Speaker 1: Information economy as a rid. The world is teeming with
Speaker 1: innovation as new business models reinvent every industry industry. Inside
Speaker 1: Analysis is your source of information and insight about how
Speaker 1: to make the most of this exciting new era. Learn
Speaker 1: more at inside analysis dot Comsideanalysis dot com. And now
Speaker 1: here's your host, Eric Kavanaugh.
Speaker 2: Fare Well. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Hello and welcome
Speaker 2: back once again to the only coast to coast radio show.
Speaker 2: And that's all about the information economy. It's called Inside Analysis.
Speaker 2: You're true the Eric Kavanaugh is here, and folks, I'm
Speaker 2: very pleased to be talking about a very serious subject
Speaker 2: today that is hiring in the federal government. We have
Speaker 2: Chris Collegato today with us and he is from Fedstack
Speaker 2: and they're focused intently on this very challenge. And Chris,
Speaker 2: there are lots of things that need to get done
Speaker 2: in DC, as we all know, and you folks are
Speaker 2: out there helping to make these connections. Tell us quickly
Speaker 2: about Fedstack, what you guys were build for and what
Speaker 2: you're working on today.
Speaker 3: Sure, thanks, Eric, so very quick on. Fedstack is actually
Speaker 3: a new brand very focused on the federal.
Speaker 4: Market.
Speaker 3: In fact, we are basically a unit that was born
Speaker 3: out of a workforce development organization called smooth Stack. So
Speaker 3: this is actually a brand launch where we're actually expanding
Speaker 3: our offering from what we're pretty well known to.
Speaker 4: Have been doing in the market space until now.
Speaker 3: So our focus has been how do we basically close
Speaker 3: in on the skills gap specific to technology. Right, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of difficulty in hiring also in the federal space.
Speaker 3: There's also a lot of competition in the open market
Speaker 3: for pretty much the same pool of resources. So where
Speaker 3: we differentiate ourselves is we're actually what we were calling
Speaker 3: it creation of net new talent. Right. What that means
Speaker 3: is we actually develop the talent from sources where you
Speaker 3: would not usually find them, right, So a lot of
Speaker 3: new entrants into the technology market that have the high
Speaker 3: aptitude for grasping new technology, exiting military that would like
Speaker 3: to break into the technology field. Basically, we created an
Speaker 3: accelerated apprenticeship program where we are secret sauces being an
Speaker 3: immersive environment where we mirror the target environment for our clients,
Speaker 3: be that direct to the government or some of our
Speaker 3: system integrated partners where they're trying to meet a particular requirement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the new training where it is intensive training,
Speaker 2: and I'm presuming what you're doing is mimicking the work
Speaker 2: environment where they'll be so they work with the technologies
Speaker 2: that they'll need to be working with in the actual job.
Speaker 5: Is that right?
Speaker 4: That's correct.
Speaker 3: So we actually have a patent pending on this technology
Speaker 3: for called mirror environment, right. So beyond just training them
Speaker 3: on the content, right, we really tailored the curriculum specific.
Speaker 4: To that job.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's not just about training on one dimension,
Speaker 3: but really the full breadth of skill sets that's required
Speaker 3: to deliver the job for day one, right, So whether
Speaker 3: that's cloud, whether that's actual programming or even consulting skills
Speaker 3: and knowledge of the domain where they're going to be deployed.
Speaker 3: So we really tailored the environment specific to the requirement
Speaker 3: and then basically run them through anywhere from a ten
Speaker 3: to twelve week window against a full time, full time
Speaker 3: absorption of the material where we provide all the lab
Speaker 3: environments set up for that the trainers, the product owners
Speaker 3: mimicking and simulating what they would face when they actually
Speaker 3: work on day one.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's lots of new technology to learn these days. Obviously,
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence is very much top of mind.
Speaker 5: For people. You have models that.
Speaker 2: Need to be designed, they need to be trained. You've
Speaker 2: got AI infrastructure to worry about. Do you cover that
Speaker 2: whole spectrum everything from the IT infrastructure to the model design,
Speaker 2: the training, all that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely right.
Speaker 3: So we will focus on what is in need today
Speaker 3: and we actually continue to continue to scan the market
Speaker 3: of what's emerging. So we want to be able to
Speaker 3: stay ahead of what's coming. So we focus on.
Speaker 4: Five key areas, right, data and AI.
Speaker 3: Right, So a lot of the data engineering, big data,
Speaker 3: analytics and so on, a lot of the new AI
Speaker 3: models are coming out there, the traditional applications development, regardless
Speaker 3: of what stack that may be.
Speaker 4: And then digital platforms.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of COTS packages, ERP packages for example,
Speaker 3: lo code, no code, type of technologies uh, including infrastructure solutions,
Speaker 3: cloud hybrid, and so on, including the way we do
Speaker 3: DevOps for deployment and packaging all that into those target environment.
Speaker 3: And finally, of course across the board, you need to
Speaker 3: have cybersecurity for secure applications and platforms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cybersecurity, I mean there's a space that will never
Speaker 2: ever ever go away. It's harder than ever, but you
Speaker 2: do have better tools than ever too, So how do
Speaker 2: you yourselves keep on top of the latest technologies? Do
Speaker 2: you hire consultants and practitioners from these environments. Let's just
Speaker 2: pick cybersecurity as one because it's its own entity. Do
Speaker 2: you go out and get folks from the big firms
Speaker 2: to come on and be your trainers and your consultants?
Speaker 5: How does that work?
Speaker 3: So we have a pretty large partner network, So we
Speaker 3: partner both from a strategic alliance with the vendor providers
Speaker 3: for example. So we create those partnerships where we are
Speaker 3: basically seen as workforce providers and then we basically look
Speaker 3: at those trainers or the ex experts from the various
Speaker 3: fields that we're trying to surface. Right So, in fact, Ashla,
Speaker 3: that's a good segue into the expansion of our offerings
Speaker 3: beyond creating this apprenticeship cohorts, where we're now actually extending
Speaker 3: our services to our partners where some of the folks
Speaker 3: that they have that may have been working on the
Speaker 3: same maybe legacy applications that now have to transition to
Speaker 3: the modern technology as new platforms get rolled out, they
Speaker 3: need to be able to keep pace with that, so
Speaker 3: we bring in the trainers that will help the transition
Speaker 3: from legacy to modern digital platforms.
Speaker 5: And there are lots and lots of new platforms.
Speaker 2: You mentioned low code, no code, that's been a very
Speaker 2: hot topic the last few years, where you just have
Speaker 2: a nice graphical user interface and it's typically a drag
Speaker 2: and drop where you pull together different components and under
Speaker 2: the covers they handle all the code development, all the
Speaker 2: code execution.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there's some exciting things that actually beyond the local
Speaker 3: no code now with AI, right, AI itself is actually
Speaker 3: needs to work together with the folks that were training
Speaker 3: because you're no longer just training them the basics of programming,
Speaker 3: but how to actually program with.
Speaker 4: AI as an assistant.
Speaker 3: So it's a little bit of a new game, right,
Speaker 3: It's almost a game changer where you know, one person
Speaker 3: needed to learn the very basic coding principles. Now you're
Speaker 3: doing local no code and reuse, dropping and dropping gugi
Speaker 3: on top of the thing, and now AI itself you
Speaker 3: give them a prompt and it's writing a lot of
Speaker 3: the code for you. So being able to live in
Speaker 3: that environment that the expectation is really accelerated outcomes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course jen ai is very hot these days.
Speaker 2: But the problem with Jenais you probably know is that
Speaker 2: it is probabilistic, so it's not deterministic. I think that's
Speaker 2: one reason why you see so much emphasis on the copilots,
Speaker 2: on the helpers, the digital assistance, because the human can
Speaker 2: then still make a judgment about what to do. You're
Speaker 2: not just turning the genai and letting it do the job.
