I don't know about you, but I love the feeling of getting to hit the merge button on my pull request and sending it off to production. That's the ultimate goal as a software engineer, right? To get our code out into the world on prod. However, unless you're living life on the edge, there's a big hurdle you have to overcome before getting to push that merge button, getting approvals on our pull request. Before we dive in, I want to give y'all a little background on myself. I'm Kara. I'm based in Nashville, Tennessee, and I have two adorable dogs, Maggie and Franklin. Before tech, I pursued a career as a ballerina, and then I worked as a music publicist. But in 2016, I enrolled in a front-end engineering boot camp, and I've been in tech ever since. I'll do a little plug here. I spoke about my career journey and why non-traditional developers are amazing at EmberConf in 2020, so you should go and check that out on YouTube. Now I work as a user interface engineer at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company aiming to stop breaches. And as a UI engineer, I write and look at a lot of pull requests, and I've seen both good and bad PRs. But what even makes a pull request good? Let's take a look at this totally real PR. This is not a good pull request, but why? First, glancing at the title doesn't really give you an idea of what happened in this PR, other than some things were fixed and some other things were added. But that's okay, let's take a look at the description. We're told a little bit more information about what has gone on here, a component and some mock data were added, but we're given no instructions on where we can even find this new component in the UI or how to test it. Last, but not least, even though it seems like a pretty straightforward change, seeing over 1,300 change lines of code would imply otherwise. As a reviewer looking at this pull request, we really have nothing to go off of and are left in the dark. And the sad part of this is that, unfortunately, I've seen pull requests that look exactly like this. And in the long run, you're only making the PR process longer for your reviewers by not taking the time and effort to put a little bit more description into your PR. Pull requests are telling the story of your changes. They're a conversation between you and your reviewers. And as the author of that story, you want to make sure the process of reviewing your pull request is as easy as possible. It's vital that our PRs give everything to our reviewers that they may need. They should concisely describe our motives and thoughts behind our changes, all the while preemptively answering any questions our reviewers may have. Just like a good story, our pull request should begin with an outline of its chapters. In our case, our chapters are our commits. We've all seen commit messages that provide absolutely no insight into what has gone on. But each commit message should show a progression in your pull request story. The subject line of your commit should give an overview of the changes that were made, while the body should provide additional context like why it made that decision, any possible future implications, and then a reference to the ticket or issue number. Using conventional commits can help provide even more at a glance insight. This is where the commit subject line includes various prefixes that follow semantic versioning. You can use feet for a feature or fix, but it can also include items like test, chore, or style. Here's a great example of a descriptive commit message from the Ember Core repo. The subject line, Update Error Message Instructions is easily understandable. The author could have left the commit at that, but they went into further detail in the body of the commit message, explaining why that change needed to be made. Now, anyone looking at this commit gets the full story of what was happening. Having explicit commit messages is important, but in order for your story to be understood, they need to be organized in a way that makes sense. It'd be extremely confusing to someone if a book had Chapter 2 before Chapter 1. You'd have no idea what was going on. You want to make sure that your reviewers can easily follow the story you're telling about your changes. You're probably sitting there saying, Kara, well, I may have a fix that I need to implement later when I'm writing my code, or what if I need to refactor something. That's totally OK. The great thing is that as developers, we have the power to rewrite history with rebasing. If you aren't familiar with rebasing, it allows you to rework your commits. You can change the order, rewrite, rewrite your commit messages, or even squash two or more commits together. Your commit history can go from something that looks like this, jumping around from implementing new components to adding mock data and PR fixes, to something like this that is much easier for anyone looking at your code to follow. This history gives a clear outline of what has occurred in each commit. It shows a clear path that the developer was taking. You can see that one-off commits like fixing the form and applying feedback from the review were squashed into the commits where those changes make sense. Now looking at the commit history, reviewers are able to easily follow the author's development process, and anyone looking at this in the future can easily dive in and know what to expect on each commit. If our commits are the chapters to our poll request, then our actual code implementations and changes are the story itself. And it's important that we pay attention to the size of our story. There's a computer programming principle called the single responsibility principle. It states that every module, class, or function and computer programming should have responsibility over a single part of that program's functionality, and it should encapsulate that part. All of that module, class, or function services should be narrowly aligned with that responsibility. It's basically stating that a single module, class, or function should only focus on one thing. It should only have one responsibility. This same concept applies to poll requests. You would think that a PR that touches a lot of files would receive more comments than a smaller PR, but a study of a Cisco systems programming team revealed that developers should review no more than 200 to 400 lines of code at a time. Beyond 400 lines of code, the ability to find defects diminishes. So by breaking a larger poll request into several smaller lines, you're actually increasing the chance that you'll receive feedback and the potential for your reviewers to catch a bug that may have been overlooked. Here is a great example of keeping a poll request small from the Ember learning team. An issue was created to fix some of the API links in the guides. The catch was that this needed to happen in the docs for multiple versions. The developer that took on this task created a single PR request for each version where the links were updated. They easily could have made this one PR, although it would have been pretty large with a lot of file changes. But by opening one poll request per version, they're enabling the reviewers to easily be able to parse the changes and look for any issues or misspots. Breaking down a poll request sounds straightforward, but it can definitely sometimes be daunting. How do we know when a poll request is getting too big and should be separated? So say you're starting a new project on your team, and that includes generating a lot of boilerplate code. That starting code should be its own poll request. This is because you'll be adding a lot of files at once, and you'll want your reviewers to be able to look through each of those files to make sure that everything that is needed is included. After generating all of that boilerplate code, now it's time to start on the index page for that project and generate some luck data. That work can be separated into its own poll request as well. By having each poll request concentrated on a singular task, you're allowing your reviewers to focus on one thing at a time. They're not getting bogged down trying to put together pieces of what's really going on with a million files changed. So we've covered the chapters to our PR story and the story itself, but what's a good story without an introduction? That's where our title and description come in. A poll request title is the first bit of information you are providing to your reviewers for what they're about to look at. It needs to give a concise overview of what is happening in the PR. One of the most common mistakes I see is using the last commit message as a title of your poll request. But this is only giving a brief peek into your story and not explaining the entirety of your changes. Here you can see two great examples again from the Ember learning team. The first example, US CSS instead of utility classes from ES Note to allow HTML to be backwards compatible, is to the point explaining what changed and even gives a quick explanation of why. The second example, upgrade to latest Ember and make 3.16 the lowest supported version does this as well. You're even alerted to the fact that this poll request is going to contain a breaking change, which is extremely important information that reviewers need to know upfront. The description is where you can provide even more detail for your viewers or anyone looking at your poll request in the future. Something important to keep in mind when writing your description is that you shouldn't assume the reader's prior knowledge of the area of the code base you're working in. It is your job as the author to provide that context to them. You can do this through including information on the what, why, and how of your changes. What changes were made, why you made those changes, and how the reviewers should test them. The what should provide explicit details on the changes in your poll request. Remember how our commits are the outline of our story? Well, this is where that outline comes into play.  