Welcome to a special crossover episode of Impact Quantum, where we dive straight into the action from the floor of Nvidia GTC in Washington, D.C.! In this episode, hosts Frank La Vigne and Candace Gillhoolley take you behind the scenes of one of the tech world’s most exciting conferences—from AI-driven robots and GPU-powered supercomputers to a surprising amount of quantum computing buzz.

Join us as Frank shares his firsthand experiences, including the latest hardware reveals, government involvement, unique swag, and even the cosplay antics of attendees impersonating Nvidia’s CEO. Candace and Frank also unpack the growing intersections of AI, quantum computing, robotics, and national security, while highlighting the importance of adaptability and lifelong learning in the face of rapid technological change.

Whether you’re a seasoned technologist, a quantum curious newcomer, or just here for the epic robot sightings, this episode is packed with insights, laughs, and actionable advice for navigating a future shaped by emerging technologies. Hit play and get ready for a front-row look at the innovations, opportunities, and human stories fueling the data-driven quantum revolution!

Links

• Frank gets a shout out from Pluralsight – https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/upskilling/frank-lavigne-customer-story
• Jensen Huang’s DTC DC Keynote – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQHK61IDFH4
• Mariya & Python Simplified – https://www.youtube.com/@pythonsimplified

Time Stamps

00:00 Nvidia GTC Highlights

03:36 "AI, Quantum, and Innovation"

09:15 "Robots, Shorts, and Streaming Woes"

11:43 Digital Twins Attract Buzz

13:56 DGX Bars: The Hot Giveaway

19:10 Career Shifts in Tech

23:05 From Publishing to Tech Transition

24:43 "Quantum, Satellites, and Lasers"

29:01 "Nvidia as Defense Contractor"

32:25 Tech Innovations Powering the Future

34:59 AI & Quantum Computing Insights

37:37 "Quantum Networking Revolution Explained"

42:18 "Unique Tech-Security Conference Highlights"

46:05 "Re-recording for Authenticity"

49:26 "Learning from a System Launch"

50:33 "Quantum Impact for Innovators"

From GPU powered supercomputers to quantum leaps in tech, this

special crossover episode between Data Driven and Impact Quantum

is what happens when AI robots and national security

walk into a convention center straight from the floor of Nvidia

GTC in dc. Frank and Candace bring the data

fueled download of what's now, what's next and what might just take

your job. Unless you've already got a DGX spark.

Well, hello X, YouTube, LinkedIn,

Twitch, Facebook. And

we're actually streaming this to two YouTube channels at the same

time. The Data Driven channel and I mean sorry, the Frank's World TV

channel and the Impact Quantum YouTube channel. And because this

is kind of a hybrid show, I'm going to post the audio feed for this

on Data Driven and as well as Impact

Quantum, I have with me the most quantum curious person I know,

Candace Kahooli. How's it going, Candace? It's great. I'm really excited to talk today.

I just got all jazzed up by the song, so there you go. That's why

I like that little like, like kind of like early Spice Girls kind of Euro

pop mix. Right like that. I actually

made that with AI and that was the prompt like kind of like if you,

if you remember familiar with that era of music. Venga Boys,

the, the tool I use like I'm sorry I can't use that name but I

can substitute like the, the keywords for that. So yeah,

there's actually an extended mix too so. Which I might put on Spotify

one day. I don't know. So yeah. So the big news,

and you can tell by my my hat is Nvidia GTC was

this week. I have my, my badge, it's

still going on but the expo floor is closed and sadly

I only have an Expo floor pass

so which you know, I mean I, I like being on

the expo floor. I was as someone called a, you know, booth

babe, which I suspect is, I think is a compliment.

But you know, I worked a booth

for a lot which was cool because I got to meet a lot of interesting

people, you know, coming to the Red Hat booth and talking about

our solution and product and getting the word out that we're not just a Linux

company. Right. Jensen Huang. And the

keynote, Jensen being the CEO of Nvidia, in case you didn't know,

he and co founder. There's actually a very interesting book

called the Nvidia Way, which I highly recommend you

list. I listen to it on Audible. Speaking of which,

Audible is a sponsor of all our shows and if you go

to thedatadrivenbook.com you can get one free book. I

recommend. It's called the Nvidia Way. I think the guy author's name was Tay Kim.

T, A, E, K, I M. And you'll get one free book. And

if you decide to get an audible subscription, which you should because it's freaking awesome.

I, I live and die by audiobooks mostly because

I'm always. If I'm not traveling for work, I'm driving the

kids around. So it's definitely a safe way to keep

up. I also have wicked cool headphones

so I can listen to this while I'm walking around and still be involved in

what's going on around me. So, yeah, it was an exciting

week. I think this is the first G GTC conference, so I think

it originally stands for Gamers Technology Conference, which really shows kind of

the origin story of Nvidia being primarily a

video card. And what's very interesting

is how that

from. Whoops. There we go. I'm having some equipment

issues, although it is nice to be in the studio because this way,

this way I have full bandwidth and a full screen so I can have all

the cool bells and whistles and stuff. Yeah, so I was

talking to you, I was texting you, I was messaging you, like, oh my God,

there's a lot of quantum here. Right? So the couple of things really stood out

from, from, from the keynote on day one, and I think really kind of set

the whole tone for it. Obviously it's in dc, right? So we kind of talked

about the importance of American innovation, the importance of America staying ahead

on AI. He talked about the importance of open source and he talked about

quantum computing, which I'm like, there you go. I mean,

GTC used to be primarily known as, you know, the

hardware conference. Right now it's about, you

know, AI ecosystems and industrial transformation

and robotics and AI and quantum hybrid

computing. I mean, it was, it was, it was cool. Like

there was something for everyone, right? There was a lot of robots on the floor.

