Hi, my name is Sean Meyer. I'm a recent doctoral graduate of the design science program at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. My research is focused on clinical predictive models intended for use with early warning systems. And today I'll be presenting GP models, a grammar prediction models. The main purpose is to summarize unevenly spaced and repeated observations from a database into discrete time periods used for predictive modeling. This presentation, the R package being presented, and the concepts it is based on are co-authored with Karen Deep Singh, assistant professor of learning health sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School. Within the scope of this project, predictive modeling is considered using available data to estimate risk of a future event occurring. This diagram depicts a simple perspective of predictive modeling where debt is acquired from some database or other source is simply prepared in some way depending on how the underlying data is structured or the modeling approach, and then an algorithm is applied. This can either be simple linear or logistic regression, or it can be a more complex but flexible flexible algorithm like random forest gradient boost machines or even neural networks. And the output is some sort of model which can be used to calculate predictions on new observations. However, inpatient care is not delivered at a single point in time, a patient state of health can change over time vital science can change over time. So it may make sense that a time series approach is more appropriate to capture the potential changes in risk as new data is collected. So the focus of this package is to incorporate expertise and reduce manual preparation and transforming time series data source from an electronic record. In this presentation, I'm going to show some key challenges of transforming time series data for predictive modeling, and how we built the package or to alleviate some of those issues. So why do you need to prepare your data. Well, preparing data is time consuming but it's often needed and predictive modeling. However, better prepared data can often lead to better results. There's a wide range of methods. And it depends on both the clinical relevance knowledge of underlying data as well as the modeling approach that you're taking. Another challenge with preparing data is that preparation methods are not often shared among the medical community. So there are some descriptions, even with both of them it can actually be challenging to reproduce reproduce results that someone on another author has conducted. While there are some data pipeline tools that exist. It still requires some sort of knowledge or guidance on how the underlying data is structured. What I've often overlooked is incorporating domain expertise into building predictors for predictive modeling. You can see in this conversation between potentially a domain expert in clinical care as well as an analyst that these conversations, the predictors are that are underlying this data is often can be vague variable descriptions often have abstract or implicit meanings. So there may exist in the health record for example baseline creatinine or highest creatinine in the last 24 hours, and they must be to be defined or calculated using programmatic techniques. Given these challenges, we decided to build a package that could approach these and overcome these challenges. The objectives for GP models was to reduce the mental effort, provide predictor transparency which could then provide predictor vulnerability, and then incorporate that domain expertise on the variables that we were able to create. Now I'm going to give a brief overview of exactly how this package works. So, at this highest level there are considered kind of global parameters and then they're considered like predictor parameters the global parameters exists and are applied to all of the things that you're creating. And this is done with this timeframe object that you're creating. So there's the sense of fixed data, which are data that is non temporal so it can be like gender or it can be an address or it can be a location or it can be a religion. And then there are temporal data, which have some sort of timestamp associated with them. There is their IDs, which really could be a patient or it could be an encounter or something that you want to associate with all of the data going through all of the predictions. You have a fixed start and a fixed end time. And what that means is your the fixed start time is the first prediction that you want to take, or you want to make and that is considered the at risk period, the start of that at risk period for that patient. And you don't actually want to stop making predictions. And you can actually, if you want to do one prediction you can actually set the start and end time to be the same it'll only make one prediction at that time. A step is actually the interval with which you want to make predictions it can be six hours it can be 20 minutes, but keep in mind that if you increase the step. It's actually going to increase the resulting output and more processing time that you're going to need.  So if you have patients that are hospitalized you can set the cut off to seven days to say I don't want to make any more predictions beyond those initial seven days. Additionally, when using timestamps timestamp comms for the start and stop when using different ones. It'll also create an auto aggressive fashion that will include data from the previous predictions. Next few sides will go over we'll talk about the, the underlying predictor level functions that we'll use so to start with we have baseline predictors this is a predictor type that will go over on the background and the right you can actually see that that was the previously used in order to calculate pre pregnancy and trimester weight so we're looking at median weight for the past nine months and three month intervals. And then in the box on the right you can actually see how we simplified that process using our new package that has this additional functionality. So here's another type of function for predictors that we can invoke is called the rolling predictor. So what this looks at is the, you're essentially have a fixed window that moves forward with every new prediction, considering T zero as that first prediction T one T two and so on, as subsequent predictions. So here we want to calculate the systolic blood pressure, the minimum maximum as well as the last value within each prediction. So we're looking at the variable SPP systolic blood pressure and then we look at a look back of six hours meaning we want to look six hours into the past, which moves forward with every new prediction. Finally, we have growing predictors, which essentially start at the point of the first prediction and then they accumulate over the course of for example a hospitalization for every new prediction. So we're looking at cumulative blood loss since admission, considering T zero as admission, we're looking at the variable blood loss and then we're looking at some as the statistics summary statistic. Just to recap and to show the side by side is we have a T zero as the start of the first prediction. And then we have rolling predictors we have baseline predictors which start before then and then we have growing predictors which start after that to contrast that. As I mentioned previously, my work is related to early warning systems. So essentially what this package does is it takes the data and it creates a, it creates an index or an anchor point that transforms those timestamps into indices. It summarizes those, those indices at the index level, and then it pivots them in from long data into one row per index or person pre which I'll show you in just a moment. It applies auto regression to where all of the previous data that's used in each prediction is actually concatenated to to the current data, and I'll show you that as well. So consider that you have a patient that is hospitalized starting. Let's say for example on June 2. You can see that little zigzag line that will consider that as the, the at risk period because they'll be in the hospital. And consider all of the different colors as different variables in material of what the actual value is we're really just looking at how many, how many values there are, and we want to summarize them and what in some way. So again just for example, the data lines can indicate or can represent when we want to make these cut off so in the past we want to for prior to the admission we want to look at baseline variables, splitting it up into basically like two month intervals. But during the admission because we can receive data and more high, high frequency we may want to, we may want to look at it a little bit differently. So we want to cut that up into shorter spans which in this example are 24 hours. So for example, the, we're looking at a single subject, or single patient or single encounter whatever you would like to consider. And then we're looking at some summarizations at the indices of time zero time one time two times. Normally these would be time stamps, and the package can actually interpret either one you can use indices if you've already got them, or you can use actual time stamps. The data is to change from long form into wide form, as you can see where it has person period. But the problem with that is previous data is lost. So, for example, for each of those observations, subject to time zero subject to time three. You have this issue where you don't have that previous data. So, to fix that, we actually create auto regressive predictions where we have. The data is actually repeated with every new observation. So you can actually train your model using the previous data that it that it has. In addition to this which I won't show you but in addition to this you all the package will also actually summarize each of those time periods so if you have more than one observation you can summarize it to like minimum maximum. And then you can add last median, things like that sort. This patch package is still in development. So we are we are still looking at developing it further. We didn't like to add more transformation techniques to suit more use cases to be able to use this and then we'd also like to add some visualization tools to help users represent the data to help them with what it looks like to be able to make these design decisions about the data that they're using. We'd also like to automate it when domain expertise isn't available. Thanks for attending my talk and thank you to our medicine for allowing me the opportunity to present my work. If you have questions or comments feel free to reach out on Twitter, or check out the GitHub page to learn more. Thank you.


We've talked about these things, some of them for 50 years, like artificial intelligence, didn't happen. We talked about 3D printing for 20 years now, not much happened, but now you see takeoff, escape velocity as they say. I mean it's funny, in the next 10 years we're going to see things that are straight out of science fiction. 20 years, I mean if you're my age, we will live to see what we call the singularity, the convergence of man and machine.


