Name: Matt Brown
Age: 30
Position: Executive Director, The Democracy Compact (the organization is sponsored by the Providence Journal; the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce; CVS; Taco, Inc.; and the Rhode Island Broadcaster’s Association. Other supporters include the Rhode Island Foundation; the United Way of Southeastern New England; Textron; Hasbro; OSO.com; Johnson & Wales University; The Beacon Mutual Insurance Company; Bank of Newport; and Bell Atlantic.)
Background: Helped to establish City Year in 1993 and served as its executive director from 1995 to 1998; visited South Africa in 1998 to study its election system.
Education: Columbia University (1992); Yale University Law School (expected to graduate 2001)
Family: Single
Residence: Providence
CARLOS DOMINGUEZ: ‘Our focus now is on the business world…but our hearts, our roots are still in education.
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(Editor’s note: Carlos Dominguez was in Rhode Island recently as the keynote speaker at an IT Workforce Summit, sponsored by the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council.)
PBN: When was Cisco Systems founded?
DOMINGUEZ: We were founded in 1984. It was basically founded by two individuals, from Stanford University. Funding was done because of a National Science Foundation grant that was given to Stanford for two things – number one to develop a high performance computing platform. And the second thing was to network them and to be able to allow them to exchange information. So two companies were formed. One was SUN Microsystems, which stands for Stanford University Network, and the other was Cisco that provided the connectivity between the two.
In the course of that time how has the mission of the company changed?
When we first started it was only educationally based, for the first probably three to four years of our birth we only worked with higher level institutions on education and finally in the 1990 timeframe we went beyond education, to focus on the business world, and we made tremendous roadways in financial markets. But still, to this day, when you look at networking academies and all the things that are still there, our heart, our roots are still in education.
You’re buying companies faster than most companies. All within the same area, or more diversification?
We’re expanding the whole products suite that we’re in. For example, we’ve done some acquisitions that allow us to bring voice now onto the networks that we’re doing. There’s a number of companies that we bought that either provide some content networking or some other technology. So we’re broadening the scope of what we traditionally covered.
What do you see as the greatest challenge facing companies today?
They’re facing a multitude of them. One of them is their model, their business models are changing so rapidly. You could use a number of examples. If you used the Cisco example, we changed the paradigm on how we empower our employees. We provide information to them on the Web 24-hours a day, seven days a week. It gives them more knowledge and more information and thus gives us a competitive advantage. We use technology internally in a lot of different ways that can help us reduce the operating costs to the tune of $850 million a year. When you start adding all of these components – by the way when you take that $850 million and plow that back into research and development that gives you a competitive advantage.
So I think the issue that most companies face today is what impact is technology having in their industry and their sector and what can they do with that technology to create some unique value for them. There’s a number of companies, like Merrill Lynch that said on-line brokering, I’ll never do that. Charles Schwab went in and started capturing (that business) and have today as much or greater assets than Merrill Lynch. And now Merrill Lynch, years later, established an on-line brokerage. A lot of these small companies are evolving and creating business models we’ve never seen before.
Rhode Island is a state of very small companies. Where do these companies find the financial resources to compete with larger companies?
This is the decade of the small companies, because on the Internet nobody really knows how big you are — number one. Number two — all of the products that are coming out and services that are coming out are really being tailored to smaller companies. Example, there’s a data base company that you know, like Oracle data base, if you are a 10 to 15, 20 person company you would never be able to have an Oracle data base. You couldn’t afford it or maintain it. Well, there’s a whole host of companies coming out that are called applications service providers that are going to be providing data base services like Oracle on a time share basis, which is really geared to the small or medium companies so they will now have access to the same tools and the same software and the same technology as the large corporation, on a time share, or a methodology that they can afford.
There are a huge number of jobs, vacancies that are out there and not enough people to fill.
That’s correct.
How do we resolve that?
You resolve it again with understanding the issue. The example is the Cisco Network Academy, which addresses the issue of not having enough IT professionals in my industry that understand networking. We came up with a very innovative way of delivering curriculum. The target audience was high school and first and second year community college students and delivering it in a methodology that was simple to use, and doing it in a way in the community colleges where it is done through technology, so you have some consistency and it really gets the kids excited. We understood how to interact with these kids through computer programs that are really, really neat.
