Good morning to you. There's a hashtag going in the morning and I'm Brian Sanko by the way There's a clip I was watching on YouTube before we come on air that shows you should smile before they Run you into the shot. So I got it right and happy new year. Once again I also argued with a friend like at what point do you stop telling people happy new year? You can also tell me what I could scare happy new year week again in January, but I feel like for the better part of This month also Merry Christmas. I'm told Merry Christmas doesn't end in December It continues till end of Jan. I don't know if you agree with me on that one But for me in Asia, please you see some a Merry Christmas. Emma to happy new year if possible I got to good morning back here because at this point Did you also see the meme in your corner? Some are just stories a happy new year new year Chevrolet tonneza make Pessa in 2024 We are done. Okay, and that's how we begin our 2020 for itself right here This is MCM and as always we've asked you a question on our socials and we are asking you We shall be ready in January To go to a D. Moiseshe and also for those that are really paid like till February Show us your ways, please. That's the only thing you need to do on that Harsha Guchizawa in the morning and at Brian's a corner on a try to for for channel underscore Pala ex Facebook No, Instagram pick a kind of underscore the rest is just right to for for channel including Facebook and at threads and Joining us at live in studio. This are not new faces on your screen They've been here before and they'll continue being here. Hopefully. That's a prayer to meet to them next to me is Bobby sure Rue and then a Byron or Tiano curry bonisana and first of all, happy new year Yeah, so I'm gonna start over the person who's telling me I'm a travel. Love Jana. How are you feeling? How was how was the holidays for you? My holiday started right on 25th. I was here on 24th Yeah, we did a show on 24th and then I traveled on 25th. So the whole day I was traveling on 25th They're not so bad. Mm-hmm. How odd Yeah, but not much feel like handful. Yeah Yeah, so then I got rest I can say the week plus it was good. Yeah, so so if you got home 26th Yeah, all right So you celebrated did you and is is it Christmas in your little pita? I'm a money. How many boxing day will you celebrate? I think I celebrated the boxing day Because Christmas you will go engaged in between like traveling. Yeah. All right. Caribou back to Kenya I mean welcome back to Nairobi. That's what I meant Bobby, how is your Christmas experience? I Think I spent Christmas alone. You spent it alone. Yeah So it was it was more of me myself and I it was quite interesting. It was an interesting Experience it was more like I'm a solid it It reaches a point as a man in life you must is it one of those moments that you decided today Christmas in the Mimi Nani Mimi Christmas. Nime come to Kubo. All right Yeah, I see Don't hesitate to give us an update.  I'm still children Okay, other life is tricky. It's a tricky. It's a tricky part. You're not sure to love it You're not sure about hating it.  You're actually hitting it But it was a nice Christmas though, and maybe thanks that you did for that day Yeah on Christmas. I just spent most of my time in the kitchen. I had some guests come up later in the day So yeah, no, it was nothing much Who will spend time in the kitchen? We'll if it can house the situation by the because it's usually surprising Or met up and it's so exhausting I come and travel the whole night time of the whole day and then when I pick a home They are expecting you to be all bubbly and all up in this space But you're tired. You want to sleep because also transitioning from Nairobi. I feel like Nairobi is like another country on its own There's a certain there's a certain mental change that you feel when you exit Nairobi to go to maybe a different place including cost I've been to cost a lot If you go collect the vibe is different. I couldn't a rush. Yeah, come on Nairobi Everybody's heading to work or coming to work or somebody's being robbed. I'm like you're just being careful Even walking on the street as compared to it when you're in cost I'm in Nakuru or any other city also mentally it first different. Did you guys get that a five a sense of life? Out of the city finally and it feels differently Yeah, actually that was the thing when I traveled I didn't go home per se. I went to the coast You went to close to the cost. Oh, okay So the change it was good It was good Maybe the nitty gritties because right now Please also tell us how was your Christmas day because I remember here we had a we had a yeah We had somebody performing Did you enjoy it? Please also let us know because I did because I was the one hosting And it's just the new year. So we are starting on a new page But they collected to Rafaña is new even the words we are using all of them are new We are learning like you're starting the one of broadcasting So took it make a mistake. Tell us up or Sakuya. Yeah, imagine Sakuya being ready to be corrected. Have you ever seen me in that mode? I'm special and it was How was it? So for my Christmas day, there's not much to tell And I could say I woke up very early in the morning to catch my purse And that's all sitting in the bus all the way to Tito and then from there to Mombasa Pretty much when I was in Mombasa. It was around 6 Already I was too exhausted to do anything by then Just to enter in shower and cut some sleep There was a boxing day that was on 25th So the boxing day I went to the beach. I could say Relax a little bit. That was nice And the change of climate and air they heat or something away from the cold of Nairobi. That was nice for my Christmas It was just good. Yeah But but also when you're doing these holidays, there's usually They're usually short most holidays There's never unless you're one of those people who go for like six months off I think maybe there's a certain level to eat I'm a maybe me me to see if you're level you're going to like a six-month holiday Nearly like it's a thousand percent holiday. No work. No phone calls. I'm a no emails anything work No, it's usually short especially the Christmas one So as you're celebrating your also mark timing for John which this is the second week of it and It's also back to school So there's a rush to get back to the city or get back to where you school get back to where you work and just get In-shape as well. Also, there's a There's also a certain move that comes with just January. I remember last year to Kotnosema Be careful. January could be having 45 days to some people and I was prophesying Prophet Sakuha here said for him Sakuha for him. It's going to be 15 days Like it's it's going to be a very short month. So, I don't know why why continue to just be like any other month December do you will come to share it to make you general. It's a new year. So you just take it easy Bonilla Nina story in a rent the couple are pressure stories are Cook your landlord from the size of most landlords are just monitoring especially place in your corner tokens Come on People have not paid their bills apparently some of them will even come back mid-month Maybe is it because Christmas or the holidays consume a lot of Our resources especially when you begin the new year Bobby I'd say I'd say from the holidays. Okay, it's or we like expect We are more over expected to spend to spend a lot on the holidays and sometimes we go overboard on our spending So such duty holiday the Christmas There's a next month coming it's a next year because that's a money next year In a few days your back to January Everything now comes just don'ts upon you that you have bills to pay you have you have a lot You have a lot on your plates to handle. So you will just be rushing from here and there yet there And because it's a long month for for some of us for some people Wow, well, I mean short what you're trying to say is that it's going to be a tough week The next couple coming two weeks are going to be tough for some people people are trying to know to like come back Come back they tend to get back to the system. I'd say yeah But that detoxing and that this disconnect is really It's divine like it's a good feeling just detaching from the city. It's a good and just going to a different place It mentally just it's refreshing and say, I don't know if you be did you experience that refreshing? Yes, sure Now that I'm back. I think I'm good for a start though. I'm still exhausted Good to go, right? I'm also looking at, you know, the dieting part There's a meme that I saw online yesterday in your Kononyasha What people ate during December and now what they're eating in January like cabbage is going to be normalized Back to cabbage. Yeah, but is it because you spent everything in December and also for people that usually do fine Financial I know in the entrepreneurship segment room will have someone who will talk about storing the finances Why is it also so hard to just budget financially for the following year? especially for people that have families and all that There's even a report in the daily today that you know the money that was disbusted is not even figured in the accounts of the People that are supposed to have that money. So there's a cash crunch even publicly see a tattoo story like individually even Yes, so is it because a lot of people don't lack that plan financially future plans for finances and how to use them. I think I'd say this People need to normalize Doing like having a having a budget We need to normalize having a budget. We don't just work with the money because you have money in the pocket You feel like you can do anything and everything You need to have a budget. You need to have a plan or not.  I remember I remember my dad used to tell me If you want something just come tell me not so if I want maybe if I wanted to travel just to see my friends I'll tell him in maybe a week or two weeks prior So that when that time comes he has already budgeted for it. He used to tell me money does not grow on trees or anywhere I have to buy that he used to tell me I have to budget for each and every other day for this family Yeah, we spend this much so that tomorrow. He may have a little motive to do to work with So we don't just we I think we need as Kenyans. We need to normalize having budgets We need to learn how to work within our means Yeah, but also there's someone who talked about bulk shopping I don't know if you've ever tried it in like design like you shopped for December but that shopping is going to carry over to the following year or the following month By the way, we are trying We are trying like I said everything to not funny. It's we are we are back to journalism one-on-one introduction to So bulk shopping does it really help? Do you think it can be a good thing especially for those that did heavy shopping for the holidays? Maybe it's time to just who school is on now see you spend after Mingi who see pick and ask curry Mingi and sure in fact at some point fast kiddo go and and and and shout out to or to a church There's some churches that have introduced 21 days of praying fasting that can help save food in the house Don't you think so guys? Don't you think 21 days of praying fast? Imagine you're only eating breakfast and then eat supper or you eat breakfast First you eat lunch and then you'll not take supper or dinner depending on your level of life Yeah, either don't you think I think that is a good way Yeah, maneuvering January in as much as we say January is difficult. I think times are changing I always love to see times are changing because indeed there see their Wait with which we took Christmas and the festive season some days back. It's not the same way that we take it with Nowadays I like I told I was traveling on the 25th and in as much as there were few people On the streets The businesses were running mostly as usual People are now working You see there was an attitude towards the festive season towards December Where people approach December visa very resigned attitude. Yeah, we're getting to the end of