spring inside this week in the virtual version of the atlanta braves ballpark how those search engines work and sometimes don't work. finding you the lowest fare and the head of social security and teleconferencing on the future of work from anywhere. that's this week. everyone. new technology, let's a big point, i often tell the story of the first cell phone i ever saw that had a camera tilt into it. you may have heard this

story before. i don't remember what brand it was, but it was like a one megapixel camera. good enough to take a blurry picture and send it via sms to somebody else. i canned that cell phone in my review. not just cell phone, the whole concept of putting a camera in a cell phone. i couldn't imagine anyone would have any use for it. well, clearly, i am not a futurist. i bring this up so you have the context when i say this next thing, which is so far i kind of think the meta-verse is kind of silly. i want you to know that, but i'm not good at predicting the future. i talked to josh rush who is building the meta-verse. his latest project is a virtual version of the atlanta braves's ballpark in which you can see behind you. thank you for joining me. i understand you're not at the ballpark today. you're using technology.ds

>> yeah. thanks for having me. i'm not actually sittingterest digital backdrop, which is a full photorealistic multiplayer simulation that runs and will run inside your browser. yeah, not quite the real thing, but to close. >> that's a key point. you're talking about something that runs inside the browser. i don't have two, i assume i could if i wanted to, but i don't have to wear goggles on my head and headphones and hold some sort of object in my hand. >> no. that's right. just answer your question, everything is built in. the real engine is a real-time engine built by epic game. unreal engine. our platform, surreal, is built on top of that same technology. and we stream everything. football and the clouds and stream to your browser. you don't need a headset. you don't need glasses to interface for what you would

expect from that picks up people who are old enough will remember second life. this sounds kind of second wife- ish. is that a fair comparison? >> i think so. there's a ton to glean and learn from second life. in terms of what people have done during the past, et cetera still going on, as far as meta- verse is concerned, it generates $500 million a year. yeah. we look at second life for a lot of inspiration for what this meta-verse is supposed to look like. >> second life, as a reference on you and you knew, and a lot of our viewers new, but it's hardly a household world. how do you take it from a fairly obscure 10 year ago mention on a television show to something where people know it the way they know tinder or facebook or ios? >> yeah.

you know, the answer to that question is not an easy one. it's not a short one. just because nobody was talking about the meta-verse, really, it was in the wall street journal. but six months ago after facebook changed their name to meta-and brought the idea to the forefront of the conversation. i can say what we have been working on free meta-verse type, if you will, was this idea that we have the technology that is a real-time rendering, cloud streaming, which allows us to basically get everybody in the cloud, to put it simply. so you can have these totally immersive for realistic things like xbox, sony playstation, quality graphics delivered to the browser. >> in the case of the braves park what do i do there? am i actually going to watch a game there? i appreciate being able to see what my ticket, you know, what kind of you i would get.

i can do that already online. >> yeah. for the braves and digital tourist park it is the first of many runways and their approach to what is meta-verse, including immersive free web where fans can do things like use our videoconferencing app that is built into the player meet and greets. you can kind of have this backstage access to players that you when you get otherwise. opportunities to take in things like virtual concerts, get exclusives on apparel tickets, merchandise, and it's all a multiplayer game like setting more akin to fortnite then something like facebook currently. >> when you talk about fortnite and those, they have had successful large group meetings and concerts and things. that is really key, because any company or organization that's going to do anything in the meta-verse space or vr or 3-d or anything else needs to understand they can get the technology from you. they still have to produce an effect.

