This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Las Vegas. Michael has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of process improvement, technology, and innovation. In this episode, Michael explains how Las Vegas will continue to be a leader of municipalities as a destination not just for entertainment but also for business and progress.
This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Las Vegas. Michael has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of process improvement, technology, and innovation. He is extremely passionate about technology and believes that more sustainable communicates can be built through innovation, workforce development, and collaboration.
In this episode, Michael explains how the city of Las Vegas is helping the community to be more efficient by providing new opportunities through innovation. The city is using technology to improve public safety, healthcare, transportation, education, and economic development. Michael discusses that by increasing connectivity and access for all communities, setting up innovation centers, and improving the city’s technological infrastructure, Las Vegas will continue to be a leader of municipalities as a destination not just for entertainment but also for business and progress.
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"One of the great things about doing all these innovation projects is that we get to meet a lot of great companies. They get to come to Las Vegas and see Las Vegas not just as a place for entertainment and hospitality, but they get to see as a great place for possibly relocating and doing business in the city of Las Vegas."
"Las Vegas is innovative in nature. We always think of innovative and entertainment, entertainment and hospitality. But, Las Vegas is also becoming very innovative on the technology side and really working towards diversifying its economy and attracting these new types of technologies. And, so from everything from underground to above ground, you know, you're gonna see those things here. And, it really is a testament to the community of people that live here as well as the people that are in charge."
"For us it's all about creating those new opportunities, creating those collisions that between our community and business, that hopefully leads to some really great things in the future."
"Las Vegas recognizes that education is extremely important and we want to build on that. And so from a technology perspective, obviously while we're not the school district, we support them in their needs. But, if there's things we're doing in the innovation space that can help students, that's what we're doing."
"To have intelligence in our roadways and in our communities, the grid really is where it's gonna happen. And, it's going to be game changing for communities."
"The cloud is never going anywhere. It's just another puzzle piece that provides more capability than we've had before. The cloud opened the doors several years ago. This next door that's opening is really starting to get us to the point of people starting to think about the Jetsons and start thinking about the Matrix and the technology that you see in those movies, and in some of that you start seeing the underpinnings of some of that now is actually possible."
"The capabilities of the future are going to be content or data driven where you're pushing data out into the community itself. Most businesses already have good internet connectivity. So, the next part of it is how do you marry that all together."
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(02:10) History of Las Vegas
(05:00) What it’s like to be the Chief Innovation Officer and CTO
(07:00) Evaluating Technologies for Cities
(09:00) Promoting Public Safety
(10:00) Health Initiatives in Las Vegas
(13:30) Vision for Las Vegas LTE Network
(18:15) Transportation Trends
(22:00) Making it Easier for Technology in Las Vegas
(24:30) Economic Development and Jobs
(27:45) Education Initiatives
(33:15) Solidifying Sustainability
(35:30) Bringing New Grid Technologies
(40:30) Enticing People to come to Las Vegas
(46:30) Importance of Connectivity
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Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Connect with Michael on LinkedIn
[00:00:00] Narrator 1: Hello and welcome to Over the Edge.
This episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Las Vegas. Michael has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of process improvement, technology, and innovation. He is extremely passionate about technology and believes that more sustainable communicaites can be built through innovation, workforce development, and collaboration.
In this episode, Michael explains how the city of Las Vegas is helping the community to be more efficient by providing new opportunities through innovation. The city is using technology to improve public safety, healthcare, transportation, education, and economic development. Michael discusses that by increasing connectivity and access for all communities, setting up innovation centers, and improving the city’s technological infrastructure, Las Vegas will continue to be a leader of municipalities as a destination not just for entertainment but also for business and progress.
But before we get into it, here’s a brief word from our sponsors…
[00:01:11] Narrator 2: Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting Dell.com for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
[00:01:32] Matt Trifiro: Two years ago when I started the Over the Edge podcast, it was all about edge computing. That's all anybody could talk about. But since then I've realized the edge is part of a much larger red.
Pollution. [00:01:40] That's why I'm pretty proud to be one of the founding leaders of a non-profit organization called the Open Grid Alliance for oga. The OGA is all about incorporating the best of edge technologies across the entire spectrum of connectivity. From the centralized data center to the end use devices, the open grid will span the globe and it will prove performance and economics of new services like private, 5G and smart retail.
If you want to be part of the open grid movement, I suggest you start@opengridalliance.org where you can download the original open grid manifesto and learn about the organization's recent projects and activities, including the launch of its first innovation zone in Las Vegas, Nevada.
[00:02:16] Narrator 1: And now, please enjoy this interview between Matt Trifiro and Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Las Vegas.
[00:02:24] Matt Trifiro: Hey, Michael.
[00:02:24] Matt Trifiro: How you doing today?
[00:02:26] Michael Sherwood: I'm doing fantastic, Matt. It's a great day. It's always a good day in Las Vegas though.
[00:02:30] Matt Trifiro: So you're,
[00:02:30] Matt Trifiro: you're talking to me
[00:02:31] Matt Trifiro: from your office?
[00:02:32] Michael Sherwood: I'm in my office in downtown Las Vegas.
[00:02:34] Matt Trifiro: Yeah. Which is a,
[00:02:35] Matt Trifiro: it looks like it's like a cool, It's in the eighties, high eighties, but it's in the eighties today, so it is a nice day in
[00:02:40] Matt Trifiro: Las Vegas.
[00:02:40] Michael Sherwood: It is a beautiful day. It's always a beautiful day. You, There's summer times. It's beautiful indoors.
[00:02:44] Matt Trifiro: It looks like you've spent quite a bit of time in southern California.
[00:02:47] Matt Trifiro: Did you grow.
[00:02:48] Michael Sherwood: I did, I was born and raised in Irvine, California and spent majority of my entire life in California, in Southern California mainly. So it's a transition to come out here. I've been out here for a while, but [00:03:00] I enjoy it. And, you know, I don't miss California too much. Do you like to go back, but what brought you to Las Vegas from California?
[00:03:06] Michael Sherwood: Uh, the job I have today was exciting. I worked for a smaller city and the opportunity to to work in Las Vegas was intriguing to me and exciting. It was something that when I had opportunity came up, I was, Let's do it. I've never been outside of California. Let's try something new. Yeah, that's
[00:03:22] Michael Sherwood: great. When you say a smaller city compared to Las Vegas, how big is the city of Las Vegas?
[00:03:26] Michael Sherwood: A 650,000 population. So it's quite sizeable. 26 largest city in the us so it's, it's pretty sizeable.
[00:03:35] Matt Trifiro: Now. A lot of people probably don't understand that the city of Las Vegas, it's part of the, the Clark County, but it's not the strip. Can you help us understand how the city of Las Vegas relates to the overall Las Vegas geography?
[00:03:49] Michael Sherwood: Yeah, it's, it's something even I had, I did not know when I came out here originally. I thought when I was working for the city, I had ev like everything. So no, we're all part of Incorporated Clark. . [00:04:00] So most of you know the Las Vegas strip, the Leor, the W, those large properties are on the strip, which is part of Clark County.