the year I've been saving up for this period and that is Whatever they were looking forward to just spending whatever they've been saving up During this period, but now times are changing People are changing too I could say nowadays people have a better plan for January than it used to be and look at it with the previous css of education whatever they did to the parents and the education system Where we had the examination results being released prior to the celebrations These helps the parents it brought a new perspective a change of perspective like people would see Now there is also here. Now the truth would dawn. My child is about to go to high school This person is about to approach another level of education. I need the school fees I need this and this So the times have changed years I could say but we're still not there generally we generally always It always will be generally also you've made you've made really an interesting point What do you think a lot of people struggle in January? It is about that. There's a what you said a settled attitude because you're going to the holy dam We don't care about The next month it is so it's there's even somebody who said don't worry about tomorrow tomorrow will sort itself out But for me, I think worry about tomorrow because tomorrow is coming to eat you So I think it's all about how long the year has been And now I need some rest Before approaching new year So it's about what we do for this rest in as much as people may try to save. I think just traveling from the city Going back may become one in the home. We should go That is costly in a way because plus you have to carry some things You have to go there when you they're together as a family. It's not light even eating it as much as food is available At Okunyubani, but still the economy is economizing us too. Yeah So it is not as cheap as we could say To feed the entire family if a family of 50 is brought together These people need a lot of money to feed these people need a lot of money to do a lot of things here So that by the time that the contribution Let's say the family is doing all this together and in our family There is a strong person financially and there's always that person that is weak there I could say there's a parasite and then there is the host In every family And the parasites are majorly on Kungawengi Okay So this person is drained Let's say in a Let's use this analogy To more generally not talking the city. This is a working person. So Sakwa, you're working. You're from Nairobi. I'm not working No, that's right. I'm on vacation. I say this is an analogy No, I'm just playing. I'm playing. I'm playing. I'm playing with you. Yeah so And then there are other 25 members of the family who have farms These people grow crops and they have everything back there at home. But now you're brought together You people you see the expectation from you Is quite high than these people these people have maize. They are wasted maize from the farms They have beans. They have this and this They have food stuff But then a lot is expected from you financially So when you're from home when you're coming back to for the new year you're drained If you didn't have an alternative plan That is a very good plan to say because you cannot just let everyone down When you're at home So you're drained financially if you didn't have this plan and then you're coming back to the city for a start Then it becomes quite difficult to pay your bills Settle your rent and everything So that is why mostly you find January and as much as people complaining it is the people in the cities That are lamenting so much about January Because the transition from the cities to home is draining financially every year When the transition back as well is is is draining sure So this is why you find is a lot of complaints about January because like people are not financially stable They are not financially ready in as much as I rested for the year the last year now Coming back for a new year. I'm not financially fresh To kick off the new year. I like that part financially fresh. Are you financially fresh? Are you financially fresh? Raise your hand Once again for the last time. Are you fine? I don't know. Do you also think uh, people get lost or get carried into you know, January is hard A January not going to go more like but it becomes a thing and to it not exactly I know people who are boiling right now. They're they're pick in their life right now. They're not struggling But because everybody is singing the same song you get carried along and get lost into it You you you Why can't you say Because you're afraid that I come urgently So Yeah Somebody who says January could be 45 days and not 30 or 31, but they must in Asia or just young the water calendar 2024 31 days So those are 31 days of praying fasting For those that are fasting for For for the nation and also for yourself But also when you look at the people that are having fun, you wonder where they're getting the money Out when you're not post okay have sure hey January in fact As of yesterday, so I don't want to mention the names, but they're really having a good time In fact, you know, I may check in to sasa co-vocation yakisasa. I'm a check-in jam At a very expensive place outside Kenya Where are they getting the money? Yes, okay I think the secret to being rich is actually finding out where that money comes from And you're able to sustain Your well to have that money Like If you're able to cut As easy as you can Then I think We should be able to plan out yourself So as much as that Go Black tax black tax black tax Does it depend with the parents like She's of of course your parents your parent attack you overbearing over demanding She's still or he's still your dad and your mom always say mom so many children You know, but I think we should also normalize being honest. Hey, mom Anyway, I only have like this in this amount Niki pass it as and then she can throw in a bible versus and they'll hold the bible says take care of you You'll have a long life But uh, but also I feel it bends to the parent The parents who are even still supportive to their children who are working and as much as you're working you have a job But but he's still he or she's still Mexico and still sense that money goes And I could really hardly yes my son. How are you exactly? I think it also depends during a black tax But also maybe during the old age But also they are trying to say parents should normalize Saving so that was cool Me quapo could 70 but you are a big burden to your kids because you didn't work hard You didn't serve you don't have pension So I think it's a thing now like people are now open to even having conversation. Mom. Do you have savings? Dad, do you have pension, you know, and what do you think about the same even like right now? I don't know if your parents are super supportive like they make those phone calls to ask when you go quiet for weeks They'll be like hey So they could say asana, are you really okay? And you're like no mom's in a person and 10k ish I'm here. I don't know. I'm a this is a wish I'm in a prayer too I could say yeah, my parents personally are that supportive. Yeah, they check in with me. They ask they chip in where they can But then it is now over time the idea of Parents bringing up their children to be their investment for the future The old perspective is over do you? It should be written off completely It's about time that parents now start investing in their own futures and because they brought us into the world Not saying just saying it is right that they give us a future to But then my future should not be your future plan My future should not be your entire old age plan What do you have apart from me? Because we can't promise life too We can't say for sure. We hopeful. I say I'll do well. Maybe I'll get something in my hands and get some money But then what if I don't have it You're now 35 the parent is 70 and they don't want to look at you They don't want to see you they see you as an embarrassment.  Why am I a failure? It's my life It's because you put your entire hope in me The good life that you wanted you expected it from me and I cannot even get the good life for myself And you're complaining more than I am So it's about time That's a really deep conversation because how many parents are also operating to hearing that Because I I know there's so many people that have gone through what you've just said Like the parent is 70 and he is looking at you as a failure because you're unable to provide some certain things for them Because also your life is not yet structured Because you're struggling through and especially now for men since this is mantuk You're expected to have settled you have some amount of money some some connections Actually building, you know have built something that's you know tangible and he's bringing Income they're not just one several sources of income, but I think people should snap out of starts Okay, my dad used to tell me I'm investing in your future, but I'm investing this for you not for me I'm taking you to school so that you can make a future for yourself I don't want you to buy a car so that you can come and Maybe take me to places and everything if you buy a car, that's your car Maybe if if you feel like if you feel like yes, my dad deserves a car then I'll buy it Yeah, but I think people should snap out of that that Okay, like let's invest let let let I'm investing in you because It's January don't worry I Think parents or normalize What I'm trying to say is It shouldn't be a demand. Yeah, it should it should not be a demand like Bobby you know what get a job get a job get a job Then when you get a job now your phone can't can't stop ringing He was a friend of mine It was it was it was quite catchy So But I think people should snap out of that To a check who was so dependent on Okay, so you can't I am an investment to to my family They've put a lot of resources to my education and everything into my well-being to the point But so I So everybody should get the thing together But also now like for a season like now, it's in January in fact ninja Right now For people that will not even be able to afford A meal Hopefully you'll be able to afford a meal. That's my prayer. Uh, where can they turn to or who can they run to? There's an Arabism that says who can I run to when I need love? But who can you run to when you need food? Who can they run to maybe? What do you think? Is there anyone who's ready to serve someone right now to semi to semi you need to have k I gently say easy Do you have someone you can call because it's already, you know, January is kicking and this is week two And think I feel like January is a good month for me I don't know but who do you run to when you need money for food? So if if you don't have money for food and you're under that you have no parent to run to Then I can for sure tell you that you have nowhere to run to You are your own your own hope I think you have someone to run to and that is good If you can you know that story of Elijah in the bible where he sent ravens to to feed him and he dropped bread and whatever Such miracles should start happening in this jam. You see such miracles. You see the lord works in mysterious ways for sure Amen But how mysterious how mysterious I think it's about time that But fellow people friends neighbors Trust the message that god is putting they had because most of the time you when your neighbor is suffering you are about to tell Yeah, you know as much as the people try to hide it and focus in their own lives If you just careful enough, you'll be able to tell and you know as much as people sometimes Do not want to receive help from somewhere in case into a costa and you approach in the right way these people will be grateful Yes, it's about time because the message of sharing and The the entire God is putting it into the heart of everybody The lord is telling me to share. He's telling Bobby to share. He's telling us how to share But how many people are sharing literally so now people have prayed to god for provision in january People have wished for provision in january. Now the lord is putting the message into the heart of every canyon Yeah, to share. Oh, that is the message. Yeah, that is your message. That is a message. Okay. Sure. But I think What actually makes us human Is it is it? That's a good question.  