Hi everybody this is Jeff Watts and this is episode 93 of the Agile Pubcast remote obviously because we're still in lockdown and oh how long have we been in lockdown we can't remember we genuinely don't know anymore and Paul and I got talking about how our energy levels seem a lot lower than normal and not just us but other people the work colleagues that we've been coming to contact with our clients friends seem to be tailing off a bit that sense of novelties worn off things maybe have come a little bit monotonous and I got us talking about well how do we handle monotony at the office in work in an agile team for example things can become a little bit repetitive how do you keep things fresh how do you keep the energy levels high and that got us talking about well what are we in control of let's focus on what we can control because quite often it's a lot more than we think at first thought now somehow that morphed into a conversation about creating a sense of safety for online meetings and how that might be different to meetings in the office in person which was quite interesting and then finally we are talking about the weirdest places that we've had meetings and that got us thinking about challenging you guys to think well where have you been that's really weird when you joined one of your teams meetings or a non-team meeting that could be that the team meeting itself was in a weird place or just you were in a weird place when you joined it we'd love to hear it keep us entertained tweet us at the agile pubcast and one final request from me is please check out our patreon page patron.com slash the agile pubcast and show your support for us with a small monthly donation that would be fantastic makes it easier to turn down these advertisers who are constantly trying to push sponsorship into the airwaves but anyway enough of me cheers to everybody who's listening hang in there things will get better and will still be here as long as you keep listening cheers everyone hello Jeff hello Paul happy Monday to you yes yes thank you happy lockdown Monday seems like I mean almost now I'm drinking the same thing I think I've already drunk this at some point during lockdown and I've I've kind of lost the appetite of all my lockdowns that are mystery sides have gone and I'm gonna just go back to try and remember something different but I think about this before that just rose yeah what do you need I think there's an accent on the rosé so we think red yeah what you need right to send you a box so you said you had someone send you a box didn't you'll make your box it's all gone I had some free stuff I had some free free stuff from my mate yeah all gone don't worry I'm drinking I'm alcohol-free today I'm winning I'm winning I'm drinking a winning an award-winning alcohol-free beer I'm guessing from the amount of German language on here that it is German from the Intel bravo I and it's won four world's best beer awards wow it's a swimmers saison seltanus alcohol fires beer and it's wrapped in paper which is quite an interesting touch you've had you've had a we had a rat a paper wrapped beer at a pub in London one of those days when we were actually face-to-face in London yeah that was our last work together wasn't it is that way what that was yes it's innocent pools yeah I remember that how long it was that seems like years ago mate nearly four months ago oh my days oh my days oh that's an interesting flavor it's almost almost got a little bit of toffee in there but oh maybe maybe more caramel and toffee but only not not that strong but a bit of a bit of fruit but not your citrus fruit more not berries maybe a bit of banana oh that's a good combination toffee and banana that's a strong combo good ice cream flavors there toffee and banana my favorite one of my favorite desserts banoffee pie oh yes fine fine a fine dessert yes my daughter made me a banoffee pie a couple weeks ago bless her what you've been up to you had a good weekend did I have a good weekend did I did it rain at the weekend yeah yeah we oh yeah so it was Father's Day wasn't it mm-hmm and Father's Day was good I had a Father's Day cooked breakfast yesterday Sunday which is nice I had to make that myself though but I still had a good breakfast and then we went out for a cycle ride and the with misses said just a short relaxing cycle ride 20 kilometers later we get home the saddle saw bottom and kids miserable sin because they have no strength left in their legs and then I cooked a roast lamb dinner so yeah that was Sunday happy Father's Day to me well fed well fed yeah and don't think we've got too much we had a bit of a lazy day Saturday but what about you we had a trip to the mall oh yeah during lockdown my laptop and my wife's iPhone both broke okay and Apple Care on the phone bless and did the best they could but they said you got to wait until the stores are open right and yesterday was the first day that Apple stores were open well yeah I think yes there are two it's one in Cabot Circus and one in Cribs Corsair and yeah so we took a drive and it was quite bizarre because any about 20% of the shops in the mall were open wow one way system zombie apocalypse film that nothing around and all that empty little bit little bit yeah surreal car park very empty yeah but it was yeah very bizarre but it was it was a bit of a change you know something that wouldn't have garnered at much of a mention turned in like an expedition yeah and day out yeah so we left the phone in the shop and then drove to Cabot Circus to get a slim chickens you drove all the way that's that's not trivial distance either that's 20 minutes in an hour-round trip or so yeah just to get a slim chicken yeah it's nice it's in the car classy Wow's is but did you get your phone in your laptop fix that's the main thing didn't get my laptop fix because I didn't think about that I didn't I didn't make it with you I didn't make the appointment I didn't make an appointment I just forgot I still have a broken laptop oh dear hey oh not like I'm going anyway so I was looking through my box there it's been messy back there but my my course box you know I take it as I'm sure you've got a suitcase usually full