Welcome once again, Robert. Thank you so much for your wonderful photographic essay, and I have to tell you that you're probably one of the best testimonials for the public libraries in America, and you're conferred an honorary library science degree as far as I'm concerned. So, we're going to have a series of just questions, and I know that you're going to also bounce them back to me, so welcome to that. But I want to start by asking you whether you had some specific inspiring library moments, library experience moments in your travels, and relate some of those. Many of the libraries, actually almost all of the libraries I went to, had inspiring stories. It's actually one of the things that I used to kind of weed out and figure which places I wanted to go to. So, it's a really difficult question to answer because I found most of them to be very important, inspiring, even critical to keep them, to keep the libraries open. But I went through and considered some of the possible ones that might be of interest. And one story I could relate goes to our time we were in Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, and we wound up photographing one of the poorest parts of the country. And we went to the Clarksdale, Mississippi, which some of you may have heard of, and it has a fantastic blues club. They're called Ground Zero Blues Club, started by Morgan Friedman, the actor. And what they do is to train young local people to play the blues, and they bring in very famous blues players to play with these kids. And it was just incredible. It was one of the nights we did take off from doing our work on the blog, and we decided to go out and hear some music. So, it was a great night. And when we were sitting there, probably the most incredible blues player I've ever heard came out on stage. And his name was Philip Carter. He was a white guy, just blew the place away. I mean, we were stunned. The next morning, we go to the Carnegie Library in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and there he is, behind the desk. He's the reference librarian, which proves that, you know, real musicians have day jobs. And so this guy, Philip Carter, proceeds to open up the Mississippi Room to me. He shows me their archives and collections. He makes the place come real. And it turns out that the Blues Club actually started in the public library upstairs. It was one of their programs, which later became this amazing program. So to me, that was an inspiring library story, kind of unexpected. And it's nice to meet young people like Philip Carter who can do a lot of things. Absolutely. That's a great story. So you also talk about libraries as, you know, among the major infrastructure of America, whether it's the schools, whether it's our transportation highway system, but that there's a concern about the diminishment of these libraries because they're being starved. Right. So tell us a little bit about that, that concern, certainly, that you express, and there's a theme throughout the book. Yeah. And I think it comes out of my interest in feeling that we all are able to do things to hopefully make our lives better and our society. And so I've always been interested in politics. I've always been interested in social issues. I've always felt, you know, engaged, at least in being able to converse with people and talk about it. So this library project came out of that interest. I really felt that, you know, this is an institution part of the larger infrastructure that I think is important, public hospitals, public, you know, schools, all of those things as well as public libraries are vital. And they are, in a sense, being starved with everyone being aware of the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. What do the rest of us have? What do the 99% have? Well, we do have this infrastructure that was built over more than 100 years. Going back to Teddy Roosevelt and Jane Adams and Jacob Rees, some of the periods of time where the early 20th century progressives were really trying to counter some of the issues of concentration of the wealth at that time. And also that they understood that public democracy doesn't work unless you have an educated public and also unless you have access to shared resources. And so public schools came out of that idea in public libraries as well. So for me, seeing that this is such a vital, important part of our culture and it's under attack at this point, it became obvious that that's what I would want to devote 20 years of my life to doing because it is critical. I am not a librarian. I'm a photographer. I teach photography. But in the process of doing this project, I've understood how incredibly important it is. As I said, I've been able to see it on a national level. And if anything, this only reinforces what I felt to begin with, which is the vital necessity in many cases of public libraries. And it's really ironic in one of the essays. I think it's the foreword by Bill Moyers. He talks about seminal moments in the history of libraries. And one of them was during the recession where the actual peak use of libraries was at an all-time high. I mean, it was literally amazing how folks went and gravitated to libraries. And then the second wave of high use was during the recent recession. So isn't it ironic that we're kind of curtailing services or shutting down libraries at the time that they're actually valued the most and needed the most? So to your point about how it's kind of necessary to maintain them open and support them. And ironically, during the Great Depression in the 1930s, no public libraries were closed. And yet they were packed. Today during the Great Recession, yes, tragically, we're seeing more and more libraries either close or cut back significantly on their hours. Living here in the Bay Area, you almost may not notice that things are pretty rough out there. It's one of the things that I think my son Walker and I both agreed it was very, very difficult to see the amount of suffering going on in the country. Libraries are one of the great levelers. It allows people that maybe don't have a lot of hope or opportunity to begin to be able to do something to mitigate experiences or to help them work their way out of experiences that just aren't very pleasant. Yeah, so, you know, Robert, you have beautiful photographs, the buildings and all that, but you also showcase the people and the amazing collections that are housed in these libraries. So we do know we espouse the values of inclusiveness and respecting individuals that walk through our doors. Was this value played out in your experience or was there any kind of changing attitudes because we're becoming a meaner, tougher society? So talk a little bit about your perspective on that. Yeah, well I do think after the 2008 crash that we have become, in some cases, people are more desperate and seeing fewer opportunities, which again is why I think I really support libraries. There is a wonderful essay in the book written by a woman named Dorothy Lazard who is a librarian over at Oakland. And she wrote about what it was like to work on the front lines of the public libraries. And I think it's a very brilliant insight. It sort of hits the nail on the head in terms of what librarians are faced with constantly on a regular daily basis. Librarians are not trained to be social workers. They're trained to be librarians. So they're given a set of circumstances which sometimes is almost impossible to work with. And yet I found in my experience over 18 years of looking at librarians, almost all of them were extremely kind, extremely considerate, able to help me unless they were overwhelmed. And there were certain situations in certain libraries where they just didn't have the time or the ability to be able to give me attention and totally understand that. But read Dorothy Lazard's essay because I think it does show kind of the degree to which librarians are faced with challenges that are very, very difficult. By the way, I should mention that the San Francisco Public Library was the first and one of the few libraries in the country that has a dedicated social worker on staff full time to deal with and hopefully provide assistance for people to go to maybe more appropriate places for them if they have problems. And I met her today. I don't know if she's here right now. But it's an amazing thing that is now, I think, being picked up by other libraries around the country, but a very progressive idea. Well, you know, to that point, I think one of the most amazing things that we actually get testimonials from some of the clients, if you will, that write to us and say, you know, because of that referral or because of Leah's work, I was able to be placed on housing. Now I have full-time employment. I was able to go back and get my education or whatever. So it really is wonderfully gratifying to see that they make a difference. And to your point about Dorothy Lazard's article or the essay, I would highly recommend it because it really does, I think, capture not only the importance of the role that libraries and