Hey everyone, welcome to a very special Brexit edition of Patterson in Pursuit. I'm coming to you straight from ground zero itself, London, England. So just a couple of days ago history was made when Britain decided that they were going to leave the European Union and it's caused all kinds of uproar all across the world.  I have many things to say about Brexit coming from this event from a radical libertarian perspective and I think you guys might like my analysis. So I'm not going to be interviewing anybody today, I'm just going to be talking. So when evaluating really any political circumstance from a libertarian standpoint, we focus on individual freedom. What set of circumstances is going to maximize individual freedom? And specifically as it relates to Britain and the EU, there are two sides of the argument. On the one hand, it's true that parts of the European Union allow for more individual freedom by Britain's access to the common market and the free movement of peoples in Europe. Yes. However, on the other hand, it's those freedoms come with a lot of strings attached and in a sense those freedoms are managed freedoms. In other words, being part of the European Union isn't straightforward, you get more freedom. It's you're engaging in a kind of political union where you give up a lot of individual freedom in fact and you sign over a great deal of power to people who live in a completely different country than you who you've never met. So let me give you an analogy to kind of see the principle I'm talking about here. From a libertarian standpoint, what is a better circumstance where a country has let's say democracy and they have closed borders and they have some protection as tariffs? Or is it better that people live under an autocracy, complete, full-on dictatorship but it so happens that the dictator is a libertarian and he gives those people lots of freedom. He could take them away. He could abuse his power but he doesn't. He's a libertarian dictator. What's a better circumstance? Well, you have to be very careful because it is tempting to say, oh well it would be, look those individuals under the dictatorship, they have more freedom, yes but how does that freedom come about? Just because you have freedom on one level because it's given to you doesn't necessarily mean you're actually as free as if a group of people governed themselves. So when we're thinking about Britain, it could be the case that by leaving the European Union they have more protectionist tariffs, let's say, yes that could be the case. However they are in a sense making that decision for themselves and it's not being dictated to them from Brussels. Let me give you an interesting anecdote since Julia and I have been traveling in Europe. Many years ago I took a semester in Washington D.C. I had a program where I got to intern with Ron Paul which was cool but I was also taking a couple of classes at American University in D.C. and part of that class there was a lot of Europeans that were there, in fact the majority of people were European in that class and I met some people who I'm still loosely in contact with now but since we've been traveling I've actually got to hang out with one of them. He was a Norwegian, very, very, very much left compared to where I am, I mean I'm a radical libertarian anarchist so there's not too many people that share my ideas but he and I totally disagree. However when we were in Norway we got to sit down and have dinner with him and we naturally talked about politics because that's irresistible but he said, Steve, I think people didn't understand why so many Americans hated the American government and we thought it was kind of silly but now with all of the difficulties that are coming from the European Union and all the nonsense that's coming out of Brussels by the bureaucrats there, I think we get it more. So this is somebody who is very much left, very much wouldn't agree with my beliefs about virtually anything, can understand that this idea of seeding your power to Brussels in this circumstance isn't really a good thing. It's a recipe for disaster, it's the principle about who is going to come up with the laws that society follows. So with that analysis I have to say I am completely 100% for Brexit. Now what I worry might happen and a lot of people are worried might happen is that by gaining more freedom, by gaining more self-governance and taking more power into the hands of the British people, they're going to do bad things with that power, they will erect more trade barriers and so on. And listening to the news here, I was up until like five in the morning because I was so excited, I couldn't believe, honestly I couldn't believe the result that they decided to leave. But I was listening to some of the commentary of the news anchors and whenever they would interview people on the leave side they were talking about like, oh, there's so much anger, for example, that Chinese steel exporters flooded the British market with cheap steel and so the steel producers couldn't compete. And from a libertarian perspective I'm thinking, oh great, cheap steel, that's a win for the British people. But this is a very protectionist idea that they think that's a bad thing, that they got access to cheap steel, whereas libertarians think, oh, that'd be a good thing, that's a win for China and it's a win for Britain. So I think mixed with this populist sentiment is very much nationalism and confusion about why free markets are a good thing. And of course part of it is also xenophobia, there is certainly part of that here. But I must say my perspective as a libertarian on immigration has started to change just in the last, I don't know, six weeks since we've been traveling. I do see more of a argument for immigration control in the following way. There are some belief systems that are incompatible with each other. That is a true statement. If it's the case that you're going to have a government in the first place, which if you guys listened to my previous podcast about why I'm an anarchist you'll understand why I don't think we should have a government. But to the extent that you do have a government that has some kind of territorial control, it makes sense that there will be some filtering process that you're going to try to create a community of people that are peaceful and prosperous and have a harmonious society. And it may be the case that there are people out there who do not, who share radically different belief systems than you, somewhat can be violent and can be incompatible with your own. So I'm sure lots of people will take that statement and say, oh, Steve, you're just a racist and a xenophobe. But no, prior to this experience in Europe and prior seeing some of the culture clash that's happening here in Europe, I would have been ignorantly completely on board with the idea of universal multiculturalism. But my belief is actually changing on this. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say in about six months from now. But I'm still working through the ideas myself. Also from a libertarian perspective, the existence of the EU is a bit spooky based on the history of it, right? If you learn about the history of the EU, it was sold to people in Europe as just a common market. It was just going to be a way that people could more freely trade with one another, but that's not what it's turned into. I think you've had pretty explicit nefarious goals that people have had of creating this massive super state where it's not just access to a new market. It's also seeding control to Brussels bureaucrats. And I know the EU wants to create their own army. They want to centralize power in Brussels. I think this is a terrible and a spooky idea. So kind of on its face, the more decentralization of power, the better. All right, so I also want to talk about something that I've seen at people's reaction to Brexit just absolutely blows my mind. How much people, the snobbishness of the, a lot of the people in the remain world just absolutely drives me crazy.  And they have no idea what's good for them. And oh man, the sky is falling because they got their way. Look, people, especially on the left, historically speaking, say that, oh, they are the common, they love the common man, right? They're the poor person's best friend. Well, this is a circumstance where you have, you know, non upper class people who largely got together, you know, middle class, lower class people, and they've made this political decision in the most democratic way possible, like a referendum. And the leftists are losing their mind. Oh my gosh, these, these boobuses can't take care of themselves. I find it so nauseatingly hypocritical. There is this idea really in all sincerity that people on the left have that, that views like poor people or lower class people as they can't take care of themselves and therefore the liberal elites need to take care of them for their own good. It's like taking away the sharp knives from the little kids so they don't hurt themselves. Which of course is the exact opposite of their explicit political philosophy, which is democracy, democracy, democracy. I've written a bunch about democracy and I've done some, already done some podcasts and voiceovers about democracy. I'm not a fan of democracy and this is a good, actually a great example of it. I don't want democracy so that the elites can rule the common folk. I don't want democracy so the common folks can rule the elites. Libertarians really have the only satisfactory position here. We can look at both sides of these, the elites versus the common folk and say, look, neither of you should govern one another. This sensible solution is some kind of a secession. Both sides despise each other. Why would we want to throw the common folk and the elites, lump them together under one political system? It just doesn't make sense. And I speak from personal experience growing up in upstate New York. So for those of you that don't know, like if you travel around even in the United States but certainly around the world and you say you're from New York, everybody assumes you're from New York City. Well, I'm here to say that New York City and upstate New York, the rest of New York, are two completely, completely, completely different places. I mean like the difference between Wichita, Kansas and like Mexico City, like just completely different. Totally different belief systems, totally different desires, totally different goals and worldviews of the two camps. And it's outrageous to think that the sensible political solution is to have one government that rules both groups of people. Like New York City folk hate upstate New Yorkers. Upstate New Yorkers hate New York City folk, right? So why in the world would we think the sensible thing is to lump them together and have one rule the other? It seems like our default perspective should be something like self-government or self-rule where two radically different groups of people who have different ideas about how the world works, they want different political structures should be able to get together and form the government of their choice. But instead, there's this weird romantic idea of oh, we have to keep the union together, the sky will fall if we have too much self-government. That seems silly. Just let different communities of people rule themselves. This is where I think a lot of libertarians get in trouble because they look at some of the very, very, very, very few actions that the federal government does to improve people's freedom in the world. And they say, oh, therefore we need like a central government to enforce freedom. I don't think that's a healthy conception of freedom. I don't think managed freedom is actual freedom. I don't think coercive freedom is actual freedom. And I view it in a similar way to the relationship between the Middle East and the US. You have a lot of well-intentioned, especially left people and some people on the right who think that for the sake of the poor backwards people in the Middle East, we, freedom fighters in the West, need to go over and liberate the people in the Middle East. We need to give them democracy and give them Western values and they'll see that that's good for them.  