He just approaches him. He that guy is I'm a jiffy. I'm a paperbug In a very cold city. It's not Nairobi Nairobi is cold but not that cold He just gives you I give that guy the jacket then that guy And I and I wear jacket and I go to a shop and I do not care. He's so excited. He's so excited about it Yeah, yeah, like How are like, okay, that's a margin. You need to find out to quess so open to other people To as I could say Diana. That's a to a Kevin to sing in a condom. We are human No, okay, see me what we are very different from Other animals we are we're social beings I am one I think approach approach I mean to approach as I'm asking for help from you guys Determine come out and it's a deal. I'm a who to decide here nevertheless Nezako approach poor But it's up to you You make that decision for yourself.   I do away hopper kinezo man The there's a there's a video could have been on no, it was in one of the interviews. We are governor sakaja said Especially people in aerobie There's a ban. He called it a ban poverty But there's a word he used it in one of the interviews where he mentioned that you could be in this city But you're suffering because your next don't neighbor But I'm gonna kill a kid to know Anything and you'll sleep hungry But because your next don't neighbor you don't have a relationship with him or her He or she's boiling boiling meaning having a good time with all the resources I took a picture on a fridge image up Now quack or heart a magic haiko now make her to you and I still you'll sleep hungry and die There's that as well. Is it because maybe we don't have we've not like invested in friendships that can help you Especially during a hard time like, you know, I don't believe for me. January is not a hard time Maybe for those that are saying January is a hard time To you. Do you feel like you've not invested in the right circles of friendships and sometimes You're going through a difficult time, but you know someone Okay, Mongolasha Vizuri and as I said here for the better part of your entire life What do you think? Yeah, it's about and there was uh, I think it was our nine interview here. Somebody was talking about The importance of surrounding yourself with the right people It is not helpful to have a large group of friends Who do not help you? But I think it is just right to have that one friend that you can rely on when times get so hard To people that can help you when the times get hard. So like you said, I think people are not investing In the right circles of friendship, but then still How easy is it to tell? Or how easy is it to get that true friend in this society today?  I think it's just about time that people learn to live in a different way There are different principles of life. They are christian principle of life They are a feast principles of life and they are traditional aspects of life But one thing that brings this together is that in all these perspectives and principles There is some act of selflessness that is appreciated That the virtues are appreciated In these societies all of them in the principles It's about time that we stop living there is a way of life here in Nairobi And part of it is what you said What for? Your worst day could be tomorrow or even after here and maybe that neighbor is your saving grace But I might have the interest you could do a dirani, but does the dirani have the interest of knowing me? Sometimes, you know, you know, there's some things that it's you to make the initiative not them When you're approaching a girl, do you expect her to say hi?  Yes, it happens There's those that say hi.  Can we talk as a man? No. Oh, yes. So I feel like it applies here as well. Say hello to your neighbor Personally, I'm a great beneficiary of all my neighbors. Whatever I've stayed On my best and my worst days. They're like my fam. So I think your neighbor can help you to Navigate through this January if it's difficult for you like they're saying it's in january Lower thirds Yeah, so I think it's about people to to make the initiative, but I could say you suck Let the art of seduction be left for the whatever seduction should be really for I don't I don't have to seduce you as my neighbor So you just say hi. I'm saying here. Let's keep it. And as a corner for your child trafficking Say dm too, you know It's where Jeffrey Epstein illustrious Jeffrey Epstein. I want to be talked about But also, uh, I actually have some few minutes and then we go For those that are coming to the city Do you think they should be ready for a hot mess? Am I just come back slowly? Relax life into him hands And then also there's that thing that you know, it's a new year. You know things are a little bit sluggish Even I saw I saw I saw a clip online yesterday of somebody's day one at work So do you feel like the people coming back to the city should just be ready for a fire A fire week because it's going to be tea for tough And then also it's also a week that children are going to school back to school Even for parents you've seen in the daily. We highlighted. There's a cash crunch Uh, we've just come from the festivities for those that did not serve for the kcse Countries that are going to uni or those that have not even managed to go to higher learning Also, I is held now easily available. I really don't know But should they just expect a hot mess? I might just take it easy And should I'm just asking what are some of the hacks for people coming back to Nairobi? Maybe towards mid-janapo I'm also towards the end because I know those people will come back in February Because they were like a January is too much Yeah, Bobby, I think I think January January has a lot has a lot of things that are happening back to school Paying fees Shopping You you've just come back to your house. Your house looks like a mess. You need to clean up You need to go get things that are not you need to do some shopping You uh, maybe you I'm in the Christmas Muzimzima I'm a cooler So does he know to say Coulda to be to me, but I think you need to turn down your Because you used to good things and now he's cabbage knocking at your door. There's that kind of video before To the Christmas Yeah, I keep a while I keep a while ugly and a cooler I keep a while chelle and a cooler I keep a while chai and a cooler Now you're back to Nairobi and salsa I could not remember. I could not be lucky. You have to worry about the next minute. No Uh, come in. Is it even necessary to worry about the next minute? I believe there's even been tougher times than January and you survived and you still went for the festivities at your back Why should January be a monster? I think you're just giving January the the attention it needs as January Yeah, in fact, it's in jar I mean there's a problem to skip some meals. I'm on a parlay in January. I think I'm an issue out of color 24 7 Okay, I think like for example, for example come on the okay. Let me speak on maybe be half on some comrades So And also the cost of living is really high We can continue to learn that You know, it will be permanent The cost of living the cost of living is super high You remember we said the value for 1000 now is 500 Bob the value for 1000 Bob is 500 And the value of 500 is 200 the value of 200 is 50 in Bob. Now 50 Bob is Mere less like 10 Bob. There's nothing much you can do All right, lastly as we exit Byron, what do you think are some of the survival Tricks that people can use Especially now comrades and then also as a man, you know, it's it's it's just difficult So you guys just get them a kiss and I'll take him on a man up. It's because she's scared It's part of like the part of the things This is John so how do you bring that and can even maintain a relationship now? I made a video to a single kid dog or to the relationship in a match You must give us a lot of money to beat up I'm a draw line. How will you survive as a man? As a man, it becomes difficult first of all to ladies If they want a man with money that most of these ladies are going to go without man And lots of men are going to not lots very few men are going to go with a lot of ladies Because it's not most people that have that money that they want And then I think survival in general right now. I think we all we need is a definite financial plan To push you through but you can have a plan and you don't have the money. I'm like you're budgeting for you're praying for breakthrough for Let's say a thousand dollars and you're budgeting for it until God answers the prayer We say like in as much as we pray for something The Lord blesses the work of our hands. Nice. So you can borrow a loan The Lord helps those who help themselves. I disagree The Lord helps those who helps themselves. Remember if it's not in God's will As you help yourself God is watching you I don't think I can just pray for food then go back to sleep Yeah, I'm like Yeah Uh By the right now, let me tell you as you go back home Trust me, you'll thank me. You'll thank me in February. You will talk to me Say hello to all She was She was she used to be this mother figure to her to me and to my friends That it was But she was just she was okay. She was the Nairobi mother the mother we have in Ushago but Nairobi sasa. Yeah, she used to be really really really nice So I could say like I was saying the Lord blesses. Have you agreed it's important to know your neighbor in general? It is Yeah So if By the plan, I mean you can acquire money from various parts various ways it means just Do something that could generate you some money If you are including selling some of your house stuff, right? If that's survival, then that is it and then you can buy them in We have the board much. Yes At TV that you're not using Yeah, so if maybe if maybe your apparent then and you're sending I tell to school then you can acquire a loan You can acquire a loan from a bank and figure out To settle maybe the entire fee don't be greedy if you acquire the loan don't be greedy and maybe Send the child to school in some part of the fee because January is still long And maybe tomorrow is not promised to if I want to take the loan for the fee then pay the fee Yeah, just have a clear and definite financial plan and you'll push through you'll survive Yeah, and I think that's why we end it because we are out of time Bobby You also said byro not you know, all right. Absolutely. Thank you so much guys I feel like you've become like the faces of this year because last year you were here Not once not twice not twice and karibu san and happy new year. Good to see you guys again All right, we'll definitely see you tomorrow for health and entrepreneurship Tuesday today We are anticipating the release of KCC examinations. I understand as we speak right now We have the cabinet secretary zekia with my chogu who is on podium Actually, the last time we checked on you on the show they had issued a statement But yeah, if you heard a candidate that's sent for KCC today, they know their fate Fate is just a word to scare you. They will know the results of their performance In short a chanana English. This is January. So tell us tomorrow. Did you have a relative or are you Are you watching yourself that's sent for KCC? Please don't hesitate to target your results If you've got a B plus D by the way, KCC results are not the final results of your life There's life outside exams and trust me. I'm a testimony to that Big time. All right. My name is brown. So I try to for four channels everywhere. Hashtag going in the morning We see you tomorrow for health and entrepreneurship Tuesday. Happy new year. See you tomorrow


And in BSU Football News, junior quarterback Jordan Hine has been announced as one of 42 players nominated for the Harlan Hill Trophy as the D2 college football player of the year in nine games hind through for 2,746 yards and 27 touchdowns while also rushing for another seven scores.


