Cox Business and How Covid-19 is Advancing Tech Adoption in the Workplace | Tacos & Tech Podcast

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash for the green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a craft beer and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Gotta shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside to Tijuana Esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador and together we are going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cox Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121-year-old family run private company that thinks in terms of decades in building community a lot like we do in building a startup community. For years, the local Cox Business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota.

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And in celebrating our technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards. The Top Tech Awards are September 17th and you can join this unique virtual networking event and awards ceremony with a very cool avatar environment built by local tech company Verbella. Buy your tickets and see who the nominees are at toptechawards.com thanks again to Cox Business for your partnership.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. Today I'm joined with the executive team from Cox California and Cox Business here in San Diego. Sam Atisha, Duane Cameron. Thanks guys for joining.

Hey Neal, good to see you.

Thanks, Neil.

So to our audience, you've probably heard since the very beginning of this podcast more than two years ago, Cox Business has been one of our greatest partners in terms of helping us build the tech ecosystem in San Diego. And we thought it'd be a great idea to get them together, get the leaders together and get to know the company itself, especially in terms of just all the trends you're seeing in this new normal. Working from home, working from elsewhere, from a technology standpoint, the usage, everything about it. We want to hear just what you guys are seeing, but also get to know the two of you. So why don't we kick it off with that? Do you guys both want to tell us quickly about your roles within Cox?

Sure. My name is Sam Attisha and I'm the senior vice president of operations for California and I do whatever Duane tells me to do.

That's funny, Neil. I'm Duane Cameron and I'm the vice president for Cox Business here in San Diego and I've got leadership responsibilities for sales, implementation, support. Really anything that touches the customer from end to end.

Awesome. Well, it's great to have you as both. I know you're both super active in the community too, and that's how I've gotten to know you from the beginning, from techcos Angels, Sam, where we both invest locally from, also from our founders dinners that we put on Beth. The three of you, both of you have joined us to bring together both investors and startup founders, which is a lot about Cox Enterprises, what you guys are about, building community. So I'd love to hear kind of where it all started. You know, it's a family owned business 120 plus years, but take us a little bit through how I'm sure obviously technology and the company has changed to get us through today. Sam, you want to take us through a little bit of that history?

Yeah, my pleasure. And Neil, I just want to give you a shout out. We've had a great partnership with you and a lot of the startup organizations here and the tech entrepreneurs. It's something I'm really passionate about. I know Dwayne is also. We're happy to not only support you all, but it's amazing to see some of the growth we've seen in the community over the last few years and the acceleration of capital investment. And that's really kind of a great segue into Cox. I mean, cox started in 1898, so 122 years ago by a gentleman named James Cox, who was a schoolteacher and his first business was a newspaper. He bought a newspaper, the Dayton Daily News. And you want to talk about innovation, Cox, James Cox and the family, now our fourth generation family member Alex Taylor, running Cox Enterprises. Cox is an American story. It's a story of innovation. It's a story of support of its employees, its customers and communities all these years. And a couple of interesting tidbits. He was a newspaper owner, then he decided to run for office. Congressman and then governor of Ohio. Governor of Ohio at the time of the Spanish flu pandemic. And so it was really interesting a few weeks ago that the current governor of Ohio mentioned Governor Cox and how he was a beacon of strength and persistency back then getting through the Spanish flu pandemic. And a lot of things we hear about today, social distancing, no large gatherings. That was some of the mantra when you go back and look at some of the things they did to try to, to kind of overcome the Spanish flu. And so really, you know, he was governor and then he ran for president and FDR was his running mate. And we have some great pictures at our corporate offices with FDR and Governor Cox walking parade routes, which are amazing. And you know, unfortunately, maybe for him, but really fortunately for Dwayne and I, is that he lost that election. And when he lost, he decided that, hey, politics has been great, but let me focus on business. And we bought more newspapers. And you want to talk about innovation? When radio started coming on strong, we got into radio. And then the family got into TV stations early on in TV. And then in the 1960s, this thing called cable TV started. And Cox got into that very early on. And we've been here in San Diego since 1962 Operating so, you know, going on some amazing years here of celebration and providing services here. And then we got into a whole separate business. There was an opportunity to get into indirectly to get into the auto business. And we bought at the time, an auction in Manheim, Pennsylvania, called Manheim Auto Auction. And if you fast forward today, Manheim is the largest auto auction company in the world. And with that, we brought in some additional brands. Kelley Blue Book, an auto trader in our auto division, as well as many other companies where we provide kind of third party services. So, you know, 122 years later, fourth generation family member, all the businesses are private. And when the governor passed away, he put in his will three things which still I would say are our values today and our why. And that is focus on our employees who focus on our customers. And we all live in communities. And that's really been how Cox has had such a passionate, passionate focus on our communities. The governor was very passionate about it when he founded the company, and that continues today. With the family, and especially now in these unprecedented environments that we're in, the company has really stepped it up for our communities. Just here in California alone in the last four or five months, supporting our customers and communities, we've donated more than $10 million of cash and in kind contributions, and we're going to continue to be part of the recovery. And we're excited to be here. And our employees are very passionate about operating this business and supporting our customers.