[00:04:11] Michael Sherwood: The city starts over by the Stratosphere Swift Strip. The stratosphere is where Las Vi, the city proper starts City of Las Vegas, and it runs all the way down to the Fremont. in those areas and then up out to Summerland or Red Rock. A lot of people know about Red Rock area and so it's, it's part of, it's within the county, but the county is the larger section of Southern Nevada.
[00:04:34] Michael Sherwood: You also have other cities that make up the Southern Nevada region as well. Henderson, Yeah. As well as the city of North Las Vegas. But it is a misnomer that the you, when you are at the Leor or at mgm, that you are in Las Vegas. You are in Las Vegas, you're just in the county portion, not the true city portion.
[00:04:53] Michael Sherwood: Yeah. And
[00:04:54] Matt Trifiro: I spent years going to CES and I basically fly into McLaren, which is also in, [00:05:00] in the county. Okay. And you would spend your time on the trip and So I didn't set set foot in, in the city of Las Vegas until probably three years ago. And you mentioned the Fremont district. Is that the area that was sort of created around the energy that Zappos brought to the
[00:05:12] Michael Sherwood: city?
[00:05:13] Michael Sherwood: Yeah, so the, for the Fremont Street has been here for, for many, many years. I'm older, so if you remember the TV show, Vegas Robert Erick, he was driving down, that was Fremont Street. And that entry, but that is where the big canopy is. Now, for some of your, your listeners, it would be the, the large canopy downtown, the golden Nugget, the circa, those make up, the Fremont Street.
[00:05:34] Michael Sherwood: One block over is Zappo, so that's, that's downtown and that's kind of really brought the tech scene and really energized the downtown area, not only with the gaming components, but more of this entrepreneurial spirit and ways to find new businesses for Las Vegas to get. So you
[00:05:53] Matt Trifiro: are the Chief Innovation Officer.
[00:05:55] Matt Trifiro: I always wanna say Chief Information Officer. The chief Innovation Officer of the city of Las Vegas. What, [00:06:00] what is a Chief Innovation Officer?
[00:06:02] Michael Sherwood: So you are correct. I'm the chief innovation, but I'm also the Chief Technology Officer. I kind of wear, so I am the CIO in a, in, in a way as well, wear multiple hats.
[00:06:10] Michael Sherwood: The job, you know, one, it's working in a fabulous city with great leadership and, and the ability to do great things. But really what I do is I do two. One, I run the operational IT for the, the city as itself. So the standard things that a CIO would do on the technology side, running the desktops and, and mobile phones and communications and those type of things.
[00:06:32] Michael Sherwood: And then on the innovation side, we're working on those next generation projects. Those things that are gonna change the community that are going. New opportunity, and that could be anything from in 2017, we had an autonomous vehicle running up and down the street on East Fremont. Over 40,000 people gotta partake in that environment.
[00:06:52] Michael Sherwood: We've done other projects where we're doing vehicle to infrastructure communication, so we have something called autonomous [00:07:00] taxi. Which is currently being operated by, So there are several vendors here in Southern Nevada testing those, but our street symbolized infrastructure actually communicates to those vehicles, tells 'em when the light's gonna change from green to red.
[00:07:13] Michael Sherwood: So we get do things like that. We've also done some things with computer vision monitoring the safety of our parks. So a very wide variety of things that are, we would consider innovative and new, that are really either helping the community with efficiency or providing new opportunities. And one of the great things about doing all these innovation projects is that we get to meet a lot of great companies.
[00:07:34] Michael Sherwood: They get to come to Las Vegas and see Las Vegas, not just as a place for entertainment and hospitality, but they get to see as a great place for possibly relocating their business or just doing business in the city of Las Vegas. Yeah, and
[00:07:48] Matt Trifiro: so when you look at. The kinds of technologies. I mean, there's a, there's a reason to bring technology in general because it helps stimulate entrepreneurialism and job growth and all those sorts of [00:08:00] things.
[00:08:00] Matt Trifiro: But when you look at like bringing specific types of technology to a city, how, how do you evaluate, how do you look at what kinds of technologies you think will have the biggest impact on the city, and what impacts are you hoping to.
[00:08:11] Michael Sherwood: So we generally, we have a template of of areas that we look to try to foster these technologies that are gonna help in these key areas.
[00:08:19] Michael Sherwood: And the key areas are public safety, always on the minds of everyone. We all tend to live where we feel good about our environment. So public safety is one, health
is
[00:08:32] Michael Sherwood: another one. If there's things we can do to help improve the health of our people that are here within our. And we look at tourism. When people think tourism, Well, you're not really, You're talking just about people who live in Vegas.
[00:08:42] Michael Sherwood: No, When you're a tourist, you are living here. So you become a resident. You are maybe a short term resident, but you're still a resident. And every time someone comes here, it's an opportunity to just sell them on. Maybe you wanna live here. And so again, that's why we kind of look at these broad spectrum.
[00:08:58] Michael Sherwood: So public safety, health. [00:09:00] We all know about transportation. Anything we can do to make getting from point A to B, simpler, easier, those type of of opportunities, something that's gonna help with the creation of jobs or economic development. Another area that we see education, a lot of the things we've dived in has been either workforce.
[00:09:18] Michael Sherwood: When we say education, we're not talking just K through 12 or or grade school. We're talking everything. The beginning of school through college, through, you're in your thirties and you wanna retool. So education and then sustainability. What can we do? We live in the desert, with desert Oasis, and so what can we do to conserve electricity?
[00:09:38] Michael Sherwood: Conserve water obviously has been big in the news lately. So any of the technologies and things that we do generally fall into one of those six categories.
[00:09:47] Matt Trifiro: I would love to walk through each of those and get some of your thoughts on that. So the first one you mentioned was public safety. Like what kinds of technologies are you looking to bring to Las Vegas to help with public
[00:09:57] Michael Sherwood: safety?
[00:09:58] Michael Sherwood: You know, it's a lot of people are looking for always [00:10:00] the fancy flash. Big, big things. A lot of times it's, it's just small things that can make a huge difference. But one of the things we've been working on is our smart parks initiative where we're using cameras and lidar. So a lot of times we try to avoid cameras cuz you don't need necessarily that to, to score a good outcome.
[00:10:19] Michael Sherwood: So we use lidar. So if you're in a park after hours when the park is closed, obviously if it's closed, you know, we don't want people in there if it's after hours. And, and so how do we manage that? And so we use lidar that tells us if someone's in the park or not. And that way we can send an officer only when it's necessary, don't have to do random patrols because there's, there's no need.
[00:10:40] Michael Sherwood: No one's there. Then there's no need to send anyone there to check. So we do things like that remote door locking. So again, we can save staff time and put resource. Where we need them. Instead of having an officer go out and lock the bathrooms at the end of a shift, we can do this remote locking and, and put that officer where they're needed.