Good morning. Good morning. It's another beautiful day in the shop It's always a beautiful day when it's in the shop. You know why? Because it's the inside. It doesn't matter what it's doing outside. It's nice in here We're getting all blue ready Christmas is over, but hey, it's only 12 months till next Christmas We got a head out on the road right away Leaving tomorrow Getting all blue ready today so that we're ready to go tomorrow. We don't have much to do I have a 9 p.m. Delivery appointment in a few days in Laredo, Texas by the time you watch this I would have been in gone already so we're going right down to the Mexico border to see what all the fuss is about I keep hearing about it all the time all the stuff going on down there I'm gonna go see it for myself and see what's going on any of you from Laredo I Would I guess I can't ask your opinion here But I'm gonna ask a couple of my buddies that run down there regularly or from time to time Where a good place to park would be because I don't think I want to park right on the Mexican border I think I want to park like a hundred or so miles north of the border at least Overnight I don't want to go right down there and hang out in Laredo overnight I don't know the area like sure that you guys from Texas might truffle and laugh at me Maybe there's nothing to worry about in Laredo. Maybe it's a good city Maybe there's nothing but I'm from Canada a long ways away the other side of the other border You know this one up here that everyone forgets about all the time Hi, I'm from there, so I don't know anything about that area So I'm not gonna go and stay in any urban congested area Especially near a foreign border that I'm not familiar with overnight. That's just my abundance of caution So I'm gonna it's a three-day drive down there. I'll drive a full day tomorrow full day the next day And I'll drive pretty much a full day. I'll get past Am I going past Dallas Fort Worth? I gotta look at my route yet I'm going straight down I 29 and I believe that'll hook me up with the I 30 nothing or the I 30 something Great, and then we're gonna go through Native America go right through Oakley Oakley Homa and Go into the great Lone Star State. I haven't been to the Lone Star State in Years, so I am I'm really excited about this if you haven't noticed I'm excited to go But at the same time a little cautious because I'm not familiar with the area at all so we'll see what happens display it safe and I'm looking forward to it. The old blue is getting ready I'm gonna get a roll greased up here right now I will not need those tarps because I'm gonna be pulling a roll tight So I'm gonna leave those tarps here at home. I don't have to cart those around everywhere then Getting all my stuff inside doing a few repairs on the truck today as well You know typical regular maintenance checking everything checking everything out. Yeah, I am mandated by law to do that So I have to come in here regularly Make sure everything's up to par and the government won't breathe down my neck While I'm in here. I'm going to finally replace that front marker light because they came Very excited about this as well very excited. I don't know if you noticed I am excited. Oh, they're all wrapped up in bubble wrap So I got two of them. I only need one for now. This is the front basil with LED light Need sort of tell I'll unwrap it in a second, but I'll show you what I'm doing over here this Remember these three diodes these three lights are burnt out and they've been driving me nuts It's also been driving me nuts that those are rusted and It's also you know deteriorating is it focusing This camera is very picky on focus sometimes it's old right it's time to replace it so Off you go And I'm going to replace it with a new one a new one that I have back there That's what I'm doing right now So since I have a 9 p.m. Delivery in Laredo like nighttime delivery Strange, but maybe that's normal in Laredo. Like I said, I don't know anything about Laredo I know where it is because I looked at it on a map and I'm like, oh, we're going to Mexico, okay? Right to the Mexican border. We're not crossing the border. I don't cross into Mexico I only do Canada and the United States the That's it, but I won't write up to the border So while I'm in here, I'm running another cycle of not just kerosene, but also diesel injector cleaner Through my bunk heater still having issues. So what I've come to the conclusion of right now my Unprofessional diagnosis would be of this problem is that I have a fuel filter on my pump That pumps diesel fuel to My bunk heater the filter is plugged. I think and it needs to be replaced It's underneath there Since I'm going to Texas. I'm not too worried. I hear it's a little bit warmer in Texas and then it is here We'll find it. I Won't need my bunk heater on this trip so I'm running another cycle with the cleaner in there as well to clean that all out and We'll worry about that little filter when I can get my hands on a new one It's just like right before the pump underneath here comes out of the diesel tank it goes to this little pump It's that pump that goes click click click click if you guys know these systems Right there right in there's a little tiny fuel filter and I I bet you anything is plugged with gunk I've got the door open over there like a man door around the corner to get some fresh air in here Don't worry, but I need to keep as much warmth in here as possible too. So I don't freeze Dirty too. We're gonna stop with a blue bee Oh, yeah, so I'm gonna cut these wires put new wires Bunk heater for now We'll see if it stays on so let's get all my tools that I need together in here So my shrink tubes wiring wire strippers and A good old trusty pair of rusty Wire cutters they work the same as the shiny ones Don't need this no more engine heater over there's not Now running healthy, right? Well number one is running on kerosene and Injector cleaner a lot of injector cleaner It runs better on diesel fuels what it's sort of designed for when kerosene burns hotter So burns all the soot off there along with that diesel. We should clean it all out on the inside But it like I said, I don't think it's getting the fuel that it's supposed to Through the filter that's what I'm thinking So before I bring it in anywhere to get fixed or replaced as one more thing I can do myself to try and fix it Keep running The colors on these wires are different and I always like to double check to make sure I understand which wires the ground wire Which one is the signal wire and which one is the marker light wire? Just to be sure Okay, so we got the new one on here the final test Turn this and four ways lights are on That's how Just like this side that was driving me nuts. Oh And the bunk either went off again So the next thing I got to fix now, which won't be today Go up here That one actually, you know what? Yeah, we can fix that one today, too. Let's just get it done And we're back home got everything done on the truck Picked up the mail brought some gorilla glue home got some stuff to fix around here picked up water milk fridge already Great is outside with the dogs this down right here. Where is he? Where is he? I? Heard you were trying to stand up today while I was working on the truck. Is that true? You try to stand up won't be long now, man. You'll be running around That won't be much longer, and you'll be driving all blue stabilizing some video here for you guys And man my office looks different then It once did then again. I didn't have an office for a long time, right? Guess my office here looks as it always has It's been my little helper. He's been helping me edit the Christmas videos for you guys Now he's upstairs. He's a little bit creepy He's a little bit angry He's tired What's all the noise up here? Diesel you gonna stop him? Thank you.  She's sad enough He likes to go here and just stare out the window into the backyard exactly If he's definitely got to go Oops, there we go. Is that everybody? Alright, well I got to get to the door so I can open it. I'm the one with the thumbs Oh Come on one more all the way in the yard all the way in the yard. There you go So I think the truck's all ready to go that bunk heater I know you guys some of you guys tell me to stop talking about the bunk heater So I'm gonna keep talking about it for it It's it's gonna need more work than that so I'll worry about that when I get back from this trip other than that the truck is all Ready to go and it's all my Just got to get a few of my clothes together here yet And we'll be on our way first thing in the morning tomorrow before the Sun comes up I'd like to be awake here. I don't have to be gone first first thing But I need to be able to get awake be awake so I can start getting everything loaded up Getting ready for this is a bigger trip than I usually do Been to Texas before when was the last time I was in Texas? I went down to far, Texas a PHARR, which is the very southern most tip of Texas. I was down there in 2009 I think a long time ago. So I hear things have changed since then I guess I'll go see if it's just rumors or if it actually is different. What do you think diesel? You were with me in Texas, huh? Diesel's been to Texas so it's moral Like I said down straight down I-29. I'm thinking we could probably make it Definitely past Sioux Falls, Sioux City We could probably make it close to Council Bluffs, Iowa Between Council Bluff and Sioux City somewhere in there The next day we'll make it into Kansas probably Maybe Oklahoma. Maybe Oklahoma. Yeah Probably Oklahoma. Maybe even northern Texas That area anyways around Oklahoma Let's have to wait and see Hopefully the wind is in our favor because it's all going to be flat land driving all the way down there, right? Very few hills So if the wind is coming from the south that's usually nice because it's blowing warm air up north to where we are, right? But in this case, I'm kind of hoping it's coming from the north and I hope it's just going to push me all the way down Get some good fuel economy and then turn around and come from the south and push me all the way back home when I'm done I don't know what my reload will be yet. I'll find out next week But from what I've heard apparently we got some regular freight coming out of Alabama I might be heading over east to Alabama and then back up to Saskatchewan, but that's just hearsay. That's nothing set in stone. That's just other drivers saying hey, they I picked up there quite often I know we also pick up freight out of Jackson, Tennessee steel Drive-in picks out of Georgia all the time, but I'm not on drive-in. I'll have a roll tight trailer So I won't have to take my tarps with me. I confirmed that with the Lord gods because I'm leaving them at home I'm not dragging those things all around if I don't have to 250 pounds of tarps Oh, you get them Frank. You get them get them So if you're tired of the home time vlogs, don't worry Go trucking tomorrow. And if you really like the home time vlogs, hey We'll be back again in about a week. I don't always film when I'm at home Do you guys like the home time stuff? I know that it's not as exciting. I'm a little bit more relaxed Right now. I'm still on vacation. So I'm not I'm not supposed to do anything. This is christmas vacation those two guys ah well diesel Are you doing ready to go in your paws getting cold? In you go see if I can get these two rascals back in the house It's nice that This little old guy frank can still play with Chevy diesel's back hips are Well, they haven't gotten worse Since we moved here, but they've definitely gotten worse since last year And he can't run with Chevy anymore the way he used to it's kind of sad So it's a good thing Chevy still has Frank to play with Frank is old But apparently he's still in pretty good shape either that or he just doesn't care He's gonna play nonetheless. He doesn't care about the pain Frank the door's over here, bud. This is the thing with Frank.  We started putting up some One canvas here the other day Brett is gonna make this all into one big family collage wall This camera would focus The way I want it to Oh, yeah, I gotta put these toys away This is like his favorite thing right now. It's like a 1980s Thing It's the old stuff. He likes the classics This Here I guess I think I got one more in there yet. So if you're wondering, uh We keep all of our Christmas decorations and Christmas trees up until after Ukrainian Christmas Which is on January 6th, I believe We're not Ukrainian, but uh, it's an excuse to leave our tree up longer Oh boy Place is still nice Probably because it's my room that I use the most Tune in tomorrow for another video as we get all blue back on the road Dust off the dust Dust off the dust Blow off the dust Clean off the dust Dust it off and Head on down I-29 to texas. I'll see you guys then. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already