Expand on what you previously wrote with a bit more detail. This section of your description should also include any lingering to-dos linked to their follow-up ticket. Remember that you want to cover all of your bases in your poll request, so it's important to provide the context of what has happened or has not yet happened within your poll request to your reviewers. The why section of your PR explains the reasoning behind your changes, including any architectural decisions you made and any possible implications from those decisions. This can include user stories for why the specific feature was added, thoughts behind refactoring you did, or even explaining your entire thought process on your changes. You should also link to the ticket or issue that your PR addresses to provide even more context to your reviewers. Lastly is the how. How are your reviewers supposed to test your code? You can provide all the details about what you changed and why, but your reviewers probably don't know the steps to actually reproduce your changes in a demo environment. Go through the steps of demoing your code changes and write each of those in a list for your reviewers. You want to be as explicit as possible. Provide direct links for the route they need to test and any feature flags or permissions they may need. You also want to make sure those exact scenarios you want tested or laid out. For example, certain steps your reviewers may need to show an error state. You want to detail the exact interaction that will need to happen. Here's a well-written description for an update to the Ember website. It's still a work in progress, so it's not totally ready to be reviewed, but it combines a lot of what we've been talking about. At the top is a link to the corresponding issue. Then the developer goes into a list of what exactly was implemented in the pull request and why those changes needed to happen. They dive even deeper by listing the remaining requirements that need to be addressed and provide additional notes to encourage feedback. And once this PR is ready to be taken out of a work in progress status and ready to be fully reviewed, the only thing that would make it even better is to add the exact testing steps reviewers can take to make sure that the language switcher is working as expected in a test environment. A way to enhance your pull request description even more is by adding a visual aspect. According to the Visual Teaching Alliance, visuals transmit information faster than spoken or written words. We can get a sense of the visual scene in less than one-tenth of a second, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Think about when you're putting together a piece of furniture. There's written out instructions, but there's also visuals to help you. You actually see a picture of the base of furniture along with diagrams of where you need to drill and add screws. We all poke fun at IKEA's drawings of how to put together furniture, but honestly, that's a lot easier to parse than complicated instructions being written out with no visuals of all the different parts. Adding a screenshot of the before and after of your changes and highlighting the differences can help your reviewers process your changes even faster. And you don't even need to download software to do this. You can simply take a screenshot on your Mac by pressing Command-Shift-4 and highlight the area where you want a screenshot. You're then able to use the markup feature to draw a square or circle around what you've added or changed. I like to often draw an arrow to kind of draw attention to it more and add a brief description on the screenshot itself. You can take this even a step further by recording your screen through something like QuickTime and actually walk your reviewers through your changes. This is great when your reviewers may not be as familiar with the area of the code base you're working on. You taking the extra five minutes to record a demo can save your reviewers 15 minutes of trying to get up to speed with what you're doing. And the thing I really love about recording a walkthrough is that your reviewers get to hear your voice and see a live demo. We're living in an asynchronous world and those small things really make a difference in helping your reviewers fully understand what's going on in your PolarClust. Our peer is officially done now, right? Not exactly. Before adding any reviewers to my PolarClust, I become my own reviewer. I look through each of my commits to make sure they're linear and self-explanatory and take a look through my code as well. During this process, I often catch most simple mistakes like a leftover console log. While doing this, I also annotate my own PolarClust. Have you ever been reading a book and left yourself notes in the margins? This is the same thing before your reviewers. While reviewing your own changes, comment on specific lines of code that may leave your reviewers with questions. You can use this to explain why you chose to do something a particular way, like if the direction you decided to go was a little outside of the norm, or you can highlight a specific line of code to get more input on. Here's an example of doing this from a PolarClust for the Ember website. The author went through and commented on their PolarClust to clarify any areas where reviewers may have questions. This is going from the language switcher that kind of talked about earlier. So they actually go into a bit more detail on why they implemented this translation as one line instead of translating each individual segment of the string. Further on in that PolarClust, the author explains why the additions they made to the package.json file were necessary. Pointing out these types of changes in your PolarClust were imperative. And doing so through commenting on your own PR helped shed even more light on them. Now that you've put together the story of your PolarClust, added your reviewers and officially opened your PR. You would think that things end there. However, the conversation around your changes are only just beginning. The entire point of a PolarClust is to get eyes on your code so others can catch bugs or provide feedback. And an essential part of the PolarClust process is responding to that feedback.  When receiving that feedback, you wanna make sure that you're understanding the reviewer's perspective. They're commenting to learn more about what you've done and to help you grow as a developer. It's okay to get comments on your PolarClust and you shouldn't view that as a negative thing or take it personally. Honestly, I take it more personally if I receive zero comments on a PR. I want that feedback because it's pushing me to become a better developer and helping me think more outside of my box. If your reviewer makes a comment that you don't quite understand, then ask for clarification. However, PolarClust are not the place to be debating about certain implementations. These conversations can easily get out of hand and overthrow the original objective of your PR, which is to get it reviewed and merged. If you catch that happening, take the conversation off of the PolarClust and into a face-to-face or virtual meeting. The important part of this is to update your PolarClust with any decisions that are made during that meeting. Again, you wanna be completely transparent on your PRs. You wanna make sure that the outcome of this meeting and any decisions are there for your reviewers to be able to be made aware of. Also remember that not all suggestions need to be implemented. Feel free to provide any clarification to reviewers on your decisions behind certain changes if they have questions. This is where becoming your own reviewer and annotating your own PolarClust ahead of time really comes into handy, comes in handy. By doing this, you're making it easier for your reviewers to understand your changes and eliminating the need for that back and forth that could happen. Whether you only get one or two comments or 10, you wanna make sure that you reply to every single one. PolarClust should not be merged until every comment has been addressed, whether that's implementing a suggestion or not. If you do apply a suggestion from a reviewer, be sure to acknowledge that. Give it a thumbs up. Something I really love about GitHub and GitLab is that they both have a resolve comment feature in their PolarClust. This allows you to let your reviewer know that you've acknowledged their suggestion, have put it into effect, and it's no longer a concern. By clicking that resolve comment button, or if that's not an option, simply liking their comment or replying with a thumbs up emoji, you're actually making it easier on both yourself and your reviewer to know that their comment has been addressed. Plus, this is a great way to keep track of what you have or have not yet gotten to in your PolarClust feedback. Not all comments will be within the scope of your PolarClust though. Ultimately, it's your decision what is and is not within scope. But if something is outside of the scope, then you need to create a follow-up ticket. The key, as we've been saying to Great PolarClust, is being completely transparent. Explain to your reviewer why their suggestion is out of scope and include the link to the follow-up ticket where it will be addressed. So after all the comments are addressed, it's finally time you get to push the merge button. You've accomplished your goal of merging your code to production. And that's another ticket marked off your to-do list. Now it's just time to start that process entirely over again with a new ticket. Thank you all so much for listening to my talk and enjoy the rest of EmberConf.