And I think a lot of liberals and conservatives don't understand this. They really think that, gosh, we're doing them a favor when we can liberate them from their backwards worldview. The same is true domestically. I don't think the idea, for example, of gay marriage being legal at the federal level, enforced by the federal government in all 50 states, now I don't think that's actually the way towards freedom. I think this should be something like a state issue. I mean the ideal libertarian solution and anarchist solution is crystal clear, right? The problem with the entire controversy surrounding marriage has to do with government getting involved in marriage in the first place. So if governments weren't involved in marriage, it wouldn't be an issue. But to the extent that they are involved in marriage, it should be a state issue. It should be a community issue, how they deal with the specifics of who can and cannot get married. This idea that we have the enlightened elites in Washington DC that are gonna save the poor bumpkins in Kansas from themselves, I just don't think that's true freedom. It's gotta be freedom by choice, freedom by voluntary agreement and not freedom by force. All right, so one other funny part on this topic, I was seeing in some of the news, some of the people online who are very strong remainders, there was a big contingency of people in London specifically that wanted to remain in the EU, people outside of London generally didn't, at least in England. And so there's a lot of people reacting saying, what London needs to do is secede from England so that they can join the EU. London needs to get together with Scotland and with other civilized folk and join the EU and leave these backwoods Englanders to themselves. Well, I actually think this is an awesome idea. This is the principle of secession and self-government in practice. On the one hand, yes, it's political because people bulk at the idea of secession until they don't get their way, until democracy runs afoul of their own ideas, then they're all supporting of secession. But actually, I think it's a really reasonable way to solve political controversy. Why should it be that Londoners are governed by little Englanders? Why should it be that little Englanders are governed by Londoners? It just doesn't make sense. They're two radically different world views and therefore they should govern themselves. And I feel this exact same way about people in the United States, the incredible snobbery that comes from people in the left who often a lot of cities in the United States lean farther left and they disparage and look on the little Englanders of the United States. It just doesn't make sense that we should be in the same political system. Look, if you want to have a strong central government, you want to have lots of welfare and social programs that are funded by taxes, great, good for you. Just don't force everybody into your political system. Allow it to be voluntary. You're gonna have right-wing voluntary governance systems. You're gonna have left-wing governance systems. And the peaceful solution is secession. So I completely support the idea of London succeeding from England. I think that's a great idea. The same is true with Texas. Texas and the United States, they've always, people like to talk about secession at Texas, it's like a ha-ha political topic. But honestly, guys, I wish this were a dead serious political discussion. The individuals living in Texas have their own worldview. They have their own belief system. They have their own problems that are very, very different from those living in Boston, Massachusetts. Both groups of people, the Bostoners and the Texans, don't like each other. They don't share the similar cultural values. Now, relatively, they do. Yes, they both still live in the West. They have, you know, they're still going to be inescapably influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas just because they live in America. Yes, okay, that's true. But in terms of how they want their government to manage their lives, they're completely different. Wouldn't it be a wonderful and peaceful idea to say, hey, people who are radically unhappy in Texas, why don't you guys come up with your own political system and govern yourselves? And we'll say the same thing to the people in New York and Boston.  This seems like such an obvious solution to political disagreements. It really should be the baseline idea that we have when we're thinking about governments. That if you're going to have a system of governance, let it be closest to the individuals who want that system of governance. And if they don't want the system of governments, let them opt out. Let them form their own system. What's not peaceful about that? Why do we think we need to have political unity with people that don't want to live the same way as each other? It's this idea of we have to preserve a political union even at the expense of people's personal satisfaction and freedom. I don't get it. And just from my own conversations, I think specifically, again, on the left, I think it comes from this idea of a confusion of government and society. So people think it's more social or something to be stuffed together in the same political system that if you want out of a political system that you're anti-social or something like that. This, of course, is silly. You and I can be friends. We can hang out and want different systems of governance. And this is obviously the case between groups of people like U.S. citizens and Canadians. Do they share similar belief systems? Relatively speaking, yeah, of course. They are Western civilized countries. Well, do they want to govern themselves in a different way? Yeah. Can Canadians be friends with Texans? And can Canadians be friends with people from Boston? Yeah. Can we trade with them? Yeah. So does it follow? Oh my gosh, we have to be in the same political system as they do. No, no, of course not. In Canada, I don't know if you guys know this, but they have voting rights for Moose. There's so many Mooses up there. And Moose happened to be very libertarian just by their own disposition. So I mean, I totally would move up to Canada just because I could probably get elected by appealing to the Moose vote, but I guess that's not on topic. All right, so what is in the future, right? What's gonna happen? What's the future of the European Union if the principle of secession is established? Well, I have two minds of this. I think on the one hand, it's not the case that the UK has seceded just yet. There are a lot of political strings that can be pulled before that actually takes place. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but there's something called, I think it's Article 50 that is the formal way to withdraw from the European Union. And though this referendum has taken place, Article 50 has not been enacted. So it may be several months before Article 50 gets enacted, which if you know anything about politics, means that several months for a lot of mischief to take place. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if Britain doesn't actually end up here, he leaving the European Union just because of the way politics operates and they have some kind of excuse or some kind of renegotiated contract whereby Britain stays in the EU. However, if it's the case that you establish the legitimate principle of secession in the European Union and Brexit happens, then I think it's just a matter of time before you start seeing other dominoes fall. The reason that other countries are going to leave the European Union is for economic reasons. I mean, anybody who understands economics and understands the play that's happening in Europe can predict it's just a matter of time before the thing crumbles. The reason is precisely because, ultimately, of socialist ideas. So you have different countries in the EU that always run deficits like Italy and Greece and Spain. These countries always run deficits because they're controlled by leftist governments, which means they spend more than they take in. It's practically a universal principle. And those countries benefit much more from being in the political union than bigger, more fiscally responsible countries like Britain or like Germany. What happens is, in effect, the Germans and the British end up paying the bills of the Spanish and the Greece and the Italian. Now, this is really only a matter of time before things break apart. An analogy is something like a parasite to its host. So you have a lot of economic parasites in the EU that are sucking out resources from the host. The producers of economic wealth, like Germany, for example, have lots of parasites that are sucking resources out of Germany. And as long as they're not absolutely bounded together in some unfortunate political union, it's just a matter of time before the host flicks off the parasite and says, look, the less people supporting more and more parasites, it's just a matter of time before the thing collapses. And this is especially true with the Euro, where you have producing countries that are fiscally responsible. They have their economic house and order. And they are locked into the same currency as other countries which are not as fiscally responsible because they have worse ideas. This is just really the inherent nature of socialism. You have the producers and you have the people who are eating the production and not producing themselves. And I think it's just a time before the whole thing unravels. Now, this is a little scary because what emerges from a Europe without a European Union and what the different type of European Union, I don't know. I hope that there's gonna be some kind of political system or economic system that enables free trade among the nations, allows free movement among the nations. But I think it's kind of inevitable that in one of the countries or some of the countries, you're gonna have new barriers erected. And I think you're gonna have more economic isolation by some of the countries which I don't think is a good thing. I mean, Europe, frankly, does not have a very strong historical track record of being a peaceful place among the countries. So I think it's at least conceivable, though it wasn't maybe 10, 15 years ago, I think it's at least conceivable that you could see the beginnings of some serious political tension in the European Union. One other option is that the EU grows. As so, for example, if we have some kind of an international financial crisis or economic crash, which I do think is ultimately inevitable at this point, but another thing could happen, which is the further centralization of power. So instead of people like the British saying, hey, screw it, wore out, there's too much centralization, we're gonna do our own thing, you could have people which have the opposite conclusion, which is, oh man, things are real bad, Brussels do something about it, right? And I think that's also a possibility, a terrifying possibility and a tragic possibility, but I don't see why that couldn't happen either. So in summary, yes, I totally support the Brexit, I support the Texas exit, the exit, I support the Grexit and the Dexit and the Frexit, I support the entire dissolution of the super state of the European Union. I support free trade and free immigration, yes, totally. I think that's wonderful. I think it brings people together. It makes the world a more peaceful place. And if part of the unfortunate consequence of the Brexit is some protectionist tariffs, I think the trade-off is worth it. Now, what we need to do is more strongly establish and champion this idea of the legitimacy of secession. When Scotland, for example, held their referendum when it was last year or two years ago, I was totally in support of it. Now, the people that were arguing for the secession, a lot of them were very strong lefties who wanted more welfare programs and wanted stronger central government. I don't support that, but the principle of self-governance, I do support. And I think if socialists want to voluntarily have a socialist government, more power to them. If libertarians want to have their private market-based governance, I think they should be allowed to have that. If people who are more moderate and want to mix want their own voluntary governance system with a Department of Education, but less government regulation, great. I think they should have that. I think the way that we get to that kind of peaceful society is through secession. All right, so that's my analysis coming to you from the great old country of England. I got some awesome things that are coming up in the future. I'm going to be doing some interviews at Oxford, which I'm looking forward to.  My wife and I are working out some things. So maybe next week or the week after that, I'll tell you maybe what's going on and what to expect in the future. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed it and have another fantastic day.