librarians play in being non-judgmental and welcoming all, but also it describes historically what's happened in our public policy of how we no longer really treat mentally ill or folks that really need help and how, because of that transition, libraries have become that place of refuge. And in many ways we have to be very innovative, very creative. But some of the exchanges with the patrons that she encounters really come alive through her essay, so it's beautifully done. And by the way, I'm going to be in conversation with her tomorrow night at the Oakland Public Library. Wonderful. So I'm going to switch the tables a little bit and then just ask you one more question about, it's almost not fair because I'm asking you what specific library or libraries from your entire experience stand out as architectural marvels. I mean, something that really says to you, I'd love to go back on any given day and visit that again. Well, of course the big three would be the Seattle Public Library, the Salt Lake Public Library, and of course the Shortsman Library in New York City, the main central library in Manhattan are just unbelievable. For various reasons I would say if you get a chance go see those libraries, they're really important. But there were many, many others that just, you know, I really would be hard pressed to really even point any one of them out. But the haunted library in Indiana was just an over the top beautiful Victorian structure as well as being haunted. It was just a brilliant, beautiful use of architecture. And so many of the small little libraries, too, are very attractive in their own way. The Roscoe South Dakota Library was one that I found very interesting. In terms of one that I felt represented our culture, there was one in Nebraska, where was it? Birchard, Nebraska. That was actually a library that was closed, but the door happened to be a jar. So our son Walker and I kind of went inside and it was in a town that had been pretty much depopulated, was almost abandoned. And much of the Midwest is in that situation today because of the problems of water and drought, whatever. But in this library was the collective memory of the community. World War I lists of the fallen veterans. World War II plaques for high school, you know, band plaques and athletic plaques. They're all housed in this library along with the books in this abandoned place, a very eerie experience. But it really, to me, kind of reflected something about that part of the country at this time. So Robert, a tough question. From your point of view, what does the future hold for the American public library? Well, you know, it's a good question and it's hard for me to predict. I think we are at a crossroads in our culture, not just in terms of libraries, but the idea that we as a people can make a difference. And you can all actually get actively engaged in one form or another of supporting the institution of public libraries. And in my mind, that could be many different things. Literacy is so important and so basic. And you all know how to read. So I'm assuming you know something that someone else would like to know to be able to function in our society. Literacy is something that I think in the libraries, in local churches or synagogues, whatever, there are many different ways of helping in terms of literacy. And I would say, you know, in terms of political things, vote for people that will continue to be able to support and allow us to have this incredible infrastructure. I think that's one thing. I think that we necessarily have to accept that things are going to get worse. I think if collectively we decide we want to make things better or sustain this incredible infrastructure that we have, we can. And that's one reason why I did the book, was to really be able to bring attention to something that I think is important. And hopefully, not just here in San Francisco, but throughout the country, people will place value on this system and then do something about it. Excellent. Great. So we have quite a few questions from the audience. So I'm going to start with the first one. It says, how did the project start in your mind and how did your perception of it change over the course of the 18 years? Well, to make a long story short, I started my photography by being introduced to a guy named Ansel Adams. And he had this amazing policy that if you, as a young photographer, wanted him to look at your work, you came to his house in Carmel at five o'clock and had a cocktail with him. He'd give you feedback on your photograph. So I lived in Santa Cruz at the time and I was all over that. I was there a lot. And at one point he said he was as proud of his work for the environment as he was for his photography, which is very heavy stuff for me as a young photographer. And so I spent years photographing in the landscape and photographing environmental issues. And then it wasn't much of a switch going from being concerned about the commons of the shared environment to the commons here of the public libraries. They kind of made sense for me, at least. And I did wind up continuing on with other projects that still dealt with environmental issues and other books that I've published. In terms of how things change, very big dramatic changes. During the 18 years I did the project, as it turns out, we went from very few computers into the libraries to being now many computers, very much a part of it. It doesn't mean that computers have replaced books. They've supplemented what the books provide. It's another way of gaining access to information. I do think that we hear about the internet as being the future and why do we need libraries. But I don't know when the last time you were on the internet, but I have to wait through a lot of junk mail to get to my email. And when you're on the internet, of course, they're tracking what you're buying and whatever. Whereas when you walk into the library, people aren't going to ask you those questions. It's free, it's open, it's a place that they're not going to track you for information. Libraries are still something that I think worth fighting for because it's different than other sources of access to information. Fantastic. Alright, so this is a very specific question about what was the first thing you usually did when arriving at the library? And how did you determine the angle, etc.? The big libraries I would write ahead because obviously they were concerned about security and I wanted to be able to photograph in these libraries. The mid-size and smaller libraries, I started out writing, but most of the time the librarians were so busy and they didn't get the email or whatever. So eventually I just showed up. So for instance, in Midland, Texas, after driving on the road for about a week and I wear my sweaty t-shirt and shorts and just my eyes were blurry from being on the road and covered in dust, I walked into the library and said, hi, I'm doing this library project and I'd like to photograph your library. Most of the time the librarians were just fine after they got over the initial shock. But the librarian in Midland looked at me and she gave me that look like I knew this could be a problem. And then for some reason I mentioned I was from San Francisco and all of a sudden she got very friendly. And then she opened the petroleum room, which was the archive of the George Bush information. I was like a kid in the candy store. It was just great. So San Francisco had a great rep even in Midland, Texas. I was surprised. That's great.  You know, I actually, I found myself drawn to the small towns with the small libraries because in some ways they're maybe the only act in town. There really wasn't a lot of other things. The library was about it. It was about the only, you know, non-commercial, non-religious space that people could gather. And so it became kind of evident that libraries are functioning in some ways differently in small towns than they do in big cities. Not necessarily better or worse, but they have in some ways a very different role. And I found myself also being able to sometimes comprehend the small places in small libraries a little bit easier than some of the large libraries. Didn't have to worry as much about security and things like that. So in some ways it was a little bit easier to photograph. Very good. And there's also that same person asks whether the photos that were not selected, are they going to be available for viewing somewhere? Well, I do have a website of my own, which is just myname.com. And I'm also going to be doing a website for this project, so just haven't gotten around to it yet. But that would be showing the larger body of work and hopefully that will come up soon. Robert, you also sparked an interest in Carnegie Libraries. So there's a series of Carnegie questions. Of the 2,700 Carnegie Libraries built, how many still exist as working libraries? 