Carrie Charles (00:01.048)
Thanks for joining me today on Let's Get Digital. I'm Carrie Charles, your host. And today I have with me one of my dear friends, Rich Berliner. He is a longtime industry leader and also the founder of the Connected Digital Infrastructure Association, where he's helping shape the future of how everything connects. Rich, thank you for joining me. I'm excited to talk to you today about what's new.
Rich Berliner (00:27.112)
Carrie, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. You know, we have a long relationship and I value it very much and it's always great to talk to you.
Carrie Charles (00:36.362)
Yes, yes. Well, you are always up to big things and on the absolute cutting edge. So you've really had a front row seat to this industry for so many years. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, where you came from, how you got here and a little bit about how you've seen the industry evolve?
Rich Berliner (00:56.532)
Sure, well, it's kind of a weird long story, Carrie. I've been in the industry for 40 years. I started out selling cell phones in 1985, six. That was before the network went on. So I literally have been around since the inception of all this. But, you know, did the cell phone sales thing for a while and I got into the construction business, just fell in love at that point. It was a very different business than it is today. But.
all the carriers were crazy to try and build out their networks as quickly as possible and to do get as many sites on the air. We started in New York with 13 sites for the entire New York metropolitan area. And so if you can imagine how well a cell phone, a Motorola brick worked with 13 sites for the entire marketplace. You know, I always talk about Michael Douglas in
Carrie Charles (01:42.22)
What?
Rich Berliner (01:52.981)
You know, the famous scene where he's on the beach and he's got one of those Motorola transportables and he's talking to Charlie Sheen. And there's no way he was doing that on the water in the Hamptons talking on that phone at that point in time. But anyway, it's been a great run. I loved the construction business. I ran a very large public company back in up until 2011 and, you know, sort of kind of went into retirement.
but really didn't know what to do with myself all day. And so a number of years ago, I got into the digital media space and I started a publication called Connected Real Estate and did that for a number of years, which was a literally print magazine. And COVID hit and I had some health issues and it just wasn't anybody to mail it to anymore. So I sold that property and got into sort of doing some EV charging things, which was a very much a business that's akin to that.
the wireless space. But about seven or eight months ago, fellow named Ezra Hug called me and asked if I wanted to buy something called the In-Building Wireless Association. And I did at that point in time. And we morphed that into Connected Digital Infrastructure Association for a really good reason. The real estate industry, who we talk to as our enterprise clients, really aren't interested in a standalone
DAS business by itself, by and large, that's not true completely, by and large, they want to look at DAS and in building and public safety as part of their overall digital infrastructure play. And so that's why we changed the name to CDIA, the Connected Digital Infrastructure Association. And that's where we are today. And I think it's really paid dividends because our friends from the real estate business encouraged us to do that.
Thank you for having me to talk about that today and why we are on the track we are and what the digital infrastructure piece of all this means.
Carrie Charles (04:00.392)
What does that shift that you made say about where the industry is heading?
Rich Berliner (04:05.492)
That's a great question. answer is very simply that real estate people, enterprise clients, folks that are going to use all the different elements that we in the industry are talking about want to do it as a packaged situation. In other words, they want to make sure that there's a cybersecurity piece to it, that the software all works, that the communications piece is there, but it's in...
fiber, in wireless, in all the different elements. And so usually the major real estate folks who necessarily can't come to an internal situation where their internal people know all of the elements, they're looking for vendors that can boil it down and give it to them all at once. And so we're seeing that as more of a trend. And that doesn't mean that companies that are in one segment or another
can't be effective, what it means is that partnering, working together with others, arranging partnerships that work for the enterprise vendors, excuse me, the enterprise customers are really the way forward. And I think that that's the important aspect of all this. And then if you load on the sea changes that are coming in the business that we've heard about from our
keynote speaker, Joe Bacuzzi from NVIDIA, now add that into this whole situation and the real estate folks, the enterprise clients are like, well, how is this all going to work together on my behalf?
Carrie Charles (05:46.988)
Got it. So just for people who may not know the real estate ecosystem you're talking about, are the real estate folks?
Rich Berliner (05:56.009)
Well, that's a great question. And there are a lot of different elements to who in any given real estate company has a voice in this. it's certainly the IT people. And then it's the CFO will have a voice into it, because depending on what they're spending, it's the production people that are building these locations that certainly want to get things done maybe before the sheetrock is put up. And there are a lot of different.
constituencies in this thing. Take a hospital, for instance, there could be four or five, six different people sitting at the table saying, well, I need this. And someone else that's at the table is saying, well, no, I need this and my needs are different and your needs are this. so getting these things together is kind of like herding cattle. It's you've got to, I should say herding cats. You've got to, you've got to get everybody.