[00:10:57] Michael Sherwood: Obviously, cameras do play some part of our [00:11:00] security strategy, but we use 'em in an analytical way where we can count the number of people at the park during the day to see if there's things we could do to improve people's using of the facilities and what facilities they do. And then at night we use 'em.
[00:11:13] Michael Sherwood: If you're there with not supposed to be, we have an opportunity to see that and and either send someone out there or maybe you're just walking your dog through and don't know the park's closed and we don't send anybody out. So it gives us some capability, some eyes and ears. We're also using drones.
[00:11:28] Michael Sherwood: Another opportunity to use technology to be able to survey a park at night, looking for trash, looking for graffiti, all types of things. I mean, general. How does a city find out that a park is in need of repair? Well, we get a phone call or we get somebody who's unhappy about the service or about the looks.
[00:11:47] Michael Sherwood: And so, you know, like any business or governmental agency, you want to be proactive. And so using these type of technologies helps us to become proactive, not just in a way of, of trying to prevent crime, but in [00:12:00] a way of making the facilities and the amenities enjoyable by all that want to.
[00:12:05] Matt Trifiro: Yeah, those are, those are great examples.
[00:12:06] Matt Trifiro: How about health? You mentioned health as one of your
[00:12:09] Michael Sherwood: top initiatives. So health is something that we've been trying to do. It's not traditionally something. The government, you know, at a, at a municipal level really dives in hard. But we've been, during a pandemic, we, we found a need of, of just being able to have connectivity.
[00:12:24] Michael Sherwood: We all know about the education connectivity issue where school kids weren't able to connect to their school, they didn't have internet at home. Made it very d. Well, that same issue is some for our senior population as well that don't have connectivity or think of in a senior assisted living facility.
[00:12:43] Michael Sherwood: You know, how do they see a doctor? Well, they have to go in these little shuttle buses, which adds to traffic, get down to the hospital. And so we thought, what if we had a private network that was able to provide connectivity in a secure platform? That would allow them to connect of one, it would less buses and [00:13:00] less traffic on the road.
[00:13:01] Michael Sherwood: And if we could help in spurring some telemedicine options. So our, our options in there are working with different facilities and being able to provide remote connectivity so we can do some telemedicine, which we thought was, was something that we could provide. We were also looking. Using our private wireless network to be able to provide people that necessarily don't have a home right now that have been displaced or need medical attention, an ability to do maybe a call in or a, a FaceTime type medical appointment, and we would provide the, the data, the, when you think about it, think of it as a cell phone.
[00:13:37] Michael Sherwood: We'd provide the connectivity to allow them to connect to the hospital or to a doctor that is able to treat them or see them. So it's still something that we're, it's. It's in its infancy, but we have the network and we have the, It's more about now how do we, how do we make it all work and functionless, and how do we get all the different players lined up?
[00:13:58] Michael Sherwood: But there's a lot of opportunity [00:14:00] there to not only. Reduce traffic flow, but improve the outcomes of those that live here. Yeah. And
[00:14:06] Matt Trifiro: I, I remember reading about your, the private LTE network that you had installed in some remarkable amount, like short amount of time, like 45 days. And I imagine that was, that was driven a lot by the, the sort of, you know, the digital divide issue with the school children needing to, to be able to access the curriculum while they're at home.
[00:14:25] Matt Trifiro: How did that network come about and what are your, what's your vision for where you take.
[00:14:30] Michael Sherwood: So it did come about, So during the pandemic, there was a challenge. There was a large percentage of individuals that did not have access, and these are school-aged children, first grade up and through sixth, seventh, and eighth.
[00:14:42] Michael Sherwood: So high school as well that did not have access to the internet at home. and a lot of people were like, Well, they just walk over to a McDonald's or go to a Starbucks or go to the library. Well, one of the problems is the library closes and it's not open on Sunday. So how are these individuals going to [00:15:00] be productive members and be able to learn and grow with the community?
[00:15:04] Michael Sherwood: And so we were looking at different options and we had a very short timeframe and, and luckily our state partners at the state of Nevada, we proposed an idea that, hey, we could put up a cellular. They're like, Okay, well if you think you can do it, you have about 45 days to get it done and we'll help you fund it.
[00:15:22] Michael Sherwood: And so we said, Sure. We, it's all about understanding risk and, and understanding the benefit to the community and what was at stake. And so we put this network together. But what we really did that was kind of amazing and not only way we were able to do it in 45 days, is we used existing city infrastructure and.
[00:15:41] Michael Sherwood: So we put our transmission sites at fire stations, at community centers, and which happened to work perfectly. Fire stations are spaced out for convenience so that the firefighters can get to your home, so our community centers. And so we were able to put this network together, this cellular network, and able to put it [00:16:00] together in 45 days and actually had students up and running within that.
[00:16:05] Michael Sherwood: That's amazing. And it, it, it was great. I mean, yeah, I mean the speeds were not a gig, you know, we're talking, they were, uh, they'd be anywhere between 50 to 25 megs, but for, to accomplish doing Google
[00:16:17] Matt Trifiro: Doc or, you know, whatever. Yeah, that's fine.
[00:16:19] Michael Sherwood: Yes. For school. And the great thing is, is that we, the city weren't really providing internet.
[00:16:25] Michael Sherwood: What we were doing is we were providing a bridge. I call it a handshake. The student would have a modem in their. that modem would write on our private cellular network based on what school they went to. We would then switch. From our network to the school district. Wow. So they would be getting whatever they got in their classroom.
[00:16:45] Michael Sherwood: So if your classroom didn't have internet and you just had Google Docs or Google accessories, that's all you would get. So you got Exactly. So the same
[00:16:51] Matt Trifiro: controls that the teachers and the administrators have at the school, that's really clever.
[00:16:55] Michael Sherwood: Seamless. It's, it was seamless and so it was a great start.
[00:16:58] Michael Sherwood: You know where we've gone. We, we've [00:17:00] kind of learned from that and, and we're growing it. We made an announcement last week at, uh, convention here, Mobile World Congress, where we're gonna expand that network out. There's a huge opportunity for college students as well. So you'd be able to pass right through into our local colleges, community college and or university.
[00:17:18] Michael Sherwood: And we're working on some other ways that if you're a student from out of. But your school participates in this school-wide sharing network. We'll be able to connect you to that as well. So a lot of that is just to be able to help the community. It's not a replacement, we're not providing internet service per se, but it's a way to really connect those that need the connectivity to school.
[00:17:40] Michael Sherwood: And for some they like it because they can separate. They don't have a lot of bandwidth at home. They might have four or five people, so, and they pay for internet, but this lets their children be on. Well, they don't have to worry about them. They know it's on the school's network. And so it's safe while they use their other network for streaming TVs.
[00:17:58] Michael Sherwood: Cause you can't, you know, one of the [00:18:00] issues we have when we first launched this network is people were trying to hook up their TV's next boxes to it, . And they didn't work cause they didn't understand the whole, what the network was really doing. They just heard it's providing internet. So, but it's a great educational resource.