Speaker 2: Is that your impression as well?
Speaker 4: That absolutely?
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I think a lot of this hallucinations happen
Speaker 3: right with some of the It depends on what you
Speaker 3: use for training the models, So you know, part of
Speaker 3: the decision making would be when do you point Copilot
Speaker 3: or others into like external resources where it can be
Speaker 3: corrupted by a lot of the unvetted information that that's
Speaker 3: being formed to form your answers versus trusted sources for
Speaker 3: training in house. Potentially that would allow actually more reliable answers.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the technologies that fascinates me
Speaker 2: the most, and I'm curious to know if you've heard
Speaker 2: about this process mining companies like Salonis Software a G.
Speaker 2: There's a few of them out there where you track
Speaker 2: typically the digital data footprints through various information systems to
Speaker 2: see what's actually happening to me, that is an incredibly
Speaker 2: powerful technology for rewriting, reinventing information systems to kind of
Speaker 2: catapult them into the modern age.
Speaker 4: What do you think, Well, absolutely, I think that that
Speaker 4: saves a lot of time.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, you've done a lot of methods in the past,
Speaker 3: the reverse engineering, and this really helps a lot, especially
Speaker 3: when you're doing modernization, right. It takes a lot of
Speaker 3: time to try and trace and ensure that you're able
Speaker 3: to keep the functions that you want to keep and
Speaker 3: how to design for the future, and something like this
Speaker 3: really accelerates that analysis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and open source is a big deal too. Open source,
Speaker 2: I think has revolutionized the information technology landscape, certainly on
Speaker 2: the app development side, I mean all the way down
Speaker 2: to Linux and the Linux kernel and the work that's
Speaker 2: being done there, but the entire data stack now has
Speaker 2: been opening up to open source technology. Are there concerns
Speaker 2: in federal use cases for open source because the source
Speaker 2: is open?
Speaker 5: What do you think about all that?
Speaker 3: I think in the early days that been a lot
Speaker 3: of concern But there's like two thoughts on that, right,
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of folks that kind of want
Speaker 3: to look at closed systems but what we're finding out
Speaker 3: is a lot of folks say, hey, because it's an
Speaker 3: open system, it's been tested more thoroughly than any closed
Speaker 3: system that's out there, that they may actually renders them
Speaker 3: more secure. You know, I could go both ways on
Speaker 3: that one, but it really depends on how sensitive the
Speaker 3: systems you're developing and how you know whether you are
Speaker 3: exposing vulnerability in an open setting, or it's a mature
Speaker 3: enough platform that's been really thoroughly tested that makes it trustable.
Speaker 3: Like Linux, you know, was in the same boat at
Speaker 3: some point, and now it's all over the place.
Speaker 5: Right now, and now it's the enterprise standard for sure.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we all keep hearing about this it skills shortage,
Speaker 2: and you know, I don't really know what to make
Speaker 2: of it all. There are lots of people, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: who want to learn all those things, and you're filling
Speaker 2: that gap, right, I mean, you are training and retraining
Speaker 2: people to learn how to use all the new technologies.
Speaker 2: And you know, the fun part is that Jennai can
Speaker 2: be a big part of that, right. You can load
Speaker 2: instruction manuals into a GENEI solution and then just ask
Speaker 2: it all kinds of questions in that environment. It seems
Speaker 2: to me they're very, very powerful and very effective. They
Speaker 2: don't hallucinate as much because they're just pointed at a
Speaker 2: particular document. Is that what you found as well, that
Speaker 2: JENNI can be a very powerful copilot in helping to
Speaker 2: train people to use new technology.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think a lot of the younger generation
Speaker 3: factor growing up with GENAI access already, right, So we
Speaker 3: have to adopt our training mechanisms and methods in order
Speaker 3: to incorporate that in the learning management systems that we
Speaker 3: actually have ourselves in house, and so we need to
Speaker 3: constantly look for new ways of actually training. As you know,
Speaker 3: we're trying to train and rescale some of the folks
Speaker 3: that are more used to the older technologies, and then
Speaker 3: you have the the folks are new, younger generation are
Speaker 3: upcoming that expect that this is the way they want
Speaker 3: to learn in the future. So we're trying to have
Speaker 3: that happy medium. But the future really is everything is
Speaker 3: going to be gen AI or agenta AI assistant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that actually brings up a really good point.
Speaker 2: I'd be curious to get your thoughts as a trainer,
Speaker 2: as someone who is working for a company that trains people.
Speaker 2: We now have arguably five generations in the workforce with
Speaker 2: very different cultural norms, very different tendencies and more rays.
Speaker 5: How do you tackle that.
Speaker 2: Do you actually address that programmatically to treat people of
Speaker 2: a certain age one way and people of a certain
Speaker 2: age a little bit different just because of their cultural diversity,
Speaker 2: or how does that actually work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we absolutely need to consider that, right, So when
Speaker 3: we're build out some cohorts in the screening process, as
Speaker 3: we are customizing the curriculum, that's part of the consideration.
Speaker 3: What is the makeup of that cohort for example, Well,
Speaker 3: if that's a mix of all five generations, you've got
Speaker 3: to be able to cater to what's the most effective
Speaker 3: technique and I just deliver the content material in a
Speaker 3: one size fits all manner.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's interesting too.
Speaker 2: So you know, maybe you could share with our audience
Speaker 2: a bit how you track those kinds of things, the
Speaker 2: techniques that you use, which sessions you have people joined
Speaker 2: to train, and then the efficacy of that down the road.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know fed stack is new, but from
Speaker 2: your smooth Stack experience, for example, how much are you
Speaker 2: able to track, measure, and then ascertain the efficacy of
Speaker 2: certain programs to certain demographics and then monitor it and
Speaker 2: modify that over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's actually a really good question because that's
Speaker 3: the reason why we actually came up with our own
Speaker 3: learning management system to be able to track everything.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: So when you look at a ten to twelve week
Speaker 3: process and cohort, every week is basically an evaluation where
Speaker 3: actually the progress of the entire class comes in, right,
Speaker 3: So we're trying to develop a cohort. In fact, it's
Speaker 3: no guarantee that they're actually going to graduate, right, So
Speaker 3: the efficacy of how we teach that is very important,
Speaker 3: but also the evaluation factors because we're very selective on
Speaker 3: the folks that we deploy out there for contracts, so
Speaker 3: we may start up with a very large number, but
Speaker 3: by the time we're finish and only the stream of
Speaker 3: the crop actually surfaces at the end.
Speaker 4: So we're a heavier aligned of metrics.
Speaker 3: And even after the courses are done, we do checkpoints,
Speaker 3: right the first thirty days, the first sixty days, what's
Speaker 3: your feedback of what would you rather us have done.
Speaker 3: Now that you actually have experience in working this and
Speaker 3: applying this on your current project, then we use that
Speaker 3: for the training of the next cohort in order to
Speaker 3: improve it.
Speaker 2: That's very impressive. You developed your own learning management system.
Speaker 2: If you sometimes you got to roll your own right.
Speaker 2: You have to figure out what you need done, what
Speaker 2: functionality you need baked into this system, and if you're
Speaker 2: a large enough organization, sometimes it makes sense to just
Speaker 2: build out your own system.
Speaker 5: That's that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: So I'm guessing you had some experience with learning management
Speaker 2: systems and you're like, you know what, we got to
Speaker 2: really roll up our sleeves and build this one out ourselves.
Speaker 5: How long did that take? Roughly? Do you know?