it still has to be fun. and that's hard. producing events and you have expense with this, producing an entertaining event that people actually want to hang out in is really difficult >> it all comes down to the constant, like anything else. . 3-d web, whatever you want to call it, is another channel. it happens to be that the technology is available today to make that channel warmer without having to have some crazy headset or something like this. what we always tell our partners or clients is this is like the real stadium. the braves are beginning to think of the digital tourist park as a venue that has to be programmed just like a real ballpark. this is kind of sensitive subjects, but if they don't put a good product on the field is not paying out. if they don't put money into the program and space to make

entertaining place to take your friends or family no one is going to come. same thing goes. there is a new kind of commitment to programming staff . it's all part of the deal. >> that's going to be my last question. what is the benchmark? it doesn't necessarily have to be the braves, but what's the benchmark you are going to try to aim at where i told you i introduced this segment with my doubts about whether any of this would be interesting to people. i'm forced to call you and say, okay, you were right. what is the level in which this idea, this concept, re-say this is a proven concept, the way that xbox is? >> i mean, as far as this big idea of the meta-verse is concerned, 1st and foremost we are nowhere near what we would be led to believe is right here in the first up in terms of a ready player one kind of world

where we are moving freely between these virtual experiences. we are a long way off from that. beyond consumer applications like the braves stadium, you're seeing lumber companies move into the space to great their op-ed online. the benchmark for success is when you actually use a space like this in your work life where you are able to move through it, a 3-d version of your company's office and log off maybe log back in and replaying fantasy baseball with your friends at tourist park. >> that would be surreal. we appreciate you being with us as you build your virtual world. thanks for being with us this morning. we will be back.

welcome back. we were just talking about virtual worlds and the meta- verse before the break. i want to follow that up with d2 patel, the executive vice president overseeing webex and security. he is overhauling his organization to get ready for the future of those communications. good morning to you. i think, you know, i will apologize. when we think of business medication i think so many of us think of zoom. webex, which you are in charge of is still incredibly popular.

like 95% of the fortune 500 companies still using webex, right? >> >> we have over 650 million users that are using webex. >> per month. >> yeah. and it has been an amazing right during the pandemic because initially people were just thinking i just need to get by. and i just make sure i can get through this and get my work done? and now it is fundamentally changing culture people are working from anywhere. you can have people all around the globe actually start to participate in the global economy, which is something we were unable to do in the past. angiography and language presence and personality type and socioeconomic level are getting to be less of the factors inhibiting people from participating. that is actually very rewarding to see. >> we are using it in more and more places. i saw a video that you are

working with ford. for the, you know, the new ford has is very big video screens. webex is hard coded into my forte, so i can have a meeting on the road or i can pull over and actually do the video. >> we have a great partnership with ford. they are an amazing company. an amazing ceo and leadership team. we are so honored to be a small part of that. they are imagining the car as being one of the places where people might actually work from. >> and hologram is coming soon as well. i have seen video in which people using some sort of goggle and that sort of thing and reaching out and touching things. it wasn't that long ago that most people were not countable being on zoom. you anticipate they're going to be comfortable putting on goggles and reaching out and doing all this sort of futuristic stuff in front of them? >> there is a, you know, a deep desire for humans to be able to

connect in ways that feel more natural. and, you know, if you think about it you and i are talking and having a quick chat. it's fine if you are doing it in two dimensional space. let's talk about for. let's say we were designing a model vehicle. you and i are in different parts of the globe and you want to look at a model of the car. this is model moving around. not only do you want to see each other in 3-d, but you want to see the three-dimensional model of the object that you actually would like. those things are now possible as a result of having a virtual reality or reality glasses on. there is an inhibitor, which is the factor of these has to be very similar to our glasses, so it doesn't feel like this massive thing. >> one of the ways that cisco has expanded both as a company and some of the things you have done, i think you have overseen

the purchase of about six companies, haven't you? purchasing of companies, right? >> yeah. the way we think about it is our primary mode of operation is we have to make sure we can have amazing innovation happening organically. we are very clear on what the strategies are that we need to get to. if that strategy can be aided by someone who is doing some interesting work that can accelerate our strategy forward , where we haven't really made as much progress and we would love to make sure that tim comes on board, the way we think about it is it a strategic fit? a cultural fit? if they do incorporating -- the thing i'm most proud of as a team is not the fact that we acquired six companies, is those companies got integrated into the platform. you don't even know that it's a separate product >> that was going to be my question.