[00:18:13] Michael Sherwood: Like we said, we're expanding it and we see a lot of value in doing that Long. . You know, I think we'll find a way to have the private community, the private side of business, kind of fill in those gaps for us. But for now, we also use that same platform. We're very lucky is that once you have your own cellular network, you're able to add air quality sensors that we don't have to, You know, there's no recurring monthly fee.
[00:18:35] Michael Sherwood: Like with a major carrier, you pay every month. I mean, all of us, I have a cell phone. No, we pay every month. So when you operate your own network, obviously your fees, there are monthly fees you pay, but nowhere near what we would. if we went with a commercial carrier. So, and they're becoming more popular. I mean, they're really, we kind of started something for something special as far as municipal governments.
[00:18:55] Michael Sherwood: Now many are, are moving down this pathway.
[00:18:58] Matt Trifiro: Yeah. That's amazing. [00:19:00] So one of the other things you talked about was transportation. And earlier in, in the conversation you mentioned the autonomous car, the self-driving taxis, the coordinated street lights. Like what, what else is, is going on?
[00:19:12] Michael Sherwood: Look, we wanna be a leader.
[00:19:13] Michael Sherwood: It's the future. And those cities and those municipalities that work on figuring out what is gonna be demanded or needed in the future, I think have a better opportunity. So, It's more of, uh, making that push into these, into these areas. I mean, drones are coming on fast. I mean, I know we see a lot of paper, newspaper articles or internet articles about drones, but they're here now.
[00:19:36] Michael Sherwood: They're testing. And so we're looking forward to working with some of those companies and. And coming up with rules. And do you mean like the air taxis
[00:19:44] Matt Trifiro: or like a drone for surveillance? Do you mean literally the, the ones that carry people in
[00:19:48] Michael Sherwood: packages? I'm talking people in packages and food . Obviously I haven't missed too many meals.
[00:19:53] Michael Sherwood: Your viewers can't see me. But you know, food delivery is something I think we'll see in the next two to three years and limited in starting to roll out unlimited [00:20:00] areas. A lot of that is. How do you manage that? You know, it's easy. We all know how to manage the roadways. We've been doing it for years. Red lights, traffic signals.
[00:20:08] Michael Sherwood: Now we're talking George Jet, you know, you're talking floating vehicles, drones, moving and delivering. How do we ensure that we have a system where they're not running into each other and, and how are they gonna operate and how are they gonna operate in a neighborhood? Lots of challenges with all of that, but I, I, I do see that.
[00:20:25] Michael Sherwood: I also see small autonomous vehicles delivering food medicine. We're talking smaller, like a, a very, I think you've probably seen, there's a couple companies that make 'em, You might have seen them. They look little ice coolers. They
[00:20:38] Matt Trifiro: kind of roam, roam on the, the sidewalk and
[00:20:40] Michael Sherwood: Yeah. Yes. Kind of roam on the sidewalk, looking like a cooler with four wheels on 'em.
[00:20:44] Michael Sherwood: They're, they're, they're ranged in sizes. We've been testing some of those as well. All of those systems need connectivity. They need guidance systems. They need to understand roadway, they need to understand sidewalks and all types of. We're working on that. [00:21:00] We've been working with some private companies as well.
[00:21:02] Michael Sherwood: E charging stations is becoming a bigger need for where they're placed and how people know that they're there. We're all very familiar with gas stations today. I mean, big signs on the roadways you drive by. But a lot of the EV stations, obviously Tesla has it pretty nailed down pretty well for their customer base, but you have all of the other auto makers, which really don't have that same infrastructure, and so how are they gonna find charging stations?
[00:21:26] Michael Sherwood: So we're working with some ideas on technology around that. , you know, transportation. There's, there's just a, um, we're getting ready to launch, I believe next year, an autonomous shuttle in our medical district, which is one of the largest hospitals in the us I think it's eighth largest university medical center.
[00:21:42] Michael Sherwood: And so it's, we're gonna have a shuttle moving you around between the campus and some of the, the preliminary, uh, offices. So again, transportation and, and the technologies, again, the things that get me excited are the fun things. The air taxi. I'm not sure when we'll see those. We've seen them at ces. If you haven't been to ces, they're [00:22:00] always at ces.
[00:22:00] Michael Sherwood: Have you, have you ridden in one
[00:22:01] Matt Trifiro: yet? When do you get to ride
[00:22:02] Michael Sherwood: in one? I don't know. I've sat in one, but I haven't been able to get anybody to, to give me a ride in one. They, they look ama, If you can just picture it, think of those large drones as the small drones you've seen with. That's what they look like.
[00:22:17] Michael Sherwood: And little except there's a little bubble where you sit in. Some of 'em are, are one seater. I've sat in a, in a four seater. I felt pretty comfortable inside. It's Barry, George Jetson. That is really fun. Barry, George Jetson. But you know, it's coming. It's coming and, and I think, you know, we'll see vertical takeoff and landing area starting to be talked about.
[00:22:36] Michael Sherwood: Um, I'm not sure when they're gonna be permitted, but I'm looking forward to the day where I. You know, fly into Las Vegas and hop on a air taxi and get dropped off right at the hotel. Be very interesting. Now,
[00:22:47] Matt Trifiro: now all these things that you, you, you're attracted to your city and bringing to your city. When I think of, of bringing new things to a city, I think of red tape, I think of like the line at the permit office and all these things.
[00:22:59] Matt Trifiro: And I imagine that [00:23:00] you've done some things that, that make it Las Vegas more attractive because there's lots of cities that do aren't anywhere near the level of innovation you have. What, how do you, how do you approach that and how, what kinds of things are you doing to make it easier for companies to bring technology to
[00:23:13] Michael Sherwood: las.
[00:23:14] Michael Sherwood: I just think it's really in Nevada's, in Las Vegas's dna. I mean, look, we have, Elon Musk has the boring company, so we've already have it. It's up in operational that's in Clark County under the convention center. But you can now go from all the different convention halls on a inside a tunnel underneath Las Vegas and a Tesla, and actually now, I think in the last three weeks, Now we have resorts.
[00:23:37] Michael Sherwood: World is hooked up to it as well, and you're talking, going from there to the win and then coming downtown and eventually going to the they. They predict that by the Super Bowl, which is not this year for Las Vegas, but the following year in 2024. We're gonna have a complete shuttle system where you'll be able to go underground and, and a lot of that's just, I think it's the Vegas, you know, how many [00:24:00] places in the world have a volcano that they've constructed, you know, downtown, you know, on, on property or, or done some of the things that we do here.
[00:24:08] Michael Sherwood: I mean, we did test autonomous vehicles first, I think, I really think it's, it's Las Vegas is innovative in nature. We always think of innovative and entertainment, entertainment, hospitality. But Las Vegas is also becoming very innovative on the technology side and really working towards diversifying its economy and attracting these new types of, of technologies.