What's up guys Michael here with jaspies and we are going to be doing a 2022-23 Panini Donruss optic full case break. This is number two Case break number two and it is a random team And as a reminder in this break actually all all cards are gonna ship so all base vets everything but These are not The names in the break. I've got them right here It's that into the list There we go. All right, so we've got all All the names Optic to just means you got your spot in the optic retail box Break number two and three is just break But we got all the names all the teams It's just gonna roll the dice and randomize Let's do it Four and a three seven times. Let's do it one two three four five six and seven Seven times there. We've got Robert Down to Eugene those in here Cool, and then seven times again for the teams one two three four five six and Seven So we've got Houston Down to the Pacers So read off the team so we got Robert with the Rockets Scott with the Hornets Julian with the Warriors Nick with the Cavs CJ with the Pistons Roy with the Blazers Nicholas with the magic Chris with the Nets Evan with the Nuggets Robert with the Clippers CJ with the Timberwolves John with the Thunder CJ with the Jazz Mark with the 76ers CJ Last spot mojo there and the Bucks with the Bucks John W with the Grizzlies Justin with the Spurs Scott with the Knicks Joshua with the Suns Jonathan with the Pelicans Shay with the Raptors Brian with the Wizards Ryan with the Lakers Robbie with the Celtics Suvana with the Hawks John with the Mavericks Robbie with the Kings Scott with the Heat Rick with the Bulls and Eugene with the Pacers So we are gonna have a trade window Since it is a random team I'm gonna do This make it a little smaller See if I can get away with the hundred here Yeah So I am gonna pause the video. There's gonna be a trade window. So Yeah, well I'll be right back and we'll see if there's any trades. All right guys, we are back No chatter. I know it's early. So I don't know how how many people are actually in here, but We're just gonna get into this break Optimize it so same teams that I read off. I'll show it again once I print this out. Oh, I'm excited I'm excited and again guys. We do have a tops five star break. That's down to four teams that we can do very soon, but The official list hard copy nothing left to do but a crack open this case Let's do it. Good luck everybody. Let's see some Craziness I want to ring. I want to ring that bell I want to ring Joe's Bell Like this big Sounds weird. I want to read Joe's Bell Whatever, you know what I mean. Good luck Please don't Don't don't click that I need I should pause first of all delayed pause, but This is I'll tell him I'll tell him what I said But yeah, good luck from me and scoop To be a good one does optic just the cars Upside down. I'm not gonna stop thinking about that now Can't believe I said that those words came out of my mouth. You know what I meant the bell that Joe owns Bell that he rings every day It's his I know I know Just just funny, you know, I mean we've all we've all done it before we've all said something That came out a lot different than it meant But now it's Now it's gonna be on the internet forever. Let's do it first box stuff behind it Colourful Pope red is out of 99 the mellow ball hollow Roddy rookie Sweated a little bit 223 Pain Watson whoa first box we're hitting gold We hit gold in the first box first box for Denver Who has Denver Evan who got his spot in? The optic filler number two That is So sweet four out of ten We love gold However, Joe says Shea lime green that's out of 149 shade and sharp Hollow rookie for Portland That's Roy. I think I think we're starting off pretty hot here. What do you say? What do you say? Hollow buddy Right on top here. We've got a Chet space behind that Yacob Pertle orange should be out of 199 Yeah, 199 Chet the rookies party Walker, and then we got a little pink velocity here Bogdanovitch for Detroit It's gonna be at a 79 hollow Kyrie. She's paying out the rest of this box here. So these cards are Stuck cool Anthony hollow as a Mowgli TJ McConnell, it's gonna be out of 199. It's holy last pack is stuck All right That is box number one Pretty good box if you ask me Let's do a box number two faster. This is full 12 box break so Will Barton out of 199 Griffin Dale and Terry hollow Ty Ty the Terence man red out of 99 Right on top here, we got a nice Palo the D. Anthony Milton little basketball parallel Rui hollow Get in the hearty We got a redemption. Well, we'll save that for Wait for the end of this box Christie Gary Harris hollow. Oh, and we've got a blue Dylan Brooks. I That's out of 49 Looks like Memphis is done with him Nice color match though. Oh, we got a photon case hit. It's like Kevin Love. Nice It's a nice cool color match to their sweet for Cleveland Let's go to Nick. It's actually really nice looking car Terry scary Terry gets to unveil it Optic rated rookie signatures hollow carto two Kenneth Lofton, Jr. Nice going to Memphis. It's going to John promising Young talent for Memphis there That's sweet That's that for that box. Let me actually grab a monster box real quick This year of optic is just so loaded and again guys that uh the promo ends tonight the basketball playoff promo so if you guys Want a chance at some free break credit up to giving away $5,000 in total and break credit If you guys want to chance at some of that let's get those uh Those promo breaks filled up by the end of the night Good afternoon Mario How you doing happy Monday another photon? There's another photon in this case This is our third box in box number three Kenneth Lofton Oh, I'm Baji little basketball parallel. That's nice and Baji again in the hollow Both go into the jazz Utah at CJ we got the photon here Looks jazz again.  I don't know if I could call it a case hit because we've hit two in this case But that is a beautiful car nice hit there.  I Love this stuff. It is so juiced this year. I How about that look at that? Keegan Murray out of 99 Keegan Murray Out of 99 going to Sacramento That's Robbie 74 out of 99 Tonya stuff is just another redemption Another redemption. There's another key in Jaden Ivy Duncan Robinson that basketball parallel Jaden Ivy hollow the rookies Mathering and a DeMarco Rosen and Devin Booker. That's red out of 99 98 out of 99 Yo, what? Two photons in this box Jonathan Kaminga photon What is going on? What is going on for Golden State, Julian?  All right, let's uh Jaden Ivy gets to Redeem this redemption rated rookie signatures hollow carto one. I like that. I Thought it one Delmore, Jr. One Delmore, Jr. What is going on in this this case? Optic is up to something Whatever it is. I'm for it. There's two photons in that box There's only supposed to be one per case so backwards face part number four Yanis hollow he sent Moses moody orange. That is out of 199 Nem hard Kessler with Carl Anthony towns at a 149 came Thomas Jabari Bones that basketball parallel Clay and Jimmy Butler 21 out of 99 all-stars. Here's our auto Out of 99 well Frazier sweet for the Knicks It's going to Scott of 99 70 and Palo the rookies a or 15 Keegan Murray again This one's orange Gonna be out of 199 Sacramento again Robbie Six, I don't want it. It's a beauty Ty Ty hollow Let's wrap up this box for the chat Dilo at a 149 Soon to be an NBA champ Jalen D. Wade Paul George hollow in the last part is Somebody healed so far every box is had either You know something real nice or a lot of things that are Number five mattering right off the bat Jordan Clarkson is the line at a 149 James Harden hollow Soakin or so can Denny Abdi at a 199 Palo are just getting all the good rookies in this box James Harden dominators Out of 49 Blue nice color match Drey Mondalo Got a pink Velo here and I'm hardy Siddiq Bay out of 79 Keep rolling Still in on the auto in this box. It's a red coming up Tom Horton Tucker THT out of 99 still waiting on the auto Auto is Patrick Beverly 99 out of 99 for Orlando But in the Lakers Jersey Nicholas Bookend nice orange here Aaron Gordon out of 199 Jeremy Soakin hollow. We are reaching the halfway point of the break here box number six box number six Wanted Graham 199 David Robinson and Tim Duncan Malcolm Brogdon picked velocity at a 79 I am a just now realizing That I'm gonna have to randomize those all-star cards. I'll have to take those out and RJ Barrett red out of 99 The auto here Ryan Rollins base rated rookie auto on card For the Warriors, it's going to Golden State Julian Chris Brown Braun, I don't know. I heard people were saying it's brown brown I don't want 49 nice rookie color going to Denver Heaven, that's Williams Jr. Hollow. We got a Luca stargazing red It's out of 99 window more junior basketball parallel there Houston All right, I think what I'm going to do now. I'm just going to open up a few boxes right now And do open three What's up, Gilo, how's it going happy Monday? Yes, sir We're doing a full optic case break. I think Joe was I think Joe was I don't remember what Joe was doing yesterday, but no one was able to cover him. I don't think So I think they just Know stream, I guess and that's what I assume happened Just knowing to cover him, but he will be in here in about an hour Honestly, I didn't even know that there's gonna be no stream yesterday. I went I wanted to watch a little bit yesterday I was bored and there was no stream So I was like, well I'm not saying that But in his defense Still could have bought spots yesterday Could you could have still got some spots?  