in some cases jabber, webex, et cetera cisco keeps the holding. i think of cisco where it's more of a holding company where there's many separate organizations under it or are you able -- you are really integrating these companies underneath. >> you should not think about us as only a company. you should think about us as a platform. a platform that integrates these into a unified experience for the customer and the user. that's the way we think about it. i will give you a sample. we acquired a company called slidell. it's an audience engagement platform. the reason is we want to make sure those people are in a large forum. and everybody feels like they have a voice. i have 4000 people on my team and i want to find out how they are doing. i asked the question. how are you feeling today? what you doing for the weekend? i get all these responses back. i'm feeling anxious.

my feeling tired, fatigued, happy, excited? that capability we incorporated into our knowledge and extension of webex. you're not paying anything extra and you don't how to do anything extra from a usability standpoint. and we allow that technology to also go out and integrate with our competitors. >> 12,000 people, army division has to be about 18,000 people. that is an enormous amount of people. your competitors are smaller. i always cringe a little when people say small and nimble. small doesn't necessarily mean nimble and big does not necessarily mean that you are not nimble. your smaller competitors are thinking, power up the networks and i'm thinking security and those sorts of things. or even younger companies that were born in the cloud. when

cisco was founded i didn't have -- i think i had a drivers permit a cloud was just a cloud. there is a race to the cloud on your part, because your older against a smaller, maybe more nimble company that is born in the cloud. >> yeah. the way we think about it is the agility is less of a function of the number of people you have more of a function of the construction of the team that you create. are you keeping teams to be on the small manageable side? the role that amazon talks about is a two pizza. you should have a team that is larger than eating two pizzas. is to keep your team size 8 to 10 people. what ends up happening is you spend less time trying to align with each other and more time doing the work and innovating. what we try to do is we will keep small teams as the size of the teams grow we create more teams. what we don't want to do is

have very, very large teams. so, the way in which we reward people is less to do with how many people do you manage and more to do with how much growth have you created in the company. what kind invasion have you delivered? that, basically, drives agility. it's lefts of a function of our u.s. multi-more large team? if you want to operate at skill you will need 10 people. if you want to operate at scale and speed you need to have more people that are structured and organized in a way that they can actually do that. >> and you have to be able to empower those people to make decisions that don't necessarily need approval from above. in many instances. this is what we decided to do, because we thought that was the best decision. >> that specifically, what you said, is so important. the kind of values and principles that you actually create within your culture that people can fall without asking for permission are really important. we have these product principles that we have in the company where, you know, the principle that you have is something that

everyone should follow. the opposite of the product principal could be something that you can build a company with. is just not something that we have to do. is not our set of values. if you can make sure that gets out to the entire order now the sub selection process that happens were people who believe in those rents was, work here. people that come work here with this principle -- there's very few decisions that come to the top to get vetoed, because most people know what we stand for. >> you have been there in charge of that division for about a year and half right now. what have you learned over that period of time that you didn't know coming in? you came in as an executive, but what have you learned from cisco you didn't know until now?

>> you know, i have always believed this and it was reinforced one more time. if you think about the two characteristics of important people their hunger and curiosity. are people hungry to go out and get amazing work done? and are they curious? i have to tell you, in my 30 year career i have yet to see a set of people that have actually gone out and put all of their heart and sole into it. we added about 1200 features in webex just over the course of the past year and a half. 1200. that is a nontrivial amount of innovation. while making sure you could scale it up and making surehaen believe in the mission and purpose. . i feel very fortunate >> i wish you the best of luck. in charge of webex and security over at cisco.

