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Clough cause media presents from the massive

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studios the valley in North Carolina. This

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is the clouds cost with our and

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Dell but I'm trying gracefully bringing use

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a best of cloud computing from around

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the world. Good.

0:14

Morning, good evening or Br. Welcome back the

0:16

cloud gas we're coming to. You live from

0:18

the massive cloud Guess Studios here in Raleigh,

0:20

North Carolina. Hope everybody is doing well. We're

0:22

mid time amid month of February Twenty twenty

0:24

four Little Pass Valentine's Day. Hope you had

0:27

a chance to spend some time with that

0:29

with loved ones and those you care about

0:31

but now they're Sunday perspective show in this

0:33

study objectives going to be little bit different

0:35

because usually it's it's sort of me solo

0:37

mice my perspective or me putting together some

0:39

thoughts from some stuff for this one. Now

0:41

I'm bringing it to friend. Bring it in

0:43

a. Another perspective cause. For.

0:46

Many of you that good chance to

0:49

get up to Las Vegas for tech

0:51

events or conferences or things about like

0:53

you've probably noticed a new. Landmark.

0:56

On the strip or just off the strip

0:58

a thing called the Sphere a big big

1:00

giant orb which has tons and tons of

1:02

L A D is on and doing to

1:04

very cool stuff in the entertainment space and

1:06

I was supposed to attend and visit the

1:08

Sphere and gets taken that because I was

1:11

out today our conference in Las Vegas but

1:13

for for travel reasons that mention I've been

1:15

traveling a time lately. got home day early

1:17

and I had a chance to have a

1:19

friend visit the Sphere So we're going to

1:21

do sort of a Sunday perspective on what

1:23

it's like to to take in the sphere.

1:26

To attend the sphere kind of understand what's going on

1:28

in that thing off. For those of you the get

1:30

a chance to get out Las Vegas so we're going

1:32

to dig into that are left the break. Your.

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to get started Today. And

2:21

we're back and die. As I mentioned the

2:23

top the show we are through back to

2:25

normal I guess to a certain extent in

2:27

terms of something that a lot of us

2:29

across the industry and our friends and so

2:31

forth are doing which is getting back to

2:33

events and one of the big event locations

2:36

is Las Vegas. Although whether we we love

2:38

it or hate it was Vegas still one

2:40

of the big things and what I want

2:42

to do was talk to someone who saw

2:44

had it is. Not only be out in

2:46

Las Vegas quite a bit but also ah

2:48

attend and visit this new. And

2:51

are no sort of eighth wonder of the

2:53

world if he will out Las Vegas the

2:55

sphere suburb. Excited to have a longtime friend

2:57

of the show long time colleague of mine.

2:59

both are multiple stopped so was to minimum

3:01

senior director of marketing sides that Red Hat

3:03

and I just long time good friend of

3:05

the shelves to walk back man could have

3:07

gone. Bryan. It's so good to

3:10

be here. You know every for years

3:12

is stubborn closet opic that you want

3:14

to bring me on so I'm I'm

3:16

thrilled to be back. and yeah you

3:18

know the Us it's it's really interesting

3:20

the sphere things are you know just

3:22

day I you know what was it

3:24

Two point three billion dollars to build

3:27

this thing it's a are definitely of

3:29

very a bit much built for today's

3:31

ah you know soundbite and social media

3:33

feeds because you know I've I've been

3:35

seen clips of those you to concerts

3:37

everywhere I go. And on. I've.

3:40

Been watched it when they were building it

3:42

and I had the opportunity to Vegas a

3:44

recently to go inside. So I like to

3:47

talk about it. Yes, yes so you I'm.

3:50

let's for regenerative that so you are you're

3:52

a veteran las vegas by no means like

3:54

a degenerate gambler but you've been up to

3:57

us to vegas probably what i would guess

4:00

probably a hundred times, close to a

4:02

hundred times. You know, the really sad

4:04

thing, Brian, is once I passed, like,

4:06

I think 30 times in Vegas, I

4:08

just stopped counting because you're right. It's,

4:10

I've actually never been there for pleasure.