1,600. There you go. 1,600. And here in San Francisco we have five. And all restored and grandeur in style. So that's fantastic. Okay. So where in Alaska? It's a fairly large area. Well, I actually photographed in Haynes, Alaska, which is southeast Alaska. I photographed in Anchorage, Alaska. I photographed in Moose Pass, Alaska, which is where the picture of the mural on the outside of the library. A couple of other little places around. So I was there to teach a workshop. So they paid me up there. And it was the beginning in 1994 of the project. So I just happened to bring along my camera when I was there. Okay. Very good. And we're all sort of curious about, you know, there's so much diversity in the libraries that you selected. The large, small, et cetera. But there is a question. What was the most unusual library? I guess other than the one that's haunted. Yeah. Well, there was one in Manawi, Nebraska that was in a little town that was a one woman town. Elsie Eidler was the last surviving person in the town. All the other people in the town had either moved on or passed away, including her husband, Rudy, who had died just a couple years before. So she's the last person in the town. Rudy had a lot of books. And so she built a shed just outside of her home. And all the books were in the shed, which had no air conditioning on a day that was unspeakably hot. So Walker and I went in and I was just dripping sweat. But the books you could check out. And they were, you know, you read them, send them back. There was a list that you would sign. People from all over the world had come to this place. And so there were people from Sweden and Japan and every, you know, all over that had checked out books and presumably send them back after she's done. And after photographing in this amazing place that she put, which was really a memorial to her husband, I walked next door to the bar that she runs in town. And thanked her for doing this because I thought it was great. Great story. So there's a question about the San Antonio Library. I think they're referring to the media that's played out about the No Books Library. Are you familiar with the all technology? Okay, so I'll respond to that one. So the question is, what's your thought on the San Antonio No Books Library? Well, actually, it's a little bit of a misnomer because it's not part of the city system, but the unincorporated county area. And what they tried there is basically technology databases. And frankly, there's been some controversy because it doesn't represent what we know and what we define as a library. So technically, it's not a library, but it does provide access to technology. And I know even within the city, there's a little bit of controversy about whether or not that's the way for the future. And rest assured that the vast majority of San Antonians do not believe that that's what's going to happen. It's just meeting a specific need on access to technology in their small centers. So that's one thing. Okay, so there was also a question about some of the states you missed. Okay, obviously you can cover all 50, and you did a great job of, I think, 38 of the 50 states. 48. There you go. So the two states that are missing and why. I wish I had a good answer, but there's no reason why I didn't go to Alabama. I have nothing against Alabama. It's a very nice state. It's just I didn't happen to go there. I am going to go at some point with my camera and photograph one library in Alabama so I can say I photographed. And the other state was Hawaii. I've never been to Hawaii, and I would love to go. It's just a matter of time and money, but someday I will, and then I will have finished all 50 states. Fantastic. We look forward to that. Great. And so the question here is, did you have a publisher interested before you actually started your trip and your project? Actually, no. A lot of this project was based on taking a risk, a calculated risk that something good would come out of it. I did have in mind when I was ready one publisher, which was Princeton Architectural Press, and they're the ones that published the book. And I didn't really consider any other press. They do wonderful books. It's kind of a smallish publisher, but they're now owned by Chronicle Books, which is a much larger publisher. But they're located in New York. The people working there are whip-smart, very dedicated, and I must say I've had the fortune of working with one of the great publishing experiences in my life. And I've published other books. But this is by far the best experience. These people were so good at what they did. I'm just so thankful. So I lucked out in that sense. Because usually when you're doing a book, you have to go to many publishers and get rejected. And it's a very disheartening experience. But this happened to work out. They understood I think when I walked in the door and said, there are 17,000 public libraries, they instantly woke up to the possibilities of lots of book sales. So I think they were smart. That's great. And also a side note to the same question. It says, thanks for a fascinating talk, a great book on such an important topic. So I want to make sure that you were aware of that observation. So those are it in terms of questions. I think we have one question from the audience. So we'll go ahead. I was prompted by the library that you described in I think it was Mississippi that hasn't had air conditioning for a year. And I'm wondering, you know, hearing the story about the Salinas Library and I remember that whole story and what happened there. Do you have any ideas? I mean, I'm not counting. Obviously the government hasn't put the money in to get air conditioning in that library. But what would it take to get some kind of celebrity or something, you know, aware of the situation? So that that could be changed? Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really good, your point of having perhaps setting up a donations for a particular library in terms of how to help individual libraries. I mean, perhaps Luis Herrera could, I think the Salinas Library is a wonderful story. It is sort of ironic that it took celebrities to save the library system, which was going under. I mean, if it hadn't been for those people that would not, this library system would be closed. And that was the irony is people were saying John Steinbeck's hometown, they're closing all three branch libraries. It's terrible. So in terms of Chula, it's in the poorest county in the country. So in the poorest state in the country, Mississippi. So what do you do? I don't know an answer. But yeah, there could there could be a perhaps something on a website, you know, that would be set up to help. And let me suggest just one point of information. The American Library Association has some wonderful affiliate groups and some national groups like the Friends of Library USA. And on their website, there's always opportunities to link with them and either offer support, financial support or find ways to connect directly from local groups that may be interested in supporting those causes. So I really appreciate your interest in a very specific corner of the world. But those needs are there. So I wanted to ask Luis Herrera one question if I could. Sure. Yeah. I think people might be interested in knowing a little bit about your background and how you wound up coming from where you came from to where you are now. Absolutely. Be happy to share that.  As a matter of fact, I grew up in a very humble working class family that did not have a tradition of libraries. And I always talk about or tell the story where we, my twin brother and I were taken on a tour of our new neighborhood branch. And it was just an amazing experience because we took books out and went home with at least, you know, five or six books. But we didn't have the connection that we were supposed to return them. So never return to books. And it was at the time when they would have what they call library police. Literally clerks would go and pick up your books that were delinquent. So there was a summer that I always called the worst summer of my life that every single knock on the door. I was certain it was a library police coming to shame us into returning the books. And never would have thought that I would have become the city librarian of San Francisco. And I always say that that's sort of my penance for that. But I'm loving every minute of it. But fast forward. My degree was in the University of Arizona serving underrepresented communities, particularly the Hispanic bilingual, bi-cultural communities. And that's where I really learned to eliminate barriers to service and really promote services to a diverse group. So I landed in the perfect place here in San Francisco. I was a school librarian in my former middle school. That was my first gig as a professional librarian. But I've been so fortunate of having a career in Long Beach in San Diego, Pasadena. And this is Library Nirvana, so I landed in San Francisco. So thank you for asking. And I think we have about 10 minutes left. And we're going to be able to have Mr. Dawson sign his books in the back of the room. And on that note, we're going to close the program. And please let's give Robert Dawson a wonderful round of applause. Thank you so much.


