Speaker 0 | 00:09.563

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Matthew B. Park Sr., Vice President of Information Technology and Security at the Pace Center for Girls. Hey, Matthew, how’s it going?

Speaker 1 | 00:23.187

Hey, I’m doing well.

Speaker 0 | 00:25.312

Good to have you on the program for a second time. I think you were on a couple years back with Phil. Yes. Enjoy that time?

Speaker 1 | 00:34.417

I actually did. It was kind of, threw me a curveball. We did some prep before, and we worked through some, you know, question and answer type of things. And then he came in and freelanced, and it made for a lively topic, but it was one of those things where, I don’t know, I like being, it put me on my heels, but it didn’t bother me. So it was pretty cool.

Speaker 0 | 00:54.068

Well, that is my aim today is to put you on your heels. So be prepared. We’re going to start off with our icebreaker segment we call Random Access Memories. I ask a question, you respond with an answer that comes to your head first. Your first question is, what did your favorite mouse pad look like?

Speaker 1 | 01:13.736

My favorite mouse pad? Oh, man. My favorite mouse pad actually was a Darth Vader shaped helmet shaped mouse pad. That was what it was shaped as, and it was pretty cool. It was, I guess, before they were gaming pads, that’s kind of what it was, kind of had a hard surface and that type of thing. Nice. But yeah, that takes me back, so I had to go back a long ways. But it fell apart after a couple months or whatever, because back then, I’ve been in this game a long time.

Speaker 0 | 01:46.734

That surprises me that it would fall apart, because you would think… that you can put as much force and stuff as necessary and possible and it would use the force. So,

Speaker 1 | 01:55.098

of course, I got you. Yeah. Nice. I like that.

Speaker 0 | 01:59.681

What’s the funniest email that you’ve ever received?

Speaker 1 | 02:05.404

Funniest email I’ve ever received. Wow. I had to think about that one. I guess the funniest email I have to receive is in regard to a colleague that sent an email that turned out to be quite a yarn. where they were looking for a particular location. I’m trying to sanitize as much as possible as not to embarrass them. Makes sense. But they were looking for a particular location. And the directions that they had was that they were supposed to drive down this road on the west side of Jacksonville, supposed to drive down this road, and then they would make a right at the pig. So this person… not being from the area, didn’t have any idea whether, you know, cause we do have restaurant here called a barbecue restaurant called the pig, um, you know, or maybe a sign that would say the pig or something like that. So anyway, they were driving to the destination and, um, they, um, they drove and they drove and they didn’t see any indications or landmarks that would be as descriptive as a pig. So they turned around and went back and then they called and they said, uh, okay, so we didn’t find a place, you know, to, to, so we, sorry, we didn’t get a chance to, uh, you know, make the pickup. Is everything okay? And he said, what do you mean? We gave you the direction and blah, blah, blah. And they said, well, yeah, well, we drove and we didn’t see a pig. And so I’ll be any type. And he said, oh, well, what time did you get there? And then they said, well, we got there, I don’t know, around 830. I know nine o’clock. So, oh yeah, no, you guys were late. So the pig eats over here in the morning. And by the time nine o’clock comes around, Hmm. the pig moves so this was on a rural side of the you know area and so they were talking about a little pig and apparently he’s huge and you couldn’t miss him and he grazes every day like clockwork this particular side of the pasture close to the fence so you would make a right wherever he is and so it’s so regular that he’s become a landmark um i don’t believe in making animate objects landmarks because they do move and have thoughts of their own but it that’s a whole different discussion but yeah that’s probably one of the funniest thing that comes to mind i could probably come with others if i was to jog but yeah that way it’s probably not best to uh base your directions on moving landmarks so i kind of agree with you on that it was a literal pig that was the thing like this is a real pig i’m looking for yeah and so and the pig apparently knows how to tell time so that was awesome you your last one here is if you could meet any tech icon who would it be oh tech icon um i’ll tell you uh you know besides jobs and gates you know because without them you know probably wouldn’t be much of an industry um Living, I probably want to meet Wozniak. I mean, because most people, Steve Wozniak, he’s the person who pretty much put the software and hardware together. And he’s probably the greatest inventor in that way that really stirred the industry. I guess the other person probably, or a couple, man. I mean, I’ve been in this a long time, so I follow like Metcalf. I’d like to meet Metcalf because… Um, you know, my son and I were just discussing the fact that he kept telling me about the, what is it? Network, uh, uh, network law, something like that. And when he’s explained it to me and I said, oh, that’s Metcalfe law. And he was like, yeah, no, it’s called network. And I was like, yeah, no, it’s based on Metcalfe law, Metcalfe law, you know, in plus two or in, you know, into type of thing. It was like, oh yeah. And I showed it to him. I was like, yeah, I used to teach that. Yeah. It’s about, you know, how, if you have one connection, blah, blah, blah. He was like, oh yeah. So though. Basically, the importance of that, of course, is the way that we deal with in social and networking and the Internet. Networks are all based, go back to that one simple principle of Metcalfe’s Law. So you’d probably be somebody else that’s interactive and would like to talk to you.

