Hey everyone welcome to the very first episode of the questioning podcast where we look at how the process of questioning can influence not only our own lives but also the lives of others. And today I have a very special guest in my first episode which I'm very excited to have so that's Raymond Moringa. Yes. Got it. Yeah. Of the Dreamers Association. From the Dreamers Association. Yeah. And I won't say much about it because you're here so you can have an opportunity to tell more to the audience about what it is. Okay. But the few words that I thought about introducing it is it's a project which is making a real difference in Kenya. Yeah. So we'll get into many areas for various questions but before we head into the questions So how would you introduce the person to what is the Dreamers Association? The Dreamers Association is an association, a benefit, a profit association which helps children and women in Africa.  We had a chance to talk to each other a couple of times and I read a bit about the whole project. Yeah. So there's a and I also read about your story which is a very interesting story too so I'm sure we'll have to check that as well. But one of the things which in a way shocked me but also when I thought about it I realized it kind of makes sense but that was the fact that you mentioned your story that in Kenya a lot of families don't see the importance or don't recognize the importance of education. Is that true? Yeah. Yes, back they didn't know the importance of education. Right now I can say the majority of the big number of Kenyans wants to send their children to school. But the problem is how, you know, they are poor, they don't have money to send their children to school. That is a big problem with them because even it costs that's why I can say that they don't see because they don't have the money to pay for their school fees so it's like if they don't have money it's like their children will be at home, they won't go to school. So that is what my thoughts were. Why should the children stay at home if they have the rights for education? So I decided to create the Dreamers Association. Yeah. Before we get more into the Dreamers Association just to look at your own story so it makes me very happy to hear that so it seems that education is becoming more recognized in Kenya but when I read your story that was a while ago yeah actually the case in your family wasn't like that so how was it? Yeah okay I've been living in a very difficult situation in my life it wasn't that good you know because even my education was a problem because my parents had no money to send me to school so it was like during my primary education it was like I go to school during the holidays I have to go and work to get school fees so it was very very very hard so I didn't even complete my studies you know because when I completed in 2003 I completed my primary education I have to join a secondary school so because in Kenya we have 84 for education system it's like you have 80 years of primary education you have four years of secondary education and then you have four years for university so I completed my primary course my primary education I enrolled myself with secondary school but in secondary school you pay more or than what you are paying in primary school so it was like during my holidays I have to go to work and get the school fees but I couldn't get a good job to make for my payments for the whole four years so I just enrolled myself for only two years and then I broke from school I didn't I couldn't continue my studies so it was very very I didn't like it I didn't like because I wanted to study because I was looking forward I wanted to become someone yeah so it's not my wish that I broke from from my studies so my parents will not help me so I didn't have any otherwise I I broke from school and then this was all I started searching for a manual job that's a manual job with all the skills it's very difficult so it's like you are doing the hardest job but what you get in return is just something it's a bread for the it's a daily bread it's just for the day then tomorrow you have to go again so it was very very very hard to me yeah taking a bit more time again with your story I'm just trying to figure out what it was because it's so different from how I grew up most people around me grew up it's almost a different world but so in terms of education it almost sounds like it was your initiative to to to go to school or did your parents encourage you to go to school so how did initially how did that initially happen okay at first I wanted to go to school though even our parents didn't see the importance of going to school but my thought was to go to school to study to get education it's like I had my okay my neighbors I saw them my childhood who are going to school so it's like I got motivated to go to school so because I saw them others who are who are having a good job so I said no I should be someone to change my family because we are in a poor poor poor situation so I said it is myself I should work hard to struggle in life so that I can change my family yeah that's I was motivated to go to to have the education so I wanted really to go to school yeah I find that so incredible and on two levels and one is as I mentioned this this podcast that I'm just starting I call it the question podcast then we don't have to focus on the the word questioning that much but but I'm fascinated by how sometimes it's important to not take things for granted and to sometimes ask so is this the right way or could this be better and one thing which is interesting for me is that when I look at well I come up from I come from Europe first world world country and although Lithuania my country it was behind comparably but still it's it's yeah it was a good life and but the school myself and my friends I would 90% of us if not more would feel like ah we need to go to school I hate school I don't want to go to school now we would take it for granted we wouldn't appreciate it because we'd be like why are they forcing us to go to school we wouldn't see the value behind it although I did see it eventually as I grew up I was like oh it's good I know how to read and this but we take it first for granted but for you the situation was very different yeah my situation was different because it's like here I have seen I've been traveling for some other countries I've seen how you live maybe in Europe you know how that because it's like yourself you you awake in the morning you can even open a fridge and things are there yeah so in Africa it's not that we are we still have a problem of searching for the storm you know daily so it means that if I have something to eat today maybe tomorrow I don't have so it's a it's continuous and daily so it's it's very different from here so because here you can get most of things but in Africa it is very hard so if it is a big problem if you don't have something to eat and you don't know where you're going to eat it to get it so that's why it motivated me to to to to in studying in studies yeah but again the motivation which was the second thing that passed me came from you like because I'll just very quickly say again in the world that I grew up in the environment my parents would have to force me to go to school you have to learn and then me and my friends would be like no we don't want to learn and and it's crazy yeah it's crazy we have a lot of children's and in Kenya in Africa the most part of Africa because that it's like that all poor you know so we have a lot of children's they need education they really need their education the problem is that on how yeah how maybe they go they want they are more interested to go to school but the problem is that how they don't have money yeah to continue so that was my thinking so I came if I can create something I can get a support from well wishes from friends I can help I didn't go to school but still I can help someone to get where she or wants you know so that's one my thoughts and I said no I have to do something because if you won't take a step then nobody would take it will take the step so if I I want I see that there's that difficulties I see there's some problems if you don't take a step it means that the problem will be always be there yeah so this why motivated me and say oh it's okay if I didn't have the fortune for education but I thank God that I have the brain to think even for the other students that I can make them to have a bright bright future so I'm always thinking I'm saying the world should be equal everyone can every child should get whatever his he or she is right for so I am very eager to sooner or later go to move to the dreamers association yeah but just before to finish getting a whole picture of your own story so you mentioned eventually have to quit school yeah go to manual manual work and but what happened next like did you like what how how did the gap between that and the dreamers association happened okay it's um it's like when I I dropped out of homeschool I started looking for um for some manual jobs and um I struggled to do that job because you know even in life you have to struggle if you you want something you have to work for it you have to put all your efforts in it so I said it's okay I have to I have to be myself and do something with the little skills that I have with the little knowledge that I have but I should live in this world the world is very hard but I'm born in this world so I should be myself and struggle to make it in life so I did a lot of manual jobs like I was cycling like a bicycle with sacks of checkers you know to send like to go like 30 kilometers to sell them so this was the job that I called half with without scales you know so I did this job and I remember a friend of mine came to me and said that if you are interested there's a job you can train somewhere and I said what's that and I said it's um to be a cook in kitchen yeah and it was like the hard job that I'm always doing and I can be somewhere but the first question I asked was so what do they need experience maybe education level and he told me that I can do I could do with my education of primary so I took a first step to go there so I went to the it was an hotel and I got the chance so they offered me the chance and they said I can train to be a cook so that's why that's where I started my my training yeah and I trained there