I think there's what the hip parade This is one of them. So this one's getting knocked out right now There's the eminence one which should be interesting See if that can fill and then What's the what's the last one? I think there's one more. That's how it goes, right? You just Just have them laying around or all In your boxes, however, you know One day or just like you get that motivation or boredom To just like right. I'm gonna organize this and make it look nice Until you get more cards and then it becomes unorganized again I think they need to do a little bit better with Packing up. What are the official predictions for the Western and Eastern Conference finals? I need official predictions What is going on in this case? Just do a quick check on some breaks here actually Four spots left in five star guys Four spots left in that Plus all the promo breaks back to it. Sorry smart man Guys, I don't know what to say these photons are Lying out. Oh my goodness. Dude. This case is insane. This case is insane Jdub photon for Oklahoma City John John W God, that's a beauty These photons are flying out of these cases man and another redemption Save that because I know there's something else working in here Josh. No, no, no not Whatever it is. It's a rookie at a 99 for the Timberwolves Minnesota CJ Not the baseballs Sharp jaylin durian with the basketball the basketball parallel sweet Yolkich owns a D, but Lakers are different now. I think I think the Lakers probably get blown out tomorrow, but uh Lakers in Seven, I'm not gonna wait anymore for this the redemption Raiden rookie signatures hollow 244 and Josh Minot Minot the guy I could have pronounced the first time They doubled down on me for the Timberwolves They doubled down on me. So try again. Okay. I saw something More careful false basketball Marjane Bochamp hollow Baji Are you guys ready for this? This is supposed to be one per case and we've had two boxes now that have had two photons in Cole Anthony photon Dillon Brooks behind it second photon of this box. I cannot wait to recap this Frickin break the way the nuggets pick evens We'll just have to find out won't we very boarded Coloco hollow Walker Cameron Johnson red Out of 99 So Mowgli Desmond Bain orange out of 199 pink velocity Bruce Brown out of 79 Sharp Wiggins John Durin There's Aaron Wiggins out of 149 Bucks Bochamp, we're calling it. Yep Whoo Marjane Bochamp For the bucks Milwaukee bucks. It's the base rated rookie on card That looks like the auto supposed to be like that. I mean, I don't I've never seen his auto before But that looks like upside down Janna Ivy and another photon guys Moses moody photon For the Warriors Hit a comminga and a moody photon in this in this case. Yeah, I have no idea. What's going on? It's going to go in state Julian I guess they're not case fits anymore It's nuts, I'm gonna have to go back and count how many we've hit and I Honestly think that there's gonna be another one of these box Matherin Kade lights up So can Halliburton, I don't want 99 Murray Pink Velo coming up D book hollow Dailin Terry is our auto for the Bulls Chicago That's Rick base auto there Jaden Ivy pink velocity Going to Detroit CJ 21 to off at a 79 Pink Velo there. No idea what's going on This case ran him Paolo Paolo and another rookie here Osemen ding Sorry Paolo rookie I'm not gonna lie. I've gotten pretty top-loader happy with this break So much nice stuff. This part's got a pretty bad thing in it though Benedict Matherin 29 out of 99 red rookie rated rookie Going to Indiana Eugene I have no idea what's going on guys So I've hit like six photons in this case And they usually won I don't think there's any more I'm not putting those top-loaders over It reminded me that I need more Alright last three boxes We hit a gold in the first box The first box we open I want to hit another one I did not think this break would take this long It's only a pass It's been fun this Optic Like I said, I said it's been And it has been so far Scoot, the photon economy Is in shambles right now Still haven't seen any Paolo color though Or auto That'd be photon inflation I mean Who's going to stay Julian It's hit two photons Just Warriors players I think he's gonna have to He's like committed now I think he's gonna have to go for the whole Team set of just photons There are so many tosser Yeah I think we just did another one Touch from black brick But it was so popular We just kept getting more That's what people wanted I mean like five-star We have one break up there too But we did a hell of a lot of breaks With five-star as well It's really just what the people want And sometimes What's easiest We've done NT baseball We've done like 60 breaks of that Case breaks It's just how it goes If you guys want it We'll go get it Last three boxes Kevin Porter Jr Is our auto Optigraphs For Houston That's Robert Robert P 55 out of 99 Luca Pink velocity That is A sweet card there Out of 79 Not a Jersey number Sweet one there Going to Dallas John Keegan Murray Hollow Sick Wrong dream of Williams I'm gonna keep one of these to the side Just so I remember I gotta randomize that Terrence Mann out of 149 Keegan Murray the rookies Ted Lofton Dylan Terry Out of 199 91 out of 199 Caruso The Caruso Out of 199 Laker Legend Walker Kessler Lime Green 20 out of 149 Going to Utah CJ Xbox Jaden Ivy Bass rated rookie signatures Going to Detroit CJ Was just absolutely destroying this break Rashawn Holmes Basketball Wendell Moore Jr. Hollow Hollow The rookies Orlando Nicholas Kennedy Chandler Basketball Parallel there Tatum Hollow Black Velocity Mo Bamba 38 out of 39 Soon to be NBA champion Mo Bamba Going to Los Angeles Ryan LeBron Hollow Also for Ryan Whoa Another Black Velocity AJ Griffin For Atlanta Subana 17 out of 39 I don't suck up on me Should have both did Cody Martin Moses Moody Out of 199 To wrap up that box If you're curious about your finals matchup I don't make the rules Shadon Sharp Shadon Rated Rookie Auto Going to Portland Roy Sick little bit of Bad ink work there Faded It's a nice card Let's keep it rolling Case it has been Jamal Murray Pink Velocity out of 79 Scotty Pippin Jr. Hollow Here's our matchup right here For the conference finals Isaiah Stewart Lime out of 149 Kari Irving Hollow Fred Van Vliet out of 199 Tyrese Martin Black Velocity These ones just Start popping out Also going to Atlanta One off 23 out of 39 Jopalo Let's Finish this break Jaden Hardy Bones Highland Red Out of 199 And that does it What a break What a freaking break It was a long one Took me way longer than I thought But we got to do two things Missouri Just to wreck Missouri Now he wrecks the bench for the Lakers Alright, first we're going to do a quick recap Very, very quick because there's a lot Out of 39 Shadon Sharp Rated Rookie Auto AJ Griffin out of 39 Ivy Walker Kessler out of 149 Luke out of 79 Matheryn Out of 99 Ivy out of 79 I'm going to count the photons too Moses Moody photon Cole Anthony photon Jalen Durran basketball Jalen Williams photon He and Murray out of 199 That's Walfrazier Jonathan Camille Walfrazier Jonathan Caminga photon Keegan Murray out of 99 Walker Kessler photon Kenneth Lofton Jr. Kevin Love photon Kevin Love photon And the first hit Of the break Was a Peyton Watson Gold Rated Rookie Auto 4 out of 10 Let's see it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 photons And 1 per case That's cool Alright And these cards here You're going to have to randomize I'm going to do left and right Space though Alright Switch it back to Screen We're going to go left Right Roll a new dice 3 out of 5, 8 times 1, 2 3, 4 5, 6 7, 8 Oops, 8 times You see it It's going to go to the left Switch it back So It's going to go to the Warriors That's going to be for all of these dual autos Or dual autos Multiplayer cards It's going to go to the left I'm going to just make a note of that real quick Alright That does it for this break guys Pretty, pretty awesome Break If you ask me Got a bunch more on the site guys Go check it out jaspyscasebreaks.com I hope everyone has a great day Bye guys


A lot of that is still there for all of these. We have been different this point for two years. We are very happy that you have come. We are very excited to be working with all the partners across the agency. Our one job is to perform in peace. Right to say my word, excuse me. And that is exactly what happens.


Hello, I am Susie from Studio Fit and Healthy 9-1-1. Join me for just a few minutes as we go inside. Find a quiet place. Stand up, sit down or lie down. And if you cannot find a quiet place, then quiet the noise from within you. Take a moment to pay attention to your breathing, especially now that we are in times of stress, anxiety and panic. Loosen up your clothing if you have to and let's begin. Breathe in gently and regularly for a steady count of one, two, three, four, five. Breathe out gently and regularly for a steady count of five, four, three, two, one. Keep your eyes closed and continue to inhale and exhale gently and regularly for a steady count of five. Now every time you inhale, take in a belly full of positivity and when you exhale release the feelings of negativity from deep within you. Every time you inhale, take in a belly full of confidence and when you exhale release the feelings of doubt from within you. Every time you inhale take in a belly full of strength and when you exhale release the feeling of witness from deep within you. Every time you inhale take in a belly full of self-love, love for others, love for the environment, love for the purpose of your life and every time you exhale release the feelings of hate, anger and disappointment from within you. Now open your eyes, give yourself a big hug. Make time to stop and reset today and every day. Make time, take time to breathe.


