Here, all winner, and you have your latest all-winner-powered laptops right here. Yeah, that's right. So we have a clamshell laptop here running Phoenix OS. This is using our A64 quad-core processor, and we have a 2-in-1 device here, which is using a new OS made by a winner called WOS, and that's kind of a dual system. One part is Android 6.0, and the other part is Phoenix OS. Can we check it out? Yeah, yeah, no problem. I'll stick it here. So the double OS is realizing the dream of two UIs in one. Yeah, that's right. So the moment with a tablet, you can't really do any office or sort of productivity work. So what we want to do is combine kind of a tablet functionality and entertainment with light office work. So here, it's kind of a familiar desktop feel with all the apps right here. And you've got your WPS if you want to do some sort of office work. Also, this is GMS certified by Google, so it supports updates. Also, it will come with YouTube and sort of standard Google apps.  And here, it will prompt you to switch to Android. So if I hit that, you'll see it's quite a fast boot into Android, and now we're into tablet mode. Nice. That's regular, what's it called, vanilla Android experience, right? Yeah, this is Marshmallow on here. So this is 6.0. And the UI looks like a regular Marshmallow. Yeah, it's just like stock Android kind of experience on there. And then if you hit the system mode, now we'll be switching back into the Phoenix OS. Which is also triggered by automatically when you turn it on? Yeah, which is also triggered by the dock. So if I turn it back into the tablet mode, put it in its dock, it'll now prompt me to switch it into the Phoenix OS mode. That's cool. So we also have it on the machine next to this one. So these are running an OptiCore 883T. This is similar to like the Surface Pro kind of device. Yeah. It can fit like a keyboard case. So you would have sort of the case and the keyboard integrated together. And it would offer the same functionality as the two-in-one device where you can switch between two operating systems. Nice. So that's the teams at Almanar have been optimizing this. Yeah. And together in partnership with Phoenix, right? Yeah, with Phoenix and with Google together. So it's RIP for the sort of system to allow it to switch. But obviously it's sort of Phoenix and Google's... Is this Andromeda OS? Is this Android? Andromeda OS, the rumored... No, I'm just joking. But Google is... Maybe this is the future of Android, right? Yeah. This has to be... Yeah, I think so. I think people are migrating that Android experience onto desktops more. So I think for Android, also the multi-window support on here for Android is quite a useful feature. So this is one of the problems with a tablet device. Obviously you don't have multi-window support. But using this, you can do that. All right. This productivity right here, you have all kinds of windows open. Yeah, if you go to here, you can have a look at the system information. So about the tablet, and you can see sort of what is running here. So here's the all-in-a-double OS. What does the octopus mean? That's just a... OK, that's just a... Code name. Yeah, maybe it's a code name for the product. All right. And then here you can see the A803T optical processor is powering this two-in-one device. All right. So that's productivity. This is the future of productivity right here with the owner. Yeah, so like I said, that's our plan to kind of migrate the tablet experience into sort of the office environment.  And this is affordable, right? This was launched crazy affordable on the company. Yeah, I mean it was, I think it was like $79, something like that on Kickstarter. So this is quite a nice design and a low-cost kind of PC. With no touch, and then we get a little bit higher when we do these kinds of things. So at the moment, if you want a touchscreen laptop, they're fairly premium. So this is kind of an economical solution to that. And this also has dual USB and support for expandable memory. Nice, with thin and compact light and affordable. Yeah, and like you said, it's a lot lighter than carrying around a laptop all the time. And then if you just want to go out, maybe on a bus journey or something, you can just take the tablet part. If you're at school or in the office, obviously you can attach it to the dock. Cool. So there's a lot of other things here. Yeah, there's lots of things to look at. This is sort of a gaming tablet. The iCoon. Yeah, this is kind of cool. Which is potentially, we'll see the trailer that Nintendo is going to launch very soon. But maybe it's similar to the NX. Yeah. And form factor where you have the, right here, it goes out. They go out so you can have a tablet or put on the controls. Yeah, so maybe in the future as well, maybe more sort of games from Nintendo and well-established game houses will start to be ported on to Android platform. That'd be so awesome. Yeah, I think Mario is coming out on Nintendo and things like that. So I was a big fan. Something like this would be really cool to play Mario on. So yeah, that's one application for this product. Please, Nintendo, give us the games. I'd say go as well. Yeah, everybody actually. And Sony, welcome. How about this one? So yeah, here we just have a sort of stock Android tablet. This is running on A64, which is a 64-bit quad-core processor. Is it 10.1 inch? And that's probably very affordable, right? Yeah, I mean this would probably be sub $100 sort of retail even. Yeah. Yeah. And those are all the tablets right here? Yeah, that's kind of a range. A lot of these use our 833 processor, which is the most popular sort of Android tablet processor on the market at the moment. It's kind of a cost-effective solution. Yeah, selling... We don't know how many millions, but millions and millions. Millions in volume for this. So next year we're going to try and bring out a new chip that's similar to the A33, maybe on a lower nanometer. And obviously carry on supporting the tablet market. That's obviously our target. That's what we concentrate on at all, winner. So yeah, we've got the roadmap for the tablet market. We're continuing to evolve those products. The lower nanometer is very useful for lower power. Yeah, so the smaller the nanometer, obviously the less power and things like that. So also for performance, you can fit more on a chip. So it improves the power consumption, also improves the performance of the chip. So these are all benefits of upgrading to that system. And some very cool form factors right here, this tablet. This is actually a Snapdragon processor inside here. So this is the 8909 or 8916 Snapdragon processor. This is made by an OEM called CUBE. This is the T2 device. So this has sort of come out of our partnership with Qualcomm. That's also very, very stable. Yeah, it's quite a... The build quality is very nice on here. So are you helping Qualcomm to get huge success in the... Yeah, we've got quite a lot of customers signed up in China. Also for the education market, it's quite a lot of demand. There's a company called Reboy that makes a lot of educational tablets in China. They're currently using the Snapdragon platform with the help of Allwinner, with the Allwinner reference design. So yeah, we are beginning to get some traction now on the Qualcomm chip. So with your experience being the absolute leader in the tablet market, you have the experience to help get this out to as many people as possible. And there's a little... I guess it's probably an affordable system. Yeah, you help make it affordable also. Yeah, also we help support the manufacturers because trying to make a Qualcomm chip work in China is quite a complex process. There's a lot of documentation. So we just try to simplify that for manufacturers. We're trying to make it easy for the next generation of products to use Qualcomm chips. Cool. And then there's Allwin VR. That's the big... it's kind of like the big hope of the industry, right? Everybody expects this to be... Yeah, I mean a lot of people are relying on VR. There's a lot of people that make graphics processes, that make memory. Obviously VR is going to be quite demanding in those areas in the future. So there's a lot of companies that are hoping that VR is going to have a big impact. All right, so here's Allwin One VR right here. Yeah, at the moment the focus on these is more for video playback. We are working on a next generation VR chip that will be able to handle maybe gaming a little bit better. So most of these, you can watch some 4K video or something like that. All right, cool. And then we go around here. You have a vacuum cleaner? Yeah, so this is made by Xiaomi. You might be familiar with mobile phones, but they do make other products as well. So this is sort of self... It's alive. This is a speaking vacuum cleaner.  So you can just sort of stick it on the floor. It'll go around your room. Some of these actually map the area. They actually draw a sort of 3D model of the room. And then they use that map to navigate around the object to navigate stuff going on here. I imagine that's a sensor to detect. Okay. Oh, what are you doing with me? It's saying, right?  Unfortunately, these products can keep the vacuum cleaner. Yeah, I think maybe this is some, you've just hit a wall sort of device. It seems to be backing away now when you press that. What's going on here? So this is a really interesting market right now. It's sort of Wi-Fi speakers. So this is using our R16 processor for smart hardware. So we're seeing a lot of companies like Google with Google Home, Amazon with Amazon Echo. Trying to sort of integrate this device into your home. Also sort of mesh networking several speakers together. So that you can sort of play a song in the kitchen. You can play a song in the living room. You can either choose the same track or different tracks. And you can speak to it? Yeah, you can speak to it. So I can ask you the weather. Obviously it's connected via Wi-Fi. So if I have some question, a little bit like on iOS or something, you might use the Siri voice control. Are these products shipping? Yeah, domestically. In China? In China. So like I mentioned earlier, we have Chinese language support AI package at the moment. So in the future, we'd like to support obviously a Western language package so that we can export these internationally. But at the moment, our main focus is within the domestic market. What's the Chinese AI? Is it very good? It is actually really good. I see Chinese users very happy. Yeah, it's very good. I've seen some demonstrations of it and it is quite impressive. It is pretty good. Is it the big Chinese companies making them? Like Baidu, Tencent, Libava or something? Yeah, these kind of companies are developing the AI solution. So there's massive application for that across a whole range of products as you've seen from the robot here. Also using some voice AI, speakers using voice AI, even the vacuum cleaner. It's using voice AI. So it has, oh, I'm not going to... Yeah, it's got a turning head.  