Wow, what a history. It's incredible. Pretty incredible knowledge, though, to have intrinsically in the company, to have gone through a pandemic before and, you know, kind of say, you know, maybe we've got a few blueprints back there that we can say, here's how we can help the community now, too, which I think you guys are doing.

Yeah, I mean, pandemic and world wars and economic recessions, depressions. I mean, the company has really came through a lot. And we're the current leader of our company. Alex Taylor, he's amazing. He's young, he's innovative, he's pushing us to get into new businesses, but all with that kind of value mindset about making the world a better place than it is today. And that's really been our mission as a company. And it's really exciting to see some of the investments we've made to support that.

Yeah, speaking of investments and just like engagement in the community, I know that you're very involved in techstars, which is an international tech incubator. Do you want to take us through some of the ways you've been involved in San Diego's tech ecosystem?

Hey, Neil, I'll take that one. And I'll tell you, we're pretty excited about the opportunities that have been presented for us to invest in technology here in San Diego. As you know, we're a major sponsor for top tech. This will be the 13th year of that event, which recognizes IT professionals across all of San Diego for their great work. And especially in a year where there's a pandemic and they've had to get incredibly creative on how to maintain their business environment. So that, along with quick pitch, a great competition for startup companies for seed money, that's been pretty exciting to watch grow here in San Diego. You probably know a little bit about or have heard about the digital divide. It's been top of mind for a lot of cities and states. One of the things that we're pretty excited about is our investment in the K through 12 space. We started a program back in 2012 called Cox Connect to compete. And over the last, say, eight years, we've been able to connect over a half a million customers or half a million students and families that without this type of access, would have struggled to have broadband access to the Internet. And so those type of investments, whether it be in the form of a donation or creating a program to help those in need, or ultimately spending money where we can really help the local environment grow from a technology standpoint, it's in our DNA. We love doing it and we search out opportunities to take advantage of that.

That's really cool. And obviously you've been doing it for longer than the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated a lot. Can you take us through what that acceleration of people jumping over that digital divide was initially in March?

Yeah, I'll start. And I think Dwayne can add, because I know Cox Business has done some amazing things for their customers. Here in California, we have about 1,900 employees. And in early March, we decided that whoever could work from home was going to work from home. And for us in California, it's about 50, 50. So about half of our employees were able to work from home. And we outfitted them with everything they needed to be very productive at home, to kind of get out of the office and kind of shelter in place. And we also have another 7, 800 employees that can't work from home. They support our customers in retail stores, they manage our technical facilities, they do installs and support our business customers and our residential customers. Early on, we were very concerned about safety, so we right away look to technology and innovation to help solve the initial opportunity of how do we serve our customers without going in their home. We turned to ar. We turned to augmented reality and an app where our technicians could basically get a picture, a video, a little voice activated, and kind of work with the customer two way on a live app. And we were seeing some incredible, incredible support of that opportunity to continue to provide people services, but do it by using technology without crossing the threshold of going into a home and potentially putting a customer at risk or our employee at risk. And you know, the funny thing is, literally, sometimes our employees would be literally in somebody's front yard, walking them through the app and the customer being in the home after they dropped off the equipment. And then over time, we got a little better and we were drop shipping equipment and then folks were kind of more situated. So I think we saw the use of technology as really important. But as schools kind of shifted to finish the school year at home, we knew there was a gap to bridge that digital divide, as Duane mentioned. And so we offered two months of free Internet service of our Connect to Compete program to get all the kids who didn't have Internet at home to be able to finish out the school year. And we partner with all of our school districts and COTS business serves many of them. So it was a great partnership to try to reach as many kids as we can. And I'll give you a little factoid. San Diego unified has about 120,000 kids and on an average day they have 92% of their kids in classrooms. With our partnership with them and really their amazing ability to bridge the digital divide by giving every kid a device because they're a one to one district, we had check ins over the network at 98%, 98% of the kids at home connected into their learning management system. And so we feel very strong about that. And we're going to continue focusing on helping kids now start the school year strong with our continued focus on Connect to Compete. But Duane's team did some amazing work on the business side helping some of our large business customers. And I'm sure he's got a few things to add there.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'll tell you, our employees here in San Diego, we have a large footprint and many of them were struggling with the work remote. All of a sudden there are kids studying from home and both individuals or the entire family all stuck in one environment. What we found is a lot of our customers were forced into the same environment quickly. And while we all know that we have a phenomenal Internet backbone here in San Diego and across the country, one of the areas we've really expanded to is in the cloud business. While many of our customers, thousands of our customers, have been looking and considering cloud, the pandemic forced them to quickly pivot and to remove their workers from the office space to the remote space. So we've seen a lot of energy and excitement. You know, Sam mentioned some of the stuff in the business environment that we've done. I mean, we built out networks for companies in a matter of weeks that used to take months. We've been able to supply a lot of the medical facilities with PPE gear and to really come at it from not only how can we continue to help you, but support your technology. So it's been pretty impressive. We actually offer a product now, a work from home product that's a higher grade than most residential customers need. And it's really trying to create that office environment in the residential space. So Pretty exciting about what we're doing and where we're headed. And we know there's a tremendous need out there. And a part of this, Neil, is really facilitating, facilitating these conversations. Many of our customers aren't sure what they need and with the changing rules and guidelines from the states, they're having to pivot pretty quick. So we're trying to make sure we're there for them and lock and step with them.