Don't be afraid to speak up ladies. They want to hear from you with these insurance companies because Cody when I first met him He told me he said Galen. Did you know 51% of the licensed insurance agents are women? I said I didn't know that at the end of the day He asked me how many do you think are in 8% nation and I said probably not many and It's because they don't have the belief system. You see to me. It's not a man versus woman thing There's not a glass ceiling Because some of the best supporters I have in this business are men I have the title of wife grandmother business partner, but I never ever ever Want to forget the word that means the most to me and that's insurance agent the more you give the more you get So ladies, that's what our heart is. I don't want to thank you for requesting me to speak I was blown away when Cody's people called me and said we got all these women wanting you to speak And I was telling a real good friend of mine in the audience just and brought this and he goes But don't forget us men want to hear you speak to mama And so I'm here to speak to you today about what works for me and what I've been able to teach other folks Stage ask you that Are you ready? Are you inspired? I love that this guy was from Arlington He knows my neighbor Chris Johnson. So that was kind of awesome getting to hear him speak You know one of the things that I think after hearing him That's really important for everybody to take away from this is you know In every blessing you're given or as we say in Texas and I do talk fast and I talk southern so Hang on it'll go fast But I will tell you that in every blessing there's a lesson and in every lesson There's a blessing and so I think we've all gotten a great blessing out of all the speakers that I've seen in this conference But I will tell you I loved hearing JD Talk about his faith. I loved hearing Tim story talk about who he knows and where he came from and I Absolutely enjoyed Jordan yesterday. I mean man. What a knockout of the park Cody askings. That's great Okay, so we'll get me off the screen and I'm not the best technology person I'm more of the talker in our gig. So we'll we'll go from there So this man right here is the best salesman in the world better than Jordan better than me and He's also my father he died at 52 years of age and Like a lot of people from the stage say they get choked up when they talk about things I lost my dad in 1990, but he's the reason I'm on this stage today He told his little girl the theme song Scotty picked it out that I could do anything I wanted to do and he asked me what I wanted to do and here in Texas. We love big hair bling bling Big heels, but I wanted to be Miss America because in 1969 That's what we knew. We knew Miss America. We knew nurses We knew teachers and when y'all lowered the lights, I can't see people so I'm gonna do a Jordan thing Can we turn those back up for me?   I had a great mentor in my life She was my first boss. I was the youngest employee hired at the Lubbock avalanche journal in the business office I was 17 years of age. I wanted to go to college But I want to go to work first Justin Brock. You know what that's like going to work buddy So she told me she goes. I don't care if you cuss. I don't care if you curse I don't care if you tell me you're not gonna do something, but you better never use the word can't So when I start working with Cody, he tells me what our message is and I've got to do this message And it's virtual and I've got to make sure we all stay on the same page And it said you can't fail if you don't quit and I'm like, well, I can't say can't You know and so I changed it To a rhyme because everybody thinks I'm instead of Queen of the Bundle Dr. Seuss But you won't fail if you don't quit and I think that's the message I want to get across to everybody today. Yes I had this whole pitch prepared because I'm a salesperson first I have the title of wife grandmother business partner But I never ever ever want to forget the word that means the most to me and that's insurance agent Because it's been the reason that I've been able to bless my family and I loved hearing all the speakers talk about how they serve My business partner and I we don't have our core values posted which we're gonna do after this conference But our people that work with us Know our core values because we try to live them out every single day and one of those is service It's serving others. It's doing the right thing I had an agent that I've been coaching on Queen of the Bundle the other night asked me She said, how do you get paid to do what you do? And I go well the insurance companies pay us when we have an exclusive product But we've learned in our business The more you give the more you get So ladies, that's what our heart is. I don't want to thank you for requesting me to speak I was blown away when Cody's people called me and said we got all these women wanting you to speak And I was telling a real good friend of mine in the audience Justin Brock this and he goes but don't forget us men want to hear you speak to mama And so I'm here to speak to you today about what works for me and what I've been able to teach other folks This is my husband. We got married in 1986 I'm talking about this because some of the ladies were like, you know How did you get from where you were to where you are and I will tell you it's encouragement. I Got asked to speak on a famous podcast about breaking the glass ceiling. I Didn't even know what that meant y'all. I had to Google it then I had to talk about it I've never had a glass ceiling because I don't have that barrier in my head. I Don't have a barrier in my head. I cannot do anything Because I was taught early on that's a bad word. I taught that to my kid I taught that to my employees every employee that starts with us.  I said we don't say can't That's the first mistake you make But I had a husband that encouraged me what a lot of people don't know. He's 11 years older than me almost 11 years but he's a Vietnam vet and He saw something in me that I didn't always see in myself and He said hey, I know you don't want to leave our kid at home with strangers So I'll stay home You go work Now Vietnam vets even though Michael Keaton made mr. Mom famous a Vietnam vet getting razzed by all of his buddies that you're mr.  That's not easy But he gave me that gift and our marriage has not always been easy We have had struggles, but I will tell you what's worked for us and that is communicating Our employees will tell you if we have a moment. We have a moment. It doesn't matter who's around it happens and we're good 10 minutes later 2011 we had our 25th wedding vow renewal thank you and those years from 2011 to 2020 there was some rockiness along the way But I will tell you our hardest time and I just see my son in the audience and I didn't expect him here today so This year was tough for us Because I traveled those of y'all that follow me. No, I'm kind of like where's Galen and I had to be with him at every moment and he had to be with me every moment and we had to try to figure out This what I hate these two words new normal Because I do not accept this as our normal But I do accept the fact that we're all being blessed by this time in our life I've had more time with my grandchildren I've had more time with my employees and I've had more time with God and I will tell you every morning. I wake up all the women say what do you do to stay happy all the time Well, I'm just a naturally happy person when my son first started working for us He goes do you have to be Richard Simmons every morning? Can you just not walk in like the rest of us? But I am a good morning person, but I thank God first for the blessings. I have I write down my goals and yes, Scotty.  I Have peace because I'm older I used to be the youngest in the room and I used to be the only female That's changed. I'm not the youngest anymore, but on a lot of the advisory councils we sit on. I'm the only female and Taylor and I which is my business partner right here He's very vocal. I'm very vocal and we keep getting invited back. So speak your mind Don't be afraid to speak up Ladies they want to hear from you at these insurance companies because Cody when I first met him He told me he said Galen. Did you know 51% of the licensed insurance agents are women? I said, I didn't know that and he's got the video because I say some things that are off-color on that But anyway at the end of the day He asked me how many do you think are an 8% nation and I said probably not many and It's because they don't have the belief system You see to me, it's not a man versus woman thing There's not a glass ceiling Because some of the best supporters I have in this business are men our men You know, I get credit all the time for things that I didn't even know I did I Watched a video the other day of Justin's on YouTube and I hadn't seen in a while because I was watching all of them Well, I can I'm all and I was like, oh my gosh All I'll do is watch videos of Justin if I don't do anything else Just kidding with you, bro But at the end of the day, he was giving me credit for something that I was like, that's nice, but I don't remember that You have to support Everybody and they will support you. That's my belief That's our company's creed and that's what we're gonna continue to do as long as we have senior security benefits Now this next picture. I have to give y'all a funny here So the picture on the right I posted and said y'all got to make the right choices in the road Life's gonna be great. My missed positivity. Well, this picture on the left Started the biggest fight I've had with my husband in 34 years Because we got lost in Yellowstone and you know whose fault it was mine Because I kept saying we needed to go east I knew we would end up in Cody Wyoming eventually and you know, it didn't matter that we were staying in little bitty You know BFE, Idaho, we would get back there in five or six hours He didn't like it, but the next day was amazing Because we had the best talk we've had in 34 years And I will happily tell you I told Taylor when I walked in from my trip.  