4:12

You know, I've been there, you know,

4:14

10 to 10 or 11 times for Amazon

4:16

reInvent, a handful of times for a

4:19

VMware show, IBM shows, like, I

4:22

can't even, I don't remember how many IBM shows

4:24

there. And of course, like

4:26

the EMC and Dell every year had their show

4:29

there too. So as an employee,

4:31

as an analyst, now at Red Hat,

4:33

it was the first time I got to go to, you know, the

4:35

sales kickoff there. It

4:37

was interesting. I,

4:39

Brian, you're familiar

4:41

with this, in my years as an analyst,

4:43

it's in the contract that we have to

4:46

trash talk Vegas and how much we hate

4:48

it. That's right, that's right. But, and always

4:50

the best thing about Vegas is leaving. Exactly,

4:53

exactly. So, you know, recovered from it because

4:55

the artificial nature of it is there. It's

4:59

even more crowded than usual when it's Super Bowl week.

5:02

But yeah, I mean, there's always good

5:04

food and there's things to check out. I

5:07

remember I wrote a blog post years and

5:09

years ago about going to the SuperNAP, which

5:11

was like, you know, the geeky place to

5:13

go check out some awesome data center and

5:15

people carried guns. And talking about

5:17

the Sphere reminded me of that because it's the

5:20

latest of those of us that are tech enthusiasts.

5:22

It's like, yeah, I totally got to check this

5:24

thing out. Right, right. And for those of you

5:26

that don't know, SuperNAP is, I think

5:29

it's still called Switch, the company who owns

5:31

it. But it's essentially what happened was when

5:34

the dot-com bubble burst in

5:36

2000, 2001, and

5:39

all these companies had been laying

5:41

fiber optic cable all around the United States.

5:43

It was, you know, it was telcos and

5:45

it was cable companies and it was railroad

5:47

companies and all sorts of people. There

5:50

was a gigantic auction for pennies on the

5:52

dollar to see who would buy all that.

5:54

And SuperNAP became

5:56

the data center that was sort of

5:58

the east or the west. West Coast place

6:01

where all of the fiber terminated. So it

6:03

became this gigantic sort of super hub, if

6:06

you will, for data centers and internet access points and

6:08

so forth. So very cool place. If you ever get

6:10

a chance to go, they do do tours. It's kind

6:12

of neat. It's out a little ways

6:14

from Las Vegas. If you do get out that way and

6:16

you want to do some geeky stuff. So

6:19

what did you know about the

6:21

sphere before going out there? So you

6:24

mentioned that you'd seen some clips. You

6:26

two has been playing there as a

6:28

resident for multiple months now.

6:30

I know we've all been seeing some

6:32

pictures of it online, social media clips

6:34

of the outside of it showing up,

6:36

looking like different stuff. But what did

6:39

you sort of know about the actual

6:41

facility and all that before going out

6:43

there? So I didn't know a ton.

6:45

Now the part of the strip that

6:47

I'm most familiar with is the Venetian

6:49

Palazzo Sands Convention Center. That's the kind

6:51

of the expo hall of reinvent and

6:54

way more times I've stayed there than I could think

6:57

of. And the sphere is actually right

6:59

behind it. So in 2022, when I went to

7:01

reinvent, I

7:04

walked by twice a day where they were building

7:06

the sphere. And I'm like, God, this thing's massive

7:08

and it's really cool. And then this last

7:10

year in 2023, when

7:12

I went to reinvent, it was all lit up.

7:14

And every time you walk by, it's

7:17

a giant sphere of

7:19

a screen. So there's cool graphics on

7:22

it. Sometimes it's advertisements, but you're grabbing

7:24

photos and videos and sending them to

7:26

friends and family and the like. So

7:28

I didn't know a ton about it.

7:31

Getting ready for this even, having been inside,

7:33

I'm like, wow, it actually will fit, including

7:36

the floor 20,000 people in it. And

7:39

it didn't feel like it was that big on

7:41

the inside, but we'll talk

7:43

about that more. But I hadn't done a ton of

7:45

research on it or anything. It was just like, it's

7:48

this huge investment. It's supposedly

7:50

got the best video and

7:53

best audio ever made. And

7:56

as we've talked about, you too was the start, but

7:58

they've got a few other concerts. lined up. And

8:01

when they're not doing the concert, which

8:04

only happened every once in a while, they are

8:06

going to have other content. And as of right

8:08

now, they just have one offering,

8:10

which is a quote unquote movie.

