All language subtitles for T.W.T.S05E06.1080p.WEB.h264-CBFM_track3_[eng]

[narrator]
On Tomorrow's World Today,

we explore the cutting edge
advances that are shaping
four different worlds.

The World of Inspiration,

where the wonders
of the natural world
amaze and inspire us.

The World of Creation,

where ideas come to life
from traditional arts.

The World of Innovation,

where ideas and inventions
move us all forward.

The World of Production,

where innovations
are mass produced
to improve our lives.

From Inventionland
world headquarters,

here's your host,
George Davison.

Hey, everybody.
I'm George Davison.

Now you might be wondering,

what am I doing
with all this old
computing technology?

Well, we're sending them out
to be scraped and recycled

because we're switching
everything to the cloud.

Inventionland
and Inventionland education,

they operate on a global level

and this old
computing technology,

it just can't keep up
with how quickly
we're growing.

Today, small businesses,
schools and even

multi-million dollar
corporations have to
think about

how will they expand
and grow on a digital level.

And that means thinking about
what kind of computing power,

the old or the new,
will get them there.

I'm sending Greg
to the World of Innovation

to explore how far
computing has come

and how it's easier than ever
for businesses and builders

to create using
the power of the cloud.

[Greg] Each year, more than
14 million new small

and medium-sized businesses
are created globally.

And many of them
are being built
entirely online.

It's easier now than ever
for an entrepreneur to develop
the business of their dreams.

Well, I'm gonna meet
with Gabe Monroy.

He is the chief
product officer
at Digital Ocean.

We're gonna discuss their role
in helping these entrepreneurs

and developers
grow their business
in the cloud.

Hey Gabe.

-Greg. Welcome.
-Thanks.

-Have a seat.
-Alright.

Nice office.
What a place to work.

Thanks. As a builder,
you can build
from anywhere now.

[Greg] I guess that's true.

So, what better place
to talk about Digital Ocean
than on the water.

Tell me about the creation
and the inspiration behind it.

Well, Digital Ocean exists
to serve developers
and small businesses

that are looking to build
digital products.

Digital products are things
like websites
or e-commerce sites

or maybe a mobile application.

They're products that live
on the internet

and are delivered to people
on the internet.

Well, let's talk about that

because when most people
think of the cloud,
they think of storage.

But there's a lot
more to it than that.

Tell me about cloud computing.

Cloud computing is actually
computer networking

and storage altogether, right?

And if you think about
what most people associate
with the cloud,

things like, you know,
photos on your phone
being sent to the cloud,

yes, that is
very much storage.

But there's also
a big amount of processing
that happens in the cloud.

Things like data analytics
or video encoding.

[Greg] Okay, so how does
something like that
help a business

go from a small business

to a medium business
to a large business?

Well, we like to think
of the developer journey

as one that starts
with learning.

A lot of folks
who are using the cloud,

they start out
by trying to experiment
with new technologies.

Once they work through
that phase,

they'll move on to building
a new application,

you know, maybe a website
or a mobile app.

And once that app gets
some amount of traction,

they'll work on
scaling that application

and that's really
where they get

the big advantages
of the cloud.

Well, I guess that's where
Droplets come into play.

-[Gabe] Yes
-Okay, explain those to me.

Well, Droplets are essentially
a server or a computer, right?

No different than the one
that might be running

inside of your house
or under your table.

The difference
with this computer
is it's managed

by Digital Ocean,

so all the power,
the cooling, the cabling,

that's something
that we take care of

so that you don't have to
worry about it.

And I guess as software
and hardware both develop,

you handle that
and that'll help

-keep a business
on the cutting edge.
-[Gabe] Absolutely.

With cloud computing,
businesses can focus on

adding value
for their customers.

And the more time
they can spend
on delivering that value

and the less time
they spend on
managing servers, the better.

So let's go
to the captain's table.

Alright.

Well, so here we are.

The captain's table. Welcome.

Well, thank you. Thank you.

So, we touched kind of briefly
on the benefits to a small
and medium-sized business

of you handling the hardware
and software end of things.