The study found that severely obese patients could safely lose 8% of their body weight in 7 weeks with a low-energy diet, LCD. This weight loss was accompanied by decreases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, improved metabolic profile, and continued weight loss up to 11 weeks. This article was authored by Lone V. Nielsen, Meta S. Nielsen, Julie B. Schmidt and others.


Thousands of auto repair shops across the country keep our cars running so we can work, shop and travel. Auto repair and maintenance operations use many types of chemicals and generate a variety of wastes that can impact worker health and the environment. Rising chemical costs, the rising costs for disposal, compliance with regulations, worker exposure and liability, customer expectations, these are all good reasons for following environmental best practices. EPA calls it pollution prevention. I call it good business practices. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9 and state and local environmental assistance providers produced this video to introduce shop owners, managers and mechanics to equipment and practices that reduce the environmental impacts of auto repair and save your business money. In this video you will see ideas that you can adopt to reduce operating costs, regulatory liabilities and waste generation without compromising the quality of your services. Topics addressed in this video include replacing solvent parts cleaning with aqueous parts cleaning, aqueous brake washing, antifreeze recycling, using bulk aerosol products in refillable spray bottles, spill prevention practices and a preferred floor cleanup method. The information presented on each of these topics is summarized in a series of fact sheets. The information on how to order these fact sheets is included at the end of this video. So for now just sit back and listen to how auto repair shops just like yours have discovered how to profit through prevention. Most auto repair shops use a petroleum solvent such as mineral spirits to clean parts. However significant environmental and human health concerns are associated with petroleum solvent use. Solvents contain volatile organic compounds that contribute to smog formation and may be harmful when inhaled. Solvents become saturated with soils quickly resulting in the need for frequent replacement. Spent solvent is the most significant hazardous waste stream at most shops. The performance that I'm getting from the aqueous cleaning units is equal to any of the performances I received from solvents in the past. It is much friendlier to my employees. Cleaning wise it just does a super job. I'd recommend it to everyone. The aqueous cleaning is way cheaper. It's much more cost effective. My first initial reaction was wow it works really good. I was amazed. I was quite surprised that I didn't think it was going to work that well but I'm really happy using it. Aqueous cleaning solutions are water based cleaners that unlike solvents are typically non flammable and contain little or no volatile organic compounds. Aqueous solutions release dirt and grease from part surfaces breaking them up into smaller particles. When aqueous solutions are combined with heat and mechanical agitation cleaning performance can equal solvent. In addition aqueous solutions usually last longer than solvents resulting in less frequent waste disposal. For many auto repair shops reducing waste disposal can mean significant cost savings. The most cost effective aqueous cleaning units for auto repair shops are the microbial sink top unit and the spray cabinet. In fact medium to large shops often purchase one of each, a microbial sink top for light duty cleaning and a labor saving spray cabinet for heavier cleaning needs. Microbial sink top units are designed for manual parts cleaning by scrubbing parts under a flowing faucet or using a flow through brush. The aqueous cleaning solution contains microbes that feed on oil and organic contaminants. Because the oils get digested the solution may be used for up to several years before requiring change out. Some smaller shops that contract out carburetor and transmission work are finding that microbial sink top units can meet all their cleaning needs. Some of the advantages are that they're technician friendly. The solution is actually warm to 110 degrees approximately and in the winter time I have technicians that fight over using that unit because they want to wash the parts and keep their hands warm at the same time. Solvent based units tend to dry out the skin and your hands can crack and even I've seen hands that actually bled from these cracks. So we have none of these problems with the aqueous unit. It also cleans well. It has no adverse characteristics that we can see and I would recommend it to as a replacement for any solvent based unit. Microbial sink top units are effective for cleaning parts with light oil grease and dirt and are best suited for shops that perform a relatively small amount of light duty cleaning. Never use aerosol products over a microbial sink top. These products contain chemicals that can harm the microbes in the cleaning solution. Microbial sink top units cost between $1000 to $1500. Several features should be considered before purchasing a unit. The working height of the unit should be comfortable for the workers to prevent back strain. The sink top capacity should accept all or most types of parts cleaned in the shop. The pump pressure that circulates cleaning solution through a cleaning brush should be high enough to provide a strong steady flow of solution and the solution odor should be acceptable to workers. The spray cabinet is another type of aqueous parts cleaning unit. Spray cabinets work by spraying high temperature aqueous solutions onto parts at high pressures in an enclosed cabinet. Compared to sink top units, aqueous cleaning solutions used in spray cabinets are heated to much higher temperatures, usually between 160 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray cabinets offer numerous cleaning benefits. They provide a high level of cleaning performance. Their automated cleaning capability reduces cleaning labor and they come in a wide range of sizes to meet your cleaning needs. What I like most about the spray cabinet is I could put in all my bearings and dirty parts, walk away, go back to my job, come back and they're all clean and it doesn't leave the solvent residue which breaks down the grease when you repack the bearings. We reduced our cleaning time to by up to 90 percent from solvent units by using these spray cabinets. Spray cabinets cost from $1,700 to $5,500. Several features should be considered before purchasing a unit. Most spray cabinets operate on 220 volt electrical power. A temperature adjuster can help optimize cleaning performance. Spray pump pressure and number of spray nozzles affect cleaning performance. High pressure and many nozzles may result in greater coverage and better cleaning. Some spray cabinets are equipped with oil skimmers. These devices are desirable because they extend the cleaning solution life. The part becomes warm enough that after it's finished we take it out and it will dry immediately. We have no problem with rusting or corroding because the part is put back onto the vehicle. If there is any lubricant that was required to put on the part to keep it serviceable we do that at the time of installation. Aquias parts cleaning can generate three types of waste that must be managed correctly. Waste solution, used filters and skimmed oil. Some vendors are licensed to service Aquias units and manage these wastes for you. However shops may choose to manage the small amount of waste themselves to realize greater cough savings. Unless you have approval from the local sewage treatment agency never dispose of waste solution down a sewer or sink. Spent Aquias solution may be a hazardous waste because it can be contaminated with metals. Spent solution should be shipped off site as either hazardous or non-hazardous waste. Take data or test the waste stream at least once to make this determination and dispose of the spent solution accordingly. The good news is with proper use, filtration and oil skimming the solution may require a disposal only several times per year or less. Used filters should also be managed as hazardous waste. Some filters may be recycled with spent engine oil filters if permitted by state laws and the recycling company. Check with your state to determine if this practice is allowed. People collected from units with oil skimmers should be managed as a used motor oil and recycled. Microbial sink top units are the only unit that will not accumulate oil because it is consumed by the microbes. Glenmore Auto Repair is a full service auto repair shop with two technicians that cost effectively converted from solvent to Aquias cleaning without sacrificing cleaning performance. Glenmore previously leased a solvent parts cleaner that was serviced every 16 weeks. The technicians used the solvent unit about one hour per week for cleaning parts. Glenmore eliminated solvent cleaning by purchasing a small Aquias spray cabinet that it currently uses to clean about 95% of all its parts, including heavily soiled parts. Labor savings as much as 80% are achieved by using the spray cabinet. The spray cabinet is serviced and 25 gallons of spent solution and sludge is disposed of every six months by a waste disposal company. Glenmore also purchased a microbial sink top unit to handle the small portion of quick cleaning jobs it performs. Although Glenmore could perform the quick cleaning jobs using rags or its Aquias break washer, they decided to purchase the unit for convenience. The microbial sink top unit generates no waste solution and the filters are changed every six months and collected by the vendor. My employees accepted it readily. The main benefits that I see that my shop has gained through using these units are that I now have, my employees now have no exposure to hazardous materials when they are cleaning parts. They don't have the toxics, they're not breathing them, they're not entering their skins, they don't have to worry about getting skin disorders later on in life for lung disorders from breathing these chemicals. Glenmore spent a total of $3,000 to purchase the microbial sink top and spray cabinet units. Glenmore is saving about $1,638 per year by using these two Aquias units instead of the solvent unit, therefore the payback period is 1.8 years. Glenmore performs a small amount of parts cleaning and chose to replace a single solvent unit with two Aquias cleaning units. As Glenmore had implemented only the spray cabinet, the payback period would have been less than one year. Most larger auto repair shops will realize even greater cost savings and