how's it going forex traders welcome back to my youtube channel my name is dapo willis and guys today is another episode of trader talk a very long anticipated episode it's been a minute i know i'm sorry but i'm back now now if you're just joining me for the first time once again my name is dapo willis and trader talk is basically a segment of my youtube channel where i come to practice what i preach most traders don't do that by the way so i come on here and i use all the teachings that i teach on my youtube channel from top-down analysis to how to use your feminachi properly how to use your trend lines i put together all the things you know about trading i simplified and i use it to analyze the market project the market so that we can ultimately what makes money and makes to put some damn money in our pockets right make redraw so the essence of trader talk is to what analyze the markets look for entries and potential exit points and ultimately redraw so redraw money so that we can put money in our pockets so guys before i jump into my screen i'd like to first of all apologize for being away from trader talks being away from the charts for so long the reason this happened is because i mean we had a couple of uh i think adu st was my pair of preference we were expecting it to drop massively however the market just kept on pulling back and pulling back it will drop your pullback now i didn't want to keep coming on here to keep telling you guys about adu st because not a lot of people can still mac um don't know people can be in the trade for as long as i can not because i have more money it's just because of my the way my brain is is set up if i see a trade and i'm very sure about what the trade is going to do i can be in that trade for as long as it takes for the market to go in my favor but a lot of people cannot really do that so i just didn't want to distract people i wanted to stay away from the youtube for a bit and literally just focus on holding on to my adu st trades which have which i've been holding on for the longest which i'm going to show you guys right about now so i'm going to jump into my screen but before i do that i want to say big shout out to all the forex mastery students i've missed you guys i love you guys very much and i'm here i'll never leave you guys i'm always here before you guys if you've bought the forex mastery program best believe that dapper willis will always come on here to hold your hand and show you what exactly is going to happen next sometimes it is necessary for you to take some time away from the chart so that you can come back refreshed now if you're one of those traders who have taken some time off the charts to do other things before you jump into the market i advise that you go over the forex mastery program again now what this will help you do is it would remind you as to how exactly the top down analysis works what this will actually do for you it is it will make you sharp all over again yes so before i jump before i'm about rather before today before i'm obviously about to do this analysis what i did was i went over all my previous trades most of them were winners anyways went over them went over the forex mastery program looked at everything again and i feel very very sharp just looking at the charts i know exactly what the market is going to do next now for those of you who haven't grabbed the forex mastery program and are looking for the best approach to the forex market you're looking for something to guide you once again the link to the forex mastery program will be in the description or around here somewhere it's very inexpensive it's just $99 do yourself a favor grab it so that you can look at the market just like how i do and ultimately make a lot of money so without any further ado i have some juicy technical stuff that i want to share with you guys do not go anywhere sit down right there and let's jump into the screen let's go welcome welcome welcome traders welcome inside of my screen um obviously guys you know the drill before i jump into my charts and show you guys all these juicy setups and how to make money the coming weeks you need to deal me one favor actually you need to do yourself one favor right there which is to smash the subscribe button so that you don't miss out on a fantastic uh analysis like this that could potentially make you a lot of money in the forex market so i'm going to give you five seconds to do that so you got five smash the subscribe button four three two one subscribe right there right there right there all right guys let's jump into the video let's go now what i'm obviously you guys know my favorite Paris AUD USD at the moment um so i'm going to kick things off with AUD USD now once again i'd like to apologize like i said in the intro of the video i'd like to honestly apologize for not giving you guys as much trader talk videos as you guys would like to have the reason why i wasn't producing as much trader talk videos is because i wanted to allow the market breathe i noticed that we had clear directions however the market kept on jumping back so for every time we tried to jump into AUD USD the market kept on pulling back just when we thought we were clear to the downside the market would just jump back and stuff like that so i noticed that the market just wasn't ready sometimes the market just isn't ready probably wants to go fulfill some technical levels and i'll show you guys in the charts very soon sometimes you just want to go fulfill some technical levels and you just need to allow it be because if you keep standing in