But what are some
specific examples

of how those advantages
help those businesses out?

Well, have you ever tried
to order clothes online

and then the clothes
that you get in the mail
don't actually fit?

Oh, yeah.

Well, so one of our customers
serves e-commerce sites

and what they have
is an AI powered
clothing fit platform

that allows you
to make sure that
through a few simple questions

the clothes you get
in the mail
do actually fit you.

That's amazing. What else?

Well, another good example
is, you know...

Have you ever tried
to place an order
from a restaurant,

but you keep calling
and the phone line's busy?

You just can't get ahold
of someone?

Sometimes you just want to
interact with the restaurant
like a chat system, right?

So, taking out
your mobile app,

chat with the restaurant,
place your order that way.

Much easier way of interacting
with a restaurant.

Now the pandemic hit a lot
of different businesses
in a lot of different ways.

Some people had to scale
their businesses back,

other people had to
ramp up tremendously.

Do you have any examples
of how you might have

helped out a business
during the pandemic?

Indeed. The pandemic,
as you said, scale was really

a really important element
of the cloud that helped folks
through the pandemic.

Some folk's business
scaled up,

other folk's business
scaled down.

Either way, Digital Ocean
and the cloud was able
to provide help

to businesses
during that time.

Nowhere is that example
more clear

than with a customer of ours
called BigBlueButton.

They provide
education services

to folks who are trying to
learn during the pandemic.

And so, I've actually enabled
a meeting with the team

over in Ottawa
if you'd like to learn
more about that story.

I would, absolutely.

So I guess I have to
get off the boat
and get on a plane.

-Indeed.
-Alright, Gabe.
Thank you very much.

-This has been great.
-Yes.

[inquisitive music playing]

[thoughtful music playing]

In 2020,
there was a huge shift
in the educational world.

When the pandemic hit,
online and remote learning,

which had been an option
offered by most schools,

became an absolute necessity.

BigBlueButton
is the only virtual

open-sourced teaching platform
in the world.

Their virtual classrooms
are designed to help teachers

engage and interact
with their students remotely.

But they knew when this global
pandemic came upon us

that their existing servers
would not be able

to rise up
and meet that challenge.

That's why we're here
at Carleton University
in Ottawa.

We're gonna meet with
Fred Dixon.

He's the creator
of BigBlueButton.

And we're gonna discuss
how Digital Ocean helped them

rise up to this new
global demand

without sacrificing
the integrity

of any of their students'
educational experience.

Hey Fred.

It's a good thing
your virtual classrooms
are packed

'cause this one's empty.

It is, but I've got
a ton of people online

watching the lecture
right now.

Well, can I steal you
away from them

for just a minute or two
and have a little talk?

-Sure. Let me just finish up
and I'll join you.
-[Greg] Great.

So, Fred. BigBlueButton.

Born right here
at Carleton University
back in about 2007.

Tell me about that development
and what BigBlueButton
was doing pre-pandemic.

So, BigBlueButton was designed
to be a virtual classroom.

And pre-pandemic,
think of the world

where you might have
a large school district.

There would be like,
a small high school,

maybe online virtual class
for those students
that couldn't make it.

When the pandemic hit,
that flipped.

You had very few people
in the physical classroom

and almost everybody
was learning online.

So that had to present
some real scalability issues
for you folks.

How did you handle that
and how did Digital Ocean
help you?

Oh yeah. So February 2020,

we could see that the pandemic
was gonna hit North America.

The tsunami was coming.
We had 60 physical servers.

And in a short pace of...
Space of time,

we had to go
from 60 to an unknown number.

So we had already been using
Digital Ocean for helping us
with testing,

so we were familiar
with their API's.

In about two and a half weeks,
we transitioned
from physical to virtual.

And what we had to do
was use Digital Ocean

'cause we were already
playing around with them,
testing with them.

And the only way we were able
to solve the problem we had

was to go completely
cloud computing

and to scale it
through Digital Ocean.

And fortunately,
we were able to do that

in such a short period
of time,

that we kept ahead
of the pandemic

and we were able to handle
all the virtual classes.