of agile goodies and stationary and it's a rightful through today and kind of a nostalgically rummage through all the things that I would normally be using on a weekly basis and now it's kind of gathering cobwebs fondly fingering the post-it notes yes just brushing them with my fingers yes it's sad times for sad times not using I've done with my Newlands they're in their case they've probably got cobwebs all over them probably all dried up my Newland pens I should feel I should get them out and give them an airing or you can not you haven't got a flipchart stand at home like I haven't no no nothing like that you should get one I have my Newlands have a day out but no it's all them all under lock and key at the moment I've noticed in my work I think I've made a jump here for everybody else I made a jump but for me in my head I haven't because I think our we're feeling a little bit nostalgic and a little bit I think sad about things we are in the roller corona we're still maybe a little bit of a dip yeah you and I and I've noticed that with with people that I've been working with remotely as well the last week or two I think the the novelty's worn off it as well and the energy levels that I don't think people have been working at a sustainable pace at home yeah no I think that's fair enough yeah I think yeah it's almost like so there was this this bounce of them at the start of this I remember me and you talking on these podcasts saying how you know how we're quite pleasantly surprised and how buoyant it is and how energized people are about there's a lot you can do online and there's a lot and a lot of people that we spoke to have said it's it's like that it's better it's better than being in person but that's their own opinion but I think now I think it's certainly right I think the novelty has worn off I think fatigue is very much set in people are working on calls a lot during the day even a lot of my friends and family that we were regularly zooming with in the evenings that's kind of run its feels like it's run its course and people are kind of saying well yeah maybe we won't bother this week the quizzes have stopped all that kind of lockdown kind of you know hunker down attitude is kind of just lost us a bit I think yeah we've left it behind and set in not new anymore is it that that it's not it's not it's not a new tool until to play with yeah and I think I know you know me I do I do get bored and I stop I do sometimes make change for changes say I'll just change things up a bit and what I don't really need to and it has its downsides but I do I do get bored and I see that with yeah teams teams get stale and organizations get stale even even during a change things can get stale which sounds a bit weird because you are changing but it's important to keep things fresh yeah we put that for years the one thing that we've most commonly associated that with is the retrospective because you can get into a bit of a habit there but equally the daily the daily standard where you've you've done a lot of work in helping keep people keep that fresh over the years and there's that balance of regularity without it becoming monotony and I think yeah we're there but what and that's what I'm trying to wonder now what what variables do we have to play with that we can change without you know breaking rules and endangering people hmm well I think a lot of the just so we went out for a cycle ride yesterday and just the sheer numbers of well we were quite shocked at last time we'd went out for a cycle ride was probably about three or four weeks ago because my daughter needs so we hadn't been for a while but we got back on the bikes yesterday and just the amount of traffic that was that was the thing that we noticed the difference this is a Sunday afternoon yeah amount of additional cars just because life obviously is obviously and life isn't back to normal and as it was but people are just moving around a heck of a lot more than they were before and they're doing they're going out and they're traveling whatever they're doing but we kind of lulled us ourselves into a bit of a false sense of kind of road safety I suppose you'd say by letting our kids much we're being much more liberal about letting the kids cycle around out on the road on the road and I'm worried too much about cars coming around but yeah I think it's I think people are just desperate to see some sense of normality but things are slowly changing I think things will slowly change there's still that looming fears that we might have to but imagine the the trouble that the the the resistance the difficulty people are gonna have if we have to regress if we have to go back to a previous condition that we've since lost mm-hmm that's what I'm struggling with at the moment yeah from a mental point of view from how I will cope with that and how other people will cope with that is having to reintroduce measures mm-hmm yeah that's nice to get a scary thought yeah there's no point worrying about that right now that's what I tell myself because if you worry about it now it doesn't happen you've wasted that energy and I worry if it does happen that worrying and I've done much good anyway yeah maybe you could prepare yourself for it I don't know but no interesting thing that I picked up through some some of the work that I've been doing my coaching and with this working from home and how I notice that because I speak to the same people sort of every week every couple of weeks there'll be in a different room you know different place some of them some of them are in the same place every time and it just sort of the patterns start I start noticing it so I was asking them about it and they said well you know when I'm in this room I have a bit of a different sort of feel and it's not so much the room the fact that it's different and this is almost like you know when I cross the threshold of this room I'm now in work mode and when I cross the threshold of that room I'm in sort of the equivalent of the the office kitchen yeah where you'd have your informal conversations and so if I want to have a little chat with somebody that's not particularly you know focused work then then I'll