for two years without any pay yeah okay it's like it was difficult because I didn't have any pocket money I didn't have money to spend but what was maybe good to me it's the hotel was offering like everything breakfast lunch and dinner because it's like I was to work eight hours in that hotel but I asked the manager if I can work the whole 12 hours during the day but it was no we you have to work eight hours but he didn't know what I want but I wanted to stay there even more longer but I can have even that dinner there yeah so it's like a treat but I wanted it to to train for 12 hours instead of eight hours but what I looked to myself was to have the breakfast lunch and dinner there yeah okay I stayed there for two years and then I got my certificate of being a cook and they first said they offered me a contract of six months I worked there with them for six months and then low season came because in Kenya we have a low season meaning that it's we have the season which tourism season and we have a season like we don't have a tourist so that season all hotels are being closed waiting for the other season so I worked there for six months and then we closed the hotel and we went home so the six months that I was working there I tried to to save so that I can have some money to spend up to when they open again or maybe I can use what I have saved for two such other other jobs so I went away from there but I had a certificate that was a little a little stair that I had there so I said looking for other jobs somewhere else with my certificate and because I was a cook you know in Kenya the place that I stay in Watamu we have a lot of private houses so in these private houses actually if they built the first person they need is the cook yeah so I got a job in a private house which are Italian and I started working with them and I was a good cook so they liked my service so it's like they took me as a permanent there so it's like oh we have a job now though the payments was not all that good but it was it was it was something yeah it was something so I worked there for some years and then they sold that place and I had no job again but I have to find to find another one so it wasn't finding another job it wasn't so hard because with the visitation they were visitors always some visitors visitors coming there so they knew me so when they sold that place it's like we know you you we know your service so if they sell that place you can come to our place to work there so it wasn't so so hard for me I got another job and that job was that place who are using to bring some guests to stay there it was like a holiday holiday home so one day some visitors came there and they liked me they said that you are a very good person yeah so we have a job somewhere we can offer you and say what job is that so you can work in our country where in switzerland so that is the beginning of coming in switzerland yeah with these friends of mine they paid you everything that I came through their country and I got a job in switzerland so in switzerland in switzerland I started to think yeah I don't know but if it's nature if it's god then he or she should be very wonderful person because from nowhere I rose up to this this step so I have to do good even to other people yeah so because it's like now I can open my fridge everything is there I sleep in a good bed and when I was a small boy you know I I put it on shows when I was 15 years so it's like I was working for 15 years I worked a bear legs a bear legs you know without shoes now I have something so myself apart from dreamers association I have like 10 children that I'm paying school fees with my own money yeah but the children are many that's why I decided to create the association so that I can get some friends I saw we can help them in a good number yeah and then what I think what I think is if we have to change something it's not you have a problem if I give you money I haven't helped you and I should see what the problem is and to help you to come out from that problem that should be a good help so I decided not to give people money but I decided if it's education if it's a poverty we can reduce this poverty or we can end the poverty if we shall educate the children because we assure that if we educate them they'll get some jobs and they'll change their lives they'll change life of other generation coming generation so that is why I'm sticking in education and I know I believe in 10 years what shall be have changes in it yeah I really like that that you're focusing on the long-term change yeah because you know so many people they like it's often I don't want to be too hard on that but sometimes people when they do some projects which are supposed to help others often it's a little bit more about themselves yeah you know where it's like I want to feel good now so let's you know buy a tv for that family or something and it doesn't change anything besides I mean maybe a little bit but there's no permanent solution but that's a quick solution where I feel good I did something like there's an interesting story I personally experienced when I used to go sometimes to orphanages yeah yeah in Lithuania and I would talk to children there and I would try to motivate them and I learned from other people around that initially I thought maybe I should go during Christmas time and one adult told me don't go then I was like why not and apparently because the children they hate Christmas time because everybody suddenly decides to go visit them then you know everybody brings them gifts and they come in and the children they just get tired they're there there's too many visitors for them in such a short period no okay and they ask even the children asking themselves like why can't those adults just you know separate the times and come come throughout the year rather than come through this short period of time but that showed me that so many times people are focused on the quick feel good solution it's like I will come to Christmas during Christmas I will feel good and I will feel like I made a difference but nothing is going to change yeah but but the permanent solutions most of times they're the long ones they're the ones which you don't get you maybe get some glimpses of ah this is nice this is happening but you need patience and you need time and but those are the ones which will change so all of that said that's why I'm very excited about what you're doing thank you well thank you and and another yeah it was good so and another thing which I wanted to bring up in regards to that is you mentioned if that's okay it's not in record but we don't need to mention names or anything but but you mentioned you worked in a similar organization in in in certain way yeah where they're trying to make a difference in Kenya specifically right yeah but you saw flaws behind their method which inspired you to do your own thing so can you tell about that okay you know um we have a lot of organizations that are going to Africa to help okay they have the name that they're helping yeah and they're helping but on how how are they helping you know it's like um if I come you have a problem you don't have you don't have food I give you a packet of flower a maize flower you are going to spend it and that's all you know but if maybe you have a land and they want to help you I will help you to do the agricultural so that you will get a lot of fault this is how we should focus the things yeah but it's not that I come here I help you in a just a day and then that's all right that's not it's not a help yeah so what I am trying to look is um how will I finish the poverty how will I end the uh the how to call it them um not having food is an example so in this I thought of we don't we now the weather in Kenya it's like um we don't we don't understand because many years that we have our um our ancestors they're like on March is going to rain but now if we are waiting for March raining the rain maybe comes on June so we have a climate changing so we cannot stay there and hoping it will rain and it might not rain so what should we do on this that's why we brought in the dream as association we we brought them the windmill to do some boreholes so that we can do irrigations so so if we have the irrigation system which we shall not wait for rain we shall have water for irrigation so what I'm trying to look is that what is the what is the help that we can manage that people want to be staying there doing nothing we can do something to get something you know so as I have told you we um we have to look the roots of the thing so that we can pull it up and make sure that we use it you know we are reaching um in maybe in even our soil is good but the problem is if I use my hands manually to to do agriculture and just do a small place you know but we have the tractors because at the rhythm as association once I even we have a project so to do them the farming but we want to help people if people and I don't they don't have food but if we do the farming and agriculture we shall be helping people we want to start with the maybe 25 people families to to dig for them with tractors like it's like an acre that says 70 times 70 that is an acre so every family we give it an acre we plug them with them the tractors we give them maybe the seeds we help them for irrigation and we understand that all of this process they'll have more food so if they have food we shall have helped them so it's not like I give you something to eat to the end and so yeah it's a permanent solution again I really like that approach and as we had our first meeting here in Lithuania I mentioned to you the the metaphor that I liked for a long time I think it's a metaphor from Confucius the Chinese philosopher that give a man a fish and he will not be behind me for a day teach him at fishing and he will that is it you know a long time yeah and I consider that it's kind of I see like your superpower and we kind of spoke about that too that you've been on both ends like maybe again I don't know many I haven't had the personal contact with many of these projects but I had some connection with some projects and usually they're like what we discussed before they're a bit superficial they try to help but they don't always know how to or sometimes they just want to look like they help but but your superpower is that or that's how I call it that you've been on both