the way of the market it will keep hitting your stop losses now i have some previous trades that i placed on AUD USD some really early entries which are still floating at the moment they're still open so technically still making money from AUD USD however some of the trades that i placed inside of the range which i'm going to be showing you guys pretty shortly got stopped out which is probably my first loss in for the year probably my first loss in a long time and it's one of those things at the end of the day if the market just isn't ready you have to cut your losses short and then move on so that's exactly what we did so we closed some of the trades out before it actually stopped us out because i noticed that this market just wasn't interested in falling at the time but we kept our earlier trades open so before i jump into the lower timeframes to show you guys actually let me just show you guys what i was talking about in terms of entries and exit and all that all of that jazz right so i'll just quickly go over to my daily time frame so that we can have a look to see what exactly is happening so you guys all know that the idea behind AUD USD was for us to roll over to the downside which is 0.1920 and once again guys it's very important for me to come on here and show you guys when good things go great and when things don't go so great this is very important because it helps you guys form a better better knowledge base in terms of the fact that if things are not going well it's important to know why exactly they go well so that if you're ever confronted with a situation like this you know how best to handle it you know i mean there's no point trying to act like everything is all rosy when everything is in rosy this is the as far as i'm concerned you learn more from when things don't go well than when things actually go well but not to worry i'll show you guys some more trading opportunities jump into the charts there's always a lot of money to be made in the market that's what i like the forex market we have so many opportunities which i'm going to be sharing with you guys but obviously i need to explain to you guys what happened with AUD USD and so that we can move on now obviously we my early entries were somewhere at the top here obviously once we had this push up and then brick of counter trend line which was here which was here so my my entries my first entries were somewhere about here i just want to zoom this in right about here so my early entries were somewhere around here and then we started for you guys know how i like to trade and then we started to pull back jump into another entry expecting the market to roll over to the downside as you can see several attempts several attempts at the downside and just when we thought we had cleared this range right about here you know cleared to the downside and then it was it was a no brainer was supposed to come on the downside the markets had to jump all the way to the upside again and then obviously running all the way to the upside and stopped out my trades that were inside of the range however still kept the other ones open as we speak now like i said the reason why i wasn't constantly updating you guys is because of how long it took for this trade to actually break out and for this trade to actually go in our direction took a very long time and not a lot of traders have the ability to stomach being in a trade for such a long time and then it doesn't play out a lot of traders tend to get scared they tend to run away so i didn't want to instill any fear in anybody i just wanted you guys to carry on doing what you're doing i was going to hold on to my trades and i was going to stick to my rules and i didn't want to carry you guys on the journey whereby you know at the end of the day you guys be like oh i wish i'd done this and i wish i'd done that so i wanted you guys to hopefully take some time out of the market to see what exactly was happening from a bigger picture time frame to see what exactly was going on you know and most importantly i needed to allow AUDUS to give me a clear direction so what i did was we closed out our trades that were inside just around here just before we stop losses closed out the trade and then allow the market do what exactly you wanted to do now from what i can see moving on so i have some trades open at the at the early stage about here so from what i can see from actually we have to go to a higher time frame to see what exactly is happening so i want to give you guys a little tip here yeah so if you for for any reason you're on a particular time frame and the market just seems to be moving sideways you don't really understand what exactly is going on it is always advisable for you to scale to the higher time frame to see what exactly is going on just so that you can have a better perspective of what exactly is happening so on AUDUSD i can still see clearly that this market is very bearish we're still trading below this trend line as you can see very very clearly trading below this trend line so it's very possible that AUDUSD wanted was just not ready to drop right it just wasn't ready to drop sometimes that happens right so um but i noticed something which is very interesting if you notice with all the push-ups push-ups even when we come and try and break this yellow bar we always come and close down back below it we try and always come and close that back down below this level this level is actually a supply region now you guys know the way i like to trade very simple and straightforward as long as we are below this supply region