go into that room and the acoustics aren't as good or whatever but it doesn't matter because you know and that I think it's quite interesting if you've got the opportunity to do it that's a variable that's within your control the other thing that that's that came up recently was so as you know I've done I've done in the past quite a bit of walking coaching and and when you've got a good relationship with people you you know them quite well you're quite open with one another the the non-verbal body language isn't quite as important as it is and and so we started talking to do we need to be on zoom I mean it's nice to see you yeah but it does take more energy yeah and there's no reason why we have to be here so should we just stick our headphones on and just have a phone call and go for a walk and again that's another variable I think that that we can play with certainly in the nice weather and that sense of making sure that you are it's quite easy to think oh there's nothing you can do yeah everything's stuck and unmovable but there is quite a lot that's still within our control even in a relatively interesting one do you think people are hugely generalizing probably just because that I wonder if I would this is I'm probably talking about me and would people be or would I be self-conscious if I was talking having a very open honest comp coaching conversation talking in public on a hands-free stroke you know I mean when I'm not talking to someone in my mind I draw attention to myself you're talking to yourself yeah okay I I do know what you mean I just I think it's a lot more common now than it was 10 years ago when you used to have those sort of Bluetooth ear sets if pieces and people think it was just for the salespeople or whatever and that did look a bit weird then but I think it's a lot more normal now and I don't think I think people feel more self-conscious than other people notice if that may sense you know the play how much people notice what where I thought you were going with that was sort of safety in terms yeah that's where I was leading yeah maybe I should try and explain it differently is that like when I'm having a conversation with you yeah I'm talking my mouth is talking to you yeah generally not not every case but generally we're having a conversation my face tends to be pointed towards your and so my direction my conversation my the volume of my voice is largely directed in your area when you are alone in a walking wherever you might be walking down the street or through a park or whatever it might be you tend to be I tend to feel like I'm broadcasting more yeah rather than having a private conversation and that's probably what I was alluding to around also around the safety is that what you meant by safety yeah yeah in terms of can people over here and and that's that's that's an important thing especially from a coaching perspective when you have sort of confident confidentiality and things and it's something that I thought a lot about and that's that's one of the reasons why I'm more comfortable moving than I am sitting still so if for example I was sat in my back garden and just sat there having a coaching conversation then my neighbors could hear the whole of my side of the conversation they wouldn't be able to hear the other side of the conversation and they could hear my side of the conversation it's not a lot because I listen more than I talk but yeah if I'm walking then unless someone is keeping pace with me they're only going to get a snippet yeah as I walk past them that's it and that and it also reminds me of it's harder to unhear a conversation on a train for instance isn't it so my thought was immediately drawn to Bob Mortimer yeah now that name that may name won't mean a lot outside of a UK audience I think but Bob Mortimer is a UK comedian stroke present TV presenter who has he's got a Twitter account have you seen his Twitter account you familiar with what I'm talking about now I have seen his Twitter again but I don't know what you're gonna say okay so he does he's done a whole series of tweets around on he does an impersonation of someone called train guy no it's it's it's very funny but it's it's obviously mimicking someone he's heard on a train at some point and the kind of you those those types of conversations where they just you can't help but be interested in what they're talking about yeah in a very funny kind of he drops in a load of fake names and things that they're talking about sales and his friend called Cole it's just it's quite funny but that's the type of thing that I think walking around maybe in the open you're less likely to be trapped in hearing hearing it I think if there was someone in that room with you or if there's someone in the same train carriage at the same doctor's waiting room you're more acoustically more sensitive to what they're saying if for instance if you're walking down the beach where there's a perhaps a little wind noise or there's even more kind of the sound of the sea there's less chance you're going to get overheard because there's a more background noise to be to be lost yeah voices to be lost it I get that yeah I the whole facing you thing I get that but with with the good quality without naming a brand at the good quality acoustic equipment that we have it's very good noise-canceling direct yeah it's true it's going probably closer my mouth to their ears over the phone than it is if we were in a pub yeah so yeah I mean I'm conscious if we have conversations in a coffee shop for example how how secure is that but the something that popped into my mind it hadn't really occurred to me at all because it hadn't really been a thing so I've been coaching over zoom for ages but basically everybody else that I've been coaching has has predominantly been in an office environment they've they've heard they've rented a room in the office or they were they were in their home and now they're sort of all over the place and I know that there's nobody else in my room but I don't know who else is listening in their room and they don't know who's in my room and so I find that something I don't think really many people really considered before I