I'm going to go ahead and get started. It's about quarter after. Hi. My name is George DeMatt. I'm the founder and CEO of Palantir.net, which is a full service web design development and strategy firm based in Chicago. Many of you have no doubt heard of another company named Palantir out of Silicon Valley. They are not associated or affiliated with us in any way. So welcome to finding your purpose as a Drupal agency. This is a session about how Drupal service agencies and firms can weather challenging times by focusing on their core values and purpose. This is a session not just for people who are in the business of Drupal, who are involved in running Drupal agencies, but really for anyone who's interested in helping define vision and purpose within their organization. If you saw my talk on architecting Drupal companies that are built to last from Drupal on Barcelona last fall, this is kind of a sequel to that presentation, but you don't need to have seen it to appreciate it, much like you don't need to have seen the original Mad Max films to enjoy Fury Road. So think about it that way. So this is actually our 20th year in business, and it's been a pretty exciting ride so far. When I started Palantir back in 1996, this is what much of the web looked like. For those of you sitting in the back, that's amazon.com in 1996. So for a lot of people, it was really hard to see the potential that the medium had to offer. But there were a few people who did get it. In February of 96, two Morgan Stanley analysts, Mary Meeker and Chris DePoy, wrote this massive report on the internet, writing, the market for internet-related products and services appears to be growing more rapidly than the early emerging markets for print publishing, telephony, film, radio, recorded music, television, and personal computers. Here we are two decades later, and the internet has not only pretty much destroyed all those industries, but completely transformed the world in which we know it in ways that not even the most wild-eyed visionaries could have predicted at the time. And I think all of us in this room are pretty lucky, because we're all involved in various ways with Drupal, which for the last 15 of those 20 years has emerged to become, as Dries said in his keynote yesterday, the leading platform to assemble the world's best digital experiences, wherever they are, desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, watches, cars, light bulbs, you name it, right? We're able to use technologies like Drupal to help connect people technology and information in ways that have never been possible in human history. But it hasn't always been a smooth ride. There have been bumpy patches along the way. So this was a slide that Dries showed in his keynote at DrupalCon Barcelona talking about a slowdown in business that some Drupal agencies and service firms experienced in 2015. He attributed this phenomena to the Osborne effect, where consumers know that a new version of a product is right around the corner and they hold off on purchasing the current version, leading to a drop in sales. And I think there's definitely something to that, but based on the conversations I've had with other Drupal agency owners over the last year and what I've personally seen in the market, I think the situation is a little bit more complex than that. So in preparation for this presentation, I reached out to a whole bunch of agencies in the Drupal ecosystem, ranging in size from well over 100 employees to very small, five person or less companies. I ended up talking to people from over a dozen companies based in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and India to really try and get a feel for what they were seeing in the market. And some of those folks got pretty real with me, which was pretty awesome. So as we get further in the presentation, I'm gonna attribute quotes, but for the first part, I'm gonna kind of anonymize some of them because I'm not really sure even though folks were mostly happy to be on the record, I'm not sure they would necessarily want some of these quotes associated with them. So when I asked various firms about the challenges that they experienced in 2015, I got an interesting mix of responses. One said, this question made me pause. Maybe it's because I've been out of the USA. Maybe it's because I've been lucky. But 2015 didn't seem slower challenging. Another person said, we've been feeling the price pressure and coupled that with the unreasonable and my humble opinion, salary inflation that top Drupal talent is receiving, it doesn't leave much margin for operating the business. Someone else said, I agree that 2015 was tough. However, I disagree with the implication that 2015 was particularly tough for Drupal companies. Our problems had nothing to do with Drupal, its commoditization, Drupal H shenanigans, and so on. Another person said, 2015 ended up being, ended up as the best year in our history, so hard to comment about rough times last year. There are tough times out there, we can feel that. Project diversification has moved out the rough spots. While we had positive revenue growth in 2015, the sales pipeline was soft. The bottom suddenly dropped out of the Drupal 7 market in Q2 and few clients were ready yet to invest in Drupal 8. And finally, we've experienced the chilly winds that have blown across the Drupal sales ecosystem over the last few months, which has resulted in a slowdown in getting lucrative new projects. So overall the consensus seemed to be that like, while there was still plenty of work out there for companies in the Drupal ecosystem, over the last year or so sales been a little harder than they used to be, particularly for firms that were set up to handle larger sized projects. Clearly something has changed, but what? Was it the Osborn effect? If we saw a sales slowdown in 2015, leading up to the release of Drupal 8, we should be seeing sales pick up now that the software's been out for six months, right? And certainly there are lots of people out there building sites in Drupal 8, as Drew's again mentioned in his keynote yesterday. There are twice as many Drupal 8 sites at this point than there were at a similar point in the Drupal 7 lifecycle. He pointed out that it can take up to a year following a major Drupal release before the number of new projects really takes off. And again, I think there's a lot of truth to that, but again, I think it's only part of the answer. The folks I've talked to are seeing some challenges in selling Drupal 8 projects, in part because of the additional overhead required to port necessary modules. We're in the midst of 3D8 projects and they're all going over budget because even basic aspects of Drupal are broken. It's not just a learning curve thing, it wasn't ready for market, and the community doesn't seem to have the time or the will to port major modules. D8 sales are tough right now, but not impossible. We are not allowing D7 to D8 module upgrades to be a blocker in the sales process. We port most modules for free. We will not do this forever, but right now we are actively continuing to invest cash in the D8 project and porting modules so we gain the needed traction over the next few months. We wanted to get ourselves out there as experts before the marketplace gets cluttered with competition. Getting D8 out the door in October made that goal easier. Now I can start convincing clients that they can build their sites in D8. I don't have to juggle D8 community contribution time with off hours, we just do that contribution as part of paid client work because the client needs that functionality. So again, based on the conversations I've had, there's currently, it feels like there's roughly maybe a 25% additional overhead cost associated with a D8 project between module upgrades and the learning curve. Now, most firms are absorbing at least some of that cost and it will certainly go down over time, but right now it's making D8 a slightly harder sell for many customers. And if it really is gonna take at least another six months for D8 to really hit its stride, on top of the extraordinarily long development cycle that we've already seen, I think it's certainly worth asking how many customers are gonna decide that D8 isn't worth the wait and move on when it's time to upgrade their site. I mean, a worst case scenario, we could see a long slow attrition of D8 customers, much like the ancient Roman Empire, which was in decline for literally hundreds of years following its peak in the first century AD. It's very easy for us to look back now and with the benefit of historical perspective to see when and where the empire started its decline, but because it collapsed so slowly over an incredibly long time, things were still pretty good for most citizens of Rome during most of that time. So the question is, how will we know when or if we reach peak Drupal? How do we know it hasn't happened already? What metrics do we use to measure the health of the Drupal project and its business ecosystem? So the Drupal Association put that question out there a couple months ago, talking about the metrics that they currently track, as well as the things that other open source projects do to track their health. Activity on Drupal.org, like comments and commits created each month, are tracked and reported as is project usage and statistics from third parties like built with. When you look at those statistics, you get some interesting, if frustratingly incomplete data points. So Drupal core project usage has steadily climbed over the last few years, but traffic and activity on Drupal.org has slowly declined since its peak in early 2012, year after the release of Drupal 7. But, maybe that decline is being offset by increased activity on third party sites like GitHub and Stack Exchange. We simply don't know. Likewise, North American Drupal con attendance, after skyrocketing over the first few years has been pretty much flat since 2012, hovering around 3,100 to 3,300 to 10 days. But, maybe some of those folks are going to other events, like the large regional camps, bad camp, nice camp, mid camp, et cetera, that have sprung up around the country. Maybe they're going to industry specific or marketing events. Again, we don't really know. And, well for many years, we've looked at these kinds of community oriented statistics to get a sense for the pulse of Drupal. What if what we're seeing right now is that Drupal is actually doing really, really well, but it's being increasingly used and adopted by organizations who don't participate in what has historically been understood to be our community. Regardless, it seems pretty apparent that we're no longer seeing the kind of hockey stick growth and community contribution that the project experienced between 2008 and 2012. Things have leveled off. And, the challenge at this point is to