okay and another reason why AUDUSD wasn't able to fall the way it should have dropped is because the euro became bullish you guys know that euro is the euro is inverse to the dollar index right so the dollar index was falling the euro was gaining strength so because of the fact that the dollar wasn't strengthening AUDUSD obviously was not able we didn't have enough dollar strength to pull this guy down that's just what it was we didn't have enough dollar strength to pull this guy down every time we tried to come down from Aussie weakness there wasn't just enough dollar strength to carry up to the upside instead we started to see dollar weakness and then AUDUSD was just gaining strength so it was an absolute mess it was just a i mean the dollar was just messing up pretty much and that's exactly why we couldn't drop however in as much as that was happening i also noticed that AUDUSD was unable to breach this level about here now here is a lesson in all of this you see anytime i plot my levels i'd never like to remove them i always like to keep them because it serves as a reference point for example look at this for every time we try to break here we're not able to break it what this means is this guy is still holding strong just because we haven't come lower yet doesn't mean we're not going to come lower eventually because if this market wanted to head higher would have taken out this level a long time ago so for me this is a reference point and for the fact that we have tried and tried to trade above it and it's not happening i am still of the strong belief that eventually this market is definitely going to uh this market is definitely going to roll over where's my i have one tool that i like to use these days hold on guys where's my bloody tool hold on guys uh come on i can't find it oh yeah i found it okay just because we have not collapsed to the downside doesn't mean that AUDUS is not going to do that in the future at the moment the market just needs some more momentum to the downside now once again the reason i say this is because of this yellow bar and if you come on the daily timeframe you will notice something similar as well okay hold on should not adjust this you will notice something similar as well look at all the times we've tested it even when we came to break it we still came and closed back down below it came back here we tested it again and we're currently testing it again ladies and gentlemen as long as we sustain below this yellow bar i see no reason why we shouldn't come lower but as we speak AUDUS needs to figure itself out i will be watching this pair very closely maybe for a break of this counter trend line to the downside and then obviously you know first level targets must always come at the base of this level which is somewhere around here actually i moved it up a bit just in case you want to form a right shoulder which is here so break of this counter trend line we should see this green bar and if we break this green bar we should be heading all the way to the downside i see no reason why that shouldn't happen however if we break this yellow bar then we'll have to do a whole new analysis for AUDUS but as we speak from what price action is indicating from what the technical is saying to me as long as we sustain below this yellow bar we are looking to the downside so that's AUDUS the nutshell not much to say about this my first early trades are still open from this i'm still holding on to it and then obviously we'll see how things go so that's it for AUDUSD let's jump over to the euro just to see what's happening in the euro now the euro is the main catalyst for why the pairs that were anticipating to jump to drop to the downside did not happen the euro was strengthening out of the blues most people didn't know why i figured it out why exactly were we strengthening so it's a very simple equation right we collapse all the way to the downside we actually collapse just past parity now for those of you guys who do not know what parity is parity is basically um parity is basically when the market drops into 1.00 so meaning that the euro is equal to the dollar so we did drop into parity we made a lot of money from here so much money so so so much money and then obviously we came into parity we broke below it just because we wanted to test this level right about here and as you can see we pinned it just really nicely and we started to jump all the way to the upside now ideally this is a downtrend this is a pullback and we should start dropping back to the downside however um the market had broken back into this range had broken back into this range not only did we break back into this range we tested the base of this range and we started pointing to the upside and once that happened i knew that uh euro USD was bullish now just because euro USD was bullish if euro USD is bullish you'll take AUD USD with it you'll take GBP USD with you take any dollar base pair with it because why the euro dollar is what the opposite of the dollar index so if the euro dollar is getting strength the dollar index is weakening and if the dollar is weakening GBP USD will go up AUD USD will go up euro USD will go up and so on and so forth and the USD will go up so just because that's why i keep telling people that if you can get your analysis right on the euro USD or the dollar index most other pairs are most likely going to what a falling line now we have the euro in front of what so what exactly is next for the euro what do i think is going to happen to the euro so if i just zoom out pretty nicely just to see what