Day 2 Wrap + Swag Segment

[Savannah Peterson]

Good evening, nerd fam, and welcome back to Las Vegas, Nevada. We’re here at the end of day two of three days of coverage on theCube at Google Cloud Next. It has been an absolutely fantastic week. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by the Dream Team, Rebecca Knight, John Furrier, and Rob Stretchay. Y’all have just been crushing it this week, very impressed with the energy, the interviews, our guests have been great. It’s our special Savvy Swag segment, but before we get into the goods, I’d love to ask you each just for a quick highlight today. We’ll start with John.

[John Furrier]

John’s Favorite Moments

My favorite was Jen Goldberg, Ken Goldberg came on. She talked about the Kubernetes 10-year-old anniversary, so it’s kind of a private win for a public because it’s a community, but theCube’s been to every KubeCon.

[Savannah Peterson]

I know, I love that.

[John Furrier]

And that’s how I met you. That’s how we met Savannah, and it’s just, it’s been one of those moments in the industry where it actually worked and working, so that was a good segment. And then we just had HCL Tech, which is doing some amazing.

[00:01:01]

They’re all in with Google Cloud, so good to hear that, and there’s just tons of great stories around more of the same, which is next generation AIs here, generative AI enterprise, all good stuff. Typical great Kube day as usual.

Rob’s Favorite Moments

Yeah.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yes, I agree with everything John has said. I really also enjoyed Karen Dahut, self-described mission junkie. She’s the CEO of Google Public Sector. I know, right?

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah, that’s great.

[Rebecca Knight]

And she just had a lot of great things to say about how Google is helping to modernize our federal government, and also local and state government.

[Savannah Peterson]

Which is a huge issue right now.

[Rebecca Knight]

Oh, yes.

[Savannah Peterson]

Regulation is kind of the elephant in the room that I think a lot of people aren’t- It will remain a big issue for a long time. Exactly.

Rebecca’s Favorite Moments

No, absolutely. Rob, what about you?

[Rob Stretchay]

Yeah, I think, again, it comes back to simplification, making AI easier, and there was a lot of really good guests on from HCL and PwC and a number of others that were on talking about how they’re bringing different apps to different things. We talked about tax and sustainability, which- That was the most unexpected one to me, for sure.

[00:02:00]

I did not think I’d be talking tax and sustainability with PwC.

[Rebecca Knight]

Tis the season.

[Rob Stretchay]

Tis the season.

[John Furrier]

Also, one favorite moment was Karen from Public Sector gave a public shout-out to Kevin Mandian, which I thought was awesome because we’ve had him on theCUBE, and he’s on the board of the Google Public Cloud Venture. Yeah. So that was a random but cool shout-out.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah, definitely very cool. I’m glad you brought that up, too. I mean, that PwC segment was definitely fun, and I hadn’t really thought about modernizing tax at the enterprise level before in my life, frankly, but as a business owner, everything that they were saying made so much sense.

[Rob Stretchay]

Absolutely. So what was yours? What was your takeaway?

[Savannah Peterson]

Savannah’s Favorite Moments

Man, it’s tough. I think one of the things that I really took away from is how many people are playing together to achieve success in this space, and you’ve got Google announcing their ARM CPU. There’s a sense that everyone needs components from each other right now or needs software from each other to be able to be successful, and so this culture of collaboration, which I don’t always associate with enterprise, I really find I associate much more with the open-source community.

[00:03:07]

I feel like that’s really bleeding into this space and that Gen AI is the backbone of that.

[Rob Stretchay]

Yeah. I mean, I think, again, we had Mark Lohmeyer on and ARM on earlier, and what he’s building in that, in the CPU, TPU, GPU space, is then HEN is coming on and putting the software on top of the operating environment, the run environment, which is, I think, just super interesting how they’re really working together, and especially when you get to distributed cloud. So I think it’s been an exciting week.