Speaker 3: Well, it's actually born out of necessity. So when we
Speaker 3: the organization started a smooth Stack, you know, five six
Speaker 3: years ago, it was an in person learning. We actually
Speaker 3: bring our students here, put them in apartments, and we
Speaker 3: have a whole training facility in house. When COVID hit,
Speaker 3: everything had to go to virtual and we had to
Speaker 3: rapidly come up with a way to be able to
Speaker 3: deliver those same, you know, quality programs in a virtual manner.
Speaker 4: And that's what actually.
Speaker 3: Prompted us to say, hey, we really need to create
Speaker 3: our own learning management system in order to deliver what
Speaker 3: we're able to deliver in an in person manner.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, COVID was quite the forcing function, right to use
Speaker 2: a technology term, It really forced us all to take
Speaker 2: a very hard look at processes, workflows, access to data,
Speaker 2: access to information systems, and security.
Speaker 5: For goodness sakes.
Speaker 2: I mean, with everybody working from home now, your threat
Speaker 2: scape is much larger because you have all these all
Speaker 2: these devices everywhere, computers that are outside of your data center,
Speaker 2: phones that are outside of your purview at least you know,
Speaker 2: in the in the corporate office, et cetera. So that
Speaker 2: was a real wake up call for you guys that
Speaker 2: you had to go and reevaluate and redesign how you
Speaker 2: do these things.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's pretty impressive. And let's get into in
Speaker 5: the next segment.
Speaker 2: We'll get a bit deeper into the cybersecurity side, just
Speaker 2: because that is so important and I happen to know
Speaker 2: from experience that cybersecurity is a constantly evolving, constantly changing
Speaker 2: environment and to stay on top of things you need
Speaker 2: to do. Of course, all the basics, password management things
Speaker 2: of this nature. Biometrics of course are really coming into
Speaker 2: play these days. But you need to be monitoring the network.
Speaker 2: You need to be monitoring the apps, you need to
Speaker 2: be monitoring the behaviors of all these people. And there
Speaker 2: are hundreds and hundreds of security solutions you can use.
Speaker 2: Some like I suggest that focus on the network, some
Speaker 2: focus on the apps, some focus on the users and
Speaker 2: kind of watching, and some take a more holistic approach.
Speaker 2: And of course, with machine learning you can track these
Speaker 2: things more and more assiduously over time. So when we
Speaker 2: come back from the break, we'll be talking again to
Speaker 2: Chris Coligado. He is with fed Stack. This is a
Speaker 2: new brand that's coming out of the smooth Stack organization
Speaker 2: that's been around for a while. They do it services, consulting, training,
Speaker 2: helping people learn how to do the jobs of the future,
Speaker 2: which are you know, it's the jobs of today, right
Speaker 2: staying on top of these systems and keeping them safe.
Speaker 2: Because if the government isn't safe, who is safe? Well, folks,
Speaker 2: don't touch that. Delby right back. You're listening to Inside Analysis.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Inside Analysis. Here's your host, Eric Tabanac.
Speaker 2: All right, folks back here on Inside Analysis talking to
Speaker 2: Chris Coligato of fed Stack. This is a new brand
Speaker 2: that's coming out of smooth Stack and Chris in the
Speaker 2: last segment you were talking about how COVID was a
Speaker 2: forcing function. COVID kind of woke all of us up
Speaker 2: in lots of different ways, and we had to pay
Speaker 2: close attention to what we're doing. You have to create
Speaker 2: these immersive experiences for people. So I guess one question
Speaker 2: I'll ask you is VR. Are you using virtual reality
Speaker 2: for any of this training.
Speaker 3: We're starting to use VR in certain segments, especially in
Speaker 3: the enterprise side of things, because some of the clients
Speaker 3: are actually in the virtual reality environment. So we're experimenting
Speaker 3: a little bit of that, right, But again it goes
Speaker 3: back to learning learning preferences.
Speaker 4: So you know, if.
Speaker 3: We are looking at a cohort where they're really receptive
Speaker 3: to virtual reality, augmented reality type of learning process, we'll
Speaker 3: shore you'll surely explore that. Uh so far, it hasn't
Speaker 3: been much demand for that type of immersion levels, but
Speaker 3: something that they were definitely open to.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, let's let's dig back into the cybersecurity. I mean,
Speaker 2: how how do you stay on top of all the
Speaker 2: latest do you interface with companies like splunk or uh
Speaker 2: Solar Winds. Of course, they had their experience with being
Speaker 2: hacked themselves, which I thought was one of the craziest hacks.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've seen some really some bad hacks lately.
Speaker 2: Snowflake was hacked, a lot of customer data was stolen.
Speaker 2: How do you guys stay on top of the security
Speaker 2: space to make sure that you are training people for
Speaker 2: this new generation of technologies?
Speaker 3: So yeah, it goes you know, I actually just brought
Speaker 3: in one of our cybersecurity UH experts is going to
Speaker 3: be leading that US for our Tier one to consult arena.
Speaker 3: But you know, so far, we've been basically working our network,
Speaker 3: whether it's a product based you know, as you mentioned
Speaker 3: all all those things that you mentioned earlier, some of
Speaker 3: the product vendors but also even some of the training
Speaker 3: vendors that are out there, they're already delivering these types
Speaker 3: of methodologies in the defense and intel spaces. We keep
Speaker 3: track of that and we create a partnerships on how
Speaker 3: to actually develop the curriculum together. You know, they usually
Speaker 3: deliver a lot of these things either in a just
Speaker 3: urst of content more of a boot camp style content push,
Speaker 3: and some of them are very focused just on the
Speaker 3: certification side of it. That's when we're actually enriching a
Speaker 3: lot of the existing programs that are out there through
Speaker 3: our mirrored environment immersion that's kind of new. So we're
Speaker 3: partnering with a lot of the players out there, both
Speaker 3: product and trainers themselves, in order to deliver a differentiated offering.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: And now do you also when you do this training
Speaker 2: and you follow all the way through, so you're helping
Speaker 2: folks get jobs at these organizations.
Speaker 5: And your clients. Is it any number of agencies?
Speaker 2: Are there specific agencies that you represent or is there
Speaker 2: a particular focus or one of the agencies that works
Speaker 2: with you the most, or tell me about that for
Speaker 2: a minute.
Speaker 3: So we don't currently have any prime contract vehicles, which
Speaker 3: is one of the key things that I'm looking to explore,
Speaker 3: hence the expansion of our services to full technology consulting.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: So a lot of our delivery is through our partners,
Speaker 3: Like our customers are basically your large systems integrators that
Speaker 3: are mid tiers and then basically they serve they serve
Speaker 3: the government and a lot of these contracts, right, So
Speaker 3: you look at some of the lart and you can
Speaker 3: name you know, you know, anyone out there that's serving
Speaker 3: the federal government.
Speaker 4: They need to ramp up very quickly, right, And a lot.
Speaker 3: Of cases they would say, hey, I need somebody who
Speaker 3: knows Java, and they'll go in there and test it out,
Speaker 3: but they don't know the other eighty percent of the
Speaker 3: stack that's going to be required for that piece.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: That's where we come in and say, well, instead of
Speaker 3: piecemealing how you bring your talent in, you can get
Speaker 3: a cohort of ten that could function equivalent to cohort
Speaker 3: of twenty when you're trying to piecemeal the talent that
Speaker 3: you're trying to put together. We will put the talent
Speaker 3: together for you, fat in a very fast method, in
Speaker 3: a cost effective way. We're actually, i would say we're
Speaker 3: the greening strategy for a lot of the sis because
Speaker 3: we are actually creating this new talent pool for very
Speaker 3: affordable resources because a lot of them are just coming
Speaker 3: out of college, coming out of former military breaking in.
