Hello. How is everyone today? I'm great, Brian. I work yourself. Oh, it's a busy Wednesday, but I am doing well. Great. Right. So, uh, today is, um, April 15th, 2020.  Before we get started, just keep in mind that this meeting is recorded and will be available for the whole world to see. So don't say anything. You wouldn't want the whole world to see. Yes. So, um, today our agenda is, uh, actually not very long. Um, there, um, there are some items that are going on in the background right now, um, namely around, um, sick out delivery versus, uh, the working group serverless. And we are currently working those issues out. Uh, but first up is, um, a presentation here from, Oh, I'm not going to. All right. Is it to your mirror? Yeah, yeah, you guys. All right. So, um, I'll let you take over right now. And, um, thank you. So let me stop sharing. Can you guys see my screen? Yes. Great. All right.  Presentation. All right. So first of all, thank you guys for having us today. Thanks for allowing us to present. Um, this is a presentation for our sandbox proposal for the serverless workload specification. Uh, my name is Tichomir Shudilovich. I, I'm a developer at redhead been there for 11 years and, uh, I'm working on business automation there. Uh, as far as CNCF goes, I've been contributing to the service workflow spec for about close to a year now. And I've also done a couple of contributions to the cloud event specification just so you guys know who I am. Um, so the agenda here for today's talk is, we're just going to give an introduction to what a service workflow specification that the motivations behind it, you know, look at a couple of key features and use cases. So everybody understands what this project is about. Uh, then we'll go into kind of like the project information and then we'll do a quick demo of course, any questions that you guys might have. So if we can summarize the service workload specification in one sentence, uh, we want to focus on then being a vendor neutral specification for defining workflow models. These workflow models are responsible for orchestrating microservices. And when we talk about orchestrating, we talk about coordination and management of, both services, um, loosely distributed services, microservices, and also events that can trigger, uh, for example, these services. This slide kind of want to get right into it, what we are and what we are not. Uh, in the top left corner in the box, you see what the service workflow specification provides. Um, or is striving to provide that the core of the specification is the JSON schema. And this is something we have been working on and also have released version 0.1 recently of the schema, uh, alongside of course, the specification document and everything, examples, use case documents and everything else. Uh, this JSON schema clearly describes the workflow model. That, uh, you can use to describe serverless workflows out of this JSON schema. Then we strive to provide, hopefully, in the near future, um, a lot of different things like SPIs, APIs, uh, TC case for conformance purposes in many different languages. We, we had, uh, we'll contribute, uh, an SPI, a Java SPI, but however, we have to wait until we have a proper GitHub structure in place for that. Uh, so that is kind of like, uh, in the community, there has to be implementers. So these are basically runtime implementations. They can use the provided SPI, say, uh, and APIs to create a runtime implementations for the server, serverless workflows. They have to use that or create their own. And they have to, in order to conform to the specification, uh, they have to conform to, uh, to given tests in the TCK. And what we're actually trying to achieve, uh, the main goal is to be able to write JSON or YAML based, which specification default, uh, um, has both, um, formats available, uh, workflows, which can execute on many different runtimes. And by that, be able to do that. Um, um, um, um, um, and by that be able to be deployed on many different cloud providers. So that's kind of like the core idea behind the specification and what we're striving to do. Now, as far as the motivation go, why are we even attempting this or why is this project interesting or important? If you look in this slide, there's a whole bunch of serverless workflow implementations already in place. And these are just some of them and it seems new ones are popping up every month, it seems.  And a lot of it is not all of the cloud providers have realized that workflows are an integral part of their serverless offering in order to be, to complement, um, the, the development and deployment of serverless. Applications. Now, well, again, but that doesn't mean we need the specification. So why do we actually need the specification? The current user situation for serverless workflows, as we've seen with all those implementations are, once you choose, um, cloud provider that offers, for example, a serverless workflow implementation, you run into big vendor locks on both the workflow model level. So you basically stuck with the proprietary, in most cases, definition of workflow definition. And it's also your stuck with workflow notation, which is the visual representation of the workflow itself. Um, so, you know, it's very hard currently, if not impossible to take your workflow definitions and moving from one cloud provider to the next. And this creates this situation where we need a portable and vendor neutral specification. Now, as far as the serverless workflow specification really focus on the workflow model, we're not currently looking at notation. We have attempted that a little bit here and there, but we were waiting to grow and get a community in place before we attempt to actually deal with the notation part of it. But we are focusing definitely on the workflow model. So this is why the motivation behind a specification. And this is why we believe that it is very important currently, given the situation of what's going out there with serverless workflows and cloud providers that a specification is is much needed. So let's take a look at some of the key features of the serverless workflow specification. They all fall into kind of two buckets. And everything that we're doing or adding to the specification, we are looking into these two buckets and see how we improve based on those. The first one, of course, is something that workflows are doing and have been around for a very long time. And what they're very good at is the clear separation of concerns. We would like workflows are really used to allow developers to build their business logic, their functions, their services to focus on business logic, and workflows, what they do, they offload a lot of crosscutting concerns such as parallel execution. So data management, things like that. All the orchestration logic is this is kind of like we're workflows are responsible for. At the same time, we have to look at workflows running in the serverless environment, and especially the cost. The cost to running in serverless environments might be quite different than what in the typical or other types of environments workflows. A lot of times are either charged based on some sort of transition. So if your workflow goes from one state to the next, you get charged a certain amount of money, or in some cases you're charged again for execution time of the workflow. So in both cases, all the control for logic and the things that we're adding to our specification, we're looking at how we can structure those and build those to lower the overall execution cost of the services running. Now, the core of the serverless workflow is the model definition. Like I said, we both support both JSON and YAML format, so we're kind of machine readable, understandable, and embeddable. This is kind of like you can see the core model definition each workflow has a unique ID, can have a name, a version, description, and the core parts of the model definitions are function definitions. These are reusable as you can define it once it will look at specific examples and then reference them throughout your workflow states or the building blocks to execute the control for logic that can reference them and call different services. Workflows can both react to events, so it's being instantiated by existence of events, and it can also produce events. So the second bucket of the model definitions are reusable event definitions. Those conform, we conform to the cloud events specification, so all of our event types that the workflows can connect upon have to be in the cloud events version 1.0 format. The third bucket is the workflow control for logic or the building blocks we call in states currently, and we will look at that those are really the building blocks to allow you to do, for example, for example, gateways where you can split your workflow execution into different branches, you can do parallel execution and things like that and we will take a look at that as well. So this is, for example, definition of functions within serverless workflow specification. As you can see this is very kind of vendor neutral. We each function can have a name, a resource, and a type. So from the serverless workflow definition, you can really use a whole bunch of different ways of accessing and defining services that should be invoked within during the workflow execution. Now, of course, we know functions also for services need input parameters, and since those are defined actually in the states that reference them, because multiple states can can execute different functions with different types of parameter input. Events, like we said, workflows can react to events, workflows can be instantiated given the event times also workflows can produce certain types of events that they can be consumed by different services or even other workflows. As we use this cloud event specification 1.0 and events have a name, they have a type which has to match the cloud event type parameter source, and we also use correlation because within workflow instantiation, a lot of times you have to correlate different events to the same workflow instance, for example, to resume execution of a workflow instance, or even start a new instance of a workflow. In this case, we use a correlation token. This is just within cloud event specification, a parameter. In this case, we use an applicant ID, because we want to correlate all the events, for example, in this case, applications submitted set scores received and stuff like that to the applicant same applicant in this case, and in most likely the same workflow instance that handles this application process that consumes these events. Now, the core building block or the building blocks that allow you to do all kinds of different things are states. State has a unique name each state, and we have a whole bunch of different types, and each type represents a certain type of state that can perform a certain function. Each state of or serverless workflow can define the start of the workflow instance. So this is where the start parameter types comes in. We have different types of starts that we have currently defined or expanding on. The default one just means the workflow instance is started. But there can also be, for example, one thing that we currently have is a scheduled workflow instance where you can say I want to schedule the execution of this workflow in this particular time frame. Next comes specific parameters for each state has different parameters depending on what it does. And also each state has an end definition. Again, this is the notes that it is the end of the workflow execution. It can be different things. It can be there to terminate workflow execution, which means stop it, or in