Traditionally, how long
would it have taken you

to set up
one of your own servers?

[Fred] Yeah,
that was pretty intense.

So it taking us an average
of six hours to set up
a physical server.

Using the Digital Ocean API's,
we were able to boil that down
to about six minutes.

Okay. So, let's talk
sheer numbers here.

You started off
with 60 physical servers.

Where are you at now?

So at the height
of the pandemic,

we actually were running
about 2,000
Digital Ocean Droplets.

In parallel, four data centers
around the world.

And looking back at the data,

we did over
two billion minutes
of virtual classes.

Well, I'd really like to see
how a virtual class works.

-Can you show me?
-Sure. Let's take a look.

So Fred, why BigBlueButton

as opposed to a standard
video conferencing system,

which would seem like
the obvious choice?

So video is fine
when you want
to build relationships,

but for purposes
of teaching and learning,

there's a lot more
that's going on
than just video.

If you just did video,
it's all on the teacher
to figure out

from the student's
facial expression.

What you want to do
is have a platform

which understands
that the teacher's
trying to teach content

and the students
are trying to learn

and the best way
to learn is apply.

You just can't watch an hour
of video and walk out
and be an expert on something.

So what we did
with BigBlueButton
was create a space

where the teacher
has lots of ways
to engage the students.

And that engagement
generates analytics,

and the analytics helps
guide the teacher to determine
which students are struggling

and then help
those students out.

From the student's
point of view,

if the teacher
is aware of them,

cares about them
and helps them out,

it means
that virtual classroom
is really valuable

for the student
as well as the teacher.

Okay, so I guess as I look
at this classroom,
which is huge,

you've got seating here
for a couple
of hundred students.

I would think
there's more opportunity
for engagement

this way through your system
than in the live setting.

Yeah, there's actually
a lot of advantages
for a virtual class.

It can happen in real time
across the world.

So you can teach
students anywhere.

Activity is gonna happen
in parallels.

So you can have some students
in breakout rooms.

Other people collaborating
together in the chat.

You can record the content

so it can be
watched afterward.

And the data that you create
from interaction

creates analytics that helps
guide the teachers

to which students
are struggling.

There should be no back
of the classroom
in a virtual class.

Excellent.
Well, can you show me
how that works?

[Fred] Yes.
So here I've got a question.

Let's say I just talked
about Einstein
for a little bit.

And I have a question.

"Did Einstein discover
the atom? True/false."

BigBlueButton knows
you're trying to ask
students questions in polls.

So it actually picked up
the text here, "True/false."

It already reads it
into memory
for screen readers,

but instead of having to teach
or type in a poll question,

it'll just give you
one button.

And when I click this button,
I immediately can start
polling the students,

I see the results
come back live

and again I'm assessing
whether students got
the answers correct or not.

I'll do one more.
I'll give an example.

"What are the rings of Saturn
made of?"

Again, one button.

You can see
it's very quick for me to go,
ask another question,

get responses back
and then I publish them.

At some point,
the teacher's gonna
have three questions.

Who's in my class,
who's participating
and who's learning?

So what we did was
we built out a system

called the Learning
Analytics Dashboard.

And this is a live dashboard

that, think of it,
sits next to the teacher

and constantly updates them
with what's going on
in the class.

I can see students,
exactly how long
they're there.

I can see participation.

And the other one is
all the poll results
are there.

So as a teacher,
I don't have to try
to remember it.

I can look at those results
and say, "Was there
a particular poll question

that people just
completely missed?

Or was a particular question
hard for the class?"

You can use that
to figure out whether you want

to engage students
or shore up some knowledge

and then move on
to the next section.

Excellent. Well Fred,
thank you very much.
This has been amazing.

I'm heading back
to Pittsburgh.

I've got a couple
of really unique individuals

from Digital Ocean
to hook up with there.

Sounds good, Greg.

[thoughtful music playing]

[inquisitive music playing]

I'm in Pittsburgh at one of
the highest points in the city

on Mount Washington
at the Monterey Bay
Fish Grotto.