exactly is going on with euro i'm just going to try and throw some trend lines on the higher time frame just to see what exactly is going on now as you can see as you can see very clearly we have broken out of so we so we were underneath this trend line we were above it then we came back below it trading below it once we were below it the market was bearish we're expecting actually i was expecting us to pull back into this trend line and drop however the market wasn't having it so look closely guys we have broken above this trend line we have tested this is a tweezer bottom monthly time frame tweezer bottom don't play with it don't play with it don't play with it don't play with it don't play with it okay sphere input like a serious guy tweezer bottom at a major support level bouncing off of this trend line so this is literally a breakout retest continuation to the upside so this exactly why the euro is bullish as we speak now the question is how bullish is the euro going to go because technically we have a high lower low we have a high we have a low this is a lower high from here and this is a clear lower low from here so technically overall on the monthly time frame was still bearish however we are we are medium term we are bullish so medium term how far is the euro going to climb how high is the euro going to climb and how can we potentially take make make money from the euro climbing high obviously medium term so once again in order for us to deduce what exactly is happening we have to throw in some trend lines as we speak this is a new touch this is a new point of the trend line actually if I want to do this the right way you have to join the dots and then wherever wherever we come from we come from wherever we come from right so from what I can see the outer trend line so this is the inner trend line which has been broken so this is the new trend line that is currently in play for the euro dollar right so I mean we have so much space to the upside so ideally I would expect the euro to rally into somewhere about here so 1.1455 will be an ideal area for the euro to rally into now this is from a monthly time frame perspective I would need to come down to a weekly time frame to adjust this levels properly now as you can see from a weekly time frame perspective you see what I like to trade on obviously doom and understand higher time because everything just lines up this guy is a major resistant best believe I just identified it on the monthly and you can see on the weekly everything lines up pretty nicely now the reason I say this is a very key level is I was trading this market back in 2015 and I know how many times we try to buy for it to breach this level every time just kept on coming down we came out all finally you go up it wasn't happening so I remember this level very well so best believe it is a strong level right so as we speak the euro is currently trading below it so obviously this is this this temporarily for a temporary trend this market is made a high high this market has made a high a low a higher high a higher low and it's about to make obviously it's made a high high so right now the euro is bullish so it's doing all the it's it's possessing all the characteristics of an uptrend now like we said how high is the euro going to go so my first level target for the euro will be 1.1455 that's really cool and interesting if I come to the daily time frame to see where we can see some potential pullbacks into I would just take out this my yellow zone right back here I'm just trying to anticipate where I feel we can come into at worst case we would deep into this demand zone somewhere around here if I take my trend lines and I draw them correctly this is this market is lining up somewhere around here although this market is quite linear I'm not going to use this trend line as a basis for anything so we're currently trading above here this market is not just going to jump off from here why why do I say so because you want to look at all the previous swings they're quite big they're quite big so it might come in for a quite big one before we carry all the way to the upside once again history always leaves clues so I'll be expecting a bigger pullback by coming to the far right time frame just to see what exactly is happening just trying to play around on the lower time frame just to see how potentially we can jump into this I will need the euro to pull back a bit more although this yellow bar seems to be looking pretty decent but I don't think this is a strong enough demand zone I feel like this is the better demand zone so I'll be watching the euro for some potential movement to the downside before we can start picking it up to the upside so either way I am bullish on the euro all the way up to 1.1455 you heard it here first on Dapsey radio you had it here first on Dapsey radio guys sorry guys I'm a bit intense today because you know I'm just looking at the charts serious business here money is on the line so you know you got to make money bro you got to make some money man anyway so yeah I'm expecting the euro to pull back a bit further into things just so that we can have a clear base because the last thing you want to do is start buying prematurely and then the market is still in retracement mode so that's it for the US in a nutshell nothing really ready to go obviously you're still going to see people on instagram trying to buy and sell they don't really know what they're doing at the end of the day because the market doesn't really have it's not ready to roll yet if you want to sell you're not 100% sure