ends you've been in that situation you know it's from the inside out and so a solution to see for you a solution is it's much more clear yeah so so that I think that's brilliant opportunity and quickly before I forget to ask so you mentioned some of the solutions you're looking at could you name more because I know there's more that you're doing with the association so there's a digging wells digging wells then irrigation irrigation okay we have the farming we have we have the education we want to set even we have a project even for the medication you know we have a lot of children are dying younger and what they miss is the proper medication so we want to set even this to make sure that the people have the access in medicine in medicines so our project is like we wanted to talk with a hospital all those because we are doing even the adoption in the sponsoring of children's so in this project we have a direct help from the sponsor to a child and we are asking them to pay 30 euro or 30 swiss francs in a month and this money are used to pay school fees and it's used to pay two meals a day at school so that sounds almost crazy to me like did I get that right so 30 euros per month covers food every day plus education is that yeah okay yeah the 30 euros that the sponsor is paying right cops for the the school fees cops for the two meals a day for a month for a month yeah for a month and the first medication this means that the child is at school he feels sick we have a first aid for them so the teachers are to take the child to hospital and money is there to pay the first the first medication so if so that's included in yeah yeah it's included the problem if maybe he continued to be to be sick or maybe this first medication has not worked we have to send him or her to a other hospital to for a further medication this the problem comes because the money that we have set is for first first aid first medication but we always do this if the child is maybe sick we have paid for the first medication and he needs some other medications we are talking for the with the sponsor if he is or she is willing to pay something else then it's okay if it he or she can't that comes the problem sure yeah so we in this we have been saying maybe we shall find some sponsors that we in association if we have yeah big sponsors if in association we have we have a cash maybe some people or some companies are finding us we have the cash so it means that if they even a child needs a further medication we have the money so the money are going to use to medicate the child yeah you know i i like that system so much i'm almost curious i don't want to get astray i'm almost curious how did you get come to that idea but but what i wanted to praise you on is so part of what i like investigating is how the human mind works and psychology and human behavior thank you social scientists and and and then when i look at yours like what's so attractive about this this method that you set up i feel sometimes when you donate to some organization like even like it's been a while since i saw the the the commercials of specifically in africa they're showing like the wells are being dug or something and you can send money and it feels like again it's a one-time payment or like i send this five euros and something happens somewhere or something and i i feel like i did it and i'm done but here there's much more of a personal relationship like because if i understand so you're specifically supporting a single child uh that that you know do you choose the child or do you get randomly or we don't choose the child because we have many child that the children that um they need help right so we have we normally have a list with the students like right now we have um 32 children sponsored but we have we have still a long a long list sure yeah so we don't we don't it depends with the numbers that we have given so it comes like from number one to maybe 100 so we are taking that yeah well still what i like a lot is that there's a personal connection there's and there's a continuation that you know and i would imagine and i would guess that you can even see maybe the achievements of the child like i'm sure yeah if you're a sponsor probably you get to know like oh he went to school today or he got the books and he got that like like you can really feel you're really making a direct difference and and you have a follow-through versus you send the money and somewhere and maybe something even we have uh we are saying every sponsor has a right because in kenya we have um we have a in a year we have three times it means that from january to april then they go for from they stay at home for whole day for one month and then they repeat three months then yeah one one month at home so it's like if they're ending them they the first time they're doing examination so there is some results a report that comes so we are we always sending them the reports to the sponsors so they know they always looking at the children how are they going on yes call it you know we are sending them pictures always pictures we can they have even um a direct contact if maybe i'm in kenya i can call them with what's up video and talking to them yeah so we have a direct um a direct contact with this this chart yeah such a brilliant idea i'm just i just cannot go without asking like what inspired you to specifically come up with this type of structure like system okay what inspired me most is um is how i see or how my life has been you know as i have passed a very hard situation um it inspired me that even even other people have the right to do something of something you know in this world so it's like um i form this association then i look for the sponsors even the sponsors they have the right to know what is happening with this then so if you are you are you sponsor a child and you have a direct contact you are sure you're 100 sure that the boy or the girl is going to school you are sure that your money is not going to last you you are doing you are really doing something and maybe tomorrow you have funding you have a sponsor this child and uh in 10 years he becomes maybe a lawyer right you are proud of yourself maybe you are going to see the child yeah the king of it yeah that's just yeah that's amazing and uh because that's one of the reasons again why uh just this is the questioning part yes i will bring the questioning sometimes then uh sometimes when when i would see the the kind of the traditional model of seven five euros or this or for that i sometimes i would do that but oftentimes i would feel i wouldn't feel i would feel cautious about that because again as just as we've discussed you don't really know where the money is going to or yeah or or hopes always have this idea of i always feel like i want permanent solutions like that teach him teach a person to fish fishing versus give a fish and i would always feel well i can send five euros and and that's all have no idea what happened and feel and pretend i made a difference or i can just really try to make a difference but here you do send a certain amount of money but then you really feel and you see the difference so right away i can say that knowing more or less how your system works uh i'm like 99 percent sure that i want to become part of it at least already by starting by supporting a child so so what's what's the next thing i need to know or do so to do that how does it work okay the first thing is to be ready okay to to do it you know so it's like you know you want to do or you want to find the or you want to sponsor a child it's like yeah we have them we have our projects so it depends on you which projects you want to to fund so do you want to sponsor a child or do you want to to to fund irrigation systems or do you want to okay we have even you know i haven't told you that you know in kenya we have a very many talented children so we thought about this even we say we said okay why do we lose the talents of these children so we as dreamers we created um we want to create a center where all these talented children's will have access who um can come to that center if they are singers for example they want to to to sing they want to become singers we shall have some teachers so that they can follow them step by step to make sure that he or she becomes a singer this children because from singing we have we can create a job we have a lot of very famous singers and they and a lot of money so why should we lose these chances of these children we have some actors in Africa but the problem that they lose this talent because no one or nowhere they can go to assess or to learn more about that so the dreamers uh wants to set this center and it should be um it will be called um creation uh creation children's center it means that we shall be having the children they there shall be some teachers that they will follow them will then uh follow them uh systematically to up to when they will achieve their their goals so we have even these projects so if even someone wants to to to help um a child in a talent way because maybe uh he or he or that he knows how to sing he has the voice or he is talented in um in acting movies like like like that or he is intelligent in dancing so but you know the problem is that um we as a association without having maybe them the financially it is very difficult to bring all these talents up so we we are looking even the sponsors in this if maybe in this um we want to bring up this um these talents we have to get some sponsors even in this so that's what that's what i was explaining is i i i forgot to tell you before so first of all you become ready to to to sponsor for example you want to sponsor child what you need you'll just need is to the um it's a i'll be needing your contacts and this is a phone number email address and uh your address where you live because i need an address where you live because i'll be sending you some physical pictures that i'll take maybe from africa i send you directly i need your mails because maybe i'll be not able to maybe to send you the letters but i will i will write you some mails i'll need your number because we shall be in touch whatever whatever is happening in kenya i'll be informing you so the phone is very easy yeah so um this is the process so i get to um your your your address and um contacts are like that and then we we move forward yes yeah um out of