I'm gonna be speaking
with Kwasi Asare

about Digital Ocean's
global startup program
called Hatch.

[bright music playing]

Kwasi.

-Hey. How you doing?
-Doing well. Nice to see you.

-You as well.
-So...

Digital Ocean's Hatch program.
Give me a quick overview.

Yeah, so the Hatch program
is Digital Ocean's
global startup program

focused on helping
entrepreneurs and founders

with technical assistance,
access to infrastructure

and a community
of like-minded founders

to help them grow
their business efficiently.

Well, what are some of
the different businesses

that have gone
through the program?

Yeah, so Hatch,
a lot like Digital Ocean,
is platform agnostic.

We've helped everybody
from edtech to fintech

health care, e-commerce,
artificial intelligence
machine learning.

It's really been
a hodgepodge of people

focused on a variety
of different things,

and trying to solve
business problems

is sort of
their shared challenge.

And that's where we add value
is by being a part
of that journey

and helping people
and businesses
solve hard problems.

Okay, well what brought you
into the program?

Yeah, so in 2008, a skinny guy
with a funny name
won an election

and I wanted to be a part
of an unprecedented
administration,

an unprecedented economy,
tell the grandkids about it.

Found myself working
on edtech policy

at the intersection
of private equity,
venture capital

and the founders
and entrepreneurs themselves.

In all of that, I found myself
connected very closely

with entrepreneurs
and founders.

And if you hang out
with them long enough

they believe they can
solve any problem
and that's contagious.

And I wanted to continue
to return that value
back to them

by helping them
along their way

through the work we do
at Digital Ocean.

Well, that's a big part
of the ethos
behind Digital Ocean

is taking these small
and medium-sized businesses

and actually help them along
that growth pathway.

[Kwasi] Absolutely.

The sum collective action
of any individual one of them

is greater than the whole.
And they all believe that.

And I think by continuing
to give back as a community,

they're actually able
to solve hard problems

for other people as well
and realize their dreams.

We're here to help make sure
that every one of them realize
that collective opportunity

and creates value and solves
hard problems for the world.

Excellent. Well Kwasi,
thank you very much.

I want to find out
more about this,

-so I'm going to go
and talk to Thandi.
-Absolutely. Thanks.

[light music playing]

-Hi Thandi.
-Hi.

-Nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you too.

So, I spoke with Kwasi

-about his role
with the Hatch program...
-Yes.

...and how he helps
small and medium-sized
businesses as a startup.

-Mmm-hmm.
-Kind of at the very beginning
of their journey.

-Mmm-hmm.
-You work with
the startups as well,

but in a little bit
different capacity.

Can you tell me about that?

Sure. So my team,
the Customer Success
and Solutions Team,

we work with startups

and small
and medium-sized businesses,

and we help them achieve
their business goals.

Okay, so are you identifying
specific products

that Digital Ocean might have
that will help them along?

[Thandi]
Um, so that's part of it.

We look at their business
and technical goals,

but we align that
with the resources
they have available

in terms of
financial resources,

their team, the technical
prowess of their team.

And we take
those things together

and we leverage
the rest of the organization
in to help them further along.

So it's really the work
of the whole
Digital Ocean community?

Exactly. Exactly.

Okay, so what if
there's a product

that might come
from an outside vendor

that will work
better for them?
Is that an option as well?

We first try to optimize
for, you know, the products
that we already have

'cause those are
what we know best, right?

Sometimes the solution
that they need

isn't within
our immediate community.

So we would recommend
another provider

for that particular
product or service.

Um, whatever it takes
to help them.

Because that community aspect,
that's a really big part

-of the Digital Ocean ethos...
-Exactly.

...is really just anything
that we can do
to help you along.

And to help the cloud to grow
and be better.

Right. And well,
speaking of community,

we're actually
in my community,
my hometown of Pittsburgh.

And Gabe is heading over
to Inventionland

-to meet with George.
-Awesome.

-So let's get on out of here.
-Awesome. Thank you so much.
It's beautiful here.