Carrie Charles (06:50.047)
or cattle.
Rich Berliner (06:53.64)
going in the same direction. But at the end of the day, the most important element is they realize that in order to get where they want to go with AI, they must organize and settle all these things so that their play with AI is going to work properly and their investment is going to be maximized. That was the theme of the Fort Lauderdale event that we did. Robust connectivity is a must to maximize your AI investment.
And that's the theme that we're staying with. But we're adding in all the other elements of digital infrastructure that go into that.
Carrie Charles (07:33.191)
So when you think about connected digital infrastructure today, everything from AI to smart buildings, IOT, all of it, what are the biggest opportunities that people should be paying attention to right now?
Rich Berliner (07:48.585)
Well, the answer to that is there's a lot of different things. so public safety is an important aspect. You know, one of our sponsors is in the monitoring of public safety networks, which is a big deal these days in order to make sure that those public safety systems work when the firemen or the police or that's Dan at Google.
Carrie Charles (08:09.045)
Isn't that googly? Is that Dan Leif? He's awesome. He's coming on the show soon.
Rich Berliner (08:14.376)
That's great. He's a terrific guy and he's come up with something that I think is really monumental to that aspect of it. Then you've got the basic communications piece, but you're not going to do that without having the fiber come to the building. And so looking at that and how it integrates with your building management systems.
is really another facet of this whole thing. And then there's all the other software pieces that fit in. How's that going to work? What's my cybersecurity play with this? Do I have coverage if there's some sort of an event with intent to get into my network in my building? We've all heard about the target situation, which was many years ago now.
Somebody had left a code in a computer that an AC technician had worked on. And so those things are questions that all the constituents within the enterprise group ask for. So we're trying to be sort of the educational forum for people to learn, to listen, to learn, to express what they think they need and to understand or help vendors understand how to approach them.
in the most effective way. did a panel with just real estate folks that Darlene Pope from Brava Systems moderated in Fort Lauderdale and basically they told everybody, look, don't come at me with, you know, this is what I want to sell you because this is what I got. You know, first of all, come to me with a question of needs analysis. What do I think I need? What am I lacking? What do I need to use in my building? And then
work towards a situation that fits my needs. And I think that's an important aspect of it. That's why we've always got the enterprise clients there talking on these panels and telling the vendor community and other real estate companies what they see as the important aspects for them in this discussion of the digital infrastructure space. And so it's educational, questioning, networking, and all those things that go into it.
Rich Berliner (10:25.446)
Again, we've done, there was a Jersey City event that was done by Ezra before I bought it. Then we did Plano, then Fort Lauderdale. And so the attendance has gone up each time and the feedback from people who have attended has gone, know, exponentially more involved in networking and I got a deal out of this and I talked to this person.
I got a job out of it. And so those kinds of comments you'll see on LinkedIn quite often. And so it's been gratifying to be in that kind of position. Obviously, we're not the biggest event. We're certainly not a trade show. But these conferences are meaningful, especially since we've gotten the participation of NVIDIA with us. And that has more luck than anything else. But they've taken a liking to us. And we've got them returning to
the Vegas event on September 1st with us to come and talk and give an update on that. But that's an interesting point that we should ask the other questions that you wanted to find out about, and we'll get back to talking about why NVIDIA is so important in this.
Carrie Charles (11:38.286)
So you know, I think the smaller events are the best and I go to conferences all the time and I you know, I love the you know, the the small to midsize where you can really connect. I think there's just so much opportunity there. You know, Rich, you've spent your I guess your whole life. I mean 40 years since you were four just connecting. You look so good.
Rich Berliner (12:02.138)
I wish.
Thank you.
Carrie Charles (12:06.413)
You've been just connecting people and companies ideas and I mean you are just a staple in our industry. But why do you think associations like CDIA, what role did they play in shaping the future of the industry and what makes CDIA different?
Rich Berliner (12:26.45)
Yep. So the question of what's different between CDI and what was connected real estate connected real estate was basically putting material out in front of people about the just the vertical of DAS. And so kind of learning from that experience. And I have to tell you, I went to a trade show that had nothing to do with wireless. And I pulled out one of the magazines, connected real estate magazines, and a guy looked at it went, I've seen that. He was about to throw me out of his booth, but I've seen that magazine.