curiosity and this includes myself and anyone else who would be interested to do that is there some type of a commitment that that you are bound to or is it flexible or we don't have any commitment because as i'm doing the things with my heart i don't force someone to do but i would just want him or her to feel that he is or she is helping so not any commitments yeah that's great as well otherwise it can be a bit scary you're oh my gosh you can't you know you never know how it's gonna end so it's a great so whenever i'm ready to do that i just send you the information yeah what about so we know each other so it's going to be easy for me what about people who are watching this and they're inspired to be part of the dreamers association okay all are welcome we have our our website page that is uh www.thedreamers.ch and we have our facebook page association the dreamers and we have even emails because we have even a booklet so i have we have even booklets so if you you want to get us you can get us whatever whatever is is there all the information is there in is it in english as well as because i know the primary language it's because you're based in it yeah your primary language is italian but is there enough english to get around yeah we are we have created some booklets in english i have some here even yeah so yeah yeah okay and the website is in english as well the website is in italian but i have not something because you know the one who did the website is italian you know he speaks italian so he couldn't do it in english but i have noticed that if you use the chromo yeah yeah i use that but we are looking forward to to to to put in even the english language in that website okay you should at least you're starting to get out there yeah uh yeah next question about that is so okay so but otherwise uh maybe i can leave or the or people can find your email on your website and just write to you directly with all the questions they have and yeah yeah yeah in one website or our facebook page we have our emails and yeah what else did i want to ask just think about what uh oh i i still have the at least the one word or two questions yeah before i i'll tell you remember is there anything you wanted that we bring up like any subject or or something to share or we just continue the conversation uh right now now here we can continue yeah so just okay yeah i remember okay so the crowdfunding one of the reasons why you're here in lithuania aside from and one before holiday is you're considering to start the crowdfunding this talk is probably going to come out in about three weeks two weeks so you know it doesn't come out like the next day so i'm not sure if something will be already set up or not but so what's what's the intention of crowdfunding so that one day that when it's there how what it's about and how people could get involved for the crowdfunding okay in the crowdfunding people they can they can uh donate their how can i say their finances to our dreamers association we welcome everyone every race even every gender is welcomed in the dreamers association we want to work together to the whole world so that we'll make sure every child gets his or her rights yeah so it will be set up sooner or later like a specific crowdfunding where people can just go online and yeah we'll be sending in next days we we shall we shall do it yeah so that comes up and so so slowly wrapping up to my last question and because i mentioned the key word for this podcast is questioning and one one more thing that was curious to ask you about yes there's something we discussed about it i know from general now that okay is that there's clearly there's obviously differences in the mentality of people in europe and people in african and yes one of them which we said yesterday is the akunda matata so i have ideas of what the answer might be but so i definitely want to hear right from the street from you now so what's when you look at the european culture and specifically you spoke about switzerland i lived in switzerland for a few years as well so i definitely know what you mean yeah people will tend to be quite conservative they're a bit called a bit distant probably different from what you're just thinking yeah so when you're when you're living let's say in switzerland uh and you're looking at the culture and the mentality and you're questioning like why are they doing this why are they why they're not doing that so what what are the main questions that come to you what what makes you question the culture that you feel could be the difference okay you know i'm grew up in african culture and during my my child period it was like you know we are in happiness in africa so the first thing is being happy if you want to live in a good way you should be happy yourself and i would like to tell you that even we are believers we are god-fearing peoples in kenya so we believe that maybe if i don't have something today god will provide for me tomorrow so i don't have to be be stressed in life i should be courage to know that everything happens i said for a reason for a reason yeah exactly for a reason so if maybe today i don't have something to eat god will provide for me tomorrow i shouldn't be sad or upset of these things yeah there are normal things which happen in this world so like me i've been without food for three days in my life without eating anything but i didn't lose the courage of living because the first thing is the life it's a precious because you won't you won't get it somewhere life is precious so if i'm good i have to show the happiness i'm in a culture that i see some people like greet them i'm being happy even if i don't have anything i'm being happy because the life that i have is precious it's wonderful it's great so i should be happy for that but if i come maybe in europe in switzerland i see people are very depressed why these four what these four we should be we should learn how to be happy because the first thing in your life is the happiness and the other things comes later yeah yeah yeah so i would urge everyone to be happy in this world you know and starting from that i think that's probably the last question like continuation of what you just spoke so so when you look at people specifically in switzerland but i think it's a good representation of many countries in europe yeah does is is it strange for you sometimes to see how much we have like abundance things you know sometimes i i make myself think about that and then just appreciate that wow you know we have electricity we have the heating obviously we have cold weather too but we have heating and nobody's that i know is starving it's just there's so much good things education is so accessible and we just don't appreciate yeah because that is that strange for you that is very very strange actually it's friend is strange because maybe it's like maybe let's say a child here he has everything maybe the things to play with as like cars and still needs a lot in africa these things are not happening maybe a child doesn't have anything have to to play with the sound they have to play with the like that but yeah a child has everything but still maybe keeping on asking for other many things coming to adults you have everything you guys here you know everything but the problem that i see with you is you are always depressed in this you're always upset i wonder why you know i always ask myself why if food is some you have a lot of food if you have everything you know what you need next it's crazy we don't have these things in africa but still we can we we share the love we we we we talk to each other we we love to each other but these things i don't see you you have everything but the happiness is not new this is the problem we are human beings and we should feel that everyone is important and it's like we have to share the love that god has given us to hear you say that and as i mentioned sometimes i make myself think about that and appreciate the things i have but it's but it's in our environment in our culture it's it's so uncommon that it's almost difficult to do but something that to put even more of a dot on what you said uh our mutual friends yeah through whom i know you and invited you here yeah i so haven't been to africa myself yet but i have the impression that she was absolutely right that when she went there she she saw that most of the people she met technically have way less things or access to opportunities but these then then us in europe but they seem to be more happy yeah and yeah that is exactly what happening you know in a good way but it's so interesting and if you like we could learn as a culture yeah we could learn from that that we should appreciate much more what we have and and share with those we don't have as much yeah again we're running a good project um so slowly making the final wrap with yeah summarizing i um so uh i don't want to force the the word too much i'm still getting used to this new podcast of the having the theme subject that's questioning yes so just summarizing and reflecting about everything we spoke and your story seems to me the way questioning influenced your life you questioned your education in your childhood you asked yourself why shouldn't i study and work for more and try to do more you questioned the traditional method of the kind of supporting projects yeah especially directed to kenya how they run things and the questioning of that inspired you to new and brilliant ideas and big change and yeah i think i think this is a your story and your project is such a great example of of how not taking things for granted and looking at how things can be improved brings can bring to wonderful big things yeah well good so thank you so much for spending your time i have a feeling this is not the last time we are on camera and record yeah it's not last time yeah thank you thank you so much


In Tokyo, President Joe Biden says the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan. China's foreign ministry answered, saying there is zero room for compromise on the issue. A Ukrainian court issues a life sentence to a 21-year-old Russian soldier for a war crime. In Sri Lanka, long lines for fuel and other goods continue. The government moves to suspend some foreign loan payments. And a military aircraft carrying 39 tons of baby formula arrives in Indianapolis from Germany in an effort to ease a U.S. supply shortage.