it might come here if you start selling start going up stop loss if you start buying and it starts coming down stop loss so you need to allow the market tell you when it is ready so it needs to form a proper base either at this level or at this level before I will be interested so we've covered AUD USD okay still bearish on this and the reason why AUD USD might not fall immediately like I said guys the euro is still looking to the upside so it will take a very very weak Aussie dollar rather yeah yeah it will take a very weak Aussie dollar with Aussie dollar to see this drop off so you might play around in this range for quite a bit quite a bit quite a bit so let me just put this here so that you guys can see so we'll play around here for quite a bit probably come now but I'd like to see us bleed down once we start to bleed down our look for potential entries right about here so guys that's the euro as you can see on the weekly time frame it's very straightforward very smooth very nice I see no reason why come down a bit it doesn't necessarily need to come and touch the base here but I would like to see at least a week around here at least fulfill this demand zone because this is actually a demand zone this market started to rally from the to the upside from here so I'll be expecting a pullback from the euro before we head to the upside and then GBP USD same thing as the euro same thing we were expecting us to collapse from here down collapse from here down however the market had other plans instead it came out from the base here and started to head all the way to the upside what do I think is going to happen for GBP USD next next level target 1.3 to 1.3 8 1.3 to 8 8 1 why if you look left simple straightforward this level is a key level guys you know I know this level is a key level this candle is brexit I was trading on this day I was trading flowing Canary Wharf I was in London at the time 2016 summer came here held held bam when we came out struggle struggled even when we broke it tested it came up here once we came back below it it wasn't one touch two touch three touch four touch five touch on top of it six touch seven touch definitely guy after it's going to respect here so if you're bullish on GBP USD be careful around this region if you want to jump in it's not too late to jump in you just need to find a potential pullback region for you guys to jump in I'm gonna have I have this one right about here because I feel like this is probably a better demand zone if I come on a weekly time frame just to see where this candle took off from yeah so we have a bullish engulfing candle that took off from here so ideally I would expect to see GBP USD pull into 1.2657 once we can pull into here I see no reason why we shouldn't push to the upside and that should definitely be in line with this trend line if I'm not mistaken correct so we'll have a nice willy zone setup about here for GBP USD actually out of everything I feel like GBP USD is the pair that are most likely being trusted in at the moment we're still hanging on here why because of this little playing games right about here okay for our time frame let's have a look so we'll see but I'll be more interested in GBP USD because I feel like here is a bit too the retracement isn't significant enough to be honest I would like to see us roll over a bit or at least form a double base here at least coming to here before start looking for buy opportunities so at the moment what's actually happening across board is the market is coming into key region so that we can have potential trading opportunities before we let before we fire you guys know me I only like to go for the very very best trades because once I touch it I'm not just going for small 5% 10% I'm going for 30% return on investment I'm going for minimum of 400 pips 500 pips I want the very best straight only and last but not the least the S&P 500 juicy at the moment I can foresee the American stock market forming brand new highs so you had it here first on Dapsey radio the American stock market will be hitting new highs brand new highs fresh highs all-time highs very soon I remember doing this prediction a long time ago but the market was taking forever to do whatever I wanted to do so I see no reason why S&P 500 should not rally into 6200 yeah so what's going to happen is I'm going to expect rather I'm going to watch out for a break of this level about here S&P 500 loves the Fibonacci play excuse me it loves the Fibonacci play loves it what's this I need my bloody Fibonacci bro as you can see simple a b c d leg will probably complete somewhere around here so somewhere in the middle so it's 50% so if we can take out 4815 basis points on the S&P 500 next level target will be 5440 and then after that 6000 6000 take a long time to get there but at the moment what are the trading opportunities how can we take advantage of this so the S&P 500 was a very easy one as you can see we just came came down came down came down came down formed a base and then we came and formed a left obviously so the left shoulder from the right shoulder and then we just started to make our way to the upside from then okay so S&P 500 I see no reason why we shouldn't come into 4815 and if I come to the daily time frame we're approaching some form of resistance which is here but I see no reason why we shouldn't take it out if I come on the four hour time frame um yep give me a second give me so you see that I don't really like treating this S&P 500 because the the waves are ugly the waves are ugly it's so ugly and it makes it so difficult for