I don't think this one was as kind of crazy manic as the California

one, because as I'm told, the California one, there's the. You can't

walk because it was just so crowded with people. This one was a little more.

I didn't have problems getting places, although I think some sessions had overflow

rooms. But it was cool. Like, you know, it was nice

because it's just that, you know, it's. It's a relatively short drive for me

to go down to D.C. so

it was definitely a lot of fun. You

know, the, the bad with situation in the

DC Convention center definitely could have benefited from some of

Nvidia's tech. Well, that's right. Didn't you, you, you,

you, you create a couple shorts, right? I did, I created. So what I ended

up doing, I, I, I had a live stream that I did from the phone

walking, you know, from. Basically I parked at,

and I walked over to the convention center and I used to work there. Right.

So the Microsoft Office on K Street is like right there. So I kind of

know the area and I kind of. The

normal parking garages I would use back when I worked there were completely full.

So I had to scramble like, oh my God, where am I going to park?

Right? And parking in D.C. is miserable. In fact, the only thing more

miserable than the parking in D.C. is the

metro in D.C. or for me to Metro in. So

a lot of people like, wait, you drove? And I'm like, yeah, because I can

be, I can be miserable in traffic in my comfort of my own car as

opposed to being miserable like on the train. But

I would choose my car too. I would choose my car. Yeah, you, you and

I, you know, we grew up in New York and like we did our time

on mass transit. Yeah, I'm done with it. Like,

the only mass transit line I really liked was when I lived in Germany and

then as far as the US Metro north was pretty awesome. Yeah. Compared

to everything else. But like, yeah, Metro north, it's not as good as that. But

I'm also, I also don't live off of a mark line, which is kind of

like the Maryland version of Metro North. Okay. But,

but it was cool. It was great. So the, some of the big announcements.

For me, what really stuck out was kind of the national security

angle of it. Right? Yes. And if you look

here, I have some pictures that I took. Like there were sections that were

reserved for congressional staffers.

Right. There were a couple of cases

where. See if I can change up that scene. There we go.

Congressional staffers had their own seats,

which I think was very telling. I think a couple of the panels had elected

officials. I think that senator from Indiana was there. And

also Jensen Wong has kind of figured out kind of the DC

kind of ecosystem pretty well for a tech company.

I mean he, he basically hit all the right notes. And I, I've

sat in a lot of these kind of government focused technology conferences. This

was interesting because it was kind of a lot of non government people, a lot

of government people, a lot of armed. A lot of uniform service members are walking

through. A lot of people walking through worked for various

departments of the federal government. And a lot of us were surprised because, you

know, they're all on furlough. So like, what is that?

You know, how do you do that while you're on furlough? And people were like,

well, you know, we cannot get paid and go to the office or not get

paid and come here. Right. So

this is way more interesting now. I don't know. I'm not going to

say what, what agency that does. That gentleman worked for, but, you know, I

thought that was an interesting thing. So there were a lot of feds there. It

was also very interesting from a.

If you haven't watched the keynote, the actual live stream keynote that he gave, it's.

It's very inspiring, right? He kind of puts this in. Into perspective.

And the Nvidia creative team really had a good kind of storytelling.

Right. Like one of the clip, one of the segments starts from, you know, this

was like, you know, the first video game that shipped that used

an Nvidia accelerator. And then kind of through the years,

like what those video games look like. And also

just a lot of good stuff there. And

they had hardware out on display. If you go here,

this is me on a. Admiring the.

Some of the graphics cards. That card there is about, I

think about 300 watts of power on its own.

And the systems that were displayed along next to it all had

like four of them in a row. Right. So these were serious

metal. Right. And I have a lot of YouTube shorts out there and maybe, maybe

I'll show them here. But where I kind of go through all of these things,

there were robots everywhere, Candace. I never seen so many robots

in one place, so.

And if you go to Frank's World TV on YouTube, like, there's a lot of

shorts I have. So what I ended up doing ultimately was since I wanted to

live stream from the actual convention center, I couldn't because

the band was just miserable. Like, you'll see in the live stream, as soon as

I get inside the building, about 50ft inside the building, it just goes dead.

So rather than kind of suffer through that, I was like, you know what? Let

me, you know, I'll record some video and I'll try to upload it. When I

tried doing anything kind of like long form, like horizontally, it took forever to

upload. So I'm like, you know what, let me do just a bunch of shorts.

So that's why I got. So whenever I saw something Cool. Like capture a couple

of like, you know, quick 30 second minute long video.

And this here is Booze Allen's

platform, I guess, because the robot, everything in green

basically is a boss and robotics um, thing.

Everything on top of that is

proprietary thing that Booz Allen, big consulting firm here in

the D.C. area, you know, has kind of put on top of

it. So in, in here, which I, I don't know why I'm pointing with my

mouse because you can't see it. But if you look, there's a lidar sensor,

there's a, another thermal

camera. It's a FLIR camera up in the front. The gray thing you see there,

the round thing is the, is the lidar.

And in the back, in that little box right behind

it, the big box in the back is a tactical radio. And

the little thing inside of that tan kind of rectangular

box is a Jetson nano.

Right. So they've taken extra intelligence and put it on top of that.

And there's a lot of, a lot of cool stuff like that. One of the

funniest things to happen is that people are actually cosplaying, walking around

the convention center as Jensen.