[John Furrier]

John’s Observations

And the ecosystem here with the booths. I mean, you have a show that we would … Go back four or five years ago, like Google Cloud, the challenger, as Guntem put it, I call it, I mean, trying hard to be number three, really has come into a great position, and they’re voting with their wallet, with the booth sizes, their participation. So with that ecosystem comes, get the attention, Savannah.

Swag Segment

So the question is, what’s the swag?

[00:04:02]

[Rebecca Knight]

I was going to say, I think the president’s not happy.

[John Furrier]

Let’s get into the real story, which is, who’s got the best swag?

[Savannah Peterson]

Exactly. Well, you know, I love going to talk to all the booths because you get to chat with people, and they have put a lot of thought into their marketing, at least some of them. As you know, we won’t just feature any t-shirt or any pair of socks on the show. We’ve got standards. It’s got to be impressive. But the thing that I obviously noticed, given the branding, totally AI savvy. It’s like they knew savvy was going to come by. Oh my God.

[John Furrier]

That’s a troll win. That’s a trolling win right there. No biggie. Troll for the win.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah. Don’t they say that everyone’s favorite word in their language is their name or something? So, I mean, when I saw this bag, of course, it was an instant, an instant winner. We’ve all got a lot of energy on the show, and I think we were all serving big data energy. Oh yeah. BD.

[Rob Stretchay]

Starburst.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah, you got that BD going on here, you know.

[Rob Stretchay]

By the way, the bunny’s name is Captain Bun Bun.

[Savannah Peterson]

You might need this. Oh, there you go.

[00:05:00]

That might be for you.

[John Furrier]

First of all, big data, that’s an old school term.

[Savannah Peterson]

I know.

[John Furrier]

That’s Starburst going old school.

[Savannah Peterson]

Going old school.

[John Furrier]

It’s gen AI energy.

[Savannah Peterson]

With a very catchy trucker hat, too. We see a lot of black. It’s nice to see some color, especially with the pool right outside here in Mandalay.

[John Furrier]

That’s an 80s, 90s throwback, too.

[Savannah Peterson]

Super. Oh, trucker hats are all the rage. Oh, yeah. And the bucket hats. I’m not featuring any bucket hats because we’ve featured them before, but they are our bucket hats. Red Hat even went bucket hat this time instead of your typical fedora. Okay. So, we’re in a bucket hat era. I’ve got a fun surprise for you in my backpack, actually.

Savannah’s Swag Picks

I love that the folks at Release brought me over a cube, specifically, obviously, because of my earrings. And we see a lot of Rubik’s Cubes on these show floors, but they’re not always branded. And this is a really fun opportunity. And this one is done, so it’s not going to frustrate you the whole time, which I’m happy. This is a runner for my top, and I’m going to wait until the end of the segment to announce, but this was a really nice find. As you may or may not know, 80% of swag ends up in the landfill within the first year of being produced.

[Rebecca Knight]

That’s depressing.

[00:06:00]

[Savannah Peterson]

Which is really sad. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. And that’s pretty depressing. So, I’m a big fan of swag with intent, high quality swag that people are going to use and utilize.

[Rebecca Knight]

Sustainable swag.

[Savannah Peterson]

And who doesn’t want a Yeti mug? I mean, I know Stanley’s having its moment, but my gosh, this is a really valuable piece of swag. It’s really durable and heavy. I’m excited. I’m probably going to keep that. I really appreciate that the folks at Alcura put that together. It’s definitely nice, and they’ve got good energy over back there by the bar. We also would be silly not to mention the swag from our friends at McKinsey we had rewired. Rodney was nice enough to sign this bad boy for us, which was really sweet. That was a super special interview that we got to do. Rebecca, I really enjoyed getting to do that. And this was, okay, I have never seen this at a show, and this is, Starburst really has a cool thing going on. This is a tactical pen. So there is a compass on the end of this. There’s a flashlight inside, stylus, and if you unscrew it, it’s even got a little screwdriver, which is kind of fun.