um traders to obviously pinpoint where the retracement is going to be so what I like to do in situations like this is I just like to watch just to see so this was where the breakout started from I would just be monitoring this for a potential pullback so if you want to understand how a pullback might potentially form look at how pullbacks have performed before in the past this is exactly what they look like they're not too big just come back for a bit so yeah I'll be looking for a pullback that looks exactly like this somewhere around here so that we can push all the way to the upside to 4515 and if we break that we have all the way to the upside so um yeah S&P 500 I have no doubt in my mind um except we have some obviously macroeconomic issues factors in the US obviously this is based on the US stock market so yeah that's pretty much it so once again guys uh just a quick recap AUD USD I'm still looking still holding um I'm still you know hopeful that we do get a push to the downside um I'm judging everything based on price action and technical analysis this is exactly what the market is telling me as you guys know me I'll always stick to my rules whatever the market tells me price action is telling me I will follow my rules okay and then we have the euro which we're expecting a potential pullback for some further upside um and then we've got GBP USD who is approaching dangerously approaching target and I see no reason why we shouldn't push into it so looking for buy opportunities on the euro and GBP USD as well and then S&P 500 as well so we're all looking for buy opportunities across the euro GBP USD and the S&P 500 not to worry I'll be coming on here to give you guys potential updates as to what I feel the market's going to do next before I jump into any trade but before I go let's look at euro JPY and GBP JPY these pairs are clear they are clear they are gone they are coming here GBP JPY is clear it's coming here they are clear guys they are clear so if your type who trades GBP JPY Euro JPY just wait for some form of a pullback or watch this consolidation around here and jump in buy you're clear because euro is bullish GBP USD is bullish USD JPY is bullish why not JPY seems to be very weak at the moment so why not but I don't really like to trade it that much I want lasting oil prices so if oil takes out 82 dollars a barrel we're gone so once I see a bullish engulfing candle actually guys let me know give you guys so much information right here let's see what happens market unfolds I'm happy to be back more trader talk videos I don't catch you guys in my subsequent videos okay with the oil 82-3 dollars a barrel if we break here but we'll see how it goes I'll be back here same time next week just to see how the market has played out if we have any opportunities guys you see I like to give the market time do take your time do what you need to do present the best I want the best opportunity I'm not in a hurry I'm not in a hurry I got money so I'm not in a hurry and the people who actually make money in this market are the people that have money and are not in a hurry now if you're watching this and you don't really have money that doesn't mean you can't make money but when you have money money affords you patience you can be patient and honestly the traders who make the most amount of this money in this market the most amount of money this market are the patient guys so if you can have you don't have to have money to have a patient's mindset you don't have to have money physical cash you have an abundance mindset it's just with this mental heart gotta be patient with the market I'm gonna give it a week just to see what exactly happens and I'll revisit it and see if we're right for us to go once again my name is Dapo Willis I'm gonna catch you in my other screen see you soon let's go thank you guys and thank you so much for staying till the very end of this video you know I love you guys very much as always um I'll catch you guys in my subsequent videos once again if you haven't already subscribed and sure to do that smash the subscribe button right there for those guys who haven't grabbed the forex mastery program the link is gonna be around here somewhere or in the description right about there I love you guys very much thank you thank you thank you and I'll see you guys take it easy and peace out


We now know when Hockey Day Minnesota will officially announce the date and teams that will be part of Bemidji's hockey day. Josh Peterson shares with us why the annual water carnival in Hockey Day Minnesota have formed a partnership for the big announcement. It's time to mark your calendars on Sunday July 1st at 11 o'clock a.m. The Minnesota Wild in Hockey Day Minnesota will officially make their Paul Bunyan sized announcement of the date and teams that will be part of the 2019 event. The announcement will be part of a long-standing Bemidji tradition during the 74th annual Bemidji JC's water carnival. Hockey Day Minnesota Bemidji is I think only fitting that we would make the announcement of all the details during that signature summer event for what will be a very memorable once in a lifetime winter event. Piggybacking on the six-day celebration put on by the JC's the organization was thrilled to have the announcement be part of their carnival and help support another big event. We love working with other groups in the community businesses groups of all kinds it it makes it makes the whole chapter feel great when we get approached and asked hey can you help us because hey that's what we like doing. With the water