8:12

And I say that because it's only about 45

8:15

minutes long. And

8:17

happy to talk about the movie itself. But

8:19

they've, they give you an opportunity to come

8:22

in, you get about an hour to check

8:24

out some things inside. And then

8:26

you do the movie and you see the whole

8:28

facility and everything. And it's an interesting experience.

8:30

Right, right. Yeah, it's, you know, the sphere

8:33

is sort of the latest in the line

8:35

of these these mega mega,

8:37

I'll call them stadiums that are popping up

8:39

around the United States, I think they're also

8:41

sort of popping up in, you

8:44

know, in Europe and Asia in places where there's

8:47

there's sort of a main stay,

8:49

in most cases, sort of sporting, you know,

8:51

sports team. So like, Los

8:53

Angeles has one so far, Dallas

8:56

has one for the Dallas Cowboys. This one's in

8:58

Los Angeles. You know, it's, it's sort of the

9:00

new thing that is, you know, probably multi billion

9:03

dollar price tag. I think we'll start seeing this

9:05

with, you know, some of the top tier, you

9:07

know, football teams around Europe and Asia and so

9:09

forth. But yeah, you're right, it's,

9:11

it's interesting, because like, you don't

9:14

really think about, well, I'm going to a

9:16

concert or I'm going to this thing, I

9:18

should research the actual stadium itself, usually, you

9:20

just sort of get there and start experiencing

9:23

it. Yeah. And Brian, I'm glad you brought

9:25

up stadiums, because it was funny back doing

9:27

the cube, I actually got to interview the

9:29

architecture firm that built both the Cowboys and

9:31

King Stadium. And the amount of tech that

9:34

goes in there is amazing. But it's very

9:36

different because, you know, I'm a season ticket

9:38

holder for the Patriots. And I hear

9:41

about the concerts and events that they do. And

9:43

of course, they want to maximize how many

9:45

days a year they're having events there, without

9:48

wearing the place out. The sphere

9:50

is different because it's not

9:52

going to be sports. And, you know,

9:54

it's not just an IMAX that's going to

9:57

play, you know, Oppenheimer

9:59

and all the latest things that come

10:01

out there. It's, you know, it requires

10:03

different tech, it's special built. And,

10:06

you know, we'll talk about this, but it's

10:08

a little bit different. And it was funny,

10:10

even the people that

10:12

built this went to London and wanted to

10:14

build another sphere and the mayor of London

10:16

shot them down because it is, you know,

10:18

it's this big thing. And it's,

10:21

you know, like, there's the eyes everywhere.