continue to ensure that we're continuing to see new talent entering the Drupal ecosystem at a level sufficient to keep the project moving forward, innovating, and not stagnating like the Romans did. So, in my DrupalCon Barcelona talk, I talked a little bit about the issue of commoditization, where the more similar the products or services tend to be from a buyer's point of view, the more likely it is that they'll go with the cheapest option. And, up until fairly recently, Drupal Services and in particular Expert Drupal Services commanded a high premium in the marketplace because there wasn't enough talent to meet demand. The Drupal ecosystem largely consisted of boutique firms, many of whom were able to form direct relationships with very large clients, because they offered services that larger agencies weren't able to provide. Well, those agencies eventually realized that they kinda need to get on a ball with this whole Drupal thing. And, so what we've seen now is that very large consulting firms, SIs, and ad agencies have now built up their own Drupal teams and formed relationships with offshore partners to provide capacity for their clients. Some of the existing boutique agencies in the Drupal ecosystem have merged with others to form larger agencies or have been acquired by larger players in the market. In addition, the overall quality of Drupal Development Services has increased to the point where even less experienced firms are often good enough for many development projects and customers see less value in paying more to hire a firm or a consultant with more expertise. These customers may not care whether or not the firm they hire is involved with the community. They're really primarily interested in whether they can execute on time and on budget. Also, now that Drupal has become such a vital part of the online infrastructure, so many companies and organizations, they've realized that in many cases, they need to build their own in-house teams instead of assuming the risk and expense of leaving it to an outside vendor. Again, many of those in-house teams are probably not incentivized to engage with our community. The result is that what many agencies of the traditional agencies in Drupal ecosystem have seen is that there's been a downward pressure in rates for Drupal services at the same time that rates for experienced Drupal talent has remained high. So I've been talking a lot about issues specific to Drupal, but the reality is not just Drupal agencies that are dealing with uncertainty right now. David Baker, who provides business consulting services for creative agencies of all shapes and sizes, blogged back in March that he had been getting more calls than usual from agency principals who are nervous about their businesses. So there's a few factors going on. First is uncertainty about the economy and the fallout from the inevitable burst of the tech bubble, right? Many Drupal agencies do a lot of work with companies in the startup space, and some startups like Acquia, Pantheon, PlatformSH, and others provide essential support for the Drupal project. It seems to be a pretty open secret, right, that the tech sector is way overvalued right now, and companies like Twitter are struggling to unlock their value. It seems pretty clear that the end of the tech bubble is in sight. When you combine that with a slowdown in the economic recovery that we've seen over the last few years, and the fact that other traditionally strong sectors like energy are struggling, it's no surprise that there's uncertainty in the marketplace. And then there's this guy. So you might laugh, but regardless of your political affiliation, there's no question that the fact that we're headed into a general election with a candidate who has at least a 40% chance of getting elected, and who's demonstrated that he's willing to say just about anything to get attention for himself is gonna cause some uncertainty in the marketplace, especially if the right race tightens as we get into the fall, and people start worrying about things like whether we're gonna get into a trade war with China or whether the US is gonna default on its debt if this gentleman is elected. Bottom line is that for a wide variety of reasons, a lot of people are feeling like there's a lot of uncertainty right now. And things like sales aren't as easy as they used to be. We can no longer assume that business will be just walking in the door, which means that we all need to work harder at differentiating ourselves from our competition. And I think that's actually a really good thing. It's a sign of maturity in the marketplace. Again, as David Baker says, times like this force agencies to do some really good things. One, being more disciplined in running their businesses, understanding their businesses like they never had before. How do we make money? What levers do we pull to achieve and impact various results? Spending less time on marketing efforts that don't result in a tangible return on investment. And finally, deciding why they exist.  We spend a lot of time as companies and organizations thinking about what we do and how we do it and how we can do it better. But less frequently do we ask ourselves why we're doing it. I mean, the flip answer is right because getting a paycheck is what puts a roof over my head and food on my table. But I think we can all agree that's not enough. There's a lot of different ways to make money and I'm assuming that everyone who's in this room is here by choice. So let's talk a little bit about that. Couple of folks I talked to said that when they started their companies, one of the big motivators was to build a place where they wanted to work every day. Amy at Hook 42 says, when Kristen and I first talked about starting Hook 42, we talked about why we should run our own company versus working for someone else. In a nutshell, we are both ethically sound hard workers who like to be involved with the community. We've felt the company we create should amplify and extend those values while not killing ourselves or each other through overwork. Todd at Four Kitchen says, the founding web chefs wanted to build a company that they would want to work for, a company that respects and empowers its team, a company where people are happy, challenged by their work and inspired to improve, a company where everyone has a say in its mission, values, purpose and goals, a company that helps its clients succeed, a company where we make things and contribute our time and effort back to the community as a whole. Other folks said that their core motivation was helping others be successful. Kristoff at Pranovic says, grow and help grow is our company motto. It stands for our commitment to personal development and growth. It's pretty much how we built the company, taking in young motivated people and helping them become part of a community of knowledge sharing professionals. Lucas heading at M-TECH says, the vision is to run a Drupal shop from Nicaragua, find, recruit, train and provide employment for a few nationals and provide some much needed jobs to folks while also filling the global shortage of skills, skill Drupal talent. So, knowing what you do and why you do it is essential, but so is being able to communicate that vision to others. Now understand that better, I'd like to take a look back at the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. Before launching his 1988 campaign for president, a friend of Bush's had urged him to spend several days at Camp David thinking through his plans for his prospective presidency, to which Bush has said to a reply in exasperation, oh, the vision thing. As president, George Bush was widely seen as a pragmatic caretaker president who lacked a unified and compelling long-term theme in his efforts. Even though he garnered 80% of the public support after the Gulf War, the economy faltered in the second half of his term and he was handily beaten by Bill Clinton, who in contrast to Bush, ran an incredibly optimistic and visionary campaign promising a new beginning for America. As conservative columnist, George Will, wrote at the time, he does not say why he wants to be there, so the public does not know why it should care if he gets his way. Likewise, companies are most effective when we can communicate who we are and why we are here. So whose job is it to make sure that happens? I would argue that this is one of the most important things that the CEO, the principal, or the other executive leader of your organization can do. And it's hard because especially when you're starting out, the principle of a company often ends up doing everything that needs to be done to keep the company moving, essentially wearing all the hats. But as your company grows and matures, you need to be able to give some of those hats to other people and focus on a few key tasks. You probably still have to put on other hats from time to time as needed, but your job should really be to reinforce the company's vision and values, hold the rest of leadership accountable for their jobs and for the goals of the company, serve as the public face of the company and accept ultimate responsibility for the company's actions. As Harry Truman famously put it, the buck stops here. Having values, principles, and emission or vision help answer the questions of what a company does, why it does it, and how it does it. So a mission is a usually brief and aspirational statement describing what it is that the company seeks to do. The difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is that a mission statement focuses on a company's present state while a vision statement focuses on a company's future. Some companies tend to blend these statements and in most cases, that's fine. Values are the things that you believe and then prioritize in your business above everything else. These might be things like quality, integrity, et cetera. Principles, which I discussed in length in Barcelona last year, are designed to help answer the question of how a company does things and what criteria they should use to make business decisions. They are very often tied together with the company's values. So mission, vision, values, principles can take many forms, right? Companies can choose to have all some or none of them. What's important is that there's an easy way for people to understand what the company is about and its approach. It's usually part of the employee handbook or field guide, often on the website as well. And this is, to be really clear, this is different from like your tagline or your company profile. So for example, Google has a mission statement and a list of 10 things we know to be true. Amazon has a mission statement and a set of 14 leadership principles. Netflix has nine core values and then defines its culture through seven aspects as defined in a 124 slide PowerPoint presentation. It's wonderful though.  