. They were going backwards and forwards to the slide. They were asking questions, they were engaging the audience. And so now, you know, rather than just guess, you know who the rock stars are at your events.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:37) Yeah. Because the days of just going on the feeling of the feedback you get from two or three people, I mean, that's great, and that's worked until now. But, you know, people often—there's a lot more left unsaid than said.

(Michael Waters at 00:30:52) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:52) And this allows that information and data to come out.

(Michael Waters at 00:30:56) And it's funny, because once companies actually see what we gather at events, they quickly grow. And that's why I'm saying we're growing to the point where they just won't have events without us, because they're like, we just now realize we can know things that we thought you could never know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:10) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:31:11) Now that we know we can know them, we don't want to go on without it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:14) No. We actually have a conference—I went to an emerging conference, I think this was year two or year three, and it's doubling or tripling in size every year in Tampa, Florida, and it's called Synapse. And we have them on the show this week because I went and met with them, and I actually went to their conference this year a few weeks ago, or maybe about a month or two ago. And it was amazing, and it was just all the emerging local technology, and it was held in a hockey stadium.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:41) And it was really, really cool. So I'm going to mention this to them because they had, like, 40,000 sessions—they didn't have 40,000 sessions, but they had a lot.

(Michael Waters at 00:31:52) Well, imagine, if you will, in an event like that where the speaker gets up and he starts going through a slide presentation, and everybody's smartphone and/or tablet while they're at that presentation is moving—that slide is moving as the presenter talks—and people being able to ask questions and engage with the audience. Doesn't matter how big. Imagine the value for that. I mean, it's just priceless. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:16) Yeah. So the person giving the talk—I'm getting a little detailed, but I'm just curious—the person giving the talk, they put it into the system prior to giving the talk? They're given the system before by the conference?

(Michael Waters at 00:32:27) Yeah. They give us their slide presentation. We load it in, and then they control it from there. We'll give them an iPad, or they can use their own cell phone, and they can push a button. And as they push a button, everybody in the audience's phones and/or devices will move to the next slide as they're talking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:43) Now can I, as a participant—and here's the product part of Joel coming out—as the participant, can I disable the auto-sliding feature and scrub as I desire, or is that not something that happens yet?

(Michael Waters at 00:32:58) The answer is yes and no. Sometimes the client says we don't want you to. Sometimes the client says that's okay, and that's up to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:05) Oh, so it's like create your own world.

(Michael Waters at 00:33:08) Right. So, I say there are some—for example, some of the pharmaceutical companies, they, for legal issues, want to make sure that all the data is presented. And so they say you can't stop it. You're going to move through it, and you're going to get the information the way we give it to you. Other ones say, hey, let people move back and forward. We're okay with that, especially with the analytics, because we want them to see what is interesting, what is not interesting, that kind of thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:32) Yeah. Wow. There's two very interesting use cases. Right? If you're giving a creative talk on Rails, you want to see what API calls people are all spending the most time looking at. Right? But if you're the medical thing, you want to force for compliance that they've covered the topic according to the standard.

(Michael Waters at 00:33:46) Well, and that's the big issue. Like, if you're a pharmaceutical company and there's a malpractice lawsuit coming out, that turns into a class action lawsuit really quick. Right? And so to avoid that, you want to be able to say, no, we had 10,000 doctors here, and we trained all of them on this information, and we can prove it. So if the doctor did it wrong, you can't blame us. And so from the pharmaceutical industry, they love it. They're saving themselves potentially millions of dollars not having to deal with the loss.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:18) Here's a question. Yeah. Let's say that I'm a physician, and I want—this is me having a lack of experience with GDPR. Like, how far do we go with letting them delete data? Like, what if I say I don't want certain data deleted? Like, where is the line on what data can or cannot be deleted?

(Michael Waters at 00:34:39) Are you running for Congress?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:43) Why? Am I that unaware of what's happening?