Speaker 0 | 06:15.937

Very nice. Great answers on that. Great answers. Yeah, I’m really excited to have you on the program, looking you up on LinkedIn, you know, doing my doing what I call my LinkedIn stalking. Right. Going over. profile and looking at this, but one of the best things, you know, and, and being a, um, uh, being a father to two girls, uh, you know, I, uh, um, kind of near and dear to my heart here is, is, uh, the stuff that you’re doing over there at the Pace Center for Girls. What a great, uh, what a great, you know, organization and, uh, um, you know, and the way that they deal, uh, um, with. with these girls and being able to kind of set them in the right path. I’m a big fan. You want to take a second on that?

Speaker 1 | 07:10.145

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, so the organization I work for, as you mentioned, is Pace Center for Girls. We’ve been around for almost 40 years now, primarily in the state of Florida. We have 23 locations, so mostly in Florida. We have a location, satellite location up in Macon, Georgia. and a location in Darlington, soon to be Florence, South Carolina as well, but one in Darlington, South Carolina. So we’re starting to spread as the news of the work that we do is spread. What we do is we take young ladies who may have had some type of trouble, some type of trauma, if you will, and we help them to reach their potential. We help them to find the greatness in themselves. We do that in various ways, mostly through our counseling. which is second to none. We have some of the best counselors that use our particular secret sauce, if you will, to apply to those young ladies. Over those 40 years, we’ve helped close to 37 plus thousand young girls and women come out of whatever situation they were in, whether it be just grade recovery, whether it be just a case where there’s self-esteem. whether it be other more serious issues. We’ve helped them conquer those things in themselves and become better versions of themselves and become contributors to society. So that’s kind of our mission. And we really take great pride in it. And any support, paycenter.org is the name of our website, is our URL. And you can go there and find out how you can, if you’re in Florida or American or South Carolina and you want to stop by and help. that’s one of those places or you can donate we are not too shy to ask for donations so that we can continue contribute to the mission i love it i love it and uh um i appreciate you sharing that uh share that out so that people can can

Speaker 0 | 09:08.875

uh help out in any which way they they feel um i i’m uh how long you been uh with pace center

Speaker 1 | 09:17.794

This year will be 10 years. I’ve been with PACE 10 years. I came in right after the Department of Justice recognized us as a model for female anti-recidivism. You know, and also during that time period is when we actually started to codify our secret sauce in an evidence-based manner so that we as duplicatable and we can show the results of what we do. I’m really proud to be in this organization and to help it advance in any way that I’ve been able to over those 10 years.

Speaker 0 | 09:48.268

Wow. Well, let’s let’s talk about then I.T. right for this organization and and the challenges that you may have. any challenges you may run into. I mean, is this, is the Pace Evergirls nonprofit?

Speaker 1 | 10:07.745

We are a nonprofit. We do receive government funding and such, but we also receive local, federal, and state monies, but we also receive work-through donations, yeah. As a nonprofit, it can be difficult to really put together a plan to… for technology and that was what I encountered when I first started with Pace is that we they really didn’t have technology it was there but it was it wasn’t cohesive it wasn’t it was disparate it was a lot of older dilapidated machinery that they were having critical and sensitive systems on and so um i came along with a plan that had been put into place to you know radical to ratify that situation to bring in um newer equipment newer ways of storage to bring technology to the forefront and then uh we were able to um we were able to do that so we transformed the organization for example i’ll give you um at the time we had 17 locations in the state of florida so we’ve grown you know since i’ve been there And we were calling long distance to each other. So you think about the fact that, yeah, each one of those locations had its own individual phone system, PBX system that was there. So that was one of the major pieces, if you will, is that we actually put in a system, a phone system that was contiguous. And we built it on voice over IP. And at the time we were on an NLP, NPLS network. We now moved to SD-WAN as the primary network. But at the time, we were able to connect them all over that network. We replaced all the servers. So back of the house was done. We actually had to add in some places, and we did and replaced all of the infrastructure, the network infrastructure, and added a wireless infrastructure, which does not exist, at least in an enterprise way that we can manage. Some centers had wireless that they had bought off the shelf. Some didn’t. So we were able to replace that. And then, of course, we replace all of the computers that the staff were using so that we could. And the theme there was, you know, we could then build a support team, support staff around those things, because now we have commonality in place. We have homogeneity in place and we had security and centralization in place. So now with that, we can then offer. better support because one of the other things is that a lot of these centers had their own support teams if you will so they were using subcontractors and such and we removed the need for that we didn’t actually tell them we didn’t have to use them but over time with the service that we delivered and reliability and we actually we won them over so those who continue to use their old folks saw the value and the expertise that we brought and they started to utilize us. Even some of their contractors that held on the longest, they started to call us to do certain things because we built a world-class team.

Speaker 0 | 13:37.384

That’s remarkable. When you talk about having an organization that is non-profit, planning comes to mind because you got to get it right. You got to get it right before you start implementing. It’s not like you can go back to the well and ask for more money really easily. So tell me a little bit about the type of planning you do, the measure twice, cut once type planning that you do to keep you in budget and still kind of propel you forward. Because this, you know, when I, I think in my personal opinion that IT. needs to be in lockstep with finance so they can understand what their capabilities are and also reduce costs while improving their infrastructure, right? So what is the items that you kind of, or the skills, the tips, the tricks, and stuff like that you kind of use to allow yourself to do this?