That's really great. It's great to have such kind of a big company, but also have such a localized feel and be able to pivot and help each individual locally in our own community. I mean, obviously you're incentivized to make sure that everyone gets connected and is able to connect and get to work. That's good for everyone, right? So it's great that you can pivot and help that out. I'm curious what other little habits you saw. You mentioned that you created some new services, like this new work from home kind of service. Any other kind of trends you saw with businesses in terms of usage or anything like that?

I would say from a. The amount of utilization on our network has increased and we expect it to to increase as school starts up again. I think one of the phrase we talk about in our business unit, Cox business, is the new normal, right? Trying to find normalcy in a very unique and new environment. So I would tell you that the ability to access applications, the ability to have a consistent and reliable network, I mean, they're so fundamental. I mean, we built our network over the last couple decades for this type of scale. Could we have ever predicted this? Absolutely not. But because we're always staying one step ahead, I think our customers are benefiting. So the second piece of that question is what new services are they adopting? I don't know that there's tremendous movement around new, but I know there's adoption where a lot of customers weren't really using these services, weren't using the cloud. There is an accelerated path to get there and get there quick. We're seeing a lot of our customers trying to really reconcile how much office space do they need going forward. I mean, that's probably one of the biggest trends in our own environment where we work with customers and they're just not sure if they need 20 offices anymore. They may be able to drop down to 10 and still be effective. And also I think for a long time there was a concern just in business in general is how many people do we have work remote, how many folks can we support? Well, overnight it was 100% right. It happened quick. And so I think that's actually been a big relief now that IT teams have settled down and they have a direction and they have a vision of where they're headed. But we'll still be there for them as things change and as things evolve, we'll make sure we're staying top of mind for them.

So has this changed how Cox is investing in general? Whether it's building out new infrastructure or kind of accelerating certain kind of cloud services that you mentioned? Is that already you've seen that kind of technology roadmap change within the business?

Yeah, I'll take the front part of that and Duane can talk about the cloud. I mean, it's a great question and I can tell you we spend billions of dollars a year on capital. We're that kind of business. We're a capital intensive business. And to Dwayne's answer before, I don't know many businesses that could handle a 40 plus percent growth in their service and still not miss a beat. And that's really what happened over our network. And so we're built for this, we built this amazing network to handle this kind of scale that we're seeing today, but we have to continue to invest in that. And so what we're doing right now is we are reinvesting in our network while, you know, folks are working from home. We are hard out there today adding additional capacity all over our network, not only for business customers, but also for all of our residential customers. Because, you know, one of the things that we see really staying in this is tele life. Whatever you want, however you want to define that. Is it telework, is it tele school, telehealth, telegaming? I mean, we could go on and on about what all that's going to look like and what's the fundamental key of all that being delivered. Well, it's a really powerful broadband network and Cox has that network and we're going to stay a step ahead by investing in that. And we also look at the network as an economic leveler. Right. I mean, because I'm here at our office 805 and 94. And so one of the first areas that we've ever offered our gig services is in this area right here. So it doesn't matter where you live in San Diego, whether you live in the, the most expensive home or you live anywhere else in San Diego. We offer that level of service wherever we can. And it's consistent and it's reliable and it's scalable I'm really excited about that investment. Duane and I have talked and he shares some incredible things that people are starting to do now with rethinking the way their business models are by taking advantage of cloud based services and applications. I'm sure Duane can add a little bit more there.