All right. So thanks again, everyone for joining today. So today, we are going to discuss about best practices about building multilingual sites that we did for one of our project. And mainly, we will be reviewing in two aspects, the site builder perspective, and another from the developer perspective. So I'll be sharing a few relations. And apart from that, it would be fun. So yeah, let's get started, actually. I'm Mohit, and I'm working as a Drupal technical architect at Excel Run. And so this is my Twitter and Drupal ID so you can reach out to me anytime. So let's get started. So primarily, the multilingual ecosystem in Drupal 8 is built on four modules, basically. So the language module is something which provides base for entire multilingual ecosystem. So let's say we have language entity, apart from that language creation form, language feature blocks, language negotiation plugins, and all other things are provided by language module. So essentially, language module works as a foundation of an entire multilingual ecosystem that is present in Drupal Core. So on top of language module, we have content translation module. So content translation module basically takes care of translation related to content entities. Basically what we have like Node, Blob, all other media entities. So it takes care of managing all the translated entities and related things. After that, we have a configuration translation module. So configuration translation module is something that allows us to have the translation facility for all the configuration entities. So in Drupal, we all know we have a concept of content entity and configuration entity. So the configuration entities like views and view mode entity, form mode, image style, and all other configuration entities. So translation feature for all those configuration entities is provided by configuration translation module. And the third one is basically interface translation module or what we call it as local. So it mainly provides interface for translating strings, actually, the string that we see on the front end. Apart from that, it also takes care of dealing with localization server, paging translation, and all those things. The other aspects or the feature that local module provides is the translation import and export features. Like let's say, we can export translations in PO file and import it again so that it will import all the translation. So all other like scaffolding related to string translation and everything is provided by local modules. So as I mentioned earlier, we will be seeing from two perspective. One will be from site builder perspective. Second will be from developer perspective. I'll be going through a few things related to site builder perspective, but from the developer perspective, I'll be covering how we can use entity API and how we can use another multi-lingual API and related things in custom modules. So let's start with the site builder things. So primarily, the simple thing is making any content translatable in Drupal we haven't ordered. So we just need to go to content type edit form, click on enable translation, and we have various options for the default language. For example, it will be the default language for the content. So it can be any based on site's default language or it can be based on logged in users preferences or default language. So I mean, we can select our preference over here and just save it so the content type will be multi-lingual enabled. Same is the case for block content entities, actually. So go to admin structure block types, enable translations, and get them with this. So these are pretty straightforward cases. Same is the case for fields, actually. So we have a simple field like let's a body field, right? So we just click on the state box and it will translate it. So these are pretty straightforward fields. And I mean, the translation support for all these things is out of box, so we don't need to worry about it. Apart from this other straightforward flow, we have a centralized page where we can review what all things are enabled for translations. For example, if you can see here, we have all these fields that are enabled for translation. Apart from that, it also provides a couple of configuration where if you want to hide certain fields from, for example, non-translation field from a translation form, we can do that. So this is pretty straightforward. And this is a brief overview of what all content entities are there, what all fields that we want them to translate. So this is good. So now, as we all know, typical Drupal site consists of various complex fields, right? Entity reference revision field, paragraph revision fields, right? So in case of paragraph fields, which is like entity reference revision, so the translation is not straightforward like what we have for body field, right? So being the entity reference revision entities, paragraph basically supports symmetric translations. So what essentially happens is like, for example, in case of body field, we just make the host field translatable and get things done with this. Now, in case of paragraph, what we need to do is we need to make entire paragraph translatable and all the fields of the paragraph translatable, but we can't do anything with the settings of the host entity. So if we see in our case, actually, what we have right now here is the paragraph field in the advanced recipe content type. So here itself, we can see the ordering. Like it's not translatable. I mean, the way we won't do. So now if we see the configuration on the content language page, here we have like accordion item and all the paragraphs. Here we are enabling translations for all the fields. So this is the way, actually, we enable the translations for the paragraphs, actually. Now, there are modules like paragraph or symmetric translation and all those things that helps us to achieve the similar functionality. But I think it has some limitation. I think it works with experimental widget and all. So this is something which we need to be cautious about while enabling translations for paragraph. Apart from that, all the different content entities like node, block type, taxonomy, and all other, this becomes the same. So this is pretty easy. Now moving on to Vue, actually. So for Vue, typically, we usually use Vue to render the content. So Vue has two ways to display the translation. So first is go to display a plugin and select the language that we want to render. So for example, this is our recipe Vue. And here we have option like rendering language. So whatever the rendering language that we have selected, content will be displayed in that particular language. It also takes care of translation fallback as well. Now, sometimes what happens is we need additional features. Like we want to filter based on some content. Let's say we have four to five language in the site. And now what we want to do is we want to have some sort of translation fallback, like let's say the French translation is not present and then we should display a Spanish one. If Spanish is not present, we should display English one. So those kind of gradual fallback is not out of books possible in Rupa. So that we can use our contributed modules. So there is a module called select translation, which provides a Vue's filter plugin, actually. So what happens, actually, we need to give a language priorities over here, like let's say French, English, or depending on like various other options we have over here. So once the content is being varied and it is being rendered, it will automatically fetch the translations accordingly. We have one Vue over here, let me show you. Yeah. So we have a simple Vue, the option is as it is and we have a select translation plugin over here. Apart from that, like I have like just two language in demo side, so I have like kept it disabled, but here we can provide all the options and it will display translations accordingly. So this is about displaying a content translation in the Vue's. Now, what would happen if you want to translate the attributes in the Vue's itself? So typically what happens in Vue, like we have a various exposed form, we have titles, we have default messages, like default to no result text and all, right? So at some point of time, you want to translate those as well, right? So being a configuration entity, Vue has its own configuration entity translation, actually. So let's quickly see how we can actually translate Vue's as a configuration entity, right? So I mean, this is like edit Vue, click on translate Vue and it will take us to the page where we can actually see both the translation. Click on add link for this translation and here it displays like the nested list of all the attributes that are like translatable. For example, exposed form or submit button text and all those things. So this is how we can actually translate particular Vue. So the thing is that once we translate it, we can actually export it via configuration export as well. So once we like run address config export, Drupal will export it into like default config directory. Obviously like it will place into that specific language related folder, but this is how like the output will look like for one of Vue's translation. So this is like mainly about Vue's translation and moving on to next thing like solar search. So typically like almost all the sites uses like solar and the related artifact nowadays, right? So even like the multilingual solar search is like pretty much a part of search API. So we don't need to do anything from a site builder perspective actually. We just need to enable module do a couple of configuration and once we like, once we update the index, solar will start indexing the content. And after that it's it's also like just to use then use those in Vue and disable it. So I'll show you basically this is our search API. I'll modify the index. And here we have like what we want to index and all those things. So here we just need to provide the proper configuration like what all languages we want to index. And later we can use indexing. Sure, I'll show you, I have that view ready. So yeah, so yeah, once we have that ready. So yeah, so this is like the index will be done. And I have like both the views ready actually. So this is like one of the views. So this is how the Vue will look and I can show you, yes. So here, here if we see like it will handle translation for like, for example, I haven't added the translation for this recipe. So it's just present in English and we can see like all other recipes are like being proper like the properly translated. We just don't have translation for this. So it will handle this translations. Similarly, for the solar search view, let me open the view URL. So this is again, I have used index. So this is again the same, the content is coming from the solar index now. And the things are same actually. It's just, it's coming from index and I'm using the same view modes. So this is basically about like a search, implementing multilingual search. So yeah, and moving on to next one, a couple of other contributed module that I would like to mention over here. I like that we significantly used actually. So one of them is like translation management module. So this is something which we use like where we want to provide the support for like third party translations. And it basically has like various module ecosystem with like various other service providers that we can integrate