And so the recognition of that in the Glossy magazine was kind of good for the time that we did. But we've moved so far past that. And so the information and the connections and all the different things I got were today of somebody who got a job from that event, you know, was hired by one of the sponsors at that event. So that's the kind of thing we've been doing. And again, I spent a lot of time and I do this fairly often.
Carrie Charles (13:16.156)
good.
Rich Berliner (13:25.33)
And I know this is near and to your heart, because we talk about this a lot. But, you know, people call me, you know, I'm looking for a job. Do you know anybody? And I try to make, you know, there was, you know, I'm showing my age here. There was an old game back in the day called Concentration. And if you got one and 42 and you both, that was the trip to Hawaii and you, you put those two together, you got the trip to Hawaii. Well, that's kind of what we're doing in the wireless space.
Carrie Charles (13:52.141)
Remember that.
Rich Berliner (13:53.531)
And in my travels and now in the connected digital infrastructure piece, it's helping people in good things come back. It's karma. It's helping that guy that gets a job in a position where he can help you later on because you've helped them first. And so I find that one of the most important things after 40 years, I can call up the CEOs at a lot of different companies because they were junior project managers back in the day when I met them. And so
you know, helping people out is very important. And that's kind of where we've come to with NVIDIA. And I wanted to get into that a little bit and talk about that whole thing. Cause again, you know, this fellow Joe Bacuzzi from NVIDIA just decided that he was going to take a liking to us and what we were doing. And he's been terrific about helping us with that. So he's coming back to the Las Vegas event in September, but
The important thing is there is a sea change in this whole digital infrastructure space coming. And that sea change is the move from CPUs, which aren't going away, but the move from CPUs to GPU technology in our space. And the fact that distributed data centers, distributed computing, is now going to be something that is going to be a staple for everybody who needs to learn about it.
who needs to integrate it into their business and who needs to make sure that they're part of it as we go forward. So what that's talking about is that NVIDIA is going to be a much more important part of the communications landscape as a whole as we move towards 6G and NVIDIA chips in all the technology that we're using, the base stations for cell phones, the data center, the servers that are going to be distributed data centers.
All of that is a very important piece of the new ecosystem. We've coined as a new phrase, the new edge. So I was talking to somebody today and kind of was like a little bit dismissive saying, we've been talking about the edge for seven or eight, nine years and nothing's happened. And I beg to differ at this point. Now what's happening is the new edge is coming and there are lots of companies, including the tower folks.
Rich Berliner (16:21.342)
that are either going to be running data centers that are distributed using their sites instead of building a massive building and taking a nuclear power plant to run it. They're going to be using locations, rooftops for real estate people, IT rooms for real estate companies, tower sites, and you name it to run distributed data center locations. And just as long as there's power and telco.
that can be a distributed data center and there are companies that are coming forward in that mode to run those instead of simply building out massive data centers. And that really, that sea change there, Carrie, is because of NVIDIA, because of GPU chips that are now going to give them the ability to run these things on a distributed basis. So I encourage anybody who's, believe me, not getting it from a dopey marketing guy like me,
not getting all the technology pieces to go to our YouTube channel, CDIA USA on YouTube and watch Dr. Bacuzzi's podcast and Dr. Bacuzzi's keynote at our event and listen to what this man has to say. Six months ago, I didn't know Nvidia had anything to do with telecommunications, nothing. And so it turns out that the...
Nvidia program on how they're going forward in this industry is going to make this a completely different business as we go forward.
Carrie Charles (17:59.458)
Wow. Well, let's talk about the event. So when, where is the event? When is the event happening? All those details.
Rich Berliner (18:08.35)
Yeah, so we're September 1st, we're kind of wrapping around, if you will, like we did with the IT Expo in Fort Lauderdale. We're wrapping around Bixie, which is in Vegas, starts the day after our event. And so we're September 1st in Las Vegas at Planet Hollywood.
And I encourage everybody to visit our website, cdiausa, to register or to look at more details and to understand what we're trying to accomplish. The material is up there. The registration is registration ability is there now too. And I really want to encourage people who want to learn more about this issue with the technology, the new edge, the changeover from
CPUs to GPUs and what Dr. Bacuzzi is doing at NVIDIA. I encourage them to go and watch the videos and visit our YouTube channel and also our website. We're now doing a newsletter every other week. We have articles about all these things. We publish every other Wednesday. We did today, this morning, our newsletter went out. So I'd love to see as many people from both
our end of the business, the telecom, the fiber, and all of the digital infrastructure pieces of this, plus real estate people who we really encourage to come talk to Dr. Bacuzzi, ask questions, and get their answers as they need to go forward in this, just to be more educated when they sit in a boardroom meeting and the CEO asks them, well, what are we doing about this? Just being educated on this.
is such an advantage in this day and age.