Speaker 1 | 14:46.891

Yeah, good question. So the first thing I’ll say is that, number one, to have a successful IT program, or technology program, if you want to broaden that, has to start from the top. You have to have your C-suite. involved. And nowadays, I even tell people that you need to have your board involved. And so you need to have those folks at the top that understand, even though they may not understand all the intricacies of what you’re doing, they need to understand that this is necessary for the operation of the and continued operation of the organization, particularly when it comes to delivering a safe environment that you can get the highest level of productivity out of.

Speaker 0 | 15:28.764

So let’s stop on that one really quick because it’s a great point. I don’t just gloss over it. How do you specifically make sure that the powers that be understand what all of the, you know, if it’s a critical business process that these IT items are tied to that, these systems are tied to that. How do you get that across to them?

Speaker 1 | 15:53.515

Well, I’ll tell you. You kind of hit it in the beginning when you mentioned finance because most times you’ll find that the CIO or whomever the top person in IT is that they report to the financial person. So in our case, we had a great person who kind of started this ball rolling in the beginning. His name was our CFO, Teresa Giles. And when she came in preceding me, she saw the need And she actually started working on how she could fund pulling the technology in because she saw that there is a high ROI on being able to get in technology that can improve not only the productivity, but improve the communication, improve the cohesiveness, improve the security. So that was her vision. So it started in the C-suite for us, fortunately. Now, it did take time for her to win over the rest of her cohort in the C-suite. But over time, because of the successes that we had, it was there. But I will tell you this. In IT and maybe in some other service industries, it’s a case where sometimes, like Churchill, right? You never waste a good disaster kind of thing, right? Where you have to have some things break. And, you know, it’s not on purpose. It’s not, you know, internal sabotage. But just because of the way that you may be running, there are opportunities there. And I’m fortunate enough that while we may not always see eye to eye all the time, that we have a C-suite that is very understanding of when things do need to be addressed, they do put their best foot forward there. So, you know, we have some… we had some issues because of the aforementioned, you know, um, elder equipment that we had and, uh, the, uh, the desperation of the type of equipment and, uh, you know, because of those things and the high rate of failure and convincing people that this is not normal, right. Um, that we’re having to, that we’re down every day and that loss of productivity, um, you know, over time it started to you. stopped being more or less a Sisyphus type of thing where we kept rolling the boulder up the hill. And, you know, we just actually got it finally where we could let it roll off the other side. And you started to gather steam and gather moss and you started to become vigorous. So, yeah, the board, the C-suite, big proponents of what we do now, we don’t get everything we want. So, you know, we’re clear on that. But, you know, we do have a lane. with them that they do value what we say, they do take it under advisement, and they do everything they can to deliver when we need it.

Speaker 0 | 18:50.966

Now, that’s a great response on that. And, you know, in that same thought process, you know… Well,

Speaker 1 | 19:00.429

can I, let me add one other thing. I’m sorry. No,

Speaker 0 | 19:02.769

go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 19:04.310

One of the things, too, from a leadership perspective in IT is that we in IT have to learn how to speak to the… we have to learn how to speak the language of business. And I think that’s one of the attributes that helped me more than anything else, is that I was able to provide them with business cases that could show them that I’m not, I got past the tech jargon and, you know, started presenting these things in ways that were zoomed out, business cases that could show them this is how it affects the business. This is how it’s affecting the bottom line. This is how it’s affecting your productivity and pulling those things in from that way. Because otherwise, hey, we need to get a new firewall. What does that mean to me? Why does that mean anything? Well, this is going to help keep us more secure so that now, you know, we can pass those audits and we don’t get fined. for example, or that we don’t have outages because of malware, because someone clicked on the wrong thing, and then that outage turns into lost revenue, right? You know, even in a nonprofit, you know, you still have to run it as a business. And that was one of the other things that Teresa and our CEO, Mary Marks, you know, brought to the table was that we have to, you know, run this thing as a business. We can’t just, in nonprofits, and I’ve worked for a few, there’s a tendency to… feel like you kind of have to be a suffering artist, if you will. And so I think that getting past that piece and understanding that a nonprofit doesn’t mean no money is the other piece of it. So I just want to make sure I amplify that point is that a lot of my colleagues have to learn how to convey their problems in business cases. So people do speak in the same language and they make it relatable to them directly to how the business is affected.

Speaker 0 | 20:51.692

You know, IT is really not effective unless it’s aligned with the business. And you can’t truly align with the business unless you know what the business is, what the business does, and what’s critical to it, right? So the only way to effectively run IT is to understand the business and then understand the business processes and the critical processes that run the business and then apply the technology on top of that. you know so that’s a it’s a great uh um absolute absolutely great way to handle uh um it um so let’s talk about that too because another critical aspect of the business it’s been a little tough uh as of late uh is security right because security is something where you’re uh you know we all know we need it And increasingly now, too, the C-suite knows they need, but they don’t know what they need. Right. And they don’t know how to know that. They see a bunch of security stuff and like, maybe we should just get it all put on. But they don’t know what to apply and how to do that. What is your, I guess, suggestions on how IT folks can look at the security solutions that are out there and strategically apply them? to the business that they’re at, what are the things they need to put into their head and take notice of and make sure that they have outlined prior to going to the C-suite and selling them something like that?