this case in this example, it can be an end type of event where when the workflow instance is completed, we produce a cloud event, which then can be consumed by either services or other data indexing or whatever you want to do to say, hey, this workflow is completed or it can trigger other workflow instances as well. If it's not an end state, a workflow has to transition. So we have transitions from one state to the next. And this is denoted with the transition parameter, which we define the unique name of the state that we want to transition to. State types, and I'm sorry if this is hard to read, we currently define nine types of states. We go from, of course, and we feel that these are kind of like the core states, especially for a version 0.1 that we have released. We're looking into adding more states and refining the ones that we currently have. But currently, we deal with events. We have the core one. So for example, the event state, which is a state that is has ability to consume events. And the operation state is a state that allows us to do actions and actions can reference function executions switch state. So we have support for gateways, which are database. So for example, given some information or data that is provided either with the starting of the workflow instance or the events that we're consumed the event data can trigger different actions or path throughout the workflow as as it's being executed. Of course, parallel state laws parallel execution. And for example, the callback state which is the newest one that we added this really allows us to do integration with different services and also user tasks so you being able to wait for a user decision is very important at times during workflow execution when human decision making is important. So this is kind of like the core of the states that we have available in the, in the specification current. Now, as far as use cases goes, there's a bunch of use cases available and we do have in our github repo currently use cases documented defines I think five or six different ones. I just wanted to show one here is an online vehicle auction, for example, example, where, yes. Any question. Okay, I'll go ahead. So in this case we we have an online vehicle auction where users from different types of devices mobile web you name it can bid on vehicles and for example in this case a serverless workflow can be used very nicely to orchestrate different services in this case authentication service bidding service and inventory service. At the same time be able to store something in a in a common data store. So a workflow can do many different things, and this is kind of like one use case where, where, where it can be used. Now as far as project information goes. We are currently a subgroup of the CNCF serverless working group. As far as communication goes we have monthly zoom calls and which happen first Monday every every month. This is the document where you can track our meetings. We also meet almost weekly on working on the specification primer document which is still ongoing and should be done in the near future as far as github goes we're currently under the CNCF WG serverless sub repository in the workflow directory. And here is also a link for our 01 release that happened about two weeks ago. As far as governance goes we're consensus and community driven. We're still a very small project as far as numbers goes as far as community goes but we're growing fairly fast. We're hoping that within the inclusion and the adult, you know, into CNCF sandbox project we can really grow this community. As far as owners goes and I had, hey the word owners currently the companies that have the decision making power. Currently a redhead Nokia Camunda and Hawaii. And we're looking at expanding that as well. As far as license go we're currently Apache v version 2.0. And I'm no Brandon Burns mentioned in the TOC PR that this might not be the perfect license for for a specification so we will hopefully work with him on and defining that in the near future to make sure it's the correct licensing. But either way should it should be open source completely. As far as the community goes we currently have a mailing list which again is the serverless working group mailing list. We have a slack channel that we're using as far as communication or chat goes. And we also started a blog with where we are posting information and just community blogs about the specification itself. So just TOC sponsors I know from the PR that we have created Brandon Burns and Liz Rice have raised their hand to to to sponsor our project and I don't know really somebody can explain me the the if we need three or how does that work. I don't know very well how that goes. All right, so do we have time still yeah we do right. So let's take a look at a quick demo actually that will speak for show you guys so so what I've created is is. We're doing a specification but also redhead what we have done and will contribute back to to CNCF is actually an API and also runtime implementation which of course is redhead specific in this case but it's a first implementation of of the serverless workflow specification it is not bounding bound to the entire specification version 0.1 yet but we're kind of getting there. But for the sake of this example I wanted to show you this demo and I will go into presentation mode what we're actually doing is we have this particular workflow which is called Jason service call. And what this will do is we want to start the workflow we want to access an existing service in this case is the rest service, which is freely available rest countries that you and specifically the name endpoint, which we want to access the other ones. So this is our service execution and get the list of get the information by the country that that are our input is for at that point. Let me go back to this. This is a simple work. So this is the operation state, which actually calls has an action that gets the country information. Alright, so we reference the country info function, the country info function then it will execute the the particular service that I just showed to get the country information. At that point it's very simple we have a switch state, which you can look at it as a gateway, and which has two choices or two path from the gateway, and it's based on the population. If, for example, and this is just for the test if the population size that we get back from the service that is is less than 20 million we say, classify the population size of this country a small or medium. Or if it's greater, we want to classify this country population sizes large and you can play with the numbers he doesn't matter it's just for the text. The classification actually again calls to functions or to services which store this information, and they're defined up here as well. So, basically, it's a simple workflow you we just received the country information, and we classify it. And that's it. And we can run this locally. I'm going to show you guys that is going to skip the test to run faster. This is running on Quarkus locally. And what our implementation does that this is something that we also want the specification to show the workflows can be exposed in services as well. And what the what really happens is our workflow is going to be exposed as on a rest endpoint. So calling this rest standpoint and giving it some Jason data in this case is going to trigger the execution of the workflow. I go here and I go to local host, and we created a small little web page is just an HTML page, which calls the HTTP get for Jason service call so this is also if you see Jason service call is the ID of our workflow. So the idea workflow which is unique ID is actually going to be the same name as the rest endpoint that the workflow is exposed. Yeah, go ahead. Interrupting here on the demo is always demo to show because there's a number of questions and we have a couple of other. Yeah, I'll just I'll finish here on minutes. So basically this clicking on classify will trigger the workflow execution passing in the name of the country Germany. You will get the information classify the population sizes large and display and we can do, for example, here in a small media and just to show you also just an example one of the things things we have done to show the yes you can deploy the applications locally, but they're also deployable in this case and open shift. We have deployed this application on open shift, and you can easily see the same type of information you can type in like Switzerland, for example, and classify there as well. So that's it for the demo and yes of course go ahead and any questions. I'll let Harry then jump in but I have a number of questions noted down that that I'd like to ask first. So the first one you partially answered this one but is there a an open source reference implementation. Yes, everything that I've shown so far is open source. Actually, there is two things that I've shown that one is the API which is the actual ability to parse the Jason and the YAML from the workflow specification. Yes, that is completely open sources Java and that is something that we will contribute back to the open shift once we have, like I said a proper GitHub structure in place, and we hope that the community then will pick that up and help us not only that, but also be contribute the API is in different languages as well. But the execution engine is not open source. It is completely also open source. Yes, it is open source. Yes, everything that we do is open source. I'm not promoting their runtime implementation because he has nothing to do with the specification it was just for the example to show you guys something running. And we also hope that more and more companies, if they get involved with the specification will create open source runtimes for it as well. Did you talk already to other projects there are a couple of workflow projects you mentioned obviously our goal but there was a big brigade as a CNCS project. Are you already collaborating with these projects actively. No, we, we, our collaboration is really mostly with with the serverless working group and the guys from cloud events. There will be definitely something we would like to to have the help and the collaboration in the future. But no so far we haven't had the chance to do that yet. So, the reason why I'm asking is actually two things, obviously whenever like specification projects are a bit different to two implementation projects in what that somebody needs to implement specification obviously, which requires to be handled a bit differently and if the goal is interoperability. I think it's a good thing to do but I would really have this almost as a prerequisite for your project that you actively engage with the Argo and brigade folks also for your own interest because otherwise you will build a specification and all the other projects in the CNCS are not not actively using it. So, I think as a, as a pointer talking to the Argo and brigade folks and how you can more jointly work together would be a great idea here. Yeah, I completely agree and I think this is where we kind of really try to get our project which is currently small into a CNCS Sandbox project is that will really give us exposure not only to the community but also the other teams within the CNCS. So, yeah, the collaboration would be much easier for us in that case. I actually still propose to do it the other way around honestly I would really propose reaching out this project and engaging them early on. So obviously CNCS might help you but you had a very early stage with the 0.1 and I mean I've done a lot of standardization work myself and I really recommend getting them on board