think that you know with the remote working especially yeah no it's especially I suppose it's more important when you're potentially talking about sensitive subjects or sensitive information whether it might be but well I know some companies don't even allow or they're very much about the security just the you know the digital security element of of being overheard or tapped into through zooms whatever that is I know it's not a flawless system but just of what you can't see around the camera maybe yeah maybe that's something that needs to be more explicit probably more with personal coaching as to or remote personal coaching I suppose as to what your surroundings are isn't that I mean isn't that if you're in the office inside a you know a meeting room a most most but a lot of offices are kind of designed with natural light and glass in mind and try to make things as transparent as possible but if you can see someone in the meeting room and you can see perhaps that in their diary what what they're up to or what they're who their appointment is a weird you know you could argue that even that doesn't give you a sense of safety if you feel you're being watched even if you can't really hear there was rooms in Nokia that and what I used to work that if we were seen in a room a comment with the name of the room but there was a room that was almost exclusively dedicated to management management layers because it was right by their desks right you were seen in that room regardless of what you were there to talk about it was deemed as a serious serious conversation okay and if you were seen on your own in that room you was deemed probably even more serious so I do think that that might have even manage that might you might we might still be seeing that even if we were in the office it's perhaps just less you know the the small window we have it doesn't perhaps that gives you more safety I don't know it's ways of managing it right so if I was if I was having a relatively sensitive conversation then I would just put my headphones on because then nobody outside if I have the windows open for example because it's gonna be really warm this week and that's just an added layer of safety yeah and yeah I think there's this that gives that that gives me the client safety that that no one beyond you can hear what I was saying yeah I wonder though for me if maybe there's things and this might happen that I don't want even the people in my house to hear true potentially how do you manage that beyond I suppose beyond going outside and yeah yeah difficult because I'm not as lucky as you I haven't I know you've got a kind of a separate kind of your shed your separate shed to the house which is gives you a kind of a that that extra distance but literally my I'm lucky I've got a separate office I can use it but it's it's near the kids can run right up to the door and largely they do a lot of time and it does make it difficult practice it needs to be more explicit as to what do we feel safe at home from a conversational point of view hmm psychological view can you imagine the old days you're getting a dressing down you don't really see that anymore the like a verbal dressing down a telling off from your body yeah yeah and your kids were in the next room yeah that would be bad having to do that yeah over zoom there yeah all all luckily I haven't had to have enough to be part of that but that must be strange or even having to give bad news and we don't know at the moment the economy is in a very funny place but you can't help but thinking there's gonna be a lot of people that where their jobs and their roles potentially under threat that's not news that you want to hear is it and that's probably certainly not news that you want your family to have to over here yeah hmm okay so a bit down a bit of a downer yeah but interesting interesting so what can we take from it so they I think this is this is an important thing we touched on it before but just this sense of checking checking in with your teammates checking in with the people that you're working with making sure they're alright and having a little bit of I saw someone so I can't remember who it was now that I don't think I knew who it was I think it was just a tweet that I noticed saying that they had two meetings this week which the agenda was not to talk about work and speaking to a few people who are going from zoom call to zoom call without that sort of five-minute walking down the corridor to get to the next meeting room type thing that that that burnout sense you know it's um just making sure that you can build a few of those things in when we did that training course that we did we made sure that we our sessions were shorter so longer and even even face-to-face I encourage teams to not have their meetings run from a clock to a clock hmm give yourself five minutes before the end of the hour because you need to get out gather your stuff move off move around or how often does the things overrun just by a couple of minutes and if your next meeting starts exactly when the last meeting finishes you you're just always going to be late so even even in person I think that's that's a good habit but even more so when it's remote and also I think don't be afraid to pick up the phone so you alluded to this earlier that you can still just have a phone conversation and a lot of those awkward silences don't seem as awkward on the phone because you don't have the visual awkwardness of waiting to waiting for a gap when someone's mouth stops moving to say something so and also I think you know good old-fashioned mobile or even there are set a fixed landline and tends to be better audio connection anyway in certainly in my house when I don't wear I don't have the greatest and most reliable broadband food so on a positive 20 second of June so eight eight days then the month the rumor is 4th of July pubs open yeah so less than two weeks we could be in a beer garden and that's it if the weather and certainly the weather is looking more positive certainly this week I think it's going to be a 30 degrees isn't it in the UK on crazy on Wednesday Thursday so if only it was that was you know those temperatures