Welcome to Liquid Margins, Opening Books, Social Annotation, and OER. And I am your host, Franny French. Today's guests, and we were saying earlier, a pre-show that we have been looking forward to holding a show like this for probably about a year. So we're really excited today to have this wonderful panel. Monica Brown, she's the Assistant Program Manager at Revis. Hi, Monica. And we have Addie Clark, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Oregon Institute of Technology. Emily Reagan, she's Associate Professor of Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at MSU Denver. And then our guest moderator today, Robin DeRosa, she is the Director of Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University, which sorry, Robin, I thought that was in Plymouth, Mass. It's in New Hampshire. So I got there. Okay, and thank you. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to turn it over to Robin to take over. Thank you very much for being here everyone. Hey everyone. I am so happy to be here. Usually I'm not a moderator. I'm usually a panelist on these things. So the idea that somehow I am in charge of making the train run on the track seems like a poor choice by a hypothesis, but I'm going to do the best I can. Wherever we go, I'm sure it will be interesting. I am the Director of the Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State in New Hampshire. So I mostly work in faculty development now but in the past I was an English professor here for about 15 years and then five years as a professor of interdisciplinary studies. And I also do a lot of work in open education, particularly with open pedagogy so I'm really excited to be here to talk about this. And I'm going to ask our panelists today to introduce themselves so I will start with Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Reagan. I'm at Metropolitan State University in Denver. I'm in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and I've been using hypothesis in my biochemistry to class which is senior level class and that's been a lot of fun. Yes, me and the chemist sits a natural choice.  Hi, I'm Addie Clark, I am an associate professor of chemistry at Oregon Tech or the Oregon Institute of Technology, and I've been using hypothesis in both my upper division chemistry courses and my lower general chemistry courses for about two years now. And Monica. Hi everyone, I am Monica Brown, she her pronouns and I am the assistant program manager at Rebus community, where I work with faculty on creating sustainable open publishing pathways. I've been using kind of social annotation via the route of being a composition instructor before this role, and gotten the chance to work with some faculty and instructional design capacity on hypothesis. Awesome. Um, so I am going to kick us off by talking about how why I think perhaps I was invited here today. And then we'll hear from some of our folks who are engaged in current practice. So when I, the first OER I ever made or used was an OER that I created with students called the open anthology of early American literature. I was really lucky to be in a field where almost everything was public domain texts. So we made this anthology. It was digital. And it was kind of okay, you know it didn't have a lot of things that the paid version had in terms of like footnotes and notes and so students weren't actually loving it. And that kind of changed when I layered in hypothesis to this open textbook that we had made. I put in the chat, the sort of origin stories of this of this project and you can, you can take a look at it a little, but hypothesis was new when I was doing this. And somehow, you know they were so new and so small that they would like talk to me every day about like how's it going over in your class, and they would watch. I would watch my class like do a kind of beta thing. So it was this really cool thing because I was not a techie so I really felt like they were watching actual students to develop the tool which was cool. And then my students love the idea of like being in on the ground floor or something but the textbook itself really took off when I put hypothesis in there. And you can see from the little write up I shared that I think hypothesis was the reason that this we are became a living organic place, rather than a replacement for a textbook it was replacing the heat anthology. It was kind of a game changer for me so in some ways I think hypothesis is what pulled me into open pedagogy. This idea that using open resources, allowed for my students to have a different relationship to learning materials than they had before. So, that was like pretty transformative for me and again at the time I was new and open I was new and everything. So it's just, I felt really lucky to be hooked in with a community of people that was discovering the potential of using an open license, making no we are using social annotation, all this kind of one posse and I think it's hard for me to separate out from now the we are from the social annotations so all the stuff I've done since, mostly through rebus has had hypothesis, you know, plugged into it and I think it's been, it's been pretty cool. So I thought I might ask the same question. First of Emily and then of Addy about how you started using hypothesis and how it's shifted your teaching or your pedagogy, or your relationship to open resources. And then I know Monica will have some really interesting things to say about what publishing looks like in this open world where we can talk in the margins. So Emily, tell us a little bit about your origin story. Well, the first two places I heard of hypothesis were one from a colleague that's at an institution that shares our campus see you Denver shares a similar physical campus as MSU Denver and Rami Khalir was using hypothesis and introduced me to the idea of annotating today and really fun things that you could do with hypothesis early on, and then also Libre text had integrated hypothesis into their resources and so I ran across it there as well. But it really wasn't until it must have been spring of 2020 so this was the semester that the pandemic unfolded that I had been thinking for over a year that I wanted to switch to using we are in my biochemistry to class I've been doing that in general for a long time. But the OER I found biochemistry free for all which is out of Oregon State huge PDF like 3,600 pages or more, and I really was having trouble wrapping my head around how to use this resource and I realized, I could chunk it up into short readings, and then assign them through hypothesis and give that a go so I feel very fortunate that I happen to start that practice before the pandemic because it was one of the things I think really held the class together after we had to move virtually, because the students could continue adding their voice and having those conversations in the margin. And so that that was my real for a hypothesis and I've been using it in that class every semester since even adding more assignments. So we have at least two hypothesis assignments a week, sometimes three. And I found it very satisfying because I get to see what the students are thinking about and then I can respond to that in my lecture so for me it's become a type of just in time teaching helps me see areas that maybe I didn't explain clearly enough in the previous lecture or things that students are especially enthusiastic about for the upcoming lecture. And it's really, really been a lot of fun. Can I just ask a follow up, which I guess is my job so good job, Robin. When you talk about hypothesis assignments. Are you just telling students, hey, you know make some annotations or do you frame or scaffold that a little bit more. It's very open ended so we're using the canvas integration so I really can set it up in canvas and so to the students that looks like an assignment there's a due date for them to help motivate taking action. And I really just have said minimally I want you to either make three just three comments whether it's an initial comment or a response to a classmate I've generally kept it very open ended because I wanted them to have the freedom to kind of explore and that's worked well for this particular class and this particular application. The other thing that's really transformative is my students didn't use to do the reading and one barrier was that I knew only half my students had the textbook so I was using the textbook very lightly because I knew it wasn't a resource everyone had access to but that was a loss for my students so. And at the beginning of the semester one of my students was asking like do we really have to do these readings. I'm like hey it's going to make