shorter payback periods than Glenmore. Larry's Auto Works is a full service auto repair shop with six technicians. Previously, Larry's used 12 labor hours per week to clean parts using two mineral spirits units that were serviced every six weeks. In January 1998, Larry's replaced these units with an Aquias spray cabinet and an Aquias microbial sink top unit. We did a rough computation on it before we bought it. We tried to get the guys to keep an idea of about how much time they spend each day cleaning parts versus working on the cars and we came up with a rough estimate of anywhere between an hour minimum to two hours in some cases where they had a big job with a lot of parts that they were hand cleaning and so we ran that out times six mechanics and it resulted as you can see by running the numbers you could run into a substantial number of hours and our labor rate if we figured that's money we're losing because we couldn't be doing other things we realized the payback was going to be a very short time in our case it was a matter of just a few months. Cost savings and cleaning performance. What better reasons do you need to convert from solvent to Aquias cleaning? Before repair work, brake assemblies are washed to remove dust and debris that prevent the brakes from functioning properly and that may cause grinding and squeaking. Brake washing also helps maintain a clean work area. Many auto repair shops use aerosol cans of brake cleaner to clean and wet the brake area and some shops still use roll-up solvent brake washing devices. However, Aquias brake washers are available that can provide significant cost savings and environmental benefits over solvent brake washers and solvent aerosols. Aquias brake washers generate no solvent vapors or aerosol mists that can be harmful to your workers health are non-flammable. Do not contribute to smog formation, climate change or ozone depletion. Do not generate empty aerosol cans that are discarded as bulky non-buyer degradable trash. Reduce overall environmental and safety liabilities for your shop and can reduce purchase of expensive aerosol cans and save your shop money. Your shop can experience these benefits by implementing Aquias brake washing. Aquias brake washers use a water-based cleaning solution that performs as well as traditional solvent brake washers or aerosol cans. Compressed air pumps the Aquias solution through a hose and a flow-through brush and a filter collects debris and keeps the solution clean. Also look for units that can adjust to different heights. The Aquias brake washer has been a great improvement to our business. It has made a hazardous job into a less hazardous job and eliminated all the brake dust. We use it all the time, we do a lot of brake jobs, it's been a great improvement. Compared to aerosol cans of brake cleaner, Aquias brake washers are cost-effective. If you perform 20 or more brake jobs per month and use about one can of brake cleaner per job at $2 per can, you can purchase an $800 Aquias brake washer and expect a payback of less than two years. After using the Aquias brake washer, dry the brake assembly by using compressed air. Avoid using aerosol solvents to dry brakes. Aquias brake washing solution will eventually become too dirty to clean well and the filter will need to be replaced. Spent solution and filters should be shipped off-site as either hazardous or non-hazardous waste. Get data or test the waste stream at least once to make this determination and dispose of the waste accordingly. Does this sound like bad news? Well it's not because Aquias brake washing solutions last for years. An informal survey of San Francisco Bay Area auto repair shops indicated that Aquias brake washing solution is changed about once every three years. Why wait? Aquias brake washing is a proven and profitable alternative to aerosol cans of brake cleaner and solvent brake washing. We've had excellent experience with our Aquias brake washer. It's been in service for a few years, easy to use, guys like to use it and it's a better way in our opinion of capturing all of the fibers and the contaminants surrounding a brake assembly. We wouldn't even consider going back to a solvent-based product. Waste antifreeze should never be disposed of down sanitary sewers, storm drains or septic systems. Why? Because the ethylene glycol and heavy metals in waste antifreeze can contaminate groundwater and surface waters. Like used oil, waste antifreeze is a valuable resource that should always be recycled. In fact, ethylene glycol is made from natural gas, a non-renewable resource. Depending on the recycling method, the cost of recycled antifreeze can be as much as forty percent less than the cost of buying virgin antifreeze. Recycling waste antifreeze and using recycled product ultimately saves you money and conserves natural resources for future generations. Waste antifreeze recycling involves two basic steps. First, technology such as filtration, distillation, reverse osmosis or ion exchange must be used to remove contaminants from the antifreeze. Second, chemical additives are added to restore critical properties to the antifreeze. The three methods for recycling waste antifreeze are on-site recycling with a unit owned by the shop and operated by the technicians, on-site recycling by a mobile recycling service vendor equipped with a truck containing recycling technology, and off-site recycling at a regional recycling facility. Shops can purchase an on-site antifreeze recycling unit that technicians operate on a day-to-day basis. Vendors offer on-site units at prices ranging from twenty five hundred to four thousand dollars for filtration units and eight thousand to eighteen thousand dollars for distillation units. These units can be used on both regular and long-life antifreeze. Be sure to ask vendors to explain operating costs, training requirements, recycle to antifreeze quality, and wastes generated by the different units. The shop owner is responsible for properly managing wastes generated by on-site recycling.  Mobile services typically use reverse osmosis or ultra-filtration technology and can recycle a fifty-five gallon drum of waste antifreeze in less than one hour. Mobile services may leave recycling wastes such as used filters or reverse osmosis sludge at the shop and the shop owner is responsible for proper disposal of these potentially hazardous wastes. Capital costs for equipment are avoided with mobile services, however service may not be available in all areas. The third recycling method involves sending waste antifreeze to an off-site recycling facility. These facilities use distillation technology to recycle large volumes of waste antifreeze. The shop owner then has the option to purchase recycled antifreeze back from the recycling facility. Recycled antifreeze quality is determined by the type of technology used to remove contaminants and the chemical additive package used to replenish the antifreeze. Some shops are particularly concerned about how using recycled antifreeze affects warranties while other shops have used recycled antifreeze for years with positive results. As of August 1999, there is no ASTM quality standard for recycled antifreeze. However, some state agencies such as California Weights and Measures have issued product specifications for recycled antifreeze. Antifreeze quality specifications and vehicle warranty concerns are best addressed on a case-by-case basis through discussions with the recycling unit or service vendor. Some vendors can provide certification letters from vehicle manufacturers or will guarantee the recycled antifreeze they produce. With savings potential of up to forty percent, recycling waste antifreeze and using recycled product is good for business and good for the environment. Every year, auto repair shops throw away thousands of aerosol cans.  Used aerosol cans that are not empty may be a hazardous waste if the contents are hazardous. Also, propellants and aerosol cans can contribute to global warming and smog formation. You can eliminate aerosol cans by using pressurized refillable metal spray bottles. Refillable bottles are a cost-effective alternative to aerosols. Why? Ounce for ounce bulk product is cheaper than products sold in aerosol cans. In addition, most aerosol products contain only eighty-five percent bulk product and the remaining fifteen percent is propellant. Therefore, fifteen percent of the purchase price is for material that never reaches the surface you're spraying. Another benefit of the refillable spray bottles, we found it saves a lot of labor and what I mean by that is since the refillable spray bottle holds probably ten times more liquid than a can of aerosol spray, there's less trips required to the storeroom. Refillable spray bottles are filled with bulk product, pressurized with compressed air and used just like aerosol cans. The bottles are available in different sizes and shapes and accessories include adjustable nozzles and nozzle extensions for accessing difficult to reach areas. Common aerosol products such as brake cleaner, carburetor cleaner and penetrating lubricants can be used in refillable bottles. Many common aerosol products are available in bulk containers ranging from one to fifty-five gallons. Using bulk product in refillable cans reduces time, labor and storage space for purchasing and stocking aerosol cans. Pressurized refillable spray bottles cost from twenty-five to sixty dollars per bottle depending on size and accessories. However you may be able to obtain them free from a vendor for purchasing bulk product. When using refillable spray bottles use pumps, spigots or funnels to avoid spills. Keep replacement parts on hand. If a clog occurs it can usually be eliminated by blowing compressed air through the nozzle. Check with the manufacturer to ensure that the bottle is compatible with the product. Provide every mechanic with a refillable spray bottle for each type of frequently used product. Make them as convenient as spray cans. The shops in this video save between four hundred eighty dollars and two thousand dollars per year by using refillable spray bottles. Payback periods range from five months to immediate at a shop where the bulk product vendor provided the bottles for free in exchange for purchasing the bulk product. With such short payback periods and such great environmental benefits it is difficult to justify not using refillable bottles for spray on products. Auto repair operations can involve spills of many products. There are consequences to every spill and leak. Oil, antifreeze, engine fluids and other materials that spill, drip or leak onto the facility floor create safety hazards for workers. In addition many spills contain contaminants such as heavy metals and toxic compounds that can be