Speaker 3: But what they're finding out is the folks that graduate
Speaker 3: from our programs are equivalent to somebody that they can
Speaker 3: come out of the street with two to three years
Speaker 3: level of experience already that level of equivalency. So it's
Speaker 3: become a very very strong value proposition for us, both
Speaker 3: from the cost perspective, and then the upfront cost is
Speaker 3: all the risk is on us. We provide a training
Speaker 3: these are paid apprenticeships right well, they're on our books,
Speaker 3: and then when we deploy them to our partners, that's
Speaker 3: where they actually had their consulting experience and build out.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of like a win win situation between
Speaker 3: us and our partners. At the same time that we're
Speaker 3: going directly to the government. Our strategy now is the
Speaker 3: you know, starting to now that we have our brand
Speaker 3: a little bit of recognitions now and about ten different
Speaker 3: agencies at this point through our partners, is to start
Speaker 3: looking at being a small business going directly to the
Speaker 3: government and actually offering these services directly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, I was speaking with a gentleman named Alvin
Speaker 2: fu who is quite a prominent thought leader on LinkedIn.
Speaker 5: He's got hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2: Of followers, he's all over the world, and we were
Speaker 2: talking about artificial intelligence, and he made a very interesting
Speaker 2: point the other day on this very show.
Speaker 5: In fact, he said that in the old days.
Speaker 2: Of business, if you walked in and said I've got
Speaker 2: twenty years or twenty years of experience, that was a
Speaker 2: real benefits. These days, it's not as much because the
Speaker 2: systems are so different, the environment is so different, and
Speaker 2: you almost have to unlearn old ways of doing things
Speaker 2: to appreciate the new ways of doing things.
Speaker 5: Do you do you agree with that?
Speaker 3: Do you feel like, yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Actually,
Speaker 3: that was a really interesting conversation between me and our
Speaker 3: CTO here because I said, hey, you know, I came
Speaker 3: in with thirty years of experience in industry, and it
Speaker 3: was like, oh, you know, yeah, me too, I have,
Speaker 3: you know, from something similar. But don't think about it
Speaker 3: as an advantage necessarily, because some cases you do have
Speaker 3: to unlearn some of these things. When you start looking
Speaker 3: at some of the technologies available.
Speaker 4: What we call the.
Speaker 3: Digital native folks that are coming up a high school college,
Speaker 3: they're already immersing these things and they can pick up
Speaker 3: things very quickly, multiple stacks before somebody. It's actually sometimes
Speaker 3: harder to teach somebody who's you know, got the ten
Speaker 3: years experience to adopt and learn the new technology because
Speaker 3: they're so biased and some of the way they've been
Speaker 3: thinking of you know, old you know, old system, old methodologies.
Speaker 3: They have to unlearn some of that in order to
Speaker 3: accelerate the learning on the new technologies.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, we had a guy in the show a
Speaker 2: while ago, Chris Gladwin. He is the CEO of a
Speaker 2: company called Oscience, and they do hyper scale data warehousing
Speaker 2: where they can literally ingest trillions of records. We're talking
Speaker 2: just gobsmacking amounts of data. And he mused that you
Speaker 2: can't be looking at log files like individual log files anymore.
Speaker 2: You have to be scanning and using machine learning to
Speaker 2: see patterns in the log files. And this is an
Speaker 2: example of how much things have changed.
Speaker 5: You can't.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, this is
Speaker 2: maybe not the best analogy, but in auto repair, it
Speaker 2: used to really have to know what this was and
Speaker 2: what that was.
Speaker 5: These days they stick that little.
Speaker 2: Thing in there and they get their reading in the computer.
Speaker 2: And it's a whole different ballgame for how you address problems,
Speaker 2: how you understand the problem space, what you do to
Speaker 2: solve it.
Speaker 5: So all these things, you.
Speaker 2: Know, some of the folks are you kind of have
Speaker 2: to unlearn some of what they've learned in order to
Speaker 2: really embrace this new age.
Speaker 4: Right absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, so we're teaching how to do
Speaker 3: modern modern development, right, if you start trying to teach
Speaker 3: folks that are coming from the old school, they're doing
Speaker 3: manual test, development, doing all the stuff. A lot of
Speaker 3: that is automated nowadays, right, And how do you package
Speaker 3: and deploy to the cloud? Very different when you're trying
Speaker 3: to deploy an on premise situation. For most people actually
Speaker 3: kind of live most of their careers in and you
Speaker 3: have to actually really teach them that advancement is and
Speaker 3: they actually get shocked when you say how easy it
Speaker 3: is that these things are auto. Instead of testing for weeks,
Speaker 3: these things are checked in multiple multiple times a day,
Speaker 3: tested the whole harness multiple times a day, and is
Speaker 3: ready to deploy tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, And that's the kind of speed that
Speaker 2: you need these days because if you think about all
Speaker 2: the tools that we have at our disposal, well guess what,
Speaker 2: the bad guys have all those tools at their disposal
Speaker 2: as well. And you know, we've seen some really, really
Speaker 2: bad hacks. I always point to the Colonial pipeline hack,
Speaker 2: which you know the media said was not state sponsored.
Speaker 5: I don't really believe that.
Speaker 2: I don't expect you to comment on it, but you know,
Speaker 2: when when an organization brings down the distribute distribution of
Speaker 2: gas for the eastern seaboard. I mean that's a real
Speaker 2: serious problem, right. That's not like the you know, the
Speaker 2: target breach or something where customer data stone that's bad too,
Speaker 2: But goodness gracious, when something is important as fuel is
Speaker 2: deprived of huge areas of the country, that's what you
Speaker 2: really have to start focusing. And that's I think there's
Speaker 2: a wake up call to a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the security space to realize that these threats are very real.
Speaker 2: They are persistent what do they call them APT advanced
Speaker 2: persistent threats, right, yep, yeah, And you know.
Speaker 3: I mean there's a lot of things that are continue
Speaker 3: to merging. I guess it's cat and mouse, right. Vendor
Speaker 3: partners are constantly trying to be ahead of it, and
Speaker 3: all the perpetrators are of course trying to one up
Speaker 3: the next the next solution. But a lot I think
Speaker 3: the weakest link in all of that is still around
Speaker 3: the people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So when you talk about inside our threat, unless you
Speaker 3: have a holistic approach to really patch all the different
Speaker 3: layers of security, you're always going to be vulnerable. We
Speaker 3: can't just be totally reliant just on the advanced technology.
Speaker 3: But you have to get your people trained and that
Speaker 3: they're not creating the vulnerabilities themselves. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know, I get really excited about some
Speaker 2: of the newer technologies and you think about the capacity
Speaker 2: we have now to scan entire net works to map
Speaker 2: them out, where are the apps, whereas the data going,
Speaker 2: who's accessing the data? And there are just huge areas
Speaker 2: that you can close off. I mean, we didn't used
Speaker 2: to have the capacity to really understand who's using one
Speaker 2: and when at some sort of significant scale, but now
Speaker 2: we have that. And there's some basic things like users
Speaker 2: who haven't logged in in the past six months, shut
Speaker 2: them down. They're probably gone, right and just see right, right.
Speaker 9: Right, right exactly.
Speaker 4: It actually does that.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 2: Well, And that's the other side of the equation too, right,
Speaker 2: is that it Historically you could have a policy. There
Speaker 2: was a bunch of words that someone had to manually
Speaker 2: update and enforce.
Speaker 5: You don't have to do that anymore.
Speaker 2: You can have policies that are extant and affect information
Speaker 2: systems dynamically. Now you still have a manual override switch
Speaker 2: at some point say okay, the machine did this, but
Speaker 2: I wanted to do that. But still when you automate
Speaker 2: that you solve probably eighty percent of your challenges out
Speaker 2: of the box, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you're starting to wed to a lot of
Speaker 3: the self healing platforms now, right, so you don't have
Speaker 3: to really have the intervention, getting the right policies and
Speaker 3: business shows out there and pretty much you know, lock
Speaker 3: and loaded. Right, it just does that, and you know,
Speaker 3: you just have to worry about some of the notifications.