Okay. And I got, I gave them, we, you know, at the

booth we had these hats, but we also had red fedoras. So it was giving

that out and we ran. Those were very popular. We ran out of those

within I think the first 45

minutes to an hour. Yeah, that's good swag. That's good swag. We went through

like, like I think 200 of them and then we found like an extra 50

on the second day and they were gone in like 10 minutes. So people kept

coming by like, hey, can I get some of that? Can I get one of

those? We're out. And but it's also great

marketing from, because like, you know, literally the company name

is, you know, the product. Right. So it was pretty cool. And these

guys are funny. I actually did a short video with them and he was

walking around pretending he was Jensen. So the shtick is that the guy on the

right is, you know, they were both his digital

twins. That was basically it. Okay. And they were looking for his third.

So what makes us really funny is, is that Jensen is, is as

a, as, as the CEO and co founder of a 5 trillion

dollar company. He's supposedly really down to earth.

I never met him in person, but like he'll walk around the expo floor

and like introduce himself and there's always like, he was a few,

he was like, I saw him from about 20ft away. And I'm like, please come

here. So we had everything ready, but he didn't. But at

the, at the one in March though, he did come by the Red Hat booth

and he's like, you know, he, he's

like, hey, Red Hat. Like, you know, and one of my team members handed him

like we had a scarf and he's like, this is awesome. And he put it

on. He's like, he goes, I remember installing you guys way back in the

day. Like it was kind of cool. And

so this was pretty funny. But my favoritest person I met

was, well, this guy was cool. This

is he, he lives in Raleigh. This guy. Whoops.

And he, he doesn't work for Red Hat, but he does a lot of

videography type stuff. So he had the most impressive rig

and he had what you don't see, you see obviously the big

camera that is a stabilizer. And then below him

he has a 360 camera. So he's able to kind of capture literally everything

from that one rig. So definitely I

feel like I have to up my equipment game.

Wait, you just got, you just got a new toy? I did just get it,

yeah. My budget is blown for a while. Like, you know, it's the DGX Spark

is what you're referring to. Yes, yes. So they actually had some

giveaways of those and it was definitely like, you know, the hot thing that

people were excited about. So it did feel kind of good to be one

of the cool kids and be like, I have a DGX bar. Like, you know,

and everybody's like. And the funny thing is a lot of people didn't know you

can buy them at Micro Center. Like,

you know, that's where I got mine. A lot of people were waiting on theirs

to get delivered. Although at the conference you, they actually had a store

and you could buy them. Wow. Yeah. Though I would imagine with DC

sales tax being what it is,

you know, the sales tax on mine was about 250. I think in D.C. it

would be closer to like 350. Right. But you know, hey, you know,

you know, you have it right then and there. Right.

So this person here, this is Maria Shah, she is a

the YouTuber behind the channel Python

Simplified. And

you know, she goes to a lot of these Nvidia events. So I'm like, you

know, I'm a big fan. So I was like, hey, you know, stop by the

Red Hat booth. And she didn't stop by the Red Hat booth, you know, so

that was cool. Like it was cool to meet her. She is taller in person

than I thought, which is kind of funny. But

she's super cool and she has like a mini entourage and they were all like

super cool. Like, you know, one guy was like, no, no. Like I pictures

her, picture her wearing this hat and he's like, no, no, you got to get

the right angle. You got to get the right angle. The guy was doing that.

Like I was like one of her people and I was like. And he was

super cool. So

the, yeah, that was, it was a great conference. And

I'll see if I have any other pictures. Oh yeah, there she is. This is

the one that he was like, no, no, you got to get like, you know,

with the branding and stuff like that. So very

cool. But she's really, she's really awesome. And I only recently

found out that she started her career as. And she's relatively

young. I didn't ask her age because that's totally impolite, but she's definitely

younger than I am and she's already changed careers. I think she

originally was. And she only recently shared this. She was originally a

graphic designer, which is interesting.

Yeah. And then she's made the switch into. I think originally, if you look through

her like her older stuff on YouTube, it was mostly Python development.

Right. Kind of like web development with Python and stuff like that. And then gradually

you got more as the AI kind of data thing. So, you know, good

on her. You know, like, I think career changes are

going to be kind of the new norm. Right. Yeah. I mean,

in every aspect of your life you have to be adaptable, you have to be

flexible. Absolutely. That, you know, you know, you say

that just to, just to handle social interactions. It has to also do with your

profession. You have to, you have to change

and you have to be willing to and, and know that it's scary

and do it anyway. Right, right, right, right. I mean,

I'm actually coming up on the anniversary of when I got laid

off Microsoft, so most people don't know. I did two stints at

Microsoft. One five, five and a half year stint and another like three and a

half year stint. So the first

stint ended because they were like, you got to move to Seattle or else. And

speaking of Microsoft, I saw some folks I, I used to work with at

Microsoft. So that was cool. They were working the Microsoft booth. Yeah. So we got

to catch up and stuff like that. And

you know, the nice thing about being a red hat is that people really like

red hat because we don't have you know,

we work with everybody, right? So like the one, the Microsoft guy was saying,

like how crucial Red Hat is to a lot of his deals, right?

He makes a lot of money. He's, you know, he's a, he's what they call,

they used to call it tsp. And he's like, yeah, like, you know,

Red Hat helps me make my number, right? AWS people will say that too,

right? It's a very rare kind of company where virtually everybody will

work with us, you know, which is kind of nice.

And so I was faced with that, right. I was a Windows Phone developer, right.