That's kind of brilliant though because like we think we all know what Apple's values are and why they are but they've kind of let the public decide that for them and they've been able to get away with it in a way that very few others can. So for the companies that I talked to, the same kind of thing was true. Different companies articulate their purpose in different ways. So I asked, do you have a mission, vision, purpose or values? Todd at Four Kitchen says, all of the above. He didn't really, he said a lot more than that but that's just a bit of the quote I'm giving you. There we go. John at chapter three says, yes, we have a firm set of values that we bring to everything we do. Jeff at phase two, yes, we have vision, purpose, aka mission, values. Mauricio at Agaric says, no, we don't have a written mission, purpose, values and our principles but we're a cooperative and we work under the seven cooperative principles. Paul at CTI says, yes, we have a mission, become a leading digital services group and a mantra. We help our clients succeed online. So going back to the 1992 presidential campaign, let's talk a little bit about purpose. First of all, raise your hand if you know who this person is. That's what I thought. So this is Admiral James Stockdale. He was selected by independent billionaire candidate, Ross Perot, to be his running mate. Stockdale was actually one of the most decorated veterans of the Vietnam War but he had no political experience whatsoever. Perot had picked Stockdale earlier in the campaign as kind of a provisional running mate who would be replaced before the general election but he actually never got around to doing that. So as a result, Stockdale ended up appearing in the nationally televised vice presidential debate opposite Al Gore and Dan Quayle with almost no advance notice or preparation. He had not even had the opportunity to have a conversation with Perot beforehand to understand what his political positions were. So as a result, Stockdale is best known for beginning his opening statement in the debate with the questions, who am I? Why am I here? And you know, if you've been able to provide a convincing answer to those questions, then he might have actually helped his ticket. Instead, he came across in the debate as unfocused, confused, disoriented. He asked the moderator to repeat a question at one point because he didn't have his hearing aid turned on. That didn't help. And Phil Hartman did this devastating impression of him on Saturday Night Live that weekend and in the end, it just ended up reinforcing the public perception that the Perot campaign had no idea what it was doing, which could have been avoided had it been able to provide a strong statement of purpose. So this is a little game I like to play. It's called What's Your Mission? And I'm gonna put up a mission statement. If you think you know what company's mission statement is, just like shout it out, it's fine. All right, to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Who's that? Okay, that is correct. That is Google. All right, here's another easy one. Nope, hang on, there we go. No. I've already given you the clue. You know that it's not Apple because they don't have one, right? To be Earth's most customer-centric company to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might wanna buy online. Amazon, if that's correct. To give, ooh, sorry about that. Having some slide issues. There we go. To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Sorry, what are they there? Facebook? Facebook, Twitter? Sorry, which one? The answer's Twitter. All right, empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. I hear LinkedIn, what else do I hear? It's Microsoft. All right, here's for this. There's a delay built into the fade effect. There we go. We make the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. Anyone?  It's not Snapchat. It's not Tinder. So, this is actually Yahoo. So, at least I think this is Yahoo's current mission statement. It was when I was putting these together, the slides together two months ago. But the thing about Yahoo is they've actually had about two dozen different mission statements over the years and so it's really hard to know for sure and if you know anything about the history of Yahoo, that makes sense, right? So, let's move on and talk a little bit about values. So, this is again another kind of guessing game. So, there was once a famous company that advertised these four core values. I won't read the whole thing, but it's like communication, respect, integrity, excellence. Anyone want to take a guess? What famous company this is? Enron. So, yeah, despite having integrity as one of their core values, Enron used a variety of deceptive bewildering and fraudulent accounting services to make the company appear a lot more profitable than it actually was, which in turn created a spiral effect where each quarter of corporate officers would have to perform more and more financial deception to create the illusion of billions of dollars in profit while the company was actually losing tons of money. Chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, personally directed the team, which created thousands of off-book companies and accounts and then manipulated the deals to provide himself, his family, his friends, with hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue at the expense of the corporation he worked for and its stockholders. The executives and insiders that Enron knew about the offshore accounts that were hiding losses for their company, but the investors knew nothing of this. At the same time, even though another one of Enron's core values was we treat others as we would like to be treated, the company's traders were actively involved in manipulating the energy market in California, illegally cutting power to the state and causing artificial rolling blackouts in order to keep prices inflated. So Enron's CEO, Ken Lay, was fully aware of these practices. In fact, he bragged to the chairman of the California Power Authority that in the final analysis, it doesn't matter what you crazy people in California do because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money. So the point here is that despite Enron's statement of its core ethical values, senior leadership actions created a culture of greed that encouraged unethical behavior at all levels of the organization. To put it another way, the stated mission, vision and values must be aligned with the actual culture of the company or else they're just lip service. So Dave at Media Current put this really well. He said, values are a byproduct of culture. Nobody remembers values. People remember how they feel. Similarly, Michael at Duo Consulting said, you know, when they were putting together their values, we had members of the management team pick out key people that exemplify the culture and talk about why and see if those attributes are in our values, confirming those values. So at AMAZ, Michael says, leaders are onboarded by other leaders during multiple weeks so that we can better create new leaders from existing employees that they understand our values and principles from the ground up, keeping these things tied together. Chris, who I see there from Digital Bridge said, core value fit is one of the areas we evaluate candidates on formally during our interviewing process. Employees are also evaluated against each of the company values annually as part of their performance review. Jeff from Phase Two said something very, very similar. It's part of the hiring and evaluation process. Several folks said that. Amy from Hook 42, at our quarterly company meetings, Kristen and I check in with the team about how the company is tracking to the core values through our decisions. At any time the team lets us know when we need a course correct or if we make decisions that may not align to our values. So this was a cool thing we did at Palantir at the end of last year. Our team actually took a survey of everyone asking what word they would use to describe our culture and then we took all those words and put them in a tag cloud together. David at Media Current did something very similar. Hi, Dave. And another tool that we and other companies use is a service called Know Your Company, which is a really great particular for either full or partially distributed companies. It's essentially a survey that goes out via email three times a week. On Monday it asks, what are you doing this week? On Tuesday or Wednesday there's a company question. It could be anything from like, is there an ideal client that you would like us to work with? To, is there something that we could improve at the company? Friday it's a social question like this one here, which is, you know, what are you looking forward to doing outside this spring? People have the option to make their responses viewable by anyone or just the leadership team if they choose. This is a really great way of just kind of keeping kind of constant tabs on that company culture and having the opportunity to reinforce those values. I always fill this out and, you know, if there's an opportunity to bring, you know, one of our principles or part of our mission into that, I do so. So this is a really great tool for understanding your culture and, you know, making sure that, you know, you're not just a bunch of smart guys who's screwing over the state of California. So the other way that companies express their values is through principles. As I said before, principles and values are usually very closely aligned. Jeff at phase two says, we try to use our values as guiding principles for major decisions, but also when we address how we roll out major initiatives, e.g. reorganization that we incorporate. Paul at CTI Digital, everything stems from the principles. Hiring is a crucial part. In many ways we are more keen on identifying candidates aligning with our principles before considering technical ability. Paul again, we reference these principles constantly, particularly when considering the relative merits of opportunities of potential clients, projects we are looking for, work that underpins our long-term goals, right? You know, and I, we are very selective at Palantir about the kinds of clients that we work with. And if someone comes to us and sometimes, even if it's a huge, very lucrative project, if it doesn't fit with our company's values, if it doesn't fit with the culture of our company, we will say no. And that's the key. I mean, these values, these principles, they have to take precedence over everything else. So where do they come from? How do you develop these things for your company? So Michael at AMAZE says, they were created during multiple meetings with all the management members of the company, but they somehow crystallized for more than two to three