and really agreeing on the common problem that you want to solve with the CNCS because just be in the CNCS won't resolve this issue for you. So if they're interested if they see value in doing this, they should see actually the value right away. So I know it's not required in the official Sandbox CNCS documents, but I would really strongly encourage you to do this beforehand because like there is no silver bullet. Just by being in the CNCS but suddenly people will magically show up and then come to you to approach it. So that would be my proposal for you to actively reach out to them. Okay, that's a good idea. It's, I mean you could accept because one thing is the Sandbox project for sure they could just more or less die or if they're not become active that's why we'll do it right in front. Definitely yeah but one thing is yes we're currently still small as far as community go but we do have some a lot of big companies in place that have been around workflows and business automation for years so that we have the advantage of that. So, but yes definitely as you said we will engage and and try to see, you know, where it leads us. Definitely. Any reference implementation we asked. I wonder what what are the pieces that we have shown right now is really specific to serverless because it feels like it's a like general purpose workflow definition language. Yeah, I didn't understand the question. So, so I wonder what what's really so specific to serverless workflows here because basically it's a workflow definition language and Jason Jason and the animal as far as I as I understand that. I don't see this that they're really serverless part in there. Yeah, that's a good question for serverless is really kind of like a buzzword anyways, we described serverless we use the word serverless because we focus the niche of this specification is to orchestrate serverless functions. And this is kind of like what we're what the way serverless is used. Yes, there is some community, you know, there was some question in the past. Maybe we can call it cloud workflow, maybe we can change the name, but I feel the serverless fits this niche nicely because as long as that buzzword is used for functions and microservices deployed in the cloud environments I think we also need to stick with that word, because we are not looking for a general replacement of existing general business automation or business process management workflows. We're looking for a very niche specific and do what we do best within orchestrating microservices which are loosely deployed on on cloud providing environment provider environments that's kind of like what we're looking at. My next question would be kind of like moving in here is there also part of the specification to define how I should write a service that works with that specification on an API level. How you should write what I'm sorry a service like if I look at lambda I know they have like just taking numbers and example here there's lots of other serverless implementations out there. Like what payloads I can expect if I'm like writing a service or a step in your in your workflow process you're planning to standardize and this as well like this is like the data structure that they get. I mean cloud events define parts of it but they more or less define the wrapper but not the actual payloads and you have some payment components in there. So there was a plan I could define this more in the protocol and payload level for the services that I want that I want to write using this language as well. All right it's a good question I'll try to answer it. Currently the only there there are two kind of like restrictions of what the service workload specification defines the one of course as you mentioned on the event side is the format of cloud events the cloud events payload is really can be is in its data parameter it can be an adjacent structure XML structure, or even base 64 as they define it in their specification. As I mentioned before, workflows really want to offload your the orchestration part and part of that is not orchestration events and services but also the data management for example inputs to a particular call as you mentioned to a function getting its results and then passing that, for example, to the next function call the restriction that we currently is the data structures within the sort of the workflows is Jason based. All right so right now, as far as payload goes in order for them to be merged within for example the workflow context or the state data context they have to be Jason format. That is currently our restriction that doesn't mean the data within this Jason structure which defines the data or the payloads cannot be anything basic before encoded images URLs you name it, but the overall structure of the data has to be Jason format. Yeah, I just think it from an interoperability perspective and another detective and you might talk to the technical people as well. And I don't know that also that part of CDF, but they are not taught exactly discussing these details and interoperability working group. And I don't know exactly those details and how to name things and how to pass, like around the bags along and there's also a lot of work for it sounds like a totally different field in the open telemetry project like instead of these, these ideas to have like this data that they do some work on baggage transportation that these kind of things so if we're really talking about a specification I would see these things fall into this one as well honestly. Okay. And that can help to introduce you to the right people if you need any pointers there so definitely. Harry any questions from your side. No, I have no further questions I think your discussion is very meaningful because if you are trying to talk about a specification and then they really need to care about that what can it fit to different implementations. Instead of just a specification. I think further discussion around this topic, maybe this right right person and also I think they need to involve the service working group in the discussion to see their point of view. What, what, what do you specifically mean we have been working very closely with the serverless working group. I mean, folks from service working group input from service working group community. Sorry, I don't really understand what that means. The users or implementations. I assume there will be users or implementations in current service working group know or for workflow interested in implementation so I think they may have some valuable input and they'll regarding to the project itself. Correct. Yeah, we have we have we give status updates on the in the serverless working group meetings. And we have been working with we're part of the group so we have received some valuable information and so far they have been also helping us. Some with comments on on the primary documentation that we're working on so yeah we're we have been working closely with with them for close to a year now. They also helped us some with the correlation in from, you know, data from from serverless from cloud event specification so we're working close and we will continue working with them. As far as being a subgroup under service working group currently. So there is communication. We definitely looking for more or more advice or whoever is interested into into giving us. Okay, Dennis is good move on to some other topics on the agenda. Next one is a quick one for those of you have been with us for a while we have been working for a logo for the. This week at delivery working group. There is a second round. There's also an issue linked in the agenda. If you haven't shared your ideas where you want this to go and provide your input please do so. Ideally, yeah. But by the end of the week. Well, this is a short week already so let's say by mid of next week so Wednesday next week, please provide your input so we can then eventually move this. Over here. I know that Diane really likes. Yes, comments in the issue, and we'll work on being able to wrap this up. I'll do that. Get it in there. I also wanted to provide some quick updates on project proposals. It was already happened in there so you should be ready for your review process. Yes, you actually are and it's currently on us the chairs that we did not find the time yet. Document is fine expect really to hear from us this week I had it on my plan to have a look at the talk today. But for some reason today turned out to be a bit shorter and expected to definitely expect something from us in the coming days so we did not forget about you just be a short of this. I don't want to think the operator framework and hub is still with the to see for kudo. Same story there so we are still waiting for feedback from the to see as there were some questions from the to see if I think kudo. In case you got. Sorry, go ahead. Okay, yeah, I also have update on regarding to the build pack proposal and I'm reading the documentation for build pack containers and I will take the review this week. I can be the contact the person for build pack review process. Yeah, for for kudo and operate the framework I would ask you to ping maybe that you see mailing list directly regarding approach updates that might be the quickest one for you to get it so for kudo we are still waiting for the final decision how to proceed and for operator framework and hub the review has been done by the working group and is now with to see the to see has to decide on next step so. Yes, then captain has done his review. This needs to be done forwarded to the to see and any other projects we forgot about no I think there's no others in review right now, but obviously we not started with the serverless workflows. And I want to take the last couple of minutes for the air gap working group to provide a quick update and also operator who wants to talk about your gap. So we have nobody there just give them a minute in case you did not have a look the air gap working group, and I will post it in the agenda, started to work on a best practices document on how to do area of deployments and I think right now they only. They have already one customer example in there, I think it's from. I think it's from great. From crazy. In case you are running an air gap environment or are interested you should have a look at it there also meeting on Friday for those of you who are interested and want to join I'm just finding the documentary you just give me a second. Oh, that's weird. Amy. Is it possible that we have the meeting notes. Yeah, I'll figure out where where the document is a definitely where is my office team. But in case you're running air gap environments, have a look at it and also try to join the Friday meeting on the operator side, we have Mark here. Yes. Now we can hear. I am here. Yeah, we don't really have anything like we've had to kind of recent meetings in the air gap are the operator working groups still kind of working through the definition of the operator there's some interesting conversations that happen every couple of weeks like encourage anybody who has an opinion about what defines an operator. We're still at the phase right now just trying to define what the operator is. I believe we have our next meeting next week on this encourage anybody to come and join in participate in it. Nothing to report yet, but hopefully soon. I think that's pretty much it for the agenda today and we are finishing on time today, perfectly on time. Yeah, just a post in the link to the work done by your gap in a couple of minutes here. And you know that I think all of you will reach out to some of the projects offline. The next couple of days and then see each other again. Thanks everyone.