released to the environment through sanitary sewers, storm drains, septic systems or oil water separators, polluting surface water, groundwater and ultimately even our drinking water. Shops can reduce spills and environmental discharges by implementing spill prevention techniques, dry floor cleanup methods and effective oil water separator maintenance. Implementing these practices will help you meet stricter regulations on water discharges and storm water management, reduce your liabilities, protect the environment, community and workers and save you time and money. One of the things that is beneficial to the dry cleanup method is you can eliminate some of your permit fees because you after plugging up your discharge to the storm drain or to the sewers and once you've proved this to the regulatory agencies involved you can eliminate some of your permit fees which really can be cost effective. Most spills and leaks can be prevented or controlled through simple practices. Overhead bulk product dispensers, roll up fluid caddies, drip pans and sloped drum covers help to minimize spills. Bulk and waste oil and antifreeze drums should be stored on special drum pallets that contain spills and leaks. An inexpensive alternative to drum pallets is livestock watering troves. All waste drums should be equipped with sloped drum covers to catch spills during transfer operations. Even with many prevention practices in place, spills will occur. Use the following dry cleanup methods to keep contaminants out of the drain. In all cases, remember, stop if there is a drop. Never walk away from a spill. If spills are not cleaned up immediately, they are likely to be tracked around the shop spreading the mess. This will ultimately cause you to spend more time cleaning the floor. Also, workers can slip and fall from these spills. If the spill can be cleaned with two or three rags, then laundered rags should be used. Mechanics should carry a rag in their back pocket at all times. Although back pocket rags are useful for on-the-spot spill cleanup, they should never be soaked or saturated with a spill. Doing so may increase the chance of chemicals dripping from them onto other objects or people. Also, many laundries won't accept saturated rags. If you can wring anything from your rags, they are considered saturated. If the spill is too large to be cleaned up with two or three rags, a four-step cleanup process should be followed. Step one, if a lot of oil is present, use a hydrophobic mop to soak up most of the oil. A hydrophobic mop absorbs only oil, not water or antifreeze. When you use these mops, avoid sweeping back and forth and spreading the oil. Transfer the oil to a used oil drum for recycling. Step two, if there is a lot of antifreeze in the spill, use a dedicated cloth mop to soak up the antifreeze. Ring out the dedicated antifreeze mop in a bucket and transfer the antifreeze to a waste antifreeze drum for recycling. Step three, use rags to clean up any residual liquid and dry the floor. Step four, if necessary, use a wet mop with a mild non-costic detergent to spot clean the floor. If permitted by your local sewage treatment agency, discharge the spent wash water to the sanitary sewer through a drain, sink, or toilet. Never dump floor wash water into a street gutter or down a storm drain. This practice is illegal and punishable with fines up to $25,000. The four-step cleanup method just described is the most efficient way to clean up spills.  Absorbent material known as kitty litter or grease sweep should only be used with gasoline or solvent spills and in emergency situations. Absorbent materials should not be used for routine spills and floor cleanup because the absorbent may become saturated with a mix of liquids which may be hazardous and used absorbent that is hazardous is costly to dispose. It cannot be disposed of in the trash. Shops should also consider coating the floors with a sealant to reduce the time and effort required for floor cleanup. Using the spill prevention practices and floor cleanup methods just described will significantly reduce staff effort and amount of water needed to clean the floor. Wash water will also be less contaminated, which reduces your environmental liabilities and helps you stay ahead of strict discharge regulations. For shops with oil-water separators, these practices can improve your oil-water separator operation, thereby minimizing pollutant discharge and reducing maintenance costs. Shops with oil-water separators should also consider other techniques to improve their oil-water separator operation. These techniques include minimizing solids and removing oil efficiently. An effective way to reduce solids, such as dirt, grit, and trash, is to install progressively finer grates and screens over the drains to the oil-water separator inlet. You can begin with steel bars spaced between three-quarters to one inch apart and add sequentially finer grates and screens down to one-quarter inch in width. Shops can efficiently remove oil from the oil-water separator by using weir oil skimming systems. Bioremediation services are also available that use microbes to break down oil and improve separator performance. Facilities using bioremediation have eliminated wastewater violations and have reported significant reductions in petroleum content. Salem Boys Auto of Tempe, Arizona, use sloping pavement, grates, and screens to minimize oil-water separator loading. These controls, together with bioremediation, decrease their oil-water separator sludge, clean out frequency, and cost by 75%. Remember, the best way to improve your oil-water separator operation is to eliminate contaminants at the source. Minimizing spills and using dry cleanup methods will reduce or eliminate your oil-water separator headaches. A clean shop improves employee morale and makes a positive impression on customers. The environmental best practices described in this video will lower your shop's operating costs and create a safer workplace for your employees, both of which add dollars to your bottom line. These techniques will help your shop use materials more efficiently, reduce toxic chemical use, and lower waste generation, all of which is good for the environment and will save you time, money, and worry associated with liability and regulatory issues. Make the smart business decision. Just like the shop shown in this video, your shop, too, can profit through prevention. The following fact sheets are available to provide more information on the technique shown in this video. Please see the label of this video for more information on how to order these fact sheets. Additional information on the project shown in this video can be obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9.


My name is Michael Undi. I'm the animal scientist here at Central Grasslands. Today I'm going to talk about determining what grazing animals are eating on rangelands. If you're talking about feeding and you compare how the animals such as dairy cattle and feedlot cattle and grazing animals, one of the major differences is that for how the animals such as feedlot and dairy animals, we know exactly what they're eating. We know how much they're eating and we know the quality of the diet they're eating because we are providing that diet to those animals. Now when it comes to grazing animals, normally we will know the quality of forage on pasture and we will know how much forage is available for the cattle to eat. But what we don't know is we don't know how much they're eating on pasture. We don't know the diet that they're selecting on pasture because the nature of grazing pasture is such that it's very difficult to obtain such information. There are many methods that have been used on grazing lands to try to find out what grazing cattle are consuming. And that includes methods such as even following grazing animals and trying to find out what they're eating. But the most common methods are those where you collect fecal samples and then you analyze the fecal samples to try to find out what the grazing animals are eating. The theory behind that is in fecal samples we have a lot of undigested plant paths which will tell you what the animals are selecting. So we are actually right now trying to determine what cattle are eating on pasture right here at Central Grasslands. What they're selecting on grazing pasture and the quality of the diet that they're eating. In that case we are looking at if we have different pasture treatments do they select the same diet? So we are collecting fecal samples from continuously grazed pastures, rotationally grazed pastures and patch-bend pastures. These are treatments that have been ongoing for a while here at Central Grasslands and it's a multi-system study which is collecting a lot of data. So we just imposed our study right onto those systems. We are also collecting fecal samples at different times of the season starting in early June into late May. So once we collect those fecal samples we are using two methods to try to answer the question what are these grazing cattle consuming at different times of the year. And we are using two methods. One is called fecal NRIS profiling. This is simply just collecting the fecal samples and sending them for near-infrared analysis and that will tell us the quality of diet that they're consuming. This is not a new technology that's been going on for a while and the nice thing with near-infrared profiling is you get your results very quickly because it's a very rapid method and also the method is becoming more and more accurate as more samples are going into the equations. To try to find out what the animals are selecting when they're grazing, we're using a new methodology which is called fecal DNA barcoding. So what is basically happening is we have fecal samples of a lot of plant fragments and those plant fragments when you submit them for DNA analysis they'll tell you the composition of the feed that these animals on grazing animals were eating on pasture. This is a pretty new method I think in the last 20 years or so but it's becoming very popular because it will tell us the composition of the forages that the animals are eating when they're grazing. So that is very important and this method also has been used a lot now in the last 20 years even for wildlife to try to find out what wildlife are eating when they're grazing out in the forest. So these are the two methods that we're using. So far we have collected samples for in two sessions in early June and mid-July. We are going to collect some in August and in September. We are hoping that this work will give us insight into whether when cattle are grazing in these different grazing systems, whether they select the same type of feed and whether they collect the same quality of diet. Thanks.