your experience richer there's connections that are going to come up in the readings that are things I'm not going to mention in lecture, and you're actually going to find it very satisfying so it's really helped me take my class, I think to a deeper level and students are able to make more connections as a result but it is very open ended just what I'm asking them to do with the so called assignment piece of it. Thank you addy do you want to jump in. Sure, so I also started using hypothesis in what I lovingly refer to as the spring that time forgot. And I started using it because we're on the quarter system here. And so my spring was the entire spring quarter, we basically went on spring break and never came back. And I was teaching a 400 level class in the fate and transport of pollutants that was supposed to have a lab. And in general chemistry there were a lot of good simulations and videos and whatnot that I could, I could send students to to sort of simulate the lab experience but for an upper division class there is there was no appropriate institution. So I sort of shifted the definition of lab, and we read peer reviewed studies in the fate and transport of pollutants for lab instead and what I used hypothesis for was posting those peer reviewed studies on canvas. And having students make notes before they came to our discussion about parts of the study that they weren't clear about parts of the study that they wanted me to provide some more explanation for again sort of that just in time teaching that Emily was talking about. And it really just sort of saved my bacon spring of 2020 because otherwise there really wouldn't have been a good substitution for that lab. Now, I have shifted to using it so I have been using OER in my classes since the fall of 2019 we, we shifted our general chemistry to a version of open stacks that I had curated and was hosting on Weber texts. And so, we already had that and what I've been trying to do since about that same time is get OER's in my upper level classes I teach to upper level classes and environmental chemistry the fate and transport of pollutants that I already mentioned and an environmental chemistry, sort of analytical chemistry toxicology type deal. And there aren't but there aren't good open resources for specialized upper division classes, because they're just so specific to those topics. And so what I started using hypothesis for last year. In that respect, I went to the open ed conference the open ed 2020 conference and I saw a really good presentation about having students tag their readings with these very specific keywords that we have definitions for. And that's what I've been having them do when I assigned them so basically I've been assigning them parts of other OER's and having them go through and tell me what they think is important to then build the OER from using these tags, or what they think could be made more clear like what this explanation is muddy and it would be better if you rewrote it sort of thing. So I've been doing that in my environmental chemistry course this year I'm teaching a new and different general chemistry course I'm building the OER again, and I'm having the students when they do their reading assignments instead of it being a reading course their assignment is to go through and tag the open stacks chemistry sections that we're covering to help me build the next general chemistry OER for the course. And that I'm sorry but that is such a cool project and I know people who use hypothesis, you know, Nate, being one of them but like in these cool ways that are so much beyond what I've done where students are just chatting with with each other because it's a bill, you know, I feel like I'm selling something by the way, I do not collect a commission from hypothesis, but the ability to use that, that tagging and curation piece, especially as a way to potentially over the over time, build OER's for areas that don't have, you know, curated organized resources yet is so and to do that with students, I think is really super cool. I'll ask Monica to chime in now from Rebus but I also noticed that big long thing from David in the chat which I can't, you know, process so quickly so maybe you guys can tell me also at some point if you can empower him to speak, I trust him and vouch for him so if he's able to be liked to talk I'd love to hear a little bit about his comment after Monica so yeah go ahead Monica. So, I think we're seeing both Maddie and Emily here at like the power of social annotation to kind of change how we think about publishing. For so long, we kind of give students these curated texts, and they might note on them right they might write on them in the margins but they're not able to make that public. And so the public component, the collaborative component it's just really cool to see students be able to kind of highlight what they value, call into question texts, and then of course make these really cool connections that we haven't seen before and so something that we try to do at Rebus is really encourage everyone to be a part of the publishing process so that it's not this like one way street, your student come in the class get the information and leave. It's more collaborative in both ways. And I think social annotation is just one really cool tool on our in our toolkit to do those kinds of things. Yeah, I mean I'm also always interested. I don't know if anyone wants to chime in but like to me it was really important when I started working with hypothesis that they had this. It was a nonprofit commitment and the commitment to open in general right like there's nothing. I mean you can use hypothesis in ways that I think you know we would not call open, but the company itself sort of has this ethos and I'm always interested in, you know, where the future is going in terms of using hypothesis through communities like rebus or using hypothesis through the LMS like canvas and what the pros and cons are. I guess sometimes I asked the question of like, what's your vision for the future digital environments that we have available to us for teaching and learning and how does hypothesis fit in with that. And it's like, especially with Emily and Addy if you guys are just thinking like, okay here's a tool that works or if you're thinking bigger about like why this tool for my vision, Addy I see you on muted do you have a comment. I have two actually and one of them Emily just posted in the chat so I one of the things I am up against is cost to the institution of integrating it into canvas, because right now I'm the only user on my campus. So they they really, they're not going to justify the cost for much longer just to give me this teaching tool. I think the benefit of the LMS and the integration personally is just one less thing that students have to keep track of it's one less account like Emily sort of mentioned. It looks like a normal canvas assignment they open it up it's just right there it gives them a grade in canvas they never have to leave the LMS to remember to do something. I think is really big and a lot of the other things that I use like that canvas integration is really important to students because they just can't keep track of all the different little tools that I want them to use. But if they're all in one place and it just looks like the same assignment, they are ready and willing to do it, even though it would be the same thing as if I sent them to hypothesis to do it on the hypothesis website. One step that one barrier taking it away makes it so much easier for them. Yeah, I mean we've heard such interesting things during coven to about. I mean, there's a million things we could talk about here in terms of like access and, you know, digital access and the ways digital tools make things both more and less accessible in various ways. But certainly, we heard a lot about tech fatigue and the challenge of a lack of consistency in the tech environments. But we also know the challenge of like centralized tech environments, and how those can also disempower learners who become less fluent in critically examining technologies right so it's a real challenge for faculty these days I mean, especially when you're at a residential campus a place where people didn't expect to be taking so many online courses and suddenly your students are in five online courses, full time online courses at once or something so it. I found that without the single sign on. It was a lot to ask of students for sure. So did you guys promote David. I don't know what he did to earn his way on this panel but he did. David I think if you try to unmute. I don't see him in my. I don't see him either. Sorry. It's okay we can we can come. Oh, there he is. Hey