My name is Sam Bakny, I'm the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism Revisited. The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slides and insults. He is hyper-vigilant. He perceives every disagreement as criticism, and every critical comment as complete and humiliating rejection. The narcissist perceives every disagreement, let alone criticism, as nothing short of a threat. He therefore reacts defensively. He becomes indignant, aggressive and cold. He detaches emotionally for fear of yet another narcissistic injury. He devalues the person who had made the disparaging remark, the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist's expense. By holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant, the narcissist minimizes the impact of the disagreement and criticism on himself. This is a defense mechanism, known as cognitive dissonance. Like a trapped animal, the narcissist is forever on the lookout. In his mind there is this dialogue, or monologue, rather. Was this comment meant to demean me? Was this utterance a deliberate attack on me? Gradually, the narcissist's mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference until he loses touch with reality and retreats to his own world of fantasies and unchallenged grandiosity. But here's the rub, and the twist. When the disagreement, or criticism, or disapproval, or approbation become public, the narcissist tends to regard them as narcissistic supply. Only when they are expressed in private does the narcissist rage against them. Public commentary, even unfavorable, even if negative, is narcissistic supply. The cerebral narcissist is as competitive and intolerant of criticism and disagreement as is his somatic counterpart. The subjugation, subordination of others, demand the establishment of the narcissist's undisputed intellectual superiority or professional authority. Alexander Lowen wrote an excellent exposition of this hidden or tacit competition. The cerebral narcissist aspires to perfection. Thus, even the slightest and most inconsequential challenge to his authority is inflated by him, hence the disproportionality of his reactions. When confronting adversity fails, some narcissists resolve to deny which they apply to their extensions, family, business, workplace, colleagues, friends. Take, for example, the narcissistic of the narcissist's family. Narcissists often instruct, order, or threaten their children into hiding the truth of abuse, malfunction, maladaptation, dysfunction, fear, pervasive sadness, violence, mutual hatred, and mutual repulsion, which are the hallmarks of the narcissistic family. Other sayings like, not to wash the family's dirty linen in public, that's a common exhortation. Whole family conforms to the fantastic, grandiose, and perfect, and superior narrative invented by the narcissist, to the narcissistic confabulation. The family becomes an extension of the false self. This is an important function of the sources of secondary narcissistic supply, to comply, to affirm, to uphold, and to buttress the false self, if necessary, by denying reality and by pathologically and recurrently lying about it. Criticizing, disagreeing, or exposing these fictions and lies, penetrating the family's facade, they are all considered to be mortal sins by the narcissist. The sinner is immediately subjected to severe and constant emotional harassment, guilt and blame trips, and to abuse, including physical abuse. This state of things is especially capable of families where sexual abuse is prevalent. Behavioral modification techniques are liberally used by the narcissist to ensure that the skeletons do stay in the family cupboards. An unexpected byproduct of this atmosphere of concealment and falsity is mutiny, rebelliousness. The narcissist's spouse or his adolescent children are likely to expose the narcissist's vulnerabilities. His pro-ness to secrecy, his self-delusion is aversion to the truth, and they are likely to rebel against him sooner or later. The first thing to crumble in the narcissist's family is this shared psychosis, the mass denial and the secretiveness, so diligently cultivated by him, criticism and disagreement that he so avoids are bound to haunt him and catch up with him sooner or later.


and those production live of re-invent 2013. This is our first year at re-invent, even though we did the AWS Summit in June, it's a little warm-up for the Cloud Super Bowl, which is going on here, 8,000 people, descending upon Vegas. Lonnie Jaffe is here, he's the CEO of SyncSort. Lonnie, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for having me, it's great to be here. Yeah, so what do you think of the conference? Is this your first re-invent?  It's my first re-invent. Yeah, us too, as I just said, but so what do you think of the vibe? Fantastic vibe, the energy level is really quite amazing. I've met 9,000 people who are here, and then also the Twitter sphere and the ecosystem of people who are reacting to what's going on in the conference is really quite remarkable. So SyncSort's a really interesting company. One of the first companies that I met coming into the business back in the 1980s, and you've sort of reinvented yourselves, I guess pun intended, made some recent changes in terms of the structure, so I wonder if you could give us the update on SyncSort. For those of you who might remember SyncSort from the mainframe days, it's quite a different company now, but take us through where you're at and maybe some of the recent changes that people might not be familiar with. Yeah, so the company, one of the first software companies ever, founded in 1968, and really high-performance data processing software on the mainframe sorting programs are actually very challenging. It's one of the core computer science challenges that anybody who's studied computer science had to deal with. And so for the first couple of decades, that was the business, and then over time, the company evolved to build a whole array of next-generation technologies that do connect into legacy systems, process data, and then load it into new systems. And so I joined a couple of months ago. I came, I was at IBM for 13 years, and then I was at CIA technologies for a couple of years. And at SyncSort, the first thing that we wanted to do was take this Hadoop business that we had built, this next-generation big data technology that was selling really well, and scale it up, just double down on the business and grow it and do all sorts of interesting things like create the cloud version, which we just launched this week. And then the other thing we wanted to do was to the owners of the company, which are some of the best private equity venture capital funds on the East Coast of the United States, Inside Venture Partners, Bessemer, Georgian Partners, Goldman Sachs, they wanted to double down on the business inorganically. They wanted to allocate their capital, so Inside alone just raised a $2.6 billion tech fund. They were in Twitter and Tumblr and a lot of the other high-profile recent exits, and they wanted to use SyncSort as an acquisition vehicle that we can go up and buy other strategic near-adjacent software companies that we could give a lot of lift to. So just did the first one of those a couple of weeks ago, a company called Circle based in the UK. So what's Circle all about? Great question. So the technology of Circle takes mainframe data that's stored in IMS or VSAM, and it moves it to a more strategic location, DB2Z, and makes it a lot more