Ni Hao, hello. I'm just trying to... just a second, it's okay. But so it speaks Chinese only and I can only say Ni Hao. Yeah, it's more aimed for kids. It's kind of a companion so you can talk to it, you can communicate with it, it'll wake up, it'll answer questions like you showed it. It can sort of rotate some movement. So yeah, I think a popular product in the future. Nice. So in 2017, we can definitely have an all-winner-powered robot that's going to bring you beer when you want. You can hope so. You can hope so? I mean, I guess some people are very busy with this kind of market right now. Yeah, like I say, it's a huge market in many areas. Even again in automotive here, there's massive application for voice AI. Because obviously when you're driving, you don't want to use your hands, you don't want to be fitted with buttons. So a lot of these products, as you can see here, it's waiting for a voice command prompt. Ni Hao, what's the weather? Ni Hao, do you speak English? No, so I really hope that you have some English speaking. English who you can play with. Yeah, I hope so too, then I can also enjoy playing with those. But yeah, this is quite a big market in China for the automotive. They like their gadgets, they like these kind of devices. In the West, maybe not quite as popular. But these tend to be aftermarket products. So people kind of want to pimp their cars and make them a bit cooler than you would buy a product with. There's like two million DD drivers in China. Yeah, a lot, really a lot of DD drivers in China. So for them, it's very useful. You can sort of have your little DD app running. You can have your little Google Maps running. Nice. And these also connect to like a camera system. So in here, we're using some software for object recognition. So to help you park, to help recognize objects in the road. Also to track the vehicles in front of you, to measure distances and braking distances. And then that information is displayed in real time. Really? Overlaid onto the graphic. Is that like a 360 lens? This, I imagine, is a 180. 180, yeah. And you have the software that can help you not crash into a car when you park. Yeah. So like I say, it's kind of object recognition software that can sort of determine different objects in the real world, judge distances between those objects. And then like I say, overlay that information onto a video. I don't want to get any secrets out of you, but is all we're working on the self-driving car solutions? This is the next step, right? Somebody might choose to use our processor for that application, but we're not personally focused in the self-driving market. Not yet. Not yet, no. But it's a big market, so. That's cool. So it'd be great if while you're driving in Uber, it says the customer behind. So they don't have to check the phone.  How much the price is probably going to be, and then it's just up to the apps to support the kind of stuff. It's just Android. Yeah, and then you can use your voice and ask it sort of different things, and it'll bring that information up for you. So if you're driving, obviously safety is a priority. These kind of things do help to make your experience a little bit safer when you're in the car. And let's check over here. What do you have over there? So over here is sort of some consumer electronics. Some of these might look a little strange. Do you make all of the drones? We don't make the actual drone. But the chip in there? Yeah, also for our camera chip. This, I think, doesn't have a camera. But we do make chips for drone cameras and things like that. Obviously drones, big market, a lot of people like using them, especially the video features on those. Because the phantom DJI and stuff, it's kind of amazing what they do. They can track objects. They can avoid, they can follow you, the GPS and all that stuff. Yeah, so it'd be cool if you were going in there also. Yeah, I mean, you can see with these technologies, there's a lot of overlap there. So a lot of the technology and automotive to do with object recognition and distances, you can also apply that technology to things like drones that also rely on having to sort of judge that data. It'd be so cool if you could have as many features as a DJI, but for 20 times or 10 times cheaper. That'd be awesome. And you would be the leader. You would be the leader. Yeah, DJI are quite good at their job. So I think it's best to let them do what they do best. Okay, and there you have an e-reader chip. This is the dual core A7. Yeah, so we have an e-reader, either dual core or single core chip. The reason you don't see very high end processors in e-readers is basically due to the time it takes for the screen to be updated. So that kind of limits how far, how fast you need to develop the chip for the readers. Is the e-reader market very popular in China? Like people love to read, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit popular. There's other applications for these displays. I think in the future, maybe for things like advertising boards or maybe you go to the train station, you wanna look at the schedule, then sort of the e-reader solution is quite good for that kind of application. Also, there's a couple of sort of mobile phones and companies that are using e-reader displays maybe on the reverse side of a phone, because obviously these use a lot less power. So that's another application for e-readers. Perhaps the main competitor over there is an XP free scale and you might have some A7 that's like a newer generation and better than what they still provide over there. Cortex A9, I forgot what it is, but maybe Cortex A8. Yeah, like I said, for the e-reader market, the processor speed is not too important, just because at the moment, we're still limited by the e-reader display screens, which if you ever use an e-reader, they sort of have to refresh. It's not the fastest refresh. I hope somebody, maybe an owner or at Google, comes and optimizes Android to really be good for these kind of displays and because you are. It's support Android, so. Yeah, it's true. So at the moment, like you say, there's not a specific Android platform for the e-reader market. So yeah, maybe that is something that we could look at developing. Do you have time? I mean, you have lots of priorities. Yeah, too many projects. Yeah, we just bought out a new OS called Tina OS, which is for the IoT market. So that's kind of like a lightweight OS for connected devices. Maybe for things like smart hardware that we looked at before. And obviously we have the double OS for the two and one tablet devices. So yeah, we're busy. And partnership with Microsoft. Optimizing everything for Windows 10 IoT. Yeah, also working on that as well. So there's plenty of going on around sort of that platform in that area. It's going to be exciting job, right? Yeah, for sure. Every day is new challenge. Yeah, there's not a dull moment. That's for sure. So yeah, that's what I love about working for Windows. And this is the karaoke screen machines? Yeah, this is very popular in China.  It's kind of people like to go out to KTV. It's cool here. Sing songs, drink beers, hire your own little private booth. It's like religion in China. It is a little bit like that. Yeah, so like in England, we go for a beer to the pub in China. They go to KTV and that's sort of the culture. Yeah, so these kind of things are popular. People can take them home. They can sing in front of the mirror, sing and I don't know, sing at festivals with their family or events like that. So like I said, popular in China, maybe not quite as popular in the West. Is this an all-in-the-part lamp or no? This belongs to the Marriott Hotel. But you do IoT, IoT is big, big focus. Yeah, unfortunately, it's not connected to anything. So it's not a smart lamp.  But that's a potential also for your business to put your chips in all the lights and all the doors and... Yeah, so that's where it's heading. And things like that, that Wi-Fi speaker over there might be the kind of device that's going to control the lights. That'll be sort of my gateway into my smart home. So that's one interesting area. Like we have a wireless speaker here. This is also something that could support Echo or could support Google Home. That's so awesome. I really hope that you get on to Google Home and Echo. This seems like the last keynote by Google. They were making a big focus of their new Pixel phone. They want everything to be like voice control and smart and stuff. And it's going to be very exciting. This 2017 is going to be fun. Yeah, I think even if you look at like the Apple AirPods, if you want to adjust the volume on them, you also have to use the Siri voice command. So it's kind of preparing us for this new era of voice controlled interactivity with devices. So like you said, I think over the next coming years, you're going to see people sort of talking to themselves down the street. But definitely that integration of voice control into technology is kind of the next step. Like we have wireless technology. This kind of hands-free idea. Now we're moving from that to almost like a touch-free kind of world. So let's say maybe there's some people watching this video. They have ideas. They want to do stuff. They want to do some startup or they maybe have technology. And they want to partner with the owner. They want to work with you. Is it possible? How does it work? Yeah, the moment we're trying to make an R-series range of processes. Most of these products over here use our R-series. So that's being used by companies like Chip, NextThings, to make a mini PC. We're going to try and make a website to support that, make all the software available, the SDK. It's going to be public, sort of no NDA or anything like that to help smaller developers sort of take our processes and develop them into their own application. So that means open source also? Yeah, that'll be our focus for our R-series will be open source. So we've got a new processor, the R40. That's going to be in Banana Pi. So we're working with Foxconn to support Banana Pi. Previously, it used our H3 chip, but we're going to move on to the R40. So we already have some customers signed up to that. So over the next couple of months, that's going to be our focus. And that's what we're going to be trying to promote within Allwinner. Is it also possible for some partners, even some small companies to say, hey, Allwinner, I want to work with you and then maybe even come to the office and work with a bunch of engineers, do some new projects, stuff like that. Is that happening? Yeah, I mean, people always welcome to contact us with their ideas or if they want some sort of support. Sometimes we tend to pass customers to maybe an OEM or ODM because obviously we provide the processor, but we don't actually build any of these products. So all these products on display here are built by different OEMs, different ODMs. And normally we work to support them and then they support the customer. If you are a big customer, then we might offer support directly. If you're a small customer and you want to know, all right, how do I start my project? Who should I talk to? Then we can give you advice for that. We can also put you in touch with some engineers that maybe have some experience with our solutions and they can also support you. And you had the world's first Allwinner partners conference. How did that go? Yeah, that was great. That was in Shenzhen about three months ago called the APC. So the idea of that was to invite all these different companies, all these technology partners, bring them together and talk about what the focus should be in the future. What's the direction of the industry? What should we be looking at? What should we be building? What should we be manufacturing? So that was kind of the value of that conference. And also just to show what we're working on, as you can see, it's expanding quite an extensive range. We're employing sort of more engineers. Now we have over 1,000 people at the company, about 800 of those are engineers. So we're developing IP, we're building our own stuff, our own proprietary software, like the double OS that was developed by us. So we are moving in that direction where we're not just sort of an arm licensee, we are sort of trying to customise video processing. Obviously power management is something that we specialise in. So we try to take the solutions and optimise them and offer the best value we can to the consumer without, if we can avoid it, sort of avoid just adding more hardware that adds more cost. If you can optimise things in software, then obviously you can pass the benefit onto the consumer. They're still getting the same experience they would get on a more premium platform.