There are a lot of different tools out there and what we're seeing is customers are trying to gravitate to what's going to work for them. A lot of these were nice to have. We didn't use a lot of video conference, but now it is 100% of what we do. And so the nice to haves are now the essentials. And I will tell you around either cloud desktop as a service, equipment as a service, anything where companies are able to offload what their IT teams have to focus on every day in an office environment, but no longer can, they're looking to the cloud. And so that's one of the areas we're investing. We're going to have new solutions coming online over the next couple months that enable our customers to take advantage of that. And prior to this, one of the things that's interesting about our environment is historically you've had the network providers and the cloud providers and then you've had the VARs and the vendors in between. Today you no longer have to go out and find that the network providers, the Cox business, the Cox Communications of the world, have figured out that laying these great cloud technologies over our backbone creates kind of that one vendor, that one opportunity to consolidate and be effective. And that's what we're seeing. Where companies were a little bit loose around the number of services, number of applications they ran, now they're laser focused on what they need and they're going after it. So we're seeing a lot of that in the business environment. Again, just tremendous interest about the next six months and enabling their businesses and their employees to connect, meanwhile enabling their customers to connect at the same time. So it's a little bit different, but definitely something we're seeing that evolution take place at a rapid pace.

That's great. That's really interesting from a micro level area where you guys are focused, but then to think about from a macro level where Cox Enterprises is investing, which you've obviously shown, you've had to invest to reinvent and stay with the times since from the newspaper days to now. I remember when I first met some of your investment team a few years ago, digital health and clean tech were a big focus and now boom, all of a sudden telemedicine is right in a. It's not a future, it is now. It's an essential. You said it best. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of that decades long kind of investment and that other areas that you guys are investing in specifically?

Yeah, I'll just talk about the telemedicine since you brought that up. There were forecasts that where we are today in telemedicine, it would take five years to get there. So you talk about an acceleration of a service that yesterday was just an interesting product. Today it is top of mind for every COO CIO for healthcare entities. So that's a big piece. You talk about some of the other investments. So one of the coolest things about our CEO Alex Taylor is he is truly about giving back and investing our dollars as a company on what will improve the world. So whether it's clean tech, whether it's electric vehicles, whether it's leveraging solar plants, I mean whatever will help improve the world long term for the generations to come. And that's truly how this business looks at the world and our communication environment. It's not a five year or ten year play doing this for over 120 years. We call it four generations of family owned. I call it four generations of innovation. We've had to shift and course correct over the decades almost. I can't think of another provider out there that's had to do what we've done and I think we've done it well. And so we're going to continue to look for those opportunities to invest the company's money on solutions that solve some of the bigger, more challenging world issues.

Yeah, I mean, adding a little bit to that and Dwayne is spot on. You know, Children's Hospital of Orange county, we gave them a grant to build out a telemedicine platform and in April they did more than 10,000 telemedicine visits on this platform. And it continues to grow since then. And so that's been the innovation. But you know, as Duane mentioned, the family is very committed to leave the earth a better place. Our carbon footprint, our focus on the environment, I mean our goal is to be zero waste to landfills by 2024 and to be both carbon and water neutral by 2044. And so the family has thrown those dates out there and they backed them up with massive investments in a lot of different technology. So to give you an idea, in California alone we spent close to $20 million on solar and energy projects. And the facility I'm at here, we're in the midst, it actually started a few days ago of installing a solar panel project. And that will then go to a behind the meter battery storage. It'll be the first solar plus behind the meter battery storage for Cox Communication. This is in addition to the two fuel cells. We have two fuel cells at this facility generating our own energy. We generate over a megawatt of energy at this location right here. So Cox is really, really committed to that. And it's been great to see the family invest not only in technology that helps us be more operational and efficient, but also invest in organizations and companies. Like, there's, I think it's called Bright House Farms. It's an aqua culture that grows lettuce and other kinds of greens in the Midwest. And they're really figuring out how to grow these in these greenhouses, small footprints. So you can pop these into any community and get a high degree of yield from them. So it's pretty exciting. The investments that the family is making.