will be around in a couple of weeks time but yeah certainly you'd hope we can actually do one of these face-to-face we'll have to think about it quick because I'll be really weird having to go back to how we used to record these things with with actual hand held devices and you know that's weird I can't compute that right now on that thing so someone said to me I every now and again I tweets a few of my daily standard challenge cards out on Twitter and encourage people to I think it's daily they did they stand up challenge Fridays is our usual hashtag and one of them in fact I was looking at these at the day one of them was changed the location one of them is about changing the location of your standard right yeah there you go right it says run run the daily stand-up in a different location and someone tweeted back saying how do I do this how can I do this on you know I'm trapped by zoom or isn't a trap by zoom but how can I do this and it doesn't take much creativity but I said well for a start you could do on a different device or from a different change the angle of the camera change go and stand outside and do it go and stand it go and do it while you're walking down to the shops going yeah you don't have to be even have to be visual you could just be audio and someone took the back saying I might do tomorrow's standard from my kids treehouse nice so you know why don't you go and sit in your kids treehouse and do a standard that type of thing yeah just takes a little bit of creativity to get out of your seat and what's the craziest place people have done their stand-ups I wonder maybe we should ask people to well I in the good old days Jeff in the good old days of mobile phones when we used to have BT meet me the conference the BT conferencing service that's a dial-in every day for our own nine o'clock you wouldn't know 9 o'clock 9 15 stand-ups I quite regularly be on the train so trying to do a stand-up on a train on a moving train with a with mobile signal dipping in and out especially when you go through the can't came some tunnels are you just you can write that off yeah we played daily standard tag on the phone you never know who was coming next so to speak Morgan in joke for your listeners listening Peter yeah see having a good old-fashioned and she don't get that on zoom do that's one thing they can have it you should have an entrance music or an entrance slogan something that you can play but your ring walk yeah yeah come on zoom if you're out there if you're listening that could be a zoom feature having a like a wrestling walk in music or a dark players walk in music to how you went to the core that's what a brilliant idea for us baby I'm sure there's an audience of two out there that would enjoy that me and you yeah nice I'll enjoy that nice would like that we used to have games didn't we we used to say trying to think of the most amusing name to to sign into the conference with and one of them was Elvis Presley so if you said Elvis Presley has joined the conference and then obviously when you left it would say Elvis Presley has left the conference now that was time yeah I think you should be able to sign in with the closest thing you got to that was zoom isn't it is a rename function but that's not it gets a bit old after a while but if it's if someone said it for you or if someone announced it for you like Bruce Brute Michael Buffers the style ladies and gentlemen that type of thing that would be good I'd enjoy that yeah maybe maybe you should tweak zoom HQ yeah suggest a feature integrate the old snap camera there you go onto a winner already you do can they do accents like you can't mask your voice you can't mask your voice can you yeah you must be able to I've seen the camera filters but I imagine you must be able to do an audio filter but again yeah well we should be on this we should be doing product managers check with this type of this type of gold dust to the market research panel yeah I want to know the most interesting places that people have joined their teams meeting from yes that's what are safe enough to share in public clean clean enough to share in public there must be someone there must be someone whose conference course stand up stood up but not literally or maybe literally from the toilet some must understand that from the toilet yeah must happen in the bath risky don't drop your phone do you all right I've got to go now because you know why because I've promised my children that we're going to watch the end of we start to watch in the beginning this is again part of it's a good place to start the beginning yeah we what we started watching Lord of the Rings this week croaking so it's getting that bad right lockdown so we started the fellowship of the ring yesterday we didn't quite get to the end because a long film no it's not I don't think it is it's just the regular just the regular two and a half hour edition yeah so we're gonna watch the they've got about half an hour left to watch before they go to bed so I promised them that all right farewell some wise cheers mate


Because what we faced during our time was really different. We struggled a lot, even for infrastructure, even for support and even for equipment, we struggled a lot. And the competition was also very less in India or abroad. And nobody was there to guide us or support us. After winning the medal, of course, I got many opportunities and many came to support me. But during my struggling days, nobody was there. Only my family and very few others were there to support me. But now kids, actually, they are enjoying a lot. They don't need to even ask for anything.  They are ready to support the athletes and everything is right in front of them. So they don't need to study and they just need to worry about their performance and they just need to perform well in the international level. And see, of course, the visible difference is there because now we are getting many medals from the international level and even athletics, we got a goal from all of it. It's actually beyond our imagination. And now that is the difference what I am seeing and as an elite athlete or as an ex athlete, I am ready to support my athletes.