[00:07:07]

So we had a multi-tool from Intel on at Paris that was one of our favorites that actually came home with me. It’s for the preppers out there. Also in Vogue, like the bucket hat, is the tiny backpack. Tiny backpacks are making a comeback. My coach purse is a tiny backpack. Really like that the Confluent people went ahead and did that. It’s a nice alternative to the tote bag, not that there’s any shame in the tote bag. We are in Las Vegas, and I love a good localized activation. The Optimizely folks have made custom decks of cards. I saw a couple other ones out there, but it’s just a really nice touch. These conferences are such an epic opportunity to make an impression, and why not have fun with it? I find so many companies really just kind of mail it in and are boring. Speaking of not being boring, this was rad. Full Story actually lets you customize your own embroidery on your beanie.

[00:08:00]

They’ve got their branding on the back, but you can put whatever you want on the front. Noah on our production team and I went and got our custom beanies. Their activation was really cool, too, because you didn’t have to wait in some long line. You put in your information, and then they texted you when your hat was ready, which was really nice, too, so it wasn’t a distraction from your show experience. Definitely something that will be coming home with me. The first piece of swag that I picked up today, because it really spoke to me also being in Las Vegas, which is just absolutely—oops, let me get that sticker off there so it’s not distracting—was this 404 Broken AF t-shirt from Mabel. I think at the end of a multi-day show in Las Vegas, everyone feels a little bit like their own 404 code, and this one really just made me smile. I do love the sense of humor that folks have a tendency to bring to these shows. Also given how dehydrated we are in Las Vegas, Pythian has a chapstick, and also they are doing robot sketch drawings.

[00:09:02]

This is really fun. You go in, you take a selfie in their booth, and then there’s actually a robot arm that draws it for you right there in just a couple seconds. Fun little souvenir. I guess that is a job that the robots are replacing to a degree a little bit. If the sketch artist is now being replaced by a sketch bot, I hadn’t really thought about that, but that is a whole thing. John, why don’t you talk about the yearbook?

Yearbook Activation

Did you have yours? No, I didn’t. Mine never printed out. Okay, so… Yes, so one of the activations here, this is really fun.

[John Furrier]

This is from OctoAI. OctoAI, yep.

[Savannah Peterson]

From OctoAI. Their AI combines two models. They’re trying to illustrate how you mix two different types of models, and it comes up with what you were like in high school. So what your yearbook photo would have been. So John Furrier was most likely to master time travel technology, and he just looks just fabulous here.

[John Furrier]

The lasers. Wow. It’s the laser lights, 80s.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yes, very. It’s a very fun… That’s super fun.

[John Furrier]

You take a selfie, and then it calculates the image, gets the text.

[00:10:05]

[Savannah Peterson]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. De-ages you. Yeah. I love it. I mean, a little zhuzh never hurt anyone.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yeah, right.

[Savannah Peterson]

Just a little zhuzh. Just a little zhuzh. I’m always…

Wiz Swag

A little more than a little. I really am a fan of the folks at Wiz when it comes to swag. They do a really good job. Their whole installation this week is a diner. They actually have Elvis serving donuts in their booth, but in addition to their lovely and very bright tote bag that was easy to see on the show floor, they also have diner socks, which are pretty darn cute, and a little notebook. So you can get cozy and also…

[John Furrier]

Do a little journaling.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah. Do a little journaling.

[John Furrier]

Yeah.

[Savannah Peterson]

That’s exactly what I think of doing after a show, is just curling up and doing some journaling. Having some me time. But I do think it’s really cute.

Googs Activation

I might actually keep this notebook because it’s so fun. Googs is doing an activation where they are letting you send postcards. We see these at show floors, but it is kind of a nice thing. Say hi to mom. Hi, mom, while we’re here, and send a postcard to a friend. And we also…

[00:11:02]

Redis Swag

Oh, this is… We only have one more T-shirt for us today, and this one is from Redis. Unstructured like my data. If you know me at all, you know that I am not a structured person. So this one very much made me smile, and again, just another clever example of companies doing something a little bit different.