It's really cool. Something else that's kind of I've unraveled with a local group with your team is this kind of sandbox environment that you've allowed startups to work in. So we have a group that meets quarterly with some of your kind of technology executives called the CTO Group. And after a while, we realized there's a need for playing in a sandbox environment for Edge Networks. And one of your team members was like, we've got Edge set up all over the country. Why don't we open it up and allow local tech companies to play in this environment? From there, it's turned into an agreement with a local tech company, a local startup called Kazoom, that is enabling a multitude of tech uses with devices that aren't being utilized fully. So it's been pretty cool to see that come from just a peer group of technology leaders turn into kind of a service. Do you guys have any other examples of utilizing your existing technology for sandbox environments?

That's a good question. You might have stumped us on that one. Well, good.

Then I hope we are the leader here in San Diego and hopefully maybe it goes to other markets. For sure.

I will say Dwayne and his team have been, I would say, on the cybersecurity side, we have been, I would say, a big partner to organizations that have been our customers, but they have found themselves in some really difficult denial of service attacks or malware attacks where they've needed that additional technical support, either on the network side because their bandwidth is being consumed by these attacks. Or just on the engineering side. And you know, I know Duane and his team as a consultant approach has really engaged and I mean, it's been pretty cool to see and we do have some technology platforms that we're able to leverage on behalf of our customers, you know, especially when they're in a pickle like that, you know. But I'm glad that this example you gave is working out and it's, I mean, if there's more out there, bring them forward. We'd love to kind of, you know, noodle a few things. I mean, we have data centers, we have technical facilities, we have smart people. Not including Duane and myself in that list because there's a lot more smarter people than us here. But yeah, that's exciting.

Yeah, your teams have been really open to trying out and kind of being first adopters to a lot of even email technology and other sales technology too. So I would put it out there to all of our listeners. Think of Cox as kind of an interesting beta tester for, for some of your early tech because they've been very open minded. Well, I'm going to. This is the Tacos in Tech podcast and we got to talk a little bit of tacos. I'm going to put you guys on the clock both. You got to tell me your favorite taco spot.

I like the taco shop in La Jolla.

Yeah. Hey, I'd get shamed, but I'll tell you, I go back 20 years with Ralph Rubio and while my team would slap me around for mentioning a chain, I'm a local supporter of those that supported.

Yeah, no shame there at all. San Diego story, it's great.

And I grew up here. I went to USD and I don't know if there's any better than Roberto's at South Mission in the roller coaster. I've been there a couple of times. Never during the day, by the way. Always at night.

Of course.

It always tasted good. It was weird.

Tasted a lot better at 3am in the morning, right?

Totally. Well, guys, really appreciate both of your times, but really what Cox Business and Cox Communications has done for our communities, we look forward to a really fun virtual Top Tech Awards this year. I've already played in the Virbela environment with the avatar and it's really fun. So yeah. So I'm excited about that and I'm also excited for Startup Month San Diego Startup Month coming up in October. We got a whole month's worth of content using Verbella as one tool and we've got a few other virtual environments as well, too. So I'm really excited for just in the next few months, some ways that we're going to collaborate and work with you guys in the community. So thanks very much.

Thanks, Neil. Appreciate you doing this. And again, the partnership on so many fronts, we are highly invested. We'll continue to invest not only in just technology startups, but just in the community. As I mentioned earlier, it's in our DNA. It's who we want to be and what we want to do. So appreciate you putting this together and letting Sam and I ramble along for a little bit.

Yeah. And I would just echo what Duane said. But also, Neil, thank you. I mean, you give a lot of light to a group that really their focus is just trying to build a business.

Right.

They're going from a concept to reality and trying to raise money and get people together and to have a place to call home with others and to be able to kind of noodle some of these things. And I know you're incredibly passionate about it. So I just want to thank you and everything that you're doing to kind of help San Diego be that hotbed of startups and entrepreneurism. And we're happy we partner with you and we're excited that Cox Business has been really an a partner to a lot of these folks that have grown their businesses here in San Diego. So it's exciting for all of us. So thank you.

Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Wayne. Really appreciate it. Much more to do and we're excited to do it together with you guys. So thanks a lot.

Sounds great right here.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music and thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co Working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as Fresh brewed Tech and Tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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