Another exciting direction for the Blockchain Technology Lab, which is new this year, is that we're expanding towards the legal direction. So we have collaboration with the School of Law and Professor Emilio Sapkuleas there, who is the head of the Banking and Finance Graduate Program. So he's going to be collaborating with the BTL and actually also joining as a senior research fellow, IOSK Research, and he's going to be responsible for legal aspect of disability ledgers, which is a fascinating domain from a research perspective. And still, I would say, still very underexplored by legal scientists. So there's a lot of fascinating questions that are touching on the legal side of things. For example, like the legality of ICOs is something that is frequently debated and it's actually a fascinating question. And in fact, what is interesting here is that there is a very extensive legislation that exists and regulates, for example, money transmission, investor rights. There is a very extensive literature that you could call classical. And what's very interesting now from the legal point of view is to see whether it's possible to translate that legal literature into something that would be relevant for the setting of disability ledgers. And the questions are absolutely fascinating and we are very interested to see what our new team that we're building towards that direction is going to produce. They're actually PSD students at law that are going to be funded by the BTL. And I'm very interested to see how the interaction between the technical side of things and the legal side of things is going to work out.


Hallimas fans, and welcome to my Whiteboard Friday on Visual Search. Today, I'm going to talk about the different optimizations that you can make for Visual Search and the different kinds of results that you might see for Visual Search content. So what happens with Visual Search is that you would do some optimizations on your website, then the user would do a Visual Search, and then they might get a different kind of result. So the kinds of optimizations that you should consider for Visual Search, which is searches that are made via Google Lens or Pinterest Lens or via Bing's image search tools, will include image SEO around making sure that you've got images that are performing well for image SEO with good file formats, titles, alt text, alt tags, schema, all of that sort of thing. Also, you're going to think about the kinds of entities which are within your photos. So Visual Search recognition software and tools, they can understand lots of different kinds of entities. There are a few that they prioritize in particular, though, and they include logos, landmark, text, and entities, which I've called Bing's in this particular instance, and just as a shorthand, but entities are essentially things that are found within the knowledge graph. And then the other one you want to think about is your composition. So the composition that you have for your image will affect what Google understands the image to be about. So for instance, the way that the different elements are positioned within an image can affect how Google understands the image. So I did an article for Moz at the beginning of the year where I compared a teapot. And there was a teapot where the handle was here and the spot was here, and they understood that to be a teapot. And then when they turned it this way, they understood it to be a kettle, and those are two different things. So the way that you think about the composition for your image can affect it. So make sure that you have clear images and that also that you're thinking about your images being similar to user-generated content, particularly if you're in a B2C business, and also that you understand the primary focus. So for instance, if you had a photo of a bicycle and you were trying to emphasize the bicycle part of the image, if you had somebody who was sitting on the bicycle or standing next to the bicycle and they were taking up most of the image, Google would think that that picture was more about that person than it was about the bicycle. So think about where the primary focus is in your image in order to optimize for visual search. You also wanna think about contrast, just making sure that it's very clear what the focus of the image is, and so that you've got whatever is the focus of your image very clear and easy to decipher, not too busy if you need it to be about a single thing. So these different elements are things that you should consider when you're optimizing your images for visual search, particularly for Google Lens. And as users carry out a visual search, so for instance, if you use Google Lens and you take a picture of a butterfly or a caterpillar or a flower or a chocolate donut, you're gonna get lots of different types of results. So first of all, you may very well get an image pack result and this will be, this will include some of the information that we were talking about before. So the difference between visual search and image search SEO is that in an image search SEO, like when you go to the image tab within Google, you can enter the word chocolate donut, but let's say you didn't know what a chocolate