HCL Swag

I had to go by and say hello to our friends at HCL and see what they had up. Really high quality notebook here. Yeah. Just a classic… Can’t go wrong. A lot of people with the notebooks. Apparently, we’re all going to go home and journal.

[Rebecca Knight]

It’s so old school.

[Savannah Peterson]

It’s such a throwback.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yeah, such a throwback.

[Savannah Peterson]

Logy Swag

Okay. So this was the biggest surprise to me on the show floor. I’ve never seen this as swag, and I can’t say that about a lot of things. Logy did a croc charm. Oh. This is the little charm that you put in your crocs. Crocs having a moment like the bucket hat, like the tiny backpack, everything. I was just going to say ugly is new again, but that’s my own personal opinion.

[00:12:01]

But I did think this was really kind of fun and clever. And I mean, if you are a croc wearer, most people wear their crocs all the time. What a great place to have your brand. For sure.

[Rob Stretchay]

I was going to say. Yeah, I wear crocs. You know what the little holes are for? Let your dignity out.

[Mickey]

I wasn’t sure what D word you were going to use. Mickey over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Savannah Peterson]

Let your dignity out. No, I get it. That holds it in. Well, there you go. That is just for you, Rob. You can contain your dignity.

Rocky Linux Swag

As someone who uses a lot of bandanas, I thought this Rocky Linux bandana was kind of nice just because it’s not like everything else. You don’t see a lot of bandanas on the show floor. So this will probably turn into one of my many sweat rags for sitting under these beautiful hot lights. But that was very thoughtful of them.

Light Up Bouncy Ball

We’ve also got. Oh, this is just fun if anyone wants to play. We’ve got a light up bouncy ball, a lot of fidget spinners and a lot of little hand toys.

[00:13:00]

But a little lighty ball is just a little more fun, in my opinion. Oh, this one was super cool.

Dialpad Swag

So this is from Dialpad. This is actually an aromatherapy diffuser that plugs into your laptop so that your workspace, wherever you are, will smell lovely. Lavender. I like to think of it as maybe, it’s not a humidifier, but in my mind it is because it’s so dry here. But I thought, okay. I did think this was a really cute and just thoughtful, different. There’s not a lot of things that smell good at conferences. It’s nice that there’s something that smells good. I think that’s great.

Scale Swag

One pair of sunglasses for us today. This is from the folks at Scale. Just thought it was a nice color, you know?

[John Furrier]

From at Scale? Yeah. Nice.

[Savannah Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s just a nice little hue.

[John Furrier]

I dig the color.

[Savannah Peterson]

Match their outfits. It’s the type of color you would actually wear. I think sometimes some of these branded sunglasses can get a little tacky. And these were the type where I would not be embarrassed if someone reached in my car and checked it out.

[00:14:00]

Pulumi Swag

Pulumi has some really cute stuff going on. So they do, and I like this, actually. They do custom stickers for every event that they go to to make it a collector item. People can put them on their laptop, do their little thing, little platypus. Apparently when we were in Paris, and I’m sad that I missed this, they did a platypus with a croissant, which I really feel like I missed out on. They also hooked it up with some very fun socks and a koozie. Vegas, a place where you definitely need to keep your beverage cold, no matter what is in that beverage. And, yeah, I think that’s actually our whole shebang from this crew. Let me just make sure I didn’t miss anything in my little tiny baby pocket.

Swag Debate

So that leads us to the debate. Which of these…

[John Furrier]

I do like the book that was personally signed by our guest on theCube. It was very perfect for just the overall intimacy of the gift, of the swag. Yeah. That was very cool. No, I think that is nice.