we thank him for being here this morning. we will be back in just a minute. will

will will good morning. as covid fades, i leased a little bit, and summer approaches and a lot of us are thinking about travel. you remember travel, don't you? i missed it terribly. i think you and i are both experiencing the same thing when we go online. that is sticker shock. the price of affairs is just

phenomenal. obviously, some of that is fuel prices. and then just demand for the flights at all. what i didn't know is when you go on some of those discount sites, the one that aggregates flights, it's not always the cheapest fare. max morlock runs a flight aggregation site called flight penguin. he is willing to spill the beans a little bit about what happens behind the scenes. good morning. what is happening on these sites? are airlines sometimes hiding the best fares from you? >> airlines are actually entering into agreements with these sites to prevent you from seeing specific legs, specific journey so you don't always see the cheapest possible flight. there's a lot of anticompetitive behavior going on here. it's really frustrating for travelers and it's really frustrating for folks like myself who want to be able to show you the best possible flight at any time. >> why would they do that? why wouldn't they tell you

there is a cheaper, more direct flight if i'm looking up flights and that's the one i want? >> at the end of the day they are in the business of making as much money as they can.>> okay. that makes perfect sense. one of my children wanted to change a flight recently. i asked him, where did you get it? where did you buy it? i was expecting him to say american airlines or southwest. he said something like, my chick my cheap tickets -- you know, one of those. flight penguin doesn't come top to mind, necessarily, like expedia or kayak. how you build trust in what it is that you are doing and why are you making the same deals with the airlines as the other guys?>> sure. chipmunk is a company in trouble for a long time that was very beloved by its users. unfortunate, was shut down a

couple of years ago. it was purchased about five years ago. >> it was founded by the government or something. >> it was founded by their purchaser. and the founders were upset try to buy it back. they failed at buying it back to some internal politics there. they decided to invest it in new travel companies. we are built on the legacy. we have learned a lot of lessons there. the most important lesson is how do you build user trust? you show users all of the flights available. you show them in a way that's easy to visualize. it shows up on a timeline. you're not looking at an old ticket or anything like that, doesn't look like a plan ticket or train ticket or anything of that nature. we make reasonable decisions about what the best flight actually is, so the first result is in some god-awful garbage flight at a discount airline at 6 a.m. that costs $12 less than the

actual best flight available. >> how are you not working with the airlines? are you giving up some money? how are you different? what makes you make that decision? >> the airlines, when they enter into these agreements with different travel sites, do a lot of things to restrict them from splaying all possible flight combinations, prevent you from showing certain combinations where you might have a lag on one airline and 2nd leg on a different airline. we can collect all the data automatically in your browser looking at all of different sites that are out there. centralize that and show to the users. we never need to enter into an agreement with the airlines. we can show the latest and best price available. >> you are relatively new to the travel business. you have been ceo over there for about a year. i do know that before that you were working on other things and

making sure people cut a fair shake financially. what have you learned about the travel industry in the one year that you have been here in the travel industry? >> the most honest thing i can say is a people in this space aren't innovating at all. don't care about user experience. they don't want you to put the best flight available. all they care about is getting your money. that is really disappointing. the statistic i like to quote is expedia actually advertises that it takes 48 flight searches before somebody books a flight if you have to search for something 48 times on amazon jeff bezos would be firing everything a person who works there and hiring new folks. beasley, that shows you how bad the tools are and how hard it is to actually press you're getting a fair deal. >> what about just a tip for the rest of us? you are the guy that works in the travel industry. i'm shocked by the prices. although, it makes sense. everybody wants to fly.

if i'm paying six dollars a gallon for car gasoline jet fuel has got to be expensive too. i get it are there any goal good deals out there? yeah, you should totally fly to florida. it's a great deal. never fly on a tuesday. can you leave me with a tip? >> there are always good deals available. the best thing to do is keep searching and keep your eye out for them. >> just keep searching. >> are right. the ceo of flight penguin. i appreciate you being with us this morning. we will be right back.

that's our show for this week. thanks to our guests and thank you for making us a part of your sunday.

and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo. i've been saying that for 25 years. today, we're going to look back at 25 years of your "comunidad del valle." ♪♪♪ damian: i started working here at the kntv back on june 10th of 1996, and 2 months later my news director, terry mcelhatton, asked me if i would be willing to host a show called "comunidad del valle." now mind you, as a 12-year-old growing up in greenfield, i grew up watching "comunidad del valle." at that time, the host was mario del castillo. so for at least 40 years we don't even know here