years. Paul at CTI, they were produced by the senior management team, constituted of C-level and department heads, a good representative body. We did a lot of post-it notes, workshops, and quickly, two weeks, arrived at a consensus. We all kind of knew what it should be. This was more cementing it. Okay, so I apologize. I had a great quote from Todd that did not make it in. But essentially, I'll just tell you what they did. So at Four Kitchens, one of the things that they did is they had, they manage everything, everything at their company, all of their company documentation, values, principles, all that way of the web chef stuff. They actually have it all managed through GitHub. So you can actually go in and check out and edit and review and submit pull requests and all the fun stuff. And so they were working with an earlier set, and so they had those out there. They also had all company meeting where they got together and had a very big discussion about the values and principles of the company, took all of that back in, and then basically went through a process where they distilled it down, summarized it, and presented it back out to the company. And I believe they've blogged about that process as well. Sort of similarly at Palantir was really interesting. We've had our values and principles for a while, but one of the things that we were working on was the vision statement. And it was one of those things, Tiffany and I, the two owners of the company, we were having, we've been thinking about this. We knew we needed to articulate it. We knew we knew why we did this. We knew we knew where we were going, but we were having a hard time putting it into a simple succinct statement. And we went around and back and forth, and this was honestly over a period of about two years, we'd take a stab at like, is this it? Well, yeah, but not quite. It doesn't feel right. It's gotta feel right. And so finally we got to a point where we were literally just, we were bouncing back, texting each other back and forth, and we finally, we banged it out. We got to the point where like, this feels right. And then we shared that with the other members of the leadership team and the other members of the leadership were like, yes, thank you. This is what I feel like we have known forever, but have not been able to say. And it is really important as your company grows that you're able to, when you bring new people in, if when you're very small, it's pretty easy to have a shared understanding of who we are and what we do and why we're doing it. As your company grows bigger and you bring in folks who you don't know so well, it's really important to have everyone on the same page. So if we can get through these buggy slides, there we are. All right, here's what I'm gonna do because I had an amazing quote. Again, this is from Todd and what happened was it didn't get added in here. This is the correct slide with the wrong so I'm gonna read it out of here. So Todd, for folks who don't know, Todd is a wonderful, wonderful gentleman and when he was very excited when I reached out to him and he kind of gave me a novel and I really appreciated it and he gave me a really amazing poetic statement here at the end. So here's what it was. No company can succeed without a mission, purpose and values. I could rattle off cliche metaphors all day long. They're the ship's mast to which we tie ourselves to in a typhoon. They're the incantations we meditate on in times of stress, et cetera. But for me, our values are our identity. When we're stripped of everything, our clients, financial reserves, perhaps even our team, they still hold true. During times of existential threat, we must know who we are and what we stand for. A shared understanding of our purpose and direction will guide us through anything. Our values say, this is who we are.  Nothing can change that. Without values, we have nothing to cling to in tough times. Without values, we are merely a paycheck delivery system. If anyone starts to doubt that if the paycheck is actually coming, we become nothing at all. We will cast ourselves to the wind. So with that, thank you very much for listening today. This is a list. Thank you to all the people who helped out with responses to this. You can follow me on Twitter at GDMET. You can follow Palantir at Palantir. And I don't know how much time we have left, but I think we have some time for Q&A. If anyone wants to come up, there's a mic in the center of the room. Hi, Dave. Thank you, George. This feels really odd. Talking to a microphone 10 feet away from you. I know. But I will for the video. Thank you. So with culture, a lot of people referenced how when they're hiring, they look for people that are a fit. And I think you and I even may have touched on this. There's also, it seems like a danger with that because there's sort of a likes, higher likes, and a sameness sort of that begins to resonate throughout the culture. That becomes a lack of diversity. So how do you balance and encourage sort of diversity or what did you listen to or find? Or is that at top of mind for people that you talk to? And what are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. And I could probably do a whole presentation on that topic alone. And so what I think, and I absolutely agree.  And we have an awareness now. We're maybe slowly starting to come to an understanding in the tech industry what a lot of other folks have known for a long time. Which is that having a diverse team is not just like the right thing to do. Diverse teams also perform better, right? And so you want to be able to have people who are able to approach problems from different perspectives and experiences. And in our case, that is something that we've actually incorporated into our goals when we've developed a very strong diversity statement that we use when we are hiring. So we do make that a priority, right? And we make sure, we check our values to make sure that they're not, you know, being, you know, that they're not exclusionary, right? So if I go back, and this was something I talked about in Barcelona, you know, for example, a lot of tech companies like, you know, big tech companies, you know, Amazon, for example, have these really strong principles about how, you know, they're relentlessly obsessive, you know, over achieving success.  And, you know, so what that does, the consequence of that is that you end up with a lot of people who, you know, are in a position where they don't go home at night, right? They work long hours. And you know what, that doesn't work for everybody. If that's what you're hiring for, you're gonna end up with a certain kind of individual, right? And, hey, maybe if that's what your company goal is, fine, right? But for a lot of other companies, I think it's really important. So one of our values, for example, is flexibility, flexible, healthy workplace. And, you know, so we prioritize things like that to make sure that we're able to hire people who don't feel like they have to give us all of their waking hours, because we do believe that what people do outside of work and having the flexibility to adjust schedules, you know, for children or whatever, that's really important. And that's gonna make them be awesome when they're at work. Any other questions? Wondering your thoughts specifically on values between balancing kind of what you are currently in the collective wisdom of what everybody thinks you are versus more aspirational values. That's a really good question. So there is a way to kind of split up your values. And this is, or actually in our case, we've split up our principles, right? So we have core principles and we have strategic principles. And so the core principles are the things that never change no matter what, right? Like that's the core of who we are. And then there are the strategic principles and the strategic principles are these are the things, these are the priorities for us right now, but we're gonna revisit these every couple of years and make sure that they're still on track. So I actually, so one of the stories is like, for example, there was a company and one of the, some of the research I did, they were talking about whether or not quality should be a core value, right? And they realized that they actually didn't wanna make quality a core value because they knew that in their market, speed was going to be critical for them. And if they were always prioritizing quality over speed, it was not gonna be, it was something they aspired to, but it wasn't gonna be realistic for them. So what they did is they took quality and they made it one of those strategic values. So it's like, we're gonna prioritize these other values, we're gonna prioritize speed to market or whatever. But when and where we can, we're gonna make it, we're gonna prioritize quality as much as possible and that enables us to do things like professional development for our employees and stuff like that so we can build that ethos of quality within our organization. Anyone else? Hello. Hello, George. So question on life cycle, the companies of research, life cycle and when they started documenting some of these mission values, principles, like where in the timeframe did that happen? Cause you had a great slide that showed early on if you're the guy wearing all those hats. Yeah. Your vision might be, well I have a vision to make payroll this month. Right. And then at some further point, you can start having more of these esoteric thoughts about mission, mission values, et cetera. So where did these companies do that? Well, hopefully vision isn't making payroll every month. Hopefully that's a goal, right? So most of the folks I talked to, and I didn't ask everyone that question, but most of the folks I talked to had started out with some, you know, some core ideas, whether they were values or a vision or whatever. They weren't necessarily articulated or written down or formalized or anything like that, but they started out with something like, this is why I want to do this, right? And I think it's not a factor of so much how long your company has been around, but really how large your company has become, right?  As you grow larger and as you're hiring people who, you know, who you don't know already, right? Then it becomes more important to have as that hiring process to be able to go in and say, look, you know, this is who we are. This is what we're about and be able to communicate that. And I, you know, I don't have like a magic number for what that size would be. My gut probably says like, you really want to start getting that together probably by the time you're around 20, but that's just, you know, that's just, I'm taking a stab, right? I think it's probably different for different people. It depends on, you know, what you do. Yeah. Anyone else? Going once, going twice. Thank you all very much.