Speaker 3: And with a lot of the data that comes in,
Speaker 3: you can control how much or how little you know
Speaker 3: that you can actually then prioritize where you can actually
Speaker 3: have the human the loop to intervene as necessary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Well, and just in terms of data usage
Speaker 2: and data storage, for example, to be able to isolate
Speaker 2: cold data, understand nobody's using this data? You know, do
Speaker 2: we really need it? And I mean this is a
Speaker 2: full time job for folks, even with the new technologies,
Speaker 2: to be able to scan these environments. Data governance, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm guessing you've probably seen this too. Data governance.
Speaker 2: We talked about it ten years ago. You couldn't really
Speaker 2: do it. Five years ago we talked about it. We're
Speaker 2: starting to be able to do it now, you can
Speaker 2: really do very fine grained data governance in all kinds
Speaker 2: of environments.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, absolutely, And you know it's taken from the
Speaker 3: policy or the written documents and actually scripting and actually
Speaker 3: automating that, right, so it's actually executable. In the past,
Speaker 3: it's about, hey, here's the policy, somebody has to interpret it.
Speaker 3: Then you have to kind of write the sop to
Speaker 3: and hope that somebody will actually react and perform it.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, that's the thing you used actually just hope,
Speaker 2: you know, and pray that someone was actually reading it
Speaker 2: and then adhering to it. These days, it is a
Speaker 2: completely different environment. And you know, I'll just throw another
Speaker 2: fun concept that you I was at the out Systems
Speaker 2: conference in Amsterdam last November and they just came out
Speaker 2: their a local platform. They just came out with Mentor
Speaker 2: is their new copilot, and you could actually load a
Speaker 2: requirements document into this thing and it will generate the
Speaker 2: app for you and then you just start fine tuning it.
Speaker 2: That's an example of how much things have changed, right
Speaker 2: that you can just because the JENAI can read pars
Speaker 2: understand the text. And you know what they did that
Speaker 2: blew my mind is the agent actually noticed a missing
Speaker 2: option and filled it in automatically.
Speaker 5: Now that's when.
Speaker 2: You're really getting somewhere and using the machines to the
Speaker 2: greatest of their strengths.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's a balance, right, So, and we always consider
Speaker 3: that in our training, right because before we you know,
Speaker 3: in traditional sense of how you know, you do applications development,
Speaker 3: you go through the different methodologies and teach them everything.
Speaker 3: Right now they have to really learn how to code
Speaker 3: tests with AI or agents at their disposal, right, and
Speaker 3: you can have multiple agents that they can be working on,
Speaker 3: so almost as a programmer, you're not just an individual now, right,
Speaker 3: you actually have to learn almost to manage these agents.
Speaker 3: And then the sort of like the traffic cop or
Speaker 3: referee as a final arbiter says, okay, this is a fine.
Speaker 3: This is the final code. It's what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: But it's not like you're doing it from scratch.
Speaker 2: Right, No, this is what Jensen Hwang was talking about
Speaker 2: just the other day, saying that ID departments will be
Speaker 2: more like HR departments for AI agents in the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good analogy, which.
Speaker 5: Is pretty funny. Right, You're like, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I do think there's a good ways to go still
Speaker 2: in being able to effectively harness such agents, shepherd them,
Speaker 2: manage them, catalog what they're doing, be able to really
Speaker 2: understand what they're allowed to do.
Speaker 5: Because you've turned something fully autonomous.
Speaker 2: You never know what's going to happen out there, but
Speaker 2: it is moving very very quickly. And you were seeing
Speaker 2: this agentic focus from big companies like of course Salesforce
Speaker 2: is doing that. Lots of small companies too. Well, folks,
Speaker 2: don't touch the That'll be right back where you're listening
Speaker 2: to Inside Analysis.
Speaker 1: Expected, Welcome back to Inside Analysis. Here's your host, Eric Tabanac.
Speaker 2: All right, folks back here on Inside Analysis, a fascinating
Speaker 2: show with Chris Coligato. He is with fed Stack. This
Speaker 2: is a new brand spine out of the smooth Stack operation.
Speaker 2: They train folks to work for the big service integrators
Speaker 2: that work for our US government and get things done.
Speaker 2: And I guess one question i'd ask you is what
Speaker 2: was the impetus to launch fed stack as a separate
Speaker 2: entity or as a separate brand.
Speaker 5: What happened that.
Speaker 2: That led you guys to believe, hey, we need to
Speaker 2: do something different here, we need to have a new focus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when we look at you know, the origins
Speaker 3: of smooth Stack when it started about five sixty five,
Speaker 3: six years ago. Uh, the initial focus was on the
Speaker 3: enterprise side, right, commercial companies and so on, And when
Speaker 3: we started looking at marketing some of these things into
Speaker 3: the federal market, it's almost like by accident that we've
Speaker 3: found out that there's an actual, real need and gap
Speaker 3: for actual partnering with systems integrators. They become basically became
Speaker 3: our initial targets because they're the ones that are actually
Speaker 3: trying to fulfill a lot of the talent requirements for
Speaker 3: the federal government. And it's a very slow process, each
Speaker 3: one competing with each other with the same pool of resources.
Speaker 3: And it became you know, apparent to us because one
Speaker 3: of our founders here actually had a previous company that
Speaker 3: was also doing a lot of consulting and they had
Speaker 3: to compete for the same pool of resources. And when
Speaker 3: they discovered that, hey, if we really want the quality
Speaker 3: of people that we want in order to serve as
Speaker 3: our main clients, we actually have to come up with
Speaker 3: our own way of actually training them up. And so
Speaker 3: it was born out of that experience as a separate
Speaker 3: company where they developed this that they say, you know,
Speaker 3: what we can actually offer this to other partners now,
Speaker 3: And that's kind of how we was born, right, It's like,
Speaker 3: all right, we kind of figure out what the seksaurcewise,
Speaker 3: we do it for ourselves, we prove that we can
Speaker 3: do it better than anybody else, and basically started really
Speaker 3: adding logos of new companies and then it started from there.
Speaker 3: But it became very apparent that what we're doing it's
Speaker 3: a very different way of doing business, at least from
Speaker 3: a growth perspective on how you go after work in
Speaker 3: the enterprise or commercial sector versus a very highly regulated environment.
Speaker 4: For instance.
Speaker 3: You know, in order to deploy somebody to a commercial environment,
Speaker 3: it's pretty easy. They don't have a lot of background investigation,
Speaker 3: security clearances, and things like that. We have to ensure
Speaker 3: that when somebody graduates from a class, they're actually ready
Speaker 3: and able to actually work, right. So that's part of
Speaker 3: an additional offering that we have with our partners and
Speaker 3: directly to the government is while people are training on
Speaker 3: our dime, they're already going through the secret or top
Speaker 3: secret interim clearance processes, so that when we say they're
Speaker 3: ready to report after twelve weeks, they really can actually
Speaker 3: execute rather than waiting for months and months even you know,
Speaker 3: to be vetted in, right. So we felt that, you know,
Speaker 3: knowledge of how you do business in the federal government
Speaker 3: is different than the way we actually do transactions and
Speaker 3: the commercial sector. And it also became apparent that, hey,
Speaker 3: we also want to be in the prime game at
Speaker 3: some point, right. So at this point, we're serving a
Speaker 3: lot of the partners that we have on board our
Speaker 3: Tier two and three training, Tier three services, and we
Speaker 3: wanted to actually be in control of our own destiny,
Speaker 3: and we wanted to basically deliver solutions themselves, right, and
Speaker 3: also continue the career path for the folks that we've
Speaker 3: actually have been training up so far. A number of
Speaker 3: that is being converted to our partners as their employees
Speaker 3: in the future as we start to expand our offerings
Speaker 3: and actually doing a consulting, we're actually creating a career
Speaker 3: path for them to continue should they decide not to
Speaker 3: move forward with existing projects they're deployed to. We're creating
Speaker 3: an opportunity for them to actually continue their employment with
Speaker 3: fedstack and serving and full consulting well after they've gotten
Speaker 3: some of the experience of the entry level professional services.