Speaker 1 | 22:32.515

So I guess the first answer, it’s a couple steps there. So the first answer I would say is that you need to understand, it’s kind of what you said earlier as far as business alignment, you need to understand what your particular risk are. You know, if you’re a bank, there are certain risks that are inherent with, you know, being a bank. If you are a school, there used to not be pretty much any risk, but now we all, every business out there has some level of risk that we have to figure out what that is. What is your most vulnerable? What is your soft, squishy part that they’re going to come for first? So you kind of have to figure that out first. And so with, and it all boils down to the fact that We all are, let me say it a different way. Data is the most important commodity on the planet, has been for the last 50 years. And if you don’t believe me, try to get any of the other commodities that are valuable without data. It doesn’t happen. You can’t get gold, silver, oil. None of that exists without data. So it’s become the fact that we have to. protected. And your data is, if you’re a bank, your data is more directly valuable, right? Because, you know, there’s money on the other side of it. But thinking about my own situation and, you know, being a nonprofit and education, you know, there’s not a honeypot full of money on the other side that people, you know, desire to get. But, you know, the data may be worth something to me, right? So to… a bad actor. So they come in and they may seize your data. It’s more or less just like kidnapping one of your children. They kidnap it. They may show you proof of life saying, hey, we have your child. You know, we want this much and we’ll release it. And so you have to, you know, so that’s the first thing is taking a look at what your risks are, where your vulnerabilities are that are inherent just because of the type of business you have. You know, if you’re in retail, your business is probably physical security, right? And that people walk in the door and just take things out. In addition to now that they may be able to hold your customer list hostage. So that’s number one. Number two. is to, now that you have identified what your risks are, you want to kind of tailor your security solutions toward that, to that risk. So there’s no need to go out and buy every single thing that’s on the shelf. If you can get from, if you’re taking a trip, it basically, if I get a trip and have a large family, then I probably want to get a van. But if it’s just me, and my buddy and we’re trying to get there fast, we probably want to get a sports car. So you want to tailor the type of tools that you have to aid the mission of the organization, your need to secure the organization and whatever budgetary confines you have also. Lastly, I think that it’s important to I probably would get help because. Most companies, including ourselves, can’t afford to have a full-time staff of security people. Security is one of the more expensive pieces of IT, and we’re already expensive personnel. So what I would recommend to a lot of companies is to look at a MSSP, a managed security service provider. Look at them and see if they can meet your pricing, whatever your budget is, and let them manage. the security piece they’ll make the recommendations for you both hardware and software um and then um something that i also um take to heart is vet them you know ask them for other um clients that they may have call those other clients and see how well they’re doing with them you know call their competitors um and and really make uh the person that you um the person or the group that you choose make them earn it but uh once you get to that that level you form a relationship with someone if you can’t afford to bring on folks yourself if you can then awesome steps one and two work just fine for you tell those people do that but if you can’t then yeah you want to make sure that you bring in some folks and that’s kind of the way the industry today because the amount of turnover that’s happening the amount of burnout because of the amount of incidents that are happening and security is that we’re having to hire folks outside organizations to manage a lot of it yep um and we may have a liaison someone inside the house that actually deals with them so as opposed to that but if you look at it um economically and i’ll just speak for us that it cost us less to hire a company to do that than it would for us to hire a single person. So we have a team of people that are managing our security that costs us less monthly if you look at it from a salary perspective than it would for us to or about the same or maybe a little bit less than it was for us to hire a person.

Speaker 0 | 27:48.772

Yeah, and this is what we’re seeing across the board, right? Where can you leverage someone else to do these types of things, keeping it in-house to coordinate? and, uh, and, and manage that stuff that that’s what we’re seeing across the board. Um, not just in, uh, you know, um, in, in areas where folks have, uh, you know, um, limited, uh, financial resources, but we’re seeing this in bigger companies now, right. Where they’re like, Hey, you know what, we’re just not, uh, we’re going to move this because we know that we can budget it. We can always keep it at the right spot where it’s at. And, and, uh, And it’s not in some regards, things are not strategic to to the business. And, you know, that’s why you kind of see sometimes break fix support being offloaded. Right. Security is strategic, but the way that it’s implemented can vary and you can be strategic about it, but they’ll help you get there. You know, they’ll ask the right questions and stuff like that. So, yeah, I agree with you. And I’m seeing this across the board and in different places. Good. All good points. I’m talking less than I usually do on this podcast, mainly because I just like to listen to you speak. You have a lot of great points. You know,

Speaker 1 | 29:16.175

I appreciate you saying that.

Speaker 0 | 29:17.436

Yeah. You know, another thing I want to get into, because, you know, I’d seen this on your profile. you know, we were discussing a little bit earlier too, is diversity in IT. And because, you know, it’s thrown out there, there’s so much, you know, that you can get into when you talk about diversity. I mean, because everybody is different and everyone has different values. Everyone has different pieces and parts of them, you know, that they hold. to deer and uh And I always found it very interesting. And when I when I was building teams, you take such diverse people, put them together in a common cause and help them kind of work together to to create things and to build things and to upgrade things. And all the fun little adventures of I.T. But what was you know, let’s take your your take in it, because I know it’s one of your passions here. I’d like. I’d like to hear your take on diversity. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 30:28.727