It says connecting, but we'll see. Oh, OK. I think we're on.  Yeah, well, that's all right. We can shovel around here. There we go. OK, we're here with Karen. We're down here at Nusa. We're at Kangaroo Valley. It's all blurring together here. And we're trying our live broadcast onto YouTube. And how's it been for you, this 11 days? Absolutely amazing, very peaceful for me. Actually, a really, really, really peaceful retreat. Lots of video editing, lots of talks about church and retreat centers, and people coming to Newcastle. And from here, I've got four people coming to my place for Easter. Yeah. It's sort of going to continue. Yeah. So it's been very spontaneous. And when you came down here, you were basically going to work on the media team and kind of just focus on your purpose. Why are you down here? That's it. I've been on purpose 24-7. Yeah, just taking in everything that comes. Yep, that's it, everything. Yeah, yeah. So there's a church forming down here, Living Miracles of Australia. That's it. Yep. So paper work done for Newcastle, but it's just a way for you guys to come and share or a way to have all the resources come from Australia to be distributed, a way to organize more gatherings. And just to be like a center point in Newcastle for all your resources. And where people can come for the first step if they want to know more. Yeah, so it feels really good. Because there's probably, well, at least 10 of us that will be in that area, probably close to 20 that will be really involved in it. So yeah, it feels keeping the space in between when we're not in the country. Okay, well, it sounds very exciting. It's like things are unfolding. You can feel the orchestration of the whole thing with the church getting organized and maybe a little center there. That sounds exciting. I heard Eleanor's going to come up and start looking around and everybody's just going to come up and Peter. Peter and Ross, KJ's coming as well. KJ, Sean. Yeah, Sean's coming. He's moving impermanently at the moment. Or how long's permanent, she knows, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's beautiful. Well, we're just grateful to be here and be able to share all this. And it's been a wonderful 11 days and it has a rain here and after a lot of gorgeous sunny days and now it's kind of winding down and we're ready to see what the next steps are. We're into big hugs now, because, you know, well, it's a few hours. Yeah, yeah. No one wants to leave. Yeah, no one wants to leave last few hours and we've got a session. I see they're behind us gearing up and getting everything ready and you've got it ready to film. I'm ready. Okay. Well, thank you. We love you, world. We're down here in Australia again, down in Kangaroo Valley and Frank and his wife, Kathy, have been our host and we're just really grateful for everything that's happened and look forward to talking to you more. Yeah, bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Done.


What's up fam? So this is not going to be a standard video to begin with. We're in the drone right now Yep, this is a drone. It's not a camera on a tripod No, this is the drone and this is not going to be our standard publishing tutorial that we've been pumping out recently Yeah, let's send that up. Show that it's a drone. Yeah, it's gonna be loud for a moment. Be ready and Here we go. Okay All right, let's keep it going Welcome to this video. Yeah, so first of all, this video is clearly very different than anything We've been making recently the reason why is because so literally today we sat down like let's do a filming session We're literally like what should we make a video about what video should we make so normally like previously? We've had literally ten videos filmed ready to upload like we have so many ideas But we're just like what should we make a video about we've made all the publishing tutorials under the Sun? Basically, and that's kind of one of one ask like what kind of videos do you guys want from us to help you guys the most? That also makes me wonder like if it if it's a publishing tour Publishing tutorial that you want or more of those because that's what some people are quite a lot people actually do ask for I just wonder like what what purpose does that serve? Why why why do you need more publishing tutorials? Is that what's gonna make a difference? Can I say why yeah? Yeah, I think it's so that you procrastinate further with what's actually taking action and building a publishing business You're gonna wait for that magical free publishing tutorial. Oh now I have all the tools I need to get started now I can take action, but let me tell you that video is never gonna come here The truth is you have all the videos you need whether you have a course or you have just YouTube YouTube have all the videos you need so it's getting to the point where like it's pointless for us to make Publishing tutorials because you have everything you need that doesn't actually help people Okay, so that brings the question like then why do you watch YouTube videos? So and what's the purpose of like our videos if you're watching them for inspiration or motivation? Then I get it. That's value. All right, then so are we on the villa right now the video Okay. Oh, yeah, I can see the screen. Okay, see that's where we've been living for the past seven months here in Bali Since November it's November 3rd I think it was and the reason I say that is because we leave Bali in a week today is June 5th We leave on June 13th. That's seven months in this villa and that basically wraps up the Bali chapter Yeah, we're really moving on to the next job No, no more life. No more Bali then not for the next while at least so that's also live it What we want to talk about in this video. This is not a publishing tutorial. We're kind of just gonna talk about life It'll be a bit about us what we're doing our plans our businesses So if you want to listen and learn about that keep watching want to learn about publishing X out I guess yeah, so I mean let's should we go into a camera that's actually looking at us now Yeah, we let's do that and then we can talk about what happens after June 13. All right, let's go All right, so we just landed the drone we're sitting here at the pool now in our villa in Bali and We only have a week left here before we leave on June 13th So quickly where we'll be going we're gonna go to Berlin for a week But then where we're really going after that is Pula Croatia for a month We're gonna be attending this month-long event. It's mind Valley event It's called mind Valley campus or mind Valley University. So you guys know I'm gonna be like going to school again No, it's not a better not hated school because school school and jobs are the two things that it's not anything But this is it's like a self-development a 30-day self-development event honestly We we don't know what we're gonna start into but we're trying it because that's what life's all about It was a shit like that But what we wanted to say is naturally with a week left here in Bali, you know You just kind of reflect on this past You know the past chapter past seven months in Bali and also funny enough a guy behind the camera Dane He was just scrolling through our Instagram the other day looking for like some sick thumbnail content And then our first Instagram post ever on our Instagram account Follow us mcgillson twins was from exactly today 12 months ago. It's just really funny looking at it. It says June 5th Post says today's June 5th, 2018 Gonna be fun to look back at this and see how far we've come and now we're exactly one year later. Yeah Coincidentally right seeing it and looking at it. So that also just made me think like yeah What what has happened in the past year? We had a few YouTube videos out I just over I was just in the in the process of overcoming the fear of speaking on camera Yeah, really a lot can happen in a year We've said that a lot of times before and since just here in Bali we've shot I was coming before 75 videos at this place which fucking flew by yeah It's crazy when you look back over the past year and just think about all the things as that have happened It seems like it's not that long We look back just one year like holy shit the amount of things that happened So 150 YouTube videos and yeah, and that's at least how we feel But there's also on the contrary feel the complete opposite way that if you're sitting doing the exact same thing You've always been doing not challenging yourself not trying new things not getting outside your comfort zone and having new experiences You could sit back look past you and think I Nothing happened. It can go the exact same life.    I know we will so that was looking looking into the past a little bit looking into the future Currently like our business plans and whatnot. So we've been making.  We're so close. Yeah, we're so so close like what life is gonna be like after creating Like you almost don't know. I don't remember what it was like before when you had free time Yeah, when you when you had free time. So after that it's just gonna be Focusing on this course because we know what we've created here is going to be something Massive for the entire publishing online business community something that like we cannot Step away from or or ignore these past six months also because the course was everything we have not published at all So we want to get back into publishing. So which brings up another topic that we could quickly acknowledge some people Leave comments or asking us about like has anything happened to your guys publishing accounts because some people I don't know. Some people know or whatever. So we did run into some issues with our Publishing account one month was it it was like two months ago. So two months ago. Yeah, and it was related to people Haven't fallen for a while. No, we made this road to 10k account There was a joint publishing account and me and rachel's we're gonna work on together to kind of show that you Start from zero and build like a brand new publishing business with nothing other than I mean We have we had money on our side to invest But you could take it from nothing to like a lot of publishing income very quickly So what everyone's always thought is that you could have a Another publishing account multiple accounts if it's under this separate business entity, which is what we had So we're like, yeah We just made this joint account for the sake of showing people and then having a new publishing account Good to diversify things like that in the end turns out it turns out that Amazon just doesn't give a shit about the Legality of things and like oh separate business entity different tax IDs means different people means accounts from different entities Yeah, so you can explain that to them, but in the end it's just like yeah, okay cool story, bro But you're operating multiple accounts.  