Thanks Cameron, and I do apologize unlike the previous session. I haven't color coordinated my slides with your hair I hope that's okay, so yes today's Session for me is about running a remote team, and hi, I'm Rob. It's good to meet you all I Live up on the Sunshine Coast, so I'm about an hour north from Brisbane if you enjoy it Who anyone else live on the Sunshine Coast? If you don't come to the Sunshine Coast, it's a nice place to live It's a great place and Me living on the Sunshine Coast has so much to do with the fact of what we're talking about today being working in a remote environment I have a young family got three kids. I've got one wife. I play football on Fridays And yeah as Cameron said, I'm I've sit in two different spaces when it comes to working remote I work in a very small remote team on the block lab team with Luke here and Ryan who's around as well We're a team of three my man Sunshine Coast Luke's Brisbane and Ryan's in Mexico. I also work for for X company It's a sort of a family of a number of companies, but there's about 400 plus Employees and it's a hundred percent distributed and they've been doing it for 13 years. So Across that company an incredible amount of experience in a distributed remote workforce Made heaps of mistakes, you know and learn a lot from it, but in a big way doing remote before it was cool So I'm very privileged to have the insight that I've had from the these these companies So this is XWP XWP is part of that X company group and so a WordPress agency and we do a lot of enterprise Media so very large media sort of WordPress implementations We also work with a lot of large technology companies like Google and big commerce helping bring their feature sets of their, you know external to WordPress services and tools and products and bring them into the WordPress ecosystem and Then like I said, I'm on the block lab team as well That's a WordPress plug-in that makes custom blocks for Gutenberg a lot a lot easier than it is if you have to do it from scratch So this is where we do their hands-up part of every presentation so please hands up who would say they work remote Okay, I'm okay keep them up for me. Keep them up nice and high I'm saying 50% so who's been doing remote for more than one year? more than two years More than five years Okay, we still got some up more than ten years more than 12 13 All right, you too can come down and do the presentation because you know more than me I mean remote where we this is not a new thing I don't have to spend a lot of time with you to explaining what remote work or a distributor workforce is It's not a new thing The idea is not new and it's been touted as an answer to so many different things within business for a long time It's been trialed by many many many many companies around the world and seen failure because you know remote doesn't work We tried that and it just didn't work. So it's not a new thing. But what I want to do today is Take you through some things that I've observed and this is not deeply scientific This is not peer-reviewed. This is my own personal observations and these little things that I've seen like how that was interesting That's cool. I like how they do that that seems to work really well and it fosters something that works well for remote This isn't this is interesting and this is always Good to see because when the term remote can actually represent a whole bunch of things and there's this thing called the remote working scale One to five, you know office space, which is just no traditional office space. But then there's having work from home option There's a remote team in a single time zone or there's a remote team in multiple time zones But then there's a remote team with like, you know, the digital nomads Which are the people that just sort of like hop and skip around the world so there's very variations of remote work and then even the difference difference between being a Distributed company and a remote company the standard sort of definition at the moment that I see is that a distributed company means that there is no office Everyone in the organization works remotely Whereas you could have some companies are remote, but they have a centralized office as well so I've mentioned for XWP and X company is a hundred percent distributed so 400 plus company and Individuals and 30 plus countries and there's no centralized office So like it can certainly work at scale as well like we're doing it within a small three of team of three a block lab It's that's easier, but it can work at scale as well You know why why remote is great for business, you know things like you know, there's we know this sort of stuff So I'll go through this quickly But you have wider access to the talent pool greater diversity when you go out of sort of like geo You know the location restrictions you get a greater access to different culture and different perspectives You know which gives you wider perspective Yet wider market access when you're engaging in different locations and different spaces because you are remote You're actually it's interesting the insights you have on different marketplaces and different Audiences that you perhaps wouldn't get otherwise This is an interesting one and Slightly opinionated may not be the case every time but within remote team members are assessed more on their work than on other things like and and this is a Generalization of course, but in the office space someone comes into the office and their boss is like Rob was on time today. He clocked in at 9 a.m. He clock. He's always on time. That's great That's not really workable. They do you know, it's it's a diligence thing, you know arriving on time Oh Rob's always at his desk. That's really really good Oh Rob's a really happy Conversational guy whenever I run into Rob by the water cool We have a quick shout. He's a really nice guy and those those things are all fine And that's really really good, but it's interesting if thinking about work a team member Performance according to their work. It's interesting how much those sort of things can impact the way people are assessed Like I said, this is a generalization, but within remote work. It tends to be The work seems to speak for the work worker more often than not If things go bad with the client, I can't come knocking on your door take that one I'll leave it, but that's nice. They can hunt you down on face back face book I'd stalk you on Twitter if they like but not hearing, you know Rob come and saw this out is you know, that's a nice thing And for business you can certainly save dollars Little asterisk there because disclaimer you may not pull the implemented done badly and everything like that but I would say from my experience of what I've seen that that operationally done well Remote work and remote distributed workforce for the business has operationally less overheads And you know, you can dig into all the reasons how another time, but I remote is great for the person as well commute is optional I have so we are working for A client in Sydney and we were down there the other week with with xwp and we were meeting with them their fantastic client I was talking to him and One of the guys commutes two hours each that each way so four hours total every single day from The coast above the Sydney wherever that is Sorry central coast. Thank you. Thank you. He's on the train. So I mean like I feel like if he was in the car That's like a dead time, but he's on the train.  That's that's brutal You know, you have a bit more control over your environments You know if you've got your office at home or elsewhere, but you know, you can make your space your space You know and everyone has we have you know different things that we like and you know You're gonna control the space that we work in And who actually said that nine to five is a good idea It's not necessarily a great idea for the individual and with remote work We tend to be able to facilitate variation in in time a bit more I work for silicon, you know in Silicon Valley in palm woods rural Queensland That's a fantastic thing about remote work is that you know, 10 years ago It was very difficult to access the kind of opportunities. I know that I've been very privileged to access and I know others here as well You know couldn't do that unless it was because you know, the companies that I've worked with and for believe and facilitate remote You know, you can set the air con to whatever you want You can reheat that tuna casserole for lunch and no one's gonna complain And once again, I would say on average for the to the person You're gonna save dollars if you don't have to catch a train for four hours a day I mean if you don't have to live in a city and living in cities fine if you want to But if you don't have to live in a city where you know cost of living is higher, you know There's opportunity to you know impact and personal budget and stuff like that. So remote's great We know that I love this quote here talent is equally distributed around the world But opportunity is not and I think about that a lot And I know I'm very privileged to live where I am and have in you know connections to the people I do But I think of the you know incredible talented people in the world around there They don't have the privilege that I and many of us have and I'm I think you know The growth of remote and distributed workforce in our industry is helping to give access to opportunity for so many people I think that's a really cool thing But anyway, I just want to say like so long didn't read why remote is great for me and People often say oh, you know, you work you work or you work from home, right? Well, you work from your house and Yes, okay, sure, but I came across this idea and it was explained to me from a colleague of mine Brandon That working remote doesn't mean you just get to work from your house it means you get to work from your home Okay, and there's a distinction and there's difference and what that difference is is that when you work remote is you can choose your home Where your home is the town that you live in where you want to raise your kids where you want to be engaged with the community and do things like that and You know, you don't even have to actually work from your house to say that you can work from your home So like I work from an office space Downtown looks like a five-minute drive. So it's not that far and I'm rented with a couple of friends of mine So I don't actually work from my house, but I would say I'll work from my home And I've been able to choose where my home is I've been able to choose that I want my home to be on the Sunshine Coast I grew up there as a kid. It's a great place. I love the beaches my family's around and The remote has allowed me to choose where my home is and has enabled me to you know work from my home And that's a really for me ultimately across at all. Why is remote great? You get to choose where your home is and then you get to work from your home But anyway remote is great. So how can we do remote great? How can we do it great? And I would if I can wrap anything around all of this is that it is about culture and community Not rules and procedures if a company was like, oh, we're gonna roll out remote We've seen the figures and we can see that we can reduce overheads by 15% in two years if we have a if we convert You know 30% of our workforce to remote So these are the procedures that we're going to implement that department that department that department So three days you know what I mean like you know and they they map it all out and they hand over a how-to book a set of policies and procedures to the workforce and say all right execute that and We're remote now that doesn't Yeah No, it doesn't work for me success in remote and success in remote from what I've seen within you know X company and in when the small teams that I've been involved in is so much down to culture and community So for anything that you implement be at any of the things I let you know show today It should be through the perspective of how can we build a culture that is great for remote and great for remote workers?  