10:23

There's the one in London, there's the one in Las

10:27

Vegas, and feels like, you

10:29

know, I don't know how many cities around the world

10:31

you can see those, you know, giant Ferris wheels there,

10:34

but the sphere people would like to have more of

10:36

them. But since it is like a

10:38

giant LED screen, it's a little bit different. And

10:40

I think

10:42

it requires a special time of type of

10:45

city to embrace that. And Las Vegas, of

10:47

course, is known for, you know,

10:49

the neon, right, right. Yeah, I there's a link I

10:52

put in the show notes. There's a, I mean, there's,

10:54

there's probably a whole bunch of them. But I found

10:56

there's a very, very good video. It's about 10 minutes

10:58

long, I put a link in the show notes, where

11:00

somebody just sort of walks through what's going on

11:03

in the sphere in terms of not, you know,

11:05

not here's, you know, the playlist from YouTube, but

11:07

like, how big is it? How much seating is

11:09

there? How does it compare to other things that

11:11

you're used to seeing in terms of, like, large

11:13

IMAX movie theaters? What's the outside made of, you

11:16

know, all that kind of stuff. So so there's

11:18

a good, you know, kind of basic

11:20

level technical overview of it. It's worth taking a look

11:22

at if you're going to go out and visit and

11:24

you're just kind of interested in like, how do they

11:26

make all this stuff happen? So,

11:29

you know, give us, you know, you had

11:31

a chance to go out and we

11:33

you and I talked about going to the

11:35

to the concert concert was sort of extraordinarily

11:37

priced. I didn't get a chance to

11:39

stick around. So you went but kind of walk

11:41

us through the basics of the

11:43

sphere. How did you get there? You mentioned it's, it's

11:45

near the Venetian and the Palazzo. So it's sort of

11:47

on on that end of the strip, if you're familiar

11:49

with Las Vegas, but like, you

11:51

know, you know, how do you

11:54

get there? Is it mostly just walking? What Yeah, what

11:56

do you know, like all that kind of stuff? Great

11:58

questions. Because right, it is something that for the most

12:00

part you're just gonna walk up. If you happen to

12:02

be at the Sands Convention Center, it can walk out

12:04

the back. It's like walking a,

12:07

you know, a block away from there. Funny thing,

12:09

of course, while we were there, there was some

12:12

convention going on, so you couldn't walk through the

12:14

Sands, so you had to walk all the way

12:16

around the Venetian to be able to get to

12:18

it. There is like, there's

12:20

a parking lot, a parking

12:22

garage right there where they can do

12:25

drop-off and pickup for

12:27

the sphere, but, you

12:30

know, if you've got, you know, five,

12:32

ten, fifteen, twenty thousand people going into

12:34

this thing, that parking garage looks slam.

12:36

So, you know, I actually

12:39

happened to be in that area

12:41

of the strip. We just walked

12:43

in, and when we left, rather

12:45

than trying to grab an Uber

12:47

or a taxi there, because there

12:49

was way too many people, we walked a couple of

12:51

blocks and we're by

12:54

like Caesars Forum, which is a much easier place

12:56

to grab a ride share if

12:58

we had to go back, you know, further up the strip.

13:00

So, logistically, it's not awesome.

13:02

There's a monorail that goes near

13:04

there, but it didn't look like

13:06

there was an easy way to

13:08

get there, at least at the time of day that

13:11

I was there. So, I wish

13:13

the logistics were a little bit simpler. I'm

13:16

sure you can get dropped off kind of

13:18

easy if you're a different

13:20

part of Las Vegas and want to get

13:23

there easier, but most Las Vegas is pretty

13:25

walkable. So, it wasn't obscene. What's

13:28

kind of interesting is what the way

13:30

they've got this movie, and it's Darren

13:32

Aronofsky, I believe, is the director of

13:34

it. He did Black Swan and a

13:36

bunch of other movies. The

13:39

way they explain the experience is the first

13:41

hour you get to experience the sphere. And

13:43

what that means is you walk in and

13:45

they've got a bunch

13:47

of AI and robotic like

13:49

kind of demo station set up. So,

13:52

one of them, like in the center, had a humanoid

13:57

robot like talking to you and they're like,

13:59

we're gonna to show you this experiment

14:01

of sound and it uses like, you

14:03

know, some kind of quantum something or

14:05

other. And if you

14:07

stand in one of these four areas, you

14:10

will hear the exact same audio broadcast

14:12

in four different languages. And

14:14

it was, you know, English, Arabic, Spanish,

14:20

and I'm forgetting probably French for the

14:22

for the for the fourth. But

14:24

oh, no, it was actually Mandarin was the fourth. But

14:27

and it worked pretty well. And like, you

14:30

know, we're all standing there and we take

14:32

a little video and send it there. And

14:34

they've got, you know, showing

14:36

off innovation showing off robots, showing

14:39

off AI. The lobby

14:41

has this huge ceiling

14:43

and there's a bunch of, you know,

14:45

visual sites to see. So everybody's taking

14:47

pictures and selfies inside. And

14:50

of course, they have very expensive drinks

14:52

and food to be able to

14:54

grab if you want to do it. And

14:56

then you make your way to your seats.

14:59

And you watch a 45

15:01

minute movie. So the movie

15:03

itself, you know, I'd call it like

15:06

a super IMAX. It was probably

15:09

the most gorgeous, like cinematic,

15:11

like nature scenes that I've ever seen

15:13

recorded on a screen. It's,

15:16

you know, like, remember, when we got high

15:19

def television and then you'd see like the

15:21

nature shows. It's that kind

15:23

of like, wow, on this like humongous

15:25

screen with amazing audio. And even for

15:27

this movie, they have built in, like

15:29

the subwoofers in the seats. So when

15:31

you know, the elephants are walking on

15:34

screen, you know, your seats are actually

15:36

vibrating and you can feel it. So

15:38

it's impressive. The disclaimer I'll give

15:40

on the movie is cinematically, it's

15:43

great. The plus a little light

15:45

for a 45 minute movie.