Yeah, so that's basically how it is with Amazon So anyone who does have multiple accounts know that like you're Very high risk. Yeah, you are like you can lose that any moment because we did have our accounts for a long time Like nine months. Yeah, I was never expecting anything then we got the KDP termination email for the multiple accounts And like yeah, I thought like it is okay. We didn't do anything wrong. They're making a mistake We didn't do anything wrong. We're like all right. Let's call and figure it out I explain it. Yeah, I actually contacted a lawyer who specializes in like Amazon cases And I told the situation and he was like, oh, so did you have all the counseling? Well, yeah, but I started over LSE. He's like, oh, well you guys know you I can't help you guys Yeah, I saw the case you guys are in the wrong like oh There's nothing like really there's nothing we can do. Oh, no, you're not allowed to do that That's there. That's totally fair that they terminated your account like oh so in the end I guess so you really can't have multiple accounts.     It's my business.  They can have whatever customers they say no to whoever they want Yeah, so basically how I see it is that we just took an L for the publishing community about this like multiple accounts LLC different entities thing and now like we know it learn from us, you know that it's not allowed I know a lot of other people who are in this situation who think it's okay And they're doing it just know that it's probably like a ticking time bomb for you. Yeah, we tested it So you're welcome. I know the answer. You're welcome. You're welcome Okay, so and then also with regards to our ACX account This is actually a pretty funny story and I have no idea what is going on All right, so about a month later from the KDP account. I figured oh, we sell the ACS account I'll just keep making money cool. No big deals cash And then a month later, we got a termination email from ACX as well with absolutely no explanation No warning no anything then of course I called up and I asked like why like why would you terminate our account? Did we do anything? We're not allowed to and then they said, okay Let me look into the case for you. What is the email account associated with your ACX account?  I'm just like What so without any warning explanation They don't won't say why like 20 to 30 times and every time you figure out like hear our names like nope.  It was just it was just cash So it was just money. She was just making money and that long run it. This cost us over a hundred thousand dollars Without in like actually actual passive income. It's one of the situations. We don't need the money at all and we can still publish We will continue to publish. Oh that fucking brings it back to the point I was starting with I was just saying that Now that we're done with the course finally gonna get back into publishing again won't be on that account But we still have means of publishing so we will be getting back in the publishing at a lower volume that we have before Because our focus is now serving everyone with our publishing community So to sum that up basically just explaining if for people are curious what happened it changes fucking nothing We're gonna get back into publishing by our other means We won't tell you exactly how because there are we know there are trolls on the internet We're gonna try and sabotage something that's that's just one of the cons of being on the internet is what it is Oh, well the pros that way the cons so that's fine So that basically wraps up everything that we just wanted to quickly discuss in this video And I also want to give a quick shout out to our camera man Dane behind the camera right now Okay, you guys can see you will need to see this look at how he's squatting behind The pool. Yeah, he's also been complaining the whole time, but he's been doing a good job Complaining that's all right. That's why we've had quite a guy's the cuts in the cuts is because of Dane It really hurts like guys. I can't go back here. I should have stood up the whole time But yeah, that's let's wrap it up. So I want to say our focus in the future 1% Doing a little bit of publishing just because I enjoy publishing a little bit But 99% of our focus is really a hundred percent is just on our course our Students doing whatever we can to help you guys basically achieve a life that we have yeah Because it's just it's really fun. I want other people to experience the same thing dominate. We out here Magic video See you guys in the next video


What's up everybody? Jason here for Jatsby's case brace.com. We're giving away 10 and Mac and the basketball spots away with this 2021 Panini Prism multi-pack cello number 175 First we do the break randomized customer names and teams to shoot the hits out then at the end of the break We'll take all 30 customer names Randomize them and the top 10 will win a spot each the next one number 176 is on the store That's the last one to sell it out Here we go. Here's a dice roller two and a five seven times. Good luck one two three four five six and seven Two and a five seven times Brian Frank down to Logan seven times one Two three four five six seven There you go stick to what you got guys Going to meet me Going to meet me. Wow. Look at that Beautiful the centering on this is great on the front silver Kobe tribute LeBron James I should pay for the spot was a late brandy. Look at that Lakers little off-center on the back though, but the front of looks great Top to bottom left to right should pay for a spot right there. You may grant quickly Nice little cello pack right there with that card All right, let's switch scenes and let's do the giveaway All right, so there you go. Here's a cousin names dice for all it roll. We got ourselves a three and a six nine times. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight nine Boom three and a six nine times Remember satans from 11 down to Nicholas at 30 And we got Nancy Brandon Josh Alex Steven Brandon Jose Brandon Nicholas and Ryan Congratulations, boom Top 10 get in there you go. Let's paste you guys over here Next one's on the website guys. I will sell it out. Appreciate it. Jasper's case breaks.com


Tom here from Warrant Systems and I want to talk about how we get clients from YouTube and This is a topic that I have no problem sharing People have asked me like if I'm keeping any secrets and I wish you about business or anything I do there's really no secrets in any of the processes that I have. That's why I spent so much time, you know I love educating people. That's the Driving force behind this but yes, I have bills to pay and someone's got to pay for the studio lights to stay on So yes, we do put clients off there and that is part of the lead generation that my company uses is YouTube But that does not mean I short any of my videos Like I don't go part way through the video and say call me and give me money for the rest That isn't at all how it works. We give when I create these videos the entirety of how we do something on there I walk people through step-by-step. I even create multiple playlists sometimes to reference Maybe one piece and then another piece and another piece So depending on which part of the process you're in whether you want to start at the beginning or the middle of The end it's broken down So my videos cover a broad range of topics now There's different ways to create YouTube channels You can create a lifestyle Sharing experience YouTube channel where you ask people to subscribe or you can create a tech channel that solves a problem Which is what I do if you are a how-to and I guess you could put me in that category You look up how to do something my channel comes up as a result How to solve that problem how to set up a particular tech thing that I've covered and This goes to a lot of other people have you know handyman videos Etc etc for building something or creating things but back to the content here one of the things that's really important is When you're looking at that is Knowing what the channels about is will drive whether or not you gain a lot of subscribers or you gain a lot of views Or you gain a lot of you know Engaged users. That's why the numbers look like they do so right now. I have 97,000 subscribers But when it comes to views 2.4 million views and this is all over the last 90 days 14,000 subscribers added 10,000 and revenue generated over the ad. This is just directly from the AdSense system and watch time and hours And when you talk about like reach how many times my channel came up and search results 35.3 million 2.4 million views. This is the number that's interesting is the 876,000 unique viewers and the reason for that has to do with you know people searching for things not Necessarily subscribing to my content so they search for firewalls, you know, they have like your traffic sources here I do a lot of reviews and firewalls unify free NAS etc So you can see your traffic sources and what people were looking for that landed them on my page or landed them as a result Which 75% of them came from Google no surprise their Google owns YouTube Engagement It breaks down some of that where some of the most videos top videos etc and audience This is where you can see that the average person watches 2.7 of my videos Well, this frequently because I have a lot of videos that cover similar topic in different ways That way if you want to set up this way you can do it this way and then I'll reference the other video Well, there's an alternative way to do something and so they'll may watch a couple of my videos This is the among the 876,000 people of that I kind of like these demographics and people ask how you do international work. Absolutely We do it on this because only 38% of that audience comes from the United States The rest is United Kingdom Canada Germany and so on and so forth and it's because YouTube has two billion users roughly I'm not know exact number right around the two billion market billion with a B And there's only 300 million people in the US and that's not well over 300 million there And obviously when you start breaking all this down that leads to the fact that as many people as do watch My content in the United States. There's just more people elsewhere. So it's distributed out It breaks down age demographics, etc. But how does that turn into actual bookings? Well, I mentioned