[Rob Stretchay]

But that was really not for everyone. The aroma thing definitely is smart. That book is for $40. I was going to say, the aroma therapy thing I think is really cool. I’ve never seen that before. That gets that creative award.

[Savannah Peterson]

Right? I know. That’s very creative. I thought this was very clever. I thought this was super clever.

[00:15:02]

What do you think you would use the most?

[Rebecca Knight]

I would definitely try…

[John Furrier]

Oh, go ahead.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yeah, I like this color. I mean, this color is so in right now.

[Savannah Peterson]

It’s such a good color.

[Rebecca Knight]

And this is a cute thing. I appreciate this. And especially… Yeah, because the company branding is not so in your face. It’s just… So, I like this. I think I would use this.

[John Furrier]

I love the 404 throwback to the URL not found.

[Rebecca Knight]

Right. That’s all I could use.

[John Furrier]

Generational throwback. And it’s got the letters AFN, which is very modern slang. For sure.

[Mickey]

Gen Z. Gen Z. You’re so hip, John.

[John Furrier]

It bridges both cultures.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yeah.

[John Furrier]

Oh, my God. Yes. Yeah.

[Rebecca Knight]

Yeah, it does.

[Savannah Peterson]

Would you say that’s your fave then?

[Rebecca Knight]

I think it’s my fave. I think so. But I’m with these guys. This is… I have never seen this before.

[Savannah Peterson]

I know.

[Rebecca Knight]

So, there you go.

[Savannah Peterson]

Savannah’s Favorite Swag

It’s such a nice touch. I think I’ll actually use quite a bit of this stuff, which makes me feel good about the fact that it’s not all going to go into the landfill. And I’m definitely going to cherish this Alkyra Yeti.

[John Furrier]

The Yeti mug is… That’s a high-quality winner.

[00:16:00]

That’s the high quality.

[Savannah Peterson]

This is the quality.

[John Furrier]

That ain’t cheap.

[Savannah Peterson]

That ain’t cheap. No, this is not cheap. And it’s thoughtful. And you know what people aren’t going to do? Throw it out.

[Rob Stretchay]

No.

[Savannah Peterson]

Right. You would give it to someone, even if you had one already yourself. Yeah. Super high quality. I mean, really high quality. From books to custom beanies to…

[John Furrier]

It’s the most versatile format, too. Car coffee holder.

[Savannah Peterson]

I do like that it was in that format. I noticed that, too. I saw some wine, you know, kind of the tumbler style. And this one is just… It’s good. It’s very succinct.

[John Furrier]

I think my favorite is the aroma thing because it’s got the generative theme to it. It generates something.

[Rebecca Knight]

Ooh, I hadn’t thought of that.

[John Furrier]

Wow. That’s deep.

[Rebecca Knight]

Exactly. It’s the next level.

[John Furrier]

It’s deep tech.

[Rebecca Knight]

It smells really nice.

[John Furrier]

It’s kind of like what we did. Deep tech. Very.

[Savannah Peterson]

Deep thoughts. It’s actually kind of…

[John Furrier]

It’s energizing.

[Savannah Peterson]

I think it’s meant to be invigorating.

[John Furrier]

Yeah. It smells. It smells like I need a massage.

[Savannah Peterson]

I know. I think so, too.

[Mickey]

Any spa certificates?

[Rob Stretchay]

I know.

[John Furrier]

That is nice.

[Mickey]

I know.

[John Furrier]

It is nice.

[00:17:00]

It all of a sudden smells a lot better now.

[Rob Stretchay]

Yeah.

[John Furrier]

It’s going to put a little bit on. It’s been a long day at the Cube.

[Savannah Peterson]

You’re going out tonight.

[John Furrier]

Yeah.

[Savannah Peterson]

Oh, well, this was great. Thank you so much for just a fantastic day. It doesn’t feel like work when I hang out with the three of you. It feels like a gift, and all of our guests are so exciting. We’ve got another Power Pack today. Tomorrow, it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. John, Rebecca, Rob, thank you so much for your help today. Thanks for…

[John Furrier]

Great swag segment.