I was told no children I was told I had to have emergency hysterectomy at 22 My mom said no way. She's gonna have a baby boy That next year October 28th. He came along ignore the 80s hair please but That's been great. He works in our business and he tries every day to prove that he's not the son of the business person but we've had a great relationship he does a great job and We are so proud to have him in our company Those of you dealing with mom Gill I want you to stop Just stop Those of you dealing with parent Gill stop Your kids are watching what you do You were instilling in them something that my dad instilled in me work ethic That's what makes you good Hop and motivation are great, but folks they're temporary. I Can motivate the best we have a sales meeting every week man. They're on fire They're gonna go right 26 apps a week because that's their goal and then somebody will hit 10 What do I do? What do I say? Don't ask these three over here because they'll tell you I can rock their world sometimes or I'll be that encouraging mom But at the end of the day don't have mom guilt When I talk about support, I have to talk about this man right here You know when I met Taylor Martin He had graduated from SMU and I'd heard about him a lot from the people I was working with prior because that's who we met how we met and When he came to work with us, I was the leader of the company. I Was asked to come along as the credibility card so we could hire him He and I immediately connected.  We will celebrate 20 years next year.  They're the antichrist. We're not We train we educate. We are always going to give you hopefully more Than you ever expected, but we are going to get so much more. So thank you Taylor. I appreciate you So next one Friends in this business. Oh my gosh, our best friends are who we work with every day This picture up in the top right We formed this thing was Taylor's idea a couple of years ago. Y'all some of our biggest competitors are in that picture biggest competitors Now when you're on the speaker circuit a lot of these guys up here were competitors They're all trying to get the next gig the best speaking engagement But yet I noticed that they all compliment each other They're all talking great about them.  We hashtagged ourselves just the ten of us Oh, I went the wrong way. So I got to go red, right? There you go. So Justin Brock and I Lot of other friends you see Bradley Hanon there, you know, I've got so many friends Yesterday young man comes up to me. I couldn't wait to meet you and my only deal with Scotty was he had to introduce me to you Josh it was a pleasure to meet you last night Tons of friends in this audience. We I don't know if the thing can through here, but man longtime relationship with those guys So this next slide and I'm driving too fast because I'm trying to stay in my time real Queens Fix each other's crowns. You know the reason women don't get along because of a guy true story, I Will tell you this though When I quit worrying about what other women thought of me I Ended up going to the top of the leaderboard by their support By them wanting me to train them. You see Rebecca Davis in this picture. I met her last night We got the best compliment ever this guy goes. I think it was Andrew Lee y'all been friends forever And I was like no actually only met three months ago First time I met Rebecca. I was at her ranch And we've been talking forever on Facebook and all the great stuff and she said I don't really have a mentor in this business Would you be my mentor and I said absolutely Compliment last night was you're even sweeter than I thought you were that's real Queens fixing each other's crowns Those two little girls in that picture are my granddaughter and Justin Brock's daughter My hope is that when they see women like us mothers like us Leaders like us They're not talking about being Miss America They're talking about being a CEO of their own company They're talking about hey, I got a husband over here who loves me and supports me I heard Brad Hannon introduce his wife as she's the rock star of the family I hear Cody askin's talk about Lauren askin's like she's the rock star of the family I hear Sean Hendricks talk about his wife Shawna Hendricks rock star of the family and I will go to the next slide This is my team. I Love these people I Have them with my family because they are my family. They're who I'm with more than I am anybody else They love us they put us Before them I see employees during AEP I will drive by the office and there will be cars there at 11 o'clock at night I'm going in with the skinniest of teams in this COVID Period because I didn't know what to expect because you can't hire good people right now because they're lazy They're earning six hundred dollars a week on their iPhone and they're happy How can you live on six hundred dollars a week? I Mean you can't have this bling and this hair and these nails and these toes and these eyelashes making six hundred dollars a week And guess what our man want all this stuff they grope about it being on the credit card But they want you looking good.  Okay This one right here This is our operations officer. She's also my daughter-in-law the best compliment you get as a boss a mom a young woman saying Hey, I appreciate you're gonna pay for my college Galen But I don't want to go to college. I Want to go to the school of Galen Hendricks and I want to do what you do and so she started with our company in 2005 with a brand new baby and our team will tell you she can be Mean to me because she doesn't want to spend in our money foolishly Not because she doesn't love me because she does That for you there are got family in the business. There's nothing better. Yeah, there's arguments I was talking to Devon Blunt about the challenges of family members There's always gonna be a challenge But you would have that same challenge if you were working at XYZ company It's just easier to put that in your head. Oh, it's because we work together. Oh It's because we live together I'm not giving up a 34 year marriage disappointing my son my grandchildren Because yeah, and I'll use the Jordan word because you pissed me off for five minutes But marriage it's hard There's reasons to get divorced But our divorce rate is 67% It's because people are looking for instant gratification if you're in this business. It's not instantly gratifying Those of you that are working hard are gonna have gratification Because you work hard The woman in this picture she may be my daughter-in-law by title, but in my heart She's my daughter, and I'm always Going to show How she can be better Women show your employees Rebecca Davis has an office full of women Show them to be what you are. You're one of the hardest workers. I know Hard work by the way is a good thing It's a good thing if it was called fun. It would be spelled f u n. It's spelled W-o-r-x W-o-r-k for a reason. I did graduate, you know, I will tell you I didn't get a college degree Everybody thinks it. Ty Woldridge at Adena thought it until about six months ago and still says where'd you go to college? I didn't I went to the College of Hard Knocks and Galen Hendricks Taylor Martin I learn every day from someone but I went to school for the social hour And I will tell you most of our employees will tell you that our business would not be what it is without the Relationships that we have cultivated because of that heart to serve When you have a big heart people see it And they want to work with you. That's why y'all want to be with the Askins That's why y'all want to be with people that are on this stage that have a heart That have been through hard times. I can tell y'all my hard times I'm not supposed to have a house in Alito like I do Based on what people say I'm not supposed to have the ring I have based on what people say I'm not supposed to have a ranch based on what people say But it took me 35 years almost to get there and you know what I Would not trade one of those years For anything even last year hard year on me You know when you're on top man You think the guys are brutal. Whoo. Watch out for the women. You know, we've got to be better at supporting each other Me Lauren and Rebecca were talking last night about how to get everybody together and get them going and I told Cody my dream For this conference is to have more women on this stage more women in the 8% nation So why do what how what what inspires me?  You know what the most popular place was in Arlington, Texas? our house All of his friends chose to hang out at our house So if I was doing such a bad job working 65 hours a week Why did every other child that he hung out with want to be with Galen on the weekends? Want to be with Galen and Dan at the ball games want to be with Galen and Dan at Hooters? Okay, that's why but I Will tell you They were there Because when we were there, we were there We were present when I got off of that airplane at five o'clock from Phoenix or five o'clock from Fort Lauderdale or five o'clock from Harlingen, Texas. I was with my child until I got on the airplane Monday morning Priorities We'll build your kids into good people, but you have to prioritize them Okay, we talk about the things that inspire me. Hey, I'm Cody askings I bleed blue and silver as you know I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan, but there is nothing more exciting than watching your grandson Play his first high school football game the night of this conference Winning 40 to zero with a school that has eight state championships Nine so nine.  I shouldn't miss the conference. I should be on time But I can't miss this ball game But you know what I did instead I Call Andy who which by the way is with Cody ask and steam if y'all have not met him He's a rock star and I said yep, and I said Andy I'm gonna be there But I'm going to this football game Because that's important So don't say can't say can but Can instead By the way, that boy you're seeing right there is 14 years old.  