(Michael Waters at 00:34:46) No. We need that as a guideline. Right now, there is no guideline. Right now, it's still the Wild, Wild West, and it's now starting. The battle is starting. The Facebook thing with the Russian collusion and all that stuff that's being alleged, that's now the battlefront for this very question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:07) Yeah. Where do I delete the—you have to give me the right to delete my incriminating data, Michael.

(Michael Waters at 00:35:13) Right. I don't want you to know that I was looking at this on the day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:17) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:35:17) On the day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:18) That's like me robbing a store. I'm robbing a jewelry store, and I walk in, and because of the surveillance rights of my photography being taken, I demand that they delete the video footage of me robbing that store because it's violating my data privacy rights.

(Michael Waters at 00:35:32) Right. And now you're talking exactly why the GDPR was written. If we've got video of this guy, we want it to be sure that the video resides on European soil so that we can reach out and grab that video and use it to prosecute this person. And like I said before, that's the rule, but the reality is they're just telling you you can't use "it's hosted somewhere else" as an excuse not to give it to us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:55) It'll be so interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple years.

(Michael Waters at 00:35:58) So the big question is going to be, you know, like, the U.S. Constitution says we have the right to be secure in our papers and our privacy. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:07) Mm-hmm.

(Michael Waters at 00:36:08) And now the question comes in, yeah, but when you put that online, where is the line to draw? You know, when you give your directional and locational information to Facebook, is that private? It's on a social media site. Well, is it private? Well, I just wanted to share it with Facebook. Well, what if an advertiser gets a hold of it? Or what if the NSA gets a hold of it? And you keep going to layers and layers. And that's why we have a Supreme Court.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:33) Yeah. It's interesting. It's like when things happen privately inside my home, there's a sense of privacy. But any action that I take out in the public world is considered—you know, there's a different standard of what I'm doing in public. And so I wonder how that's going to play out in the digital realm. Like, in my private networks, I'm probably going to have a different standard of privacy than when I'm doing something on a public network.

(Michael Waters at 00:36:53) Right. Here's an excellent example. Supreme Court says that if you're out in public, that you have no expectation that you will not be accidentally photographed. That's what the Supreme Court has ruled. They said if you're standing there and someone's taking a picture, you're going to get in a picture, and you can't claim privacy rights. But if people are taking pictures publicly, like for a newspaper or whatever, you need to be made aware. There's all these little issues. Right? Well, how does that same rule apply to data on the Internet? Are you on Facebook? What do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and what do you have a reasonable expectation of the whole world knowing? Because now take that Supreme Court ruling and say, well, yeah, if you're on the street, you have no expectation of privacy that your picture will wind up everywhere in the world on the Internet attached to an advertisement. Well, that's never been even possible. But yet now, that's actually a real issue. And I don't know if you remember this, Joel, but Facebook got in trouble with this a few years ago because they were taking—if Kodak ran an ad, Kodak was saying—Facebook was telling Kodak, everybody who likes Kodak, we'll put that picture of your friend on the Kodak ad on Facebook and say, "Joe likes Facebook, likes Kodak. Therefore, you should buy Kodak products." And they got in trouble for that because there wasn't a disclosure that your picture could be used in association with an advertisement just for liking something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:15) Oh.

(Michael Waters at 00:38:16) More of that stuff is coming.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:19) Yeah. Because it kind of happened behind a private area. It's like, then you get to the question of, is Facebook public or private? Like, it's in Facebook's world, but then when a fifth of the Internet traffic in the world's on social networks, it's like, is it really a private area? These are going to be crazy lines that are going to be set.

(Michael Waters at 00:38:39) Why me, as CTO of Duuzra—why I have such an amazing and difficult job with the GDPR on our technology—because we're dealing with events, we're dealing with data and locations and information, and who had access to what and who saw what, and where does that information reside, who owns it, who has ultimate rights to it, when do we destroy it, when do we keep it, all of that. That's the emerging stuff. So at Duuzra, we have all these questions to be answered.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:06) And then my question—for some reason, my mind always goes there—who covers the cost of the extraction?

(Michael Waters at 00:39:13) Yeah. It's a tax, isn't it? No matter who's doing it, there's a tax somewhere.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:18) Yeah. But, like, if I'm an—like, let's say I'm Duuzra. Right?