Hello everyone. I'm a cloud computer engineering from China Mobile, and my name is Li Hao. And I engaged in open-stack development and maintenance more than two years. And today I would like to talk about something about China Mobile cloud computing and the architecture and optimization on 1000 node cluster in China Mobile. I will talk the topic from four aspects. First, I want to talk about the practice of open-stack in China Mobile. I will introduce the plan of China Mobile in the public cloud and private cloud and introduce the progress of building open-stack source pool. Second, I hope to introduce the architecture and deployment of China Mobile's public cloud. I will show you the topological graph and a lot of details of the topology and the tools we used to develop the open-stack. Third, I would like to share with you what we have done and optimized in the process of deploying a 1000 node open-stack cluster. I will analyze almost all the computer open-stack components and introduce the optimization of every component. At last, I will introduce the joint test of our public cloud. The test is worked by China Mobile and Intel. The main purpose of the test is to analyze which state is the most time-consuming in the process of creating a virtual machine. At that time, after we optimized the bottlenecks of systems, or in other words, most time-consuming steps to what extends the performance of the whole system is improved. As I mentioned earlier, in the construction of cloud computing, China Mobile has spent a lot of human and financial resources. Now we have one public cloud with two ports and one private cloud with two ports. The public cloud port is located at Guangzhou in the south of China and Beijing, the capital of China. Both ports have about 1000 nodes. Guangzhou port has 600 Noah computer nodes and 13 controller nodes. Other nodes contain 115 object storage nodes and 115 block storage nodes. We also have 17 NFV SDN nodes. The number of nodes deployed in Beijing and Guangzhou are roughly the same. Our public cloud is online now. You can visit the website ecloud.1086.c Our private cloud has two ports. Each port will have 3000 nodes. Two resource ports are located in Harbin, northeast of China, and Huahuaotze, north of China. We hope in the middle of 2017, our private cloud can be online. By the way, in Harbin resource port, 3000 nodes are all bare mental nodes. We will use ironico to manage them. Perhaps by the time it is the largest ironico cluster. Public cloud topological graph. Now I will introduce the architecture and deployment of China Mobile. Let us look at the graph. First, we have three network isolated zones. The DMZ zone, the core zone, and the production zone. The left is the DMZ zone. DMZ zone can be visited from the internet. We deployed the NOVA, NOVNC proxy, and HRE proxy to keep live in this zone. The middle of the picture is the core zone. We deployed the controller node. For example, NOVA API, single API, and keystone in this room. The right is the production zone. About 600 computer nodes, and 115 block storage nodes, and 115 object storage nodes are in this room. And also, glance API and single volume is in production zone. Second, every physical machine in our public cloud has six nicks. Every two nicks do bond. So we have three bonds, management brand, business brand, storage brand. Traffic in the core zone is through business network. And the traffic between the core zone and the DMZ zone is through the MDMT or manager network. Traffic from core zone and production zone can only pass through the management network. The traffic between VMs and VM visit and VM visit internet is through the business network. And the traffic from VM to block storage and object storage is through storage network. Third, the single volume use SHIFT-DOG and IP-SAN as a back-end. SHIFT-DOG and IP-SAN is deployed in the production zone. So single volume must be also in production zone. Glance API use SHIFT as back-end. And SHIFT is also deployed in production zone. So Glance API also in the production zone. The last, every OpenStack service is deployed on three to five physical machines. We have HRA proxy and keep alive the load balance. We deployed two MyCircle gallery cluster. One is for Nokia as a database for index, one for other component. In this slide, I will introduce some details of the topology. Horizontally expanded service, horizontal extension of the core service. It means we deployed six keystone because we think three keystone is not enough for us. So we can deploy more. And we use HRA proxy, keep alive LVS, do load balances. So as a service should a valid for example keystone by the VIP, which is created by keep alive instead of a valid one of the keystone IP. So there is no single point of failure. And we use 5 plus node to deploy the API gateway. And each service reside on different track. It means a physical machine deployed multi-service and each service reside on a different rack. So I think this will ensure that the system is highly robust. We also use availability room and host aggregate in our public cloud. Computers are divided into many azs. For example NFA azs, big data azs and the default az and no azs. And we also use two host aggregate. One is Windows aggregate and the other is Linux. Because we think the Windows VM and Linux should not be on the same machine because Windows license may charge in accordance with the number of physical machines which are running VMs. In our public cloud we have two pools. Every pool is independent. They have their own OpenStack component like Keystone, Cinder, Neutron, GlonSnova, Stirling and RabbitMQ. And we don't use multi-region because we think our experience is about 500 computing nodes can be in a single region. Two independent OpenStack pools are controlled by China Mobile Resource Management Platform. We call it OP. The end users' information are sectionized in different OpenStack pools when users register a new account through OP. OP will call Keystone RISC API to every OpenStack pool. This will ensure the users is registered in both pools and the name, password and information are all the same. But other resource is not sectionized. For example, users' VMs, users' V-router, key pair is independent. And most of the resource can't migrate between the two pools except the image resource. Now let me talk about the deployment tools and how to deploy a multi-version of OpenStack component. First, we use Ansible to deploy it because we think Ansible is very easy. Then, Puppet or SourceStack, sound-useful model is share, copy, script and playbook. Our deployment is not automatically but semi-automatically. We write some scripts like the pictures to accomplish the deployment. While we don't use PackStack or DVStack, I think PackStack can only deploy one single controller and one single network node, and the controller is not high availability. It is not suitable for big public cloud, and DVStack is more flexible and fit for developers, but it's also not fit for big public cloud. We have a problem in deploying the public key. Sunlin and Nokia has no kilo version, so we have to use high version for these two components, and other components still use kilo version. We try to resolve the dependence of different OpenStack versions, but we failed. At last, we think the deploy high version of OpenStack in Docker is a good idea. I will talk about the optimization on this slide and the following slides. We have three levels of optimizations, infrastructure optimization, and the mid-wild component optimization, and the OpenStack component optimization. First, every physical machine has three bounds in active and backend mode. The business network and the storage network are separated to ensure the business traffic and the storage traffic are independent between each other, and the core service uses SSD. For example, in FlexDB, we use SSD because we think this will make the data write and read faster than before. The traffic between the code zone and the production zone is through management network. The traffic in the code zone is through business network. This makes full use of the network resource. The optimization of HRA Proxy Keep Alive MariaDB Gallery, RabbitMQ, I will talk in the next slide, optimization of middle-wild components. For RabbitMQ, we increase the RabbitMQ connection pool and add a heartbeat check, and we add the function of auto health, and we increase the open fires for RabbitMQ. For HRA Proxy, we configure a reasonable number of HRA Proxy process and strengthen the detection of backend service. For the Keep Alive, we enhance the exception handling for Keep Alive and add the exception handling for Knicks. If the Knicks in Keep Alive is down, the script will try to restart the Knicks. For MyCircle, we increase the max connection pool. The default volume is too small, and we solve the MyCircle data log problem. We all know that MyCircle gallery mode is active and active. When no API receives more than one request, MyCircle A serves the request 1 and MyCircle B serves the request 2. The request 1 locks the table A and wants to write table B, and the request 2 locks the table B and wants to write table A, so maybe the data log occurs. We configure the HRA Proxy, makes MyCircle gallery from active active to active backup, so the situation will not occur anymore. Novel optimization. Profile optimization. First, we increase the max pool size and the number of workers and the scheduler host subnet size to increase the concurrency