it. So that like it's easy for third party too. It's easy for like site owners to get their site translated actually. Apart from that, it also provides, I think translation support for various, I think machine translation. I think there is a support for Microsoft Translator actually for work. So this is kind of, I just wanted to mention that like we extensively used it. So this is something. So this is pretty much about site building aspect. Any questions? Like I'm checking the chat. So feel free to share any questions. Cool. I think, yeah, we are good. So let's switch to Hayden. So you mean translation management tool? Yeah. There is a module for EMGMT like in Drupal 7 version. And there are like multiple plugins available. But yeah, so, and it is like stable as well. So you can use it. Like I'm not sure about other plugins in the ecosystem, but yeah, definitely you can use it. Cool. Thanks. All right. So I think let's switch to how we can actually leverage APIs. So the main thing about like entity API in Drupal, there were like significant changes around entity API and like everything was not completely, but yeah, the change was major, right? So there were like changes, like for example, in context of translation, what the major changes were there like translation where the instances of entity interface. So now being a translation is instance of entity interface, we can directly call all the method, like if you want to get the field value. So now like when we have the translation object, just call the like translation arrow gate and like fetch the value. So this is like really easy in the like, it really improves our developer experience. Like while, let's say if you're building any blocks or any controllers where we want to play with translation, we can really use those. So apart from that, there are various methods actually that we like extensively used, for example, entity gate translation. So this is something it will fetch the translation. Basically like we need to provide the language argument over here. So once we have the proper language, it will fetch the translation. Apart from that, there are like various other methods like for example, gate translation from context. So what this method does is like, it will get the proper translation based on language negotiation plugin. So it will allow language negotiation plugins to identify the active language and based on that, it will fetch the proper translation. So we don't need to like worry about any additional things like identify language based on certain parameters or whatsoever. So this is basically, apart from that, I mean there are several other methods like get languages or get translation language, get translation or there are multiple methods actually that we can leverage on day-to-day task and we have like various hooks. So we can actually use it like at certain point of time. Now moving on to like API. So typically like while developing custom modules, many times we create content entities, right? So to make any content translatable, we just need to provide like two attributes actually, make translatable true and we need to actually provide a link code over here in entity keys. So both of them together will like help like entity to be translatable. Apart from that, like there are things like other things like content entity storage base and content entity storage class, I think we have two classes that will take care of related stuff holding. So we don't need to worry about other things. Now like whenever we are creating, let's say content entity, we also create, we also add like few base field definitions, right? Like for example, main title or whatsoever. So we need to make those translatable as well, like depending on the requirement. So we just, we can just call it like said, translatable true and the translation system will take care of it and make it translatable. There are like entity field manager and that those will take care of like adding additional fields because additional field translatable. For example, there are, once we enable, once we like make this translatable, there are other fields also, and gets like translated along with that. So yeah, so this will be taken care of by I think entity field manager class. So this is basically about having like content entity translatable, translatable. Now moving on to configuration entity. Now as I mentioned earlier, like we have a module, right? For the configuration entity translation. So like all the configuration entities like views or image style or any other configuration entity, these are like out of works supported by Drupal Core. So we don't need to do anything actually. We can just go here and show you the page. Yeah, so we can go here, regional language, configuration translation. And yeah, so we have the list of all the content entities. Like click on whatever we want to translate and yeah, and translate it. So this is like pretty straightforward for all the content entities. So that now the question comes up like when we want to translate custom configuration. So let's say we are building a module and we have configurations like the default messages or other strings or probably email tags that we want to send it to editors or some other stakeholders, right? So those should be like, those should be given in their own language, right? So we want to have like configurable email templates and all those things. So in those cases, we want to make those translatable, right? So apart from like having configuration of what else we need to take care of is like we need to create a schema YAML and the configuration translation YAML. So let's review schema YAML first basically. So this is basically in our case, this is like simple configuration that we have provided like what we can say it's a config object, right? So that can be like config object or config entity. So in our case, it's a simple configuration. So it's a config object, this is label and the mapping, in mapping, we actually provide various attributes that we want to map actually. So the main purpose or the why schema YAML was introduced because we wanted to provide a translation support for the configurations like what we have spring, right? That was the main purpose of introducing a schema YAML. And after that, like we extended it and it also provides supports of like generating forms on the generating forms on the configuration translation page. So that like it's easy for us to like figure out the translation. So mainly like we have actual configuration. So on our config form, actually I'll show you. Yeah. So on our config form, let me just open it. So this is our simple configuration form, okay? Which we have like two configurations right now and we want to eventually translate it fine. So basically this is help text and default description which basically holds our configuration value. And we have like various types for that configuration. So in our case like type is text. So there can be like many attributes. Like for example, there is a type, there is a label. There can be like translatable attribute like translatable true, false. We have like nullable attribute as well. Like for example, then you should be null or not. You can also provide class. Like if there are some types which doesn't have any default type data class we can provide custom class as well. So this takes like all these values and we can just provide the mapping over here. Once we are done with like schema YAML, we just need to provide the mapping over here. And names will be like similar to what we have in schema YAML. And this is our route name basically. The route that provides the configuration form in English actually. Together this will basically provide the translation support. So basically if we go here and we can actually add the translations over here. So this is basically providing a translation support for configuration. Now what would happen actually? We have stored some email text in our configuration. Like let's say we want to send an email to media owner whenever like media is expiring or a certain thing is happening, right? So the preference set by the editor is like I should receive email in my own language. So fine, like we have a default email text like when the media is expiring we have stored it in configuration. We want to translate it as well, right? So that like media's owner should receive email as per their own preferred language, right? So the same case is like I have taken this example from Drupal Core actually user module. So what we are doing here is like we get the language from the user account. Actually what user has selected, okay? He store original language for a while like get config override language. Now we actually set config override language and we actually like set dollar language which is like the language coming from users preference. So that like for a while the configuration language will be what is like selected by the user. So this is a snippet from actually user.mail and user.module and hook mail actually. So we get like all sort of configuration and again like once we are done with our job again set the original language. So that way what happens like we can actually send like personalized email like the translated emails to all the stakeholders. So this is something which we extensively used to send an email on various events actually whether in like the media is updated, node is updated. So this was like really handy. Now moving on to like next one. So the thing is that like let's say whenever we write like slash en on the URL like slash en slash hello one, right? So the like what basically decides like the language should be en, right? So language negotiation plugin typically takes care of all those things like they will identify the language and they will tell the system to like return that particular language. So in our case like we had a there was like a similar use case there were like feed URL and application was consuming it, right? So what was the case that like feed URL and didn't had any like language specific prefix or any other way that we can identify it. So the issue was like we were not able to properly detect the language based on URL or any other negotiation plugins that we have specified it. So we have to write our new language negotiation plugin. So fortunately there was one flag in the URL basically the portion of the URL that was like depicting or that was suggesting that this feed URL should be for English content actually. So we actually built a language plugin we were leveraging that portion and identifying the language based on that. So again I mean I have like shared hypothetical example I mean so like I have explained like this is like typical annotation for writing a new plugin. We are writing language negotiation plugin so provide ID name description and all those things. This is where our business logic is there. Like here like what I'm doing is like I'm getting the query parameter from the test type and language data language. But in like here we can like use all sort of business logic that we want to do to identify the language so that like we can like return proper language. So this is how we can actually leverage language negotiation plugin for like various environments. I mean typically we don't have requirements. I mean we don't have that much requirements of language negotiation plugins because like Drupal we take care of all those things like having URL prefix and all those