15:47

It's not some big action adventure.

15:49

And the message is a little

15:51

bit heavy handed as to what

15:54

we have done to our beautiful planet.

15:56

So I'll leave it there. And, you

15:59

know, if you go read online. I'm sure you can read much

16:01

more about it, but beautifully shot

16:03

and impressive to see. And

16:06

yeah, it's the disclaimer also, it's

16:08

Vegas. So the movie itself,

16:10

I think the cheapest tickets are about 100

16:13

bucks. And my

16:16

recommendation from everything I read is the 300s

16:18

and 400s are the best place to see

16:20

the movie because you can see the the

16:22

this all of the screen itself

16:24

really well, I was sitting in the 400s,

16:27

which are, you know, one of the

16:29

least expensive seats and it was great seats.

16:32

I talked to, you know, a friend that went to see

16:34

the YouTube show. And they

16:36

said, you know, again, like the lower

16:39

levels, you could see, you

16:41

know, you too much better. But

16:43

you might not have the best view

16:45

of the full screen. But

16:48

even if you're in the three in the 400s,

16:50

and you're like, okay, you know, Bono on

16:52

the edge and everybody are kind of small. Most

16:54

of the time on the screen, they have

16:56

a giant projection of the band. So while everybody

16:59

posts photos of some of the beautiful scenes

17:01

and kind of videos that they have, they do

17:03

do what they do at most concerts, which

17:05

is, you know, make the band actually visible, even

17:07

if you're in the back row. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:09

I want to talk a little bit about some

17:12

of the visuals around it. So when you when

17:14

you walk in, so a lot of us

17:16

have seen, like on the outside, you

17:18

know, they'll show something

17:21

right, maybe it's the the big emoji, maybe

17:23

it's, you know, some sort of logo, like

17:25

you said an ad or something, when you're

17:27

inside the place, but not in the seating,

17:30

can you see stuff sort of on

17:32

the you can you get a sense

17:34

of like, what's being projected to the

17:36

outside? Or is that entirely to the

17:39

out? Like, is it sort of translucent

17:41

to the outside or no, you actually

17:43

it's a completely separate experience. So no,

17:45

there's plenty of LEDs going in. They've

17:47

even got in that main lobby.

17:50

It's not quite holographic, but some

17:53

of the some

17:55

of the cool things that I'd seen in videos

17:57

from the YouTube show were up

18:00

above you and you can see

18:02

there. But what happens on the outside is

18:04

on the outside, the inside is kind of

18:06

self-contained and nothing in between. Because it's funny,

18:08

like it's one of the things that's cool

18:11

on the sphere on the outside, sometimes it

18:13

looks like it's transparent. And

18:15

they're just doing that with the LED screen. So

18:18

they do the same thing, I think for some of the some

18:22

of the content there is, you know, they could make

18:24

it look like it's the sky, but it's no different

18:26

than just going to like a planetarium and being like,

18:28

Oh, look up. Yeah. Okay.