(Michael Waters at 00:39:23) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:23) If a government comes to you and demands some information, you could, out of the kindness of your heart, absorb the cost as an operating expense, something you have to do in order to comply, like a tax-type thing, and then do it. But at what point—like, who sets the standard now of how much cost they can leverage against you, how many times they can request data, and then how complicated is the data that they're requesting? And, like, if they tie you up as a resource and they tie up two or three, maybe, SQL people as a resource, or people that are just being forced to write SQL to comply, like, if they tie up these expensive resources, like, how much of that is allowed?

(Michael Waters at 00:40:04) Well, now you're getting into the libertarian me, where I go, you know, all of this is a cost to the end consumer, whether the end consumer wants to see it or not. That's why I say it's a tax, no matter what. Because as a company at Duuzra, when people say I want to know where the data is, who has it, and deletion, there is a physical labor cost involved with that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:24) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:40:25) You have to have a tech go in, look at the data, find it, extract it, delete it, confirm deletion. All of that has to be done. And when we're doing that, all of that comes at a physical cost that ultimately is passed down to a cost of our service. Somewhere, somebody's paying for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:44) Yep. What does Duuzra mean in rugby? Like, what type of rugby term is it?

(Michael Waters at 00:40:48) I'm going to quote this terribly wrong because I'm not from England. So it's basically a huddle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:58) Oh, okay. Cool. Like getting together.

(Michael Waters at 00:40:59) Yeah. Like a huddle. Getting together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:01) Collaboration.

(Michael Waters at 00:41:02) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of what it is—instead of getting, you know, let's do the huddle. Let's have a Duuzra. Let's talk, which is exactly what we're doing. Our Duuzra is an event software, a huddle, where we're getting together closely and working and collaborating together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:17) Well, it goes very well because that's what the seminar itself is.

(Michael Waters at 00:41:21) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:21) I'm getting—yeah. And then the software, so, I mean, it's beautifully named.

(Michael Waters at 00:41:25) Yes. So that's what it's about. So when people look at us, they need to know that our business is all about making that huddle effective. Right? So that we can sit down and talk and make sure that everybody got through the information that they needed to get.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:39) I want to know how you fell in love with technology, like, what your first experience was with technology.

(Michael Waters at 00:41:45) All right. This is going to date me. I don't look that old. My very first computer was a Commodore VIC-20.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:52) Not the 64, VIC-20.

(Michael Waters at 00:41:54) No. The VIC-20, the predecessor to the 64. I have the cassette drive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:01) Oh, man.

(Michael Waters at 00:42:02) I put the audio cassette in, and I type the run command, and then I'd hit play, and then I'd go watch the Dukes of Hazzard while my program loaded, because it would take thirty minutes to get through that tape for my program to load.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:17) Did you have to stand in line for punch card time?

(Michael Waters at 00:42:21) Not quite. Not quite that level. I'm not that old, but much. I mean, with the tape cassette—and I was in school, and they were doing a trial program. Our school was one of the few pilots that had a computer programming class, and so I was invited to attend. There was only six of us. We were the guys that got beat up. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:42) Me too, man.

(Michael Waters at 00:42:43) And so we got invited to this class, and I got my first—my first, I guess, it would have been called the quarterly assignment—was I had to write a program, and I had to have certain elements in it. It had to have some kind of a timing device, some kind of a display device, and some kind of an action. And so what I did was—you know what ASCII art is?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:04) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:43:05) Yeah. ASCII art. So I created ASCII art of the middle finger. When you typed in a command, it would flash up and down as though the computer was flipping the bird.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:15) Oh, you had two things that you flipped. Oh, that's so good.

(Michael Waters at 00:43:18) Yeah. So the hand would basically blink. It would go blink, blink, blink, blink, and it would look like you were getting flipped off by the computer. All in ASCII art.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:26) It's like 8008135.