well, I’ll tell you the biggest piece. And again, when I say diversity, I’m talking, you know, yeah, of course, there are different types of diversity, right? So for me, I like to look at it from a holistic perversion perspective of diversity of thought. And the more people you have that come from different experiences, different backgrounds, the more… able you are to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, if you will. Right. So, you know, people can look that up as far as the story of the wisdom of the crowd. But the point is, is that, you know, none of us are as smart as all of us. And because we’re able to leverage so many different experiences and so many different ways of thinking, you see it even with the. If you come outside of IT and you look at certain law firms that only pick from a particular school that, yeah, they have this cream of crop and their best. But, you know, you often see that, you know, law firms that have groups that come from an amalgam of different locations, they’re able to think differently and be more creative as opposed to having the same rote report approach every single time. So just as an example, so for me. As we look at things like coming down the pipe, like we talked earlier about, you know, AI, some of the other pieces that we talked about in technology, for example, some of the opportunities that are there, we see that there are, there’s less, the exclusion of certain data sets means that you have a product that just isn’t performing at its best and is not performing optimally for. the totality of the population. What that can mean is that certain parts of the population can be singled out falsely for things, for example, whether it be in a security checkpoint or whether it be in a police checkpoint, that if the software hasn’t been trained on a full data set that is inclusive and representative, of the population, then that means that it is a faulty data set. And just simple things as being able to wash your hands in the bathroom means that certain faucets may be triggered by a particular skin hue and may not be triggered by others. And it creates a frustrating experience for those that it doesn’t. And you don’t understand why. And it’s because it simply wasn’t calibrated because it was tested. amongst a particular subset of the population and not more broadly across the diaspora of the population.

Speaker 0 | 33:26.953

You know, that’s such a great point. And one of I just want to, you know, take a second to expand upon because, you know, doing testing on a broad spectrum of society and then implementing those, you would think that you would have such a bigger market share, such a bigger. uh, uh, you know, uh, um, you know, a bigger amount of people wanting to use your product or service, uh, um, it just seems so beneficial, uh, to take that moment. And we go back to the measure twice cut once theory, right? Do the work up front and then turn around. And now you have that, uh, have that ability. I’m, you know, it is, uh, it’s such an interesting way to look at it. And, um, and it is, uh, To me, it makes sense to do that testing up front, to be inclusive. And the other piece that I really thought was interesting, and I’ve had some pretty interesting teams where you do get people from all sorts of different experiences and such. And putting them together and having them brainstorm before you go live with a project. is so beneficial because all you just start to get all of these different types of experiences put together and, uh, and they do it, you know, you, they learn from each other and they’re like, Oh, but what about this? And what about this bit? We looked at this piece. So meetings may be longer,

Speaker 1 | 35:02.400

right. But,

Speaker 0 | 35:03.641

but, but, you know, if you can, you know, if you can rein in that, uh, rein in that and make sure it follows the same path and they stay on the same, uh, on the subject of where you’re trying to do and focus on the project. It’s very beneficial down the long run. And this is why I always kind of tell my teams that, hey, speak up. Tell me, even if I seem like I don’t want to know, tell me anyway. Right. Because I want I want that information beforehand and not after.

Speaker 1 | 35:31.946

Well, I tell you, first of all, I have to ask you, when did you start stepping into my meetings? Because that’s what now I’m a little paranoid now. But. Joking aside, it’s a case where, yeah, we really, it sounds like what my meetings look like. I mean, I have a very diverse group, thought process, you know, gender, races, ethnicities. And because of that, you know, we’ve really gotten to enrich conversations, even in skill set. Right. So not just levels of specialty, but also levels of experience. And. You’d be surprised how many times that even though a lot of us graybeards think that we’re doling out this wisdom onto the crowd, that sometimes even the baby faces come back to us and they say something that’s like, wow, I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t seen that. Oh, that’s an interesting way of looking at that. And that diversity of thought really helps to not only build cohesion in the team, but it also helps to make the entirety better. Because, again. There are things that, you know, to your point that you brought up from, you know, as far as managing all of these locations. And a lot of times it’s based on the experience of the folks that are on that front line every day and the things that they’re telling me are that are happening. And I really encourage them to do so. And I even, you know, I may go a step further. And that’s something I have to explain as I bring new folks on is that, yeah, I may challenge you. I’m going to push you from time to time, you know, because I want you to defend that argument. I want you to tell me, you know. Make me understand what it is that you’re having a problem with. Because again, I don’t have your perspective. And so I want you to be able to push past that and share what your experience is. And there are others here who may have a different experience. And let’s kind of, again, let’s amalgamate that into something that can be amazing for our internal customer and user.

Speaker 0 | 37:30.864

I love that. And that’s absolutely correct. And that’s the way it really… You know, if you really want to benefit from having a diverse team, input coming in. And also, I love the idea of challenging them to really explain that thought and take it and take it there.

Speaker 1 | 37:48.589

Right.

Speaker 0 | 37:49.970

You know, I do. Are you sitting on my meetings now? No, I’ll tell I’ll tell people, you know, hey, listen, you know, you might have a good a good thought. Let’s take it all the way through. You know, let’s explain that thought. Why? Why are you so dedicated to that being the case? And and to really start to walk them through the thought process and how it relates to the business when they click. It’s such a great feeling. Right. You know. Oh, that’s why I’m so that’s why I’m so into this. So, no, that’s that’s fantastic.