in At the top There's a little button that says hire us on our website pretty simple People wanted to start calling us and obviously this creates its own challenge because that volume of phone calls Is harder to deal with and people just want to start immediately jump in and start talking about their problem And how they like to talk to us, but they of course got those pre questions of how much do you charge So we even when people call we look to organize all this information in a more coherent way We will hire a spot is as simple as that and if you need to communicate any sense of information We have a encryption key, etc. So there's a first step hourly rate That's the other thing people want to know what's your hourly rate So we have a rate of right now in January of 2020 200 us dollars per hour That people can book us at and we have a minimum booking of just one hour. We keep it pretty simple We have our hours that you can book us, etc. But we haven't got to the booking link yet We do have a note on here that i'm charging Currently 250 us dollars where people want to book me This is just me making sure my business can scale properly because if everyone just wanted to book me because they See me in the video We didn't have time to make any more new videos or do any other things besides that So it is distributed amongst my texts. That is also why we have here This form and for those of you wondering, yes, this is just a google form that says contact a human at lts Really simple. We do this and this fills out a spreadsheet on the back end Spreadsheet has all kinds of client details in it. So i'm not going to show the spreadsheet But if you've ever used google sheets, they're wonderful. We're a company that uses g-suite This allows me and all the technicians to share this spreadsheet So we can all make notes on a spreadsheet when a client comes and contacts us via the form We decide who's got the expertise to take care of that or how it should be responded to But we've already answered right up front You know the question people ask what's your rate because that was a lot of it And this is you know, this has been fine tuning over time of wrangling in the volume of traffic that we get down to this So they fill out their email address name company name phone number, etc Reasons they want to hire us. These are the reasons right now and we do have something that says Do something not listed because sometimes people have you know different questions They fill out this information We evaluate that and we decide which technician would be The ideal person to deal with that and we'll contact and reach out to that person to start You know start the engagement process We are using this service here. I've no affiliate link training for it. It's just you can book me It works really well. They charge $10 per calendar per month. I think you get a discount if you prepay or something um But it's a great little booking system that we use this ties into a payment system So this is important. We've automated all of this When we give people the booking link, they go in they can choose the time they are it references our calendar They don't get to see our calendar They just see what time slots are free and this allows people to book one of my technicians Now why we don't directly just have the booking links so they can jump right in is because we tried to do some Evaluation ahead of time so people don't give us money I don't want to have people give me money unless I think I can solve your problem If there's no chance of us solving it, we'll just send you a polite. No, this is not something We're uh within our capabilities of doing Now we have support services or support it services Other than me obscuring the link here, they pick the thing they want. So one hour, $200 They see here. We don't offer Saturday and Sunday bookings generally. We can open them up Um, and we don't have much booked for next week, but today we only have the one to one 30 slots All we have open today. So we're pretty booked up So they go here and they choose this booking because they want to book then And because we have multiple technicians available, it's not that we don't have any bookings It's just that the fact that with multiple technicians, there's a lot of free slots When people do this just a little behind the scenes for those that might be wondering They felt the first name last name email I tell them they can just put the same thing because we've already contact them We tell them just put their name in and put some of the same information On there, then they're going to book this now by the way They can't actually complete the booking until they put a credit card in this is an important step This is one of those you have to pass before you book the slot that way the slot is reserved for you And I wasn't doing this before and it turned out if people don't pay you ahead of time For it or pay you separately and don't commit it created some confusion So part of the committing process is committing and putting money involved Now sometimes when people contact us because it's a larger business engagement We don't send them this link. They want to just pre buy hours. They're going to get a completely separate We'll actually send them a formal invoice because we've had company goes I want to buy 20 hours ahead of time That's fine. They're not going to get this link. This is the booking link for people that have one off I just want to start with a small consulting The reason we do these and reason we offer even the smaller engagements Uh, they frequently lead to bigger ones because not everyone's willing to give you 20 hours pre-bought unless they at least buy some amount of time and see if you are helpful This is part of my strategy that I'm very very open about how we do things So, um, this allows us to engage once and sometimes leads to further engagements Once this is done, uh, this fills out And books the link we send them a link and whatever arrangements were made because we've already engaged with them email They have our remote connection tool how we're going to get in we've talked about that because sometimes people just want us to Log in sometimes people want to say build something for them Whatever the things are sometimes they just want to talk to us And walk them through a project and review some notes that they sent over that's actually a frequent thing That we'll have one of my technicians do like review a network plan This is also very important for those that want to engage with us is the fact that when they do this that There's not anything done for free because this comes up of I just want to answer on a question I just want to know Which is the best of these two devices to use to us that's consulting because we don't really sell product product I've always found as a race to zero margin Because I'm not physically manufacturing product Therefore selling a product doesn't make much sense because people are deal hunting and finding you those deal on a product Is really just outside of what we do right now So a lot of it is everything we consider a consulting job Now we will do complete Projects and buy the product and everything if that's something people are interested in having us turnkey complete Purchase configure and deploy we do do that, but people just wanted to get product advice Sorry, that is a consulting thing now.  This is what the forums are for. I built this about a year ago. I'm using discourse I have a video on it. We host this over in digital ocean just to be clear if anyone's asking And we get a pretty good number of people This is the last 30 day look back about 81 more people joined 110 topic 480 posts And uh, this day was particularly popular with about 4 000 hits to the site with logged in users 536 people visited that day 2846 anonymous and the crawlers as in like your search engine crawlers was 624 And you know, this leads to a lot of answered questions for people I we a lot of time just say look post over in the forums because I you know, I get it You don't have a lot of money or you don't have the ability to or you're just getting started out I spend a lot of times at least once sometimes multiple times per day I go through and answer a lot of questions in the forums and those questions also are very helpful as answers for other people Maybe they didn't ask the question the right way. Didn't know I had a video on the topic So someone will ask the question and I'll link them to a video link them to an answer Or just sometimes explain no, it doesn't work that way But that's not a good idea, etc. Or sometimes that's a great idea You just need to change this and I do this as a service And it also helps because now this knowledge base that we built currently gets in the last 30 a's 58,000 50 Yeah, 58,000 page views. This allows a lot of people to go there to start typing It also autocompletes and let me show you what I mean by that. So if we go here to the main page of the forum When you start creating stuff in our forums and People can start going through and look it says your topic is similar to oh vlands and pfcents people wanted to know about this qo s Etc etc It searches itself and of course google indexes this well Hence the crawlers hitting this so frequently and more and more frequently as people do this this allows You know me to answer a lot of questions and just be helpful to people I really want people You know to be able to engage and learn and learn more about technology It's a passion of mine sharing all this with people which includes this part of it too I don't hide the fact that i'm an actual business who does make money on this because well, I gotta keep the lights on like I said, but This is our whole process. This is how we book clients We've we've put clients big and small large engagements small one-off engagements Sometimes we've even had very very large companies that one day always ask That one thing I found about big companies. They frequently asked to be not named, which is fine But they've consulted with us some very large like two letter domain and Fall into that fortune 1000 category and they actually didn't spend a lot of money with me So as exciting as it is, you know, I'm smiling thinking about it's a really cool that company called and the fact that Someone very high up that company was a fan of my videos and I just had a nice conversation with them And they booked us for a small project They had Related to something and the way they wanted it done was us to create something and not actually log into their infrastructure Which is perfectly fine. We did that we consulted with them and help