(Michael Waters at 00:43:29) Exactly. And so I wrote this program, turned it in. My teacher said, as far as what you did with the programming language you had, I'm going to give you an A+. This is absolutely the best program in the class. She goes, but I have to give you a C because of content.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:50) Don't censor me.

(Michael Waters at 00:43:52) Well, and it was. I felt so censored. But what I didn't realize was this pilot program, the results of what these kids were doing was actually going to be shown to a group of adults who were deciding whether or not to keep the program in the school.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:06) Change it to a—oh, Michael killed the dreams of children.

(Michael Waters at 00:44:12) So basically, they're like, yeah, we're not turning his assignment in over to these people, because they're like, this kid's just using it to thumb the man in the system.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:21) Yeah. Just change the finger, Michael. Give it a thumbs up.

(Michael Waters at 00:44:25) Thumbs up, I would have gotten an A+. I thought it was funnier to have the program computer flip me off. But the reality is they just didn't include that when they showed it off. But, you know, that's really the first time. I mean, I was addicted to computers from the Commodore VIC-20.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:43) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:44:44) And the first program I've flipping the world off, I've always been a little bit of a libertarian. And, you know, don't censor me. Don't tell me what I can and can't do on my computer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:54) That's I love that story, man. Okay. So yeah. So you sorry. I can't stop thinking about it.

(Michael Waters at 00:45:04) Yes. This is this is what we do. Right? This is this is where computer hacking began. We looked at something, and we said, what can I do, even if I shouldn't do it? I just try to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:16) Yeah. Well, one of my so, like, my first first programs probably I think the first time I ever wrote code was my father had showed me it was on, like, a DOS system, and you could run some basic diagnostic commands. Right? And so I was like, oh, he showed me how to, you know, spit out text and everything like that. And I was and then tie commands together and then run commands with commands. And so I made a menu where I tied ten commands that were useful. I was like, what are the tens that you use the most? And he told me, and so I made a menu that tied them together. So you'd open up the menu. It'd show your visually show you the list of ten, and then you could press a number to run one and, like, pass the arguments and everything like that. So that's what I did. And so that was my first one. It's not as cool as that. But then I definitely got into, like, when I was I got in so I started programming around the age of eight. Right? But then when I was around thirteen, I started to get a little nefarious with with what you could do, kind of pushing the boundaries because no one was talking about it. It was just you alone on a computer. Nobody thought it was cool. There was some websites. They showed you how to do some things, and you figured it out, and then you kind of learned about data. And then when you're when you're exploring, it's like you're playing in this playground, and the whole playground's open and it takes someone else walking up to you and saying, if you go on that area, you're bad. It's like, but it's just the whole playground. They're like, yeah. But if you go on that swing, you're a bad person. And I'm like, oh, okay. You're not supposed to go over there. Because to you, like, exploring, like, it's all just data. Like, it's all just computers connected. And as long as you're not, you know, digging up the swing set and tossing it over and, like, causing someone harm, it's just you're kind of exploring. But there's definitely areas you can't go. But, yeah, that's that was, in the most abstract way I could tell that story that I explored the playground.

(Michael Waters at 00:47:06) You're right. And that is when we go back to data and the GDPR, that's literally what's going on is there's this gigantic playground of data. Everybody has it. Everybody's collecting it. And if you're not, you're stupid. So everybody's collecting this data, and suddenly, people are starting to say, you mean you can influence elections? You can turn the tides of entire countries' destinies if you play with data properly? Hold on a minute. Now we need to address whether or not that even should be done. And, you know, that's that's kind of the issue right there. It's a whole new world we're living in. And so this that's I mean, when we talk about, when I talk about Duuzra, we're in the GDPR. We're at the forefront just like anybody else of what can be done with data and who owns it and what rights you have to it. So it's a question that I don't think is going to be answered in the next five years. I think it's going to be over the next ten years it'll be answered.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:03) Alright. So there's a couple CTO questions. Yes. How so you have about a hundred employees at the whole company. How large is your development team, like, the stuff that you're directly responsible for?

(Michael Waters at 00:48:14) I'm going to say fifteen people right now. Cool. And we're expanding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:19) Yeah. And so you guys you maintain a couple code bases. Obviously, to do this, you'll have some server side component. You'll have mobile apps and things like that.