This is Jason with Spaulding Decon in Tampa. We're here at a scene of an unattended death in a hotel. There was a spot on the floor that contained bio that was removed. And the main part of the bio seems to be in the bathroom here, around the toilet and around under the sink there. So we'll be removing that. We'll have to see if the toilet or the sink and everything has to come out. But we're gonna start with what's visible and go from there. All right, we're gonna start removing some of the bio in the bathroom. We've actually already started on some of it. We're gonna continue now that you're here. And we're gonna spray the chemical on here to neutralize it, clean it up. All right, next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna spray an indicator on it. And we're gonna hope it doesn't foam. If it doesn't foam, we're good. If it foams, we've got to clean it again. So the good thing is this just happened. So everything was fresh. It wasn't like it soaked through a lot of stuff. Didn't sit for a long time where you got all the odors and it's soaking. If it would have been a while, we probably wouldn't have been removing this floor. There we go. We'll fog the rim and leave an air scrubber run overnight just to get what little odor is in here out and we're all done. That easy.


Your Coca-Cola bottler presents Claudia based on the famous play and novels by Rose Franken Brought to you transcribed Monday through Friday by your friendly neighbor who bottles Coca-Cola Relax and while you're listening refresh yourself.  It is a cold and nipping air.  I really really are I've known you to sit still in one place alone. What you doing? Oh Must be pretty fascinating things Pretty dull thing but a great many things You sat right down after dinner and it's half past eight now. Well, I'll be through a little while darling. I'm just cleaning out my death mostly bills, of course Honestly, they accumulate so it's absolutely. How's the car? Majesty seems very pleasant munching her hay Sent you her regards between months. Oh, no, I wish I'd walked up to the barn with you But I knew if I didn't set myself down to my desk right after dinner I'd fit her instead Majesty understood say David when she's gonna have her calf She hurry up. That's one thing. You can't hurry up You'll be coming around first of the year and not a minute sooner. Well, he said he hopes.  I just paid the dairy bill it seems to me it's about time I had a glass of homemade milk and Addition homegrown butter and a picture of home separately.  I thought you were interested in Majesty's calf purely for sentimental reason You can't bluff me. You don't give a hoot about the blessed event for itself You just want Majesty's milk and I was that too much to ask of a call Please be quiet. Gladly. I am busy too busy for For what? Or a slight token of affection and esteem perhaps. Oh, never too busy for that.  That's good. Hey, don't go away. Don't go away. You're busy. Remember These old bills they bore me and finish up with I hate paying bills It's not just the money either much of this much is right. It's much money. Oh, pay them Already the six of the month four more days and we'll be dispossessed David that's not really true about the tenth of the month I mean off goes the gas off goes the electricity off goes the phone Think of all the money we'd say Polly Anna, but oh, I suppose I might just as well pay these old bills I'll be hounded by my creditors as they say in the melodramers.  It depresses me Hey, hey, what? Hey, you left your pipe on the mouth. Oh So I'm telling you now so you won't interrupt me later. That's very sweet. I'm very sweet girl I got on back to your work, you know David are you gonna read the stock market? What's it to you because if our stocks have gone down again, don't tell me we can't afford it David, you know, it's funny.  Do they what goes down must have been up. Yes, but what is done? David doesn't have to go up Very funny, you know, I don't think we can afford stocks Certainly not with all these bills. We have they don't have anything to do with each other both money aren't they? Yes money we haven't got aren't they aren't they I refuse to get into a financial conversation with you Do you think I don't understand? I don't think you want to understand them, but you do understand all too. Well, I'll write out those checks We'll go to bed. Okay. Well That's the first decent thing you said to me all day Listen David even mentally you better not buy any more stocks even even with a margin the expression happens to be on March oh, I don't have any intention to buying any you stick to your onions. Oh onions is right You should see our grosses bills discussed. Well, don't talk about it. Just pay. I am paying it just as fast as I can Listen David, it doesn't hurt if I talk about it too doesn't hurt to me where the mattress Take the pipe out of your mouth David. I can't understand a word. You're saying doesn't matter matters to me She's like awful waste of energy to me to talk and not let people understand what you're saying Of course the free country where the matches when I look at this pile of bills It doesn't seem that very much in the country's free. We're doing all right. I mean the country or us both Yeah, I thought you wanted to be quiet. I'm being quiet. Can't you hear? I've only said a few words Listen will you look at this bill from the cleanest? Some people certainly are chief skates and tomorrow didn't they charge you enough They are there they are Exorbitant and at these places 75 cents. Can you imagine for a jacket 75 cents only had three spots?  I am for 75 cents. At least they could do a supply of stamp omelette Wouldn't you think but no I even have to supply the stamp Tell me how did you ever get to be such a tight wad? I'm not a tight wad. No, you just don't like to part with money. Is that it? That's all I say Well, so much for the cleaners now for the butcher Would you like me to take over that job? No, it's all right David every life a little rain must fall Only in this life. It's pouring tonight. Let me see. Let me see the butcher the butcher Huh, just as I thought I'll rate you. Why don't you tell him? I have good lord I won't feel safe walking down Main Street past the bush. Oh, don't worry. All right. He agreed with me David You know, I don't think you have any idea just how expensive life is. Well, you were giving me a rough idea Well, life is very expensive Leave me Probably seems to be getting expensive or every day more expensive every day.  I'm not worried David. I'm just a little irritated that Then stop thinking about it so much. We do the best we can and that's the best we can do That's logical.  I don't need any more than I have Anyway, you know half the fun of shopping is going to sales and you can't find a really good sale every day Oh, excuse me darling.  I didn't mean to say much Except there's no reason for you to fuss about the money you spend it's all for necessities and we are managing to Save a little besides so everything's fine. Well still I wish we could save more. You never know when they're going to need I wish we could too but we can't living is very expensive. You said so yourself You know David, you're very sweet. I'm not sweet word of matches and sweetness has nothing to do with you. Oh, yes, it has You weren't sweet.   Does you know in a way David don't tell me there's a tax on dying exactly so Tax can go up as high as 60 percent 60 percent after the first 60,000 60 percent if you're rich Then it's almost cheaper to stay alive Honestly hardly anything's worthwhile these days Oh bills bills bills bills look at them all over the place. Well, we're a big family Well, not so big as we're gonna be someday First things first darling Take your time actually David. I have figured that the baby doesn't cost us a thing No, you have How do you uh figure that well figure it out for yourself now unlike a great day Where the baby is not the upkeep. It's the original investment Oh, yeah, because after paying the doctor in the hospital and all that the baby is really not much more expensive than a A good piece of furniture say well have you told the baby? I'm sure you'd like to know Now look, what does it really cost to feed a baby practically nothing? What's he eat milk? Well that costs money. Oh, you know perfectly. Well, we have milk in the house anyway And when the car starts earning away David, even the milk won't cost us anything No, no way do you see some of the feed bills we'll have and they will balance out the money we save on the milk You follow me No, and what else does the baby little orange juice a few old mashed vegetables and things it doesn't amount to anything at all And his clothes are all presents he receives so far So you can see for yourself how people really really exaggerate about these things David For my money the baby doesn't cost us a cent at this point. Not a cent. That's a pleasant thought And I'll take mama so I buy an extra chop for mama. That's not real money, David Or if I have a ham or stew or something an extra mouth doesn't show at all and mama's is a small mouth Oh, yeah, sure So you see David there Let's see one two four of us four of you And I mama baby and we are living as cheaply as two You're almost convinced when I'm only trying to explain this to you because you said that it's because we're such a big family That life is so expensive. Well, life is expensive because life is expensive It's because we are a big family that we're feeling David Are you thinking that we should have a budget? No, I'm thinking no such thing. Oh good Because when I get around to deciding I want to have another baby. I wouldn't look at a budget twice. You wouldn't David, you're not the budgety kind of a man. Are you sure I'm not and I'm proud of it I'll tell you something else darling The second baby isn't nearly as expensive as the first You mean it's even cheaper. Well, you wouldn't know about it being an only child But but you've heard the expression hand me down It makes quite a considerable difference in the cost of the second child. Let me tell you Well, what do you know? We might even save money We might even make money now. Wait a minute. Oh darling I've had lots of women wish they were married to an unbudgety man like you Is uh Is that a proposal of marriage mrs. Naughton? You may consider it as such mr. Naughton Like set Now forget the rest of the bills for tonight You mean not pay them tonight Why darling, that's a wonderful idea. Let's uh put out the lights and go to bed David it's very thrifty to turn out the lights Very nice to be in the dark with you When it's time for one of your favorite radio programs Before you sit down to listen go to the refrigerator and get yourself an inviting frosty bottle of coca-cola You'll enjoy that interlude in your daily chores more if you listen refreshed. Say joe Can you figure finances that way? Oh, you mean uh One minute life is expensive and the next it's cheap. Exactly. Ah the female approach david Fascinating the workings of a woman's mind The head rules and then the heart takes over. Well, you're not so tough-hearted yourself and between you and me and this bottle of coke Neither am I. Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of and you bet it isn't Why you take a crusty old fellow like jared tucker. He's crusty. All right He certainly is a way down deep. He's as sweet as quince jelly Wait till I tell him what you said and you'll see i'm right when you see jared tomorrow tomorrow That's the seventh anniversary of pearl harbour day, isn't it exactly so See you then david right joe Every day monday through friday claudia comes to you transcribed with the best wishes of your friendly neighbor who bottles coca-cola So listen again tomorrow at the same time And now this is joe king saying orif war And remember whoever you are whatever you do wherever you may be When you think of refreshment think of coca-cola For coca-cola makes any pause the pause that refreshes And ice cold coca-cola is everywhere These broadcasts are adapted for radio by mania star And the entire production is supervised and directed by william brown maloney And now here's a word from your friendly neighbor who bottles coca-cola