Where is it in Rhode Island?
In three schools. I don’t have the names of all of them. There’s currently three, there’s going to be eight by the beginning of the year in September.
How many students are in each of these programs?
They vary, but traditionally between 18 and 24 students per class, and you can run up to three classes to four classes a day.
What is the eventual goal? From what I understand there are certification steps.
That’s correct. What you end up doing and the one that’s being delivered in the high school, after two semesters and each semester is 240 hours of instruction, they will get a certificate that they are a Cisco certified networking associate. That has got the credentials that they understand how to build and maintain at that first level these complex networks. Then they can continue if they want to go for a Cisco certified professional, instead of an associate, at that they get more trouble shooting, how to manage larger scale networks, and maybe more variety of complexity. The last one is what they call Cisco certified network engineer. These are the propeller guys that build the most complex networks that exist today.
Besides the Cisco program are there other programs that parallel this?
I think there are other programs. I think Microsoft has one, a couple of others. I don’t think it is to the extent of what we’re doing. The next level of this is now helping the kids get placed, and again, I’m working with a couple of people who do it in an innovative manner where we get the data base with the authority of the school and the children to get put into a data base that we work now with a recruiter to get them placed and the fees that are taken off of that, some of that is put in escrow for the kids to continue their education, and some of it is done for workforce training, how to interview, how to present yourself.
Logically you’re not going to create enough people to fill all these jobs.
No, the demand is greater than what we can produce.
What more has to be done with our educational system today to be more responsive to the needs of the workforce?
I think it’s really a partnership between education, government and business. One of the things we really have to do on the business side is go to the educational institutions and say here is the kind of worker that I need for you to help me produce. And for them to have the flexibility to be able to maybe map their curriculum a little bit differently than what they’ve done in the past. As I mentioned before I could take an electrical engineering student, it still takes me two years after graduation to make them productive for my company. If I could cut that down to six or three months, we’d be very, very happy because now we’ve got them with the workforce training we need. A lot of it has to do with the communications side, in presentations, expressing themselves not a lot of these skills are being taught in schools.
It would appear that the number of kids in colleges following technology programs is relatively small?
It’s declining. Engineering overall is declining, especially with minorities. Whatever is happening in the overall scheme of things, if you do the minority aspect of it is down to almost nothing.
Are there no role models in these fields for minority students?
It’s a very individual type thing. I personally am so involved in the community in trying to drive these kids, from meeting with them on a one on one basis once a month, to mentoring them in any way that I can and chairing an organization called Communities in Schools (CIS) to really keep the minority kids in school, to graduate, and provide some leadership there because I think it is absolutely crucial. The thing is most understood is they introduce these programs sometimes in minority communities, they don’t understand all of the hardships these kids have, from not eating to having drugs at home.
You mentioned the partnership of business, education and government, all with somewhat different approaches and goals. Is the marriage coming together? What are the obstacles to making it work?
It’s kind of interesting because for the first time that I’m aware of, the three forces are together and they all have a win in making it happen. Business wins in the sense that they get trained workers, that they can put into this wonderful economy and continue to grow. Education gets winners because they get funding and maybe more focus from what they should be doing from an educational perspective, and government wins if they have trained workers in their state, businesses will move in and it really helps the economy and the whole process.
As we look at this economy, in your vision do you see this thing slowing down at all?
Oh no. I see technology continuing to accelerate. There’s some great exhibits I’ve been very fortunate to see. One of them is the smart home. It could get to the point where it’s absurd on technology, but I think there are some things that are very, very innovative in how you do things. The Internet is continuing to fuel new models and new ways of doing things people haven’t thought about it before.
It’s funny, a lot of times technology comes in backdoor. Sony, with their new Playstation Number Two. Real interesting technology, you have gaming at home with all these teenagers that want it, including some adults, and what’s going to end up happening – their strategy is you’re going to do gaming with other people around the world, or around the country, it’s going to be a portal out. To be honest with you that’s going to be, probably in my estimation, 30 to 40 percent of the connectivity in the future will be coming out of the devices that don’t exist, so there’s going to be a whole transformation on how that is done.