And I made the transition into data science almost

ten years ago now. And yeah,

and I, I wanted to, I didn't really want to move to

Seattle, but the real thing that blocked me from like wanting to relocate

was the fact that my family is all on the east Coast. My in laws

were on the east coast. My mom stubbornly stayed in New Jersey way

longer than she needed to after my dad died. And

so I think I made the right decision for my

family. Plus my wife has her own career here in the D.C. metro as a,

as a fed. So it just made a lot of sense.

But we know what's really funny, Candace, is the whole.

Let me share this. This is a little bit of

self promotion, I suppose. This

here is the blog post that Pluralsight did

on me. Well, that was very cool though. I mean, we can take it. That

was cool. Thank you. Thank you. It really was cool and you deserve it because

like, it really, it came from your,

your love of lifelong learning and

who can't respect that, you know, that's what's so

fantastic about it. Like, and you could tell we're recording live because you have like

a phone.

So they did this really nice story about like, you know, kind of like, you

know, the situation I was in was I really was a Windows Phone

developer and it was just kind of like not,

not a good time to be in it. I was the only company that would

had any kind of thing related work to that was Microsoft.

And every single job I applied to that year at Microsoft, they're like, you have

to move to, you have to relocate to Seattle. And I'm like, that's not happening.

So they did a really nice story, kind of like, you know, really

talking about career shifts and changes, you know, although some

people would argue I'm still an engineer, right? So I didn't really change radically.

But you know, even if you're in one field, even a field that's, you know,

quote Unquote, a, you know, great career path like

software or development, your career, what,

what it looks like is going to change from the moment you get your degree

or, you know, graduate from a boot camp is radically going to change.

Right. When I look back in my classes, like, you know,

the one that does the basically was

Introduction to Relational Databases, right. SQL and all

that. That's the one that has probably changed the least.

Right. Everything else is kind of like the language. No one uses Pascal,

no one uses Fortran, no one uses prologic. And what was the other one?

There was some AI course I took. I'm blanking on whatever language that was.

But that is completely irrelevant to today's AI. Right.

So it's, I mean, it's just cool. And basically pluralsight has this, you know,

whole thing. And today, candace, is day 1100, if you can believe

that. That's fantastic. I mean, but

legitimately, finding how much time a day?

5 minutes, 10 minutes? Today. Today I managed to put in like

30 minutes. But just to say I'm going to learn something new.

Right. You know, and, you know, that's, I mean, that's really been,

you know, my entire last year, you know,

with, you know, impact quantum and, and data driven. Just

learning something new every day and figuring

out what's useful and what, you know,

is just a lot of hype and I can kind of not really worry about

it. Right. But being willing to learn.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that is going to be the adaptability and

particularly this is even before kind of people are freaking out about AI taking

away all the jobs. Right. Even before that you really needed to be

adaptable. Right. And I know people that, I mean,

honestly, for me, I wish I could say I started off with that mindset, but

it really took major life. Crises. Crises.

Crazy. What's the plural Crisis.

But it took multiple things, like whether it was the

dot com Bust followed by 911 for me to go from being

a Java developer to a. NET developer and then

going from basically being a Windows Stack, Windows

admin developer engineer to data

science and AI also took a major

crisis. It's one thing the previous time I was

laid off, I had no wife, I had no kids, I didn't have a

mortgage. Right. You know, the second time it happened, I did have

all of those. Right. So it was definitely a. You know,

sometimes panic and fear and loathing can lead to

motivation. Look, I mean, my

career started, you know, I was, I was a, I was

an English Women's studies communication major.

I graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University,

which is kind of a big deal. I worked very hard. Thank you.

It's. It's legit. Ivy League. Legit. Legit. And

I went into publishing. I just, that's where I landed my first

job and I, I loved being around books. That was pretty

obvious. I remember one of my, one of

my experiences was when Bridget Jones's

Diary came out in, in, in, in

paperback and I was at Penguin Putnam at the time and

you know, just figuring out how to keep all the, all the stores in stock

to keep it, you know, riding that best seller wave. And then finally,

you know, publishing was condensing and then I, and then I, I

immigrated to, to, to Canada and

I knew publishing. But that's when I started in technology

and went into tech pub. To tech edtech, you know,

Pub ed tech. And I was selling, you know,

all kinds of technology to every developer that I could find.

Evolving, just evolving with the market. I think that's where I first met

you. You were like a Silverlight conference or something like that at the

Manning booth or was it. Yeah, it was Manning

and that's what it was. I mean I had to, I had to you know,

learn and understand everything. You know, talking about Silverlight to Python

to you know, you know, and then it became to understanding, you know, machine learning

and TensorFlow and PyTorch and now

you know, just delving into quantum and

being a little bit obsessed with

quantum biology. That's all in quantum chemistry and

quantum consciousness. That's really

tickled, tickled me recently. We have a great show on in the

queue about quantum where we kind of, we don't go into it

in detail but we do talk about it with, with

a legitimate researcher, right. Who does like, you know,

we get into a good conversation with her about space satellites and stuff like that

and kind of like what's the logistics of that? Like, because like, and I

was, I, I got, I got the answer to my question of like why laser?

Like, you know what the acronym behind laser means? Like for me I never got

a good answer until that show. So. Right. If you're not already subscribed, do

subscribe. That was a cool conversation and how. We'Re, we're going, you, you

can connect up in space. It's very different than connecting here down at

Earth, right? Well yeah, plus the, the notion of you have like

she didn't give it in freedom units, she gave them in kilometers. But like, you

know, it's actually if you have the

longest subfloor subocean floor cables, something like 40,000

kilometers. And

it's actually faster to go up to a satellite and then

back down because that's more of a.