The Kaduna State Governor-Senator Obasani has assured readiness to continue providing an enabling environment towards reshaping the attitudes of National Youth Service Corps members deployed to the state to promote peace, unity and development in Nigeria. Governor Sani, who was represented by the Commissioner for Human Services and Social Development Rabi Salisu, stated this at a closing ceremony of the 2023 Batch B Stream 2 Orientation Camp. We are all aware that the co-principal of this National Youth Service Corps, NYSM, is to centered around national integration, unity. I urge you all to embrace and respect the diverse cultures and traditions of your post-communities, where you will be posted to. My dear compatriots, in this challenging economy time, I encourage you to think creatively and explore unconditional avenues for your personal skills growth beyond your service here. Also, the NYSE State Coordinator, Hassan Tauara, charged core members to be disciplined in carrying out their national responsibilities, noting that the program is an avenue to promote unity and integration for the progress of Nigeria. We have witnessed the transformation of these core members into more informed, enlightened, responsible, diligent and community-driven individuals. They have been taught to embrace our culture, to bump our values and commit themselves to the service of our great nation, Nigeria. To my dear core members, we should remember that you are the future of this great country. Therefore, the knowledge and experiences you have gained are not just for personal growth, but to contribute positively to the development of our beloved nation, Nigeria. As you are back on your primary assignment, I implore you to uphold the ideas of the National Youth Service Group. Okay, my resolution is to make my host community happy. I'm here to serve my country and I'll try and do that with everything within me. Try my possible best to make sure that my host community feel my impact there and I'm able to work for myself and also improve in my area of study, also just not to serve Nigeria, but also to develop myself. I come from the east and I'm raster today to be precise and from this kind of story you'll be hearing about, you know, you wouldn't want to come, but I've been here, like initially, like I'm going to redeploy and everything, but being here I've met with the people, it's just the opposite of what we hear from there and I've changed my mind that I'm staying, so it has been a nice experience. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


So, hi. Welcome. Thanks for coming. My name is Dennis De Bell. I'm from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and I'm here to talk about 3D steganography. I'm sure you all know what it is. So, steganography is a practice of hiding or concealing a file or a video or an image inside of another file or image or video. So, you could say it's like, oh, my hair is terrible. Funny tail. Funny tail. Wait a second. Oh, man. I need my hands, though, for the live demo. So, is it okay now? So, you could say it's like hiding files in, like, plain sight. And what is 3D? Well, it's bigger than 2D. Yeah. Something like this? Okay, so what is 3D? It's bigger than 2D, so it's better. And I'll mainly focus on, like, 3D printing right now. So, yeah, 3D, in respect to 3D printing, is, of course, yeah, making everything at home just to push off a button or just from your workplace, so you never have to leave your workplace and keep on working, and all the stuff will magically appear somewhere in a corner. So, what happened after the promise of self-replicating machines and endless resources? People started to print, like, jewelry and little fiddly things. Pretty much trash.  And, of course, people started printing guns. Does anyone, everyone know this one? Sorry? Yes. It's called Liberator. Liberty as in Libre. I don't know. It's a project by Defense Distributed, and I think it was done, like, early 2013. It caused quite a media hype. People started printing this and testing it out. And actually, yeah, caused a change in legislation in the UK. They actually sort of revived an old law about concealed weapons or undetectable and untraceable weapons, so weapons without serial numbers, weapons that cannot be detected in metal detectors. So, what this means is that if you, this thing around, you might end up in jail for 10 years in the UK. What it actually didn't do was liberate anyone, of course. Maybe the opposite was true, because I'm working at the art school in Rotterdam, and I teach, yeah, like rapid prototyping and 3D printing. And all of a sudden I saw these signs appearing about, yeah, that you're not allowed to print a gun. So I was like, yeah, okay. So what are we going to do now? Maybe you can guess. Print a gun, of course. So first, let's invent a problem. So how to print a gun and get away with it? Come up with a solution. So I took the approach of steganography because it's really nice to fool humans and machines. And I will show you some classic examples of steganography. So the basic idea is you have, for example, an image like Lena, and I have a 3D model. I can also show you. It's a teapot. Actually, let me show it for real. So this is the 3D model. Now, if you just cut the teapot after the host, like the Lena image, it becomes sort of a polymorphic file. Yes, teapot. It doesn't really matter what kind of phone it was.  Sorry. So you can just put the two files together using cut. And you have a new file. I call it BMP now. And you can see it's an image. But if you now rename it to STL, that's the stereolithography 3D model file, and you load it up in mesh lab, it's also a teapot. But of course, if this teapot was like this gun, you would see maybe an image, but if you would print it, you would still print a gun. So, yes, like classic stereolithography is based on data, and humans are not based on data. They're based on carbohydrates. So if you print this BMP, you can see the gun. So we need some way of concealing this gun. We need, like, a file in a cake. So first I tried it manually using mesh lab. It's a really nice open source 3D editing toolkit for using point clouds, for example, to reconstruct 3D models. So the payload is the liberator, and the host is, of course, the teapot model I just showed. If you combine them in mesh lab, it's called almost like cutting, just flattening the two files like you would do in a Photoshop layer. And they can create, like, a teapot with a little gun inside. So this is Cura. It's used to slice the model up for 3D printing and also controlling the printer. And it's also open source. So I wanted to print it at, like, shapeways or this I materialize online 3D printing service, but it's so expensive. It's like 300 euros for this small teapot. So I looked up on 3Dhubs.com where you can find, like, local printers. Yeah, two people always happily printed this with no questions asked, actually. So I ended up with this teapot with this, yeah, liberator inside. But, of course, this all so much work to do it manually, have to align it and stuff. So there's another trick, which I call the gift wrap algorithm. And it's using the quick-hole algorithm to create sort of gift wrap around a 3D model, a convex hole, it's called. And this is the command. You can also use a mesh lab on the command line, but I mean, you first have to make a script in the GUI. Which sort of makes sense. And so, yeah, these are like the other parts, except for the low receiver of the liberator gun. And I put them in this hole. And, yeah, if you remove the hole, you end up with a part. And you can also fool machines, of course. I showed the CURA software before. And I made a special version for it. It's on GitHub, if you want to look it up. And this is a special version that will only print guns. No matter what file you put in, a gun will come out. I cannot really demonstrate it, because I don't have a 3D printer with me, but you can download it for you and try it for yourself. It's really nice based on Python and you can just, yeah, really easily hack into the code. So how to prevent people from printing guns? Well, in 2D printing you have something called steganography, also known as the yellow dots, which put like a little minuscule yellow dots on a print when you print something that can trace and it can contain like a timestamp and the brand of the printer. So you can be, the printer can be tracked by the authorities. So another one solution could be to put like little micro dots inside of the 3D print filament to trace the prints you make. These are all like ridiculous recommendations, by the way. Or you can make like sort of prevent people from printing at all by making some sort of virus that will go all over the world, sort of Stuxnet for printers. That causes it to heat up extremely high and burn it down like this one. This will be my next project, I guess. Or of course you can start putting up notes. I guess that will help. So in the end, who did I fool? Yeah, actually no one. Everyone wanted to, was happily to take my money and print my models. Yeah, Carl MacDonald also did a project with a liberator called, I forgot the name actually, Liberator Variations. I think you can look it up on Thingiverse. We combined also different models. He said like, yeah, after I did my project, a week later, Prism was leaked and everyone forgot about the defense distributed. So, yeah, actually I'm not really sure I fooled no one because I brought it with me in my hand luggage. Yay! You can feel free to touch it or look at it. Maybe I'll put it up for auction, who knows. I'm not going to take it with me anymore. Okay, that was my talk. Thank you.