Speaker 1 | 38:30.263

And that’s our job, right, as leaders. Right. Just to try to tie in with that. maybe complaint, but that issue and tie it into, you know, the lane of how that fits into the business or why a decision may have been made based on, yes, we know that this is an issue, but this is the why based on the business needs. So it really makes for a rich reciprocal conversation.

Speaker 0 | 38:54.217

I totally agree. I totally agree. So one of the things I’m going to do a little differently. We’re going to go into the IT crystal ball. which is our usual segment on the future of IT. But I’m going to do something a little differently here because I got into a conversation prior to the podcast, and now I want to finish this conversation. So I’m actually going to do it a little bit differently. What I’m going to do is we’re going to take a trip to the past.

Speaker 1 | 39:22.267

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 0 | 39:23.327

All right? Okay. And then we’re going to have Matthew walk us up to the present and then the future. Sure. And And we’re going to tackle something that’s been on this broadcast now several times, which is artificial intelligence. Because it’s here and I’m using it and I’m sure you’re using it, Matthew. I’m sure you’ve used it prior to this either. Let’s. If you could take us on the trip of AI. And so let’s go back to the past here and start it up.

Speaker 1 | 39:57.691

Okay. I’ll tell you this. This is a conversation I’ve been having also because that question has come up. And the first thing is to besmirch a lot of fear. Not that there isn’t reasonable fear out there from so many things we’re seeing. But to explain to people that you’ve been using artificial intelligence for probably the last 10 to 15 years. And it’s as simple as the fact that if you’re in traffic and you have Google Maps on in your car, and it’s telling you a different route to take because this traffic pattern looks like it’s congestion. The reason it’s able to do that is it’s taking information from all of the phones that are there, and it’s either they are all sitting still, and it’s able to take that through an algorithm and say, OK, that means that these folks are not moving, but this other path. And it generates a path, an alternative path for you to take. And then as you take that path, it will guide you through and say, OK, this way will get you there. Or if there’s no traffic, if you can have alternate paths and it’ll tell you, well, this path will save you the most amount of gas. This path will avoid tolls. So it’s as simple as the fact that, you know, in everyday life, we’ve been using artificial intelligence a lot. If you have a 401k, there’s not some guy in a suit that’s, you know, moving your money around. It’s an algorithm that’s actually looking at the market and based on what you’re investing in, it’s actually moving the money around to try to get you the best return at the end of the day. That’s how it’s working. So the person that you actually talk to, the salesperson, they’re probably getting a lot more credit than they should. Yes, you do have top level hedge fund folks, but, you know, that’s where it is. If you’ve gone to the doctor in the last five to 10 years, a lot of the especially like now with the. you have two daughters. So we talk about mammograms, for example, they probably don’t know how old they are, they might not be ready for that yet. But like your wife or significant other, if they’ve gone to receive that type of treatment, then yes, a lot of times there’s an algorithm that’s built into the computer that is looking at that scan and it’s saying that this looks anomalous to me. And based on that, that triggers the human to investigate further. So As far as artificial intelligence itself, we’ve been using AI for a while. What we’re running into is technology is a news cycle because we have deified technology and technology billionaires, if you will. So when there is a new discovery, because again, AI, you know, November became chat GPT because of AI. Why? Because we can talk to it now. Right. With Google Maps and the other things, you couldn’t talk to it or you could, but you wouldn’t get an answer. Arguably, you could through, you know, the assistant on your phone. But, you know, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 42:48.441

So where we are now, it’s made it more interactive.

Speaker 1 | 42:56.747

And so that’s what it is. It wasn’t it’s more of a bidirectional relationship as opposed to, you know, being a modern directional relationship. So. If we look at it from that perspective, the future is bright. But yes, we do need to put guardrails in there. And I think there’s been some response in that, particularly if you look at chat GPT’s implementation in Bing, a Microsoft product that they’ve actually kind of pushed, not completely pressed the brakes, but they’ve kind of taken their foot off the gas a little bit as it becomes, again, From an engineering perspective, well, I’m going to use a football analogy. Some of you people may hate this, but growing up, my favorite football coach, I grew up as a Cowboys fan. I broke that addiction some time ago. We share that. Yeah, Tony Romo broke that. He broke that for me. But in any case, Tom Landry was my favorite football coach. He is, to me, the greatest football coach of all time. He can work offense and defense. And one of his most famous quotes is, after is that you would see him get so frustrated when Roger Staubach would scramble and stuff, but he got a touchdown and he would be so frustrated. And his answer when he asked about that is he said, my plays are perfect, but not for the players. And the reason that I say that is that when we work down this whole line is that the technology itself isn’t necessarily a problem. It’s a human. When we. build things as engineers or as programmers, when we build them, it’s kind of like we talked about the earlier with some of the other data sets, right? Is that you put this car and you put all this energy and this money and millions of dollars and time and effort, and you put it out on the road and you say, okay, we’ve got as far as we can go. And then within months, all these complaints come in. Right. And the reason is, is that you have people that are using the car in ways that you had no idea that they were going to use it. Yeah. And by having that level of field test, if you will, it gives you new data that you have to hurry up and add it to your data set. And sometimes that can affect the viability of the product that you’re making. So in the lab, this thing works great. I mean, Google, they’ve had. the Lambda project for years when they bought what DeepMind was it? And so they’ve had it in the background. Microsoft had their own AI product in the background, but it wasn’t until you released it to the public to where you could see where the corruption comes, number one. And number two, the false positives that have come out of the fact that we have let the internet become a place where there’s inundated with so much false information that it. thinks but it’s said in such an authoritative way that would be because we haven’t properly fact-checked things over the years because of the fear of free speech we have let things exist on the internet that people have accepted to be true because there isn’t enough contrarian evidence to overcome that fact although there is enough evidence if you pay attention to it to to overcome that i know whether well i don’t want to spark any things but um the point is If in that situation, if it’s returning back to you, you know, false information or false dates or that type of thing. And it’s if you look, they’re citing sources. It’s just that the sources are sources that aren’t reliable. Right.