(Michael Waters at 00:48:27) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:28) Are you doing just straight native, like, directly for iOS, directly for Android, or are you using, like, React, or what do you put yourself like?

(Michael Waters at 00:48:35) Well, no. We're we're making native apps.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:39) Okay. Cool. Have you have you checked out the React Native projects yet?

(Michael Waters at 00:48:44) Yeah. There's some great stuff out there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:46) It's unbelievable. Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:48:47) Yeah. I think apps are and I and I'm I'm talking about apps globally, are going to be the the Internet will die as we see it, and what will emerge will just nothing more than an amplified Internet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:02) Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:49:03) I mean, going to web pages is going to disappear. I think within within our lifetime, going to physical web pages is just going to disappear. Everything's going to be apps in the future. And people are going to just have their phones, their phones or devices that will just have apps on it. There won't be a web browser.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:22) Well, a lot of the a lot of the kids, the thirteen to fifteen and stuff, they're like, they don't even do tech they have they have, like, three or four apps that they use, and everything is inside those apps.

(Michael Waters at 00:49:34) Yes. So app development from that standpoint is the future, and we are kids don't I mean, kids using an app, and you have to explain to them you're on the Internet, and they don't understand that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:45) Right. They're like, no. This is an app, and I connect with these people on this app.

(Michael Waters at 00:49:49) Yeah. And you don't realize that's all happening over the Internet. By the way, jump back real quick just to the GDPR question. One more thing to mention. One of the reasons that governments are getting so concerned is they recently found out that terrorists were getting together on sites like Sony network and planning all kinds of stuff using the chat features inside of the Sony PlayStation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:16) Well, if it's not Sony, it's going to be something else.

(Michael Waters at 00:50:18) Right. And so that's where these GDPR things are coming in where they're saying we want to be able to reach in and grab that content.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:25) That's like me saying well, I mean, that's true. But the it's also like me saying, like, oh, terrorists meet at coffee houses, so we're getting rid of coffee houses in our country.

(Michael Waters at 00:50:34) Right. They're not wanting to get rid of them. They're just saying we want to be able to jump into them without having any jurisdictional land.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:43) Tough though because it's like, it's tough because then the company has to actually open an entire door to a government that at their own leisure can do whatever they want. And then it's just like, we know about on a human on a human level, we are imperfect. So who happens to get voted in that position? I'll tell you what. I want to be elected into the position where I get to see everyone's Google search history. I'll make a lot of money that way.

(Michael Waters at 00:51:09) Right? Total abuse ready to happen. It's a new thing. Anyways, back to what we were talking about, I just wanted to mention that that's one of the

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:15) What's the what's the Vic 20 up today for the kids in school right now? What did which what should they be having? Should it should be like the HoloLens?

(Michael Waters at 00:51:23) Honestly, I really think that, like, your Raspberry Pis.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:28) Oh, yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:51:29) Devices like that. Like, if I and I've and I've got a kid growing up getting interested in computers, so I'm very happy with him doing that. But if I give my kid a project, I want him to play with the Raspberry Pi. I want him to play with those types of devices. Because, really, those really are the hacker devices of what the sixties and seventies were and the eighties. Back then, it was Vic 20 and try to hook up to something. Now get your Raspberry Pi to remotely access this thing and pull down this data for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:00) Yeah. Well, we're the thing is, like, software was so cool because you had a machine and it was an infinite world and there weren't, like, a whole lot of machines around. Right? You had your machine that was your portal to the machine universe. But now the machine universe has infected our universe, and so now knowing it's now equally as important to know the hardware because the hardware's all around us. Like, it wasn't all around us in the eighties or in the nineties.