Hello everyone, welcome to the second half of the elevated third hour. This is new business is everyone's responsibility And since there's three of us from the team, we're gonna do a little do-op group thing where we stand up here And then we trade off so Apologize as we kind of awkwardly work through that Very important just wanted to make a note about these contribution sprints Obviously Drupal works because everyone contributes so if you're developer, please check out these sessions and contribute to the community We're not a developer All right, so just quick intros since this is new business is everyone's responsibility We brought a few people from different departments in the agency and you can tell which one of us is The developer because he's not wearing a sport jacket. We try to make it easy for you. I'm Nelson Harris I'm a business development strategist at elevated third. This is Jeff Calderoni He's our CEO and founder and then this is the developer Nick Switzer. He's our development director And if you were around for Melissa's talk, you heard that elevated third is a digital agency based out of Denver, Colorado We're about 30 people And we help organizations solve technology and marketing problems But today we're going to talk about our sales process and kind of some of the lessons We learned as we've kind of grown as an organization. So with that I'm going to hand it to Jeff to speak about that Hey everybody, it's nice to be here. I'm gonna start with a story so This is me in 2005 After about a year in business. We had a hundred and fifty square foot incubator office and a few subcontractors and one big client Although apparently I still couldn't afford a computer. So that was a problem What I didn't know when this picture was taken that we were about to lose our biggest client and about to lose about 80% of our business and Subsequently, I figured out that I didn't know how to sell anything So even though I have it, you know, nicely framed MBA on the wall I didn't know how to sell and in business school. They teach you how to do finance They teach you how to do marketing HR, but they don't say what happens before all that and so, you know The quote the fairly famous quote is nothing happens until somebody sells something And so all of our livelihoods depend on somebody selling something and that's what we're going to talk about today So after that wake-up call, I also had another problem. I didn't see myself as a salesperson I'm not an extrovert. I don't Don't like to negotiate. I'm the person that will pay a sticker price. I just want to get out of there And I I haven't perfected kind of the double guns wink. How you doing? thing that you do at networking events But as I muddled through I realized that it wasn't really necessary and in fact those sales cliches are really counterproductive to being an effective salesperson The sales team we recently read a book called to sell as human by Daniel Pink And one of the things that he says they did a study where they had extroverts and introverts and amberverts Which are kind of right in the middle. They're neither You know introverted or extroverted but amberverts outperformed both the extroverts and the introverts in terms of closing deals And what the study suggested was that the reason that happened is they were Competent enough to sit back and listen to the client and listen for client problems But they still were able to they weren't so shy that they couldn't speak up or they were afraid to speak up when they did Have a solution and so I think this is important because whether you're a developer or a designer or on the account team Your company really needs you to engage in this sales process and you can engage in the sales process It's not that the double guns wink person that really sells. It's the person that can listen to their client and solve their problem So really all we need to do with a potential client is listen for pain and if we have a solution that makes it go away We need to tell them so there's no Scripts no closing statement. You don't have to stare at them willing them to pick up the pin and sign the contract All we're doing is just solving business problems in a profitable way So if if everyone in your agency can help with sales We're gonna tell you a little bit of why we think That's the most effective way to organize your process So let me ask if you know for those of you that are in the agency business Let me ask if this scenario has ever happened to you you get an opportunity That's twice as big as any single project that you've done up until that point But there isn't really enough time or access to the current site to really evaluate and look under the hood And see what you're agreeing to and why oh and by the way, it has to be fixed bid But you keep telling yourself, but look at all those zeros. There's got to be enough money in there for us to make a profit, right? And then you bring in the developer and you've already decided that you're going to take the business and you're looking at the developer With your double guns wink and saying there's got to be enough money here, right? right and You can imagine how this project turned out we've got Four times the number of hours that were that were estimated and 18 months later We still weren't done with that project and so I don't know if any of you have made that mistake You'll never forget it and you'll never do it again Because it's so painful with that client sort of slogging through this under under documented underestimated poorly scoped Project because you didn't take the time to involve the whole team And and get real buy-in and real momentum with the with the project So as as Jeff just set the stage for you're probably expecting that there's got to be a better way and there is This is the the method that we've developed over kind of working in a sales process with the rest of our team So the first thing that you do as soon as we hear that, you know A potential opportunity and we qualify that opportunity as a salesperson is we talk about it with our team And what that really involves is getting people into the same room together So you can actually speak in person when that's a possibility We try to bring one representative from both the sort of creative and design side of the house as well as the development and sort Of strategy side of the house so that we are getting both perspective on a large web project So what this allows us to do is create proactiveness through communication So when you get people in the room that early on You may not think that there's really a lot for you to talk about because it's a brand new deal You may not know a lot about the project or the client But you'd be surprised when you just set up the opportunity to have that conversation That the conversation kind of free flows and people start raising questions like hey I wonder if they thought about this thing or is this really doable for the scale that they're hoping for and the budget That they've allocated for this and if this red flag comes up that would be a big problem And who's in you know who's responsible for that is that it's something the clients worried about is that something? We're worried about as an agency And so it really keeps you kind of ahead of the curve and ahead of the ball as it's rolling And so you know as an example of this earlier this year We we had a very large RFP response for a transportation authority That was sort of you know Complicated and had a lot of sort of parts of the house that we had to involve in the agency and because we as soon as We heard about the opportunity we got everyone to a room and we talked about it We brought up the idea of oh well content migration is pretty big part of this project They didn't mention anything about that in the RFP are they doing it or are we doing it? And so when we crafted our response we assumed that they were doing it Of course an addendum was issued like a couple of days before the RFP was due saying oh, yeah No, you guys need to be worried about content migration And so because again, we talked about it right away We were able to say oh well We already figured out what we would probably do in that scenario and here's what it is And so we were able to respond pretty much instantaneously with an updated scope of work And we were able to actually win that contract as a result Another really big advantage of getting the people in the room early on and talking about these things is that it allows people to Leverage passive connections and what I mean by that is your subconscious mind is amazing amazing things when you're in the shower Or when you're working on other projects if you've thought about the project early enough so Since we started doing this, you know, we've been amazed at the type of passive connections that people have been able to make sometimes It's as subtle as oh actually have a friend that works at that company. I didn't think about that until now I wonder if they would have any insight into the project or You know a family member that works a similar organization. I bet their structure the same way subtle things like that But also things like as somebody's working, you know on the implementation team on an entirely different project They come across the exact same problem that the the RFP or the you know initial prospect had raised and they go Oh, well, we're we're solving it in this way in this project maybe we could adapt that solution to fit the this response and You know, sometimes it's also something as silly as you just read the RFP for the fifth time And you notice something that you didn't notice before sometimes those things can be very lengthy and you miss something But we had a situation like that with a botanic garden We were responding to an RFP and they were trying to build a separate commerce experience and then they had a main Drupal site and We were kind of like why after we read the all the requirements again, we were had planned to respond in a certain way We go why not just integrate the commerce experience into the main comm because we do Drupal and we understand how that all works And we ended up winning that contract as well because we were kind of breaking the mold and stepping outside of the prescribed Requirements that the RFP had set and I think that they appreciated that So I'm going to hand it over to Nick about warming it All right, so like Nelson mentioned First thing we do is get in the same room. So let's talk a little bit about what actually happens when we're in there So in there, I mean our goal is to come out of that meeting and maybe it's not the first one Maybe it's a couple depending on sort of the size of the opportunity and that's something we'll gauge when we initially meet But you know, we want to come out of there with an estimate and and that's the whole goal of this collaborative meeting Is to get everyone in the room and you know, like he's been saying talk through sort of all the The various possibilities and really leverage the different types of expertise that we have in the room and sort of available to us through the office and so what we do is, you know, we really push to Actually produce the estimate in there. We don't just sort of all take notes and then go our separate ways we really try to follow through on that collaboration and we've got sort of a you know a Formatted estimate document that we'll go through every time and you know, we'll build out features We'll build out assumptions. We'll all agree on sort of the complexity of the response that we want to put together based on You know size of the project and other sort of various factors that we've evaluated As an agency and that that does a lot of really neat things I think you know, it's it's great that it sort of keeps people out of those silos like these guys talked about Because then you don't sort of have your developer sitting over here Your designer sitting over here sort of coming up with their own separate solutions that may or may not Be aligned in the actual scope and the budget of the project So to dig a little more into that Brainstorming, you know late like we've been hinting at I think you know We really try to read between the lines of RFPs as much as we can And you know that I think gives us opportunity to really brainstorm different alternative solutions and make sure We're really getting at what we think the RFP and the client are getting at and and you know That's that's a lot easier when you've got two three four maybe even more people in the same room that are all Putting their heads together and aligning on that strategy and sort of bringing their experience and different expertises From around the office to produce something that will meet the requirements, but maybe not be quite what the potential client was expecting And then while you're actually producing that estimate It's important to remember that estimates are exactly that their guesses right which on the surface It's kind of like yeah, of course, you know their guesses, but You know, I think just our perspective on that is you know You could put two developers completely separate estimating You know some feature or some major projects in one estimate maybe five times what the other is And it doesn't necessarily mean one is right and one isn't I think you Each just