Speaker 0 | 46:32.326

And that’s interesting, too, because and you’re right on this. And so there’s a there’s a chance here. I mean, I look at it as as kind of like, you know, Wikipedia. Right. You notice how no. you know, you can look at an article and then you can go back a few days later and it’s completely different. You know, it’s changed a little bit. And, and that’s because the, you know, people will keep editing it and adding to it and everything like that.

Speaker 1 | 47:00.560

And if you’re correcting it,

Speaker 0 | 47:02.061

yeah, if you’re looking at artificial intelligence as something that’s static, right, then you’re looking at it the wrong way. First of all, you know, this is items that are just being run. in data sets, like you mentioned, boom, boom,

Speaker 1 | 47:16.782

boom,

Speaker 0 | 47:17.062

boom. You know, it’s not this all-encompassing entity, right? It’s running algorithms in the background based on what you want it to do. And it’s producing output it thinks is correct based on all the information that it has.

Speaker 1 | 47:30.677

And there’s the other piece too, right, is that it hallucinates because it’s programmed to give you an answer. And then when it can’t give you an answer, it hallucinates, meaning that it actually will provide something out of thin air that sounds logical based on everything else it’s learned. But maybe, you know, in fact, not true. Right. Because it’s trying to please you. It’s like a pet.

Speaker 0 | 47:50.761

And is that any different than what a human would try to do if they didn’t know what the answer was? You know,

Speaker 1 | 47:56.463

it’s this,

Speaker 0 | 47:58.104

you know.

Speaker 1 | 47:58.744

Yeah. It’s like talking to a really, really smart five year old.

Speaker 0 | 48:02.366

Exactly right.

Speaker 1 | 48:02.906

That’s what I equate it to. That’s where we are.

Speaker 0 | 48:04.727

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you’re right. And it also has to deal with something earlier we talked about, which is diversity. Not everyone thinks the same. Not everyone has the same experiences. And not everyone types the same. Not everyone puts that input in a certain way. And not everyone expects the output that they’re going to get. So, there’s this piece of multiple people entering data. So, that being said, that’s present. Where we’re at right now, we are at… artificial intelligence that is trying to learn all of the different types of ways that people can ask questions and then trying to find sources that are correct and returning things that may or may not be accurate. And, you know, I found that when I use it, you know, to do simple tasks, like to create meeting agendas, I don’t want to… And listen, I’m just going to give you a bunch of information. And can you just format this into a nice looking meeting agenda that I can pop in there? I still have to read it back and look at it because it could be wrong. And sometimes it does a great job of putting it all together. And then you’re like, well, that sentence doesn’t make sense. And that’s about 70 percent of the way there. And then I have to clean it up and and fix it. But so that being said, now that we have the past, the present. we’re moving on to the future, right? What do you see here? The future of artificial intelligence and where it’s going to be used and what the pieces are going to be. What are you seeing in that mix?