When you're working in SPSS and you're accessing data, one of the most important things you can do is to create labels and definitions for your data. I like to think of this as the statistical version of Alice in Wonderland and the caterpillar, asking her to explain herself, you need to explain yourself or more specifically, when it comes to your data, you need to tell SPSS what do your data mean. Now, that is the data description. And I see two kinds of information that you tell SPSS about your data. The first one, I'm going to call semiotics, which comes from the study of meaning. This is where you tell SPSS, what the variable names are, the data types, the variable labels, the value labels, the missing values, the level of measurement, and the role that each variable plays. Contrasted with that, there are other elements that you can call aesthetics. And that addresses variable width, decimal places, column width, and alignment. And these are all settings within the data window of SPSS. One of the most important though, at least for human consumption is going to be the variable and value labels. And so I'm going to take a little time and talk about those. With the variable names, that's what the short names, the ones that you have there at the top of the column, there are some important rules. So the rules for variable names. Number one, the names must be unique, no two variables can have the same name, that shouldn't be too surprising. It's an identifier. Rule number two, the names must start with a letter. I put an asterisk there because you can start with an at a pound sign or a dollar sign, but you don't want to because those are generally reserved for special functions within SPSS. Rule number three, names can use letters, upper lowercase, they can use numbers, and they can use period underscore at pound dollar sign. On the other hand, don't end with a period that can cause confusion with the command terminator. And don't end with an underscore because that's used for automatic variable names when SPSS is doing computations. Rule number four, names cannot include spaces. And rule number five, names must be less than 64 bytes. And most text coding systems, that 64 characters, but if you're using the Unicode system that might be only 32 characters. And the last rule rule number six is the names cannot be any of these words all and by eq g e g t l e l t and e not or two or with because those are all reserved function names within SPSS. So don't create that confusion. So those are the short names that go at the top of a variable. On the other hand, the label that you associate with that you can give it a more descriptive name. Those are the variable labels. And so there are a few rules for those rule number one, they must be less than 256 bytes, that actually means it can be really long. Although you don't usually want to do that because some procedures will display as few as 40 bytes, 40 characters. And you really want to be able to read what it is. So you want to keep it short, but you can go longer if you need to. Rule number two, the labels must be enclosed in quotes. Although I'll tell you, they need to be straight quotes, the vertical ones, and not the curly quotes are SPSS chokes on those. Rule number three, labels can include any character, including spaces, which is something that you can't have in the variable name, but you can put it here. So that allows you to put labels that sort of float on top of the variable names, and those can show up in the variable lists, they can show up in the charts and the output that you create. Another really important one is value labels. So you may have a variable called gender, and you may put zeros and ones, but do you remember what those zeros and ones are? So I'm going to show you some ways of dealing with that. The most important thing is to put value labels on there. So here are the rules for value labels. Rule number one, they must be less than 121 bytes. So that actually is really long. You generally want to keep your labels pretty short. Rule number two, like the variable labels, the value labels must be enclosed in quotes, and they need to be the straight quotes and not curly quotes. Rule number three, labels can include any character, including spaces, that's good. This is an interesting one. Rule number four, the value labels do not need to be unique. That is, more than one value can have the same label. So you might have the numbers one through nine. And it could be that seven, eight, nine, all say the same thing. But they underneath have different code and terrorist situations where you might want to do that. But mostly I want to show you how this works in SPSS. So just open up this syntax file. And this one's going to be a little different because we're actually not going to use a data file, I'll refer to one, but I mostly just want to show you the syntax. This syntax file shows how to write variable labels and value labels. Now, you don't necessarily have to put them all broken down in lines, I do it because it makes them a lot more readable, it's a lot easier to see what's going on. The first thing is the command variable labels, because there's an SPSS command, it's written on all capitals. And then what you do is you write the short name of the variable. And then you have at least one space, and then you have straight quotes, and then the long label. So here, for instance, I've got very zero one, that would be the first variable. And then this is its label written out. And you don't need to have anything after it don't need any commas or question marks or semicolons or anything. You just go to the next one. Now I put it into another line because that makes it easy to follow. And I run them all through here. I'm going to make one important recommendation. If you have a dichotomous variable or binary one that has only two possible values and gender might fit into that category, let me recommend this, that you code it as zeros and ones, a lot of people use ones and twos, but that gets confusing. If you code it as zeros and ones, and name the variable after whatever the one is. Now, when it comes to male and female, I generally give ones to whichever group I think can have the higher score on my main outcome variable. So it'll switch around. But if for some reason, I think that men are going to have a higher score on an outcome variable, then I will call it male. And then the label will be R for respondent is male. On the other hand, if I think women are going to have a higher score, then I will call the variable female and the label will be R as female, I would obviously only use one of those two. Now here are some other examples. I tend to give generic names such as variable or really just q for question q 01 q 02. And I use the leading zeros so they sort properly in the dialogue boxes. And when you're done listing all of your variable names and the variable labels and quotes, just end with a period doesn't have to be have a space before that's leftover from earlier versions of SPSS it's a habit I have. So you can run this at any time and it will assign these labels to the variables and then they'll show up in the data file, which is nice. Next are the value labels. And what you have here is the first command, which is written in all caps, and then you give a list of variables to which the values apply. And you can list them out separately, ver one, ver two, here, I've got a very three with that elite in zero. And then if they're all next to each other, if they are adjacent, they can actually specify ranges, ver three, two, and capitals, ver 10. So that'll be three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And then you just go to the next line, and you give the first value, that's a zero, and then I give zero equals no, and one equals yes. When you're done giving the values need to put a slash. So it knows you're done with the values for that variable. Then you can go on to the next variable. I said, for instance, if I gave one on a gender variable to men, I would call it male. And so zero, which would mean no, they're not male, would be female, and one yes, they are or true, that would be male. And do a slash. On the other hand, if you coded it the other way, then you just call it female and zero, which means no or false means they're not female, they're male. One means they are fine. Obviously, use just one of these, I do the slash. And then I could have a rating variable, say for instance, a lot of people call it a Likert scale, just a rating scale. And I could do rate zero one to rate 10. And I can specify every value. So this is a five point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Finish with a slash, or maybe have a different kind of scale here at the end, I have scale zero once your scale zero to that's an 11 point scale, but I only mark the two ends, the zero and the 10. So zero is never or not at all 10 is always completely. And then to let SPSS know that I'm done specifying value labels and with a period. So this is actually a single sentence. And it's a way of telling it how you want the numbers to appear both in the data window and in any output that you get. Finally, I'll mention something about missing values because it can also be easier to specify these in syntax, the command is missing values. And you just give the names of the variables and you can use two in the same way. And then in parentheses, you put the number that is assigned to missing values. 99 is common. So I've got that there. And then you can do a slash if you're going to use different codes after that. I could do mail through female. And here I say two through high. And really what that means is anything other than zero or a one is missing. So if I accidentally type in a seven, you know, it's missing. And then here, I specify several different values, I can put seven comma eight comma nine. So if any of those show up, those would be considered missing values. Do what you want. The nice thing is it will exclude them automatically from analyses, but it will include them in frequencies when you're getting that output. Finish with a period.  And it's going to do a lot to clarify your data and make it easier to follow your analyses and reconstitute your work in the future.


housekeeping if you study carefully ఇఈగింాకమార్. లావసారిలికవారూటా. అవర్లాప్. అంవిననిసునాటి ద్స్. మఎవిన్మనికార్. మాప్లాటాలిరాటిస్. ప్లార్యకటిసాా涂దా. అంవిని� The Bible's way of getting married from the Hebrew society was made selection. Families usually arrange marriages as we are going to study today. Every culture may have its way. In the New Testament you will notice in the Roman society you have made selection usually arranged by families. Example Mary was bethrotted to Joseph. Be it as it may. There is a functional difficulty with our dating habit. Hence I say fixing flawed family foundations. All the young people are looking for. They want the right spouse. They want the right man. They want the right woman. But the dating culture that is based on the philosophical underpinning of romanticism is not helping do the right thing. And it leads to a lot of immorality. Let me give you an example. By 1950s a new morality had arrived in the world and with it came a jump from the beach of this foolishness to permissiveness. Then you see today we see the resultant. Society flaunts sex in everything. The effects are far-reaching that a return to modesty would almost instantly collapse every economy of the world.   Everything is around sex. If you want it to sell you must polish it around sex.  And the concept of sex we see today originated from the theory of romanticism which exalts emotion above logic, above reason. And today, sadly, the young people in the Christian church are susceptible to its bewitching influence. It is in this slide the Bible says if any of you lack wisdom, this you ask God. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path. Let me make a bold statement today. God owes it not a responsibility to direct you to the right spouse until you acknowledge him. Look at the text again. In all your ways, including your boyfriend's way, your girlfriend's way, acknowledge him.  You must acknowledge him, not in many ways, in all ways. Then you have given him the seat, then he can direct your path.