accessible to our Hadoop product. So now we could, a lot of the early adopters of Hadoop, the consumer internet companies of Silicon Valley, Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Google, they didn't have mainframes, they didn't have any legacy systems. So this wasn't a challenge for them, but for the grown-up companies who are using Hadoop, what good is your next generation big data cluster if it can't access your actual data? And 70 to 80% of corporate data is still stored in the mainframe, so this allows them to get access to that mainframe data, and it also helps them save a lot of money. So you said VSAM and IMS data, to DB2Z. So then it can be accessed off-platform. So not off-Z DB2, I forget what IBM calls it, Linux, Unix and whatever else, but the Z version of DB2. Yeah, and so it's a relational structure instead of hierarchical, so it makes it a lot easier to access using our Hadoop product. So then what we did this week is we launched what's called Syncsort Iron Cluster. It's the first data integration product that runs natively on Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and so what that allows you to do is without installing any servers or software, you just one click, you can spin up a Hadoop cluster in the cloud and start siphoning off your expensive workloads that you were previously running in a legacy data warehouse or legacy ETL tool. You can instead save huge amounts of money, redo those processes in Hadoop in the cloud without building anything, and then as a side effect of saving all of that money, you also get a Hadoop cluster, which is getting better and better every day. You can use the Hadoop cluster to pre-process the data and then load it back into the whichever systems you were loading it into before, or you can load it into something like Amazon Redshift, which gives you the opportunity to do a whole array of next generation cloud things. What are you seeing for EMR Elastic MapReduce and what are the advantages relative to sort of non-cloud MapReduce? Well, one advantage is you don't have to buy any machines, you don't have to install any software, you don't have to plug anything in. That's something you'd expect, right? It's very elastic, so you can scale up and scale down. Batch processing tends to be very interrupt-based, so there are times when you need to do more batch processing and less, so it allows you to be very flexible there. It's also getting cheaper and cheaper all the time, and this is something that Amazon is great at. Not only do they make incredibly high-performance systems, but they're really good at making sure that the price is the best for the customer. So for a vendor like us, we're able to create a product, have it be really inexpensive, free up to 10 nodes, and then incredibly cheap hourly price beyond that, and then as elastic MapReduce gets cheaper, we benefit from the commoditization that's going on in the cloud platform space because our product becomes higher and higher value. So, Lonnie, talk about some of the, let's dig into some of the use cases. So you're moving data from mainframes into Hadoop, so you're doing some processing. What kind of, when you're talking to customers, what are some of the real pain points that they're looking to address? I mean, essentially, is it customer data they're trying to get in there? What are the workloads that these data sources are going to really support? So the most common scenario that we're seeing in terms of the really large purchases of our Hadoop products so far, our customer has, let's say, six different source systems. One of them might be the mainframe, and accessing the mainframe is very challenging. There's all sorts of things you need to do, like EBSDIC to ASCII conversions and Cobalt copy book imports, like really hard, sustainably high-value stuff. But then- Fun though, really fun. Really fun. Then you have maybe five other source systems, and what you're doing today is you're taking those and you're bringing them into a legacy data warehouse, more expensive data warehouse environment, and you're doing what's called ELT. So you're processing it in the data warehouse, and then maybe you're running a business intelligence tool against it, like Cognos or Business Objects or something like that. Instead, the very simple version is they have an opportunity to upgrade their expensive data warehouse for, let's say, $5 million. Instead of upgrading the data warehouse, what they do is they spend $1 million building a Hadoop cluster, and then they avoid the data warehouse upgrade entirely. They save $4 million. They put the Hadoop cluster between the six source systems and the downstream data warehouse, and all they use it to do is to pre-process the data and then load it into the data warehouse that they were gonna put it in anyway. Very simple use case. You just use it as a pre-processor to save money, and then as a side effect, you get the Hadoop cluster, which becomes a long-term active archive of all of your data, incredibly inexpensive. 100 to 1,000 times is cheap, which is so many orders of magnitude, it's really hard to conceptualize. And then over time, the Hadoop cluster gets better and better. So the phase two is, okay, now that I'm using Hadoop as a pre-processor before loading my downstream systems, maybe I can stop loading those downstream systems altogether, because the world of things you can do with the data once it's already in Hadoop is getting better every day, and not just what you can do with it against Hadoop, but also there's these nearby systems, like the NoSQL repositories, so you can pre-process the data in Hadoop and then load it into one of those and then do all sorts of sophisticated analytics, next generation systems, so that cloud product lets you do all of those things, use Hadoop as a pre-processor, save huge amounts of money, build skills, make it easier to attract talent, but you don't even have to build the Hadoop cluster on premise. Right, absolutely, and I think you touched on something really important, doing the transformation, the processing in Hadoop instead of in your data warehouse, it's going to save you a lot of money. It's, you're using the power, the compute power of Hadoop, you're using it more than just as a storage engine, you're using it as the compute capabilities, which is really where the power is, and you're not paying Teradata and Oracle significant amounts of money to upgrade as data volume continues to grow, and then you use those savings, as you said, now you've got a Hadoop cluster, you can pump those savings into either hiring data scientists or experimenting with new analytics, so it kind of pays for itself, it's a great value proposition it sounds like for the enterprise. Yeah, and so what our product, the way it's useful, and this is, Hadoop distributions really are attracted to us because we, first of all, make Hadoop a lot easier to use. We contributed a patch to the Apache Hadoop trunk, MapReduce 2454, which got committed earlier this year, and it allowed us to install our algorithm and sort program on every node in the cluster, use our GUI to design the MapReduce jobs instead of writing it in Pyagre Hive, and it just makes the Hadoop cluster run so much faster, it handles all the connectivity into the backend systems, including the mainframe, which is really challenging, and it has this quality of making it easier to manage and maintain over time. So that, in the cloud in particular, is very useful.  