[inquisitive music playing]

[thoughtful music playing]

-Hey, Gabe.
-Hey, George.
How are ya?

I'm great.
Welcome to Inventionland.

Thanks. I'm so happy
to be here.

Well, we're thrilled
you're here.

We're working on some stuff
and I saw this graph

and I thought,
"Is this accurate?

We're looking at
this kind of growth
right now in the cloud?"

The cloud has been
growing like crazy.

Actually when
you think about it,
there's really two trends

-that are driving
this phenomenon.
-Mmm.

The first is this idea
of digital products, right?

Websites, e-commerce sites,
mobile applications

and education platforms.

All being delivered
on the internet
for consumers

who want to access it
over the internet. Right?

-And so, that's a big trend
going on right now.
-Makes sense.

The other thing
that's happening is folks
are getting kind of tired

of having to manage
their own servers
and infrastructure, right?

Uh, it's just kind of
exhausting, all those cables.

It's, you know,
a lot of work, right?

And so, if you take a look
at this picture here,

people are really looking to
outsource and rent
servers and equipment

from a cloud provider
like Digital Ocean.

So, you know,
we've got five seasons
of Tomorrow's World Today.

Many, many terabytes of data.

We have more seasons
in the future.

So what we'd like to do
is to be able
to deliver our shows

to our audience
all around the world
fast and reliably.

So that's what
I'm curious about.

Yeah, so if I'm understanding,
you want to build

a video streaming platform
for Tomorrow's World Today.

And you want that
to be accessible
from anywhere in the world

-at great speed
and performance.
-Yes.

-And you're looking
at the cloud to do that.
-Exactly.

I think the cloud is exactly
what you need.

[George] Alright, good.

That being the case,
your people sent me
some images

that I thought would need
some explanation.

Uh, these Droplets?
What's a Droplet?

So a Droplet is
a really important product
for Digital Ocean customers.

This is the manifestation
of a server running
in the cloud.

It's just with this server
you don't have to worry about
maintaining it,

you don't' have to worry about
power and cooling, cabling,
all that annoying stuff.

We take care
of all that for you.

[George] Very nice.

So, if I was to add to that,

and want to really
grow it out,

what's the capacity?
How big can I get?

Well, we have customers
who run hundreds, thousands,

even tens of thousands
of Droplets.

The only limiter
is how much capacity
we have in our data centers

-and we've got
a lot of capacity.
-[George laughs] Alright.

And then, they sent me
this thing called
a "Kuper-netee"?

How do you say that word?

-Kubernetes.
-Kubernetes.

Yes. And you were just
talking about

if you want to run
lots of servers in the cloud,

-lots of Droplets
in the cloud.
-[George] Yes.

You know, how could
you make that work?

And really what Kubernetes
does is it makes it possible

for you to manage
a group of servers
as one thing. Right?

So if one of the servers fails

or if you have
a big load event

'cause lots of people want
to watch Tomorrow's World
Today all at once.

-Yes.
-You got a new episode
out there.

Kubernetes is gonna make that
a lot more reliable

and scalable
for your customers.

[George]
That sounds really good.

So, you know,
there's always a better way
to do something, Gabe.

So I was just curious
about, you know,

where is the future going
with cloud computing?

Well, the future
is what we call server-less

and ultimately
location-less technology.

So today, if you want to use
something like Kubernetes,

you have to pick
which physical data center
you want to run that in.

-Okay.
-[Gabe] So you can run that
in say Australia.

In the future,
you're not going to
have to worry about

where in the world
your data center is located.

You just say, "I want
to run my application
in the cloud.

I don't care where."

And the application
will magically move

wherever it needs to
in the cloud

and provide the best
possible performance
for your end users.

That sounded really good.

Alright, so I'd like to learn
a little more.

How do I get
this thing started?

Well, I got a free trial code

that will give you
some credits to try
Digital Ocean out.

-You interested?
-Oh, we like free.

-[laughing] Let me
drop it to you.
-[George] Sure.

[inquisitive music playing]

-Got it.
-Awesome.

-Thanks for coming in, Gabe.
-Alright, thanks George.