donut was or let's say it was a different language and you didn't know the local word for a chocolate donut, then what would happen is that Google would, the user would make the search of the chocolate donut and Google would use its tools like Vision AI, for instance, to understand that that's a chocolate donut and then they would look through their images to understand which ones had text cues that were talking about chocolate donuts and that sort of thing. So that would have returned potentially some image pack information and also in the chocolate donut example in particular, it might return something like multi-search. So for instance, you would use, you would do a modification like you might say, oh, chocolate donut or like a donut like this, but with sprinkles maybe, for instance, you might also get a result that's around Google Shopping, for instance. The other one you wanna think about is the kinds of result you might get for different search features. So local pack is something that might come up, also knowledge panel. So particularly with the entities, the entities maybe will be attached to a specific knowledge panel. So for instance, logos for businesses or landmarks will have a knowledge panel and also certain things. Like if you were to think about something like Lego, that may very well have a knowledge panel as well. And landmarks, again, will also could very well be showing in a Google map. So think about the kinds of search features that you might show there. And that means that you could also, while you're optimizing this, as part of your optimization for visual search, you might think about the optimizations that you make for these types of search results as well. Finally, the other kinds of search are the other kinds of results that Google might give to someone when they make a visual search is a visual match. So visual matches are images that look really similar to the picture that the person took. And these will sometimes return an image pack. So sometimes they'll return a local pack and they'll sometimes just return a general search result like including a feature snippet that might have an image in it. You might also see something for Google business profile. So if there is something that's local that has that, then they may very well get a Google business profile visual match. And also just general web content that might come through there. So there's lots of different opportunities to return a visual match, but this one is particularly good when you're thinking about the composition of your images. So if you have a lot of football, if you have a lot of interaction with customers where they are reviewing your content, where they are visiting your establishment, and they're creating a lot of user-generated content, then think about how you can create images and add images to your website that satisfy the visual match queries that users might be making. And I think there's some great opportunities across visual search in the next few years. Google's been investing in this quite a lot. And I think that this is an opportunity for businesses of all sizes. And I hope to see more people getting involved with visual search optimizations.


The budget has grown dramatically in the last two or three years, but the majority, most of those funds are tightly linked to particular activities. And it's interesting, the implications of that swing I don't think is fully understood by the eerie staff and what it means. And it's certainly a nuance that our partners in the national systems don't understand, that all they see is the bottom line, eerie has a budget of x million dollars. Eerie is the same with x million dollars today as it was with y million dollars 20 years ago. And in a sense there was a lot of large yes spread around by eerie through using unrestricted funds in that way. That's not the case. I'll give you an example right now. The DG has asked me to chair the scientific committee for the International Rights Congress that's taking place in Hanoi in November. And we've been putting together a program and soliciting abstracts for papers and posters. And one of the common requests is, I'd love to present a paper, will eerie support me to attend the conference? So that's airfare, registration, accommodation, etc. In the past, eerie did this, put up several hundred thousand dollars to pay for these people to come to a meeting. That sort of funding is not available now because although even if we had the same level of budget, it's monies of a different type that we can't just take and spend like that or spend like that. It's all tightly linked to particular contracts. And so that is quite a challenge. And I hope it won't affect the relationship. I mean, the other thing that is also interesting is that there's still a lot of funding that is going out to the national programs to support the research links that they're involved in with eerie. I sign transfers of funding under Memorandum of Agreement every day. So they see the money coming, but they still don't fully understand the nature of that funding and that it can't be used just for any sort of activity. And I'm sure most of the centers are finding themselves in the same boat.