things. But the kind of the cases that I just mentioned right in those cases like it is like really useful to have a language negotiation plugins. So this was like really handy and we like used it a lot. Apart from that yeah for interface text translation we like it's like we used it. I mean now we customized like we like used the context parameter of the T function. Actually pretty much everyone are familiar with T function. So that's pretty standard but we actually leveraged the context parameter of T function. So the case was that like we had a like multiple blocks actually which is like same title but we wanted to display like different transaction for those blocks. So the thing was that like English translation is same but we want to have contextual translation for both the blocks. So in those cases T function was like it takes argument called context actually that was like really helpful to us. So in our case the string was similar actually like the English string is saying and we just provided a different context for both the strings. So here this is what it looks on translation interface page. So what happens like we can actually translate both the strings individually. I think we should be able to see it over here. Yeah so these are like this is the block I have created. Actually I'll share the repository URL as well. It's a I have created a custom module. So this is the block I have created and this is basically a Spanish language. And yeah I mean the string is same English string is same for both the string and the contextual translation is different. So yeah and we can actually see here as well just as a kind of configuration. Yeah so this is how it will look I mean on the translation interface page. So this is something which we frequently used just to provide a contextual translation like various places. Apart from that like what we have T function in PHP we have like similar T filter or we can say translation filter in doing and in JS like the same which is like pretty standard. So we can like almost like everyone frequently uses it. So another case was like like adding translations in custom module. So like typically what happens for contributed module let's say we have a contributed module we install it and it has translation. So it will fetch translations from Drupal's localizations or what like Drupalized to Drupal.org. Now when we are writing custom module the case is different right. We need to provide our own translations. So now the thing is that it becomes hectic like sometimes we need to go there we need to upload translations. It's like kind of tedious process. So what happens actually? So Drupal has like a few actually attributes. So we can actually add interface translation project and interface translation server pattern in modules info.yaml file. And so what those attributes basically does like we can actually provide a pattern for PO files. So let's say I have provided a pattern so that like my translation will be there in like translation folder and the language code.io. So in our case it will be es.io. So now what will happen like Drupal will identify the particular translation when the module is installing and actually import it. So this is again localized way of handling translation like what Drupal.org it does with contributed module. So the next thing is like we have lots of translation I mean coming from various spaces like themes and all and we want to I mean those translation are frequently generated like by the developers or like if you are back end developers who are working on the themes or contributed modules or custom modules. So the thing is that periodically you want to like generate a PO file, upload it and like import it again, right? So to reduce those manual thing we can actually use a Dress Language module actually. So what Dress Language does is like it provides a generic utility around the language module. It has like various Dress commands basically like that allows us to create language and all those but two commands are like they're like Dress Translation Import and Translation Export command. So we can actually use those and we can import translation via Dress command. So the thing is that it will actually simplify the things for the like translation import and overall like translation process. We can in fact include CI pipelines whenever deployment will happen all the translation will get referenced. So we again I mean we used it very well and it was like easy for everyone. Yeah and after like if you want to try it out this is the repository.  I have created a custom module with all those custom the developer related changes that I have done. So in case if you want to play with that and that's it and I'll review the questions now. Charles I'm not clear about the translated field name thing that you mentioned we wind up. We wind up making the translation and one thing that is fit me in the same as the content of the translation really best in translation I don't actually understand. So we want the UI to be engaged but output the web page to be in the target. You mean so does it does it mean like let's say the translation forms text are in like let's say English and like while we are adding the French translation. I mean I mean if it is the case I'm not sure kind of like we can definitely provide like customized translation text but as long as like let's say let's say we are adding a French translation the URL itself will be like a far slash not slash and it is less you did and the translation form will be presented and definitely like out of box like Drupal will translate all the interface so interface will have translation but somehow we can I'm not quite sure like I haven't reviewed this kind of scenario but somehow I think we can manage it. I mean I can check it and get back to you maybe. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Any other questions? Cool, I think quickly check in just a second. Yeah, I'll share the slides as well. I'll upload it in session and I'll quit it as well. So yeah, you will be able to get it in and I'll share the Github URL as well. So yeah, we should be, I'll get it. Yeah, all right, I think, yeah, that's pretty much it. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining today. Thank you.


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partner. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. We're on day three. I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE. My co-host is John Troyer and we're very excited to be welcoming a CUBE alumni, the CEO of Zidara Storage, Nelson Nahum. Welcome back to theCUBE, Nelson. Hi, thank you, Lisa, how are you? Good, good to have you here. So, Nelson, from your website, you say scalable, elastic, cost-effective enterprise storage as a service. What is this? How does this make Zidara unique? Yeah, we are unique because of what we provide is a cloud storage solution that has all the capabilities of enterprise storage, you know, the security, performance, isolation, fully management by the customer, block, file, object storage. All this as a service at the customer side. So, we are the only one company that can send all the equipment to the customer that the center, the customer, don't pay for anything only for what they use. If we ship 200 drives and they start using 10, they pay for 10 and then they start using another 10, they will pay for 20. And if they want at some point to shrink, they shrink. So, it's totally elastic in the sense of the agility for the provisioning, but at the same time it's elastic in the price, so the customer pay only for what they use. So, this is your fifth or sixth time at VMworld with Zidara.  What is the Zidara storage cloud? How do VMworld users benefit from it? Yeah, so VMworld users, as you know, they use a lot of storage and enterprise storage capabilities, performance is very important, reliability is very important. This show is the most popular storage show, I would say, because of the need of enterprise storage in VMworld environment. But the reason why are coming to our booths is because they want to move to an OPEX model even if they want to have this in their own data center and we provide that. It's not only OPEX model, it's not only the financing of the equipment, it's also the fact that we manage the equipment remotely. So, the customer don't need to use their own engineer to manage and learn new equipment and so on. If there is a failure, we have a DevOps team that can do everything remotely and immediately act on an issue. As well, one of the important thing that happened with this new model is that customers are not locked with the technology. We as a service provider have the incentive to have the best technology, best price performance for the customer at any time. Well, let me jump in there and let's talk about hardware for a second, right? The one thing about storage is it keeps advancing, keeps getting cheaper, a lot of people out there still running spinning disks, Flash and now NVMe, the generations are changing, the densities are getting higher. You have to invest now to get the next generation of performance out of it for your workloads. Talk a little bit about how you as this service provider who basically provides the hardware you have to take on the hardware costs, how are you looking at this, where we are on the curve? Are there shortages in production? What is that doing to pricing? And what's the risk model both for you and for the enterprise then in this equation as we move more to Flash now, say? Yeah, really good question. So actually this is basically we take out from the customer, not only the risk, the fact that very quickly the system becomes obsolete. So Flash is a good example, right? There is all the time new innovations around Flash. People predicted a few years ago that Flash will be extremely cheap. Actually it's going up the price. So people that buy today are all Flash array and they calculate the ROA over five to seven years, they are overspending because at some point the Flash will go down and there is the new technology and the higher capacity drives, et cetera, et cetera that they are paying today for what is the cost today. So our customer, for example, rely on us. So they say, okay, Zadara is my storage expert and this storage outsourcing. And what we do is we provide, because we are as a service and our incentive is to have the customer forever with us. It's not a three-year lease or four-year lease, it's a day-to-day working together with the customer and be the provider forever. So we have the incentive to provide the best technology at the right price to the customer. A good example I can tell you last year at our company summit, we used to have a SAS 10K RPM drive that were the enterprise drives. And people that have our systems with those drives may start it two years ago, may start it one year ago, maybe six months ago, or even three months ago. At some point we say, you know what, we will provide Flash at lower cost per gigabyte that's spinning this, okay? And not only that, we will do that migration online. The customer will not feel anything. And at the end of the migration, the customer will have higher performance Flash. And guess what, the invoice, the next invoice will go down. And this is the kind of thing that we do that when you buy CapEx, you cannot do. Well, Nelson, talk a little bit maybe about to the customers, this consumption model, right? As a service, OpEx, that