ability for NOAA. And we use a reasonable ratio of CPU, disk, and memory to increase the number of the running VMs in dependent machine. We also use more scheduler filter to complete precise scheduling, and we use config drive instead of metadata server because we think the metadata server is not robust. And we developed some NOAA new features like change VM's secret and change the VM's host name and execute the command in the VM through the NOAA API. And we optimized the code of volume touch and volume detach. And we have practice optimization. All the images are cached on each compute node. We can do these things like specify the physical machine to create all kinds of VMs in one physical machine. Then the path VR log NOAA base has all VM image cache. Then we transport the image cache from the physical machine to all the other NOAA computer nodes and then create a VM in any of the NOAA computer nodes where no need to download the image. Greatly speeding up the VM provision. This is our practical optimization. Optimization for Newton. Profile optimization. We increase the workers and we increase the database connections and accelerate the restart OVS agent. We can see the Rayleigh test. We create network, we create subnet, we create routers. Concurrent is 1,000 and all the tests are success. And in this slide, we will solve the restart OVS agent. It is very slow. We are using the OVS OF control and OVS OF control to distribute the flow table and configure OVS port. OVS DB port is time consuming. The average of 0.54 seconds to configure one flow table when in large scale will be very slow. Let's look at the table. When restart OVS agent in NOAA computer need 15 minutes, this is too long. So we change the Newton code restart OVS agent. First, we stop distributing the duplicate flow table. And second, we make the code of restart OVS agent from single thread to concurrency process. Third, we do not delete the port and the flow table when restart. And the first, the local controller is used and the flow table is delivered through the local controller RYU. After the optimization, the recovery time reduced to seven minutes. Optimization of monitoring. First, we use Celerometer NOAA key influx DB instead of Celerometer and MongoDB because in a large scale, Celerometer MongoDB is very slow when choir sample or monitor date. After use NOAA key, the response of query sample is in five seconds with 10,000 VMs. And our monitoring system is also support OP for billing and also support sending to do elastic stranger. Now I have a brief introduction to China Mobile's monitoring architecture. First, Celerometer agent sends the monitoring data to Celerometer collector through the LVS and the Celerometer collector will transform the date and send them to NOAA key to store through the HAA proxy. NOAA key receives this date and stores the monitor date index to my circle gallery and stores entities to influx DB. This is the brief introduced to our China Mobile monitoring architecture. And the optimization of sender, profile optimization. In our public cloud, we use sender and our sender support ship dog cluster and IP send cluster at the same time. And we add the hard bit time out to this old parameters for bidirectional hard bit check. And we also modify parameters, provision the capacity, put a reasonable ratio of volume capacity size and expand the OS API max limit volume to increase the number of entries displayed and we also configure rate, a reasonable QS to limit the IO of each volume. Second, the high availability optimization. Multi-sender volume are configured with the same host and we use the pacemaker to manage a multi-sender volume cluster. So at the same time, only one sender volume is up and the others are down. When the active sender volume is crashed, pacemaker will restart it. If it can't restart for many times, pacemaker will start another sender volume and the sender API's high availability is also used HRA Proxy and Keep Alive to do load balance. Optimization of glance. China Mobile has developed some new features for glance. For example, the images are shared across different pool. If I upload an image to Beijing pool and the OP will synchronize the image to Guangzhou pool. So the images between the two pools are all the same and we also developed a new function. Images can be downloaded by the download tools. For example, Flashgate and Dublogate because we think the end users don't want to use Glance Client to download their images. Next, the practical optimization. First, we use Glance API to use image cache. We think the image cache may increase the download speed and we configured the NOAA computer. The NOAA computer uses Glance by storage network to access the Glance API's endpoint address. When users call NOAA image create command to backup its VM, NOAA computer will first make four backup of the VM's disk and then upload it to Glance. By default, NOAA computer will call the VIP of the Glance but it costs a lot of time. The traffic starts from the NOAA compute in the production rule to the HRA proxy in the call rule and then the traffic is from the HRA proxy to the Glance in the production rules. At last, the Glance API will send the date to backend. If the NOAA compute can upload the image directly to Glance storage address, the time cost will be lower. The optimization of keystone. Profile optimization, we use more workers and we run keystone in HTTBD because we think HTTBD is good for us than the normal keystone. We use four-net token format than the PKIJ format. Here is an example. We have a comparative test for PKIJ and four-net on 5,000 concurrent. Each request contains two processes. One is get a token and the other is verify the token. The left picture is the result of the PKIJ and the right picture is the result of the four-net. We can see the four-net has less failure and less cost of time. Now we go to the first part. 100 node performance in this part. I will introduce the joint test for our public cloud. The main purpose of the test is to determine which part is the bottleneck when boot a new volume in OpenStack. First, I want to introduce the method of the test or the technical of the test. The tests are in two phases. First, acquisition phase. Monkey patch the live system. Maybe we will insert the print log sentence in the most important function and then the OpenStack will produce logs with timestamp for analysis with minimal overhead. And the second phase, offline analysis pass the collected log and reconstructed concurrent request handling processes and render reach statistics. We can see the picture. The picture shows that the elapsed time stack acquire in different concurrency of creating VMs. XS shows the different concurrency and the Y-axis shows the cost and time-consuming ratio of different components. We test from five concurrent requests to 2,000 concurrency requests. The scheduler costs the most time during the instance provision. It's worth when the request pressure increases. We will see the scheduler will be saturated at eight concurrent requests. And I think the really is a black box provision and it needs constant polling for intermediate state updates not accurate and powerful enough. But I think our test is a white box profiling. It has deeper insights into the OpenStack system without excessive monitor overhead. And the test is state machine parsing because the analysis can enumerate all the successful or failure status of every tracked request and replace the concurrent provision process for later analysis. When the concurrency is 2,000, the throughput is 1.178 requests per second and the failure rate is up to 414.1 and the retry rate is up to 26.3. This result shows us that we meet some problems when concurrency is large. The right picture is the analysis of an individual request using state machine. We record every step with steps during the instance provision. If the request meet error, we will also record it. And the left picture shows us the failure reasons. For example, the Neutron error creating port on network or OpenStack optimization. In fact, we have solved the three root issues database and data logs, Neutron port create a failure, crystal authentication failures. So after we solved the problems or after the optimization I mentioned before, we can see the performance has improved a lot. The failure rate is from 25.720 and the retry rate is from 29.080 and the work clock is to 417 to 115 seconds and throughput is rise from 1.31 to 4.35. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much.


From my personal experience physical fitness is one of the only things that they kept me even keeled. I wanted to talk to you about the importance of physical fitness and the role that plays in mental health. Fitness is an important part of my own, my own method for keeping myself sort of balanced and, you know, ready. What can we do to to reduce that stigma surrounded by seeking mental health care in the Coast Guard? If you have a toothache or your broken bone, you would seek help. We need to be in that same same space when it comes to mental health. I do encourage people to step forward and seek the professional help you need. It's not an impact your career. We need each and every one of you. You're all valued members of the team and finding that that professional help is really important. Thank you so much. Hopefully I can get a couple push-ups with you after I know burpees are your thing. Burpees are my thing. I know burpees are your thing. I'm happy.