David. Hi, I'm sorry I did not mean to. I did not mean to be on this. This discussion I apologize. And you know what this could happen to any. Things in the chat so be careful. It was not a smart thing Robin it was just me blur, you know, gliding away. Oh, so I was just saying that, and I love what the panelists have said and I appreciate you being here and. For me, the annotation was not. It was not something that informed my pedagogy didn't inform what I was doing it actually was more of an openness to the students sharing their organic thinking with each other. And so I was just saying in my, my little note there that in their labor reflections I do a lot of reflections, and I asked them what's working for your learning in this course and I'm telling you invariably they always mentioned the annotation. One, they've never been invited to annotate in an academic setting before I think they do it a lot in their own social media platforms, but in an in an organized fashion, and it opened. I, my point was the openness for me is the openness of the organic thinking, because that organic thinking contributes to the writing practice practice which also contributes to their, the course community so I would love to actually have them go out, find organic texts, annotate them bring them back to the community, and then we refashion that now I don't know if the hypothesis people here can do that in the canvas LTI, but I would love for that to do that as well. So what Addie was saying, it is a beautiful thing when they can, you know, single sign on and use hypothesis but I have taught where they actually had to go and create their own personal accounts and hypothesis which was very, you know, it was simple it wasn't it wasn't that that difficult I teach at a community college online first year composition. Robin, our world is like unicorns and rainbows we could do whatever the hell we want so but I love the idea of you guys curating your stuff in the STEM areas and all that my, my goal and I'll stop here, my goal is to actually use hypothesis to perhaps create a children's storybook about on grading, where we get on grading through maybe a press book into the hands of elementary school students to hopefully kind of bypass the trauma that traditional grading does to them. So anyway, that's my little side project with hypothesis but thank you Robin. That is awesome I gotta, I gotta go find a resources to get in the chat in a minute because we made such an awesome little on grading chat book, it's, I think it's not impressed books though it's almost. Yeah, I gotta figure that out because I have something you could, you could start with. Those are our super great comments one thing I'm really interested in David that you brought up. And this is one of the things I've been interested in is sort of the community aspects of social annotation. But the others like the confluence of that community building with what you mentioned which is writing, which, and the third thing which is close reading. And I think as somebody who has taught both literature courses and reading and writing courses before making reading visible and close reading visible. Like I spent so many years teaching close reading without ever really being able to crack that nut. I think I did a better job with poetry right because we would talk about scans and we would talk about diction. And it's really hard with pros to help students understand what close reading look like and I just think there's something pretty magical about the confluence of community reading and writing. And it's sort of writing across the curriculum way in any discipline like those three things are generally going to be really, really useful. I just want to jump in Monica Emily Addie and then I can look to see what else we've got going on the chat. Well I'll just say manual was trying to help think of ways we could get towards what David wanted which was students finding things and then those being able to be annotated. I certainly have tracked down references that my students have linked to and brought them into the classroom. It would just be one step further. It will work for me but I could upload those as another assignment and students could then be annotating a related piece that was found by another student. So that's, you know, maybe one way to kind of let that cascade out. So just, I wanted to kind of follow up on that idea of how to let it cascade from the student contributions to additional annotations. We had some good luck to with students across different courses at different institutions, intentionally annotating the same text over a week or two. And then the work from that, they would share some of their blog posts and other things they were doing so that you ended up kind of creating some networked learning opportunities through those social annotation. And I wouldn't run me call them like I'm, Rami called them and a Tata funds is that right. It was not what you guys are calling them, but but doing that with with classes is very cool too. Addie go ahead. And I have to say just that discussion just now I just had an idea about an assignment that I do. And in environmental chemistry I frequently have students bring current events into the class for us to discuss because there have been a lot of current environmental chemistry events that we need to talk about. And I usually have them submit them and then I put them online and they we talk about them in class and I'm just now thinking, what if I put them in hypothesis and then they can talk to each other that way. You know when a panelist goes home that you're really getting to some, some good content. I do there's probably a lot of stuff and I'll ask, you know, Aaron and Nate what I'm missing but I do see a question here from Manuel. I want to ask the panelists do they find in the chemistry classes. There's a lot more writing so do they find an appreciation for the communication of technical content. So the question is really, how do you do you also get the added benefit of talking about scientific writing and how that works when you're doing that kind of social annotation. Either I think that's for the chemists. Yeah, go ahead, Eddie. Well, I'm just gonna say you go explicitly focused on that is come up just a little bit tangentially but I like the idea of diving deeper. Okay, Eddie. Really, I haven't gotten into it. But again, the question is making me think about ways that I could marry these two things together, because I do make them do at least in my upper division classes I make them do science writing, and I'm making them read science writing so the marriage of those seems like a natural thing I should be doing. Wikipedia contribution project with my biochemistry to students this semester so for the first time instead of just writing a final paper for me to read their updating Wikipedia page about a protein so it's related to our course. And this is my first time running the this portion of the class and I'm really thinking about how I can use hypothesis to do some annotation earlier in the semester to help scaffold this Wikipedia assignment better so that's something I'm going to be chewing on. I'll put into the chat, the wiki edu link for those of you who are interested in some of the confluence with teaching with Wikipedia. You do not have to go that road alone these those folks are really great at supporting anything from a very small, you know, two day Wikipedia project to whole semesters research project and it really goes back to that open education philosophy of the non disposable assignment, where many students tend to do research that, you know, go in the old trash can now goes in the delete button. But with Wikipedia there's actually a place where some of that research can live and serve access needs. Any other comments that I've been missing the chat is going fast and I know I'm missing things or Monica is there anything else you want to jump in on before I choose another question. I don't teach chemistry, but I do. I did teach research writing for first year students and so I didn't have hypothesis back in that day and I wish I had because I think it could be really compelling way for students to conduct research across the web and be able to really close read as you mentioned earlier Robin, the text and understand how scholars write about these different things. Yeah, I look forward to teaching an English research course again in the future because I think there's a lot of potential there. Monica one way to is in the research is to have what Emily and Addie are talking about when they do their writing, asked them invite them encourage them to cite their peers and what they've said in the annotation so now we're