translates very well to the cloud, cloud consumption models. You partner with all the major clouds, you can have data up there as well. Your customer base, do you see people adopting the hybrid model? Where are we in that journey to the public cloud? Where are people keeping their eggs and in which basket these days? So, yeah, as you know, our system can be on premise and can be consumed from the major public cloud, Amazon, Azure, Google, we will announce next month another one that- There are more than just the three? Yeah, yeah. There's another one. So, they can consume us in both. I will say until two years ago, the market was divided in the people that want to be all cloud or private cloud or inside our data center. Today, 100% of our customers have both, basically. Except for the very small start that may start in the cloud. Even the one that after they're getting bigger, they have multiple environments. So, I will say today, the landscape is that people have both because there are things that it's better to do in the public cloud for bursting and for scalability, but there are things that it's better to do on premise. So, it's no longer a private versus public, it's hybrid, I guess. And speaking of that, and you mentioned that Zodara partners with some big cloud providers, Amazon, Google, Azure, and then there's a to be announced soon, what have the announcements that you've heard at VMworld this year, what have this meant to you with the VCF on AWS, that was announced Monday, then we heard yesterday about the pivotal container service with Google. What does that signify to you in terms of the market trends? Is it in line with what you expected? Yeah, so actually we were, I guess, the first company to partner with Amazon and cross connect to Amazon, first storage company. Okay, they're not the first company, first storage company. And people will say, why you will do that, it's better to sell the box and things like that. So, our product was built with cross connectivity and integration with Amazon and Google and the major cloud immediately, right? So, we are multi-tenants that is necessary for the cloud but the main thing that we do is that we do a really good job of separating the tenants between them that is unique and this is why enterprises prefer to use our storage even in the cloud. So, customer of us has dedicated drive, they have dedicated controller, they get the networking even and can attach the cloud storage solution to their own Active Directory and have all these capabilities that they will have on premise. So, we started in this way and I think that now we see more and more, even VMware and NetApp and those that they were classical on premise going to in the same direction. It's actually very good for us. I'm a little interested in the container story here, right? A lot of talk about containers here at the show. On prem, even the hyper-converged story, talk about containers, you're running workloads and storage, containers, super useful for that. Obviously in the cloud, what's the Zidara service with containers and how does that work? Yeah, definitely. So, we launched two years ago a very unique service that allow a customer to run a Linux container inside the storage. So, inside the cloud storage solution, they can run their own code. Why we did that, there were many customers that have millions of files and they're reading and writing from a VM outside the storage, introduce latency. One of our customers had billion files. And billion files, if every time you cut one millisecond it's translating in a long period of time. The other thing that is interesting with our service is that storage, by definition, you can write or read data. You cannot get a synchronous notification, hey, a file was changed. But if you run the application in a Linux container inside the storage, then we can provide this type of notification and say, hey, each time that a new file JPEG come to the file system, we will notify the Linux container and the customer can trigger many application or many service that will do something with the data, at zero latency. So, zero latency, nothing to manage. They don't need external VMs. And also, they get the capability of notifications from inside the file system. Nice. I'm the container front. I'm glad you brought that up, John. Are you seeing any industries in particular that are early adopters of this or that are coming to Zara saying, hey, we want to go the container direction. We need some advice here. You talked about a customer with billions of files. Are you seeing this, any sort of industry specificity or is it more size of company where container technologies are going to be meeting? Most of our customers that use container, they use for a specific service. They will not run a full blown application in a container. They still run VMs. But there are some services that benefit from zero latency and from having this notification that they can run in our side. So, I think it's not per industry, but more per type of service within the industry that they need to do. Okay. Another thing I saw on your website was that Zara was chosen as a 2017 red herring top 100 North American winner. You joined fellow winners, Google, Skype, Twitter, innovation, it's a really hot topic. So, I'm sure that that was pretty cool. Michael Dell talked about innovation yesterday and how important it is to innovate with customers. Tell us a little bit as we close up here about how Zara is innovating together with your customers. Yeah, great question.  So, I like to innovate and have a new product. I also am a firm believer that especially a company like us that is not the big companies, we need a really differentiated product. We don't want to compete on the cheapest thing and with Amazon, for example, we need to provide really high value. So, in order to provide high value, we need to innovate. I believe that as the time goes on, there's more and more opportunities for innovation and this is what you keep seeing new startups coming along because it's a non-stop journey and getting the best value for the customer and nothing is more rewarding when you have an idea and people, we start developing that and then suddenly customers are using and they like that. This is the best reward that we can have. And it's probably rewarding for them, I would imagine that they are able to be influencing to you. In our case, because we are a smaller company, we do summits every year, we invite customers a little bit lower among the VM world, but we invite customers and we have the interaction with the customers and they can strongly influence the roadmap. We typically ask about what are the main issues and we try to innovate in this way. It's a good thing to have a really good roster of, we have worldwide customers today and everywhere in the world and when you put everybody together, it's a really good experience. So as we wrap here, where can folks go? I imagine the Zadara website to learn more in about a month of this new announcement that Zadara's going to be making. Yeah, ZadaraStorage.com is the place. And we offer free trials and the nice thing about our service is that it's very easy to try.   Fantastic, well Nelson, thanks so much for coming back to theCUBE and sharing with us some of the great things that are going on. Thank you very much, it was a pleasure again. And we'll be watching to see what comes out in about a month's time at ZadaraStorage.com. Definitely, it will be very important. All right, you heard it here first. All right, from my co-host, John Troyer for our guest Nelson Nahum. I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE, live continuing coverage from VMworld 2017. Stick around, we'll be right back.


My name is Nathan Kinch. I'm one of the founding partners of Greater Than X where research, design and strategic advisory firm. We focus on helping brands navigate all of this complexity and change that's happening in the world of personal data and particularly this notion that people like us or data subjects, we're gaining more control of our data. What does that mean to a brand? What does trust mean to a brand? And those are the types of challenges that we're helping big brands all around the world across financial services, telco, insurance, health, government. Trying to help them find some meaningful answers. So I predict myself and Olly Smith, the Chief Strategy Officer at Telefonica Alpha Health, we're going to be sharing the stage. It's a great opportunity where we're good mates. But we're going to be talking about data trust by design, which is something that we developed at Greater Than X. It's a way to bring trustworthy data practices into customer-facing experiences, things like product marketing, privacy notices, terms and conditions, product disclosure statements, consent notices, the overall design of an actual experience. And what I'm going to be focusing on is a little bit of the theory, you know, where did this come from? Why do we need it? That's probably the biggest question that we've got to answer. And then Olly's going to be supporting me by showcasing how Telefonica Alpha Health has been implementing data trust by design within their organization or context, with their customers, with their users for the last 12 months. So one of the questions that we often get asked is why do data trust by design when we've already got privacy by design or privacy and security by design? And it's a great question. It's actually something that we spend a lot of time thinking about at Greater Than X. Privacy by design or privacy and security by design was developed by Anker Valki about 20 years ago in the late 90s and it's had an incredible impact. If you look at the data, it's decreasing risk, it's increasing competitiveness, it's increasing trust. One of the problems organizations are having is it's really an internal thing. The principles and the practices of privacy and security by design, they're not making their way to customers. And so we felt there was a gap. And that's why we developed data trust by design principles, patterns and practices to bring trustworthy experiences to life. The reason that this is really important to a brand is that if we assume that we keep moving on the trajectory that we think we're going on as a result of things like the GDPR and all the other regulations around the world, we're going to gain more control of our data as individuals. And that means if a brand is going to earn access to data, if they're going to competitively differentiate, if they're going to do deep personalization, they need trust. They need people to trust them so that they share data. At the moment, the things that we're observing with data trust by design, a 60% increase in comprehension compared to the way that things currently work, a 10 times decrease in time to comprehension which is really meaningful because you think about a privacy policy or a terms and commissions experience at the moment fundamentally broken. But most importantly from a brand's perspective, there's an 8 times increase in customers' propensity to willingly share their data when we implement data trust by design. If brands can do that consistently, increase the likelihood that their customers share data by 8 times, they are going to competitively differentiate and they might even win their market. And that's really what data trust by design is all about.


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