Right, so you're abstracting with that complexity, and I think the GUI interface, you can kind of intuitively create jobs without having to code and do all that kind of work, and it's amazing in the data integration world, I mean, there's still so many people out there whether it's not necessarily big data workloads, but including big data workloads, they're doing hand coding, and just this primitive form of moving data around, have you seen that change all over the years? I mean, I was covering this market 10 years ago, and that was a problem then, and it seems to me it's still the way a lot of companies do it. The early adopters of Hadoop, you know, the consumer internet companies, they could hire an army of Stanford Computer Science graduate students to cobble together data flow language code on Hadoop. It's really challenging for the grown-up companies, the large banks, the hospitals, the government organizations to do that. We are seeing people who are using things like Hive, which is still very popular. Even if you're using Hive, you can take our technology, plug it in, it just makes the cluster run so much faster and it still handles connectivity into all sorts of legacy systems. And then over time, you can start to use the visual tool that we have so that you can manage the flows that you're building a lot easier. So it sounds like your mission is to make Hadoop better, easier, faster, increase adoption. Exactly, and we also focus a lot on the downstream systems. So we want to become the most differentiated pre-processor for the fastest growing things that you would do with Hadoop systems. Like so today we load into Vertica and Tableau and all these incredibly sophisticated no-sequel repositories. And then over time when people start doing all the big data things that people have been envisioning for a while, dynamically altering the price of milk so you can sell more bread because you know the foot traffic patterns in your store or predicting traffic patterns a couple of hours ahead of time and dynamically allocating the tolls to anticipate traffic bottlenecks or figuring out which healthcare treatments result in the best outcomes and delivering that insight to the clinicians at the point of care, you already have a Hadoop cluster. It already has all of your data. It already has a fantastic tool on it that's easy to design the analytics and you can let your data scientists loose on that and create all sorts of next generation systems. And essentially talking about integrating an analytics system with what essentially is a transaction system and making decisions in near real time. That's right. I mean there's also an emotional component to it. People could always do data offload or workload siphoning off but you do a whole bunch of work and then all you have is a new system that does the same thing as your old system. Not that exciting. However, with Hadoop, not only do you save five to 10 times as much money as building out the Hadoop cluster costs, you get this cluster that is getting better faster than almost anything else in the technology industry and that emotionally just feels more valuable to people and it gets prioritized above the line. It's so much easier to sell something when it does something useful and saves money as opposed to if it just saves money or it just does something useful. So if I understand the strategy, you're taking the data transformation prowess of SyncSort and you're building around that using M&A. You obviously have a strong background in M&A. What have you, what you've learned at IBM that you're going to take with you? IBM is a very prescriptive M&A model, right? What will you take with you and what will you do differently? So my big focus from an acquisition perspective is identifying, and this is particularly important in the world of open source, is finding things that are sustainably high value. It's very easy to have a piece of technology in the world of Hadoop where tomorrow a company like Facebook open sources a project that does the same thing as the product that you're trying to sell for money and that's problematic. So you need to find things that are incredibly challenging, sustainably high value and that we can give a lot of lift to. We have thousands of customers. We have a global enterprise sales force. So we have the ability to buy a powerful piece of technology and then pump it through our global sales force and give it a lot of lift. The other thing we want to find is things that are going to not restrict our partnership freedom of movement. We have amazing partnerships with the Hadoop distributions with companies like Amazon and Tableau and Vertica. So we want to make sure the things we buy continue to make us more and more useful to them. Awesome. Lonnie, we get in the hook, but great segment and congratulations on the move and the opportunity, the vision, wish you the best. Thank you. It's really good. Okay, keep it right there. We're right back with our next guest. We're live. This is theCUBE from Reinvent 2013.


Hello and welcome back to the craft box. My name's Brenton today We're in episode 102 of the was 101 death walkthrough last episode if you haven't checked it out already we made it into zamonda and We are now talking to its easy snake tail Impressive. I did not think you would win so quickly Yeah Zibu heard how you beat the long dreamer shamans like a drum He wants you to raise a force of igoka defenders and strike the elephants like summer lightning in heavy thunder Go to the barracks and rally the igoka defenders. I'll meet you there Okay, then that's cool That sounds perfectly not like a scam at all Um, yep, we are defeating him Only possible solution So yeah, still missing the waterworks boots Been doing it a bit which is kind of annoying, but it'll be fine We'll get them soon. Probably maybe not who knows This doesn't look right at all You got here too fast.  I mean Barter killed the wizard. Oh It is a bigger place, and I thought it'd be Yeah, he's a cheeky one Okay, we are just going to redo our deck. Hmm. Um, he says doing waterworks Okay, thank you. That was so weird. Um, don't even know what that was Do-do-do-do Do-do-do-do And a reshuffle. Okay, let's go. Now, let's do this Okay, a painted greyhorns. Uh-huh.  Okay, that's fine Frostbite me. I don't really care to be honest. Don't care at all Yum Hello He was one who I went through on waterworks with just before Okay, that's cool. Oh Also, it's the birthday celebrations and there's a new balloon emote, which is really kind of cool Okay, bye That's unlucky. There's a balloon emote, which is so cool. So super cool. Um, see ya Not a moji Pretty cool Pretty cool Um, so yeah, two blades and hopefully we can hit I mean he's got a tower shield, which is kind of annoying. Oh Well, who cares not me.  