kind of renewing the research within the learning community as well. The other thing is I saw a tweet about decolonizing the syllabus and the person who did the tweet said, you know, you got to get messy you can't just say you're going to have these new readings on your syllabus to decolonize it. In a good way is to actually invite the critical consciousness of the students on those texts, get them to annotate them and to deal and get their hands dirty on these types of topics so to two comments there. Yeah, and first of all, David welcome to the panel is a pleasure to have you. And also I will say we've done some great stuff with our in our interdisciplinary studies, quote unquote textbook which again I really think of as a community. It's got a lot of, you know, peer reviewed open source articles from various places, but it also has a bunch of student writing that current students in the program annotate and a lot of those students, you know, when they go on and graduate they are still there, but people are annotating their essays and we end up with this really wonderful thing where students are seeing their peers as people who can participate in a scholarly conversation and contribute scholarly contents. And it really keeps our alums like hooked into the community, because they get pinged on these various annotations as they're coming in so they're always excited about seeing that we're still teaching their work. You know, a couple years after they leave and graduate so I think. And I also used in sort of an ungrading kind of way. I use hypothesis when my students are publishing we use domain of one zone in our program. So our students have their own URLs where they're doing a lot of their own work. I wouldn't do migrating via hypothesis and before you furpo me in the chat I will say, you know, I didn't do anything it was all feedback right there's no grading, but I would comment on their stuff just the way I would comment on any academics blog posts. If I had a typo or a problem like that. Like if I was reading Emily's blog and she had a typo I wouldn't comment on her blog and say, Emily you have a typo, you know, I would, I would email Emily and be like hey you might want to fix that type of. So that's what I did with my students I would give them some private feedback but most of my stuff was public and hypothesis, and it really changed. I felt like that was just an automatic way of ungrading. It changed the model from grading the feedback, just by thinking about their stuff as public and sharing stuff publicly the way I would with any scholar that I engage with online so I just love the way the dialogue of scholarly conversation can can change a little bit your relationship with your students it can move them and I think into a community of scholars, rather than just a community of students. Great question from David in the chat, and I would love to hear this from Addie and Emily to is about the assessment of hypothesis. So, with hypothesis assessment in my course I would always do it by self assessment where I would show them how to gather data on how many, you know annotations they made they would write out their data they would look at their metrics, then we would have little rubrics where they would look at the kinds of engagements they were having and then they would assign themselves a grade for it and that's what I would use. I'm curious to know what other people are doing do you count annotations do you not grade it and how does that may be different than how you would count class participation with like verbal contributions. Either of you want to jump in. Yeah, so the types of assignments that I've been using hypothesis for have been very much participation type deals of a very black and white you did it or you didn't. With my general chemistry this fall what I've done is I have, I get I give them the tags and the definitions and then it's also always open that if they have a different kind of comment that they want to make on a section they are more than welcome to. And I just tell them they have to make at least 10, and they don't have to be unique from what their classmates have already done because since the purpose of this assignment is to sort of build the text. They're almost doing a, you know, majority rules sort of thing on various sections if all of them highlight the same thing that tells me that it's a pretty important thing. So, for my general chemistry students it's a 10 point assignment they have to make at least 10. A lot of them still make more than that because I was a little worried in that model that they would get to 10. And even if that meant they were only on page five of the reading they would stop. But a lot of them keep going and they make more than 10 but it is entirely 10 annotations 10 points done I do not grade the quality of what they have to say I don't that because that's honestly it's their opinion. So how do you grade an opinion, at least as a stem person, I have no way to, I have, I have no knowledge on qualitative grading as a chemist so Yes, and I do something very similar. You know, I'm expecting three annotations and you get three points. And it's not grading the substance of those annotations. However, if students aren't participating they're not getting the benefit of the assignment right they're not showing that they're doing the reading or having the incentive to at least crack open the reading and take a look at it and they're not engaging with the reading and their classmates. So I've been using it at the, you know, kind of a basic foundational level and even just that has been really fun and exciting to get the conversations going I really feel like this benefits some of the quiet people in the class where you always have some percentage of the class that will be happy to engage verbally and some people who hold back. But everyone is equally contributing and hypothesis and I find that very satisfying. Well, I think you guys are brilliant and kind of I'm not teaching this semester kind of bombs me out because I'm remembering just how creative. You can be with with this stuff and there's so many interesting ways to use it. I only have a couple of minutes left and I guess I just want to say, ask folks if there are any last questions that you want from Monica Emily or Addy. I'm trying to read the chat quickly or David David is here and ready. I'm just seeing all of the, all of the stuff come in and chat and I'm trying to keep up but I can't really are there any questions that I missed Aaron or Nate. It's weird when we're all just sitting here in silence reading the chat. But I guess it tells you something about the power of the margin conversations right. Actually, we moved our faculty meeting online because of coven we used to meet we have a we don't have a senate model we have full faculty town hall meetings and we all show up. But now since we've moved it online. It's so funny because the chat is amazing. I mean you can only imagine like the faculty back channel. At some point they're going to shut it off on us but for the most part I think it's absolutely fantastic so I want to thank you all for coming. I will suggest that all of us are, you know, here on the interwebs and you can find us if you need anything. Maybe folks can either drop an email or Twitter handle in the, in the chat if you're willing to field questions I know there's also potentially some chemistry we are questions that were coming up there. So, if you want to find these folks, they can put their info there and then the last thing I'll say is. The hypothesis team is aggressively kind. So I do find that when I tweet at them like my student Chuck can't remember his password you know like they immediately help out. If you have questions, please, please check them out and I just want to put in a final plug for Monica over at rebus if you are interested in making we are or just kind of learning how people engage together in the, in the searching of, of open resources maybe just pop over there Mount Monica can put the link in the chat. So you can see what rebus is all about because it's a it's a similar ethos I think to hypothesis so with that I will turn it over to for any. All right. Thank you so much. That was great. The time just flew by as it does. I'm always amazed when I look at the clock, like oh my gosh. I want to thank you all what a wonderful panel and and David thank you for for being brave and and showing your face and it was nice to hear your voice and your thoughts I usually just read you on Twitter. But anyway, so thank you to Robin to Monica to Emily and to Addie. And thank you as well, Nate and Aaron for holding down the chat. And we will see you next time on liquid margins.


