(stirring music)
>> Announcer: From Seattle, Washington,
it's theCUBE.
Covering AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit.
Brought to you by Amazon Web Services.
>> Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here with theCUBE.
We're in downtown Seattle, Washington,
actually right on the waterfront.
It has been a spectacular visit here
for the last couple of days.
And we're back in Seattle for AWS IMAGINE.
We were here a couple weeks ago
for AWS IMAGINE Education.
This is a different version of the conference,
really focused around government and nonprofits,
and we're really excited to kick off our day
with the guy coming right off the keynote
who's running this, he's Dave Levy.
He's the vice president for U.S. Government
and Nonprofit for AWS.
Dave, great to see you,
and congrats on the keynote.
>> Thank you,
thanks for having me, too.
We're really excited.
>> Absolutely.
So as you're talking about mission and purpose,
and as I'm doing my homework
for some of the topics we're going to cover today,
these are big problems.
I couldn't help but think of a famous quote
from Jeff Hammerbacher from years ago,
who said, "The greatest minds of my generation
"are thinking about how to make us click ads."
And I'm so happy and refreshed
to be here with you and your team
to be working on much bigger problems.
>> Yeah, well thank you.
We're very excited,
we're thrilled with all the customers here,
all the nonprofits,
all the nongovernmental organizations,
all of our partners.
It's just very exciting,
and there are a lot of big challenges out there,
and we're happy to be a part of it.
>> So it's our first time here,
but you guys have been doing this show,
I believe this is the fourth year.
>> Its fourth year, yeah.
>> Give us a little background
on the nonprofit sector at AWS.
How did you get involved,
you know, what's your mission,
and some of the numbers behind.
>> Well, it's one of the most exciting part
of our businesses in the worldwide public sector.
And we have tens of thousands of customers
in the nonprofit sector,
and they are doing all sorts of wonderful things
in terms of their mission.
And we're trying to help them deliver on their mission
with our technology.
So you see everything from hosting websites,
to doing back office functions in the cloud,
running research and donor platforms,
and so it's just a very exciting time, I think.
And nonprofit missions are accelerating,
and we're helping them do that.
>> Yeah, it's quite a different mission
than selling books, or selling services,
or selling infrastructure,
when you have this real focus.
The impact of some of these organizations is huge.
We're going to talk to someone involved
in human trafficking.
25,000,000 people involved in this problem.
So these are really big problems
that you guys are helping out with.
>> They're huge problems,
and at Amazon, we really identify with missionaries.
We want our partners and our customers
to be able to be empowered
to deliver on their mission.
We feel like we're missionaries
and we're builders at Amazon,
so this is a really good fit for us,
to work with nonprofits all over the world.
>> And how did you get involved?
We were here a couple weeks ago,
talked to Andrew Ko.
He runs EDU, he'd grown up in tech,
and then one of his kids had an issue
that drove him into the education.
What's your mission story?
>> Well, on a personal level,
I'm just passionate about this space.
There's so much opportunity.
It's everything from solving challenges
around heart disease,
to research for cancer,
patient care,
to human trafficking.
So all of those things resonate.
It touches all of our lives,
and I'm thrilled to be able to contribute,
and I've got a fantastic team,
and we've got amazing customers.
>> Right. It's great.
Did a little homework on you,
you're a pretty good, interesting guy too.
But you referenced something
that I thought was really powerful,
and somebody interviewing you.
You talked about practice.
Practice, practice, practice,
as a person.
And you invoked Amara's Law,
which I had never heard for a person,
which is we tend to overestimate
what we can do in the short term,
but we underestimate what we can do
in the long term.
And as these people are focused on these giant missions,
the long term impacts can be gargantuan.
>> Yeah, I think so.
Like you said,
we're tackling some huge problems out there.
Huge, difficult problems.
Migrations,
diseases.
And, you know,
it takes a while to get these things done.
And when you look back on a ten year horizon,
you can really accomplish a lot.
So we like to set big, bold, audacious goals at Amazon.
We like to think big.
And we want to encourage our customers
to think big along with us.
And we'll support them to go on this journey.
And it may take some time,
but I'm confident we can solve
a lot of the big problems out there.
>> But it's funny,
there's a lot of stuff in social now
where a lot of people don't think big enough.
And you were very specific in your keynote.
You had three really significant challenges.
Go from big ideas to impact.
Learn and be curious, and dive deep.
Because like you said,
these are not simple problems.
These aren't just going to go away.
But you really need to spend the time to get into it.
And I think what's cool about Amazon,
and your fanatical customer focus,
to apply that type of a framework,
that type of way of go to market
into the nonprofit area,
really gives you a unique point of view.
>> I hope so.
And we're doing a lot of really cool things
here at the conference.
We've got a Working Backwards session.
One of the things about working backwards
that's really interesting is
the customer's at the center of that.
And it all starts with the customer.
I can't tell you how many times
I've been in a meeting at Amazon
where somebody has said,
wait a second.
This is what we heard these customers say,
this is what we heard about their mission.
And it's all about what customers want.
So we're really excited that our customers here
and our nonprofits here
are going to be going through some of those sessions,
and hopefully we can provide
a little innovation engine for them
by applying Amazon processes to it.
>> For the people that aren't familiar,
the working backwards,
if I'm hearing you right,
is the Amazon practice where you actually
write the press release for when you're finished,
and then work backwards.
So you stay focused on those really core objectives.
>> Yeah, that's right.
It's start with your end state in mind
and work backwards from there.
And it starts with a press release.
And certainly those are fun to write,
because you want to know what you're going to be delivering
and how you're going to be delivering it,
and frankly how your customers
and how your stakeholders will be responding.
So it's a really great exercise,
helps you focus on the mission,
and sets up the stage for delivery in the future.
>> It's funny, I think one of the greatest
and easy simple examples of that
is the Amazon Go store.
And I've heard lots of stores,
I've been it now a couple times up here,
in San Francisco,
and the story that I've heard,
maybe you know if it's true or not,
is that when they tried to implement it at first,
they had a lot of more departments.
And unfortunately it introduced lines
not necessarily at checkout,
but other places in the store.
And with that single focus mission of no lines,
cut back the SKUs, cut back the selection,
and so when I went in it
in San Francisco the other day,
and it gave me my little time in the store,
the Google search results?
It was, I think,
a minute and 19 to go in,
grab a quick lunch,
and then get back on my way.
So really laser-focused on a specific objective.
>> Yeah, and that's the point
of the working backwards process.
It's all about what customers want,
and you can refine that and continue to refine that,
and you get feedback,
and you're able to answer those questions
and solve those difficult problems.
>> That's great.
Well, Dave, thanks for inviting us here
for the first time again.
Congrats on the keynote,
and we look forward to a bunch of really important work
that your customers and your team are working on,
and learning more about those stories.
>> Thanks, we're thrilled.
Very thrilled.
>> All right. He's Dave, I'm Jeff.
You're watching theCUBE.
We're in Seattle at the AWS IMAGINE Nonprofit.
Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.
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