Thank you Boop boop Okay, we need to do another hit we will probably Wraith to be honest just because we got that we got that man Okay, what is it? It is a hit. He is why bringing me Mm-hmm Okay, you would tower shield wouldn't you? You really making this more difficult than it has to be sir. You do realize that, right? Like you could have just died easily like the other one, but nope you had to do it the hard way No Okay No fizzle that's good No, oh Crick even better even though we didn't need a crate, but we correct so that's good gotta love critting Okay, there we go. Bye Heal. Thank you full health again. Yay No, I didn't go very well. No, it didn't Free free free Free thank you for freeing us. They got the drop on us. I thought they were on our side Hurry and tell captain Cizani. What happened here warn her that the king's magician. It's a snake tail is actually a great horn Yeah, I Don't think he's a Yeah, I don't think he's a greyhorn nor do I think he was a lion Yeah, I think there's yeah, there's some different identity issues with them Yeah, he needs help. The snake tail is a greyhorn Oh Titi is not a greyhorn, but a traitor disguised as one and he had greyhorn mercenaries painted up as zebras in genius We must tell shockers you do once we have hard proof the greyhorns didn't get in through the source gate So there must be a breach Search the city walls to find the breach and please fix it once you've reinforced it Meet me back outside the source gate Okay My dude Let us see I was I was about to say at least we don't have to defeat 10 of them A hole big enough for a greyhorn to pass through you need to find some wood planks to fix it Wood planks where are these? They're usually around here somewhere Don't know though. Who knows we will find them though. Oh Here they are There's one at least pile of wood one No, he's online again. Hello really love going online and offline a and And Two nope three. I can't count. Yes, that is correct. I cannot count Okay Let's go and fix the hole in the wall because apparently all we do in this world is fix things But that's fine Much better. No greyhorn will sneak through there again Okay, that's what you think Probably will find a way. There's a will there's a way Umm But yeah, let us go and talk to what's her face again. She remember Show me number nine and just wonder out skirts, which is out here out in the wild again Do po do po do po do po do Do po do po do Hello You found and fix the hole in the wall good work. I I have not found the evidence we need yet, but I had to check on the Ogoka defenders out here. It's not going well. The Greyhorns have put a scout tower on fire, defeat some Greyhorn mercenaries, and survey the scout tower. Then report back. Seriously, this is just not even needed. Like why do we have to defeat some, like, I'm not even going to question it, but I'll be back in just a sec. Okay, I am back, defeated them, and then we need to survey this area. The tower is burning. But look, down there by the, it looks as if the longdreamer shamans have the water elementals under their control. Okay. Well then, let us see what Sunzeny wants us to do now. Why are you still there? You're kinda, like, still there. So she has 67 balance, uh-huh. Do you have, like, a gear? We'll find out. Water elementals? That gives me an idea.  You can take control of the water elementals. We could use them to douse the fire. You'll need to defeat the longdreamer shamans, and claim their storm talismans. They use those to control the elementals. Mmm, I would have to do that, wouldn't I? Okay. I'll be back once I've defeated six of these. Haha. Okay, I am back. Did you get the storm talismans? Very good. Now that you have the storm talismans, you can compel the water elementals into helping her. Of course, they are a key art experience, so you'll have to show them how strong your medicine is. Defeat the water elementals to let them know you are in charge. Then use them to put the fire out. Here's a bucket. So many defeating. Okay, we'll do one battle. In fact, you know what, we're just going to do both of them on camera. You know why? Because I'm in gear. I've tried fifth times getting water work gear. Well, fifth is not enough times, apparently. You need to try more than fifth times. You should try at least fifth, tenth. Yep. Okay. Let's do this. Haven't done this for a while. For some reason, I'm in realm bail of strom. Don't know why. I don't really care though, but you know, not really where I usually am, so it's kind of weird seeing people because I do love playing games by myself and, like, when I'm in by myself, I'm in, like, by myself. I'm, like, in pirate 101. I know it's already dead, but I'm always in the last world no matter what, or, like, a random world in the middle, just so people don't find me. If I'm in was a 101, I'm usually in a random world, usually vampire or scarecrow, or wraith. Is it vampire? Is wraith or scarecrow? Because I don't want people finding me because I just love playing by myself because I'm a loner and have no friends. The only time I do try and have friends is when I do team up, but obviously I then do want friends, so I mean, it's not really a big issue, but, yep, that's just how it is. Scarecrow. Here we go. Oh, crit. Even better. That 13% crit pays off sometimes, and we probably didn't need a crit, but we did, so that's fine. Yay. Two down. One to go, I don't want long dreamers, shamans, they are bad, they earthquake, and earthquake is bad, and never again is earthquake going to be good ever, so yeah. Okay, we're going to defeat you, plus whatever else comes, hopefully it is not a long dreamer shaman because I would literally die. Okay, I'm going to discard you. Pew. Yeah, I mean, death is slow, but I think that even without D&I, it's still really good. Like, you don't need, you don't need it, just because, yeah, scarecrow is fine.   I just do two blades just to get as much health as possible, so I can go on to the next battle, full health, which is a good idea if you're death, because I was hoping that did max. Actually, I wasn't, but I was thinking it would, because literally that's the way you get health.  So scarecrow is great, 5-better than D&I, that concern, that respect, I mean, but D&I is a fantastic spell, and I can't wait to craft it. But scarecrow is pretty good. It's a bit underpowered, yeah. Yeah.  Okay. Using the bucket, you direct the water elementals at the fire. With a hiss and a billow of smoke, the fire goes out. But yeah, like, it's kind of underpowered, kind of, I mean, it is, let's be honest, it's underpowered. It's an underpowered spell, but at least it does damage.  Like it could be shit, like, really underpowered, and costs a lot of money. I can see the cloud of smoke from here. Great job. Now, let's find that traitor. My scouts scoured the area, but haven't found anything useful. Can you check the magician's hut near the palace for clues? I'll wait back inside the city gates to hear what you've heard. Oh, the magician's hut. Hello. Okay. This is where the monkey is for this place, for Zamunda, not the outskirts, because I already found that one, but for Zamunda in here. Tzitzi's hut is locked up in dark. But what's this? Outside, you find jars of white and black paint. You should bring them to Captain Sunrunner as proof. When we eventually go in there, because I don't think we actually do go in there now, but when we go in there, there's the monkey. So yeah. Let's go and talk to Senni... Senni... Senni, yeah. These jars of paint are the evidence we need. Tzitzi used them to camouflage the Greyhorns with white and black stripes. I'm sure this paint is enough proof for Shakazibu. We'll tell him how Tzitzi used it to disguise the Greyhorns in his attempt to replace the Igoka defenders with his own men, but the palace is still locked. I know. Take this evidence to Queen Amelie Ardenwin. I'm sure she will help you. You can find the Queen in the Moon Gardens. Here's a key to the gate. Okay, next episode we will head on into the Moon Gardens, which is just over here. So yeah. Thank you for watching. Remember to leave a like and subscribe, and if you've already subscribed, press the little bell to see exactly when I post another video. And remember, craft outside the box.