Options for thin cows that have lost calves really depends on individual producers feed and financial situation. For young cows that have good production potential in the herd, it may be worthwhile if feed is adequate to go ahead and run them as drys and expose them during the upcoming breeding season. However, most of the time our production costs, our lack of income by not getting a calf out of those cows and potential market risks don't usually allow us to retain dry cows. But if we are retaining them, if our situation allows, we just need to make sure they get back in a reasonable body condition score prior to breeding. So for mature cows, we want them at least in a body condition score five by breeding. If producers decide to market dry cows, the first step is to evaluate cold cow prices. And again, it's going to really tie to that body condition score. And so the good news is we are coming into a seasonal high for cold cow prices. So that seasonal high usually occurs in July, but we have seen really good prices in April and May and should expect good prices into June and July as well. So I encourage producers to take a look at how those prices for cold cows are determined. And it's basically going to come down to the percentage of lean meat that they're expected to provide. So we essentially have four basic categories. The highest condition cows are going to be called breakers. And they're usually in a body condition score of seven to nine. So those are on the higher end of the body condition score scale from one to nine. That next class is going to be referred to as boners or sometimes boning utility. These cows are usually in a body condition score of a five to seven. And then our last two groups are called leans and lights. These cows are usually very thin with body condition scores less than four. And in general, these cows are going to be worth less because they're expected to have a much lower dressing percentage and possibly more carcass defects. In addition, light cows are going to generate a very low hot carcass weight. Typically 500 pounds or less. So if we look at cold cow prices based on those categories, you can see that breakers are up 29% and boners are up 14%. So that's the current marketing year. When we look at premium white cows or those that are fed a concentrate diet before processing, that market is increased by 25% compared to last year. So there definitely are some positives in terms of marketing those cold cows. So the first thing I encourage producers to do is to get a good assessment of body condition score on the dry cows and estimate where they're going to fall out in terms of market cow class and then consider how much body condition score improvement they need to make to move up in classification and possibly recognize that additional premium. So in terms of body condition score changes, it usually takes around 80 to 100 pounds to increase one body condition score. And producers are going to have to determine if they have the feed availability. So consulting with a nutritionist, getting nutrient analysis on any potential feedstuffs and then making up a ration formulation, sorting those cows by different body condition scores. Obviously, there's going to be some increased inputs in terms of time and labor in addition to the feed. And so it's really important to take a look at whether or not you're able and willing to do that or if it's best to just market cows immediately. What are some things to consider when making decisions about what to do with dry cows? I think it's really important that producers take a close look, an honest look at their financial situation, have discussions with your accountant, with your lender, maybe others on your management team to find the best strategy that's really going to minimize any financial loss to the operation, already experienced great losses. And so trying to kind of minimize our risk and take what we can get at this point is probably a good strategy. So obviously there are risks with prolonging ownership of cows that that might potentially go to market. And so not all of your thin cows are good candidates. If you've got really old cows, cows with with bad teeth, with structural issues, with health problems, you may want to go ahead and market those in a more timely manner. Obviously, assuming that they're healthy enough to go to market, we have to be careful of what we're sending to consumers. But it may be kind of a cut your loss situation rather than those cows eventually becoming non-marketable and basically losing all their value. So obviously other considerations are available to feed resources. What are your options heading into summer? That includes summer pasture, which may be still a little bit of an unknown at this point. But overall, I think we need to just take a look at what are we able to support with our current feed resources for the summer and even going into the fall and winter, looking at the price spreads between the market to cow values and what it's going to cost to replace those cows and then just looking at our retention rates and if we're going to meet our goals for our cow numbers. So those are some considerations and I encourage everyone to do their research and figure out a strategy that works best for them.


We have quite a few newcomers, especially this year on the women's side. So we have seven newcomers on the team this year, and it was really great to be able to bring them in a little bit earlier. So they moved in on the 16th, and we had our first practice on August 17th. And it's been great, the upperclassmen, like we have a really good team culture, so really kind of helping them out and bringing them in and helping them kind of get used to being on a college team, and things have been going really well. We're really excited about what we think the women can do this year. So we brought in, like I said, seven newcomers on the women's side, and I think as many as three or four of them can be in the top seven. And on top of that, we have three returners coming back, and Kelly Winklebauer, Emily Gates, and Mikaela Sabo. And the three of them actually trained in Flagstaff, Arizona this summer. So they spent two months training at elevation on trails and dirt roads. So they're committed, and they really wanna see the team do well this season. And then on the men's side, Patrick Watson was actually out there in Flagstaff as well with those three, and he's got some really big individual goals, but he really wants the team to do well as well. So it's gonna be exciting to see. We have three guys that kind of stand out right now, and Pat, and then Nikita Kulik and Idris. And we're looking for some of these freshmen and maybe some of the other returners to step up and fill in that four or five spot. Yeah, so the way our schedule's set up is each race kind of gets a little bit more important as the season goes on. And we even do that a little bit just with our schedule. Like the 5Ks, the 5K duels that we're gonna do at Mount St. Mary's, again, that's just a rust buster. Even the Shannon and Reddy meet, they're not gonna race the whole thing all out yet, it's still getting them used to, especially the freshmen, getting used to racing longer distances. And then, I mean, after that, we do another race at Elizabeth Town. Our first kind of meet where they really start pushing is when we go down to Salisbury in early October. And then once we get in October, that's when the meets get really important. Yeah, so I think in order for us to achieve our goals, we have to stay consistent and stay healthy. I mean, that's the number one thing that we need to do. Just, I mean, in this sport, it's a long term sport. I mean, you're not gonna get in your best shape in a month. It's gonna be the next two, three months to get to that point. So we can keep everybody healthy and get in some good consistent training. I think we're gonna surprise some people.