Yeah, for everyone's here, we probably wait for another like one minute and for people to dial in. Yeah, we'll probably still see people join the live stream is now up so whenever you're ready, you're welcome to go ahead. That's good. Thank you, David. Yes, just now reached the two minute past nine, and let's get started. Thank you everyone. This morning to join this meetup. So you may be from Seattle for from San Francisco and good morning and from the world. So today we are honored to have speakers can have a check and make it to talk about real life implementation of hyper ledger. Hope everyone enjoy the content and day. So now heading over to every track for starting the flow. Yeah, thank you. I assume that the screen is visible my slides are visible to everybody. And yeah, Mikey, I think we can get started. That's great. I don't know if you want to go into full screen mode or not. It might be nice. I am on full screen mode. I'm not sure if you can see the notes but we can, we can go with this if that works. I guess we'll just kick it off if you go to the next side we can kick it off with an introduction of each of the participants today. One second. There's no screen sharing right now but it should start again. Yeah, do you see my screen now. Yep, I do but I'm not sure some folks in the chat said, they can't. Okay now they can. Perfect. Can I go to make it a presentation mode. Yes. Awesome while you're doing that I'll pass it to can to introduce himself. And, yeah, why don't you introduce yourself while we do that. Sounds good. Thanks, Maggie. So my name is Ken Ken Wayne, I work for Riverside County as the assistant assessor county click recorder. Although that's kind of more of an administrative role. My background is always in technology information technology. So definitely honored to have this opportunity to really explore some of the use cases that we have kind of put together a proper concept with our partners so definitely look forward to sharing all of that. There you go. Thanks, Maggie. And I'm Maggie shoe I lead worldwide business development for Amazon's blockchain product Amazon manage blockchain. I was previously at an Ethereum startup called air swap that was acquired by consensus. And prior to that I was chief of staff to Tony Shay the former CEO of Zappos. I'll pass it to Abhishek Pernintra. Yeah, hello everybody. This is Abhishek. I am a chartered accountant so my primary skill is finance risk management governance. I am at emphasis I am part of the consulting group that handles emerging technologies. Today, our area of interest would be the use of blockchain technology and how we have used it to take care of some of the problems that the country was facing. Awesome. If you go to the next slide. I'm on the managed blockchain slide. I think you might be sharing a different screen because we're just seeing the our team today slides still sorry all for the mix up and I could probably go ahead and share my slides as well. Yeah, you might be sharing the window versus the screen. Well we sort that if folks want to write where they're dialing in from and kind of just who they are it'd be awesome to see that in the chat. I think there's some problem if I make it full screen otherwise. Abhishek I can see now it's your slide for what is showing up is that correct. Yes, yes. Maggie. Maggie, can you see the slide for I can yeah why don't I go ahead and share my slides might just be easier that way. Okay. If you could stop sharing and I can go ahead and share awesome to see where everyone's from we got a lot of international folks are up late. Check if you stop sharing your screen I can share mine. Yeah, yeah, I'm doing that. I don't know why there's a delay. We good. Yes. Awesome. Um, so today we're going to be talking about the Amazon managed blockchain product. Some challenges at Riverside and then Infosys will deep dive into the solution and also share a brief demo of the solution itself. So what is Amazon managed blockchain? We are a fully managed service that makes it easy to create and join scalable blockchain networks using popular open source frameworks. So a few of the key benefits of Amazon managed blockchain. It's a fully managed service and I think this is really the most important. So you're able to create networks in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days. The next one is open source variety. So we currently support hyper ledger fabric and public Ethereum. The third is decentralization. So we've added governance features that make it easy to do things like add and remove members. The fourth is that it's reliable and scalable. So we've enhanced the open source service to allow for some additional features such as the ordering service and different components there. The fifth is low cost. So you're only paying for the resources that you're using and there's no upfront cost. And then the last one, like all AWS services, it's tightly integrated and coupled with other AWS services. This is just a quick flow of how you would create a hyper ledger fabric network on Amazon managed blockchain. As you can see, it's a very few set of steps. So you can very quickly get from your network creation to inviting other members and really working on your business use case. We like to say that we take care of the heavy lifting around the infrastructure so you can quickly solve your business problems. And Amazon managed blockchain is just one part of blockchain at AWS. We also have Amazon QLDB, which is more of a centralized database that allows for verifiability and audit ability. We have over 90 marketplace offerings on our marketplace. We work with a number of public and private protocols. And we also have a number of consulting and technology partners. So, you know, if there's blockchain, we probably have some sort of coverage at AWS, whether with our native services or our partner team. And so just sharing how this project came about. We were approached by Riverside, one of our customers, and they had an idea for a blockchain based digital records management effort. We connected them with Infosys, one of our partners, who has a lot of expertise in this area. So I will now pass it to Ken from Riverside to share more about their challenge. Thank you, Maggie. So what I want to start with is definitely kind of share a little bit of our business because, you know, try to leverage technology to improve what we do. We first have to really understand the problem. So what I have in front of me, the slides in front of you is actually one of the first use case that we presented to our partners. As you can see, I literally just put down the health and safety code that we're pretty much in California as a county government, county clerk recorder. We're kind of governed and mandated to fulfill and execute the code. So I kind of took the abstract of the code in relation to one of our division that handles high value of public services. And that service is actually specific to our citizens making requests for their vital records. So what comes to the vital records is pretty much marriage certificate, your death or birth. As you can imagine, those are very important documents in our citizens life. So sometimes they will need to make those requests and get an official copy certified copy to prove to whatever third party or business that they need to demonstrate. Again, using those, those critical records. So I presented the verbiage and I kind of the abstract here is probably important part as you can read through the code. It is required us to use a very specific type of paper, we call it the bank note paper. And that paper is defined in this very specific way for a single purpose. The purpose is to make sure that it is authentic. The document that once we produce it and print your birth marriage or death information upon that paper itself need to be trusted and proved to be original. And as you can imagine with with government counties, county government. All of this are written decades and decades ago before, you know, the availability of all this capabilities to technology over the last decade. But yet we are still literally governed by this requirement. We do have a safe that we keep, you know, piles and piles of bank note paper that we inventory very regularly, because we cannot afford to lose any single sheet of that paper, because of its importance to be authentic and prove over originality of all the certificates that we issued out. So that is definitely one of the business operations that does have a lot of cost, have a lot of labor involved, as we try to fulfill this request. So below I kind of illustrated a little measurement in terms of what kind of volume and also costs that we are associated with this type of operation. So as you can see the last three years we handle, you know, $80,000, $90,000 and obviously 2022 to code it. That's kind of an outlier. So the value drop. But on the right side, I also show you the cost that we chart the citizens, when they do make such a request. Now as a local government, when we do ask for a fee or charge a fee for the service, those fees are based on the cost of labor involved to actually deliver the service. For example, also worth to fulfill a request for a birth certificate. The cost and all the labor involved throughout the process of handling a physical paper centric process is about $28 per document. Now you can also imagine because the value and you know the transaction varies between year to year, and there's really not a good way to forecast this type of stuff. So we have to do fee studies periodically to make sure we are only charging what the cost is to us. So that's another undertaking that we have to do regularly, which is a pretty big endeavor to try to factor in all the labor associated to fulfilling those type of work. So that's one of the first use case. Now so we brought it to my partners, AWS and Info says, the goal is definitely to say, All right, we really need to take another look at how we can approach this. Our ultimate goal is definitely to find more efficiency and cost effectiveness of doing this business because it is our mandate to fulfill this type of work. There's a Senate bill 689 that's specific here in California, and I extrapolated the verbiage. This is something that we're all very excited about because there's actually a Senate bill currently in the works to revamp or amend and I'm sure the jargon is for the process, but there is effort to actually update the safety code to include blockchain as a potential delivery mechanism to allow us to really have the option to leverage the state of our blockchain technology to fulfill request digitally. So that's currently in the works and at the timeline, I just learned that two weeks ago, the timeline maybe kind of push it out, we were hoping this will go through the process by end of this calendar year. I believe there's some delay happening so I need to really get my head around exactly what the timeline looks like from this point forward. But the good thing is, I think we all feel pretty confident it's going to happen and it's something that are sacramental or state capital is looking at and they have work groups and whatnot, and supporters as well. Can we go to the next slide please make it. Thank you. The second use case is something more specific internally to our county government. So as part of our responsibility as assessor county court recorder. We are also responsible to service our internal customers which is 40 plus other departments within county over Riverside. So our responsibilities also handling record retention. So as, as part of government entity, depending on what kind of business and what kind of a state code or regulations that you're a bit by to do your operations such as social services shares human resources and so on so forth. There is requirement to retain records or official records for a period of time. So HR may have a 30 plus years of retention schedule based on employee information or 70 years or accounting may have seven years of records for accounting related. So as you can imagine, as a county government, we have all kinds of rules how long we need to keep the official original record in storage until it expires that timeframe, then we can send those official records for destruction. So we as a assessor county court recorder, we are the kind of the service provider to facilitate to make sure that most of those records are in compliance with their retention schedule based on whatever that requirement is. You know, for that line of business. So again, I did the same thing.  