them deploy something that was really cool So this is the whole process kind of top to bottom How we do it there's no secrets on it using you can book me using just a google calendar We have found it to be very effective. It's more personal that way That's why it literally says contact a human at LTS. That is what you're doing. It is reviewed by us I don't just spam you with a bunch of automated Click here for my webinar click and throw money in here. That's why we don't even send you the booking link where you spend money until We know we can help it's just our part of the process It's our part of making sure that it's a good relationship And we're actually providing value and you're getting something out of it not just saying hi Now if you just want to throw money at us perfectly fine We've got options on our affiliate links. You can just you know, just throw money at us I do appreciate people who do that It just wants to say thank you and that is like, you know It's another revenue source people throw money at our patreon Someone actually sent me a message to apologize because they couldn't afford the patreon anymore and I said Thank you. I mean dude, if you can't afford it forms are great This is I want people not to have a barrier. This is why my technical videos are Is in depth as they are I don't want them to be any barrier because people said well You should have like a better series that you create paid videos I'm like no no no I shouldn't because that seems like I create a barrier and I've actually had some great conversations with people Who are far outside the us and other nations that just don't have any type of real budget And they send me thank you notes or post into forums like hey, this is very helpful This helped me solve a problem and 200 us dollars is quite a bit where I'm from And this is awesome when I you know had people reach out, especially through the forums Say hey, this was very helpful and helped me saw that problem This is part of the goal, you know, we can I can create a lot of content I can make money and solve people's problems and it can all work and keeping this content free Sometimes you do have to watch a little ad on youtube But yeah, that's to me a fair enough exchange to get some content I know myself I've watched plenty of videos on youtube to solve problems Because that's the last thing I'll touch on is you know giving it away. Can you Actually give it away inside people here you yes, uh, trust me I've watched enough videos on things like plumbing that made me decide to hire a plumber It turns out not my life skills Even building stuff that's like a woodworking real impressed watching people do it They make it look easy turns out not easy something else to hire out. All right, and thanks And thank you for making it to the end of the video If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up If you'd like to see more content from the channel, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon If you like youtube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to laurancesystems.com fill out our contact page And let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on If you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums.laurancesystems.com Where we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general Even suggestions for new videos. They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you. And once again, thanks for watching and see you next time


Tom Hanks had previously played an Elvis impersonator and Elvis has left the building in 2004. Before getting on to a plane toward the end of the film, Elvis turns to Priscilla and mouths the words, I will always love you. According to Dolly Parton, Elvis loved the song and wanted to record it. He invited Dolly to the studio. However, Colonel Parker called her the night before and told her that if Elvis was going to record the song, they would get half the publishing rights. Dolly had already had a number one hit with the song and refused to relinquish any rights. Which ended up being a smart move because in 1992, Whitney Houston drove it to number one for 14 weeks with Dolly still holding all the publishing rights. But Elvis never recorded the song and Dolly said she cried all that night from disappointment.


Yeah, let's have a friendly rivalry. You ban some of mine, I ban some of yours. It's all good, you know, because we're competitive. Is people hating on China right now expected? Is it justified or is it just plain wrong? Oh, wow. This video went viral on TikTok. Then it got posted on Yahoo News. And of course, all the boomers, doomers, zoomers are all commenting on it. Let's play the video. You keep mixing them up. Oh my God, man. That's so bad. Good country and good people. Same with China. What's wrong with China? No, China. No, the government of the China is not good. Right. I destroyed my country. Oh, man, as you can see, you know, the Uber driver's like, what Asian are you? And she's like Japanese and he's a good, good, good. That's a good one. That's a good Asian. Not like Chinese, Chinese destroyed my country and they're destroying the world. And I'll tell you this, Andrew, anytime this like little weird microaggression between a rider and a driver pops up, it allows everybody to like talk about the more macro discussion, right? Yeah. I mean, listen, the whole discussion about China versus US or China versus the world or whatever country you come from, it's going to be happening for the next, I'm sorry to say, 20 years of our lives. 20 years. Oh my goodness. That's quite a long time.  Imagine. Yeah, I just started being proud of being Chinese American and now I got to deal with this. Yeah. Can I just be proud of like everything everywhere all at once? That's the side that I like, the Michelle Yozak. But yeah, guys, I think that this is a conversation that we have on our channel quite often. So we want to have a thoughtful conversation here today. We're not trying to defend China and do all this. We're not going to play by either side. But you guys can listen to our points and let us know what you think in the comments down below because you know, this is something that I think people should have more balanced conversations about. These are just three points that people need to know moving forward. And I think it's going to advance the discussion. Of course, everybody's going to have their own opinion. By the way, Andrew, being Chinese can be a governmental identity. It can be a governmental system. It can be an ethnicity. It can be a type of food. It's just really complicated because there's one word that describes like 10 things. All right, Andrew, number one, Andrew, as far as China, America, America, China relations go, they're just so macro and micro economically enmeshed. There is no real separating. So when everybody's like, yeah, I hope the other side, they go downside. I hope they go to the ground. I hope they blow up. It's like, no, you don't because it's actually enmeshed together. It's kind of like this. All right, my fingers are intertwined, right? And so China's going down. This is China, my left hand. And then if China's going down, it will drag America down too. Guys, I think like any smart person is going to agree, listen, like China's such a big part of the world, whether you like it or not, that if it goes down, it's going to be bad for the rest of the world. So if you want America to fall into chaos, then yeah, have China fall into chaos, I guess. Yeah, well, because they're kind of like enmeshed. They're kind of frenemies. It's sort of like you have frenemies. You can focus on the friend part. You can focus on the enemy part. But the word is frenemy. It's friend and enemy rivals put together.  And that's why I do support that America is able to like ban companies, whether that's TikTok or Huawei, if they feel like it's in their best interest to ban a Chinese company in America, absolutely. They should do it. China bans American companies. Do you see what I'm saying? Where it's like, yeah, let's have a friendly rivalry. You banned some of mine. I banned some of yours. It's all good, you know, because we're competitive. We're trying to compete for seeing who's going to be top dog. Andrew, that brings us to point number two. A lot of people don't want to see competition because for about what, 60, 70, 80 years, the world has been unipolar, right? America's been the only world superpower. And some people feel like that's the only way to maintain stability. Of course, that seems like more of a pro Anglo-Saxon perspective that might be driven more by America, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia. However, there are some arguments for it, Andrew. And people are sort of picking sides, right? Like people that are not just Chinese and not just from an Anglo country are like picking sides. Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of people want stability for the world. And they think that order, which comes from hierarchy, which comes from somebody being at the top, being dominant, is going to be better, as opposed to two people at the top butting heads and then letting that friction kind of like reverberate down below. It's better, Andrew, if America's LeBron in China, if anything, that it is AD. AD's good and could do things, but LeBron's a leader. Because when you look at Chicago Bulls, you got Zach Levine, you got DeMar DeRozan sharing it. One and two, it's not working out. Yeah, but listen, guys, growing up, being born and raised in America, of course, I don't have a problem with America being number one. I just think that people need to think about, what are we going to do in America to keep ourselves at number one? What do you mean, you put the responsibility on me and my behaviors and I will raise my kids? It's kind of like France and Argentina in the World Cup, right? They're competing. And you're France and you're like, oh man, we might lose. But you know, I just want to see Messi break his ankle. That would be nice. That's how we would win. Good career. And France would win if Messi is injured. Yeah, so let's just like hurt them and then we can break their ankle. You're sort of like Tonya Harding on Nancy Kerrigan. Yeah, but that's kind of cheating. So I really don't know how America cheats in this actual scenario anyways. But I guess what I'm saying is, instead of wishing for the downfall of China or for China to break its leg or start falling down, I guess why don't we talk about what we can do to make America better? Right, and I'm sure some people on the American side would be like, they're the Tonya Harding and we're the Nancy Kerrigan. You don't see because your face and your eyes can't see it.  