18:30

And then once you once you get into

18:33

the sort of stadium part where the seating

18:35

part is, it's, it's essentially down

18:37

below. So if you if you actually go

18:39

there, and you see it at street level,

18:41

you know, part of the sphere, you know,

18:43

is down below ground level. So most of

18:45

the stadiums kind of kind of

18:47

down below a little bit, it feels I

18:49

mean, it looks from what I've seen, it

18:52

looks like it's about half of the sphere

18:54

is where the seating is. It's not sort

18:56

of this big, you know, round open oval

18:58

like a regular football or soccer stadium. And

19:01

then as you sit, it's

19:03

kind of this tiered seating, right? Like there's kind

19:05

of a floor level, and then a couple of

19:07

tiers. How much are you once

19:10

you actually get in your seat? Are you are

19:12

you tilted back and you're kind of looking up

19:14

at the ceiling? Are you sort of looking down

19:16

on everything? What's the what's the actual seating feel

19:18

like? And does it does it move at

19:20

all? You know, or is it just kind of

19:22

fixed, fixed seating? Yeah, no, it is all fixed

19:24

seating. I

19:26

would be worried if there were 18,000 seats moving around,

19:30

even though there's certain pieces. When

19:33

they're they have the camera flying, it almost

19:35

feels like if you've been on Soren at

19:38

you know, Disneyland Disney World, you almost feel

19:40

like that because the screen is

19:42

so big, and it's so impressive and the like. For

19:45

the most part, it's like a regular

19:47

seat in any stadium you're facing, you

19:50

know, facing straight ahead. If you

19:53

needed to look all the way down, it's

19:56

tiered enough that you can do

19:58

that. I heard that. some things

20:00

that people were a little bit

20:02

worried about how steep it was at the upper decks.

20:04

At least from my experience, I was in the 400s.

20:06

And I've been to the garden in Boston

20:12

or the upper deck of Gillette

20:14

Stadium where the Patriots play are

20:16

a steeper set of

20:18

stairs than it was at the sphere. Because

20:20

if you just think about how the thing's

20:22

shaped, you're

20:26

not going straight up. You want to be

20:29

a little bit nicer on the climb up

20:31

or climb down. But

20:33

yeah, it fixates. And as you said,

20:35

it's really only kind of half of

20:37

the stadium, much more like a

20:41

typical music

20:43

theater or concert hall

20:46

type of seating, just bigger

20:48

and up higher, not

20:51

like any kind of

20:53

sports arena. Right. And I

20:55

have to imagine the sound is probably an interesting

20:59

science experiment. Because it's

21:01

obviously it's enclosed, but it's

21:03

enclosed with completely rounded walls.

21:06

And I'm not sure

21:08

what the material is on the inside. I'm sure it's all the

21:11

same LEDs. So there's probably all sorts

21:13

of interesting kind of sound wave

21:15

bouncing characteristics that they had to figure

21:17

out throughout. I

21:19

mean, was the sound pretty robust

21:21

or was there anything interesting about

21:24

it? The sound was amazing. I

21:26

mean, the thing has, according to the

21:28

website, they have 167,000 speaker

21:32

drivers there. So it's concert

21:34

grade audio. And there's

21:37

something about the way they do it. It's like,

21:39

oh, we target every seat. So like, I remember

21:41

I've talked to people that put in Wi-Fi in

21:43

the sports stadiums, and they

21:46

have the access points tuned

21:48

to get the entire stadium covered. And if

21:50

they had any issue, you could actually be

21:52

like, hey, I'm in this section in this

21:55

seat, and they could adjust this.