Speaker 3: They can actually get a career path all the way
Speaker 3: through solutions, architects, senior architects, and so on as they
Speaker 3: pursue an next step with the career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's great, and I mean I know from experience,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you've seen this as well, that when
Speaker 2: someone really knows what to do in a situation involving
Speaker 2: industrial enterprise technology, they can save you time money. I
Speaker 2: mean we're talking weeks, months, millions of dollars, even billions
Speaker 2: of dollars if they really know what they're doing. And
Speaker 2: it's difficult for people to ascertain that. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you don't know, it's like we always joke about in
Speaker 2: the old days the car repairman was like a doctor
Speaker 2: who told you was wrong, how much it would take
Speaker 2: to fix in everything. It's like, well, if you're on
Speaker 2: the outside, how can you challenge it. I mean, the
Speaker 2: business leaders and the government leaders need to know some
Speaker 2: of this stuff to be able to challenge things and understand.
Speaker 5: That's why it's so.
Speaker 2: Important to get a good trusted advisor to help you
Speaker 2: on these projects, right, because they can make all the
Speaker 2: difference in the world.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Yeah, absolutely so, I think that's
Speaker 3: a very good point, because another piece that kind of
Speaker 3: differentiates us is we're not just doing technical training, right,
Speaker 3: So part of actually our curriculum is to do well
Speaker 3: rounded consultants at the end of the process, right, So
Speaker 3: we teach them how to communicate in a target environment
Speaker 3: for let's say, for a particular project within an agency.
Speaker 3: We also teach them how to operate with that agency,
Speaker 3: give them lessons on the mission itself. And that's a
Speaker 3: big different difference between the commercial and the federal side
Speaker 3: is it has to be mission aligned, right, So it's
Speaker 3: not just about the technology that you're doing. You need
Speaker 3: to understand with the mission you're supporting. And that combination
Speaker 3: of mission knowledge coming from the experts and the clients
Speaker 3: themselves immersed with the technology know how, that's a really
Speaker 3: great combination that we're trying to push forward.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's the next generation.
Speaker 2: I mean, we talk about the ten X developer for example,
Speaker 2: which refers to someone who really either knows the full
Speaker 2: stack or knows enough that they don't waste time and
Speaker 2: they can really produce quickly. And these days that's going
Speaker 2: to rely heavily on using copilots, on being open minded
Speaker 2: about what these systems can tell us understanding that a
Speaker 2: copilot will get you almost all the way there. I
Speaker 2: think eighty percent is a good rule of thumb, the
Speaker 2: Preado principles everywhere in life, right, they can get you
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the way there, and then you have
Speaker 2: to do the fine tuning to kind of finish that
Speaker 2: all out. But to not embrace those technologies is really
Speaker 2: a non start of these days.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Oh, yeah, you're going to be
Speaker 3: left behind, right, because everybody's doing that in all aspects.
Speaker 3: An in the federal business for example, not just from
Speaker 3: the technology folks that we're training, but even our business
Speaker 3: development right as we're responding to RFIs and rps. You
Speaker 3: better believe it that you need you know, AI and
Speaker 3: just being able to sift through the mountains of data
Speaker 3: just to qualify you know what you're going to be
Speaker 3: right and then get a starter, setup a draft at
Speaker 3: least to meet some of the compliance requirements. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you look at using a co pilot, let's say
Speaker 3: pointed to a public training database or LLM, you need
Speaker 3: to make sure that you're augmenting it with your private
Speaker 3: training data set that's unique to your organization. Otherwise everybody
Speaker 3: is pulling from the same data, the same hallucinations, and
Speaker 3: you look at some of the folks that are actually
Speaker 3: on the client side and receiving end, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know what, you're just using copilot on this one.
Speaker 3: Everybody else does you submit exactly the same content as
Speaker 3: can get really funny. So I think that's how we
Speaker 3: organizations will kind of this forward. I'd say you're right
Speaker 3: about eighty percent of it is just to be an
Speaker 3: equal footing with your competitors that everybody else is using it.
Speaker 3: Where you have to make the differentiator is what is
Speaker 3: your private training data that allows you then to actually
Speaker 3: put forward what's really unique about your organization.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, and there are so many different realms to address.
Speaker 2: I guess legacy systems. That's got to be a concern
Speaker 2: for government agencies and for the sis that you work
Speaker 2: with is how do we migrate away from some of
Speaker 2: these systems. You know, some of these environments are using
Speaker 2: old operating systems that are not even maintained anymore. That
Speaker 2: in and of itself is a huge space to address.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of these modernizations have been going on
Speaker 3: for decades, right, They've been involved in some of the
Speaker 3: agencies that they started it thirty years ago, right and
Speaker 3: still still ongoing. And some of these systems already you know,
Speaker 3: back to the fifties and sixties when they were initially built.
Speaker 3: I think the next challenge though, I think everybody is
Speaker 3: trying to modernize, moving from the old coboal you know,
Speaker 3: assembly languages into the even away from the main frames
Speaker 3: into into some of the newer technologies.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: But I think the next challenge.
Speaker 3: Would be how about the workforce program managers technical managers
Speaker 3: of the old system. Once it's migrated, right, you then
Speaker 3: need to equip them on how to manage in the
Speaker 3: new technology.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So it's actually an interesting thing.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 3: That's why we actually uh created our Tier three services,
Speaker 3: our partner training both straight to the government is being
Speaker 3: able to say, how do we help you in your transition.
Speaker 3: You're all in, everybody's involved, our partners sis the government.
Speaker 3: They just move from the legacy system and they just
Speaker 3: upgrade it to the new sets of technologies. Well, they
Speaker 3: know the domain knowledge, right and the business policies and
Speaker 3: the old one, they don't know how to translate and
Speaker 3: operate in the new environment. So in fact, helping folks
Speaker 3: that preserve that old knowledge because that's important or to
Speaker 3: operate in a new environment. But they need to learn
Speaker 3: how to operate in the new environment. So that's really
Speaker 3: how our two er three offering really originated, is for
Speaker 3: that demand that a lot of folks are in modernization.
Speaker 3: Then they're figuring out, oh my god, I have a
Speaker 3: lot of talent here I need to preserve, but they're
Speaker 3: not used to the new technology. So there needs to
Speaker 3: be a transition, right, preserving that old knowledge and being
Speaker 3: able to operate in the future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, well, folks, podcast bonus segment coming up next. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back, I mean, all right, folks, time for
Speaker 2: the podcast bonus segment here on Inside Analysis with Chris
Speaker 2: Coldegato of fed Stack and Chris, lots of people out
Speaker 2: there are looking for jobs. You know, we're in a
Speaker 2: very strange time right now. You're going to see lots
Speaker 2: of layoffs at big companies as companies really try to
Speaker 2: reorganize and understand how to work in this new world
Speaker 2: because with all these copilots, well, let's face it, people
Speaker 2: who have jobs are going to have to do slightly
Speaker 2: different jobs or even significantly different jobs and really stay
Speaker 2: abreast of what's happening out there. So what's your advice
Speaker 2: to folks to help them understand maybe which direction they
Speaker 2: should go if they want to work with you, which
Speaker 2: path should they follow? How do you know what you're
Speaker 2: going to enjoy doing? What's your advice to people looking
Speaker 2: for work right now?