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It has sought out the opinions of various animal welfare groups, as well as research findings by leading experts in the fields of animal handling, animal stress, and transportation. Like other animals, horses must be transported in a humane way. But there are unique considerations having to do with their proper handling and movement. This program will explain how everyone who is part of the transportation cycle is a vital link in this chain of humane care. To understand how to properly treat these animals with the respect and dignity they deserve, it's essential to understand that horses respond differently to stress they encounter while they're being transported. Things that might influence their reactions include previous experiences while being transported, the condition of their health, their social interaction with humans and other horses, environmental conditions, their breed, age, and gender. It's important to make the distinction between injuries that are caused by being improperly transported and those resulting from owner abuse or neglect. That's because USDA sponsored studies have shown that neglect on the part of original owners is a primary cause of severe welfare problems in horses that are sold for slaughter. Reputable auction houses should refuse to accept a horse that has severe injuries or ailments. Instead, its owner needs to arrange for the suffering animal to be euthanized as quickly as possible. Horses that are purchased in generally good condition need to remain that way. The first step in safeguarding their welfare is to observe the behavior of each horse before, during, and after the auction. That's because aggressive horses need to be placed in separate pens. This helps to prevent painful injuries from being inflicted on more submissive animals.  But when doing this, they need to avoid filling a trailer as they go, taking previously purchased horses along with them for days at a time. Instead, after each auction, newly purchased horses should be taken to a nearby feedlot or farm. There they can be fed and watered until enough have been purchased to make up a full load. In most cases, dealers hire commercial shippers to transport their horses, but some do it themselves. Either way, it's often necessary to transport a load of horses over long distances. An important part of humane handling has to do with the vehicle that horses are loaded onto. There are three styles now being used to haul horses for commercial purposes. The smallest of these is the long, single-deck Gooseneck trailer. It's designed to be pulled by a pickup truck and is used most often for shipments originating within the same state as the final destination. That's because the Gooseneck has roughly half the capacity of larger trailers. USDA sponsored studies indicate that the long Gooseneck carries an average commercial shipment of 11 horses. During loading and unloading, the design of a Gooseneck makes it necessary for a horse to take a step down or up, so it's important that the loading area's floor have a non-skid surface. This can help to avoid injuries resulting from a horse slipping and falling. Another vehicle that's used frequently is the straight, single-deck Semi-Trailer. Studies have shown that on average, 22 horses are transported in this style of trailer. A straight trailer needs to be parked flush with the dock during loading and unloading. It's also important for the dock's ramp to have a gradual incline and non-slip surface. That's because horses have long legs and a relatively high center of gravity. They can easily lose their balance and fall, sustaining painful injuries, injuries that could easily be avoided. A third design is the double-deck Semi-Trailer, commonly called a potbelly. Due to its larger capacity, this is one of the most common types of trailers used when transporting commercial horses. Studies have demonstrated that this type of vehicle is used to transport 28 horses on average. But the potbelly's two-tier configuration makes it awkward for transporting most horses other than smaller foals and yearlings. The reason for this is the lower ceiling height that's caused by using two decks, rather than just one. A horse needs room for a full range of motion. In that way, it's able to move its head around naturally. But in a potbelly, there isn't enough ceiling height to do that, which can create a problem. For example, when startled, a horse may suddenly rear its head. That might happen if the trailer hits a pothole, or comes to a sudden stop. As a result, the horse could hit its head on the lower ceiling, resulting in trauma to its head. Double-deck trailers can also result in injuries during loading and unloading. Many horses are reluctant to walk up and down a potbelly's steep internal ramps. When forced to do this, the animal might panic. If it jumps and falls, the result could be a serious injury to its head or withers. For these reasons, the two-tier trailer is most practical when using a floating deck. This creates just one level and maximizes the overall ceiling height. Basically, although more horses can be loaded onto two-tiered potbelly, Goose necks and straight semi-trailers are more sensible from both an economical and humanitarian perspective. That's because fewer injuries can result, ensuring that each animal reaches its destination in the best physical condition possible. And this ensures that its worth is maintained from a financial perspective. Think about it. If a horse is seriously injured during transport and needs to be euthanized, the dealer loses his entire investment in that animal. One of the most serious problems during transport is fighting. However, bite and kick injuries that are inflicted by aggressive horses can be significantly reduced. That's done by separating stallions from more submissive horses. Although certain ones can be safely penned with other horses, two stallions must never be placed together. This type of isolation should also be used for aggressive mares and gildings. It's important to keep in mind that a load of horses is made up of animals that are different from one another. Each one has had a varied level of experience with other horses, with people, and with being transported. For that reason, every horse needs to be carefully observed and, if needed, separated before transport. Keep in mind these are herd animals. When initially placed together, a group of horses establishes its own pecking order, with one being dominant and the others taking their places in a descending order of dominance. So it's normal for some degree of biting and kicking to occur. An overly aggressive horse, one that continually attacks other horses for no apparent reason, will quickly become obvious. On the other hand, a horse that's extremely submissive, one that's repeatedly being kicked or bitten by several horses, may need to be separated as well. Removing rear shoes before transport is very important when putting horses together in loose groups. That's because this simple practice can help lessen the severity of kicking injuries. It can also reduce damage that's done to the sides of a trailer due to kicking. Removing hind shoes from a horse you haven't worked with before can be somewhat challenging, so be careful. When being loaded, swing gates in the trailer should be used to keep overly aggressive or overly submissive horses separated from the others. Again, carefully observing how pinned horses interact with one another is crucial before loading them for transport. By doing this, compatible animals can be selected to travel together. Using proper handling techniques when loading and unloading horses is also very important to help avoid injuries. For instance, horses have very sensitive hearing, so it's important to avoid creating loud noises when moving them. They also become easily frightened by sudden movements, so handle horses quietly and with patience. A horse's sight is also very sensitive to rapid light changes. As a result, it may balk when being prodded to go from the trailer that's in bright sunlight onto the ramp of a dark barn or loading area. A possible solution might be to add skylights in the roof above the ramp, creating soft, even lighting with no shadows. That's because shadows can also frighten a horse. When moving a horse, it's essential to understand the position of its flight path. When a person stands just behind its shoulder, the horse will move forward. Standing in front of a horse will cause it to move backward. Horses have a fairly thin skin, so at no time should an electric prod be used. The only exception to that is if someone's safety is at risk. When sorting and moving horses, the use of rattle paddles and flags is much more effective and much more made. The number of horses loaded onto a trailer can also affect the amount and degree of injuries. Generally speaking, each horse should be given enough space to ensure that it's not crowded, which might cause discomfort or injury. If too many horses occupy the same compartment, one may bite or kick those around it to gain more room. Or if a horse falls, it's more difficult for it to stand back up if there's not enough room. This problem can be compounded if other horses trip over the down horse, causing them to fall. Allowing more space is extremely important when transporting horses on a very hot day. Depending on the temperature, it might be advisable to drive the load only at night when it's cooler. Making sure that a trailer offers enough ventilation is also essential. Whether driving during the day or nighttime hours. Horses have a natural tendency to kick, so the sides of a trailer that's used to transport them can be damaged over short periods of time. To solve that problem, some carriers use plywood as reinforcement. Although this protects the trailer, unfortunately it can cover much needed ventilation holes that provide the horses with air. In this way, damage to the trailer that's caused by kicking is prevented and the horses that are being transported are provided with enough air. The flow of air also increases the more that a trailer is kept in motion, so a driver should stop only when necessary, such as for checking on the condition of the load. When hauling a load of horses, good driving techniques need to be used. This involves accelerating slowly, decelerating slowly, turning corners slowly and with care. That's because sudden starts, stops and turns can cause horses to lose their balance, fall and become injured. Drivers need to check on a load as often as circumstances allow. This entails observing the physical condition of the horses and providing veterinary assistance as soon as possible if any are in obvious physical distress. Before being transported, it's essential that horses have an opportunity to rest with easy access to food and fresh water. This needs to be done for a minimum of six hours beforehand. Their feed prior to being loaded onto a trailer should consist of hay or grass, as because oats can cause digestive problems during transport. Studies have shown that when provided with adequate food, fresh water and rest at least six hours beforehand, horses can remain on a trailer for about one day, but leaving them on for a longer period than that can compromise their welfare, especially during hot weather. After that time, the horses need to be unloaded at an appropriate location where they can be fed and watered. Once they've rested for a number of hours, the group can be reloaded to resume the trip. Treating horses humanely when being transported is the responsibility of everyone involved. As part of that responsibility, it's critical to follow certain guidelines, ones that help ensure the health and well-being of each animal is safeguarded. This means never transporting a horse that isn't able to bear its weight on all four legs, isn't able to walk without assistance, is blind in both of its eyes, is younger than six months of age, or that is likely to give birth while in transit. It's important that the condition of each horse be accounted for during transit. That's accomplished through the use of an owner-shipper certificate. This USDA form documents essential information about each animal, along with the vehicle that used to transport it. There should be no argument about the need for treating horses that are sold for slaughter in a humane way. Their health and well-being must be safeguarded for both economic and humanitarian reasons. This needs to be done by every individual who is a link in the transportation chain. These animals deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. They need to be kept in the best physical condition possible. And when being transported, they need to be free of fatigue, dehydration, stress and trauma. It's simply common sense. It's simply common decency.