Cool, so thank you all for for being here and Also, this particular space is getting when I was working through it It's much larger than it was even a year ago, and there's no way that I can cover everything in this time allotted So I want this to be more like a journey to try to give you some understanding as to what's there what some of the trends are and I apologize in advance for all of the things that I left out because there's a lot of amazing stuff going on so Another part of this as well is that I have a lot of involvement in many of these particular projects as well So I want to make sure like that's clear that it's that it's up front as well and that's part of the reason why I can speak up to to many of these things and But if you look at in Some of the things I'm involved with like you'll see like I have connections and have operated and worked with some of these groups Let's see So but the very first thing is We talk about software supply chain security We have to ask what exactly are we defending against and to answer that it's like we're trying to defend the software supply chain.  So there's not an official Definition that exists out there, but there's some that have good Approximations of what it is, but there's still gaps in some of the definitions So but generally you see something will create They'll perform some creation of an artifact or of a thing they will transform one thing to another Or they will assess the quality of that thing and report on it of course create an attestation of the of the equality And with there's various actions that we perform that fit into those three one or all It's not like you can't just pitch them hole in one at a time But things like you write code you compile you run integration test you do a code review So these are all like actions that you can that you can perform and so Why do we want to protect the software supply chain though? There's two things that people that we need to look at now Most people we say how to what what do we want to defend most people that image it comes to mind is how do we defend? from a from an attacker getting into the system and that's a very important aspect of it, but that's not the whole story and It's very short story, and I know that this particular one you hear it all the time Every time you go to a to a security talk you go you hear about log for shell But there's one particular aspect that many people Don't quite tend to think about and the question is why was log for shell so expensive and Think about this for a moment because it wasn't just like hey, this is bad. It's everywhere Why was it so expensive to fix? There was no malicious supply chain attack that had occurred as far as we know like it was a it was a mistake and My thinking of this it came down to this just very simple idea The cost is because we do not know where the things are we don't know where things go We don't have a way to map even in many organizations. We don't have an easy way to map Where when something comes in and what is the full outlay of where it is? and So what happened with log for shell is when it when it landed we has a community had to go to every single project and within our with within our Not only in the developer side But also from the operation side and say hey are you using Java are you and don't take it for granted? Maybe they're not like even projects you don't think use Java there might be a Java component in there somewhere So you have to ask the question don't don't have implicit trust like we had we covered that last time instead what you want to do is you want you want to ask the question and and get to that place of knowing but it was a very manual process and This also creates a lot of stress because we're trying to rush We're trying to beat the exploits before they arrive or are they already in the gates? We don't know so when you have that stress you also increase the mistakes that people make as well so So that's when you think of like protecting the soft software supply chain There's two things keep the attackers out, but also know like Developers are all gonna make mistakes. We're gonna continue to make mistakes and How do we know when one of those occur? How do we know where it went? so Let's back up a little bit. We want to cover like what really matters and I mentioned this rest before with people The people are the things that matter the most but when you talk to a CISO you'll see people process technology Like you'll hear this from CISOs all the time people process technology people matter the most That's why it's bold and largely in this side. You have the process and you have at the end of the day the technology that drives it and You want to focus on the people first Hold on a second. What happened with the S-bomb thing? We keep talking about a small deal We hear this this gets injected into every conversation. So let's get out. Let's get this one out of the way first We there's no tool that is that is evaluated in isolation It's important and I sorry this is a little bit of jarring side But I want to make sure that this part is done first So no tool is evaluated in isolation. So when we talk about a sponsor we many people say oh, it's it has all of these gaps Don't look at it as just the S-bomb look at it as the S-bomb in connection with everything else It is going on and how does it in the context of where it's going to live? How does it actually work? How does it actually fix things or help us discover where things are a really simple example? For this to use an analogy is we do not eliminate unit tests when they don't find all the software bugs We leave them there. We keep running them all the time. So Please with S-bombs acknowledge they do have a lot of limitations to them There's only room for one unicorn in your life. It's not the S-bomb So let's go back to and and just a real quick example of an S-bomb I want people to see what you tend to see in the in them. This is spdx. There's other fantastic formats out there as well Like cyclin DX and so on This this slide will be available. I actually pulled this from the spdx repo and it's under a creative commons license And so you can go get the slides and then look at them earlier or just play of examples out there But anyways, wait, we said people first the way quite we cover that sponsor gets get back to people. So The people are the most important part when you're working with an organization the the very like We spoke about community before that we have here But when you're looking at a company and how you're trying to get a company to move The very first thing that you want to try to do is you want to try to get what they call executive alignment you want the executives to buy into the idea that this we're going to take some action in unison and Get them to be supportive of spending the resources to do there part of that process Are things like well-written policies like policies are things that? Bind our actions as people together Another important thing as well is you have to again focus on people first That means you have to have good training don't assume people will learn on their own Not because they're they're lazy or anything similar But don't assume they will learn on their own because they simply don't have the time the incentive structures are not there So provide the incentive structure a positive incentive instructor So that they can they can have the time to train that they can have the time to keep up This is a growing and evolving field. We cannot expect people to just know this material And then we have process now as the threats change shows so should your processes and so a process is The various things you do in order to meet your goal So if your policy defines your goal, what is it you're trying to do and your processes? Roadmap on how you get there. There's some really amazing documents that I highly recommend you go take a look at The one that is that most people will point you towards is the secure software development framework that is published by NIST Which describes what things you should put inside of an SDLC? There is definitely some discussion as to like is doesn't go far enough is it is is a covering the right things But before you even ask those questions though You should just go read the document make a make a decision and understand like what they what they're trying to to talk about Then you can ask a question. How does this actually relate to my to my development? How does it relate to my to my environment? And so there's also some additional resources that you can also tie into so you have salsa version one which was recently published We here in the CNCF produce the software supply chain security best practices It's a fantastic white paper. I highly recommend you you read it if you're interested There's also some things like the secure supply chain consumption framework So it's not enough to just produce things in a secure way. You have to work out how do you consume them as another one as well that? me and Santiago For who's also part of the CNCF or works with us in the CNCF We also helped co-author this NIST SP 800204D. I'll go more into that later as well But these are things that can help you with that with that process So we have several CNCF projects that are designed specifically to help the one that I am most involved in In the software supply chain side is in is in toro So in toro, we've mentioned as bombs before as bombs are like what are the ingredients that you tie it that you're going to use To produce your software in toro is designed specifically to answer the question of how like I did it We went through this like these particular systems were used to commit these code or these people were involved with committing these code Not necessarily the legal names. It could be a well-known name as well. So I want to make sure that's clear And then how does it progress through where code reviews done? Did it go into a bill system that we that we have some? that we control What were the what were the various things that have gone through? And like did you do the integration test where their scans perform? So like an entire process of what we have described in the previous one in SSDF and similar We want to be able to say hey, we can attest the whole thing and reason about it in a programmatic way To help with that as well Two projects I've been involved with witness and archivista were added as in total sub projects as of last Tuesday I got the text message that they were accepted So I would love to get people to help contribute in this particular area and to help make this something that can they can help with that Another one that we have is tough, which is a specification for securing software updates So once you produce that artifact you have to be able to deliver it safely to to your destination Tough helps in that delivery by ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the updates And so it does things like ensuring it was not tampered with and also making sure that they've not that nobody sent an older version That is properly signed so they can't roll you back into a into a broken version There is also projects like notary which are a standard for and set of projects for signing and verifying workflows for OCI Artifacts or container images. It's actually much larger than this and total things that they do But there's some there's a lot of interesting work that's going on in notary It's another fantastic place that you can go and and take a look at and make some some good contributions There are also Other groups that we work with we have open SSF opens an SSF has a much wider scope than just software supply chain security They're looking at vulnerabilities in general They have a few projects. They have several projects that are real that are that we work with so for example we sign things within total or Then that thing can and those signatures can end up in six-door There's the open SSF scorecard if you are unfamiliar with the open SSF scorecard Highly recommend you go take a look at that because that is something that can help you work out Your vulnerabilities in general or what you're do what it helps reduce your total risk as of your of your project And all of this comes down to community. We also have a community impact as well. So the community here We're driving a whole bunch of things that is are that are impacting other groups. So again, this