21:57

But yeah, it was really crystal

22:00

clear. There was nothing, you

22:03

know, compared to some movie theaters. I

22:06

feel like movies lately have been like really

22:08

kind of heavy base and you lose certain

22:13

some of the dialogue amongst some of

22:15

the background noise. And this was, you

22:18

know, beautiful audio, I call it like

22:20

a super IMAX view. And

22:23

the sound system was really amazing. So

22:25

I mean, they, you

22:27

put a couple billion dollars in and you

22:30

sweat the details, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No,

22:32

it's, it's, yeah, the feedback I've heard has

22:34

been really, really good. I, you know,

22:37

I think I'm really curious about, and obviously

22:39

this is probably all speculation unless you've heard

22:41

something, you know, the few

22:43

pictures I've seen of the U2

22:46

concerts, you know, so what right now with the way they

22:48

seem to be doing it is, you

22:51

know, they have, you know, they're treating it not

22:53

really as like a stadium venue like

22:56

football stadiums do where, you know, some band might

22:58

come on a Thursday and somebody else comes on

23:00

a Friday and you know, they're trending to do

23:03

the Las Vegas thing, which is somebody

23:05

has a residency for a long period of

23:07

time. So, you know, Fish was there for

23:09

a little while. U2 has been there for

23:11

multiple months. Dead in company is sort of

23:13

the next one in line. I

23:16

did notice though that the stage seems

23:18

to be fairly, you know, relatively fairly

23:20

small and fairly fixed. Do you get

23:22

any sense of like, are they going

23:24

to, you know, if for example, you

23:26

know, Taylor Swift or somebody who does a big

23:29

stage with a lot of production, is

23:31

there room to move stuff around? And you

23:33

get the sense it's sort of like, well,

23:35

you know, they can adjust it, but it's

23:37

sort of where it is and the size

23:39

it is. Yeah, you're right. The stage does

23:41

look kind of small and it does look

23:43

kind of fixed. And if you think about,

23:45

you know, U2, they can make

23:47

this nice production forum. Fish

23:50

and Dead in Company, you

23:52

know, obviously have a

23:54

certain kind of aesthetic that

23:57

you will go to on the

23:59

screens. for that kind of thing, so

24:01

it kind of lines up. I

24:03

don't know that just a,

24:06

you know, somebody like

24:09

a Taylor Swift would be the right

24:11

fit for it. And anyway, you can't fit enough people

24:13

in there for her audiences these

24:15

days. So it's, yeah,

24:18

it's going to be interesting to

24:20

see because there's certain general

24:22

purpose nature that you would want in such a

24:24

facility, but you want to take advantage of the

24:27

special nature of what they can do with the

24:29

audio and video there. So I'm definitely

24:32

interested. I sure, you know,

24:34

would consider, you know, I was talking

24:36

with friends and, you know, didn't companies

24:38

not my, not my jam,

24:40

but you know, I haven't seen Pink Floyd in

24:42

a number of years, if they were able to

24:44

do it, I would totally think about trying to

24:47

get tickets and go back to Vegas for it.

24:49

So right, right. Yeah, it seems like it has

24:51

the potential to do some interesting

24:53

things. I mean, I can imagine, you

24:56

know, if you wanted to watch like a sporting

24:58

event, it would be kind of an interesting thing

25:00

if they could figure out, you know,

25:02

how to, you know, how to use the

25:04

whole thing for projection of some sort. I

25:06

can imagine, yeah, like

25:09

certain movies would probably be really interesting in

25:11

there. But yeah, it's going

25:13

to be interesting to see how they sort

25:15

of dole out the space because obviously

25:17

you can't, you can't wear out a

25:19

band seven nights a week, they, you know, they

25:21

sort of need breaks for various reasons. So yeah,

25:23

it's going to be interesting to see how they

25:26

maintain it because I've heard, at least

25:28

initially some various things about how profitable it is,

25:30

how expensive it is to run and what sort

25:32

of stuff they do to kind of, like you

25:34

said, you know, try and use it as many

25:36

days as possible without completely wearing it out. Any

25:40

tips or tricks for, you know, now that you've,

25:42

I mean, you're a one-time veteran, but,

25:46

you know, like I've heard,

25:48

like you said, the way it's

25:51

tiered, you don't necessarily want

25:53

to sit at the bottom because maybe you,

25:55

yeah, so a couple of things that because

25:57

when I did read about it, first of all, like if you're going to

25:59

be a concert, Oftentimes you're like, I want to

26:01

be at the 100 level and that'll be great. The

26:04

back half of the 100s

26:07

has the tiers above you. So

26:09

you actually can't see a lot

26:11

of what's on the

26:14

screen. So that is not ideal. It'd

26:16

be perfectly fine if you have like a

26:18

corporate event there and you want to see

26:21

it but not for the concert

26:23

because taking

26:25

advantage of the screen is a big piece of what you

26:27

would want to see there. The

26:29

other thing is, yes, tickets are expensive

26:31

but looks like there is like a

26:34

resale market. So we talked about you

26:36

two. Just

26:38

to put some numbers out there, it was typically like

26:40

$600 to $900 for most of the seats.

26:45

I heard on the day of somebody that got a

26:47

ticket for more like $350 because sometimes people

26:51

buy tickets and they can't go and they'll

26:53

want to put it up there or they're

26:55

just available. So there is that opportunity to

26:59

last minute make a purchase from

27:02

that standpoint. And yeah, I always

27:04

love for these type of things

27:07

if you've got like the

27:10

view for my seat type of thing. So

27:13

lots of venues when I go to, I try

27:15

to look that up to be like, hey, it's

27:17

very different if you're going to see a comedian

27:19

than if you're going to see something visual like

27:21

this where you want to be a little bit

27:23

more centered. So

27:27

yeah, and there's always good resources

27:29

online if you go start reading

27:31

review sites. Right.