and a seal door really, really wants to go on the Middle Earth field trip. My people, it turns out, are like dying or something. I mean, I feel fine. I just gotta say that Org's got nothing on her foot. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Rings of Power, episode five, might be the funniest one yet. We start out the episode with Nori and not Gandalf. Our Nori is using words to explain other words to a dude that knows no words. We conclude that conversation with him, secure in the knowledge that he is good, whatever that means. And so that we see the rest of the Harfoot party that they tried to leave behind, but didn't leave behind quite. And they're struggling along.  So she proceeds to sing a super depressing song about hardships on the road. A song called Not All Who Wonder or Wonder are Lost. That sounds familiar. Then we pause for a brief interlude so we can see some Middle Earth pop stars who've decided to have a photo shoot at the crater site where not Gandalf crash landed. In very short order though, we return to the main plot where we see one of the Org's approach data who happens to be standing in direct sunlight. And here we get the show's first fourth wall break where data has the Org demonstrate to the audience that Org's are in fact vampires because they do burn in the sunlight.  So we circle back to the world of men, to the humans who are all in their fortress tower thingy and the main gal. She gives them an empowering speech about standing and fighting against data and the Org's who have offered them mercy if they just swear fealty to them. But it's okay because they have a well-trained militia and wait, hang on. I'm being told that they don't have a well-trained militia or weapons or food. Yeesh. So now we cut back to Numenor, check in over there. And Isildur really, really wants to go on the Middle Earth field trip. But his dad is like, half of Numenor wants to go on the field trip, but I don't think there's a seat for you. And if you're wondering what the other half of Numenor wants, it's to be a mob and to yell about the warmongering elf that organized the field trip. Meanwhile, Isildur's sister goes to chat with her boyfriend and try to convince him to talk to his dad about this whole situation. But he's like, when I speak, his ears close up. And this is when we learn Isildur's sister takes things very literally because she tells him to speak louder. So then we check in with Halbrand, who is called to a meeting by the queen, where he learns that Galadriel has told them all that he wants to unite his people. And he seems pretty upset about this. Flashback. You would do well to identify what your opponent most fears and then give them a means of mastering it. The next day. It's like, well, I didn't mean me. Okay, so then we cut back to the Harfoots who have traveled miles and miles and miles, according to the map. And they get to this forest that they normally go to. And it's like super, super barren. And the lady's like, this forest shouldn't be this barren. That big dude that got here after us cause we left him behind, it's his fault that it's like this. Can't argue with that logic. Anyway, so she's like, we should take their wheels and leave them behind. I just gotta say that Org's got nothing on Harfoots. They are brutal. So then we cut back to Numenorm, where Galadriel observes the dude's training and how to fight. And she's like, they don't know what they're doing. They've never faced Org's before. I'll show them how it's done. She goes up to them and she's like, so here's what you do. You stab them. But later she does also say that you should never trust to brute force, to best an Org. Anyway, so after she says that you should stab them, she's like, come at me, bro. Her next bit of advice is to fight with your feet, not with your arms. And she demonstrates what she means by this, by proceeding to do a series of very elaborate hand and arm maneuvers. And while she's doing one of these maneuvers, she takes the sword out of the hand of one of the dudes she's fighting. And he just lets her. But I mean, in general, all these people she's fighting, they are very polite and courteous. Like when she's fighting a whole bunch of them, she's only got two swords. And she's got those swords at the necks of two of the guys she's fighting. Everybody else just waits politely for her to be available to defend herself against them. Very good manners. But before we move on from them, I do just wanna call attention to this one dude who's standing in the background who has just the worst wig that I have ever seen. Anyway, after Galadriel takes care of like everybody and is like, yeah, I'm the best fighter ever. Hope you learned something. Then Hal Brand, he kicks up the sword and catches it in his hand. And Galadriel goes over to him and is like, I've never known a Smith's apprentice to be able to do that, just takes practice. So moving on from them. When I was in college, I really liked to take my laptop out to cafes to study there. And it looks like Farazan had the same idea. He brought his maps out to the marketplace so we could look at them there. I mean, it's not ideal for private conversations about state secrets, but you know, he just needed a change of scenery, I guess. So anyway, his son comes and finds him while he's there. And he's all like, my dad would not be such an elf lover.  You numb nut. And his son seems kind of convinced by this, or does he? But anyway, it's time to check in with the Harfuts again. And Nori sees that not Gandalf is doing something magical to his arm. Oh, sorry. I didn't tell you that not Gandalf scared away some warthogs. I mean, I'm sorry, oh wolves and saved the Harfuts. So anyway, he injured his arm and he's covering it with ice now. And Nori is like, I know, let me touch it. And then she's like, oh no, I have made a huge mistake. After which she's like, meaty and runs away because not Gandalf clearly hurt her on purpose. Finally, it's time to check in with the elves who are having this like fancy feast with their guest, Durin. There's this fancy eloquent toast. But then, before they can drink their wine, Gilgillad is like, before our wines ascend. So I think he was planning some kind of like wine-based magic trick where they levitate it. Sorry, illusion. And then Durin wants to know where they got the table that they're eating off of. He's like, this shit's expensive and rare AF. Dwarves only use this for super special stuff.  