[00:24:29] Michael Sherwood: And so from everything from underground to above ground, you're gonna see those things here and it really is a testament to. The community of people that live here as well as the, the people that are in, in, in charge. But as you said, you know, these things, there's a lot of moving parts and, and I won't call it red tape, but there's a lot of policies and procedures that have to go through, but we're able to negotiate those here when we need to.
[00:24:52] Matt Trifiro: Yeah, that's, that's really great. And it's like, like that gets liked when you think of like what's made Silicon Valley. What it is, it's been [00:25:00] a combination of these entrepreneurs, the venture capitals that fuel it, the schools that, that produce the, the, the scientists and engineers that can do all these new technologies.
[00:25:09] Matt Trifiro: And you get this, this flywheel going and it seems like you're starting to get a flywheel going in Las Vegas now. You mentioned economic development and jobs. So how, how are you, how does that all fit into this, this technology paradigm of.
[00:25:23] Michael Sherwood: Sure. So, I mean, one of the things we noticed several years ago was we have the best and brightest every year coming to ces.
[00:25:31] Michael Sherwood: They come here for a week and they take all that knowledge and excitement with them, and it leaves.
[00:25:37] Matt Trifiro: I, I thought, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas?
[00:25:40] Michael Sherwood: Well, I'd like it to, I'd like the technology thing to stay. Um, and what we thought about was, Hey, these companies come here every. and pitch their products and people from around the world come to see 'em.
[00:25:51] Michael Sherwood: Why aren't we talking to 'em about setting up innovation centers here and, and showing their, their technologies all year around? And [00:26:00] that would help us kind of build. We're not, we're not gonna be Silicon Valley overnight, you know? We'll, never, There's only one Silicon Valley. I know every city talks about being one, but you know, we want to diversify and how do we make ourselves more attractive?
[00:26:12] Michael Sherwood: And it started with really that, that real simple idea. See, everybody loves coming here for ces. Not only that, we have more technology conventions. Amazon's here. Microsoft's here. Cisco comes here. Um, we just had CrowdStrike, Falcon Con was just, yeah, Mobile World Congress. Mobile World Congress was last week.
[00:26:31] Michael Sherwood: So, you know, why would we not have these companies doing more? And the, the vision is setting up innovation centers, which they're doing a lot of 'em. We have like five or six different companies now with innovation centers here. And the next step will be is why don't you use some of our area? We have an innovation district in downtown Las Vegas, which is set up for, what is that?
[00:26:49] Matt Trifiro: What is an
[00:26:49] Michael Sherwood: innovation district? So the innovation district allows us to test out new technology, cut some of the red tape, as you mentioned earlier, where we're able to help these companies and expedite them to come in [00:27:00] and test some of their newest technology. That could be anywhere from a autonomous vehicle, could be a digital sign, could be a one camera, even a camera, you know, anything that's kind of innovative and new.
[00:27:10] Michael Sherwood: or something. That's not what we don't have in our portfolio. We allow these companies to come in and test it, and when we allow them to test it, we allow them to leave it up and bring customers in to see it. And for us, it allows this innovation district, it allows us to be like a, a showcase all year around.
[00:27:26] Michael Sherwood: And these companies love it. These companies love it. They love to come here and, and put their technology. And then they get to show it to all their customers and, and they, they don't seem to have a hard time getting their customers to want to come here for a day or two. And so it works out for us. We get to see the technology, We get to work with these companies very closely when these are all large and small companies, and we get to work with them and then we get to help them hopefully grow their business and we get the benefit of having those jobs.
[00:27:54] Michael Sherwood: So, and we've had companies from Israel, from Australia, Japan, all of them [00:28:00] come out here and establish projects and some have had great success. Others, you know, we went to go back and rework a little bit. But again, for us it's, you know, it's all about creating those new opportunities, creating those collisions that between our community and business, that hopefully leads to some really great things in the.
[00:28:19] Michael Sherwood: Yeah. That's,
[00:28:20] Matt Trifiro: that's exciting. It's a great way to stimulate in innovation. So you also mentioned education as being one of the pillars of, of how you view your role. Tell me about that, how that fits into
[00:28:31] Michael Sherwood: the picture. Well, I mean, I'm gonna go back to even what you said. Look, Silicon Valley has some great things that make it very special.
[00:28:37] Michael Sherwood: One thing is they have. that great flywheel, but they have that process of, they have great schools in that area that that churn out great talent. I know a lot of my friends, they trade jobs, but they all stay within Silicon Valley. They're moving around to different companies, but they keep all that talent local.
[00:28:52] Michael Sherwood: They develop it there, they keep it local, and it get becomes more educated and trained as they go from employer to employer. They're learning new things, they're [00:29:00] expanding. So we want to kind of, you know, what do we need to do? And obviously Las Vegas recognizes that education is extremely, I. And we want to build on that.
[00:29:09] Michael Sherwood: And so from a technology perspective, you know, obviously we, we're not the school district. We support them in in their needs. But if there's things we're doing in the innovation space that can help students, that's what we're doing. We're coming up right now, we're getting ready to launch a 3D maker center.
[00:29:23] Michael Sherwood: So for your audience, what is a 3D maker center? Well, one of the things is we all know small business makes up the majority of business across the United States. Yeah. So how do companies prototype how, if they want to build something, where do they go to prototype? Either they have to go buy an expensive 3D printer on their own, try to figure out how to use it, or go to some other company to create a prototype.
[00:29:44] Michael Sherwood: But what we've done is we've created a maker center where we have these tools available, where we provide training and and education. So you have that great idea to make a new product. You come on down, you work with our people, we help you 3D print a model of it that helps you go [00:30:00] get your venture funding or helps you sell your idea and concept.
[00:30:03] Michael Sherwood: Maybe find an investor and that keeps those people here. So we're trying to make this support system that supports from an education standpoint, not just the, the, the general grade school, but providing services around that, that support business, that help people also transition. If you think of Las Vegas, you can easily see when you're here, how many jobs are.
[00:30:26] Michael Sherwood: Jobs and how many of those jobs in the future might be disrupted? Yeah. During the pandemic you used to go to a front desk to check into a hotel, so you needed a lot of people at the front desk. I've been all over and I mean, you know, there's several hotel chains now that you get your, your room key on your phone.
[00:30:41] Michael Sherwood: You don't even need to check into the front desk anymore. So what are we doing to help our community prepare for that? And some of that is coming up with these new education things to help be prepared. Maybe it's becoming a robot service technician. Maybe it's going to be, you know, some other technology based skill.
[00:30:58] Michael Sherwood: But if we don't provide [00:31:00] the, the ground funding and, and some of the opportunities for that, we'll lose these people that will go, they'll leave our city and go to another city that, that has opportunity for them. So really it's how do we help entre. Provide them tools and services and educate them. You know, Las Vegas is one of the malware capitals of the world.