community and all the things that we've learned here It's Santiago and I worked towards Taking some of those learnings and helping Frame them within the context of the SSDF in a way that makes sense for cloud native and microservice systems There's also groups like the CTA and CTA Mitigating cyber security threats and machine learning based systems So these exact same things that we're doing here if you think about machine learning environments You have to know where did the data come from? What were the parameters? Where do they come from? Who defined them? Where did the hyper parameters come from? So like model weights and similar things and and Making sure that the information if you want to do some additional vetting where was the vetting done on those on that input Before you actually before you actually consume it as part of your ML So it looks a lot like CICD systems. We have the end goal is is perhaps different, but those processes have a lot of similarity We've also have had some impact with the IE Well, I got this night. I ETF. It's a IEEE free future networks. I apologize for the for the mess up on that But we've had communications with them the omnibore community There's a DHS software supply chain vulnerability tools cohort that is looking to contribute into open SSF That so there's a lot of things that are going on and this is just like a small sliver of things that we've had an impact on as It has a community and our impact in this space is going to just continue to grow Especially when you consider that that we are the producers of the packaging and of the end of several of the runtimes So with that I want to thank you all and Please come join us in tax security tax crews a fantastic place. There's a software supply chain working group There's also several other groups that you can join as well. You have the sick security and you can help in Kubernetes itself Also want to point out the graphics were made with AI in case anyone was wondering and Finally, I also wanted to say I Just say that all this is like in loving memory of Of our dear friend Nova as well So I had just keeping her in mind and wish she could be here to To help with stuff as well But with that I want to thank you all for your time. Please come talk to me Please find people in this community talk to them as well. Not just me. There's a lot of us here. So again, thank you everyone


So it's time for our usual weekly League of Ireland chat and this week joining us is former harps captain former harps goalkeeper Gavin Cullen. Gavin good to see you again. Good to talk to you. Hi Arshing. Good afternoon They're good Gavin looking forward to another busy weekend on the on the League of Ireland front particularly for fun harps One point above the bottom two. It was looking so bright several weeks ago It's amazing what won the feet and how things can pan out How much pressure is there as they're now on harps going into this game against slag on Saturday? Do you feel Gavin? Yeah, there's just big pressure on the minute and the next five or six games are all massive games They're all cup finals for them It's amazing where the runner results harps have that they're still down there But it's coincided with Waterford having a runner results and Dundalk having a result. So The three fairly foreign teams within the league are on that bottom four. So look as I said pressure, which I suppose From from the from the results are proud They thought they may be able to get out of it And there was even talk at one stage of pushing on up the league because of these results It's such a tight league this season that anybody can get sucked down at this point Yeah, and it's amazing too that you could have what 42 points and you can still be sitting second bottom on the table again And it's it is like you go right up to to Bows and dairy like dairy or dairy or fourth on the league and 45 points and And harps only harps only eight points behind there You know, I know eight points is a lot of making up, but it's a very very tight league So it's kind of leagues I've seen in a long long time. Yeah, then obviously every game now is bringing huge pressure Harps boss, Olly Horgan was of course Disappointed with with how it panned out last week in relation to the defeat to waterford I mean a minute that For a change the performance just wasn't at what they was expected of the boys It wasn't there once the game They didn't look like themselves in the midst extra goals But they didn't look as a sharp or as hungry as they had in recent weeks Especially that done that game at home and another all our performances look they look really good So it's what I am and hopefully it's just a blip in the performance and it's not just a It's not gonna be going on to this week and a week after as well Yeah, how big a boost is it then that Ethan Boyle, Sean Boyle and Ryan Conley are all back after after suspension Because they were missed last week, so they were. Well, they were like but I think the players that came in and Though it should have been able to do and come in and get a result in waterford They're not like as I say, it's great to have all the players and squad available, but at the same time I don't think I think Barry McNamee was probably a bigger loss than any of the three Ben injured last week But at the same time like they're a little bit glad to get bodies back So they have they have opportunities to change the team if required Yeah, there's no indication yet that Barry McNamee is gonna be available for this week We're hoping that he is but in relation to him is is he gonna be a vital player against the side like slag or over Yeah, yeah, it's because look break and as we've seen he has done that at home He can pick a passing create a goal again It can dictate the game though the tempo of the game sometimes get his foot on it Which probably harps don't have a lot of players like him and he's very he's very good at that So obviously if he's available and hopefully is no he will come on the reckoning probably will start the game Yeah, there's gonna be many goals in this tie because slag or haven't conceded too many They've got an excellent record so they do and in relation to conceding goals It's the sort of game could be just one another or two one is it Gavin? You won't know. Yes, like open excellent. I think by our sham growers They've been they've been the best of season defensively And they've been good they've had a blip after the midseason break and they've dropped a lot of points So they sort of fell away in terms of a title shot, but there's still third in the league and they've got a good team Good squad Any game harps played them has been up and talking. There's been very little I think the last game from park I think slag or one, but a lot that was done the Ed McGinty is performance at night So at ball we take you can't see a lot of goals, but then you never know Yeah, and in relation to being in this situation before harps of lots of experience Of course fighting it out and the bottom places and the premier division and staying up The fact that Ollie Horgan's been around the block such a long time Does that maybe give harps an advantage now going on to the final six games of the season for which are at home That they've been in this scenario so many times before Gavin. Oh, yeah Look, you can't buy experience at whatever level it is in terms of uneven to among on things or Relegation bells are no matter text and always been the master of it. There's no two ways about it He's been he's kept harps up in in recent years where nobody give him a chance But this year thinks a wee bit different. I think the quality in the squad's a wee bit different I think the the they expect to stay up But I think there's not as much talk about relegation, which is which is good But at the same time there's still there there abouts, but I like I believe whether it's done that harps draw I or Waterford going on to the playoffs I think they should have all too much for any of the first division clubs coming up this time Yeah, two big games at home next for harps Obviously, they've got slag of Rovers and Saturday mentioned the club their draw. They're coming on the Monday the first of November So if you could come drop six points out of those two matches, there'd be a huge six points Gavin, I'll be absolutely massive. So it would I think you would nearly say that Would be more probably won't be enough in terms of points on the board But it would be enough in terms of mentality and pushing on for us the season to keep them up there You know, so that's a huge two weeks. Yeah massive two weeks For harps and I suppose the fact as well that Waterford are in cup action this weekend Gavin of harps We get a result that's thrown the pressure back on on the men from the south of the country again, so it is Yeah, obviously Waterford in the semi-final and they'll be glad to be there But at the same time if they end up at the weekend out of the cup and and harps four points or five points ahead of them Like it's it looks like a lot to catch up then for water for so it'll be a big mental swing as well So obviously if harps get the three points this week, it'll be a lot more difficult the task for Waterford in the running Yeah, the other game on Saturday shamrock rovers against Longford town You would expect rovers to have no issues against Longford But we said that before so we did Gavin and for some reason long for it You can put in their best shifts of the season against the champions so they can and the home advantage at bishops get to Yeah, long for a really supposed playing out of season. So there's no pressure. There's no On them the no in terms of results and things you got so players will be playing for contacts players will be looking to get seen by All our clubs so they may be putting an individual performances better But at the same time shamrovers are two ones away from one on the league So you'd expect them to want to get it wrapped up as quick as possible And I wanted to fully expect the three points there and Saturday Yeah, it's not very often that Derry City will be looking for favors off their neighbors harps Gavin But this weekend they would because if they beat Sligo and Derry one Derry are being thrust under that European spot So there yeah, Derry will go third in the table and if that happens, which will be phenomenal turnaround from earlier on the season and Hats off to everybody at Derry for doing that. They definitely look good They look the part they're working really hard and You look you can't see in terms of form You can see in passing Sligo when they're on and end up punishing third as well But it was a great one for them last week against Pats Soros against the sides at the second and in the table Soros Brilliant one as I say, they've been they've been a breath of fresh air since the Rehearsal has taken over and there's a real positivity about the place now at the club We played their reserve team a couple of times there and and you can tell and you can tell there's a They're underage teams and they're 19s of qualified for the cup final they're doing really well and you can tell obviously with the Investment from fellow but already that there's there's progress being made and things are looking good for Derry at the moment Yeah Just maybe coming away from from the League of Ireland side could you mention Derry cities on under 19s and You say that they're competitive that they've got a good side there What's your thoughts been so far in the in the opening Ulster senior league season Gavin You guys of course sitting top of the table who had four ones from three of them from right and said 12 At the top and these have a bit of a break this weekend So what's what's your thoughts on how the league was panned out in the early stages? That's been it's been very competitive the games we've the games have been very tight and very good A lot of goals are a good quality and so It's it's gonna be a tough league issue that we've played seven games and cups and leagues So far and each one of the games have thrown different tests like as I said about Harps and Derry have been have been excellent against us We the only side we haven't played yet is Bonnegie, which was supposed to be played this weekend But it's called off so like we're We're happy with anything going for sales, but in terms of the standard in the league It's been it has