It's. It'll. It'll end up less than 40,000 kilometers.

Right. Plus there's also. And this is the part I have to listen to it

again because I understood it when she said it

and now I can't describe it. Like. But. But there's a. There's

a. Some quantum phenomena that would get lost through going

through all the repeaters on terrestrial cables.

Whereas if you bounce to the satellite, the satellite is only. The only

repeater. So you have one repeater. Right. I remember that. I

remember we were really blown away by that. I don't remember why that mattered. I'll

have to listen to it again. But. But it did matter. It did. Oh, it

absolutely mattered. It had to do, I think with the distance.

I thought it was the repeaters. Well, that they

brought down the distance that it had to. I think it was distance, but it

was also repeaters because you need to repeat. You need to have a repeater even

for fiber, which I didn't know that. So basically the signal

will lose strength over a certain amount of time. Right. And then you have

to amplify it every time. So because

it's 40,000km and it has to go through a tube, basically

the cable, you need repeaters every so often.

And each one of those repeaters would have to

have special magic hand wavium

to preserve the quantum space.

Quantum. Quantum information input that it gets and then on

the output. And there's a whole lot of

barriers. She explains it really well. I'm not going to.

But there's a whole lot of barriers that, you know, how do you. Preserving that

information is not trivial. So it's just easier to throw something in orbit that can

do it just once and then back down. We. So you also get the distance

benefit too. Right. And that pesky speed of light thing keeps

coming up. So. But this is gonna be an upcoming.

This. It's an upcoming show. Yeah, it's very exciting.

I think two shows from now. It's brilliant. Brilliant.

Yeah, she was cool. But yeah, speaking of

quantum, I'm. There was a lot of quantum

companies there, like out on the Expo floor. So it was really cool.

So I bumped into and I invited. I gave everyone

like, you know, my contact information, like, hey, you know, we got

this and you know, impact quantum. And so I

bumped into. I'm not. The display thing is not cooperating with me there.

It is so inflection was there.

Quantum machines was there.

Cuera was there. Yuval's

company was there. He wasn't there. But, like, the people knew him.

So there's a lot of. So I introduced myself to everybody there, like, hey, you

know, because we're always looking for guests. So that's

a plug for if you're a Quantum company. If you're listening, it's

ditto for Data Driven. Right. Mean, it's, it's. What's interesting

is, and I kind of suspected this like a couple years

ago, like, people always like, why are you, why are you interested

in Quantum? Right. Because I'm like, there's going to be an overlap of AI and

quantum. Absolutely, 100%. And I

also kind of like, I also kind of like a year ago kind of said,

you know, it's looking like Nvidia one day will be thought of more of as

a defense contractor and critical to national defense. Which, when I said

it, I looked like I was a lunatic. But if you watch the keynote,

I highly recommend you go do that. Like, it's not that hard of a stress.

He didn't say it in so many words, but it was pretty clear. Like, the,

the writing's on the wall. Like, this is a national security issue.

Right. And, and, and, and props to Jensen

Huang for

setting the stage for who the adversary is without saying that said

adversary by name. Okay. And since his, I think his

family's from Taiwan, so, like, it's probably, it's pretty close

to home in a lot of ways. Right.

And now it's just very impressive. Kind of like

it's these emerging to emerging intersections. Yeah.

That are what's really the most exciting. Like when you, when you think about

robotics and then about AI and then you think

about quantum hybrid. Yeah. I mean, these

are not isolated silos of technology. These are very

closely integrated. And, you know,

my advice to anyone out there is, you know, get good at one.

Right. Because it's very easy to look at all this, get overwhelmed. Right. But get

good at one silo and then at least have a passing

understanding, conversational understanding of the other ones. Right. Think of it

like human languages. Right. You obviously have your native language, and if you can, you

don't have to be totally fluent in a second language. But as long as you

can kind of like have a base understanding and kind of the ability to get

around, that is going to open up more doors for you. And I think the

same is true in tech. Right. Like, you know, obviously my home base is

data science and AI, but you

Know, soon, maybe one day, Quantum, right. I'll be able to explain

why the satellites are better

than, than the landlines. But, you know,

but I think it's also interesting to realize like, how much

we do know about quantum more than the

average technologist. Right. Because people are asking me like, why is

quantum a big deal? And I was explaining it and those people like, oh, okay.

You know, and it's like, it's hard. I'm like, yeah, it's very hard.

Like, you know, when I first learned, heard about it, like, I would have gone

15 minutes, I get a migraine, I'd have to stop. Right,

right. Break it down. And you understand that, you know, quantum is

important. It's important for certain

businesses, certain sectors way more than others.

It will affect all sectors. But. And

some are more obvious than others. Right? Like there's going to be some sectors that

are going to immediately be impacted. Right.

Security. It. Security being probably the most obvious. I think health

is another, really. Health is another one. Anything where you

have to simulate chemistry. Yes. Oh my God. I

spoke to a phenomenal woman yesterday. We're gonna have

her on the show and she is this

molecular chemist and she is just

fascinated about the intersection of

chemistry, biology and quantum. And

just, and it's just so important to understand the intersections there. And

that's going to be a great conversation as well. Sorry about that. No, no, it's,

it's a very exciting time to be like, you know, I mean, honestly, like if

I, you know, one conference had robots, had

AI, had quantum

computing, like all in one place, man, it doesn't get much better than that.