Before the invention of the phonograph in 1887, music relied on the same technology of recording and preservation used for literature. Music could be written down and copied by hand, circulated widely in printed form. It could be annotated, kept in libraries, discarded, and much, much more. But performances could not yet be preserved as sounds. The 19th century was a period that saw a huge expansion in music consumption, printing techniques became more affordable and varied. For instance, it was possible to produce printed copies of something that had been unwritten on paper with a special ink. The process was called transfer lithography. It was not quite as seamless as using a photocopy machine, but the results were similar. Printed music was also made more accessible by new distribution infrastructures, such as macadamized roads and steam-powered railways. This was also an age of renewed efforts in popular education, ensuring that more and more people could read what was being printed, copied, and distributed in ever larger quantities. While we may imagine the 19th century as an era of ubiquitous music, people of the time often described it so, what they meant certainly did not resemble our experience today of going from one space to another with speakers almost in every corner, without recording technology in order to exist as sound music had to be performed live by someone. Concerts, especially large public ones, were expensive to put on, so concertgoers did not constitute the majority of music consumers in this period. Most people interested in this art form would buy sheet music, or copy it by hand, to perform themselves at home, often in the company of family and friends. It was quite common for people to collect autograph signatures of their favorite composers and authors, whether originals or in facsimile prints made with transfer lithography. The origins of today's mass music consumption happened in paper form, exchanged, bought, handled with care or the exact opposite, easily distributed and reaching far away people and places. Even those who attended public concert could purchase programs or portable scores to read during the events, which helped them remain focused on the listening experience or simply gave them something to live through so as not to get bored. Before the 20th century, when sound technology and later screen media took over, being interested in music meant first and foremost handling it in written forms. Perhaps precisely because handling music was so central, it took different shapes and could be a more invested act than we tend to assume, going beyond the functionality of simply reading notes on the page or playing them. One telling example is the way in which the composer Luigi Cherubini handled the contents of his library at his home in Paris during the 1820s and 30s. He copied in impeccable, luxurious handwriting about 3,000 pages of music by composers of the previous century. The names include Pergolesi, Durante, Padre Martini and Handel, composers whose works were well known and available to purchase in print. These psalms by Benedetto Marcello certainly were, yet Cherubini went to considerable length to copy them from a printed edition and produce four massive, beautifully crafted volumes in his own hand. Copying was, in this case, most likely a means to absorb the models of these past masters to virtually apprentice under them. But still, there seems to have been more at stake than simply going through the music as a composition exercise. In Cherubini's copy, the page layout and calligraphy are monuments of precision. He even went as far as reproducing the original Hebrew and ancient Greek inscriptions of the intonations, though he probably did not understand them. Such precise work must have taken him years to complete. It was an exercise in calligraphy, in perfecting the art of writing by hand as clearly and beautifully as possible, almost as if Cherubini wanted to create by hand something nearing the perfection of print, so that lithographic copies could be easily taken from anything he wrote. Another approach to handling music, which was common in this period, left fascinating traces on items previously owned by Cherubini. He collected a short sample of other composers' musical handwriting. Like many other music devotees of the time, he had an interest in graphology, the study of the shape of a script, in an attempt to gauge traits of the writer's personality. He was believed hand writing conveyed the sensations of physical movement, that of the writer's hand, which were thought to be as revealing as the involuntary gesticulating or facial expressions which accompany a conversation. Cherubini was after one page autograph samples so that he could place them side by side and assess these movements by comparing them. To do so collectors like Cherubini often had to pillage longer manuscripts or letters for samples. This was necessary for that composers who could no longer produce sample pages of their handwriting expressly for the collector. Armed with scissors and spare paper, Cherubini would visit the families of former colleagues and even the library of the Paris conservatoire to carry out such surgical extractions. He would cut out a few autograph pages and substitute them with copies written in his own hand. That librarians and friends indulged him in this way speaks to a different culture of preserving and handling music than we're used to, one in which it was not necessary to keep artifacts, even valuable ones, from being actively engaged with or even modified. Cherubini carried out this kind of surgery on the most cherished manuscript in his own, the autograph of Haydn Symphony number 103, the drum roll, which Haydn himself had donated and dedicated to Cherubini when they met in Vienna. It took out three spare blank pages from the end of the manuscript, copied the content of the beginning of the minuet, and then cut the original out before gluing in his own copy as a replacement. Yet, ripping out three pages of Haydn's handwriting from this manuscript was far from extreme as an example of what music handlers were up to in this period. Another pseudo-science, extremely popular in the early 19th century, phrenology, had similar objectives to graphology, but was based on observing or feeling the shape of the skull, in our case the skulls of musicians, to determine their dispositions.  It remained separated from the rest of his body for about 150 years, moving from one private collection of skulls to another, until skull and body were finally reunited in a new grave in 1954. To be sure, Cherubini's care in providing replacements for the pages he took from Haydn's autographs and many other manuscripts was tactful by the standards of the time. What's more, preparing his copies of original pages provided further opportunities to engage with various composers through their scripts. Retracing those lines was another way to appreciate their nuances and to get to know the personality behind the music, even if the composer was long dead or lived far away. Cherubini lived at a time when sounds could not be recorded and played back. However, something which could be replayed over and over again was the imaginary encounter with different musical personalities through the shape of their handwriting. Handling music in paper form, just as it is the case when we listen to it, could be the beginning of an extraordinary immersive experience.


Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Well, welcome back inside Mandalay Bay as we continue our coverage of VMworld here on theCUBE along with Peter Burris. I'm John Walls, and I was joined by David Convery who's the Solutions Architect at CDW and Lee Caswell, Vice President of Product Storage for the VMware Storage and Availability Business Unit. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Good to see you. Great to be here. How's show doing so far for you? Oh, it's on fire. I mean, we have a tiger by the tail here. It's been great. Don't let go. Don't let go. All right, Dave, you've been doing this for a long time. And we were just talking about your history and your background. I said, yeah, I first got into virtualization back at Y2K. Wow, I remember that. How far we've come, huh? And yeah, yeah, again, I did it. I used it for Y2K testing. And then from there, I worked for a disaster recovery services company and we had these customers, Katrina, Rita, 9-11, they just came in with their stuff and they didn't have enough physical servers to, you know, in their contract to recover their businesses. And they were taking out VMware evaluation licenses to get their businesses up and running. And VMware was super supportive of that and they knew, you know, the licenses would come and wow, yeah, it was like thrust into ESXi or ESX at the time, you know, just crazy. And as we think about what's happening on hyperconverge now, right, it's the same idea, right? I mean, it was actually practicality, you know, the necessity, right, of using VMware because gosh, I needed to do it for kind of TCO reasons. And what happened was ESXi started out at the fringe almost, right? And then came roaring into the, you know, into the core as people realized, hey, I really can run like mission critical applications, business critical apps. The same trajectory is happening now with VCN, HCI, right? And our VCN rating notes, we're starting off like outside startup VDI, test and dev, right? You know, all the management clusters, right? But now what's happening and the majority of applications mainstream business apps, right?  And as we were talking about this, I still have customers, they talk about running exchange or SQL on physical servers and I'm like, why? So now you take all those benefits of virtualization and you add VCN on top of it and make everything totally portable on just, you know, commodity based hardware.  Who cares? Throw some storage in the server, add them as you need and keep going. Well, to that point, Lee, you're talking before we went on the air here about how people, you know, professionals coming in and saying, I want to get my attention from here to up here, right? I want to be able to look at business and not so much about what's going on behind the scenes in the back office. It's interesting, I was even at CDW recently, right? We were talking about how long it takes to train someone on enterprise storage. Versus, you know, actually the less you know about storage, the more a hyper-conversion system works the way you expect. I had a note, yeah, of course it gets bigger, right? I mean, why wouldn't it? So the idea that you can get people trained up, not just using the product, but actually selling the product, I mean, it's actually a very interesting dynamic. One of the other interesting things we're seeing right now is just the overlap of flash, right? All flash, right? Which first, you know, blue, you know, came blazing onto the scene for performance, right? For an application is now coming in because customers want to spend less time, actually man, is that looking down? I don't want to look down anymore, right? And so the idea that the customer sat numbers for all flash users is just off the charts because the risk of misconfiguring something actually is really low, right? I mean, you don't spend nearly as much time and you don't worry about it. Right, right.  And on top of that, you get compute memory and everything else. So there's still some challenges associated with application and selecting new technology and there's a lot of transformation and transition. There's a lot of new technologies coming online. That's right. Even in the storage world. So how is virtualization helping customers or helping protect customers for making bad choices with current products? Yeah, one thing you want to look at is like, where do I manage this from, right? How many silos do I have, right? And so the extent that you can leverage vCenter, for example, right, is a common management domain, not just for storage, by the way, right? Well, we started off with compute, right? We got storage, but you also have networking, right? So what we have today with NSX, right? Integrating that together. We've heard what we announced at the show here, right? It's this VMware cloud foundation. Great way to go and integrate, right? All the rich features functionality and now you've got it in one user interface, right? That simplifies the deployment and then the support, right? Making everything easy. So, you know, putting everything together, plug it in, run a wizard, everything's set up for you and it's set up the way it should be. Yeah. So it's not as dependent upon the underlying type or choice that you made about the storage. It's now more what does the application need and let's just point the application at the pool. Yeah, so there's still, I still see, you know, there's going to be those needs where that super low latency, super fast shared storage is going to be critical and is going to be needed for specific applications. But all that other stuff, all that normal day-to-day, web servers, applications, email, file shares, all that stuff, you can just throw it on there and it works. You don't have to worry about all the silos and all the different management people that you need. So going back to John's question, based on your point, Lee, the idea that getting people to raise up their perspectives. Dave, how much time are you now saving, not doing the physical stuff, to actually starting to talk to developers that people are taking all of this