[00:31:18] Michael Sherwood: This is where what comes here stays here. You know, people from all over the world bring their laptops and they bring their viruses and everything else with them. So part of that education process is also teaching our community about cybersecurity awareness. We do so much to teach people about crime in general, but we don't give 'em enough knowledge to arm them.
[00:31:36] Michael Sherwood: And what they're mo they're probably spending 50% of their day on, which is their mobile. And so what are we doing? So when we talk about education, it's not just school education and our wireless networks and things like that. It's also grassroots efforts and, and working with the community on being cyber aware.
[00:31:52] Michael Sherwood: People lose money every day to phone scams, email scams, and that that hurts business. It hurts the economy. So, I'm giving you a lot of [00:32:00] information here, man. Did you just, did you
[00:32:01] Matt Trifiro: just claim that Las Vegas is the malware capital of the world?
[00:32:04] Michael Sherwood: We're up. We're in the top. We're in the top. How's
[00:32:06] Matt Trifiro: that measured?
[00:32:06] Matt Trifiro: Like what is it? What is a malware, ma? Yeah. What is the list of malware? I
[00:32:09] Michael Sherwood: have to go. I'm gonna have to go pull. If you Google search it, you will find it. They did not do one during the pandemic, so maybe we're lower on the list now. But every, if you Google search malware, Las Vegas is, I think in the top five, definitely in top 10.
[00:32:24] Michael Sherwood: And it's a combination, I think, of reported incidences and, and a bunch of data that they acquire from some of these, we'll call 'em, you know, security companies in general. So, you know, I do need to go figure out where that all the data comes from , but the point of the matter. Is that we do, because we have such a, a, a large amount of people coming in and out of the community, you know, cyber security in general, especially the fishing scams.
[00:32:49] Michael Sherwood: We're more concerned about how do we educate our small businesses? Cause that could, that could break a business. You could have a great business, good small business going and get caught up in sending $50,000 to you [00:33:00] think is a tax liability or payroll. And you're scammed outta that money. And, and there's really no way very hard to get help to fix those things.
[00:33:07] Michael Sherwood: So if we can educate our businesses, we wanna work on that as well as the community. And it's just providing more ways to get people involved in, in providing new opportunity. Because this, this is a fact. The service industries that we all know throughout the US are gonna be disrupted with technology.
[00:33:25] Michael Sherwood: I've seen robot waders in almost every town I've been to. Since the pandemic hotels are everywhere in front desk staff, less of them as you start doing keyless entry on your phone, and so parking meters are all electronic now. There's no person. And so there's, there's a lot of these technologies are gonna disrupt.
[00:33:44] Michael Sherwood: And so how do we prepare and how do we provide new pathways for learning? Yeah.
[00:33:48] Matt Trifiro: That's great. And then, and then the last thing you mentioned was sustainability, which I imagine applies at many different levels. Water probably being a very important one, being in the desert. But tell me, tell me a little bit about how you think [00:34:00] about sustainability and how technology is going to hook
[00:34:03] Michael Sherwood: into that.
[00:34:04] Michael Sherwood: Sure. Uh, you know, a lot of what we're doing right now is sustainability is just putting out, we have air quality sensors, We have other sensors where we're starting to build a benchmark. We're also doing that on, you know, how can we provide shade. I mean, some of the sustainability is just planting. Hmm, that's not in my purview.
[00:34:18] Michael Sherwood: But, uh, from a city perspective, planting trees, trying to, to remove that, what we call asphalt surface, that attracts the heat all day and then lets it off all night, keeps the ground warm. So things that we can do to help in that regard. We talked earlier about how do we lower traffic congestion, remote medicine, telemedicine, providing connectivity so students don't have to drive to school every day if there's no, if they seem to use library resources, use the.
[00:34:44] Michael Sherwood: Keep vehicles off the road, whether it's an Uber or your own car or or a bus. Try to lower traffic. The more cars we can keep off, the things you can do without being there. Obviously it makes our roadways more attractive. Less time on the road leads to less greenhouse and [00:35:00] carbon emissions throughout the community.
[00:35:02] Michael Sherwood: You nailed it on water. You know, there's a lot of things we can do in water conservation. Part of that is just knowing when our sprinklers are on or off. We all have timers at home. Those are great, but now with the connection of internet and those type, we can monitor that and we can have sensors in the ground that tell us if we don't need the water, if it needs fertilizer, wind.
[00:35:22] Michael Sherwood: So there's a lot more data now. Everything's about data. Everything we've talked about today, there's a data component around it, and it's really using these systems to capture the data. Understand it and then try to adjust or, or provide solutions that help or meet the need of the community. But look, sustainability, we live in the desert.
[00:35:44] Michael Sherwood: It's not natural to have all this development and and growth here. And so whatever we can do from removing real turf and putting in artificial grass, but just using technology to help us manage our. Is a huge advancement and opportunity for us, and I think, you know, over [00:36:00] the next two to three years we'll be able to drop our water usage substantially just by using technology.
[00:36:05] Michael Sherwood: One of the ways
[00:36:05] Matt Trifiro: that you and I have gotten to know each other was through the other hat I wear, which is as a part of the Open Grid Alliance, which is a non-profit organization, and we recently did a partnership with the, the city of Las Vegas and the innovation zone. Can you help my audience understand why bringing these new grid technologies to a city like Las Vegas is, is important?
[00:36:25] Michael Sherwood: I mean, it's the future mad. I mean, come on, it's going to be, So all the great things we talked about all rely on, on connectivity and speed of processing information and getting information to where it needs to be. And in a traditional sense, the cloud is great. I'm not knocking the cloud. It, it is a lot of potential and it's over the last, you know, seven to 10 years, it, it, it is been a huge advance.
[00:36:50] Michael Sherwood: But it would be foolish for all of us to think that's where it stops. A lot of these systems that need, the drones that are flying, the autonomous vehicles are gonna need that, what's called we call edge [00:37:00] compute, right? Or that capability of having compute on the edge. And I like to call it like I see it and, and I really see compute being spread amongst a grid almost as, as, as you see, you think about a, a lined grid piece of paper where you're gonna need compute everywhere.
[00:37:16] Michael Sherwood: You're gonna do some on your mobile. But you're gonna need to offload some of these calculations and some of the things you're gonna need, you're gonna need to offload it and going to the cloud just isn't gonna work. So you're gonna have these, I call 'em nodes, but edge devices where they're going to be almost like in the old days with copper, you'd have, you know, I'll see these little pedestals all over.
[00:37:37] Michael Sherwood: Where all the lines in your neighborhood would come together, whether it be for telephone or for cable. You're gonna have kind of this same connection, but it's gonna be a computing center. It's gonna have capabilities to process. In the old days, nothing was processed. It was just passed down the line.
[00:37:54] Michael Sherwood: What we're looking at now is being able, and it really provides a whole new opportu. For new [00:38:00] business, for new ideas to really work for drone delivery, to really to take shape for autonomous vehicles, to really work, to have intelligence in our roadways and in our communities. The grid really is, is where it's gonna happen and, and it's going to be game changing for communities.