comes with sort of a different set of assumptions and they're approaching it from a different angle And I think that's where you know in the brainstorming phase It's it's really great to you know you get sort of the technical minds and then The sales minds and maybe the strategy minds in the same room because you can sort of have those understanding understandings of the client's objectives from the business side really Tempering sort of the what-ifs and maybe we could try this and maybe this is a good fit for this modern technology As you really start to craft that pitch So I'll hand it back off to Nelson So you've brought your team along the way On the entire process of estimating and figuring out what the strategy and the solution is going to be and now You know, hopefully the client has invited you in to actually pitch the solution And we feel like it's important to continue to bring that collaborative approach into the pitch meetings So pitch meetings aren't just for the sales people with the double guns. They're also for developers. We found a Lot of success surprisingly with bringing a developer into the room to actually not just demo Like a lot of you know pitches might go but actually just talk to the client directly one-on-one no script about solutions And you'd just be amazed how how that lights a client up I mean when you think about the fact that a client at this point has spent a lot of time You know mapping out their requirements and coming up with what it is that they really the pain points that they're trying to solve And they're meeting with vendors They're in this sort of tumultuous place where they're not sure whether or not you're really going to be able to deliver on their entire Scope on budget and on time and so it's it's really an amazing thing when a developer can come in and say No, this is how I would handle it. This is this is easy This is you know easy for me to do and here's exactly how we would do it from a Drupal perspective or form a development perspective But also on the flip side of that to say no This is really a concern and this could inflate your budget pretty drastically and you know This is a red flag and we're going to be wanting to manage to that the entire time and and pay careful attention And it just creates an instant rapport that the client has with the developer and a trust there that you can't really Manufacture by having a salesperson sort of be in the way So for me, it's just as a salesperson my job to sort of direct those conversations and make those moments happen And we've we've actually had a couple clients sort of break the The mold of the sort of interaction that you normally have in a pitch process and just and just say like I want that Developer on my project are they gonna be in my project or and this is my dream This is literally what I've been thinking about the entire time We've been talking about putting this this RFP together or scoping out this project And so this sort of magical moments happen when you bring a developer into the pitch And I want Nick to to talk about kind of how developers Perspective is on on bringing into the pitch Talk about those magical moments Yeah, so I think we put a lot of effort into you know thinking about who does collaborate on that estimate And and you know, I mean it might be part of our first initial meeting because I think what we really try to leverage You know as Nelson is sort of getting out was we've we've got a lot of different experience in our agency not just technology experience but life experience and lots of different backgrounds and You know, we'll find a lot that if you bring people who are passionate about what you're pitching about Yeah, and I mean like honestly most times that's Drupal What kind of sometimes you've got the bonus of you know, oh, hey, we're gonna pitch a ski company, right? Like that's that's pretty cool so get someone in on that who really cares about it and we'll go the extra mile to Help make that happen and you know, I mean I think it can be a little dangerous too because I think You know speaking from a developer's perspective I absolutely do this and I've seen others do it too that you know You really want to get into the weeds and you want to talk about browser support and you want to talk about implementation specifics and It's not really the time for that at this point So you want to make sure you know if you're the developer in the room or whoever the developer in the room is sort of has those Guide rails I guess a little bit Provided by an outline so that you know We can still give the client something to look forward to in the implementation process when we actually do get into those details and start building things So you've you finally won the project and you're ready to get to get to work The deal may be one But the whole agency involvement shouldn't stop now And so because the whole agency was involved in the pitch process It shouldn't be a big milestone in order to get started the same people and the same thinking in the same process It should be just sort of a continuum for that smooth transition As a company we read a book called Let's get real or let's not play and it's a sales book But that's one of the things that they talk about is that really in a consultative sale It's not the sales people landing the business and tossing it over the fence to the developers and the designers Like it's consulting all the way through and really just at some point you start getting paid But the process should feel seamless and and the client and the team should feel like they're just continuing on in that momentum keeps going So when we went a piece of business we we try to celebrate the the sales team typically buys alcohol for the the team that Was involved and passes it out in the all-company meeting And we give kudos and really try to make people feel like they're vested in the process And that they really helped us as an agency by Investing their time in doing this The other thing we have is we have this nautical Air horn it's like this Really loud obnoxious thing and I'm really conflicted when I hear it because it's like great new business But I want to punch somebody right now because I'm trying to work But but I guess overall it's a good thing to hear But I think I think the other thing that that is important to talk about is You know we lose you know our close rates pretty good, but we still lose more than we win And I think the team that's involved and you know developers and designers and account people need to realize that it's Competitive out there. We've got a lot of good competitors And there's always price pressure and other people that are willing to take more risk than we're willing to take And it's always that balance and so when we lose work I think it's good for everybody to know Just how hard it was to get that work and to see that really we can't just Manufacture a client that has an unlimited budget that wants to do their bleeding-edge stuff with paired programming and Completely agile like it just in our world that just doesn't exist those things don't exist together And so having everyone recognize that it's it's competitive And so that we can really celebrate when we win because we know how hard it is and and how good our competition is So I think the other thing is just Since everyone is is bought in everybody is part of the process Like I said like we can just continue on and so we've really worked hard on our documentation So that the sales team and the knowledge that we gained throughout the sales process is really captured So that as the team members are added to the process It's not as though life begins at the contract like there's a lot that the sales team understands about the client There's a lot even than the prospects Prospecting phase that is important to capture and we haven't always as an agency capture that and brought that forward But the insights that we get the pain points that are discovered like those should be the things That help us make decisions as Melissa talked about before when we're deciding where the buttons should go like we should know What problem they're trying to solve even in the sales process and so working hard to sort of get that all together So yeah to add to that I mean in the same way that we've involved developers and implementation people on the You know sales process and the pitching of the deal and the scoping and the estimation You know, it's it's important that the sales person is involved in the project as well, so as a sales team it's it's you know We're always in this kind of place where we're about to hand off the project And nobody likes as a client to be working with one person that they finally Established trust in a relationship with and be handed off to an entirely different person that's going to manage their account or or their team And I think what we do by building out this this collaborative process in the sales process allows those people to have you know Those are familiar faces to them. They've talked to the developer. They've talked to you the account manager often that will be working on the project And so that's important and and you know as a sales person since we were involved in the process So early we know those red flags that could potentially come up and it allows us to kind of be Outside of the the implementation process But still checking in on it and knowing exactly what we talked about from a key performance indicators perspective or a goals perspective And just make sure that those things are staying on track Another thing that's really nice about this from a sales person's perspective is As we go out and continue to look for ideal customer profiles and clients that we would like to work with And maybe prospect and look for new leads It really helps us to qualify those leads and to create a better customer profile If we see the successes that are happening in real projects that are being implemented and we're part of that process It's really why we call ourselves business development strategists because we're helping kind of with the strategy piece And it helps us strategize to find new clients So if we for example know that we do really really well with Botanic gardens or cultural institutions that need ticketing and membership services That helps me as a sales person to say I know, you know who fits our profile You know as a good customer and how we would be able to help other people with similar pain points And I'll let Nick talk briefly to you about sort of relaying that to Deb Yes, I think just a quick point here You know don't spend all the time working on the collaboration if you're not gonna continue it through the process I think just in general in our implementation process We really like to prioritize sort of living documents and being efficient and not throwing stuff away So don't just sort of toss all the assumptions and collaborations and feature definition everything you put together in the initial phase Out the window when it's time to pass it on to the implementation team And you know, I think that's when you really start to you know See the power of having you know a developer and a designer and sort of people who move all the way through the process Because they can bring those assumptions to the rest of the team as you go through the discovery and implementation process And and I don't think that necessarily means they're sort of checking boxes on an SOW and saying okay We're doing this we're doing this I think it just gives them a much better starting point and and really makes everyone Involved to look better to the client because we can come in with a you know A nice informed and pro approach and really hit the ground running when we get into discovery and you know Maybe the project stays the same maybe it doesn't but we have a really well-informed team asking the right questions to get Us to where we need to be through discovery So essentially, you know everything we've talked about here can be sort of summarized into a really quick Bulleted list of how to win business together as an agency which is Bring it up to your team as early as possible and get people in the room physically when you can War room it and collaborate on your estimates so that developers and salespeople are aligned on budget and total scope Bring your developers to the pitch because they can be your best closers Celebrate and begin work together and finally continue to work as a team and keep the salesperson up to date and involved in the actual implementation process So thank you very much. We hope you've learned something and enjoyed our talk and we'll be here for questions. Thank you So you mentioned RFP We do a lot of government work ourselves and as the engineer I always get the RFP after the question answer session is already been completed So I can never ask any questions in this RFP is totally You know worded ridiculously But on the rare occasion where the sales teams actually give me the RFP early enough so I could actually ask a question I'm always kind of it's always two-edged sword, right? It's like you talked about that one example of migrating data, right? The thing is is that at least in the government space when you When you write a question Everybody has to see the question and the response so now you're giving your competitors