data, all these assets and turning it into business value? Are you able to spend more time and directly supporting them as you go into customers and design these capabilities? It does seem like that shadow IT or DevOps or, you know, the people that aren't depending or depend on IT, the consumer, is becoming more of the decision maker or at least the influencer. And what V-SAN brings to the table for those kind of people, especially with the automation and the whole private cloud piece of it, it takes down that, I call it the IT stop sign, okay? So, you know, why is DevOps going to the public cloud? Because it's easy. So you have to be as easy as wherever they're going in order to bring them back and keep that governance on your data and keep your IP where it belongs, whether it's in that private cloud or often to a secure, more secure public cloud or through a hybrid cloud or whatever. V-SAN kind of keeps everything contained for that. Yeah, and I think there seems to be a trend or at least a thread here that I'm hearing in a different conversation here about simplicity, right? It's just about keeping things simple for people, letting them focus on their core competencies and what they're really, what they're paid to do and not distract them away from having to learn. Like you said, you get up to speed in 15 minutes as opposed to hours or weeks of training before. Three clicks, you have a visa, is it three clicks? Yeah, three clicks, you have a visa. I ask customers pretty routinely now, is your budget going to be, is it higher or lower this year? The answer is like, it's lower, right? Yeah, it's always lower. And you're like, do you have more people or less people? And I'm like, well, less people, they're shrinking data centers, right? And all of a sudden, and then you say, well, and how many projects do you have? Like, every project now has an IT component, right? So now it's the pace of change, right? And so if you don't have to worry about the underlying infrastructure as much, now all of a sudden, it just becomes easier to start worrying about, hey, how do I go on scale? We had a customer this morning I was talking to, right, that was talking about, well, you know, the other thing it does is it gives me the opportunity to have kind of bite-sized chunks, right? So the risk of making the wrong decision is actually low, right? I buy a set of servers in as opposed to, you know, I buy something that's this big where I have to basically predict what's going to happen for the next five years. And this looks more like, hey, you know what? I kind of have to know what's going to happen over the next six months, and then we'll figure it out from there. That's today's mentality. So easier to change one piece instead of the whole puzzle. Exactly, right? I don't pay the tax for that. That's a great point. There's not that many IT shops that are refreshing their entire data center. There are, but there's not that many. Usually it's a silo, so, but there's always projects. VDIs, some sort of new SAP application or, you know, we're migrating to a new version of Exchange or whatever it is. So, okay, let's start there and let's just slip it in, try it out, and you'll see you'll like it. It's like, sorry, it's like crack. Everybody needs more, right? So, slip it in, try it out, and you'll see you'll like it, and then from there it'll just roll. And as the old siloed equipment starts to age out, they'll just easily transition it into vSAN. That's what I think, we just did a survey. Be motioned over, add a new server, shut that down. We just finished a survey of 250 vSAN customers, and one of the things that we were watching is, so what about the applications, right? Because when we started, like it was, hey, I'm going to try this in test dev, I'll try it over here, or DR is a good one, right? I tried and, you know, it's not, I'm not running like my real stuff on it, right? You know, now what we're finding is like, this year it's switched, right? So we flipped into the majority or now, business critical applications, right? They're running SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, the whole Microsoft stack. They're running Oracle databases, right? They're running Percona, right? I mean, they're my SQL variants, right? It's really interesting.  And it's the economics that drive this, right? Once you started looking and saying, you know, here's how I can go and do this in more bite-sized chunks, it starts to become more, you know, it's more cloud-like, I think, from that standpoint. But it's also the risk, because, as you said, you make a design decision, it's not going to be the right design decision in 18 months. You make a product decision today, it's probably not going to be the right product decision in 18 months. You make the right, you know, you want to, your company decides to buy a new company, or wants to diversify the best of itself, you don't want the infrastructure getting in the way of those business decisions. So it's certainly the economics, but it's a lot of it has to do with the fact that, as you said, the pace of change is so great that the only way you're going to make a decision so great that the only way to ensure that you can keep up is to focus on where the change really needs to be and diminish the focus on where the change isn't as required, does that make sense? It does make sense, and you know, one of the things that, you know, degrees of freedom that customers also want is we're finding, you know, they're pretty used to being able to configure servers and choose their own server, right? So the idea that we give choice, right, running software on a server where you get to choose, right, I mean, we have what, 15 different partners, right, server partners building something called a vSAN-ready node, right? So you can take our software, pre-configured, right, to strip out the integration risk, if you will. Now, there's also some customers who just want, like, the simplest, easiest, fully integrated, and we're working with EMC, that VX Rail product is an integrated, CDW offers both of these, right? So if, you know, for customers who want just to say, I want a single point of support integrated backup, I mean, that's a world-class product, right, as an integrated appliance, that's one way to buy, right, one way to deploy. But on the other hand, if I'm a UCS shop, I can go and say, hey, here's how I get a UCS. If I'm an HPE shop, here's how I do that. Lenovo, right, it all works, all pre-configured. Or Dell? Oh, yeah, the up-to-Dell, yeah. Of course, right. I've heard of it, guys, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you for that, by the way. No sweat. I may be back, yeah. I'm happy to be here, the value out of the cube. All right, there we go, exactly, yeah. Whoo! Good career advice. Just flash before your eyes there for a moment. Yeah, it's all good. Right, right. But this choice, right, I mean, it's interesting because certainly customers are looking at, what level of choice and flexibility do they want? And this server choice, right, is a big one. Yeah, yeah, there's the reason why people buy servers isn't because it's a specific brand.  The software that the vendors offer to manage those are what's important. And it's funny, since vCenter, even before it was vCenter, you know, just, I guess, two O was it? Being able to integrate the management of the servers into vCenter and having all those sensors and all that stuff kind of bubble up into vCenter is huge. And being able to hook in and take, like, vRealize automation or vRealize orchestrator and make it deploy the physical hardware as well as the virtual, it's big. Tie that in with vSAN, it just kind of makes it easy. So Dave, you're working with a lot of customers every single day. They are also starting to deploy cloud or at least procure cloud as part of their core strategy. Talk a little bit about the challenges associated with inter-cloud communication and the role that virtualization plays there. Yeah, yeah, so it's still kind of the Wild Wild West out there with that. I know VMware with NSX trying to, and now with the new announcements, and I haven't fully digested all this stuff from yesterday. None of us have. Just the idea of providing that kind of peanut butter of policy for security and networking and all that from whatever you need to keep. But by the way, that's a technical term. Peanut butter of policy. I like that a lot. I have more. Peanut butter of policy. In your private cloud and being able to kind of spark that up in whatever public cloud you choose to use kind of brings that core, you know, so VMware's message was always, whatever hardware you have your choice, now it's whatever cloud you have your choice. So it kind of makes sense, you know. And yeah, security and the networking is the biggest piece of it. And if you look at the NIST official version of hybrid cloud, it's being able to move things back and forth seamlessly. And that's what it brings to this table. A big part of this cross-cloud message, right? And there's an obligation and it turns out, I'd argue that your most strategic engagement with the cloud is actually data, right? VMs you can spin up, spin down, right? They're transitory, it's on and off. But the decision about where you place data is longstanding. And what data? And what data? Sovereignty issues about, you know, it takes, you know, data's not quick to move anywhere, right? So it takes time and it takes, you know, from a cost standpoint, right? You all of a sudden lock yourself in on data to keeping it going, right? So those sort of issues, and if you want to take it back, by the way, there's some egress fees and other things to go and manage. So what we announced right in this cross-cloud world about how we're running, for example, in IBM SoftLayer, right? You can now spin up VSAN in SoftLayer, right? And see the same policy-based management, right? Across the cloud now, right? I mean, that extension, right? Into the public clouds, right? Is a really interesting way for us to go and talk about, you know, moving from just a storage, you know, into a data services, data management, right? That becomes a key element to go forward. How do you convince people to be early adopters, then, of that? Because now that they're making decisions that, well, not that they all matter, that those matter maybe a little more. Is it really early adoption, though? This far into the game? I mean, there's not always... I mean, we should talk about a transitory element. Yeah. You're thinking, okay, I want you to take another step. Yeah. I want you to go a little further out. And so that's what I was saying. Well, here's where I'd, let me add a little bit to that. Here's what I'd say is that, you said data management. Yes. I would say data asset management. That's fair. That's a good term.  And so this whole notion of data as an asset really elevates this conversation about what data, where, when, who, all those other things. And to the degree that virtualization simplifies those conversations, it's going to have a major impact on business flexibility, agility, even design. That's right. You guys agree? Totally agree, yes. So think about it. And I have to credit VMware SE, his name is Paul Irwin. Think of NSX as kind of a bodyguard, okay? And every chunk of data, whatever it is as a bodyguard, kind of leading them, leading the way and protecting that piece of data from whatever it is that it needs protected, wherever it goes. And that's really a real simple analogy. So it's not just, I have to configure a firewall over here and make sure that if it goes into cloud that that firewall has the same rules. It doesn't matter anymore because my bodyguard's gone with me and that bodyguard is making sure that all the policies are applied no matter where I am. It also opens up new areas, you know, when you talk about data asset management, now I started thinking about, well, you know, maybe I want to do some big data analytics on where my data is, right? Where do I locate it, right? And you could locate it at different places for sovereignty, security, local performance, for example, right? Back up any geolocation issues, right? And then I also started thinking of a policy base, or maybe we call it storage policy based management. And that sort of, now it says, you know, it's not just capacity, right? I maybe want to be thinking of performance, right? How do I think about allocating performance? How do I think about managing performance across different assets, for example? I mean, this is what's exciting, I think, is once you start where we've started from, which is at the hypervisor level, you're at a natural architectural injection point to go and say we could take all of these pieces in and very efficiently go and manage them, provide new functionality, right? That's a really interesting way, as customers try and assess, like my data may not just be here anymore, right? Maybe out here, maybe out there, how do I go in and get a handle on that? That's true, once you hit that inflection point where the industry starts coming to you. Right, that's right. VMware has clearly hit that point, and then some. Yeah, interesting. Well, we've had peanut butter policy, we've had bodyguards, I wish we had more time to get more pearls of wisdom today. We'll get the big IT stop sign. I like that too, all right, good. Thanks for joining us, guys. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having us. Have a great show. All right. Our coverage on theCUBE, VMworld continues in just a moment here from Las Vegas.