So I guess you better have it then. And Durin is like, damn right. So after that lovely little feast, Gilgillad pulls Elrond aside because he wants to share with him the secret of the rotting tree. So this tree is like in a very central location that is clearly visible to everybody all the time. But it has the good manners to rot only on the side that no one can see so that we can keep the super, super secret that it's rotting. So after showing him the tree, Gilgillad explains all of the horrible things that will happen to all of Elf kind if they can't vaccinate all the elves with the me-thrill. But you know, Elrond swore that he wouldn't share the secret of the me-thrill. He's not gonna break his word over the mere hope that this might help the elves. Gilgillad tells Elrond, hope is never mere even when it is meager, which I'm pretty sure is a direct appeal to continue watching rings of power. So then Gilgillad says, if the hope of preventing that is not enough to make you reconsider your oath, I suggest you find another. Wait, find another? Find another what? Find another what? Okay, so back to Numenor where Isildur's buddy got promoted to lieutenant because of the whole fight with Galadriel. So he tries to convince his buddy to let him go on the field trip to Middle Earth. But you gotta love a recurring joke because his buddy is like, sorry, Isil, see is always right. Next we learn exactly what Farazan's son thought about his master plan. He is not on board with it. He is so not on board with it that he's decided to be a terrorist. He gets onto the boat where Isildur happens to be a stowaway and he starts pouring alcohol all over the deck and he's got a flaming lantern. It's gonna set the boat on fire. So naturally, Isildur attacks him and knocks him around to ensure that he drops the lantern. And as we all know, alcohol is the exact same thing as gunpowder, so the ship explodes. And Isildur and Farazan's son are on the ship when it explodes, they are fine somehow. So in light of this act of terrorism, the queen decides to convene a powwow, but then she decides they should sleep on it. And she tells Galadriel to make sure that Hal Brandt attends the next morning session. I mean, she is the queen and could command him to attend and send her guards to get him. But, you know, I get it. Times are tough. You've got to cut costs where you can. Can't be sending guards to do everything when you can have the elf do it for free. So we circle back to the elves where Elrond is having a real crisis over this whole vow of Mithril saving the elves thing. He made a promise to his bestie that he wouldn't tell anybody about his secret project, but his bestie secret project could save his entire race. Like, what's he gonna do? I mean, it's not like he could go to his friend and be like, yo, bro, my people, it turns out are like dying or something. I mean, I feel fine, but apparently shit's critical. So could you help brother out? Maybe share some of that sweet Mithril? One hour later. Oh, it turns out that he can do exactly that. So what was all the drama about? So then we circle back to Numenor where Galadriel is letting Halbrand know about the next morning staff meeting that he's got to be at. And in this conversation, she tells him, sometimes to find the light, we must first touch the darkness. What that means, your guess is as good as mine. So Halbrand now learns that Galadriel's brother died and she is like, super not over it. And he's like, so this is about vengeance? And she's like, one cannot satisfy thirst by drinking seawater. And Halbrand is like, the sea is always right. Okay, he doesn't say that, which is a real missed opportunity if you ask me. She tells him all about how her team mutinied against her and her friend conspired to send her into exile. And the reason they all did this is because they couldn't distinguish her from the evil that she was fighting anymore. Which makes sense that she thinks that because if the elves ever did find Sauron, the first thing they would do is pack him off to Valinor. So then she gives Halbrand his special meaningful necklace back and is like, this is how you earn your peace. Which I mean, did get me thinking that she's banking a whole lot on that necklace meaning what she thinks it does.  Like who's to say that's even his necklace? I'm just saying. Okay, but so then we circle back to the humans where they are swearing fealty to Data because you know, they were promised mercy if they did that. And Data is like only blood combined and like makes the old guy kill this young kid that's with him. So is he gonna make everyone who wants to swear fealty do that? Cause it's a real quick way to cut by 50% the people that are gonna be supporting you and alienating the other 50%. Sounds like a great strategy to me. Meanwhile, back at the tower, the elf dude realizes that if he wants a shot at banging that chick he's into, he should try and bond with her kid.  I wasn't aware that the string on a bow was scary, but good tip, I guess, but the kid is not into it. He does not trust elf duties. Like, no, no, sir. Why do you suddenly care about people?  Also, lift your aim. You can't argue with that. So the kid now trusts him 100% and is like, let me show you my big bad super secret sword thingy. And conveniently, the wall right next to them has a decoration that explains what this thing is and where it came from and what it's for. Don't you just love when that happens? The kid's mom is having some doubts about this whole resistance thing. Seems pretty futile. So the elf dude is like, nah, she needs a pep talk. We can survive this. There is a way. There must be. Great pep talk. He almost had me there. So then we come back to Elrond and Durin where Elrond finds out that Durin lied about that table. It's not actually rare or special. We know how Elrond feels about deceit and lying. Oh wait, he's fine with it. Oh, okay. Nevermind. But yeah, it turns out Durin, the prince, just needed a new table to satisfy his nagging wife. It's being a prince isn't what he used to be, but Gilgalad is secretly watching this conversation, which is bad news because, well, I'm not really sure why, but there's definitely a reason. And I'm sure feeling the tension of this situation. And finally, we come back to New Menor where the Middle Earth field trip is finally underway and they've decided that they're gonna wear armor for the entire journey to Middle Earth. Seems extremely impractical to me, but it looks good. So, you know, if you've got it flaunt it, right? And that wraps up episode five. We learned so much in episode five. We learned that Galadriel is a good fighter, which I think we learned in the first few minutes of the first episode. Okay, no, okay. We didn't learn that. We already knew that. We learned that New Menor is gonna send ships to Middle Earth. No, they decided that before. They just kind of confirmed that decision. We learned that Isildur wants to go to, no, he wanted to go before. Like that's how the previous episode ended, but he's gonna get to go. So, okay. We learned that the dwarves have found Mithril and that the elves want, no. I think we found out that the elves want the Mithril before. I think we knew that. So not that. We learned that the Harfoots are savage and they just leave behind, no.  So that's not new. We did learn that not Gandalf can do math. He did magic the first time that he showed up. Okay, so, so that's not new. We learned that, we learned that Orcs and the guy in charge of the Orcs, that they're bad guys. And no, I think we knew that before. I think we went in expecting that, actually. We learned that, that Mithril is a vaccine. Okay, we learned something. We learned a very important something. All right, so I would say that's well worth an hour's watching to learn that. So I can't wait to find out what thing we learn in episode six. Let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about Rings of Power so far. What you're most excited to learn in the next episode. Who your favorite character is. And just in general, how much you're enjoying this show. I would love to know. Let me know your thoughts and feelings. I post videos on Saturdays. Other random times will be definitely Saturdays. So like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined. And I'll see you when I see you.


Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering ZertoCon 2018, brought to you by Zerto. This is theCUBE, I'm Paul Gillan. We're here in Boston for ZertoCon, and with me is Rob Strichey. He's the senior vice president of product for Zerto. And Rob, I understand here, one of the big items of news is Zerto7 is being announced. Tell us about what's new in Zerto7. Yeah, so we're announcing Zerto7. It will be out in Q1 of 2019. We're really excited because really it's the first time that the IT resilience platform that we've put out will also include in the convergence of backup, disaster recovery, and cloud mobility, all into one single platform. We've been building upon this platform for years. People have come to know us for continuous data protection and our journal-based data protection. And now we're extending that over time to give people a better view and better resiliency across the near-term and the long-term. Well, now I think a backup is being kind of table stakes in the resilience game, but this is, the backup features are actually new for you in this release, is that right? Absolutely, what we've done is enhanced what we had, we had some backup features in there already, we already get used for recovering for things like ransomware, using our journal file level recovery where people can go back like a DVR a few seconds before they got hit. Be able to pull the file, the folder, or an entire virtual machine back and pull that out like we were using a backup. In fact, much quicker, our customers tell us than legacy backup. But table stakes is having enhanced indexing and search capabilities across all your different platforms, having dedicated workflows that are integrated into the current recovery workflows, things of that nature that really are in Zerdo 7 that will take us to the next level. Now, backup is a fairly painful process for most IT admins. What is Zerdo doing to make that simpler? Yeah, I think the great thing is we have over 6,000 customers already that utilize us and trust us for data protection on a daily basis. We're extending those workflows to say, okay, I need a weekly, a monthly, a quarterly, or a daily even, and I want to keep that for a certain amount of time. Right now they would see maybe one day to 30 days back in what we call our journal. And now we're extending that so they see the points in time beyond that and helps to simplify those workflows for those customers. Because really, the complexity comes from, I have a media server, I have single points of failure, I have to worry about did I get that backup or not. The journal technology that we have actually alleviates that. Plus, we've been doing this at scale for many years with many thousands of customers and we know that that's been one of the pain points for our customers around backup too. We didn't take this lightly to go further into this market. We thought that really, the market was ripe for convergence of these products. Oh, now go one layer deeper on journaling. I mean, that's a technology that's been around for a long time, but really not so much in the backup space. What are you doing that's different with your approach to journaling? Yeah, so we actually brought this out back in 2011, so we've been doing it for about seven years now and we took a different approach to disaster recovery. It allows for a lot more granular recovery in seconds. So you have recovery point objectives that are very near and then you get quicker recovery time objectives as well. So a lot of this journaling technology was how do you have the right order fidelity of all of these systems as an application. Now doing that and saying, okay, I want to take a point in time and I want to keep it as my gold copy for three months because I have a business or a corporate mandate that says this is the retention periods that I have really brings together what we've been doing in journaling for years as we went from being the first to put out a hypervisor based replication and journaling system. Then we took it to what they call the DR as a surface market. Then we took customers to public cloud in 2014 and back from public cloud in 2016 and now we really have to any to any technology across those different platforms all using that same underlying journaling technology. But it doesn't need different ways in clouds versus say in VMware's hypervisor. Now how do you coordinate the complexity of that environment? You've got customers who have some backup on-prem, some backup in the cloud, they maybe have multiple clouds. How do you coordinate all that backup? Yeah, I think it's been really one of the things that we've been working on for some amount of time already. So they're starting to see the fruits of our labor about how you have a distributed scalable system that automatically does that. So we're not just a replication engine or just a journaling system. We actually embed the orchestration in automation into the system. That way it's wrapped in. It's kind of like having an engine and having the steering wheel at the same time. Then we wrap a nav system which is our analytics product around that to give people guidance on how to utilize it. So to your point, we try to make it easy. And in fact, one of our pillars is it better be simple, like real simple, otherwise we don't ship it. There are a lot of vendors in the various aspects, backup, DR market. How is Zerto differentiating itself? Yeah, I think that we're not doing backup. We're doing a completely different way of taking this. Backup has been done typically either with agents or snapshot technology. Maybe you go back four hours in time if you get hit with ransomware. Because we already have and can see that data in the journal, seconds of granularity. So say somebody's loading a database on a Friday night, doing an ETL into the database of a terabyte of data. We'll see that terabyte go in and all those changes happen. You could actually utilize the journal after you've actually done the load to take a pre and a post copy of that. So I have before I made the changes and after I made the changes, which really helps customers in a unique way. The, you get into some very large file sizes, I would imagine, when you're doing that many copies of data. How do you manage the volumes? Yeah, we have some technology inside the product that is space efficient, uses things such as compression and other types of technology. For doing the backup and for in Zerto 7 and for long term retention or secondary storage, we're partnering with people like HPE and their store once product set. We have other partners of ours like Exigrid here and their NFS enabled secondary storage. Plus we'll use some of the typical S3 SMB as well as cloud based as targets. Because we think that they have some of that built in hardware and built in technology that really does a better job of doing the compaction. We're not trying to be a purpose built appliance for everybody. We look at being a software company and leveraging those really good secondary storage devices and clouds as the targets. One of the themes of the conference we heard John Morency, Gartner talking about it this morning, was resilience and really moving beyond backup and disaster recovery to business resilience. How well are your customers taking to that message? It's amazing. I think that when I go out and talk to our customers, CIOs, VPs of infrastructure, or just even CIS admins, they're looking for resiliency. They're looking for a single product that can bring together backup, disaster recovery and that cloud mobility. I think you heard one of our customers up on stage with Morency, Jamie from Tinkata that really has embraced that. They're actually kind of, I would say pushing the cutting edge of seven different cloud providers. And utilizing us as that platform. By design, seven different cloud providers. By design. And part of that is if you look at GDPR and all the different regulations across the world they have to deal with, it's easier for them. But they know that they utilize us as an IT resilience platform that enables them to go those different places. You mentioned ransomware earlier. Have you seen the growth of ransomware continue or is that now slowing down, finally being displaced by crypto mining and some other? I think that it's always there. I think that it flares up from time to time and it's not a as Ziv, our CEO and founder said yesterday it's not if you're going to get hit by ransomware it's when. And I think that being resilient and having a resiliency in depth type of approach really is important for that as well. So in time we've got left. Talk about the future. What's the roadmap for Zerdo going forward the next couple of years? Yeah, so this year we're laying out the IT resilience platform, building it out and continuing to build upon what we've done as we see and where we see a lot of our customers going containers are a big thing. And we see that the infusion of containers in our customer base is growing rapidly. So we'll be looking at some new approaches to that. And we think we're uniquely positioned based on our underlying technology to take advantage of that. Cloud-born apps are a big one as well. But because we're already in the cloud working with Azure as one of our key partners in Amazon as well, we get to see how these all come together and we have a unique seat at the table for going forward. Rob, I can't let you go without asking to stand up please and show the camera the official Zerdo colors. If anyone is walking the walk here it's Rob Strache wearing pants with the official Zerdo colors. Where do you find pants with that color? You can find them. The great thing is being in Massachusetts there's a lot of different companies that make Nantucket red, which is not really Nantucket red it's more like a fire engine red. But these in particular I had made for me for this conference this week. So. If you can find anything in the Boston area. Absolutely. Rob Strache, thank you very much for joining us. Much appreciated. Thanks for having me on. I'm Paul Gillan. This is The Cube.