and understanding of their direction You're going so sometimes I like to mention it in the RFP Hey, if you need to migrate the data This is how we would do it and not ask the question because I'm hoping that most of my competitors Do you even think of that which immediately disqualifies them and makes us? You know the winning candidate so I'm kind of curious as to what your thought process is with that as well Do you ask all the questions you hold stuff back, you know kind of what your methodology is for that? Yeah, it's a no it's an excellent question And I think you know again one of the reasons we like to talk about it So early is that we do bring the velifers in on the question and answer portion because I think that's where some of the real You know meat of the project sometimes can come out. I think it's a conversation I'll let I'll let these two weigh in as well But I think it's a conversation That is important to have as both the sales team and with the developers because the sales team can say on a tactical level We don't want the competitor to know that we're thinking about this And maybe it's not that important and they can ask the developer like how critical is it that we know this right now? Or is this a discussion we can have during sort of statement of work conversations and negotiations? But I think again It's it's just more proof in the pudding right that the more collaboration and communication you can do earlier on in the Process between sales and development creates a much more smooth handoff process And you can develop that strategy and tactic together and the developer can say this is mission critical We need to know this if we're going to respond Otherwise, it's not worth our time and then we can say okay Well our competitors may know about it, but it's important that if we want to go after this contract We we need to ask that question or whatever the case may be I would just say that it's it's always a balance between like showing credibility and Sort of selling from the very beginning and like you said kind of risking that your competitors can follow in your wake I think that if it's really the secret sauce, maybe I keep that and put it in the proposal But if it's just really something obvious that everyone's missed then I want to be the first one to say that So that the client recognizes that we're ahead of the game versus sort of trailing behind And you find that actually gives you an advantage in the RFP selection process I mean you never you never really know because they never really tell you how they how they decided but it's it's the same when you Like when you have a competitive advantage and you put it on your website, you know You can people can try to copy you But if you're ahead of them and you're executing better than you're just it's always better to sort of stay ahead or get Ahead and stay ahead if you can Gotcha. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks Thanks, that was a great talk. Oh, thanks So I wanted to know if you could say more about your slide that was called I think leverage passive connections so I'm I'm a partner at an agency and I'm in charge of the selling and I would love it if my staff were out You know making those connections and bringing in leads and that kind of thing. So I'm curious Is that what you meant by that and how do you incentivize and how does that work out or does it work out for you? Sure Yeah, so I think that's definitely one element of the slide I think obviously like just the earlier you can bring something up. It's just what what connections do I already have potentially is kind of the main goal I was trying to sort of communicate on that slide but certainly We we try to Talk about initiatives that the agency is sort of going through or you know as a sales team We build campaigns for outreach of like this is an ideal customer profile We're looking at and we'll just tell people about it Even if it's in the hall or you know when you're getting lunch or at an all-company meeting sometimes We'll even bring up this is kind of initiative We're working on and we've seen people go. Oh, well you guys are targeting You know 100 million and above in the tech industry like I have actually a friend that works at so and so company Like would that be a fit and then we go yeah, that's awesome Like that's fantastic And so it just kind of brings about those conversations when you are just sharing strategy for the types of Organizations that you want to work with Jeff I think can probably talk a little bit more about how we like incentivize referrals and things like that But we've had a lot of success with just folks that aren't on the sales team Bringing us leads just because we're talking about what we want to go after and I think that starts conversations Yeah, I'll just add to that that we That for employees that bring us just basically really warmed up leads that we end up closing will do a spot bonus for that But it's not it's not one size fits all it's not always the same But there's always a gift or a thank you and then again Like if somebody brings us in to a deal that we just wouldn't have had a chance at otherwise We'll do a spot bonus and so the combination of those things We also have a sales slack channel and so these guys will get on and just say like Anybody know anybody at so-and-so company and somebody will say oh, yeah I used to know somebody that worked there like and it just sort of reinforces that we're always kind of thinking about it And we're grateful to the person that chimed in on slack and like just trying to create a culture where we were just sort of always Aware and then you know, not only do we sort of get that feedback? But we're letting the team know that is interested in the health of the company that we're really aggressively trying to grow and we have These opportunities and so just trying to generate that chatter is also part of it That's great. Thanks. Yeah, thanks Thanks. That was a great presentation and I think some of my questions were just answered but okay, I was just curious around like You know running an agency like from a management sort of leadership perspective like how do you resource? You know, how do you build this culture where? People that are very busy developing products and are billable to the client like how do they get pulled out of that? And how do they feel comfortable thinking? Okay? This is okay I can put this off until tomorrow like I'm just wondering if you have any recommendations for sort of dealing with that paradox That's a good question and and really Hadn't really figured that out up until recently and what we've done is You know, we've got a new operations person That's just much better at the numbers and getting as data around those things and everyone tracks their time And so we've given the sales and marketing team a budget which includes a Block of money for the opportunity cost of pulling developers and designers into into pitches And so the sales team and and I have to be careful We're trying to ration that because we know that it's not unlimited It's basically a trailing percentage of the previous month's revenue And so we're doing great then there's more money to go after bigger things But if we had a tough month then we've got a ration a little bit And so it just helps everybody on the sales team sort of think about that It's not an unlimited resource and so like if developers are our best closers We want to take them to the pitches even when we know we've got no shot just in case But if we know that our resources are limited we might just say We've got no shot. I'm gonna go do this one by myself I'm saving your four hours for Friday because I really want you to work on this RFP And just to add to that too. I think because we have this collaborative process There's a tendency sometimes even for me on the sales team to be like, you know I have a call with this Fortune 500 company and they have their developers on I want to bring You know three developers so that I just have this like warm safety blanket that you know I can be sure that they can talk about it. And so when we have to manage to that marketing budget It allows us to say like yep No, I really need three developers on this and I'm willing to sacrifice for whatever because this is important Or it lets you say I could probably get by with one or whatever and you know figure it out from that So it's good system. Yeah, for sure I was just gonna speak up because I kind of approach it sort of advocating for the projects in this position a lot of times and We've put together a really great Process as a company where we have sort of a larger scheduling meeting every Friday where we have the sales team in the room We have the account team in the room I'm in the room our creative directors in the room and sort of that gives us an awareness of Everything that's happening at the company so we can you know sort of way that like the budget is great And we definitely manage to those numbers, but we can also weigh like there's no way we can pull that developer off this week They're gonna miss all their deadlines like sort of what's the importance there And we've also used that to really put a lot of effort into a long-term planning tool Where you know, we can use that to say you can't have them now, but how's next Thursday, right? Or you know and that also gives the sales team the opportunity to make sure that business sort of fits into our pipeline as well So yeah, it's collaborative. It's good Yeah, I mean you start to develop those signs like And you try yeah, and it's coaching too because you know I think I think you're right There's a risk there because the developers and just the reason that they're really good at what they do is because they're Immediately thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong And so you don't want that to be the first thing that comes out of their mouth in the in the sales meeting And so just it's that balance of like, you know If there's a meeting where that happened you just sort of take the developer aside and say like Look, I get what you're saying, but let's let's show the client that we know how to do this There's plenty of time for us to back out if it gets tough or we haven't given them our price yet Or whatever those things are to sort of help them feel like it's not going to just come down the mountain on them If we close the business that that helps


Okay, the House of Representatives on Wednesday began an investigation into the alleged non-remittance of contributions to the National Housing Fund. This non-remittance has resulted in the workers threatening to withdraw from the National Housing Fund. So we have our guest this morning that will be talking with us on the issue is a former deputy president, NLC, an industrial relations expert. I'm talking about Mr. Amici Asuguni. Good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning, thank you for having me. Give us a background to this happening, why the workers are threatening to withdraw from the scheme. Yes, I hope you can hear me clearly. Yes, I can. The National Housing Fund Act was actually put in place to favor workers and this scheme has been in place for decades and you know that when activity of this nature is employed to service the interests of workers, every worker will want a shater. Even at the country today, you know that inflation has eaten up the salaries of employees and therefore people who are still paying rent, they suffer more than the others and therefore whereby you are making contribution and it's not limited, it means that your right to assessing that fund has been restricted by the act of the employer. So that act on its left is a violation of that very act. Employers were clearly obliged, not at their discretion, to remit within a specific period which shouldn't be more than a week or two having to don't have such funds for workers and therefore employers have continued to use this money for their business, including government especially. So whereby you pay to pay salary for example, you have hinder workers of not just their salary but of their chances of getting that very low as it were and therefore workers are saying why did not and not remit in the case where you have paid a salary?  