[00:38:19] Michael Sherwood: I mean, I've gotten a ton since we've made the announcement a ton of inquiries about everything from medicine. To gaming, to law enforcement, Everybody can start understanding, especially in the tech world, can start understanding what that means by having a really decentralized platform where I can store even city services not far away in the cloud, but in this kind of fog or edge or node compute structure where I'm able to do things and then re.
[00:38:50] Michael Sherwood: Wherever I might need to. So, you know, there's a lot of, just a lot of capabilities there that I think we're only beginning to really understand and really know where it's gonna go. I, I just [00:39:00] see from a connectivity perspective, to a content perspective, to changing our daily lives. This is, this next three to four years with this type of computing being rolled out is gonna be ground.
[00:39:12] Michael Sherwood: It's interesting you compare
[00:39:13] Matt Trifiro: it to the cloud, but actually the cloud is part of the grid. It needs to evolve. It needs to not just exist in these large centralized data centers. It needs to become part of this distributed fabric. But the cloud, certainly the cloud providers, the Amazons, and Microsofts and Googles, the world understand that.
[00:39:27] Matt Trifiro: And it's gonna be a really interesting world. You know, it's almost like every fiber intersection point's gonna have a little data center on. And it's going to provide services to your neighborhood or that neighborhood, and that's a very different world than we've lived before. You're right. We think of those little telephone switching boxes that are everywhere.
[00:39:41] Matt Trifiro: Yes. And now they're gonna be
[00:39:42] Michael Sherwood: little data centers, data centers. Yeah. That's why sometimes I call it fog computing, but I don't think that gives it a good representation either. The cloud kind of stretching out. But I do try to make the connotation, The cloud's never going anywhere. It's, this is just another puzzle piece that provides more capability than we've had.[00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Michael Sherwood: And I think it really opens, like the cloud opened the doors, you know, several years ago. This next door that's opening's really starting to get us to the point of people start thinking about the Jetsons and, and start thinking about the Matrix and some of the, the technology that you see in those movies and, and some of that, You start seeing the underpinnings of some of that.
[00:40:18] Michael Sherwood: Now, actually, it's possible now where before if you were in te. Wasn't really possible. We all knew about latency and the inability of certain the cloud to do everything. Now with the edge in these nodes, you know, as much as we see red and green light signal poles everywhere, you're gonna see data centers everywhere.
[00:40:37] Michael Sherwood: You're just not gonna really know they're there. There's gonna be woven into the fabric and it's a huge market of opportunity. Yeah.
[00:40:46] Matt Trifiro: That's cool. One of the things that, that, that has fascinated me about cities, and it's only in, I don't know, as as an adult that I've really thought of it this way, is like their businesses in a sense.
[00:40:57] Matt Trifiro: I mean, they're, they're systems that are processing [00:41:00] inputs and outputs and producing services and goods for their, for their constituents, but they also compete with each other. Like you said earlier in the call, like, you want more businesses to come to Las Vegas, Well, that means they're making a decision.
[00:41:11] Matt Trifiro: To go to Las Vegas instead of somewhere else, presumably and residents the same way. So how, how, so first of all, who's your biggest rival? ?
[00:41:19] Michael Sherwood: Well, it's gonna be California in general. Yeah. You know, then on, on where everybody's competing for the Exodus from California. So I would say our rivals are Phoenix, Austin, Salt Lake City, obviously Denver, another area.
[00:41:35] Michael Sherwood: It's kind of the, I would say the, the flattening of Silicon Valley, and you kind of see it was all, all kind of bent up there, kind of like a volcano. It exploded, and we're trying to catch some of the lava as it as it flows out. Maybe it'll just become a grid too. It'll just, and I, I, I really think with the pandemic really accelerating things.
[00:41:55] Michael Sherwood: I think you've seen a, a flattening or an extension of Silicon Valley kind of explode out [00:42:00] from that epicenter and a lot of these other cities, Austin, Phoenix, and certainly Salt Lake and, and have all been doing a great job in attracting people to go there. And we're doing the same thing. I mean, we wanna it to the point people live where there's good schools, there's safety and there's technology.
[00:42:18] Michael Sherwood: I mean, I talk to a lot of people now and, and, and when I recently bought a. I checked to make sure that I had internet that was capable of what I expected and I wouldn't buy, I mean, literally, I would not buy a home in an area that didn't have the connectivity I need. I mean, one, it's my profession and so I need it, but it's the way that we interact.
[00:42:38] Michael Sherwood: I have kids and, and
[00:42:40] Matt Trifiro: we need, even if it wasn't my
[00:42:41] Michael Sherwood: profession, Oh no, it's true. I need one just for my son's Xbox traffic. But the bottom line is you nailed. I, I do look cities as, as being competitive. We are in a business of capturing taxpayers. You know, we need you to live here in order to pay your property tax and, and contribute.
[00:42:59] Michael Sherwood: And a [00:43:00] lot of that is not just the property tax. If you come here, you might start a business here, You might do other things here that help the economy. And so that, that whole opportunity of, of getting people to realize Las Vegas is more than one. and that there's a whole bunch of opportunity here, and that's really what we're after is, is showcasing and demonstrating how great it is.
[00:43:22] Michael Sherwood: And it's great when we open up that innovation district, bringing things like the open grid alliance and launching it here, having that option. When you gen, when you think of Las Vegas, you don't think hopefully next year or so people will think about the grid and, and. in Las Vegas and the grid will stretch across, but, but the nice thing is, is that we have those technologies here first.
[00:43:42] Michael Sherwood: We're kind of doing these things that we hope leads to bringing other businesses here and other use cases, and really growing our economy. So if you were to
[00:43:51] Matt Trifiro: look out on the landscape of the, you know, sort of those other cities, you say you're competing for these, this exodus from California. What, what makes Las Vegas stand apart?
[00:43:59] Matt Trifiro: Like what are like the [00:44:00] top three or four reasons that someone should choose Las Vegas over some, some other choice they might have?
[00:44:05] Michael Sherwood: Sure.
Number
[00:44:06] Michael Sherwood: one's gonna be the diversity of the community here. We have a great workforce, Well, very hard working. We are a 24 hour city. Not every city is able to have the type of people that are willing to work all hours of the day.
[00:44:17] Michael Sherwood: So we have that Manhattan and Las Vegas, right? Yeah. That's, that's really it. And so, and I'll tell you this, you could afford anything. You can't afford an apartment in Manhattan. You can easily get something here. And so we have that the, the community, number one. Number two is our innovative spirit here.
[00:44:33] Michael Sherwood: Look, people are doing things here that other states and other municipalities won't allow or are hesitant to allow. We. Look, the city's built on risk. We know how to operate and manage risk, so it's a great place. Your business card's a poker chip? ? Yes. Yes. So it's a great place to be able to have no state income tax.