been very very good We're the addition of Monaghan, of course this year it seems to be that The guys from outside have done a goal are settling in okay Gavin. So they're they have they've got some good results They beat Van Harps and they beat Lederkenny They've lost to us on Bonnegie So it's been a mixed bag for them, but I spoke to their manager before and after our game and and they said look But they go and and they learn but no, they know that hopefully in a couple of years time They can compete with the likes of ourselves and and all but I don't think that I far away I think they've got the nucleus of some good players there. It's just on a new league You want to and it's good to see I think we're down in Monaghan in two weeks time So that'll be again a different test for us as well When is that cocktail Bonnegie game going to be played because that's probably the big game so far this season Given that the two user holding the top two positions. I think that's fairly early to say that Look, we've had a couple of some big games against Lederkenny so far as I say Harps and Derry have been More than good against us and and we're both unlocking out to get results against us So look, they're all big games It's fairly early in the season to say well, that's the top team. That's what he's going to be because It's it's it's there's only four games played So there's a long way to go like we treat every game both the respect and and and each week So I don't think we play Bonnegie until until December, but it could be wrong. But I think that's that's when it is You know, yeah, okay. Let's go back Two teams playing at the national level cup semi-finals this weekend pats against undock Bows against Waterford just find your thoughts on those two how they're gonna go Yeah, look cups and semi-finals days. They could go absolutely anyway The four teams are on it. They're all fairly good form. No, they're all fairly consistent form Like if you're thinking on paper, you would say bows to beat Waterford and and and pats to beat undock But I don't think so don't act of a brilliant record in the cup and Suppose it's it's they're not probably gonna qualify for Europe and they all are away but the cup So I'd say all the eggs one basket and probably go for done dock and I go for both to get the Water first was to pull it off. Is that a good enough distraction for harps than at the bottom end of the table? So it is it could take the focus of Waterford maybe in their own Yes, no, we've seen it before suppose in England and teams leave Ireland We've got the cup finals and end up getting Struggle their season sort of Peter Daff and the league but look staying up. It's the most important thing for any club If they get the cup final and actually make it that give them a left and a belief for some of their games going on So I would disagree little take the right off the ball. They'd be honest I think I think they would take more belief out of it than anything Okay, let's think I'm good to talk to you and that will speak to you again soon Enjoy the football at the weekend. No more. I should thank you, but


Welcome to the last set of news. My name is Rob and today I want to do an update on a video We did in April of 2022 where it talks about What's going on with the markets and why things are chopping sideways? Taken precipitous falls and when even when people are saying that things are priced in they really aren't priced in Just kind of give a sense of what's going on and in actuality if you're if you're trading crypto or holding crypto What does it matter? It's just just something to wrap your head around. There's a great quote from John Mayer Keen's the Economist Royces markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent So even though there's a lot of good Opportunities out there a lot of good projects. It just seems there's a lot of Irrationality for the market you have to remember that the markets are put together by people So I wanted to replay this video just to give people a sense of kind of what's going on And as far as the irrationality and really comes down to the bots and emotions and things that are going on So I'll make this quick. So this is the original video I want to talk to you about why I think Is one of the culprits for why the market seems to be the chop sideways or take enormous or small dips Throughout time Specifically when there's certain news that comes about and I'm gonna make this short and sweet So we're not gonna go over 20 30 minutes. That's gonna be about five So let's just jump into it. This is the reason or one of the reasons why I think there's a problem So if we take a look at the markets, I think you already know this today is a 22nd It's about 10 a.m. Here mountain time I'll pass with Texas time and we saw quite a bit of a drop-off yesterday Bitcoin down 6% in 24 hours 6 and of course our market cap was doing pretty well 2 trillion 2.1 trillion then all of a sudden just seems to drop off now. There's some winners around here I don't need to tell you that because you check your portfolio time. So the question is what the heck happened and Before I take a look at the correlation between S&P 500 and NASDAQ I want to play this video. This is from fast money CNBC and this first minute and a half or so they're gonna talk about exactly what happened So just take a listen and the next part is gonna be very pertinent to why I believe that This market will either chop sideways or continue to go down throughout 2022 not that there can't be a good rally But I think there's something that you need to know before you do any trading. So just take a listen Hey, I mean the picks was up 11% But if you look across sectors some of the some of the destruction was was awful In fact, I listened to those power comments and to me again evoking And in a glorious way Paul Volcker and talking about a guy who basically crushed and rubbed out Inflation in a way where actually there was a sense that you no longer had to worry about that It sounds like that that's his goal and I would go back to Van Halen again and say their next album I believe was called diver down and that the minute we heard this the myth of bond market got up to 295 you absolutely had a case here where the equity market sold off and again the destruction wasn't just in retail Wasn't just in in some of the high tech names. It was look at the resources space Look at these were demand destruction type reactions from a market that listened to Powell again a Fed that hasn't like 50 Bips since 2000 hasn't gone back to back on meetings since 2006. I know the Fed is telegraphing But people seem to be taking this for granted. This is not insignificant So, yeah, that's what happened yesterday and we had known about this everybody's talk about it drone Powell come out and said hey, we're gonna raise rates and He's gone from a little bit a little more hawkish. We would say right But the thing is that everybody said don't worry about it. Everything's priced in we already know it It doesn't matter if he does two hike rates six hike rates, which he was planning on doing I actually think it's even more than that now six seven or eight. It's all priced in it's all priced in The thing is if it was all priced in what happened to the market So the next person who's gonna talk this is Steve Grasso and before he talks I'm just gonna tell you this is who he is Steve Grasso Wall Street New York Stock Exchange pedigree He is also the CEO of Grasso global and if we take a look here begin his career career work on the floor New York Stock Exchange 1993 so he's been around and he's managed that some pretty big profile So the question is is he's gonna be asked is well Why did this happen? Why did the sell-off and I think it's really important to what he says So I'm gonna play this just take a listen and this is the crux of Why I think things are gonna just chop sideways for quite some time I think it's you know guy said fair fair warning. Maybe it's fame warning I don't know if they're really going to do what they say they're gonna do and I said they said this weeks ago to me It's almost as the more transparent. They become the more I second guess what they're actually saying. Why did we sell off? Because it's a knee-jerk reaction and most of this stuff is done by computers versus human beings because as soon as the Fed speaks You have tape reading algorithms these days that actually sell the stock ahead Based on words versus based on actions so I would expect the market to actually bounce back tomorrow, but I do think and general mills has said this Markets have been jumping in a weird fashion and it's not a real rally and guys said this I think Tim has said it as well It almost feels as if it's a synthetic bounce where people are looking to sell those pops versus buy those So yeah, a couple things to break down there and that was a great point Steve said now I knew about bots I understand there's a lot trading bots especially in crypto and even the traditional finance, but When I heard about this about the algorithm as far as tape reading just as soon as something comes out now It makes a lot of sense Even though there are some rational people in the market people potentially like you and me It's not about who is irrational who is irrational It really comes down to the bots and of course once the bots start to get in it's a cascade effect And you have more people who may be rational and see what's going on especially TA traders and go You know what? This is like that. I need to sell off I need to sell off 90 sell off and it just keeps happening and happening happening But what Steve said right there made a lot of sense and the second thing he said was I believe that the market will Actually rebound because it's just bots and there's a lot more rational people out there in the market Well, that's not so much the case if we take a look at S&P 500 right now it is 10 a.m. Here mountain that means it is a high noon over on eastern time So the market's been open for about three and a half hours So here's what we got S&P continues to decline and also NASDAQ also continues to decline So the question that remains how far are we going to go? Nobody knows So the thing is before you make those trades before you do those things this is not financial advice This is just financial opinion. I think you should really take a look at the trading that you are up against And the people that you were up against and the people that actually go I'm not a big trader and I think it makes a real good case for just dollar cost averaging I can't beat bots. It's very tough, especially the ones that do micro transactions millions per second However, market goes up, market goes down. I'm in here for the long time Time in the market. I think it's more important than timing the market and that's it I want to make this short and sweet because every time this comes out I will probably replay this video so people can actually see it and that is it for today So thanks so much for watching. I'll see you on the next one