Today, I'm going to walk you through how I create FPV videos for clientele and commercial work. I'm also going to share with you the best practices I use to best communicate with clients so that they enjoy the experience and want to work again and refer you, and also how I get these clients in the first place. To illustrate what I'm talking about, I'm going to use the example of me working with my friend and client, Daiji. The way I actually met Daiji was through another friend that I met through a networking event. They saw the work I was putting out on my Instagram, and when the time came, she thought of me to make a video, and that was the boat video that you may have seen on Instagram or YouTube, or maybe not, you know, maybe it's not actually that big of a deal. Needless to say, that video did relatively well, and not only was Daiji very satisfied with the outcome, but he also really enjoyed the process of working together. So when the time came for him to promote his new service, which is a home omakase service, we wanted to get together and create something great. So the first step in my process, when creating a video from scratch with a client, is to get on a call and figure out what their goals exactly are. So to understand this first point, imagine going into a hospital and you have a pain. You go into a hospital, the doctor walks in, looks at you once, is like, here, here's a band-aid, walks out. How does that feel? Second scenario, you walk into the hospital, you've got a pain, the doctor sits down, takes a look at you, they ask, how are you feeling? What's hurting most? Tell me the symptoms. By asking those questions, doctors most likely going to prescribe you something way better than a band-aid. This is the big difference between made service providers and great service providers. They out care the competition. So for Daiji's call, this is what I did. We hopped onto the call, and the first question I asked him were, what are some of the biggest goals you're trying to reach with this video? This allowed him to express in his own words what the success of the video would look like. I could write those down and figure out how we could best convey those in our next video. Through asking more questions, I later discovered that our previous video was a huge talking point to a lot of his clients. It was kind of like one of the first or last things they saw that blew their mind and separated him from the rest. That's one of the huge advantages we have with FPV drones. We can create these incredible videos that people still are not really used to seeing the perspective of flying from the sky to hitting a subject. After figuring out his goals, I then asked what were some of the struggles he was dealing with in his business, and he was able to tell me some of the ongoing pains that he's been dealing with. Through his answer, I figured out how else we can design this shot and this video to solve some of those problems potentially. Some of his objectives and goals for the video were to capture the city of LA in SoCal, which is where his new service was going to be based. He wanted to do the shot going through the car because he thought it was really cool, so of course I'm going to include that if I can, and then he wanted to make people talk. That was where the three points that he said in his own words. Now that I have these points, I can design a shot or a video that will hit these points as best as I can. Once I had all this information, I was able to go back and put together a proposal using Daiji's words so he understands that we are actually listening and we're trying to solve the problems and the goals that he has. Without a hitch, he agreed to the proposal and I'm sure that listening really significantly increased my chances of this happening. They say a minute spent in planning and pre-production is five to ten minutes saved in production and post. From my experience so far, this has been very true. So some of the big things you want to do when planning your FPV shot is a, figuring out the location and getting as good of a grasp as you can on it, and b, figuring out what action points you want to share in the video. Once Daiji and I settled on a location, a big beach house in Malibu, he sent me as many photos as he could. I looked at photos on Zillow, looked online for as many reference points as possible, and we started to plan out a route. I drew up some routes, I imagined shots and movements and actions in my head, and I also asked Daiji what are the most important points he'd like to show in the video. And I think it's these action points that allow us to tell a better story throughout our FPV video. I planned as much as I could before heading in, but one of the important things, especially on set, something always happens. So have a plan, but always be flexible in where it goes. Adaptability is one of the key things that you need to have, especially if you're working in creative. The intention of the video I decided to craft for Daiji was walking people through an experience of what dining with Daiji would be like from beginning to end with FPV as the tool to capture everything. The rest of the challenge is fun, but nerve wracking, but fun, because now it's time to execute the shot that you planned out. Whenever I'm creating an FPV shot, I'm trying to push the boundaries of what my skills and my equipment is capable of, and also trying to figure out what can an FPV drone communicate and do that other tools cannot do. So by orchestrating a one take that wouldn't be possible on necessarily a steady can or a crane because it's limited by the arm, how can we fly through and close to things in a way that feels seamless and still is able to communicate the story, but still is able to break people's minds having them wonder how they did it. When you are designing these shots for your work and your client, always be asking yourself, what can my drone do that other things cannot? And in order to tell a more intricate story for brands and spaces and clients, often they're going to want you to be a little bit more precise with the controls. So while you are training to do more FPV work, I would recommend practicing more intricate shots, whether that means flying indoors and flying through small gaps slower, not too fast so that we can capture the action properly. That way our FPV cameras can rival that of other steady cam shots that are able to track more precisely. After using the time we had until the sun sets and we could no longer shoot, it was time to get some sound design. Sound design is super helpful for FPV because all you hear on the regular track is, but being able to sound design, you can solve all of that. It makes a world of difference. Listen to this clip with the out sound design and with sound design, right? Crazy. To do the sound design, all we did was make sure we had a high quality enough mic to capture this audio. I use the shotgun mic on my Sony, but you can use a recorder or even just your iPhone if that's all you have. This can be an easy thing to forget when you're getting the shots, but being able to sound design can really help to illustrate a story, which if you're trying to do more brand work and push the limits of FPV, I highly recommend you start experimenting with too. For this video, I'm not going to go too much into the post-production process here. For my editing software, I like to use Premiere, but DaVinci, Final Cut, Anything Works, whatever gets the job done. I like to speed ramp the shots so that the timing feels better in the video, and I like to add coloring and sound effects afterwards. If you want more in-depth advice about FPV, becoming a creative professional, or my inner thoughts, then I would highly recommend you sign up for my email newsletter. This is where I usually just kind of go and release things that I can't often talk too deep about in YouTube videos. If you want the inside scoop on that, go ahead and click the link in my description below. And now, without further ado, here is the final product we shot with Daizumi. Being able to shoot great videos clients are happy with is the key to getting greater cooler work. However, through this video, I hope you've learned it's only about half the battle.  If you want to learn more in-depth about how to obtain bigger clients for FPV, go ahead and take a look at this video here. Or if this one looks more interesting to you, it's here for you. Go ahead, choose whichever. It's your life.