Speaker 3: So you know, I think it's important to know kind
Speaker 3: of what level you're at at this point. Right, we
Speaker 3: specialize on a lot of the folks that are actually
Speaker 3: in the entry level folks, right, so we're creating that
Speaker 3: launching that career path for folks that are exiting in
Speaker 3: college or just trying to break in the same thing
Speaker 3: with the former military. If you're in a situation where
Speaker 3: you are experience and you're experiencing a layoff, right, it
Speaker 3: could be a little bit of a shock when you
Speaker 3: try to enter the market and you're used to working
Speaker 3: in the legacy environment and now you're asked to operate
Speaker 3: in an environment you've never been exposed to. And so
Speaker 3: I think that's critically important that you gain the proper
Speaker 3: skills that's marketable in the current environment.
Speaker 4: We talked a lot about AI and.
Speaker 3: Basically augmenting what you may you may be an experienced
Speaker 3: developer in the past, but a lot of expectation is
Speaker 3: that you have to learn how to program together with
Speaker 3: your assistance or your AI assistance, and that's a brand
Speaker 3: new gain. So in order for you to not only
Speaker 3: differentiate yourself, but just to keep up right because your
Speaker 3: competition is actually probably not necessarily the uh, the tenured resources,
Speaker 3: but even the upcoming uh you know, younger generation who's
Speaker 3: actually been brought up in this type of technology. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's it's very very important to understand the landscape,
Speaker 3: who your competitors are, and then be able to highlight
Speaker 3: what your value proposition is.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And one final question I'll throw at you, which part
Speaker 2: of the market do you think is most underserved? Is
Speaker 2: there an area like AI, cybersecurity, analytics, data infrastructure? Are
Speaker 2: there any areas that seem to be bigger than others
Speaker 2: in terms of opportunities that you're seeing Right now?
Speaker 4: AI is exploding, so that's very important.
Speaker 3: Data centers are popping up, which basically, you know, coming
Speaker 3: with AI, it's kind of chicken our eggscenario there one
Speaker 3: is kind of feeding each other, right, we'd add the
Speaker 3: a b AI more computing power, more data center is going
Speaker 3: to be up, so technicians on the data center area
Speaker 3: is actually a very strong growth area to focus on,
Speaker 3: which also can gain you exposed to some of the
Speaker 3: AI applications development. Maybe a good entry way is to
Speaker 3: start of getting exposed to the infrastructure that's going to
Speaker 3: be housing a lot of this AI and computing power.
Speaker 3: So I think those two And of course CyberSecure is
Speaker 3: always a requirement, So regardless of what you're heading, you
Speaker 3: need to make sure that you're well rounded. Any kind
Speaker 3: of solutions you're developing is well grounded in security.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's really good advice.
Speaker 2: And I always suggest to folks, and I'm guessing your degree,
Speaker 2: focus on something you really enjoy. If you are naturally
Speaker 2: curious about hardware, go down the hardware road. If you're
Speaker 2: naturally curious about app development, focus on app development. Mean
Speaker 2: that example I gave about these new machines, these new
Speaker 2: systems being able to load a requirements document into a
Speaker 2: gen AI oriented engine and have it build an app
Speaker 2: for you. I mean, that's just crazy. That is so
Speaker 2: much different than the way it used to be. And
Speaker 2: whenever you see these huge advances in productivity, you got
Speaker 2: to jump on board quick, right, Final thoughts from you.
Speaker 4: Chris, absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a very fast changing environment and
Speaker 3: so going to be left behind very quickly unless you
Speaker 3: keep up. So you may be busy doing kind of
Speaker 3: what your your day job is, but you need to
Speaker 3: kind of do your homework and really continue to learn.
Speaker 3: Continuous learning is what you're going to give you, you know,
Speaker 3: keep your value long term.
Speaker 5: That's great, that's great advice.
Speaker 2: Well, look these folks up online, Chris Coligato co O
Speaker 2: L I G A d O.
Speaker 5: It's fed Stack.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on doing some good work keeping our country safe, prosperous.
Speaker 2: That's what we want to see here, folks. Seventy meilf
Speaker 2: I want to be on the show. Info at inside
Speaker 2: analysis dot com. We'll talk to you next time you've
Speaker 2: been listening to Inside Analysis.
Speaker 11: Ey digits lock them in for more information. Recreation and
Speaker 11: Guaranteed fun case a A.
Speaker 7: What is your plan for your beneficiaries to manage your
Speaker 7: final expenses when you pass away?
Speaker 9: Life?
Speaker 7: Insurance, annuity, bank accounts, bestment account all require deficity which
Speaker 7: takes ten days based on the national average, which means
Speaker 7: no money's immediately available and this causes stress and arguments.
Speaker 12: Simple solution the beneficiary liquidity clan use money. You already
Speaker 12: have no need to come up with additional funds. The
Speaker 12: funds wrote tax deferred and pass tax free to your
Speaker 12: name beneficiary. The death benefit is paid out in twenty
Speaker 12: four to forty eight hours out a deficitt ury money
Speaker 12: out a definitive all I said one eight hundred free
Speaker 12: zero six fifty eighty six.
Speaker 9: You like to safely leverage bank money to earn double
Speaker 9: digit returns income tax free, with guarantees and no downside
Speaker 9: market risk. How can you do this? This is Farence
Speaker 9: host of the Your Personal Bank Show.
Speaker 8: One.
Speaker 9: You fund a high cash value policy one time to
Speaker 9: earn dividends and interest to establish a bank line of
Speaker 9: credit using the cash in your policy as collateral. When
Speaker 9: you earn more in dividends from your policy than the
Speaker 9: interest the bank charges, you keep the difference, and the
Speaker 9: difference is average two to five percent annually in your
Speaker 9: favor for the past forty plus years. Three the bank
Speaker 9: funds contributions years two to twenty plus. Each year the
Speaker 9: bank adds funds, your rate of return increases. Your average
Speaker 9: rate of return can grow too strong, double digits annually
Speaker 9: within a few years. Contact me at your Personal Bank
Speaker 9: dot Com Your Personal Bank dot Com or eight sixty
Speaker 9: six two six eight four four two two eight sixty
Speaker 9: six two six eight four four two two for more info,
Speaker 9: or tune in to the Your Personal Bank Show.
Speaker 1: Your Personal Bank Show airs Tuesdays at four pm right
Speaker 1: here on CASEAA ten fifty AM and one oh six
Speaker 1: point five f M, the station that leaves no listeners behind.
Speaker 11: If you're looking for a fuller, part time sales position
Speaker 11: and you have radio, TV or print media experience, KCAA
Speaker 11: has a great opportunity waiting for you that pays the
Speaker 11: highest commissions in the market. If you're interested in a
Speaker 11: sales position with US, email CEO at case AA Radio
Speaker 11: dot Com.
Speaker 13: Kca T, Hebot Club's original pure powd Drgo super Ta
Speaker 13: helps build red corpusoles in the blood, which carry oxygen
Speaker 13: to organs and cells. Our organs and cells need oxygen
Speaker 13: to regenerate themselves. The immune system needs oxygen to develop,
Speaker 13: and cancer dies in oxygen. So the T is great
Speaker 13: for healthy people because it helps build the immune system,
Speaker 13: and it can truly be miraculous for someone fting a
Speaker 13: potentially life threatening disease due to an infection diabetes or cancer.
Speaker 13: The ta is also organic and naturally caffeine free. A
Speaker 13: one pound package of tea is forty nine ninety five,
Speaker 13: which includes shipping. To order, please visit to hebot club
Speaker 13: dot com. T hebo is spelled T like tom, a
Speaker 13: h ee b like boyo. Then continue with the word
Speaker 13: T and then the word club. The complete website is
Speaker 13: to Hebot club dot com or call us at eight
Speaker 13: one eight six one zero eight zero eight eight Monday
Speaker 13: through Saturday nine am to five pm California time. That's
Speaker 13: eight one eight six one zero zero eight zero eight
Speaker 13: eight to Hebot Club dot com.