I watched my dad work three jobs until I was five years old And we never had anything, you know anytime you got a motivational speaker, and I used to the same thing I told everybody about all my challenges and how broke we were and all that stuff But you know what the truth of the matter is I love beans and fried potatoes and cornbread and if I have to go back There I'm okay with that because I've had to build and rebuild five times in my career That's what makes you good you got staying power But you're making an example for these people that matter in your life My dad used to tell me two things and they are right No was spelt backwards You get three no's. It's on to the next. What did Jordan say yesterday? You prospect you sift through don't let those nag you out let those make you better Move on and he also said The people that you can call in the middle of the night to come get you from wherever you may be I won't say jail, but most of y'all go there Those are your people Those are the people that are going to encourage you My family and my family I always tell Taylor Martin You don't have the Hendricks blood, but you have the Hendricks heart and he supports me He puts up with a lot of my crap and I'm pretty easy most of the time these days But I used to be high strung if y'all think I'm high strung right now No, no, no, no, they can tell you high strung, but these are my people This is what keeps me humble. I Want everybody in this picture to watch me serve I never have to ask my son and daughter-in-law to give to the Ronald McDonald house. They just do It's because of what they've seen It's because of the people they are and our whole company Scotty's giving money Taylor's giving money. They join any bandwagon. I have so guys I will tell you this right down Queen of the Bundle go like the page if we can ever help you understand how to be Better cross-selling agent. You want to raise your income 30% call us. Thank you. Thank you for having me Thank you, Cody askin Are you tired of missing deals?  Do you feel like leaving money on the table every time you talk to someone my name's Cody askin I'm excited on December 11th to spend the day with you and coach Michael Byrd on our super-selling masterclass We're going to go through the sales process How do you transition from one part of the process to the next when you get to the clothes? What are the words you shouldn't be using? What are the phrases you should be using and how do you keep from creating doubt in the customer's mind? If these are problems that you struggle with we are going to make sure that you never struggle with them again Super-selling masterclass December 11th coach Byrd and I are going to walk through the sales system the sales process the sales cycle and how you close more deals more often Every single time and I'm super excited to spend time with you on December 11 So make sure that we see you on December 11 Hey, if you enjoyed this I got another one you're gonna love it's right there click on it See you next so you brand first then you market Then you distribute and I didn't really understand this I just thought if I became a great coach People would just come running right? What if I told you doesn't matter how good you are if nobody knows it how many of you think you're the best kept secret


Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Raya Salter. And I'm Nicole Horry. In our show this time, we'll go to the State Capital Auditorium for a public forum with some national experts on rail. The rail issue is in daily controversy and seems to be at a tipping point on both route and design. We need to follow what's going on. Of all the threads in local media, rail seems to be the most prominent. Think Tech has been covering the issues in many of its talk shows. The forum addressed was known as option 2A, street-level rail from Middle Street. The group that organized it is called Salvage the Rail. Salvage the Rail wants to modify the heart rail project to allow street-level operation for the final five miles from Middle Street through downtown, arguing that this will save money, three billion dollars, save time, it would be completed in 2021 rather than 2025 and will provide a much more environmentally friendly system that can be easily extended to Waikiki and UH Manoa. The moderator of the program was architect Scott Wilson. He's been involved in the efforts of AIA Honolulu to research rail transit since 2009. He was chair of the AIA Transit Task Force from 2009 to 2012 and chair of the AIA Regional and Urban Design Committee from 2011 to 2016. He was president of AIA Honolulu in 2015. Rail has become a real contentious issue for a lot of reasons and a lot of people are digging in on their positions and I don't think that's the way to go forward. My name is Gil Rivier. I'm the senator for Senate District 23, which is the north and wind matures of this island from Anna Point around to Kaneohe. The people in my district feel very strongly about this issue, they're very concerned about the fiscal prudence of the rail system. I think most people love efficient transit systems, things that work, things that show up on time, things that are built and managed and maintained. So I think we can all agree that it's important to build our rail system appropriately. The question is, do we continue without ever modifying a plan that was designed many years ago or with the realities that we're facing today, do we consider an alternative? I think what you're going to find today in this presentation, because I've met these three gentlemen that are going to speak and Scott Wilson, who will be the moderator here, these guys have a compelling story to tell. They have the expertise, they've seen it work, they've seen systems that work, they know what works, what doesn't work, what's misguided and they're going to bring you some information that I really hope you guys can listen with open minds and consider maybe this is what we should be talking about and then maybe let's build this into a conversation. Today's forum is sponsored by Salvage the Rail. We have a website salvagetherail.org. If you're interested in following our, in being on our email list, please go to that and sign up and you will get, you will get public announcements as we, as we continue our work. I wanted to just explain our title option 2A, but you see on the screen there. It comes from June 2016 and in 2016, the FTA, the Federal Transit Authority, notified Mayor Caldwell and Hart that according to the calculations, their project was looking to cost approximately $7.7 to $8 billion. And the current funding had only been 6.8, so there was a shortfall. And as a result, the FTA requested a recovery plan from Hart and the city. So in the process of, in order to get the remainder of the 750 million federal funding, Hart published this in June of 2016. It was meant to go to the public, it's on their website. It's just an update. And in the contents of that update, if you go to the next slide, there were six options listed for how to proceed with a recovery plan. And I'm not going to review all of the options because some of them just were really non-starters, I'm not even sure what the point was. But if you look in the middle there, option 2A was built in Middle Street as planned and continue with at-grade rail system. So that is the option that we're going to talk about today. We don't know why Hart really never pursued it. We talked to them today and they were actually very complimentary of our ideas. So let's go on and listen then, let's get started. After a welcome by Senator Gil Riviere and a history of option 2A by Scott Wilson, the first speaker, Vuken Vuchik, gave us his remarks. Dr. Vuchik is an emeritus professor of transportation systems engineering and city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He's lectured there and at more than 100 other universities. Dr. Vuchik's work has focused on urban transportation engineering, planning and policy and has been published in many books, papers and reports. He has consulted with the U.S. Department of Transportation and the cities of Belgrade, Beijing, Lima, Moscow, Naples, New York, Perth, Philadelphia, Rome, Singapore and others. The dominant mode used to be in World War II or so, streetcar or tramway. What happened with that? Well, it was systematically proclaimed that streetcars are old-fashioned, that they're noisy, they're not flexible and so on, that whole campaign was pushed by several other major interests, major lobbies of General Motors and Firestone and so on. And city after city, United States illuminated streetcars in nearly all cities, except in Boston, Philadelphia, where we have tunnels for it and so on. The, no, no, no bank. The France and Great Britain also mostly illuminated streetcars. In Spain, Franco brought a rule, got away with streetcars, no discussion about it. Now, some of the countries were different. Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavian countries and so on said, no, we do not want transit mixed with traffic and flexible and stuck in traffic. We want public transport to be separated so that it's independent of congestion. And therefore, they did not abandon streetcars, they modernized them, upgraded them. And that went through years and several stages. So that made so much difference that we, at one time, we said, we cannot call this any more streetcar, it must, it's a different mode, and we call it light rail transit, sometimes light metro and so on. Next, please. There was a, then thinking that, well, we now have so many cars, people drive and so on, we don't need a rail transit or transit at all, except for some peak hours and some people who cannot drive and so on. Well, that was, that proved to be completely wrong. With the increasing congestion, cities saw that they must not decrease and neglect public transport, they must build better and more competitive public transport. That means that primarily rail transit benefits in large cities. Small cities, buses are okay, medium cities, still okay, but we try to improve transit. But in large cities, we see that we must use much more rail transit. So in 1955, there were 20 cities in the world with metros, rail, I would call it, either rapid transit or metro is the same. So how many do we have today from 20 in 1955? Today we have more than 180 cities, not only North American, Europe and so on, but it's in Africa, it's in China, it's building about 15, 20 metros and so on. What happened with light rail? Light rail came back, the countries that said we were not abandoning it and invented light rail, they expanded it and they showed the others how light rail can be a very efficient system. So that Germany and Central Europe in general maintained light rail. But what happened in France, which abandoned all virtually all, 25 cities in France have now built new, recently built light rail transit systems. New systems in Spain, 25 new systems. Now there are some light rail systems, even in Africa and Morocco and in Algiers, in Israel, in China and all over the world. So that the several hundred cities