This is just one roll of our warehouse from three years ago. And we have rows and rows and rows that in our warehouse that look just like that. That we intake all the boxes and boxes of records and we we cover them we make sure we understand the retention schedule we categorize them ID them we link them. And then we make sure we track them until the retention timeline is expired then we retreat them for for destruction. Or when the business required to pull out their archive for whatever legal purposes or research purposes, then we have to go retrieve those boxes, and actually deliver them back to the business for them to use. And all this revolves around again paper centric original official copy of that record. And that's the trust aspect of it. People want to retain the original or the law require us to retain the original on altered version of the truth. And the best way to do it is actually to take those papers and show them onto a shelf somewhere. And then we make sure that this governance around those boxes that that people cannot temper or destroy them. And the stats as you can see we have 200,000 plus boxes, and those are just the boxes that we know that are submitted to us. There's unknown number of official records that is planned to come to us or supposed to come to us, or the departments are currently holding them until they have the resources to actually put them on to a schedule. Until they come to us, I don't know the extent of the universe or how many more boxes is coming or should be coming. But you can imagine the logistics of us running a warehouse operation just to maintain boxes and store them. Now, three years ago, because of all the costs associated to housing all this here internally, I did leave the effort to actually outsource the handling of the physical paper. Even though we're still the governing entity around it, but yet the physical and logistical work were outsourced to our third party that provides, you know, an economy of skill for the component of housing them. And on the right, you can kind of see an abstract of the cost involved now that is handled by a third party. I just pulled out a few to kind of let you understand, if I am housing them, I have a team of six or seven people X amount of score footage, whether or not the shelves are filled up or not, there is a fixed cost that I have to plan for for the maximum capacity that may or may not come to. Now, when we outsource it, we do take have an advantage of variable costing based on the volume that we actually need. But then the complication is depending on what you need, when do you need it, how often you need it the cost. There's about 50 different line items of different charge types that we had to figure out based on what is being stored or retrieved. And that adds a lot more administrative overhead as well. But overall we get achieved some cost savings by outsourcing. But at the root of this is that paper centric operation that we could not get past or get around because of the paper centric approach to things. The delay, the lag, the lead time, as well as number of people in the labor involved in touching that physical process or the paper centric process. Those are the costs that we were able to continue to maximize or building more efficiency increase because we are literally down to the point where that paper is the root of the challenge. So maybe next slide please. So those two use cases are the ones that we brought forward to try to tackle with our partners. As you can see, so white blotching, right, the left vertical showing you what I just described paper centric processes that we have to touch in this physical logistics happening to make things work for what we do. Now the green vertical is digitizing right so whether or not you have a scanned process to take all your paper to scan them and from that point forward we can use digital process which is much more efficient, accurate and timely. Now you literally bypass the scanning and just create your process using digitally born documents and never really make it a physical version of it. Either way, there's plenty of solutions out there and providers that can help us digitize. So that is not the challenge. We know a lot of vendors out there that can have a system to facilitate workflow, all kinds of digital information. But that vertical and that solution doesn't solve the underlying challenge that we have as a county government, which is the trust, the trust of that document that we're seeing in front of them for whatever reason, there has to be a level of confidence and trust and immutability using the jargon Now people have to know that was the source of truth. That was the original version, and from that point of creation, or whenever in the process that document or information is dubbed as now the official record, it has to be verifiable. And obviously paper delivers that whether or not again using physical paper type that only government can retrieve or purchase or housing, you know, forms or papers that we require people to sign using the blue ink onto the sheet. Those are all mechanisms written in our regulations or code to protect trust of the originality of that document. And the ability to digitize the vertical is only the one end of the situation or solution. The trust mechanism was never really, there's no good solution out there for a long time until watching console. So as you can imagine, blockchain delivers that trust component immutability. And it allowed us to be verifiable documents of his authenticity. So obviously you can imagine the value coming out of that, having blockchain fit in the last component that was missing to complete the digital transformation of government. That was the missing piece. And now it is mature enough for us to really, really take a look at how we can pretty much change and evolve and transition into a digital world. Next slide, please. So at the end, I will conclude that the business, this is my boss. Honorable Cesar County Clerk recorder here's at Riverside County, Peter Aldana. This is his quote, and we're striving to live up to it. One thing I do want to make a comment is we are in the business of service, serving our customers, our citizens, we're in the business of making sure that our citizens records are kept safe and we're able to deliver to them. We are not in the business to be the next calm. And with all this latest technology and advancement. We do not want to be in the position, and we probably will never be able to achieve to be in a position that we are the most advanced IT shop that can deliver all this for our core business. And understanding that early on, we need partners such as AWS Infosys, we need the industry leaders that knows of this to come to kind of help us. That allow us to do what we do and what we're mandated to do as our core business, which is public service to our citizens. And that's why we're very grateful to have this opportunity to really explore all these challenges and potential opportunities with great partners such as AWS Infosys. And we have definitely achieved some great stuff together. So that's kind of the business side of things scenario so I will pass it back to Maggie. Awesome. I'll pass it to Abhishek. Yeah, so I hope I'm audible. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, I will, from this slide, I will just concentrate on the box or the content under the Infosys solution or the part which is handled by blockchain and what functionality of blockchain are we using in this particular solution that we made for Riverside. So, what we are doing is, we all know that the record that we are handling is personally identifiable information. So it is very sensitive. What we are doing is in the first part of the solution, we are computing the hash of the digital record. Okay, so it could be a PDF, which is in the form, which is the PDF of a marriage certificate or a birth certificate. We compute the hash of that record and that hash is what is stored onto the blockchain. Okay, so the document per se, the personally identifiable information never enters the blockchain. So that is one very significant part of our solution. And obviously from the hash, it is impossible to create a document and look at the information that is contained in the record. Next, what we do is, since this hash is now residing on the blockchain and the digital record is handed over to the citizen, either in the form of an email or in some way the PDF document goes to the citizen. Now this citizen might use his record, which could be a birth certificate or a marriage certificate, where he submits these again in digital format to other departments, to other service providers, it could be government departments, it could be private departments. Now, when these departments receive these records, let's say the passport department receives the marriage certificate so that the name of the spouse can be entered onto the passport. And before they do that, they want to verify this marriage certificate, whether this marriage certificate is authentic or not. So that is where we start the second part of the solution. So the verifiers now want to verify the authenticity of the record. For this in a paper based, you know, a conventional way of doing it, they would have put a request to the assessor's office, the assessor's office would have received those details, they would have looked up in their records. If it is a recent one, probably they look it up in their systems. If it is a very old one, they go to those, you know, those warehouses where these things are kept and they verify it. And then they communicate it to the verifier. So that involves time, that involves cost and that also makes the experience for the citizen not so good. So that is where the second part of the solution comes in. The county also now has a verifying portal. So any third party who is receiving such a record can simply drag and drop the credential onto that particular portal. That portal, what it does is it again computes the hash of that document which it has received. And that hash is compared with the hash of the document when the document was issued. So if the hash matches, then the document is authentic and the verifier, it could be the passport office in my example, they are convinced that the document is authentic and they can process it. So this becomes the, you know, when we say instantaneous authentication, this is what we mean that the verifier, any verifier can verify this official record or, you know, personally identifiable record provided by the citizen. The citizen himself can go to this portal and verify his record before he wants to submit it externally to any other department. Maggie, can you go to the next one? So this is an animated overview of the solution. Immediately after this, I will go into the demo video. So the citizen requests for a digital identity from the county from the assessor's office. The citizen submits this to any other department. In my example, it was the passport office. So he submits it to the passport office. The passport office now simply drags and drops it onto the verifying portal. So the citizen submits this to any other department in my example. It was the passport office. So he submits it to the passport office. The passport office now simply drags and drops it onto the verifying portal. That verifying portal is connected to the blockchain again. He gets an OK or a warning or an error that, you know, that there has been some tampering with this document. So depending on that, the other department can take the subsequent action. Now, all of these actions of issuing of the credential, you know, the credential being verified by some other department, all of these actions are also recorded onto the blockchain. So these are the transactions that the blockchain records and audit of this is also enabled in our solution. So if later on, you know, the other department is questioned whether did you actually verify the credentials of the citizen before you issued them a passport so they can show them the audit record also. We can go to the next slide. What we have done is in this 45 minutes or one hour that we have today, we have, I mean, we have we had a can who has explained very beautifully what the problem is.  I have explained you the blockchain part of it and what exactly are the actions that have what exactly is the feature of blockchain that we are using here. But in addition to that we, all the three of us have co authored a white paper tech wire has also featured it. So you can go to any of these sites and have a deep dive into the solution that we have built.  Please do somebody please do let me know when you are able to see my screen so that I'll then start playing. We can see it. Yep. So this is the login screen of the admin in the assessor's office so we are going to now see the steps by which he issues a digital credential here we are issuing a merit certificate in a PDF form. So the login to this solution. They enter the metadata related to this issuance of digital record. Any comments that he wants to put in that goes in. And this is the step where he's picking up the merit certificate. I think the screen is frozen. Okay. We're still seeing the login screen. Can you help me here? Is it moving now? No. Let me share my screen. Okay. You can just voice over. Yeah. It's taking a little time to open the application. And please keep the questions coming. I know we're answering some of them as we go and we'll leave time to answer the rest at the end. Please let me know if you can see my screen. Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So the, so the login happens. The admin enters the metadata related to the issuance of the merit certificate. Once he has done that, he goes to the next step. The next step is to actually give the digital record. So here he picks up the merit certificate and drops it into the window in that website on that portal. The hash is generated. He sees a acknowledgement that the hash has been generated and it has been posted onto the blockchain. From the admin's perspective, there are also some reports that are available relating to all the records that he has issued. He or his colleagues have issued and you know, Excel of this can also be exported. So any MIS related to this, again, in the digital format, it can be done easily from the solution itself. Do you want to take a pause here? Yeah. So, so, so what we saw up till now is the first part of the solution that the admin is issuing the credential or the merit certificate. And like we saw, the dragon drop is not an upload of the merit certificate into the blockchain. Only the hash is computed and the hash is stored onto the blockchain. Now we go to the next step. Before the next step, what happened, what is happening before the next step is that the citizen has received this digital record and he might have probably emailed it to the passport office. And now the passport office wants to verify it. Yeah, please go ahead. So he, now the passport office is opening the verifying portal of the county. They have received this document. They are dropping this document onto this portal for the purpose of verification. They click on the validate button. Within a few seconds, they get a message that the document has been verified and it is a exact electronic reproduction of the original. So this, there has been no tampering in this document and, you know, this is a valid document. This action of verification also gets recorded onto the blockchain. So like I was saying, it can be used evidence as evidence later on that the verification was done by that external department before they issued any other credential. We're also, so if there is any tampering in the document and a tampered document is put in for verification, then what happens is that again, they're dropping a document. The document is actually tampered. They're trying to verify it, but the verification fails. Even this action gets recorded onto the blockchain. So nothing much we have done for such an event. We will just tell the citizen that you have given us a wrong credential. Please give us the correct one and the citizen will give them a correct. The audit that I was talking about, we have enabled that also in the solution. And here there are several ways of doing the audit of transactions. One way of that is again, uploading a file. So, you know, this is the auditor or some other allied department which is picking up that credential again and is trying to verify it. So trying to get an audit trail of it. In the audit trail, they can clearly see the metadata associated with it and the transactions that have happened when it was issued, who had issued it, when was the verification done, whether the verification was successful or not. So this, in a very short video, I have tried to explain the way we have used a very simple feature of blockchain and we have tried to solve a complex problem that the county was facing. We plan to now take this to other counties, along with AWS can is also helping us in doing a lot of road shows we will be taking it to more counties probably to more states as well. From a citizen's perspective, it actually makes him mobile. So if he's moving from one county to the other, and for any reason he wants to submit his marriage certificate or birth certificate, the other county will also be able to the other county will also be able to verify it instantly. The other departments in that county or the new state which he where he's moving will be able to verify it instantly for any legal related related things or any investigation related things if, you know, an audit has to be done whether the documents were verified before the credentials or all that can be enabled. So this is my part, and I'll take a pause here. And I think Maggie, we can go to the Q&A part of it. Okay awesome sounds great. And I think we answered most of the questions in the chat but just, I think one additional for each of us that we missed so for can the question is, are the fees paid directly by the requester of the documents, or does the recorder also incur fees. If you're, if that's referring to existing operations, I think we include all costs to generate or come up with the fee that we're charging. Now if that's relating to the blockchain aspect of it kind of envisioning how the fees will be calculated to charge. We don't have that answer yet. But I think just very preliminary kind of just getting our head around the fact that we will be able to leverage, you know, all the kind of the variable costing as a service using AWS model cloud concept. That is something that we feel is going to see some cost saving for sure. Just keep in mind, we have to hire, let's just say at the peak we handle 10,000 requests per month. We staff at the peak just like building our infrastructure, right, we buy enough servers just because once in a year we're going to peak it out because it's sort of the most important part of the month. And then we always kind of provision based on the highest level possible. That concept is no different for us staffing folks, even though sometimes the windows nobody shows up, but we still have five steps in there try to, you know, potentially fulfill that so we will know that a little bit more down the road as we continue to evolve this into production version of it. I do, if I can take one minute to add just one more thing on the, on the what was just shared. Just so the audience understand the beauty of what AWS and Infosys did with this proof of concept is, although you see the demo of loading a PDF to get a hash and stored. But what they also done is they wrote an API. So that was that interface was actually used and created for us to demo and walk through audiences about how that architecture work. In reality, the API, we have our line of business applications that I can call the API and automatically sent the metadata in the digital version of the file into this exact same PO up proof of concept blockchain. So that process there, you know, we can make it without human intervention and truly deliver and have the potential to deliver a full ecommerce experience.  And then you put in your credit card you can submit and five minutes later you're going to get an email with your birth certificate that you just purchased. And because of that integration and how this is actually architected, I can connect all kinds of line of business application that we currently use or we will develop to facilitate paper centric process. And then literally just tied into this back in architecture, and then truly streamline the operation experience. Hopefully answer that maybe turn it back to you. Yeah, I think that's a great answer. I'm pretty exciting. The next set of questions was around pricing so I've included a link to our pricing page, as well as the network architecture. So I'm sitting on a blog post around this and I think that'll be in there so happy to send that along when it's live. And then the final set of questions more on the technical side. I'll give to Abhishek so the first one is, does the hash include more than the checksum of the file and things like date time that would constitute a new hash. I'm not sure if I got the question right but the hash is totally generated from the algorithm. The hash per se does not contain any information about you know the date or the date of birth or the marriage date or the people who are getting married and so on. So it's totally a alphanumeric string and yeah, I'm not sure if I answered the question. Yeah, feel free to chime in but I think those were all the questions I don't know if anyone else wants to ask a question, either in the chat or live. I can see one question which talks about are you storing the docs on centralized server. So for the solution part of it. Like I said, the document actually never enters the blockchain, we just take the hash and we that is what we are handling in the blockchain. Probably can can answer you know is there some kind of a digital document management solution that they're using for all the documents that they are handling. That's correct I think most of the art department definitely have, you know, document management system where a lot of our existing documents or digital versions of it are going inside. So that's where we plan to house those original source documents we don't intend of putting those source documents onto blockchain for both security destruction requirements right so even though the hash of a document that's supposed to be destroyed after seven years. We can delete the PDF in our own document server, even this leave the hash out there forever because hash itself is not the document. It is a verification in the fingerprint of that source document, but we will have possession of that document within county infrastructure at all times. There is one last question how many organizations and peers are involved in the solution. In this POC, it is, I think only one node for the for the assessor's office. The beauty of this solution is that the verifier need not have a node. So, you know, he just goes to the verifying portal. He has not subscribed to any service either from Infosys or from blockchain or from AWS. He's he has received a digital credential, he drops it into the verifying portal, and he gets some message whether it's, you know, authentic or not. And I will add a little bit to that our our grandeur vision as kind of a leading the charge leveraging technology for for the rest of the California to be quite friend. That's our vision. We are envisioning that we want to build a sort of a work group or consortium of counties who are willing to stand out the node. And because you know every county has this business, we all do the same thing. And then obviously the stronger the fabric or the participants are the more secure the better for the infrastructure. And we also will be able to to leverage each other, because, again, our citizens cross counties right they move from one place to another. So having that one central architecture and the same model governance, and we can all take advantage of it is kind of where we're leaning towards how to build up that consortium. I do also see a question that came up about the certified copy of real estate tax. I have definitely open. I think for the proof of concept I shown the two use cases, but I can assure you that is not where it's going to end. Because, as I mentioned earlier, if we stood this up correctly where this is a very county specific back end blotching capability that we can easily integrate to any line of business and any line of business application that can facilitate, for example, certificate, no estate tax, or social services, I need to issue whatever letters that's all the importance. Anybody can tie into it to this blotching fabric and send in the hash and the metadata to leverage this ability of literally stamping that pointing time to prove the authenticity of a document at that process for that business. You know, if we do this right, the, this is the foundation to allow multiple county government entities departments revolutionize how they handle the work. And they can literally just hook into it whenever they're ready or or wanted to to transform. So hopefully I answered that question. Awesome. I don't know if you guys want to close it out. Yeah, so it looks like we have get to a natural wrap up and thank you everyone for participating and make it can have a share and a team have awesome presentation. Feel free to reach out to the speakers and hope everyone have a good day and a week. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody.


Achieving success in any area of your life can be boiled down to this simple formula. The formula is V times T times S equals success. The V stands for volume. Volume just means how much of a specific action are you taking. So if you think about going to the gym, if you're trying to get shredded, volume would mean how many times are you going to the gym and how many reps of a certain exercise are you doing. The T stands for time. Time is how long have you been putting in the work? How long have you been doing the volume? If you think back to the gym example, if you go to the gym only for one week and intensely, it's not going to be the same result as if you go for a year or two years or three years. So time is how long have you been doing the thing? The S stands for skill. Skill gets better at more volume and more time that you do. And if you have higher skill, it takes a less amount of time and it's a lot easier to find success. But again, skill only increases the more volume and time that you have. So if you're trying to find success in whatever area of your life it is, think back to this formula. V times T times S equals success.