27:35

It'll be interesting to see what they do. It'll be

27:37

interesting to see how like the camera

27:39

technology evolves in terms of, I don't

27:42

know, I'm just sort of thinking out loud.

27:44

Like Las Vegas is famous for

27:46

various types of fights and so forth.

27:48

It would be interesting if some sort

27:51

of live event that's not music where

27:53

you're just using sort of fixed backgrounds

27:55

or movie backgrounds,

27:57

you're using sort of live. Does that work with

27:59

the LEDs? It'll be interesting to

28:01

see how the camera technology evolves and how

28:04

much we expect that in our homes at some

28:07

point. Yeah, well, you know, right, we always talk

28:09

about so many things. It's like, do I go

28:11

to the movie or is my large screen TV

28:13

enough? And do I need 4K? And

28:17

just, you know, Brian, I look at it,

28:19

it's a 16K by 16K

28:21

picture resolution. So again, it's

28:23

amazing. And

28:25

you do notice like the detail. It's

28:27

like, wow. Pretty

28:30

impressive. Well, very cool, man. Well,

28:32

I'm going to kind of wrap it up there. You

28:35

know, like we mentioned, it's, you know, if you're

28:37

going to Vegas, you know, Vegas is always going

28:39

to be somewhat expensive. So, you know, if you're

28:41

hearing five hundred dollars or three hundred dollars or

28:43

whatever, everything in Las Vegas is a little bit

28:46

relative. You know, you can always throw a

28:48

few bucks on a few hands of blackjack and all of a

28:50

sudden your tickets might be paid for. But

28:52

it's, you know, it's like you said, it's a it's

28:54

a pretty unique experience that as of right now, you're

28:57

not going to get anywhere else in the world. So

28:59

it might be worth your time if

29:01

you're out there for three or four days. Any

29:04

any last thoughts before we wrap up, wrap

29:06

up or just kind of last thoughts about

29:08

the first experience? Yeah, you know, I hopefully

29:12

they will have some other experiences

29:14

because, you know, I enjoyed

29:16

that one. I wouldn't go see that movie

29:18

a second time, but it was fun to

29:21

check out and, you know, hoping they expand

29:23

on it. And yeah, unfortunately, everything in Vegas

29:25

is expensive. It was

29:27

a lot cheaper to go do that than, you

29:30

know, probably play some games at the table

29:32

and absolutely was not going to be able

29:34

to afford a Super Bowl ticket this year

29:36

myself. So I

29:39

was happy to check it out. You know, it was

29:41

it was definitely it was it was fun and good

29:43

chat with you about it, Brian. Yeah, good deal. Well,

29:46

listen, everybody, as we mentioned at the top of

29:48

the show, you know, some of you are

29:50

getting out to Vegas for fun, you know, whatever.

29:52

It's a bachelor party or a sporting event or

29:54

whatever. But a lot of you, you know, it

29:56

it does at least pop up somewhere on on

29:58

your radar for you know, potential

30:00

conferences, probably not the CNCF, but a lot of

30:03

the other, you know, vendor sponsored conferences, analyst sponsored

30:05

conferences and other things. So we wanted to give

30:07

you a little bit of preview now

30:09

that at least part of our community has got

30:11

out and had a chance to see it. So

30:13

hopefully this was useful. We put some

30:15

stuff in the show notes so you can, you know, take

30:17

a look at the trailer for the movie. You can, you

30:19

know, dig into what's in the stadium and so forth. So

30:22

with that, we'll wrap it up. Thank you to Stu for

30:24

the time. Great to have you back. You

30:26

and I, I think you and I do more,

30:28

you know, unofficial Cloudcasts when we get together and talk,

30:30

but it's good to have you back on the show, man. So

30:33

with that, folks, we'll wrap it up. Thank you all for listening.

30:35

Thanks for telling a friend. Thanks for helping us grow the community.

30:37

And with that, we'll wrap it up. We'll talk to you next

30:39

week. Thank The

30:41

Cloudcast. Please visit thecloudcast.net to

30:44

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