have built also light rail transit systems. The next speaker was Douglas Tilden. He has had a 45 year career designing rail transit stations throughout the US, in Chicago, New York, Washington DC and Miami, and in the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and Greece. In 2007 and 2008, he was chief architect for one of the consultants to heart. He now works as an independent transit consultant. I was asked as a designer of transit stations, I was asked to take a look at the design of the Honolulu stations, the heart stations, and explain what would need to be done to those stations to accommodate light rail transit vehicles. But before I do, let me just say this and the reason that I, could you pop the next one up, the reason that I'm showing this. All of these big complicated projects go through various phases. And I think right now for heart, I think that you're in what I call the frustration phase. As a community, you're very frustrated that things are taking this long, you're very frustrated that there doesn't seem to be a fixed budget or a fixed schedule. We had similar problems when we did the Athens Metro project, in that we had a client that was the EU in Brussels. We were going back and forth between Athens to Brussels. We had the parliament, the Greek parliament that we were responsible to. They had a different feeling about what they wanted. And then one of the big things that we really wrestled with on the Athens project was all of the antiquities that we had to deal with in our excavations. And what that meant was that as we, even though we knew that some of those antiquities were there, given ground penetrating radar, we had to stop construction. We had to bring the Ministry of Culture's people in to clear the site. We had to pay the construction contractors more money because of what we were finding. And a lot of those antiquities ended up in museums, some in the actual stations. I was responsible for the design of those stations. And we have, for instance, out in front of the parliament building in Athens is a, we discovered a Roman bath. We knew that it was, it was pretty big, but we didn't know there was 150 meters long until we started opening it up. So right there, we had to tell the contractor to stop the work on the stations. We had to bet the people from the Ministry of Culture to come out and it took them over a year to clear the site. The reason I'm bringing this up is that every one of these big projects has frustrations, but how do you surmount those frustrations? Number one, you establish a fixed budget that you work against. The budget doesn't keep changing. You establish a schedule that you meet. And if you get behind schedule, you come up with ways of which you get back on schedule. And you start at that point because when we were welcomed in Athens by the Greeks, they told us, you're not going to get a darn thing built here. We've got a terrible history of not getting things built in our community. We set a budget. You can see that we ended up building it for two point four billion dollars. We set a fixed schedule. We had good decision making. We had patience, we had perseverance, but we moved forward and we built it and we opened it eight years later on January 2000. And since then, in the last 15 years, the Greeks have extended both of those lines. They've built a new line out to the airport and the project is a terrific success. But I want to emphasize the fact that you've got to have clear direction. The community has to know how much it's costing. The community has to know what the schedule is. And you have to move forward with those two key elements in mind. Finally, we heard from Gary Andreshak. He has more than 35 years in city planning and design, specializing in land use and transit planning, and has produced master plans concentrating on livability and pedestrian neighborhoods. His current projects include the light rail corridor and Calgary, Alberta and the high speed rail project from San Diego to San Francisco. I'm going to speak about the transformative opportunities of rapid transit on urban environments, specifically on downtown Honolulu. I'd like to add that I work on a weekly basis around North America on the design of transit systems. And one of the opportunities of doing that is I see what people are doing and I see what makes sense and I see what troubles me. So what I'd like to do is show you today what I think makes sense. I will add to that I live in Vancouver, Canada, a beautiful, livable transit city. So with that, let's go to the first slide. Now, this one's a bit cruel, perhaps, but it may well be a candidate for a liquid liquefies, believe it or not. I had a hard time believing it. Next. And this is the end of your line, and I'm not sure they need the no parking anytime sign at the moment, because I really didn't see a lot of pressure on the curb next to it. I will show you the next slide, which is the end of the line, and I call this one number two, because this is the end of the, you can go to the next slide. This is the end of the line of an elevated system in suburban Richmond, British Columbia, which, and you can see, I think I can do this without taking these fellows' eyes out. The end of the line for starters, they realized that the end only had to be a single guideway rather than a double guideway, because the double guideway is one station back. So they have the lights on in that case, but you can see immediately after building this thing, the developers came in and realized the potential of it and put the density where it should be next. Now, Vulcan spoke about the really delinear transit corridor and next slide, and Doug's talked about the stations. What I want to talk about next slide is really the context of the community that this system will go in and through, because as I said, when I started speaking, I see what we're dealing with here as an opportunity to really refurbish downtown Honolulu in a very positive manner. Next. I had the benefit when I went to grad school in Copenhagen of getting to know a professor, a fellow named Jan Gayle, who some of you may know. To my mind, he's the preeminent urbanist in the world today, and he's written many books. His latest one is Cities for People. And of course, the premise of that one is that cities should be for people and not for cars. In 1971, he wrote a similar book called Life Between Buildings. And the thesis of that one is quite simple. It's that a city is not buildings alone. It's the spaces between that matter most. And really in 1971, what he was commenting on was what we would call the emerging profession of urban design. When I started going and taking architecture in the 1960s, we had architecture, and we had city planning, and we had landscape architecture. But there wasn't a profession that really looked at how all of those pieces came together and how done properly, create to the synergy that we need to maintain the cities that we have and make them function better and make them more beautiful. Next. So, as an urban designer, when we look at transit, we look at a variety of things. We look at what I would call a series of overlays, one being the transit overlay, one being the open space overlay, and one being the buildings overlay. After they spoke, Scott Foster summarized the points at issue and called for questions from the audience. Here's some of the Q&A that followed. This seems like a great urban planner's design that looks great. But wouldn't it be really much better to just stop the damn thing at Aloha Stadium and just leave it there and leave buses to take things? I mean, it might be nice to have all of these fancy LRTs going on King Street and looping at Alapai and coming back. But, you know, that costs money. And let's take out the politics and the feds and all of that. But wouldn't it be much better off, quite frankly, to just stop it at Aloha Stadium? And the second related question is, regardless of what it is, how do we get from where we're at now to where you guys are proposing taking us? I mean, not talking about the dollar amounts, but what are the logistics? How do we get the ledge where the city council or heart or the feds to sign on to your proposal as it stands now or as it might be modified? Thank you. OK. Let's see. I think there was one question there about the sort of the one C drive question, you know, should we stop the system at Aloha Stadium? Bukong, do you like to address that? Well, that would mean that you would have a rail system where there's light traffic, very little traffic, and when you come to the main area where you have a lot of traffic, you would give it to the buses. And buses are already overloaded and they're reaching their capacity. So it would not be justified that we build that wrong line in suburbs and use that speed where there's no congestion, there are no people, and here to be with buses, right? Also, I'll ask Gary about who rides buses and who rides trains. Yeah, I was going to pick up on that. One of the things that we notice, time, can I add? Do you want an answer? Okay. We have a very hard time across North American cities converting car drivers to bus riders. They're far more interested in going from the car to the train that somehow it seems classy or a better ride or whatever. But another thing that happens, and I see it over and over again, is that we as planners, we tend to think that everybody is the same. And of course what I'm seeing is this tsunami of change from younger people, from the Gen X and the Gen Z who firstly don't want driver's licenses, don't want to own cars, want to live in downtown cars and want to be reliant on transit and on walking and on riding bikes. And if you do what you're suggesting, you're not going to play into that generational promise that you need to rejuvenate your city. All in all, this was an impressive program on an important community issue with a world-class panel of transit experts. Many people showed up to hear what was said, but the city wasn't there, and although some legislators appeared, in large part, neither was the state. After all the controversy, could it be that no one cares? We should all care and stay informed. Want to know more about Option 2A? Check out salvagetherail.org. The rail project will define our city, our economy, our way of life, and our community for many years to come. 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