[Savannah Peterson]

Helping decide what our winners are, too. You’re welcome. You did a great job, and I love this color, too.

[John Furrier]

Swag Segment Wrap Up

First of all, thank you for doing this segment, because it’s become quite the thing. Now, they’ve got the savvy gamification.

[Mickey]

Yes.

[John Furrier]

They’re pre-gaming and engineering the win. And so, I’ve got to vote for the savvy logo. I mean, the bag is pretty… The bag has got to go back to the original.

[Savannah Peterson]

I know. I mean, this will also get some use with me, for sure.

[John Furrier]

All the marketing people watching us now, we’ve got to win next time. So, what is the criteria, if you had to say now to people, if you want to win the swag award here, the savvy swag, what is the criteria?

[00:18:07]

Criteria for Winning Swag

Is it a black box, or do you have some special formula?

[Savannah Peterson]

I appreciate… Okay, so the way that I think about it is, was it thoughtful? I mean, just period. Because if you just slapped your logo on a shirt, that’s not thoughtful. So, are we thinking about swag? Are you thinking about how… Brand is everything that people say about your company when you’re not in the room. So, I think it’s incredibly critical. So, I’m thinking about if you thought about it. I’m thinking about if it’s local in any way. That’s a huge player for me. I loved when we were in Detroit, they used a lot of local vendors to upcycle wool shirts in jacuzzis. And they had picked artists from there to do custom shirts for people. And there were a lot of things there that really activated the local economy rather than just having things shipped from Shenzhen with your logo strapped on there.

[John Furrier]

And boy, if it’s a shirt, it has to be comfortable. I mean, it won’t even be considered. If you’re walking and the logo sticks to your chest, come on, not happening.

[Savannah Peterson]

No, I totally… John, that’s a really good point. And so, the other category that I really think about is utility.

[00:19:01]

Is this just a novelty? We’ve had some fun desk toys and things on the show before that are interesting to look at. But am I really going to touch that in six months or even a week? Probably not. I think that having function and being able to use it again and again. And then, I also think the last factor I think of is how many brand impressions am I going to get from this swag if I’m using it? Is it something that’s going to sit in the closet or sit on a shelf? Or is it going to be my mug that’s in my car every time I drive to our studio in Palo Alto? But there is that X factor. Is it fun? Is it funny? Is it beady energy? Is it this? Is it… Right. Oh, yeah. And is it catchy? I mean, did it make me feel something? Smile, laugh?

[Rebecca Knight]

Do I think you’re clever? Right, exactly.

[Savannah Peterson]

And it tells you a little bit about the culture within an organization, how they treat their swag and what their attitude is. And it’s really fun to see their eyes light up when they realize that we’re going to feature it on the show. So, I really appreciate getting to do this segment with the three of you.

[Rebecca Knight]

It’s really cool.

[Savannah Peterson]

It’s a nice touch.

Day 2 Wrap Up

I think that’s a wrap for day two. It’s been absolutely brilliant. I think we’re going to enjoy the show that Google’s putting on.

[00:20:00]

We got Kings and Leon. We got DJs going on tonight. It’s going to be absolutely fantastic.

Thank You

Before we do anything else, I need to say a very special thank you to Andrew, Anderson, Jay, and Noah, who are holding down the fort on the production side. Also to Don, who’s rocking it. He’s selling something right now over there.

[Mickey]

I can tell.

[Savannah Peterson]

Wheeling and dealing.

[John Furrier]

I don’t think he’s selling it. He’s listening. Yeah.

[Savannah Peterson]

He’s going to be listening to the replay of this broadcast now now that we were all chatting about it. Up here’s a present, Don. And thank all of you for tuning in to day two of our coverage here at Google Cloud Next in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Closing Remarks

My name’s Savannah Peterson. You’re watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech coverage.