Speaker 14: Bobula here with my home improvement tip of the day.
Speaker 14: If you're in the dark about some of the latest
Speaker 14: advancements in flashlight technology, here's a quick summary. Conventional flashlights,
Speaker 14: which rely on bulky D sized batteries and bulbs with filaments,
Speaker 14: are increasingly being replaced by lights with LEDs that's light
Speaker 14: emitting diodes or lights with fluorescent bulbs. Unlike other lights,
Speaker 14: LEDs have no filament to burn out. Instead, they're powered
Speaker 14: by tiny semiconductors. LEDs draw only a minuscular amount of power,
Speaker 14: so batteries last much longer than in conventional lights. Fluorescent
Speaker 14: lights are also taking an increasing share of the market.
Speaker 14: They're especially popular in lantern type products with their elongated
Speaker 14: fluorescent tubes. They put out a lot of lights, so
Speaker 14: they do a good job of illuminating larger areas, say
Speaker 14: your dining room during a power outage. Fluorescence do take
Speaker 14: a lot of power, though, so you'll want to keep
Speaker 14: plenty of batteries on hand. Get more info at Bobula
Speaker 14: dot com and right here at home with me.
Speaker 4: Bob feed down.
Speaker 13: It's a bird, it's a pan.
Speaker 11: No, it's super raw.
Speaker 15: Okay, a gimmicky opening for a commercial about super Roth
Speaker 15: universal life insurance, but I'm sure it got your attention. Now,
Speaker 15: what is a super Roth, you ask. It's a permanent
Speaker 15: indexed universal life insurance that's totally liquid and easily accessible
Speaker 15: once it matures. Can be used to supplement retirement savings
Speaker 15: or a death benefit, or both. Has no income or
Speaker 15: contribution limit, has no five year rule like roth iras,
Speaker 15: has no ten percent penalty for accessing the funds before
Speaker 15: age fifty nine.
Speaker 11: And a half.
Speaker 15: Oh, and the average historical returns are five to seven
Speaker 15: percent annually. Tax freight. Super Roths also lock in gains,
Speaker 15: which means you don't lose your money when the market
Speaker 15: is down. It sounds incredible, right sounds super super Rocks
Speaker 15: are the way of the future, specifically your future. To
Speaker 15: see if you qualify for a super Roth, go online
Speaker 15: to the Superwroth dot Com.
Speaker 16: Tune into The farrand Dozier Show. Music Marks Place in Time,
Speaker 16: the soundtrack to life. Sunday nights at eight pm are
Speaker 16: KCAA Radio playing the hottest hits and the coolest conversations
Speaker 16: Sunday nights at APM on The Ferrand Dozier Show within
Speaker 16: the array of music, talk, sports, community outreach and veteran resources.
Speaker 9: The hits from the sixties.
Speaker 16: Seventies, eighties, nineties, and today's hits. The ferand Dozier Show
Speaker 16: on KCAA Radio on all available streaming platforms and on
Speaker 16: a six point five m and ten fifty AM The
Speaker 16: ferrando Zier Show on KCAA Radio.
Speaker 6: KCAA Radio has openings for one hour talk shows. If
Speaker 6: you want to host a radio show, now is the time.
Speaker 6: Make kca your flangship station. Our rates are affordable and
Speaker 6: our services are second to none. We broadcast to a
Speaker 6: population of five million people plus. We stream and podcast
Speaker 6: on all major online audio and video systems. If you've
Speaker 6: been thinking about broadcasting a weekly radio program on real
Speaker 6: radio plus the Internet, contact our CEO at two eight
Speaker 6: one five nine nine ninety eight hundred two eight one
Speaker 6: five nine nine ninety eight hundred. You could skype your
Speaker 6: show from your home to our Redlands, California studio, where
Speaker 6: our live producers and engineers are ready to work with
Speaker 6: you personally. A radio program on KCIA is the perfect
Speaker 6: work from home advocation in these stressful times. Just type
Speaker 6: KCAA Radio dot com into your browser to learn more
Speaker 6: about hosting a show on the best station in the nation,
Speaker 6: or call our ceo for details too eight one five
Speaker 6: nine nine ninety eight hundred.
Speaker 8: Listening to KCAA Melinda at one oh six point five
Speaker 8: FM K two ninety three cf Brito Bealley.
Speaker 6: One of the best ways to build a healthier local
Speaker 6: economy is by shopping locally. Teamster Advantage is a shop
Speaker 6: local program started by Teamster Local nineteen thirty two that
Speaker 6: is brought together hundreds of locally owned businesses to provide
Speaker 6: discounts for residents who make shopping locally their priority. Everything
Speaker 6: from restaurants like Corkis to fund times at SB Raceway
Speaker 6: and much much more. If you're not currently a teamster
Speaker 6: and you want access to these local business discounts, contact
Speaker 6: Jennifer at nine oh nine eight eight nine eight three
Speaker 6: seven seven Extension two twenty four.
Speaker 5: Give her a call.
Speaker 6: That number again is nine oh nine eight eight nine
Speaker 6: eight three.
Speaker 5: Seven seven Extension two twenty four.
Speaker 10: NBC News Radio. I'm Lisa Carton. Both Canada and Mexico
Speaker 10: are responding to new US tariffs with retaliatory measures of
Speaker 10: their own. The news follows President Trump's decision to implement
Speaker 10: twenty five percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada. He also
Speaker 10: imposed an extra ten percent levy on Chinese goods. Canadian
Speaker 10: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country will implement twenty
Speaker 10: five percent tariffs against US goods starting tuesday. Mexican President
Speaker 10: Claudia Sinbaum also said sheep plans to follow suit, but
Speaker 10: no specifics were given. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
Speaker 10: set to meet with President Trump on Tuesday. The meeting
Speaker 10: would make him the first foreign leader to visit the
Speaker 10: White House during Trump's second term. In a letter to
Speaker 10: nettan Yahoo, President Trump said he looks forward to discussing
Speaker 10: how they can bring peace to Israel and their efforts
Speaker 10: to counter our shared adversaries. Netanyahu's visit comes as negotiations
Speaker 10: are expected to resume between Israel and the Palestinian militant
Speaker 10: group AMAS to extend the ongoing ceasefire. The acting fb
Speaker 10: BI director is reportedly pushing back on the Trump administration's
Speaker 10: order to fire senior FBI officials. On Friday, several of
Speaker 10: the FBI's lead executives who helped investigate President Trump's alleged
Speaker 10: crimes were removed from their roles. Brian Driscoll sent out
Speaker 10: a memo saying he'd been ordered to remove eight senior
Speaker 10: FBI executives in turn over the names of every FBI
Speaker 10: employee involved in capital riot cases. Driscoll reportedly refused the
Speaker 10: Justice Department's order so aggressively that other FBI officials feared
Speaker 10: he would be forced out. Are you winging it for
Speaker 10: the Super Bowl? Broccoli might be a cheaper party snack
Speaker 10: this year. A Super Bowl watch party will cost about
Speaker 10: the same as last year. A Wells Fargo report shows
Speaker 10: feeding ten people for the Big Game will run around
Speaker 10: one hundred and thirty nine Bucks, which is just ten
Speaker 10: cents more last year. You're listening to the latest on
Speaker 10: NBC News Radio.
Speaker 8: NBC News on CACAA level. The day sponsored by teamsterun's
Speaker 8: Local nineteen teen thirty two. Protecting the Future of Working
Speaker 8: Families Cheamsters nineteen thirty two, dot org