Let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries up 76, Nasdaq's down 39, S&P's off 9, Gold contract down $26.80 trading at $19.82 an ounce. We have Silver down 51 cents, $24.45 an ounce, LightSuite Crew down 48 cents, $81.32 a barrel, notes and bonds. Ten-year note, down 16 ticks, trading at $1.1028, the 30-year full point and a half at $123 and $Kingdala, $Kingdala up 427 ticks, trading $102.282, the Euros at $109, the Yanis trading at $143 and the British pound is at $127 to $1 U.S. dollar. Off-phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>, give us a call, folks. Want to know what's going on in your world and the world of TFNN, folks. We get a real treat for you, bottom line, tomorrow. My man, Mr. Larry Pezzavento, he's doing a live trading webinar. It starts at 9 a.m., goes to 2 p.m. and I say live, it's a live trading webinar. Goes for five hours and we're going to get my man Larry Pezzavento on right now to tell you all about it. Larry, what's going on, brother? Hey, Tom. How are you doing, pal? I'm doing great yourself.  This is going to be my fifth one that we've done here in the last few years. And the Tigers and Tigris love it, too, Larry. Big time. Yeah, we've had a lot of fun. We've had a lot of fun. But it's my chance to really play in the World Series because this shows the folks either it works or it doesn't. We've been pretty on-spot the last four shows we've done. Yes. This will be the fifth one. We've made money each time. And I think we'll do okay with the volatility that we're having today and tomorrow do with this full moon that's coming in right now. It's literally coming in right now because it was 2.23. We won't see it till tonight, folks, but it was 2.23 in the eastern board anyway, right? Yeah. What that blue moon means, folks, is it means there's two full moons in the same month. That doesn't happen very often. Right. So, in fact, when Elvis died, that we have one of those in August of 96. But that was on the 16th of August. Anyway, what I'd like to talk about, of course, is all the things that we'll be covering. We've got three PowerPoint presentations that we work on during the time we put on trades. The main thing what we're doing, Tom, is we're looking to make the $295 fee that the folks, people pay. We've done that each time. Yep. And I think we'll be able to do it tomorrow, but there's no guarantees. Of course, if we don't do well, they get to have the next one free. But I'm really comfortable because I've got the eight things that we're looking at for tomorrow, a lot of different patterns and soybeans, crude oil, gosh, just everything, Treasury bonds, gold, I mean, S&P 500. There's just a bunch of them that... And the volatility is picking up, which is good. Volatility is the trade is best friend, folks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We love the volatility.  That's the kind of action that you love to see. You don't want to see something going sideways because there's nobody, nobody's interested in it. But when they're going up and down, that's when you want to be at the dance. And we're going to bring the girl to the dance that we started with. That's ABCD. And we're going to have some fun tomorrow, I believe. I really feel comfortable about it. So I'm looking forward to it. And would you get folks, okay, with this, okay? So the webinar is 295, but you're also going to get a full month of Larry's newsletter, Fibonacci 24 by 7. So it's a great value. Okay. That's the bottom line. So come over to our website at TFNN. You're going to see it right under the featured content. Sign up now. You know, particularly please sign up now, folks, because, you know, if you go and wait till tomorrow morning, we just got to make sure we get you in the Tigers Den, particularly if you're not in Discord already. If you're not in Discord, folks, it's a buck. Get in Discord, getting high Tigers Den because it's an amazing trading room. I mean, it's the best, it's the best $1 you'll ever spend. Seriously. And we only charge a dollar, so we don't get, you know, there's no scammers on that, man.  You're going to have a great workshop. It goes from nine to two, because that's when the action is. And the bottom line is that Larry's going to be throwing out some trades. And Larry's a patent recognition expert. So you're going to understand the patents. You're going to see the patents and you're going to see how to trade the patents and how, where to put your, where to go in, where to go out. And of course, what does happen, because we have so many traders that are going to be in there anyway, as Larry has been talking about on the show, they're going to, the traders themselves will be sending Larry over set ups like, Hey, man, let's look at this one. Let's look at this one. And that's what's so cool. That is, that's cool. It is. It's so great about the room itself. Do you know what I'm saying? That, you know, more eyes. Let me tell you, more eyes work. There's no two ways about it. Amen to that. Amen. Hey, listen, thanks for having me for these last 17 years. I've loved it every minute. Can you believe it's 17 years, man? I can't believe it. That's scary. I remember in Clearwater when I met you and it was February of 2007, Dr. Earl dropped us off in front of that hotel. We were given the seminar in and it's been going on ever since. And we've met in New York and Las Vegas. Oh my God. I think, I think I solicited you in New York, right? It was a trader's ex-boy. Yes, it was 2004. Yeah, absolutely right. Right on round Valentine's Day. As a matter of fact, I like it. Oh, that's right. Matter of fact, you still owe me $40 for dinner. I'll get that when I see it next time. That's a beautiful thing. I like that. I like that. Fought it all a number. I like it. No, no, no doubt about it. Hey, listen, has the weather calmed down? Anything out there? A little bit. No more major rainstorms. So the electricity ran for 36 hours straight. So we don't have another rain due until Monday or Tuesday. So we should be just fine. Okay, awesome. Okay. Well, listen, you have a great one. Safe one. Of course, we look forward to the show to the webinar tomorrow morning. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank God bless. Thank you. Bye bye. So folks, just come over to our website at TFNN. You're going to see it right under Featured Content, live trading webinar. Trade what you see, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Again, it's $295. Larry's going to be trading live. He's going to set up all the patents. Well, the market sets up the patents. But you'll understand the patents. You'll see them, you know, they're very clear setups when Larry, the charts that Larry's using. You'll see the angles. You'll see the geometry behind the angles. And this is folks, life's about geometry period. So, so check it out. And Dow. Let's see where the Dow is right now. We're going to have a man, Mr. Basil Chapman coming up next with us. The Dow industry is right now up 71 Nasdaq's down 40. S&P's off nine and a half. Stay right there folks. Come right back.


One of the most important parts of diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine is a millennia old idea That to treat illness you need to treat the person's spirit. Now this idea probably came from the pre-modern shamanic idea that There's this kind of fragmenting that happens when a person is ill. Now in Chinese medicine It's a little bit more systematic and a little bit more scientific Because there's a pattern to describe When a person has spirit or what is the state of the spirit or what is the state of the spirit lacking?  Hey, I'm Alex Hein author of the book master the day current doctoral student in traditional or classical Chinese medicine Now I've included as the first link in the description there It's a free download on how to add 10 years to life with traditional or classical Chinese medicine You can check out that infographic right there in the description So the first thing about spirit is that the spirit is the gestalt of the person It gives you that snapshot into the person's life And so just like if you've ever met someone with mental illness or someone that's obviously Crazy and out of their mind or someone drunk someone high you see the difference This is not an abstract idea.  No hippie woo-woo. No metaphysical jargon that Snapshot the gestalt we're like Wow, they look great. They look like they have a lot of energy. They look like they're well rested. They look Grounded they look calm that feeling is one aspect of the spirit and of course, you know even the way for example that Children with learning disabilities are or let's give a dramatic example for example children with Down syndrome Often when they come into a house pets when they hear them They will run and they will hide because the pet the animal knows that something is quote not right something is Making them nervous and so there's the aspect of the spirit which is typically we see in the eyes But there's also the spirit in the way that the person's acting and so just like every police officer knows How do you tell someone's really drunk besides getting them to walk the line and recite them alphabet backwards you look right into their eyes and There's like the wavy kind of can't quite focus in your eye look or there's the Hey officer, what's up kind of look you're looking right at them. You can feel the beam That is spirit and spirit is typically seen in the eyes So what does it mean that the spirit is reflected in the eyes? Check out this kind of dichotomy here of yin and yang of having spirit and not having spirit So when we say having spirit the eyes are bright the person looks at you They make connection you can feel that connection between your eyes The facial complexion is bright and shiny. It looks well The mental status is that they have clear speech and that they are conscious Their response rate is that they respond quickly and they respond freely and the respiration and the breathing in their chest is regular Now in terms of not having spirit when you look into their eyes They are dull or they it feels like they're not looking right into your eyes The facial complexion is dull or pale The mental status is kind of unclear. They kind of take a lot of time to respond or it's a murky muddy response The response rate is obviously slow and the respiration is poor So what do all these things indicate clinically in Chinese medicine? Why is treating the spirit the highest the most important virtue of what's called the high-level physician? The reason is that Spirit first of all indicates what is the if I can use the word energetic What is the energetic state of the person and I don't mean that in a woo-woo sense, but is the person well rested? Healthy vital and alive if so, they will have the signs of spirit being abundant and strong But if the person is for example, I had a patient. It was a 78 year old woman a lifelong smoker Did not take care of her health was not happy neglected herself and as a result at 78 Just isn't that old when I asked her a question It would take her two to three seconds to actually register the question and she didn't have dementia She didn't have mental illness. It took her a long time to actually process that and then get back to me it Her reactions themselves were very slow. The overall interaction was not smooth. It was jarring It felt like she was kind of half asleep And so that would be a diagnosis where you say there's something going on with the spirit of the person So really the spirit indicates the current energy level of the person and also the prognosis When the spirit is there and present change can happen quickly But when it's not the prognosis is not favorable because it means that either the illness is at the deeper level or the person's resources are very taxed And they're very tired Now the last thing is that the spirit is the key foundation for treatment or on some level should be the king of the treatment You know, we say that treat the spirit first But what does that really mean like if a person has IBS don't we want to just change their diet or give them an herbal formula well I'd like to think of it as if you've ever gone to click a Starbucks and you've had a really unhappy barista and You're waiting in line and you're maybe you're in a good mood or maybe you're not and you ask for your drink And the person just sitting there like this to like Yeah, okay Grande I'm local local dope. I hope I have a frappe half calf cappuccino And they just look dead. I mean they look like a zombie and you're like This person just does not like their life that kind of spiritlessness Like maybe that person needs treatment, but maybe what they really need is to do a job that they love Maybe they need to follow their passion maybe they need to do something that really excites them in life and maybe that treatment is more effective than any medical Intervention that a physician could do or that an acupuncture needle or a herbal formula could do maybe that is the thing that revives the person and Consequently revives their immune system their energy. They sleep better So when you think of treating the spirit, this is just one way to think about it What it means in Chinese medicine and what it's important is So I hope that helps Understand that spirit is not this metaphysical esoteric thing But it's really practical and all of us colloquially We know what spirit is when we feel it with a person or the absence of spirit is when we see it in a person Now again, you can check out the first link in the description It's a free download five daily habits that ten years to your life So if you're interested in that click the link and download it You can also check out my last two videos right there and right there