Carrie Charles (19:54.473)
I will be there.
Rich Berliner (19:56.457)
Great, we're looking forward to that. I always like seeing you because you have, I commented on your posting the other day on LinkedIn. The bottom line is you do a lot of moving. You're hustling all the time and I admire that greatly.
Carrie Charles (20:06.167)
Thank you.
Carrie Charles (20:12.193)
Thank you, thank you. I got a lot of airline miles, that's for sure. And hotel, I don't know if it'll ever end. I'm 58. At some point, I probably need to just slow down, but it's exciting.
Rich Berliner (20:14.708)
I bet you do.
Rich Berliner (20:22.462)
We'll talk about looking good. You have maintained a great image and I would bet you weren't, I would bet a lot of money that you weren't 58 years old. So, you know, take that as a major compliment.
Carrie Charles (20:28.429)
you
Carrie Charles (20:34.349)
Thank you. Thank you. what's just in just one sentence. What are people going to get from this event? Why should they attend? Like just what's that mic drop sentence?
Rich Berliner (20:52.384)
My elevator pitch, yeah. Yeah. Listen, learn and go away with information that you can use in your daily life that's going to tell you everything that I, that the current administrations of these things like Nvidia and others are going to do going forward to change the face of telecom and digital infrastructure as a whole, meaning the move from
CPUs to GPU technology and how all that fits in with distributed compute, distributed data centers and the new edge. So that's it in a nutshell.
Carrie Charles (21:32.671)
Awesome. What about your vision, Rich, about CDIA? Where are you going to take this five years from now, ten years from now? What does it look like?
Rich Berliner (21:40.085)
Well, that's a great question that I can answer very simply. And I hope I live long enough to see this to its logical conclusion. But we are really trying to educate. We talked about Dan from Googley. That's a product that people need to understand and know about. And you can mark it till you're blue in the face in this business. But I think the personal contact and connections that people made, whether it's getting a job, getting a deal.
with somebody, whether it's a real estate company finding someone to help them with their situation. All of that goes into being part of the community. And I'll say this with
you know, some ego involved, but we seem to have kicked up a lot of other organizations that weren't focusing on this into looking into this and being more open to new things, the new edge, distributed data, other things like that. And so if we succeed in helping people to understand more about what I see coming down the pike in terms of, you know, 5G standalone and 6G technology,
I've done my job and that's what I'd like to see the CDI become is a place where people can exchange ideas, where they can learn, where they can focus on getting a job, they can get a customer, they can find the technology they need and you know one of the people that's been a great help is this young lady Darlene Pope from Brava Systems has been incredibly helpful in helping us with the real estate community.
She's had many different positions along the way, knows everybody in the real estate space, and she's been a great help to us because the real estate folks in this day and age are like a sponge. They're just soaking up this information. They may not be moving real quickly, but they're soaking up the information on what they need to know going forward. And again, we've got a speaker, one of the biggest developers in the LA market, Chris Rising from Rising Real Estate, CEO of Rising Real Estate.
Rich Berliner (23:52.636)
is coming to speak at our event. think he's going to be a real interesting guy to talk to and for people to meet.
Carrie Charles (23:59.637)
Rich, thank you for coming on the show. I'm excited about your event. I just love to hear what you're up to because you're a connector and you put people together and you're just all about making a difference. So I'm excited to see where this, you know, this association and the event and where it's going to go and how it's going to manifest. And I can't wait to see you in Vegas. So thank you.
Rich Berliner (24:20.788)
Yeah. So people can find us at the CDIA USA on the internet and a YouTube channel is CDIA as you say also. And Carrie, I couldn't thank you enough. I can't wait to see you in Las Vegas and keep up the good work. You're a connector too. You're on the move all the time. You must go through a lot of pairs of shoes. But at the end of the day, it's great talking to you and I look forward to seeing everybody out there in.
Carrie Charles (24:42.477)
I do.
Rich Berliner (24:49.704)
telecom and real estate land at our event.
Carrie Charles (24:52.449)
Sounds good. You take care.
Rich Berliner (24:54.109)
You too.
Carrie Charles (24:57.794)
Alright, that was awesome! That was so good!
Rich Berliner (24:59.433)
Yeah.