What was really interesting though was a, this was kind of

talk about in the keynote where he talks about, you know, one of the server

racks that they have for their supercomputer is like over 2 million parts, right. From

like hundreds of different suppliers. So you have to give it

props to Nvidia's like logistics, plus also

the electrical systems that they need, the cooling system, like they had one, they had

like a couple of exhibits were talking about like different cooling system, liquid cooling,

high efficiency air cooling. There was MCD

and a Schneider Electric. A couple of electric companies were there.

Not like electric company, the kids show when we were kids, but hey.

But electrical engineering companies were there because it matters, right? Like all of this

stuff has to happen somewhere in the physical world. And

you know, very often that's in Loudoun County, Virginia. But you know, that's, that's,

that's, that's a topic for another show. But yeah,

so this is some of the swag. So in the keynote room, they had T

shirts, so

which was pretty cool. And then we have this bag, which

I'm gonna see if I can get my kids to nerd out and trick or

treat with this. But

some of the swag in here was really good. Like, my favorite bit of swag

was this thing.

See if I can see that. It's basically like a. An adapter.

Oh. So it also has this. So this is the. Probably the most useful bit

of swag. There's other cool stuff in here, too. There's what I

think is a luggage tag for F5 Networks.

And this is just the other stuff I collected.

There's. Whose socks are these? AWS

socks. Okay. With the DC

skyline. That's kind of cool.

Guardians of the AI keychain, or is that a pin

keychain? Hand

sanitizer, but like in a business card type

thing. Okay, so that was pretty cool. And then

I did get quantum machine socks. They're upstairs.

You know, pens, the usual kind of swaggy type stuff.

Google Cloud pen. And so,

yeah, it was. It was definitely a very productive,

you know, couple days. I definitely am

gonna kind of binge watch all the sessions because as far as I know, everything

was recorded, so that'll be kind of nice.

And yeah, it was awesome. And I thought it would be cool

to kind of share this across both shows, Right, because these are two very related

fields, right? AI and quantum computing.

Because whether you're using actual quantum

computers or simulated ones, it's

all going to be some form of linear algebra, which happens to be what

these GPUs are really good at. And the keynote really

did a good job of putting it all into perspective in terms

of, you know,

we, you know, it was a little. Little braggadocious, but, you know, I guess when

you're worth $5 trillion, you know, you can. Yeah, I guess so,

right? You know, I would. Dear Lord, please give me that problem.

Oh, my God. Honestly, making trouble today. Okay,

now it's Murphy's Law, man. As soon as I crack open a book or start

a call, guaranteed somebody exactly

like. So the.

See, folks, we really do record these live

today, folks. We really do. But these are. These

are. These are interesting times in terms

of.

There we go. Cool. Sorry about that, folks.

It really is live. So also, you know, we're streaming this on multiple YouTube channels.

So if you. If you. You. If you're. A lot of channel growth on both

channels, both Frank's World and the Impact Quantum Channel. So

wherever platform you're liking. If you can like share and subscribe, that'd be great. Leave

a comment if you have any questions. But there's definitely a lot to digest

from this show in terms of, you know, from robots to

quantum computers. The big thing that they released was the

NVQ link, which is an interesting,

I would say little project, but it's not little.

It is basically like a network bandwidth. I totally want to geek out on this

and I would be lying if I said I knew that much about it, but

everybody was just going crazy over it,

right? Yeah, there's a lot of potential there,

right? I mean a lot of potential to just kind of

set the pace for. Quantum Networking 100,

right? And just the high speed bandwidth because hang on a second,

my wireless headset batteries were low when it was beeping at me, so I had

to take those off for a second. But no, like, I mean

just kind of, even if you don't use it, it's basically a

high speed, low latency interconnect

between both quantum processors as well

as GPU based ones, right? So this

is, I mean the stat was just

unbelievable. Like it could, you know, this thing could house, I mean

terabytes of information could be shared across this, right? So the whole notion of

what it takes to build a computer bus speeds

can be completely reimagined now because of this, right? And the idea is

that, you know, when you do have a, you know, you'll see in the picture,

right, there's the chandelier.

Those are going to need some kind of controller system. So you have these hybrid

systems that are both GPU super clusters and an actual quantum

computer. So I think that the, and, and you'll notice that they did a really

good job here of showing now at least three different types, right? There's this

one, I think that's the Rigetti.

This one, I forget the name of it, but they had these all out on

the floor, okay. And you'll have to go to watch the

YouTube shorts to kind of of see me walk around them and stuff like that.

But I mean it was just it, you know, and this is just, just so

much going on in so many different directions. One of

the companies, there was a robotics company and

there I overheard the pitch.

Basically the too long didn't read of the pitch was you

don't buy the robots from them, you pay them $20 an hour

basically per robot. That was basically the

idea. So don't quote me

on that over that. That makes it much more competitive, right?

Yeah. Because especially I gotta spend how much money to get one

robot. Right. And whatever the. The

accounting magic you need to make that make sense. Right,

right. You don't. That. That doesn't really apply anymore. Right. It's completely.

Right. I don't even know if that's. And minimum wage in some

places is $15. Right. So, like, it's not.

You know, and these workers could work 24 7. They don't get

sick. I mean, they'll break down, but yeah. I mean, the labor market is about

to get seriously disrupted.

Yeah. And, you know,

speak. You know, I think everybody over the next

five, 10 years is going to have to experience some kind of career disruption and

retraining. Right. So if

you don't like learning,

get used to it. You know, Eat your

vegetables. Right? Is kind of like the thing. Learn to like the vegetables. That makes

it a lot easier when you eat them. But it's fun. Right. And I think

I enjoy some of. The stuff that I've learned, like the AI tools. I mean,

I. I have. I'm having the best time. I mean, I'm like, is this even.

Am I working right now? I don't even feel like. I feel like I'm enjoying

what I'm creating. I'm enjoying what I'm sharing.