Also, if you look at cellular phones that are outside of the U.S. – by the way they have pretty sophisticated infrastructure, much more advanced than ours – cellular phones, you’ll be able to have a combined telephone that has a GPS. You’ll be able to do videoconferencing on it, in a very short period of time it will be your PVA, so there’s a lot of technology coming in. If you think of it, all this DSL coming into your home, broadbandwidth. Once it gets there you’ve got to distribute it. So appliances will be smart. Wouldn’t it be nice if your refrigerator – you’re traveling – you’re condenser has a problem, it notifies somebody instead of letting all your food spoil. The other convenience is on the refrigerator – Whirlpool has one that’s got a scanner, an Internet screen on the front of it and then it has a bar scanner right in the box. So you finish you’re milk, you scan it, you throw it away. When you’re ready to go to the store in a couple of months you say print it for me, or downline load that to the store and have that delivered. It’s got also a panel from the back, they have access to put it in the refrigerator. That or it will create environments where your mailbox needs now to have storage for products that might spoil. It’s kind of on the edge of how you do that.
The other thing that I think will be very, very powerful is voice recognition that’s coming. There’s a whole host of products that will be coming out where you’ll say phone here, get me this, get me that. It will be a very big convenience for us, but it will play an even stronger convenience for those who are paraplegics or that don’t have the capacity to do it on their own. That will be invading the homes by leaps and bounds.
We look at all of the exciting developments on the one end. But what does this do to the socialization process? This is all really to support the human condition.
That’s a great question. It has come up a couple of times. I’ll begin by telling you I’m not really qualified to answer it. You probably need a great psychologist to be able to do it, but there are a lot of people who are communicating over PCs. My kids, I’ll give you the tradeoff, my oldest hates to write, she’s 15. As a result of the Internet, as a result of e-mail, she spends a lot of time writing now, communicating with her friends instead of on the phone, and I’ve seen her now structuring her thought process, having very witty conversations with someone whether it’s online versus talking on the phone. I don’t know whether it will ever replace communications face to face, but it certainly offers alternatives. I rather enjoy sending e-mails out. I can be pretty funny, instead of doing things spontaneously.
Where do you see Cisco Systems going? The growth has been incredible, where do you see its growth?
It’s kind of a question that we’re entering new markets. If you look at the market we’ve traditionally been, the sum total is something like $30 billion and we’ve been very fortunate in capturing $14 – $15 billion of that. We did a good job. The good news is we’re entering into markets that are much bigger, for example the IP Telephony market that we’re getting into, all this broadband optical stuff. That market is somewhere between $240 to $300 billion and we’re a small piece of that. If we execute well and do the things we need to do and know we can do and capture more of that market, we’ll do well. It’s exciting for us because we became the biggest company in our space and now with the new paradigm we’re the smallest company in our space. It gives us a lot of room to move and grow and continue to do the things we do well.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
When it comes to technology it’s going to create the haves and have nots for us, whether it’s at the state level, the country level or whether it’s in the corporations, it’s something that we need to take seriously and define ways to partner, in ways that we haven’t partnered before, because just like the industrial revolution created the superpowers, the Internet revolution is going to do the same. I encourage all your readers that can help and participate in this new economy to really contribute in any way that they can, and also challenge businesses to do some of the things that we have done with our networking academy program on their own to continue to help.
And the footnote to that is they don’t have to be as big as you guys to do some piece of it.
No they don’t and as a matter of fact in a three to six month period we’re going to take the engine that we use to create the Cisco Network Academy which is serving the technology, which is doing all the on-line assessment, which is doing all the other things. We’re going to make it available and people can build upon that engine, that model, their own curriculum.
From a practical standpoint, how does somebody get into that?
Real simple, I would go into the Cisco Web site, cisco.com, look under networking academy program, (it will)give you some information on that and you can sign up on the mailing list and we keep you updated on that.