Thank you, thank you very much, thank you very much. Okay, I think they told me I got about, was it 90 minutes, two hours? This is such a blast, I am having such a good time.  So, I mean, this is, you gotta give me the moment, it's like I gotta do a little walking down memory lane right here. I gotta do it, and I realize, and by the way, cause I'm gonna mention a lot of people and I'm inevitably gonna forget some, so please forgive me, forgive me if I do that because I just gotta say, let me just start by saying, when I got involved in this over 30 years ago, first started speaking out as a young professor, I did not envision creating an organization, I couldn't imagine creating an organization, I could not imagine managing other people, I couldn't even manage myself. I mean, it was inconceivable to me. And yet, with all the craziness and the burden and the service, service is a Yiddish word which means trouble, headaches, of running an organization and dealing with real human beings and all their stuff, the fact of the matter is one of the greatest sources of joy has been the people that I've worked with, within Drug Policy Alliance, Linda Smith Center before that, and in this broader movement, both in this country and around the world. And I just gotta shout out some of them and remember as many of the people, because remember, this goes back not just the 17 years of DPA, it goes back to 23 years, back to 94, and they're starting at Linda Smith Center. I gotta start off by just saying the people, I mean, let me start with New Jersey and Roseanne Scottie.  We need you to end those drug free school, got it Ethan, it's gonna happen. We need you to pass the best naloxo, got it Ethan, it's gonna happen. We need you to do medical, got it, got it.  And that powerhouse of a woman with her indefiniteable, you know, deputy Megan Glazer had made stuff happen and made stuff happen in New Jersey, has landed on the front page of the papers and transformed what was the worst state in America when it came to the war on drugs. No state had a higher rate of incarcerating people for drug offenses. No state had more people dying of HIV, women and babies, and Roseanne has transformed that. I look at, I look at, you're not gonna have time to applaud for all of this. New Mexico, you know, three women, Catherine Huffman, Rina Shepansky, and Emily Calton back in the AMAZE teams they assembled. Catherine Huffman who moved there, that stayed back in 2000, everything set foot there, worked without Libertarian Republican governor, Gary Johnson, who had stepped out courageously to challenge the drug war, and the Democrats in the legislature, neither of whom wanted to do anything one another, and they, she put that stuff together. I think Catherine was the first DPA colleague who was ever hospitalized for exhaustion, but not the last. Rina Shepansky who is now the chief of staff to the New Mexico Speaker, and just made stuff happen working with Bill Richardson, Emily Calton back who had a deal with this atrocious governor, Martinez, coming in and figured out a way to build left-right coalitions like nobody had ever done in America on this cause, absolutely extraordinary.  You know, Lynn Lyman, who put together, I mean, just the role she played, not just on the marijuana thing, but on everything else, Armando Goudinho, who actually broke through on the issues of cremigration and got Latino activists to embrace marijuana reform, because we had proved our merits on the cremigration stuff, making that stuff happen. San Francisco, hey, Marsha Rosenbaum, you know, hitting it out of the park on safety first, turning this model city Laura Thomas, I know you're gonna get that safe injection facility going, will you be first, we will see.  Hey, Art Colorado, I am so proud of you, becoming a national figure on this stuff, the stuff you're making happen there, and in DC, beginning with Bill McCall, and then Bill Piper, our longtime director there, Jasmine Tyler, and Naomi Long, Michael Collins and Grant Smith, and Malake, who landed up leading the first marijuana decrim legalization effort in which racial justice was front and center and pivotal to the success of that campaign, providing a model for how we do this in other places. New York, my home, headquarters. Derek Hodel, I love you and I thank you. Both for the five years you did with me back then and for the work you did as DPA's interim director when I decided to step down, you have done beautiful, incredible work and I am so profoundly grateful. And then for the five people who headed up our New York efforts and became national leaders, Vince Marone, Deborah Small, Michael Blaine, may he rest in peace, Gabriel Seah, and now Cassandra Federique. I mean, you're talking about dynamos coming out of New York and becoming national leaders in a way that have helped transform drug policy in this country. Hey, Jag, Gulford on the psychedelics and Hannah, our dynamo on the international front, right? The people who helped me raise the money, Clovis and Ellen, Gloka and Jude, yeah, man, you did it. Our communication director, Deedee and Sharda, if you don't know them, you gotta know them. And my brother, Tony Newman, the media maestro, the media maestro, the media maestro. Stephanie, who organized these conferences and then became our person, working on the dancing and keeping people safe when they want to party, making the stuff happen in ways that are pivotal. Tommy and Tony, working at the media department, Tommy McDonald, Tony Papa, you guys are heroes to me as well. What a trio we've had in that team. Asha, Asha, Asha Washington, you spread your wings and fly and make stuff happen at MC and build the best grants program in America, a grants program that cares about the people that talks about not as grantees, but as partners that infuses with love and passion and direction and has made incredible, incredible things happen. I love you so much, I admire you so much. And let me just say, because nobody, nobody except those who work in DPA more or less who are gonna know about these two people, but they are DPA's internal secret weapons. Ryan Chavez and Lena McGoya, oh yeah, baby. DPA, give them a shout out for Ryan and Lena who never gets a public recognition, but who made the machinery work inside in a way that never gets applause, never gets a claim, but this machine never would have worked without the work they do. Now, I know I've left some out and I do apologize because there's been hundreds of people who have come through and worked and made the stuff happen or going out and do an incredible work. Then I have to turn to other people. There's four people, I would say, who have been absolutely central to my life, my success, and the success of this organization. And the first one, who some of you know, is my daughter Lila. Lila's not here tonight, but when you're an activist and you're going 24-7, what did you call it, Harry, 36-9, you know, and you're going non-stop, non-stop, non-stop, but my love for my daughter and my commitment to being a good father was the thing that kept me sane. It was as somebody who had grown up as a traditional Jew, keeping the Sabbath and rejected that, who obliged me to once again relearn the meaning of the Sabbath and the importance of the Sabbath and putting things aside in order to rejuice and to love and to get to your heart so that you come back out the next day fighting and making things happen. And when I can say to all of you, whether you have religion, no religion, I don't care what date is, what it is, the notion of somehow putting away that time, Kenny Glasgow, when you put down that phone and you take that 24 hours or whatever it is once a week and disconnect and it feels like you're stealing time away from the movement. But you know, it's when the new ideas come, it's how you recharge, it's how you have the ability to pace yourself as I was said in this opening thing, this is a marathon we are in and that's one of the ways you just gotta do that. It's my tip to all of you as activists. Secondly, my partner in this for so long, my partner in work, my partner in play, my partner in romance, Marcia Rosenbaum. You know, I mean Marcia, I have so much admired the kind of leadership role you've played in terms of the safety first and addressing the issue of kids and constantly finding the new energy to get out there, to bring the California PTA on board and others on board and we think it's flagging and all of a sudden it's flying again. Your work in San Francisco and educating that young city councilman who became the mayor, who became the lieutenant governor, who will likely be the next governor of California Gavin Newsom, your role as essentially the first lady of this organization movement. I love you so much. I am so grateful you have kept me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Third, he ain't here, but George Soros, I mean, if I think about who are my heroes, it's a weird group. It's people you all think about. It's people like Martin Luther King. It's people like Nelson Mandela, people who had the vision and did the impossible in the ways that I was talking about. You know, I don't know if Malcolm X was my hero, but I will say that when I saw that movie about him back in Christmas 94, just as I was starting this thing up, it was one of the most inspirational things I ever saw in my life. Vaklav Havel, the hero of the Czechoslovakian Czech Republic. But there's two other people. One of them I'll mention shortly. But the one I'm thinking about now, George Soros, he is truly a hero to me. His vision, his commitment in the world at large, his being the leading funder of human rights and fighting against xenophobia and closed-mindedness and everything all around the world. The leading who took virtually all his money and said, I'm gonna pour it into advancing this cause around the world who has kept his moral center. And when I think back just over 25 years ago to that phone call I got from George Soros invited me to lunch and the conversation we had or open society was breaking out and the former Soviet Union had fallen and everybody was thinking open society. And he's asking himself, was it America the model of the open society? And he asked, what is the one thing in America that is most antithetical to open society ideals? And the first thing that hit him between the eyes was the war on drugs. It made no sense. It was the leading exemplar of socialist dictatorship and fascistic dictatorship thinking in American open societies and we sat for two hours and we argued and we shook hands and things started to happen. And the fact, nobody thought he would stick with this. Nobody thought that this would become one of his top three passions in all of his global advocacy.  And very, very recently at the age of 87 he just renewed his commitment to this. I got to tell you, this movement, I fear to think, I fear to think what it would be without George and without his vision and the moral clarity and the courage and the damn everybody, he was gonna do what was right. And last, I could have done this without you. I could not have done this without you. I remember, you know, we met back when, you know, that Right Wing Institute, Manhattan Institute June 88, right, 29 years ago.  I could not do this stuff, but for you, I don't know how I could possibly have done it, how I could have learned to run an organization to have. I got to see when people asked me, well, Ethan, I just become an ED, what do you need to, what's the key thing? I said, find yourself an hour glass and raise your board chair.  