(Michael Waters at 00:52:26) Yeah. No. And I I advise kids, if a parent is listening to this and you want your child to grow up to be a CTO or some kind of a tech leader, giving them a smartphone and a laptop is fine, but it's not the way to get them to do that. The way you get them to become a CTO or a future product leader is you get them devices like Raspberry Pis. You buy them 3D printers. You buy them devices like that. Devices that by themselves invite exploration, invite experimentation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:00) That's so true. Because you can't take it apart anymore and understand what's going on. The components are too small and too digital and lasered on. So now you need intentional components like Raspberry Pis, that are made for the education and the and the maker community or the hacker community so that you can see how these things that you can't see are working together.

(Michael Waters at 00:53:18) The Commodore Vic 20 was basically a keyboard, a big thick keyboard, and you had to plug in everything. You had to plug the phone jack into the wall if you wanted to do any kind of a modem connection. You had to buy components out of a catalog, hook them up, and then try to dial up to something. I mean and then you go into the Commodore 64, which was the best selling computer of all time, which still blows my mind. These were all devices that in order to make them do anything, you had to find something that you couldn't normally interact with and then figure out how to get it to interact. And that was the exploratory nature for me to help me addicted to computers. And my smartphone, it doesn't do that. I just download an app and read my email.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:01) That that crossing that physical threshold is so important.

(Michael Waters at 00:54:04) Yeah. Like, my kids think I'm nuts because I bought a device off a Kickstarter that failed, but the device connects to WiFi and it sends any number of signals. So I set it up with a mercury switch so that if it's knocked over, it sends a tweet, which then sends me a text message. It lets me know the device is knocked over. And what that lets me know is someone is in that room and shouldn't have been.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:25) I love it.

(Michael Waters at 00:54:27) But, see, that's a non-hackable security system because you don't even know what the components are. And I'm using something that was never intended to be a security system as a security system. So that's the hacker mentality. That's how you get people that look at an app and go, you know, we don't just have to have a meeting here. We could bring interactivity to the meeting. And so thoughts like that happen to create companies like Duuzra, not because we're just slaves to our smartphones, but because we're putting things that don't normally interact with each other together and seeing what can happen. And that's what I fear about legislation. The overreaction from government, stopping that stops innovation. Kids need to be allowed to screw stuff up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:09) Dude, they're little machine learning algorithms. They need to fall over to learn how to walk.

(Michael Waters at 00:55:14) Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, I want kids that are able to say, look. I figured out how to shut my neighbor's light switch off remotely. That's great. Don't do that again. Now you figured out how to do it. You're now product.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:28) I learned how to print stuff off. Yeah. I remember I was trying to convince my neighbor that their printer was alive. Like, sending them messages. Oh, man. Alright. I'm not even going to go into that. Yeah.

(Michael Waters at 00:55:43) Don't admit to a felony on TV.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:44) Yeah. I know. It's it's only been about a decade and a half, about fifteen years, but, like, you know, I think the statute of limitations, you know, that's another interesting thing. But, yeah, we this has been a fantastic call. I'm so glad we upped it with the video, and I'm actually really glad that there was issues on the first call because I had this is even better hanging out with you again, man.

(Michael Waters at 00:56:05) Thank you. I appreciate it. And, likewise, I I'm a fan of yours. I'm watching your stuff on Amazon explode, and and, really, I don't put myself on a pedestal as a CTO. I just I'm a tech leader in that aspect, and I just think the kids need to be tech tech leaders. That's where we're headed. Everything's headed towards tech. And inspiring people to be that way is what we need to come is where we need to come.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:28) Yeah. We're working on this new project called Leaderbits where the idea is that we create these small little pieces of leadership that are, like, three minute video, and then you interact with the video and gain experience. And we didn't want to use the word journal because that sounds kind of lame, but so we called it ReflectDB. It's like you reflect into it after the after the lesson. But we see so many people, like, with these companies that are growing rapidly, and the questions that we have as CTOs is, like, how do we encourage our people to be great leaders for the ones that want that path up to leadership? And, like, we at least need to provide something there for them so that they can walk down the path if they so choose.

(Michael Waters at 00:57:09) Absolutely. And that really is the question. And so I meant what I said earlier. We want to tell we want to teach our youth and the leaders how to take stuff apart and put it back together in different configurations than have ever been thought of before.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:23) I love it. Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.