[00:44:55] Michael Sherwood: So your money goes farther here, You know, you're able to have more disposable income [00:45:00] here than another city. So we're very friendly, business friendly mindset, I would say more than most others throughout the region. We have great university system here as well as airport. So our infrastructure, you can almost be anywhere in Las Vegas and get to the airport within 20 to 30 minutes.
[00:45:15] Michael Sherwood: I can say I won't name where I was from, but in, in Orange County, I couldn't get to LAX in half a. Let alone Yeah, pretty much, you know, 30 minutes, so I could 30 minutes, I could even get outta my own city in 30 minutes. So, you know, we have a, a great infrastructure and so I, and I think you have a real spirit here.
[00:45:33] Michael Sherwood: We have ces, so if you're on the technology side, we have great convention and great hospitality, and come on, some of the best restaurants the world has. Same thing with enter. So we have a wide variety and then great state parks and a lot of 'em, people don't realize we have Red Rock, you have Valley of Fire.
[00:45:49] Michael Sherwood: There are so many things close by Colorado River and Grand Canyon's. Just a short skip and a jump over the border there to one of our friends. So we want you to live here. Go [00:46:00] visit, but stay here. I think overarching is the community and the ability to get things done. And you see that the boring company, we've talked about 'em.
[00:46:07] Michael Sherwood: We have a monorail here. We have the boring. We have some of the largest buildings in the Western Hemisphere here from a hotel and and convention perspective. It's just a great place and I think the, the people make it what it is, technology secondary, but that's, that's really what it is. Well, and honestly, it's fun.
[00:46:25] Matt Trifiro: Like it's fun to be around these entrepreneurs. It's fun to be around new technology. It's fun to be around great restaurants and lots of new people coming in and lots of new ideas coming in. So I, I, I get it. I mean, it really makes Las Vegas super competitive and you know, certainly growing up I thought of it as a place that you visit as opposed to a place to live.
[00:46:43] Matt Trifiro: But now I, I have, you know, a small handful of friends that. Staked out the rest of your lives, potentially in, in Las
[00:46:50] Michael Sherwood: Vegas. So I, I felt the same way. I felt the same way being from California, you know, it was a great place. I came here in the summer to party and visit and, and then go home, and now it's where I call home [00:47:00] and I love it here.
[00:47:00] Michael Sherwood: There's just so many great things about the community and about the city that make it a, a great place to be. Yeah,
[00:47:06] Matt Trifiro: that's, that's neat. Okay, so, so the final, final question here. So, so part of what you need to do is you need to look out into the. And so if you were to think of like all the things that are happening that need to happen to bring your vision of the smart city to las, to to reality, and you could, you could push one of those dominoes.
[00:47:25] Matt Trifiro: You could give it a nudge. Just make it work faster. Can you think of one that you would like, one, one thing you would like make happen more quickly to, to make everything else happen?
[00:47:34] Michael Sherwood: I'd love to see more connectivity to the homes directly. Hmm. I think we're moving in that direction already. Fiber's coming in, we've.
[00:47:42] Michael Sherwood: Several companies looking at doing fiber to the homes out here, but it's that whole, we're already on the way. We talked about the grid a little bit, but extending that because that capabilities, the capabilities of the future is gonna be content or data driven where you're pushing data out into the community [00:48:00] itself.
[00:48:00] Michael Sherwood: Most businesses already have good internet connect. So the next part of it is, is how do you marry that all together and how do you, what do those drones need? You're gonna have six G and seven G, and they're gonna all need strong infrastructures. And then you need that last mile. So I, I, that last mile might be wireless, might be a combination of wireless and fiber, but you start looking at your home and I'm looking at it from a future.
[00:48:24] Michael Sherwood: So a lot of us already, our washers and dryers need to be connected. I mean, my new washer and dryer came with a QR code to download an app for it, your refrigerator. All these things we think about in the future are gonna require connectivity. And so right now the, the best connectivity is, is a solid underpinning of fiber and, and wireless.
[00:48:42] Michael Sherwood: And so if I could push a button, I pushed that. Connectivity. Connectivity, okay. Connectivity as a whole. And I pushed the button for, for building out the infrastructure, the technology, we call 'em mini data, whatever we want to call 'em, but the capability of having that edge, edge compute capabilities for small [00:49:00] local business, for big business, for companies to be able to have, when you build a great foundation, many great things can be built on top of it.
[00:49:08] Michael Sherwood: And that's when you talk about connectivity, I'm talking about building that found.
[00:49:12] Matt Trifiro: Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the same way that you said you wouldn't buy a house that didn't have great connectivity, there's probably a future state where you won't occupy a building as a business unless it has access to the grid.
[00:49:21] Matt Trifiro: And so there's this whole, because, you know, I think one, one of the things that really surprised me in, in my journey to, to where we are today through edge computing, into the grid. Is that most companies have computers stuck on their premises that they want to get rid of. Like, I don't want a data center in my factory.
[00:49:40] Matt Trifiro: I don't want a data center in my basement. I wanna get rid of that. I wanna buy it like I buy. My SAS products, my sales force, and my SAP and all these things, but I can't. And so once there's infrastructure in place where businesses can consume all these capabilities, they that they have to [00:50:00] spend money on computers and people to maintain them and things, but like now they can just order it from the infrastructure.
[00:50:04] Matt Trifiro: I think that's gonna be super game changing.
[00:50:06] Michael Sherwood: That's gonna be huge. It's gonna be, Imagine what you can do with that and imagine the abilities to the agility that it will create for business. The ability to ramp up quickly. The ability to really harness power and technology you didn't have before. I know you and I have talked about things, but I mean, even for government, we have the ability to lease services and systems that we could never stand up on our own or operate on our own.
[00:50:29] Michael Sherwood: In a grid environment allows us to tap into that collaborative almost and rent it or use it and then change to something else if we need to. And so lots of flexibility, lots of capabilities, it's gonna really change, I believe the way business and the way cities operate and, and work. It's amazing. And, and like I said, it all starts with a solid foundation and, and having great partner.
[00:50:51] Michael Sherwood: And having great technology is just as important to me, I think is, it should be important to everybody as roadways are today and, and having water [00:51:00] and power at your home. Connectivity should be right inside with, with anything else.
[00:51:05] Matt Trifiro: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Hey Michael, this has been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast and to, to have this conversation with
[00:51:12] Michael Sherwood: you.
[00:51:12] Michael Sherwood: I really appreci. Oh, it's been my pleasure. It's awesome. And if I could say we love having people come out to Vegas, so have your listeners come on out. I'll do. I'll do
[00:51:21] Matt Trifiro: a live, I'll do a live show
[00:51:22] Michael Sherwood: sometime soon.
[00:51:24] Narrator 2: That does it for this episode of Over the Edge. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating and a review and tell a friend.
[00:51:30] Narrator 2: Over the Edge is made possible through the genesis sponsorship of our partners at Dell Technologies. Simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting
[00:51:38] Michael Sherwood: dell.com.