Listen guys, I think just being Chinese allows us to see it more holistically, to be honest. I totally get it. I totally understand America wanting to maintain preeminence. We're just saying that like literally almost like a sports team, let's just be better. I mean, you know, a lot of people would say that China is where it's at because of America. America's policies help China a lot, rise up, and then now America created this monster in China that they don't agree with. It's because the CEOs sold us little guys out and we don't get a benefit from getting rich like all the global CEOs that went over and brought all the manufacturing jobs that we needed here to stabilize our society over there. David, moving on to point number three is that, you know, everybody experiences Chinese people differently. Yeah.  I believe it is the largest wealth gap in the entire world as a country. And it's also the biggest wealth gap in America. Of any group in America, Andrew, the biggest wealth gap is Chinese Americans because you have people who are like multi-billionaires and you have people that are like in the lowest level of poverty of poverty. And you can interact with like anybody along this level from like one to 10, right? 10 being the richest, one being the poorest. And some people, Andrew, they're like, you know, everybody's always talking about how China's so dominant but the people who do my laundry and give me a massage for $40, they sure seem like weak and docile and just like subservient to me. And then other people are like... Or how about this? Well, you know, I just sure did like it when they were just only selling me dollar dumplings instead of trying to buy my house and therefore up the market price of everything around it. And they don't even live in the house. They're ruining the community fabric. That's like more like what somebody would say in Richmond or Vancouver, Canada. You know, it's starting to happen in America as well. In the middle level, people will be like, you know, I just think the Chinese graduates, whether they're Chinese American or Chinese from China, make great workers. Yeah, sure, they'll never probably break the C-suite, but they work really hard and they're cool with like just a middle class. Oh, but on top of that, they can't be trusted. Yeah, they can't be trusted too much. That's why they can't enter the upper levels at your lens of leadership. So trust them, but don't trust them too much. Right. Because they're good brains, but they're not trusted brains. Right.   And I think that that's the weird thing because Chinese people have never been good at eliciting emotion because you know, Chinese are always like, if you got to spend a lot of time around Chinese people, they're always like, yeah, the facts are the facts. Emotion is emotion. But for other people, like facts and emotion are more blended together. I mean, I do want to say that it is complicated because there is, you know, some fear of stealing data, right? There is that those are real things. Yeah, I think I think there's the stealing aspect, which is more of like a conspiracy, right? Whether it's COVID stealing, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's just the competition aspect. So there's fear on the competition side, which is like, well, we can't, they can't be living middle class lifestyles with two, three cars. The whole world's gonna collapse and be unsustainable. Even Barack Obama had a quote that was similar to that, right? Which, you know, offended a lot of people in China because they're like, what? You're saying they're like, we can never have a good life. But you guys can only have a good life. I think Barack's quote, he said something along the lines like, well, you know, if everybody in China lived the way that they did in America, then it would probably destabilize the world because the way that we live in America is superfluous or something like that. Yeah, so he was actually making a comment about America and Canada consumption patterns, consumption pattern of waste and paper and natural resources and things of that nature. But, you know, it could all be viewed this way or it could all be viewed that way. I guess what I'm trying to say is, man, it's just really, really complicated. And most people are more driven by emotion. In fact, I'm not saying that China and America, America and China are not rivals. And like I said, it all kind of goes back to that Team America thing. Even other Asian countries, I would say Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, 5050. But like they're all more signed up, probably on a macro scale on Team America, right? Where they're like, just, let's just maintain the unipolar dominance. But I think that China, obviously, to some extent, if we live in a global world with a global perspective, they have their own right to be like, yeah, China can rise as high as it wants. Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess, in the sense of Cold War, I think leaving comments is the least of our worries on the internet, right? I guess people can say whatever they want. If they want to nuke China in the comments section, that's a little bit different than like, the president wanting to nuke China, right? But yeah, I guess, David, overall, what can people learn from this, from this discussion, or how can they maybe prepare for these situations that might come up? Should they prepare? Do they want to care? Should they care? I'll say this, when it comes to the politicians in America, most of whom are still white to this day, right? I think that they actually have a lot of international global trade interests, so they understand that even decoupling is not really a reality. But they also want to appeal to voters, like Billy Bob in the Yahoo News section. So you're going to hear politicians say like, things that sound maybe like 50-50, we're just going to compete and sound, not conciliatory, but more like 50-50, and then you're going to also hear them say like, damn, China! And then people are going to be like, yeah! So I think that as a Chinese American, I don't know, I guess you just want to be educated on it, right? Or can you get ahead of it? I noticed Andrew, to be fair Andrew, would you agree with a lot of Chinese Americans, they choose to completely disengage, because it seems so messy, because they're like, well, I don't want to be caught supporting this like evil regime, or even sound like I'm defending them 10%. So I'll just be quiet, even though I do have a more multi-layered perspective than other people in this country. Yeah, it's tough.  Yeah, they don't give you a lot of credit, and they don't make it easy to defend it either.  Hey, thank you for defending China's honor, you know, in America. We are very grateful, you know. Unfortunately, that's not how it works either. I guess, you know, for me, for example, I'll just use a... Right, as an Americanized ABC, right? As a personal experience, like I was out in East Village waiting to get a seat at a bar, I was on a date, I was... And outside, there was quite a few Asian people in this area, maybe like 20, 30% of it is Asian.   So he was bringing in... They're so cold, they'll smile. He was not talking about the CCP or CPC, he was talking about Chinese people, day to day, IRL in person. Yeah, that he comes across with on the street.  So I was just telling him like, hey, man, like, by the way, if you think Chinese people are rude or cold and maybe don't smile, that's not necessarily because they don't like you. That's not them being racist towards you, bro. It's just, they do that to me and I'm Chinese. They just don't give out warm expressions and interactions that much period. Yeah, I would say on the global ranking of warm, like, if Hofstede had that ranking, warm, they might, it would be in the lower 20th percentile. Yeah, yeah. And then the guy at the end of the conversation, it feels like that he kind of understood. He kind of walked away and was like, oh, okay, all right, man, well, you know, that makes sense. You know, and then he went about his day.  And I don't think everybody wants to have that conversation because you got to be prepared for it. Oh, I got one. Don't let some of the valid disgruntled claims that people have against China's government prevent you from having that conversation about Chinese people. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's key. I think you just... Just like everybody else is like trying to make that distinction. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. Honestly, it depends on how nuanced and complex and compartmentalized and how educated they are. Don't ABCs should at least make that distinction and be definitely willing to hop, to not let the thing from the other thing leak in and the other thing, or it could be isolated and not be connected. I mean, I think a lot of people, they hear about this macro geopolitical thing like China's going to take over, and then that trickles into their day-to-day life on a micro level, where that's how they treat other Asian-looking people. And I think that's terrible. Or even Asians being unwilling to defend Chinese people too. And that's wrong because, to be honest, most regular Americans have nothing to do with the geopolitics. They can't do anything. I'm sorry. Even like Americans in America don't have anything to do with American intervention in the Middle East that lack thereof or too much. Even if you want to stop whatever America's involvement in like the Ukraine and Russian war, really you as an individual can't do much. Right. There's a lot of stuff happening that's like way over your head as a regular citizen unless you are part of a lot of the maybe top 30 most richest families in the country.  But anyways, guys, you know, this was a conversation that we're trying to have, which is trying to be thoughtful about it. You don't have to agree with us fully, but let us know in the comments down below how you feel about it. You know what's always interesting about these, Andrew? Is that like sort of these macro discussions happen because of a really, really nano micro event. But I think it's because everybody can imagine it's more visceral when it's just like somebody being recorded on TikTok versus like a world forum, you know, with a lot of politicians and a think tank symposium. And that's why you don't have political conversations with your driver. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. We are the Hop Hop Boys. And until next time, we out. Peace. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.