Yeah, maybe your remote experience was poorly But you know you've got to facilitate yourself you better set yourself and accept and accept the responsibilities of Working a remote as well to be able to have a good experience Anyway, so these are Rob's six no-fail whales to build a great remote culture and community for dummies Number five will melt your brain, but We have one two three Four five six that we're going to go through and these are all little snippets of things that I've seen that I've worked over the Over the years and the first sort of categories within communication Who uses if you're even if you're not in a remote team Do you guys use hands up? Please if you use slack or an equivalent like a You know company message sort of forum sort of thing one thing I want to say is like don't do back-channel chats about work And this is something that I've seen Happened a lot because it's really easy to do there's a the conversation happening about a piece of work And then you like and I'm like oh Luke Oh, we were doing the the reburning of the shirts or something like that and then it spins off into a You know PM a DM a private conversation and we make decisions We work on stuff and we arrive somewhere and then we bring it back and everyone else who loses that context So if there is work conversation do everything you can to have that conversation In the the appropriate forum like whatever channel is set up for that work try not to do back-channel work Back channel communication Here's another one act like everyone is remote if you're in an organization We're like, you know some people are remote some people are not and you've got a meeting of six people And there's five people sitting in the room and there's one person one poor person on a on a laptop And they're sitting in like I guarantee 100% of the time that that six person on a laptop who is remote will feel Disconnected and disengaged from the conversation wouldn't even be intentional and even the other five people might be trying to like do their best to Bring them in but that that divide that is Physically there it just it breaks down the level for though the ability for that person to fully engage and contribute You know unless they're super charismatic in you know You know some individuals are amazing like that sometimes but on you know for so much of the time They will be disconnected like if there's five people in an office and one person dying in remote Those five people just go sit somewhere else around around the room around the building around the office and all dial in and jump on The zoom or hangouts call and what that does for the whole team dynamic to contributing to like better communication and better flow is Is it's it's fantastic Default to async as well so asynchronous communication shorthand for put it in chat Have the chat happen within the slack channel that has been set up for that work if you can default to async It just if there's a little bit more structure there and this is sort of like it My average experience across a lot of things is that there's a little bit more structure there It gives lets people that are perhaps you know within conversation in group chat like on a call or a video call Personalities probably you know Unintentionally dictate to how much voice some people are given and you know things like that And I've just seen async communication facilitate good work on communication So much better and of course there always needs to jump on off on a call and everything like that No, of course when that when it's required do that But you don't need to jump on and have a meeting every single time if you can a sing a string You know type in in the chat throw there and have your Communication and you're meeting asynchronously incredible value Within that whether it's on a call or in that document all the things Document things well. I like I've seen so I work with a bunch of Project managers and team leads at X company who are just you know world-class And I put like one of the biggest things that makes them world-class It's their ability to capture things that and decisions and moments within meetings and just document them well and you know not not like It's dot-point. It's simple But if it's captured but what they do is they document as the conversation occurs and they they capture the moments They don't just documents that I will call we today. We had a two hour meeting that was it That's a very long meeting a one hour meeting about this project and this is where we arrived Document how you got there because oh man a week later. No one actually remembers that meeting like oh, yeah And being able to refer back to just just good simple documentation Makes a massive massive difference And here's an interesting one This is this is about you know communication But in a specific area especially within HR if you're in an organization doing a remote of a larger size Like you're gonna have to invest more into onboarding.   Oh, yeah, this is what we're doing over here You know there's a physical presence there that sort of just really carries onboarding along and after a week or two You like I get how things work But with remote that just this is not there like if we carried that sort of onboarding practice through into a remote You know environment you pull You know I can imagine a developer joining our team and we sort of handled onboarding like that They'd be like just sitting literally on their own staring at a empty slack Just waiting for something to happen. So within within onboarding specifically we have to invest more into onboarding You know and you know, there's depending on the role depending on the project whatever depending on the person You know that that takes on many many different thoughts, but we need to invest more into onboarding All right lost in translation. This is a really funny one that catches people out all the time It's so easy to make assumptions about the things and the things that we say and how they translate And it's not even always like cross cultural cross language like my first So when I first joined xwp, you know at x company I was a came on as a project manager and I had um, I had two projects with two with a canadian client, uh, rogers media and um, you know, they spoke english or first language english as well Canada I would actually say culturally. There's a lot of crossover even more than with Australia even more than, you know, America and Australia right like And you know, and I just you know got stuck into it. I remember this one day. I used the term.  They're really on the cold face Um, you know really getting into, you know, whatever the works are and I moved on Any guy and then a guy Matt at rogers. He goes, sorry What?  He's like, what's the cold face? I'm like, oh, you know, like You know the the furthest point in a mind like they're the ones right at the end They're like getting into the work. They're like they're taking the mind deeper. They're like, oh, okay I thought you were making a blackface reference I'm like, no, no, no, no, and I'm so glad we cleared that up But I and it's funny Things like that happen and it's hilarious but always be careful about especially idioms like that Consider who you're talking to and be be aware of, you know cultural differences language differences, but even, you know subtleties like that Cool rhythm and routine Like I said earlier, who decided that nine to five was right like, I mean, I have two I have three kids two of them are in, you know, sort of kindy prep area so like nine to five like really conflicts like a lot with that that routine thing and You know being able to be flexible around that with remote is fantastic um Yeah, but like I can too like like nine so nine to five May not be right for everyone, but I can tell you what's not right and that's like, you know, six p.m. To three a.m Some people sort of swing pretty hard in the other direction like oh, I don't have to do the nine to five thing I'm going to sleep in go ahead. I have just a cruisey lunch and I'll sit down at work and Three p.m. And I'll work through till three a.m. Like that's fine every now and again But I would say that that's not healthy long term that disconnects us from Getting vitamin D, which is apparently very important to us Connecting with you know people out in our community which are awake at normal hours But so like of course flexibility in remote, but let's be reasonable and you know build this is basically like summed up It's like build routine. I know when I first started working a remote I just like embraced the flexibility and I was doing Bits of snippets of work here and there and I just you know Jump over that cafe over there for a couple of hours and I go somewhere else and it was fine And it was fun, but it was really tiring. It really saps your energy when there's like When you're constantly making decisions about what I'm going to do next and when and things like that It's really draining.  So have routine of course, but allow flexibility Like you know, I can go if I have to do a doctor's appointment for my kids I can or I can do the the kidney pickup if I need to or if um, you know for whatever, you know, I can be flexible You know break your day up One thing that I've sort of built into my daily routine like three or four days a week I'll take like An hour and a half break in the middle of my day and I'll go to the gym Like remote lets me facilitate that sort of thing It's fantastic and breaks my day up and lets me do something physical or resets my brain But you know, so break your day up You don't have to like you may start at 9 a.m. You may start at 11 a.m You may start at 6 a.m. But you don't have to do a big, you know, eight hour block of work Break your day up it refreshes the mind and you know resets you for whatever you need to do next um So work home separation For a lot of remote workers we work from home our house I mentioned that I actually have a little office down that I you know, you know rent with my friends So this is the biggest issue for me, but Um, hands up please who work from the who who work from their house?  You just may be more diligent than I am but um, it's It's an important thing and you know when you work at an office and you go to the office and you leave The office is there's a great mental divide there that you can separate your your work from your home But man for remote, you know distributed workforces. We this is an area that we've got to be diligent in Because if your work home Lines Break down like it's damaging. Um, so something to be very careful You know probably spent like another hour talking about that thing alone You know things to try but it's a good thing to be aware of and look you don't always have to be on Slack's great.  It's worse than email Like, you know what I mean like getting pings at random times like don't log into your work slack on your phone Is an example like you could or make sure you turn off notifications and you don't always have to be on um, like my my My boss at xwp He's just um, he's a great guy and works really really hard and always does really odd hours And I was always like sending me messages at odd hours or following up an email that he loops me in But he always says to me he's like rob like I know you're seeing all this stuff from me at like, you know 11 p.m.  Like all right, these are some these are some Standards we're going to set for the way we work That we can decide when we're at work and when we're not at work and it has to be okay when someone's not at work That you know, you shouldn't be expected to be able to reach out to them I'm scrum like so scrum's like, you know A project management methodology if you're familiar with it, you're familiar with it if you're not I probably can't explain it really easily But it's a basically a fantastic way of applying like an agile approach to a project works fantastic with web development And you know engineering development teams all around the world for years have been implementing it with great success Um, I've actually noticed the practices of scrum And the way the team structured and the cadences within it really working well for just general operational teams or marketing teams HR and accounts and stuff like that And I know so if you if you're working in an organization, which is you know a bit bigger And you've got teams dedicated to marketing or HR or something like that check it and you're familiar with scrum as well Check out the practices of scrum because I've seen it's like really interesting Instances of success where just bringing that level of structure to non project work Really really help like productivity and clarity and getting stuff done Space look this is just about the space that you work in Like sometimes you go to an office if you work at an office and it's beautiful There's good light they've invested into you know good, you know plants everywhere and stand up desks and stuff And I I'm the worst actually for my for my personal remote home office. I'm like, oh, yeah It's going to be amazing And for like a custom artwork up and everything like that and I and like month passes three months past six months I'm like, oh, I still haven't really set things up But it's important that like if you have a zone for work Make it a good space to work because you know the atmosphere and the space and the zone that we're operating in It totally influences how we're feeling and how we're you know how we feel about the work that we're doing How are we feeling about ourselves within the work that we're doing? So many things like you know having good light, you know having you know good screens We're all sort of looking at screens all the time if you can Facilitate and afford a good screen, you know like that that's totally worth it A good screen height, you know, that's not a good fee in that, you know But having it up here is really good. Actually the interesting thing is that This is one of the really interesting things I've noticed about remote and working on remote teams Like I work with I've worked with Ryan for like years and I had no idea how tall he was You just don't know and then occasionally you meet them in person like, oh, you're six foot seven. You're huge I had no idea. I mean, it's just one of the interesting things that you By the way, it's a screen height thing, right? But anyway, so make sure you have good screen height Like I love having a stand-up desk like, you know, do that thing if you're