To have a board chair when my staff was pissed at me and worried about me and wanted a vent that they had permission to call my board chair without me knowing and vent at him about me and I would use the judgment about what to do with that information. It was the two of us guiding this thing and balancing this thing from the board meetings to the running and I have to tell you, when Ira and I had the first conversation and now you're gonna hear some inside stuff, when we had that first conversation in the summer of 2015 when I was beginning to think about making this move and at first he was going, nah, nah, no, maybe just a sabbatical, dah, dah, dah. And then as the conversation got more and we got to the spring of last year, 2016 into the summer, because I knew I needed to persuade Ira that this was the right move. And one reason I knew was because he knew what I knew, which was that if I made this move, he was gonna have to work like he had worked since he stepped down from the ACLU in 2001. He was gonna have to manage this transition, manage the search, step in and step up at the age of 78 going on 79, really, really step up. And when he said to me, Ethan, you've made the case. You've laid out the reasons, personal, organizational and political, why this is the right time for you, for this organization and for this movement. I understand what I gotta do. I'm gonna get you for it, but I understand what I gotta do. That was the pivotal moment. And so Ira, I remember when I went up to your place, your summer place in August of last year and we said, let's do it. We kept it a secret for five months. We went through the election. Should we change? Because we thought Hillary was gonna win and didn't happen that way. But we did it right. We did it right. And I so much appreciate, not just what you've been to me, to this movement, to this organization for almost 30 years and especially for the last 17, but the role you've played over this last year and supervising this transition and putting the term together that identified Maria, found the right person, did it right. I will be forever indebted. So please, these four people and Ira who's right here, please and Marcia, please just give them a round of applause and thanks from all of you. Look, it's not just drug policy alliance, it's everybody else. It's Kasia Melanuska and Daniel Wolfe and Jean-Paul Grunt from Who Worked at the Open Society Foundation. Amazing thing happened. It's my allies.  And thank you, Neil and thank you, Jack Colby for them. It's Alan Clear and Harm Reduction Coalition and I remember Rod Sorge for those of you who remember him and Dave Purchase, a leader, a courageous leader on Needle Exchange. You know, Rick Doblin, the one man in this movement who's really gonna go down in history is Rick Doblin from MAPS because of the work he's doing on Psychedelics. SSDP from Betty Allworth today to all her predecessors making stuff happen. Julie Stewart at FAM, a courageous leader making stuff happen as well. Hey Keith and Alan, it normally you drove me crazy but you built an organization that could articulate the desires of marijuana consumers. Rob Campia, I wanna strangle you half the days of the week but I'm glad you're out there fighting the fight because we needed you as an ally. Steph Shear at A.S.A. American State Fair fighting for medical marijuana, God bless you on that. My allies at the ACLU, Gretchen Bergman, a new path. Hey Dorsey, all of us are none. That day you stood up in Long Beach and I knew where you're coming from and you're pushing me on stuff and you stood up there while your wife was struggling and you talked about as a former, somebody who'd been locked up not on drug charges who was coming our movement and become our ally on the ballot initiatives and you said, let me talk to you in the audience about medical marijuana, the role of methadone and the core value of personal sovereignty over our minds and bodies. I fell in love with you that day and I've never fallen out of love. Kenny, it's such an honor and pleasure to be up here with you today. To be last time I was in Atlanta was with you, I was going to that theological seminary, talk to those ministers, make it happen, it's an honor and I love you, I love the work you're doing what you said about the South. It's damn right, I'm glad we're here, I'm glad we're doing it and it's gonna keep, keep happening. Wow. But as you know, it ain't just the US either. I know what's going on, isn't it? But you look at the organizations, International Harm Reduction Association, Pat O'Hare who opened my eyes, Jerry Stimson who took it, Rick Lyons and his people there now, transformed, TNI, release, right? Steve Rolls is here today, Steve give me, just do an amazing, path-breaking work thinking about legalization. I look at my friends in Mexico and Mukad, the brave journalists who were represented here earlier today. I look at the other organizations fighting on the ground, I look at other national organizations, my friends in Canada, the political leadership, Donald MacPherson, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Asian Harm Reduction Network, the European, the Eurasian, all of the people who inspire me day in and day out. You know, I was talking to my friend Harry and saying, well, so who's inspired me? Who should I be thanking? Well, one person I can't go without is Kurt Schmoke. Because when I talk about Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, I can't help putting Kurt Schmoke in that category. Because Kurt Schmoke is a young first term mayor who stands up almost the same day that I'm a young assistant professor who's just putting these intellectual ideas out there. And here is a young mayor, African-American, former chief prosecutor of Baltimore, gets himself elected, gives his first speech at the National Conference of Mayors, has his prepared speech about the drug war, the country's going crazy with the drug war, drug war hysteria, McCarthyism on steroids, and this brave mayor tosses down his speech and says, let me tell you about the drug war and provokes the debate about ending the drug war and puts out the notions of decriminalization and legalization, who pays the political price, who gets reelected twice in Baltimore, but probably forecloses a broader political future because of his courage. That was courage. That was courage. I remember standing on a national TV, on a national TV show back in 88 with Ted Koppel and I'm sitting and there's Charlie Rangel and Jesse Jackson either side of me joking. There's a one-term mayor I've ever seen it and I said, don't bet on it. And he came back and he did it and eventually those guys turned around and understood he was speaking the truth and they were the ones who had been wrong. That type of courage is true courage, but it's not just the leadership there. You know, it's the folks I look at, the ones who have been down on the streets, panting out the clean needles and risking the cops going back to the 80s and the early 90s, right? It's the activists from the Bronx and Brooklyn to Indonesia and Vietnam and going into parts of the Middle East and dangerous parts of South America and Mexico who are doing the right thing. It's the journalists risking their lives. It's the public defenders busting their butt at 80, 90s hours a week to help people. It's the prosecutors breaking ranks with all the other assholes in order to say the right thing and do the right thing.  It's the people whose names oftentimes don't get recognized. It's the parents whose kids are suffering from Dervet syndrome and no medical model works and they are standing up on their kids and getting out there. It's the people dying of cancer, willing to stand up and say, I need my medicine. It's the mothers like Joy and others who lost their kids to an overdose who just wanna forget and close themselves off to that pain and who find the courage to stand up and say, I'm gonna join this movement. It's the people who Gretchen's pulled together who are struggling with addiction in their families and say just because I've seen the worst that drugs can do doesn't mean I'm not gonna also support the cause to end marijuana prohibition, to end mass incarceration and understand that drug policy reform and good drug treatment and helping those who struggle with drugs are all part and parcel of the same thing. Those are the people who inspire me. You need a board. I got a board. I let my board and people know early on because I had a fair amount of latitude who was gonna be on that board. The number one requirement to be on the DPA board wasn't about money, wasn't about this. Obviously you had to support the mission of the organization, but the number one requirement for board and for staff is you gotta be a mensch. Now for those of you who don't know what a mensch is, a mensch is a Yiddish word which means a good human being. It means a person who knows how to use their heart and their mind in order to do the right thing when the pressure's on. And when you have a staff and when you have a board of menschers who are smart and know how to use their hearts and their brains to do the right thing, you can do just about anything. And Kurt was on that board and Joe McNamara Brave Cop was on that board and Bob Sweetaberry Federal Judge was on that board. And also Pam Lictie, who I think is in this audience today and Christine Downen and Carl Hart and Ed Sanders and Fergie and Larry Campbell, the former mayor of Vancouver and a host of others, Jason Flan, the businessman and music executive. I mean, it was putting together a group that had my back while they held me accountable. And that was the essence of success for DPA going forward. And probably the single best part about all this, it's the fact that the people you work with and you fight with become your friends, become your dear friends. It's my brother from another planet, Harry Levine who has broken new ground on marijuana arrest and race who basically when you looked at Obama finally saying the right thing about marijuana was where Harry Levine's words coming out of his mouth. When you look, what turned this thing around, it was Harry Levine. But I don't get just appreciate Harry Levine as an activist scholar who's turned the New York Times and other major media around. I get to play with him as well as one of my best friends. And I get to hang out with Howard Josepher who you heard earlier and watch the Yankees and cheer for the Yankees.  I love the Yankees.  So let me just say this. Here's, I always said it. I sometimes regret, you know, for DPA we've always been sort of one third marijuana, one third drug sentencing reform, ending mass incarceration, and one third harm reduction. That's what we've done. For better or worse, marijuana has grabbed the headlines and been our most dramatic success. And I'm extremely proud of the success we accomplished in helping playing a key role in the country going from 25% support for legalizing to an unimaginable 60%. In legalizing medical marijuana, was it 30 states now and other ones? I mean, people are now kind of, well, yes, yes, and we have to do this the right way and it has to be social justice and we have to figure out the right ways to do racial and social justice in a country which is the most dynamic example of dynamic capitalism and crony capitalism in history. We gotta do that. But that success and victory don't sneeze at it because it helped change everything. And when marijuana accounts for half the drug arrest in this country, it is making a dramatic difference. I feel proud of the battles we won on harm reduction in legalizing access to sterile syringes in New York and New Jersey and California. I feel proud of the work that we did on the lock zone and Good Samaritan, organizing the first conference on this issue back in 2000 when nobody was paying attention to this issue, setting up grants programs on this thing and changing these laws to good Sam laws. And now I'm just forgetting, I forgot to thank one other group of staff, our legal affairs office.  