So then it's a criminal phase and it's good National Assembly is carrying out the investigation but it's obvious such investigations shouldn't take long because we are talking about workers who have failed, we are talking about right of individuals and where employers choose to do otherwise. We believe that the right of workers should be protected because it's their money, the law is not telling the employer to pay for workers, the laws say workers should contribute from their own earning and whereby it should have been dotted not remitting it is like stealing from workers, for us it's unacceptable. How long has this been going on? You know it has been staggered if you measure a period of time you may cut off the crime before that moment. A lot of employers you know before now the law was compulsory for both public and private sectors and I had to point in 2022 where they carried out the law on a business facilitation act, business facilitation act of 2022 tried to open the window for private sectors not to compulsorily be involved in the scheme. In that case private employees are put on a, they are not optional, you can either choose to contribute or choose not to. The meaning that even though you are contributing you can opt out, the law allowed that having introduced this BFA in business facilitation act which amended which section 45 of the national housing fund to allow private sector employees to either join or not looking at the category of the work they do. Some of the private sectors they work for one month, they work for one year, they lost their job and then how do you transfer this body from one employer to another? It become a case because they are not even fitting where and you say you must contribute before you can accept the loan and the worker who will not even work for the six months before his contract is terminated, it means he has lost the opportunity to now allow the private sectors to determine whether to join or not so that right is actually open for private sector but for these people that we are referring to it has started as long ago when we have governors that can no longer pay salaries, people who were old salary in this country for one year, people who were old salary in this country for 18 months, situations like that you don't even talk about the remittance of the housing contribution, we are not talking about no payment of salary that should allow them to pay their pension, not just this deduction, worker-specific deduction equating the union dues, they pay to the union they affiliate to so we believe that any money deducted from workers is actually workers entitlement to invest it where the law says they should invest. Okay, so the benefit of contributing this money you're talking about taking loans, what other benefits come to the person who contributes and if for instance you lose your job or your organization stops contributing what happens to the one you have already contributed? Yes, the national housing fund scheme or other art is very very robust, it is robust to the extent that a worker is not assessing loans based on his own personal contribution, your contribution gives you right to assess loan so you may have contributed just one million but you can assess up to 10 to 15 million what he means then is that the contribution of the entire workforce in the country is not being brought to a pool whereby workers that are qualified, you know the law says you must contribute up to six months so that will give you already impression that six months contribution of the entire workforce is already in a pool for the first worker that we apply to get therefore they would have contributed millions of million including running into hundreds of millions allowing workers now to assess such money so every worker is entitled to assess more than you have in the account meaning you can assess the loan and you can repay them within a lengthy period of 30 years to solve the benefit for us is actually in favor of workers and then when your work terminates or in the case of retirement or incapacitation as the law specifies is for you not to apply for reform assuming you did not even assess any loan in the first place whatever you have contributed would have been invested and you get both your interest and your contribution upon retirement or as the case may be incapacitation that you need help as a matter of urgency so all of these provisions are made clear in the law to the extent that no worker loses anything the minimum is to get your refund and but the benefit is to get access to that loan meaning you are getting beyond your own money you contribute one million but you are giving 10 million so you must pay back at a very little or no interest to the extent that workers at the end of the day become owners of building in most cases you buy from government that is how you see government with lunch house in a state and it's open to these people to knock from their contribution assess that very facility depending on the cost and their man who are contributing so your category will tell you the kind of category of house you eventually have as a worker but it means to make a blue body a landlord yes what's the role of the federal mortgage bank right now uh what are they doing about it what's the quarrel with with them uh from the workers is it the government you're quarreling with or is it the federal government mortgage bank that you're talking to or who is responsible for all this I think the way it applies because I'm talking from the consultant point of view the way it applies now is workers have rights to assess their money that is not in doubt the major problem is the remittance which is not the prerogative of the mortgage bank mortgage bank is to receive therefore we don't have they don't think workers have problem the only problem they will have with mortgage will be the processes to assess the loan processes to get their refund which every financial institution must put realistic and transparent method in place for workers to either assess you or get your refund as the case may be but agitation that is stronger now is remit my money to where I will get my loan because if you don't remit my money you are restricting my right and privilege from assessing it because for you to assess that very money you must be a constant contributor to that fund and therefore withholding my contribution is as good as withholding my benefit which eventually deter the entire essence of the scheme in the first place this is a scheme that was introduced in fact 1992 and therefore you can we cannot afford to suffocate it at the expense of inability of government but from 1992 there surely must have been some contribution that was made can the workers at this point access it there's this quarrel with the federal mortgage bank banks already that they are not even sending alerts to the phone numbers of the people who have been contributing whether they have stopped or not I think it's still they are right to know what the balance in their account is as it were and federal mortgage bank is not doing it so don't you find that worrisome no cases cases of bank collapses are also part of the challenging but like I said that one is already taken care of by law because bank you know there are procedures and when a lot is not given even in our regular banking sometimes you face challenges not getting a lot not getting a lot has no effect to the amount you have it's just an update to getting you to know the amount that you would have contributed but every worker is looking beyond his actual contribution workers are looking for the purpose of contribution you are contributing to get additional benefit therefore the additional benefit is worth motivate these workers to pay I am paying like 2000 or 5000 every month to you but the time I'm going to assess this money I will assess them in millions so you're going to give me money contributed in Himo state you're going to give me money contributed from Bruno state so we're going to assess this money beyond the borders of my own contact so that is the most important if workers should rather for example in our own regular bank whereby you suffer not all these are lack differences or gaps you go back to the bank you have mortgage bank of federal government in all the state so you can apply you can apply you can go to the customer service to know why if everybody have their code you must have your contributing code your contributing number and once you go there and then start it they will know whether the problem is from the bank or from you that you have changed line and they are sending it to your old line and you're complaining that you're not getting it in your new line so you need to update your your data so for us some of these things can be resolvable but the major one is give me room so that my right will not be truncated and that is by limiting that which I am contributing eat it it apples on the in the case of pension in the case of pension workers will pay employers will pay and it is what you pay that they will invest for you waiting for the date of your retirement in cases like that you see that workers will pay their own because the law said deduct at source so employers are quick to deduct to reduce cost of their own business running their business but their own obligation to also contribute equivalent of that amount or higher in the case of the new law as a matter these employers will withhold their contribution they are from making it difficult for your expectation to be their life because some of these workers eventually disengaged from work and going into their camps you'll find out that the contribution of the employers is not part of your saving and that would have that would have negated the essence of making that contribution to wait for retirement because so all this money are meant to accrue interest so when you withdraw my money you withdraw my interest the day you're paying me are you paying me the actual or you're paying me with the current rate as the bank would have initiated these are some of the challenges okay I think the business they look tiny the threat now is to withdraw from the national housing fund because of these unremitted funds but are there other ways to pursue this thing for instance illegal is it can also be a legal matter because if money has been deducted from your salary for instance and paid and it's supposed to be paid somewhere and it is not paid it could be a matter for the courts are you also exploring that opportunity as well yes because government is involved and we all know workers are not in a hurry to taking government to court because we also see court as government and therefore except for cases of where there are no other options even a case of law you don't withdraw from law the threat they are making is to tell you that if you cannot improve me leave me as I am that is the that is interpretation of that threat if you cannot help the workers to get the purpose in which this contribution was introduced in the first place then a lot of them end their salary and pay their rent because you cannot say you mean way for me at the end of the day you deduct part of my money and it's not something any good to me so we believe that part of the options is what national assembly is doing because they made the law national assembly can also amend the law looking at what is happening now so that even public sector will also be optional man a worker will believe he can tolerate the bureaucracy and all of these guys they are going to introduce you can suffer it and tolerate to the end those workers will continue those workers that believe that they can plan their income and pay their rent as they go on to their retirement and they have a good plan for themselves don't forget you are saving 2.5 of my money to enable me assessment because of the poor salary we we have in the country where societies where salaries are equivalent to the living standard of workers you don't even need to go that far because workers will have saved money from their income to actually buy these houses and live properly but in this in the fear in the fear we have in this country whereby salary is you can imagine the 30,000 negotiated two years ago or so and they know that now even with the current ongoing processes to put a new wage in place inflation is already telling you that whatever you are bringing it's almost eating up so we are also living in fears when it comes to economy stability and that is what is affecting to have this is so I simply believe that workers may continue to enjoy because that is the only thing they will get from government we government are selling house to you they will not sell it like the private sectors we do so it's cheaper and affordable for workers and therefore I believe the mortgage bank exercise on behalf of workers is this something they can work with going to court yes I also encourage that it takes court to address law and therefore one of the best options to address cases like this is to ask court to pronounce the right of workers as against the employers that have refused to remit by the time court direct and also put sanctions that those withholding these deductions shall pay certain interest on the deduction as the moons depending on the number of moons you withdraw this money it also have the workers that even though the money is not limited it's already creating more revenue for you so in one way or the other they will find a better approach without violating the law also on the side of workers okay thank you so much mr amici asuguni for coming on the show and giving us your thoughts and explaining more on the issue thank you very much okay that was mr amici asuguni former deputy president nlc an industrial relations expert talking to us about the worrisome issue of workers contributing money but the money not being remitted to the appropriate quarters for housing and that is how we are wrapping up the show this morning but remember what bill gates said it is fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure every successful person has said that if you don't learn how to fail you may not be able to succeed so remember these words of bill gates as we wrap up today it's fine to celebrate success but it's more important to heed the lessons of failure let's do it again same time tomorrow my name is nyam gul aghaji bye for now