And I'm doing it in a way that's incredibly digestible to

all kinds of folks. And that's what to do. And people

need translators, Right. People that can understand

the deep technical side of it and explain it in more human terms.

Right. And you know, I gave my stump

speech yesterday. Somebody was like, you know, how do I get in one of the.

There was a recent graduate. Was there. A lot of university students were

there too, which I think Nvidia gave them like a

sweetheart deal to attend. Oh, I think a lot of important, though. I

mean, it really is. Right. Well, it's smart too, right. Because one, it's, you know,

you know, it's the right thing to do. Right. But it's also going to build

out their talent pipeline. Right. It's the next generation of talent.

Get them out there, get them while they're. They're excited.

I met students from Morgan State, gmu,

University of Maryland University, Kentucky. They actually

drove from Cincinnati area to here.

And though, I mean, it was just a

bunch of universities and

Virginia Tech was actually a sponsor of the conference, which I thought was interesting. Oh,

that is interesting. Their logo is up there. And I was like, oh, that is

interesting. And probably a bunch of other universities didn't notice it. Their logo

Is very stands out. Okay, well then they

did the right way. They did it the right way. Yeah, exactly. Right.

So it was, it was a very, it

was one of the more unique conferences I've ever been to. Right.

Because it really was at the confluence of national security, Fed

type stuff, cutting edge robotics, cutting edge

AI, quantum computers. You had students, you had federal

employees, you had uniform service manager, congressional

policymakers, pipeline showing up. It was a, it was a unique

mix that you don't see a lot of places.

Right, right. So it was really cool.

I'm hoping to go to the one, the big one in California which is going

to be. Suppose somebody told me that it's wall to wall people and

increasingly over the last few years, wall to war robots too. So. Right,

right. More of that in California. I mean that's the thing you want to. This

kind of set the stage for you. Yeah, yeah, Expect for the next one.

Right? Yeah, exactly. I mean and, and

Nvidia's really got a lot of things figured out. Right. Like it's

not just the hardware. They have the software layer with Cuda. Jensen

does a far better job of explaining it in the first 10 minutes of the

keynote. But I mean,

no wonder why they're worth 5 trillion. Like it's no surprise.

It'S always live. It's always things.

Someone came into her, her home office while we were.

If you're listening, you didn't see it, but. I

found the podcast. But so thanks for joining us live. I

don't see any active questions in the queue, but

if I met you at the conference. Very nice to meet you. Definitely

looking forward to getting hands on with the spark.

That was also cool. Everybody's like, do you have a spark? Do you have a

spark? Well, that kind of puts you on a different echelon. I know I was

like one of the cool kids. I got a spark that was like. Rolling up

the high school and like you know, a Beamer or my neighborhood is really an

iroc. But

that date, that, that puts me at a very interesting time and place in

history, I suppose. But. But yeah, no, it was

really, it was really cool. I think the future looks

amazing and I think there's just so much

opportunity in this space. Oh, the one last thing was like there was this.

Nvidia had like a whole startup area. So apparently Nvidia has like a startup program

and stuff like that. Really cool stuff, a lot of innovative stuff there.

One of the best signs I saw, which was behind the red hat booth. It

was kind of like the next Aisle over was. They had this huge sign that

said AI took my job. Right. In big text

and the little text to another level. Oh,

that's clever. Right? You know, I mean, that's it.

What did someone say? It's not that AI is going to

take away your job, it's that the person who, who knows

how to use. AI, it's going to take over your. Job is going to take

away. And I'm like, well, I was like, you know,

look at the stuff we do. Right? We're not a big team here. Right. We're

not, you know,

look at what we're able to accomplish. Yeah, absolutely. You

know, and that would not have been, it would have been

doable, it wouldn't have been feasible without AI. Right,

right. Because sadly I do have to sleep sometimes

and you got three. You got three kids. I got three kids. There you go.

Well, I'm really happy that we talked about this because honestly, the conference looked really

exciting. It was always nice to hear from somebody who's there,

get them to download, you know, some of that information. Absolutely.

Fun fact. We actually re recorded this. We were, we pre recorded something the day

before I went and I was like, no, so much was there that we have

to redo it. So let us know in the comments if you want to hear.

Kind of like the original, It'll be like the original cut of Star wars

and kind of like the remix, you know.

But yeah, I mean I'm, I'm super

excited. It was, it was cool to connect with former people

I work with at Microsoft and these are people that go way back,

like back to when it was called dpe Developer Platform Evangelism. Like,

you know, he was talking about like, you know, we had some interesting war stories

we could share and stuff. Like that back in 1900 and hootly who. No,

it was 2000 something. But yeah, yeah, I'm right there with you. This was

this, this was when Windows Phone still was a

thing. So way, way back.

But yeah, plus it was really cool to meet like

Maria. Maria Shaw from Python Simplified. She's awesome. Shout out to you, Maria.

You know, you know, not only have you also

career transition, you've done it very well and I think your, your videos are

always positive and helpful. Thank you. Help other people follow that path too. Right.