like Variation as well like, you know go to different spaces to break things up It's amazing how often like on a Friday Like end of the week and it's sort of like lunchtime and I'm like, oh, I'm so like, you know winding down for the weekend But I've got this chunk of work that I need to do But my brain is just starting to switch off And go into Friday night football mode And then I just go all right. I'm just going to go and I'm gonna actually go sit at There's a little beer garden near my place. I'm gonna have a Friday afternoon beer But I'm gonna open up my laptop and I'm just going to punch through those last bunch of tasks That I know I really should get done before the weekend and I change my location And it's it's incredible how it just resets the mind and just, you know, you know It vibrates the mind of any to get that work done So like be very have variation in in your space, you know Good audio good air good food all that sort of stuff have a space for focus But then also have a space for interaction as well Like one of the things I do like about my little office co-working space Is that I'm like, I'm not isolated from other people if I don't need it I can walk out and I can see someone and have a chat like being isolated We'll talk a bit more about isolation in a second But make sure that if you can have have a space for interaction with others Work should be more than work So within, you know, for instance, like, you know, your Slack channels and stuff like that Have channels for shared interests like have a foodie challenge Channel have a beer channel have a Friday night foodie channel If you know whatever like if there are things that people within your team Your organization can connect over have channels that people can just talk about that and connect and find shared interests There we go channels for shared interests there we go Shared experiences bounties and the vault. I'm just I'll touch on that momentarily Meet the CEO. Okay. This is interesting, right? I say I'm working at a big organization of 500 people in in Brisbane here And we all work at the same office and I go in and I walk around and I have, you know, I'm involved I'm part of a team of six. So most of my interactions are with that team of six But you know, then I go to lunch and I see those other people and I see there's other than I walk past You know the CEO and the leaders of the organization And you know, there's just chances to engage with other people Within organization outside of your immediate team that doesn't exist in remote automatically. It just doesn't exist Be so easy and I've seen it happen for myself and others as well We when we have not been intentional about this if you don't create space to meet the CEO or just others in the organization It doesn't happen and look that can like, um You know, that can be like loads town hall style meetings or you know fun days Like you know game days or if you can do it like in-person meetups Like Luke Ryan and I have all got together this week around Brisbane here Like Ryan came over from Mexico and like, you know, we've been able to do in-person stuff if you can facilitate that stuff That's fantastic. What it does for connection and you know doing stuff. It's fantastic um Or you know strategy sessions So sometimes you need to go really deep into strategy and you know play some rocket league No, this is sort of like a Once they have something I mean a few of the others at x company every Friday We sort of play rocket league for a couple of hours for an hour or so on a Friday afternoon And it just let your hair down and relax, but you know, that sort of stuff is fun Professional development, um within a remote organization. It's harder to learn by osmosis If you're in office, it's easier sort of like look over you know to to sort of hey I'm just doing this thing over here. Can you help me out or hey? I saw you I saw you doing that What about this or you know walking to lunch? Oh, you know having a chat about what you're working on It's incredible what we can learn from each other just by being in the presence of each other when we're working remote We just have to be more intentional about it So find ways to share knowledge and that could be like anything like if someone does something really cool on a project Find a way of sharing that with the rest of the team Share wins. This is something that we're starting to implement at x company like when something really cool happens within a project Capture that and share it with we call them wins share it with the water organization It's amazing what that fosters in conversation And then it often turns into oh, how did you actually technically implement that? Oh, we did you know Headless Gatsby thing when wp graphic you are like I've been thinking about doing that You know and that that fosters the sharing of information Provide company access to learning resources And if it's appropriate allow people to build time for just professional development Like give them work allocated time for doing this sort of stuff Oh, there we go Although there it is there Well-being so this is Social separation Presents according to a study and I checked this out. So come ask me for the reference for the resource if you want A 30 percent greater risk for early mortality. So social separation Contributes a 30 percent greater risk for early mortality For those you know following in social isolation That's worse than the most other health other health related Factors so being separated from other people Seriously can be dangerous. So within our remote work within distributed workforce something we have to be careful of We have to be intentional about being aware of that and facilitating things to make sure we're keeping our friends our peers our team Safe and you know, this is everyone's responsibility and sometimes that's encouraging people to have community outside of work Making check-ins, you know just part of process like for X company when we submit an invoice It goes to just another sort of form saying hey, how are things going? Um, are you feeling happy about your team and your project?  You know the are you okay day thing fantastic? It should be part of our everyday We should be like intentionally looking out for our peers. Um, and you know for their for their well-being well-being so like Six large buckets there with a whole bunch of sort of things that I've observed over the years I hope maybe there's one or two in there that you found interesting and that might take away But uh, thank you very very very much for listening to me today and your time I guess questions, correct? Yes Yeah, thanks rob. Uh, yeah, again if you have questions, can you please come down the front and get the microphones? Yep, respect to the volunteers who've just been doing this all weekend up and down the stairs Uh, thanks for that. Um, I heard you say number five is going to blow your mind. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, did it expand? Just click that mate I watched the video I got you but you didn't leave the room you hung around it works No, that's all I wanted Cheers In in the middle, uh, thanks for the talk really Good insight on that type of work environment Question would be so For myself. I'm in an office space job. Yep. How would you Go about approaching, you know, the boss about potentially moving from an office space to a remote base working environment That's a really good question. Um, I actually haven't personally Like done that sort of transition myself. So I don't have a whole lot of personal experience um I'd say like like mostly it comes down to baby steps and making it simple like hey look just a day a week like I mentioned that guy In my colleague in Sydney. He does the four hour commute thing. He said hey, look, I'd love to just work a day a week from work I don't have to go full remote, but if we could start with a day that'd be fantastic, you know So for the for maybe the upline that aren't familiar with it or maybe I've heard bad things about it Like just keeping it really simple is just the you know the best way to approach it broadly speaking Yeah, thank you You almost touched on something in your talk That I think would have been really interesting. You said you get back to it, but you didn't hold the bounties Could you expound on that? Yeah, okay. So we have this thing in x company And we're really, you know proud of our remote culture and community I mentioned at the start that that really I feel like that's how we should think about things culture and community You know rules and processes But one of the things that we have is these ideas of how to slide. I'm sure I had to slide, but it didn't show up But bounties and and the vault and you know, it's a gamified experience But what it is that they basically it's all about fostering shared experiences You know if we have a shared experience like, you know We bunch of us know each other from the word process Australia slack and probably have cross paths But if we had a chat with each other last night at the after party just having that shared experience Outside of work like all of a sudden like, you know, there's a deeper connection there. It's more fun and So bounties are about a shared experience and they can be anything right read or watch a film go watch um Endgame Avengers endgame and provide your opinion on who really should have died and share that in, you know The movies channel completely unrelated to work. It's a small simple thing or there's more like, you know


We're going to have a really quick report back session. I don't know if we have our reporter from session one. All right, Ted. So these are, we asked each session to come up with big ideas, three to five. Some have more, some may have less, but that's OK. We're reporting them out now. In about a week, you guys are going to get some materials that are sort of all the ideas that came out of the meeting with some requests for you to start prioritizing them. And so these are ideas that are going to go into that later on. OK, we had a lively discussion in the population genomics session, and we spent a lot of time talking about sample collection, sample archiving, and in standards across samples. Thinking about the ecological context and recording phenotypes associated with the samples that we are sequencing and archiving, and pointing out throughout the session that there's a lot of resources that already exist that we can leverage in the population genomics realm and for how it is that we're connecting the phenotypic data and the archived samples. We also talked a fair amount about in this sampling the international context of sampling, funding for this, the training and in leveraging local populations in terms of how it is that we use citizen science and citizen scientists and in aligning our interests with those of local populations. We also spent a good deal of time talking about prioritization of what gets sequenced and whether or not in the need for a good phylogenetic context and whether or not we need to do low-pass sequencing or high-pass sequencing initially to just connect the population genomics with the phylogenetic context. And the point was raised and agreed upon by many that one is not enough and that we need to think about how many is enough when we're thinking about population genomics. And then we also talked a fair amount about this idea of the extended specimen and that the importance of collecting phenotypic and ecological information on the samples that we use. And then as we were talking about these different data types with population genomics, there were a number of insightful comments from data scientists in the room that noted that we don't have to reinvent the wheel for a lot of these things in terms of how it is that we connect this data that this is being done through resources that already exist. So those were the things that sort of came out of the population genomics session.


My name is Yukiko Kamura and I am the division chief of pediatric rheumatology at the Joseph M. Sinzary Children's Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center and I'm also a professor of pediatrics at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. I've been practicing pediatric rheumatology for 30 years since I finished my fellowship and I came to New Jersey actually to be the first and only pediatric rheumatologist in the entire state of New Jersey at the time which was kind of crazy and scary for me but it represented a great opportunity. When people hear about pediatric rheumatology they think arthritis and autoimmune diseases and they didn't even know children got that and it must be so rare and so terrible when they get it. All of those reasons are why I became a pediatric rheumatologist because I knew that if I was able to understand and be an expert in this area there are so many children out there that could use my help because no other specialists and pediatricians really know how to take care of these children and to diagnose these children. The moments when I'm really the proudest is when you know I have seen a child who is suffering from the disease that they have and to be able to make them better. Having that kind of experience is so gratifying to me as a professional and I feel like that is such an accomplishment.