Speaker 1 | 49:51.162

Well, two things there. First of all, Michael, I want to tell you, because again, being a fellow parent of an experience about, and just to take maybe a slight tangent is, I stepped into my boys, I was dropping them off to go get a pair of shoes and some Jordans or whatever the case they were looking to go. And I stopped to go get a McDonald’s hamburger and I walked in and there was nobody in there. And I was like, oh, is this place open? The door wasn’t locked. And I saw screens. And I went in and I could place my order with the screen and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, OK. And then I went and got my boys and brought them back up there. And they’re like, yeah, we just hate. So that’s not why we’re here. I want you to take a look and see that these jobs aren’t going to exist much longer. And the reason that I bring that up is that because of the automation, because of the ability to automate, the ability to have that artificial intelligence to be able to, you know, make those type of things. And again, that’s more dumb input. But. you know, it’s not that long, I believe, going to now that we have predictive text to where you could go in and talk to that screen now and tell that screen, this is what I would like to order. I would like this type of hamburger with this and that or whatever. And it could go through its menu of choices, spit that out on the other end. I think that’s more or less where we’re headed. And so the reason I say that is I think as parents and we as we prepare for the future, we need to start preparing our children for a world that’s going to exist not the world that exists today. Because the time when you’re going to be able to make a good living doing that job that that robot or that kiosk is going to do is going away. And you’re going to have to adapt and make sure that your children are prepared because That doesn’t necessarily mean all jobs are going away because somebody’s got to program it. Somebody’s got to install it. Somebody’s got to. So we have to take the game up a bit and prepare for the next level when we talk about those type of things. And the reason that for me that’s important is that right now we’ve gotten into kind of on the other side of the resistance to AI has been this kind of protectionist thing. We’re kind of trying to protect jobs. as opposed to retraining our people so that they can fit into the world that goes, that’s coming. Because again, there’s not a lot of people in the 1800s, early 1900s, when cars were invented, that were like, oh man, what about that poor horse? What is he going to do now? Right? When they started closing buggy whip factories because they didn’t need buggy whips anymore, those people had to retrain into other jobs. And we did that as a country. We did that into a community. And it’s something that we need to start doing today. And we’re not doing a very good job of that. We’re siphoning money out of public education for other things that have nothing to do with public education. We say we don’t have money for it, but then we find money to pay security guards to stop, you know, all the shootings that are happening, which that to me sounds contradictory. But that’s a different thing. Don’t want to go too down that path. So my point is that. When we need the money for things we want, we find the money to pay. And so we need to invest in our children and in our teachers so that we can prepare them for the world that’s coming. And so that’s one thing. So when I say that, I go back to the artificial intelligence pieces. That’s what we’re getting to, is that the level of productivity is going to increase just like it has when you look at the industrial world, right? That the level of… productivity increase, but the amount of work that was actually being done by the human was less because you had better tools. We learned about repetitive motion and how it was harming the body. And so we learned to adapt with those things and we gave them tools and robots to assist them inside that workplace. That’s what’s coming to the office now, right? We talked about it a little bit with the radio. There used to be a person that was a radiology tech that would read that scan. Now there’s an AI that can do that faster. give you results quicker, which helps the patient get better now than then that human or the doctor that interprets what the robot says can then make a more cohesive diagnosis. When it comes to writing your paper, like you said, with the agenda, you know, now I have a virtual assistant, a literal one that can actually check my email and tell me, you know, that you need to check this or this person called and you need to do this. those type of things. So now that’s something where I don’t have to triage my email for the first hour and a half of the day through the tranche of email that I may have. When I’m writing a paper, I can get a rough draft on something on a topic that I may or may not know very much about. And it can be written sort of in my style, and then I have to go in. I want to make sure I say this for all the teachers. I need to then go in and I need to make the corrections. I need to put my own voice and my own originality into that paper. But I’ve got a great start. So it saves me the time of having to to do all of this treasury ahead of time. And so that’s what you’re starting to see where we had that in the blue collar world. We’re starting to see that come into the white collar world. And that’s what AI is going to do for us moving forward. it’s not going to be about cars that drive themselves next week that’s not that’s a pipe dream that’s going to be a very long time because of the same thing we just mentioned as humans but for us to be able to have more better productivity um and also quality of life that’s based on that productivity that that’s what we’re coming to i

Speaker 0 | 55:38.487

think you you sum that up perfectly and it’s a um it’s a great a holistic view of of where it was uh where we are now and where we are going. And it’s something you’re right. We’ve encountered this multiple times. And I feel like we always have the same conversation, right?

Speaker 1 | 55:58.298

It’s we do.

Speaker 0 | 55:59.379

Oh, the jobs are all going to go away. But they don’t. They just change a bit and people learn how to adapt to it and use it for their advantage. New markets open up, new pieces open up. Actually, most of the time it creates new jobs. And, you know, it’s just learning to kind of adapt to the situation. And as human beings and as IT human beings, we should always learn to adapt because that’s all we’re doing in here the entire time.

Speaker 1 | 56:28.301

And IT particularly, Michael, because remember, there used to be a person, and usually it was a woman, that would answer the phone when you picked it up, right? And you’d tell that person, hey, I need to call Michael. And he would pick up, you know, make a connection in the back end to do that. Well, that job doesn’t exist anymore. The way that that’s done doesn’t exist anymore. But nobody, you know, but we have taken those folks and they’ve become either IT specialists or they’ve become switchmen, which don’t exist anymore. Now they’re network people. So it evolves and we just have to, we have to step that game, but we have to make sure that we’re cognizant that this needs to happen and that we prepare for it or else we run the risk of really falling behind in a lot of ways. And I think that we’re on the precipice of. of something that we may not have seen before because yes you had the luddite movement back in the industrial revolution you know to which your point is we’ve had this happens that we’ve had this conversation a lot and over and over again but we find a way to get to the other side by you know bringing those people into the fold and saying yes we see your concern but this is something else that you can take that same skill set and do you no longer make boogie wet buggy but those cars need tires with steel belts it’s the same stuff we’re just going to do it a different way and we’re going to make the tire as opposed to making a buggy quip we have to start doing that as an or as a community and as a country or else we’re going to leave people behind and then that’s going to cause a lot of the anger that you see that’s happening right now no i’d say it’s a it’s a great uh

Speaker 0 | 57:58.121

a great way you summed it up perfectly um uh matt thank you so much for being on uh nerds this is uh michael moore i’m hosting this podcast for dissecting popular i.t nerds i’ve had Matthew B. Park, Senior Vice President of Information Technology and Security at the Pace Center for Girls on. Thank you so much, Matthew. Really appreciate it. I know it’s your second time on. Just keep coming on, though. I really always enjoy the conversation and stuff.

Speaker 1 | 58:26.882

Michael, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time.

Speaker 0 | 58:29.164

Thank you.