I know I was gonna do it. Dan Abramson who joined me back in 96 and was by my side for 20 years drafting legislation and hiring the most extraordinary team, Judy Appel, the dynamic team of Tamar Todd and Tessian Naidu and Lindsey LaSalle, right? Joy Havelin and Jolene Foreman. I mean, you wanna talk about a dynamic all-woman law firm. There ain't no better all-woman law firm in America. Already better law firm, period, than what we got going on right there. The battles we won on these things, the hundreds of state laws we have now changed, the civil asset fort battles that we won, legalizing medical marijuana in one state after another, working hand-in-hand with our allies on the ground in various states and with MPP and others. I am so proud of those victories. Change in drug sentencing laws, increasing access to drug treatment, doubling funding for drug treatment, advancing harm reduction in every which way, lining up one victory after another, the ones that Maria was just reporting on over this weekend, the one that DPA California our allies did so beautifully. Those victories, maybe one day we'll tell some of the stories because you know how difficult those things are. I know how many years it took to legalize clean needles in New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico. I remember the tears of Roseanne and Rena and others when we got right to within two yards of the finish of the goal line and some asshole legislator, some committee chair killed it at the last moment. But we did change things. We did save tens of thousands of lives. We did provide medication with a marijuana and a lockstone or a methadone to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who would not otherwise have had it. We did reduce the incarceration of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Those are real victories. And at the same time, we transform consciousness. If there was a growing consensus, Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions accepted that the drug war and mass incarceration has gone far, I'm proud of the role that we played. We were the first to define this issue as a racial justice issue. Didn't happen yesterday. It happened with Rockefeller drug rule reform beginning in the late 1990s. It happened by making Connecticut the first state to define medical marijuana as a racial justice issue back 10, 12 years ago. It happened with marijuana legalization in DC more recently. We did this stuff because the commitment to racial justice and its centrality in the effort to end the war on drugs has been part of DPI's identity throughout. And I'm delighted that now it has the opportunity to soar and to manifest itself and to build a new movement. When we had that town hall two years ago with Black Lives Matter and for the first time we had a new civil rights movement that was standing up and speaking DPA language on drug policy reform while pushing us on issues of racial justice. That's what this needed to be. So when I asked myself, what do I help for the future? Well, I mean, obviously one of the things I'm doing now is letting go. I am letting go. Before I started the organization, when I had Georgia's commitment, I went to see a very wise man named Ram Dass. Some of you know Ram Dass used to be Richard Alpert but a wise man. He gave me two pieces of advice. The first one was, Ethan, you need to learn to love William Bennett. Now for those of you too young to remember William Bennett, William Bennett was the first drug czar at the peak of the drug war, one of the most hateful, evil, putrid human beings in the face of America. And Ram Dass is saying to me, Ethan, you gotta learn to love William Bennett. I almost gagged when he said that. But I knew what he meant. Which is that if somehow we can't find the way to cross over, to find that little bit of humanity amidst the fear and the hate and everything else, they drove Donald Trump into the White House. If we can't find the way to reach the people who are doing the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, but who are still human beings with children who love people and try to lead decent lives, if we can't find that, we don't win. We don't win, you know? I'm driven by rage oftentimes, by rage against injustice and I'm angry about it. But I also know that there are times and places to manifest that and times and places where we gotta figure out how we reach across and under and around and into people's hearts who can't believe that they would ever embrace us. I think Ram Dass is right about that. But the other thing he said to me is, you gotta learn to let go of your attachment to the things that you're fighting for. And what I took him to mean by that was, win or lose, this struggle is the right one. Win or lose, whether we were victorious in all these battles or not, it was still the right choice to commit one's life to this cause for myself and for all of you. Now winning, of course, is all the hell of a lot nicer and I wanna keep winning and see this thing keep winning. But it also meant that in stepping down and part of why I felt so light and free while I'm here and people keep coming at me, you think, yeah, you look happy and I am, I'm happy. I'm happy about the fact that this transition is going so well, I'm happy about the work and the commitment of my colleagues, I'm happy about Maria coming in, I'm happy about the strength of the team and this movement, but I'm also letting go. I'm letting go and knowing that this thing needs to grow to its next generation in the same way, you send your baby, your child out there or they don't send them out there, they go out there and they do things that you may not always approve or I'm letting go, but my hopes, my desires is that this can continue to be a movement that is grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. It's my hope that we have the strength and the ability to argue fiercely and ferociously with one another and keep come back, love it. I remember the early days of the old Drug Policy Foundation, I forgot to give a shout out to Arnold Treback and Kevin Zeiss, the founders of the old Drug Policy Foundation. I remember when the debates over is addiction a disease or not, almost split this organization in the early years and they remain vibrant and powerful and crucial debates today where people still on either side of that debate have to come together to end the drug war and the debates and the challenges of how we talk about and handle and negotiate the intersection between racial justice and drug policy reform, how painful that is, how difficult that is, how we have to understand and be able to hear one another. I hope that we will continue to be that. In fact, not just continue but be even more so that, how we can recognize our fundamental commonality of values and desires and keep going back to the one greatest value and feeling that will lead to victory, which is love. It's loving one another, it's compassion, it's empathy for one another and drawing strength from that compassion and empathy for one another and being able to expand it and extend it even to those who it is most challenging to do so. I hope, I hope and believe that we will continue to be a movement that is not just about drugs but that it's about advancing broader values because of the values we believe and the values we articulate, that in addressing people's fears around drugs and their children and around race and everything else in crime, that we will be a model that can help this country, and other countries find a place in a new dialogue in the midst of the rise of right-wing populism and fascism and extremism and white supremacism that we need to be a voice, a leader, a model for how we engage that. We need to avoid joining one side but be a voice for how we speak to this. I hope, I hope that that core principle that has guided me and this organization and a significant part of this movement for so long, this basic belief that nobody, but nobody deserves to be punished for what we put in our bodies if we don't hurt anybody but else. That nobody, but nobody deserves to be punished or discriminated against or amongst based solely upon what we put in our bodies if we don't hurt anybody else. That there is no legitimate basis in science and medicine and ethics of the Bible for discriminating or distinguishing among human beings based what substance they put in their body, that there is no basis to saying to the parent who God forbid is two children addicted to drugs, one being booze and the other one being heroin or cocaine, that we are gonna distinguish in our laws or our values or our belief system between how that sun is treated and that sun is treated, that that core value, that value of human rights that is at the core of this movement, of civil liberties as the core of this movement, that it lies at the core of uprooting the racism of the drug war, even though it doesn't look like it's there, it is at the core of this movement and of their ability to uproot the manifestations of racism in this drug war, that that value cannot be abandoned. It's not just about stigma. It's not just about toleration of people who are addicted. It's about understanding that people who use drugs should not be discriminated solely because they use this one or that. And that principle needs to continue to drive us into the future. It is the next frontier of freedom. In an era when freedom is being diminished, when the threat to this country is never greater than that presented by Donald Trump, when the dark side of America, the ugly side, the father Coglins and the McCarthyism and the George Wallace and the bigotry and the racism and the xenophobia, which never before took the White House the way it has, it's there right now, we need to be the voice for decency, for human rights, for how to communicate and dialogue with one another. So as I was said, and as Cory Booker said, I ain't going anywhere. I am, you know, I got 30 years down and I'm 60 now and I see 30 years ahead, maybe more. I am delighted that Maria is there to carry the burdens of fundraising and budgets and audits and staff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're gonna do it, Maria. I know you're gonna do it well with a lot of fantastic support from our colleagues. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm taking a break. I'm enjoying life. My only plan right now is no plan.   So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being my allies, my colleagues, my friends, God bless. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. I love you all. I appreciate you all. I'll be back. I'll see you in St. Louis in two years and we're gonna do it. Thank you so much.