You know, and that's what we try to do here. Being

quantum curious. We're saying, you know, you don't have to have a PhD. No,

but that doesn't mean that you can't be in the conversation. It doesn't mean you

can't understand. I gave that some speech yesterday. I was like, you know, look, you

don't have to be a PhD in that. So I, you know, they're, they're going

to need, they're going to need customer solution architects, they're going to need, or customer

success, whatever they're called now, CSAs, you're going to need people to rack

and stack this stuff. You're going to need people that you know can

market it. You're going to need business development, you need sales leaders. You're going to

need all of that stuff. You are going to need. Yeah, and

not every one of them is going to need a PhD. In

fact, one of the guests said there's already too many PhDs

in this field, which is kind of funny,

right? So actually, speaking of which, Candace, that is an

excellent segue. No wonder why you're a master marketer. So this

is our book here that we wrote and it is.

Can I, I think I can move it up there. It says Quantum Sales Playbook.

There we go. There you go. Quantum Sales Playbook. And it's

basically a sales playbook that is for

startups, for anyone in really emerging tech fields,

Right. Like, you know, I wrote this around Quantum based

on what I experienced with AI, because I've been doing AI now about 10

years, right. And majority of that has either been

sales or delivering training about AI, right.

So actually I think eight of those 10 years have been selling

AI. Two of those have been training

shout out to Wintelact back in the day. But,

but what's also part of it. Is from, you know, I don't

know, maybe 14 or 15 episodes of the

first part of the season of us talking to experts

and understanding, you know, all of their perspectives, be,

be them PhDs, be them industry, be them, you know, trying

to go over the bridge from one to one to the other, you know,

hearing what they have to say and what's real. What's actually one of the, one

of the guests pointed out, he goes, he, he does happen to have a PhD,

right? And, but he realized that he, you know, he

sold the system to a company in Japan and like they had to fly

out a lot of people like customer success,

right, to make sure it up and runs and things like that. And they didn't,

you know, I think it was kind of a learning experience. That's why I'm not

saying the name. If you want to listen to it, you can figure out which,

who I'm talking about because that show has been released. And if

you're really clever, you know that we said the name of said company already in

this episode. But, but, you know, he was like a learning experience. Like, he

realized like, you know, you know,

you're gonna need people to rack the stack and it's basically kind of like the

end result. Right. Like when somebody buys a solution and it has to

be on prem, you have to set it up, configure it. You have to teach

people how to configure it. So you're going to need trainers, you're going to need

marketers, you're going to need all of these roles. You're going to need them.

Right. Do they have to have PhDs in quantum physics? No. In fact, it's

probably a waste of their education and skills because the people with the PhDs need

to be designing the next version of your product. Right.

So you need people who are kind of not PhDs. You

need people from other disciplines to go in and, and do this. Right.

And that's really kind of the gist of art, this show, right. This

impact Quantum. And the book is really about, like, if you. This is really for

business developers, startup founders. That's, that's really who this is really melt for is

like, even if you have a PhD, you can't assume everyone

else will understand why qubits are important, why they're a big

deal. Right. And that's the subtitle of the book is Selling Outcomes, not Qubits.

Right. And it's not just, it's not just for quantum.

No. This could apply to any emerging tech. Exactly. That's the point. It's for any

emerging tech getting kind of beyond what the technology is into, why

the solution is going to work. That's exactly.

More important, you know, aspect of it. So. Yeah. Awesome.

And if you run an incubator or

like a research facility at a university, we'll give you a copy of it for

free. Right. We're not doing this for the money. We're just doing this to help

nudge along this. Right. Give my, give my experience in sales, Candace's experience

in marketing. Kind of like translate that into quantum. Right. It's our

contribution to this emerging ecosystem.

Exactly, exactly. Awesome. And

that's all I got. Anything else pertinent?

The Great White North? No, honestly, it's raining. It's

raining here today. And that's. It's so. It's not, it's not white yet.

We're gonna need. I mean, and it's, it's been known to snow by

Halloween. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we're gonna have that

this year. I think it's. My grandfather grew up in Montreal, so whenever as a

kid I would complain about being colder, like the snow, he would

tell me it was the ultimate uphill, both ways

in the snow, being chased by polar bears. Like, that was the exact

kind of stuff I do to my kids now. Because

it's time. We should be doing it. Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Up a little

bit. There you go. Although one of my Weisenheimer kids is like, you know, growing

up in New York City, he's like, yeah, uphill, both a. In the snow while

getting shot at. Like, oh, okay. Now he's just taking it

to the next level. For the first credit was it was

the kids taking it to the next level. So I've raised

snarky kids, which is karma, I suppose, coming back to bite me.

Oh, oh, please. I'm from New York, so my kids have a level of sarcasm.

Oh, yeah. That's unnatural that even though they spent. More years in

Montreal, people are like, you're so New York. And

like, where are you from? Kind of sticks with

you. Yeah. I mean, I understand why it sticks with me, but it's from them

and, and they, they left there 2 and 4 years old, you know, and

now they're 20 and 18. But it's, it's, it's. It's

in the home too. Right. It's in the heart. Right. Thankfully for me, like, I'm

still in, like, the east coast corridor. Right. So Baltimore is kind of like,

you know, like a Diet Coke for. I'm gonna get so much hate mail for

that. But it's not. It's culturally similar enough,

you know, kind of got that east coast vibe. Right, Right. So,

all right, so with that, we'll let our AI, who is a British

AI from the other side of the pond, finish the show.

That's a wrap on our special crossover episode from the floor of

Nvidia GTC. Whether you came for the Quantum, the

GPUs, or just the good old fashioned robot envy, we hope

you're leaving a little smarter and possibly a bit more paranoid about

bandwidth. Don't forget to, like, share and subscribe

to Data Driven and Impact Quantum, because the future doesn't

wait, and neither do we.