carnival split between two locations Hockey Day Minnesota should be all right at home. With the announcement and special events located at Paul Bunyan park and the carnival laid out where the future hockey village and rink will be located just months later. The clock will just be ticking even more. Tickets and merchandise of course will be rolled out after that event not necessarily right away. Through the partnership form between the Bemidji JC's and Hockey Day Minnesota the big announcement party won't end right here in Paul Bunyan park but it will continue in style with the water carnival grand parade. As soon as we heard the announcement that they were going to do their announcement during the water carnival the morning of our grand parade it was a natural segue we thought no one better suited than Nordy and the Wild to be the grand marshal of our grand parade. As the two groups continue to work together on finalizing the announcement celebration details one thing is certain excitement surrounding these two Bemidji events just got bigger. In Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. And again the announcement celebration will be held at Paul Bunyan park Sunday July 1st at 11 in the morning followed by the water carnival grand parade with the Minnesota Wild and Hockey Day teams and grand marshals at one o'clock should be a lot of fun. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


This is stock number 11437. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and use sports car headquarters. Today we are checking out this exceptionally clean 2009 Chevy Corvette 3LT. This vehicle has a 6.2 liter V8 LS3 motor which pumps out 430 horsepower. All of our vehicles go through 130 point inspection per the Wisconsin state inspection process. They get a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids get checked and topped off before they are made available to our customers. Cyber gray metallic is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the quality and condition of the car before seeing it in person. Very nice down that side. Comes with 18 inch chrome alloy rims in the front and it has Michelin Pilot Sport 24540 ZR18 tires on the front here as well and these tires are very new on this car. I would say probably 80-90% of the tread left on them has the drilled rotors. I didn't see any scuffs or scrapes on the rim. Front fender is in excellent condition. This one does come with the HID headlamps and factory fog lights. Front bumper is in excellent shape. I didn't see any major scuffs or scrapes or cracks on that. Headlight lenses are nice and clear and the hood is very nice and clean as well. Passenger side front fender, no major scuffs or scrapes and the passenger side rim is in nice shape as well. No scuffs or scrapes on there. As you go down this side of the vehicle, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just can't make a drip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the car, hear the car and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. So that when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises and that's why we offer the Summit Auto Fastpass option in the upper right hand part of your screen. You'll link right to our website where you can apply for financing, get pre-approved, see a payment quote, even appraise a trade all from the comfort of your own home. So when you get here, all you have to do is drive the vehicle, love it and you'll be all set to go. Back tires have just as much tread as the front tires, maybe just a hair bit less. Drilled rotors in the back as well as we come around to the back of the vehicle. Your bumper area is in nice shape and it does come with Corsa exhaust. Those exhaust tips are very nice and clean and look good. Take a look at the trunk here. Comes with a set of factory formats as well as a car cover that comes with the vehicle. Nice and clean back here and you get that sunshade. The black, the back glass is in nice shape as well. Really like the cyber gray color. It's a little bit of a bluish gray, done metal gray if you will. Back rims in excellent shape and down the rest of the side of the car looks really really good. Inside the LT3 package gives you the black and gray leather interior. There are no rips, there are no tears on the seats. You get the Corvette logo stitched in the headrest there. Bolsters look pretty good and both these front seats are power and heated. Factory floor mats, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, memory driver seat and Bose sound. We'll hop inside the vehicle here so you can check out the instrument cluster. Are started here so you can take a look at the miles and everything. See at this one is 24,571 miles. Instrument cluster is very nice and clean. Comes with the leather-wrapped steering wheel, Bluetooth controls on the left, audio controls on the right and you do get those paddle shifters which is what you get when you have the automatic transmission. AM, FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities on the vehicle. Dual climate controls, you get the carbon fiber instrument cluster trim there. There are your heated seats, our heated seat buttons I should say. You have two key fobs that go with this car and you get a keyless entry right there. Passenger side format and seat are in excellent condition as well. No rips or tears on that. Smells very clean inside this car. I don't think it's ever been smoked in and the headliner is in nice shape as well. Home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lane systems. Compass display in the mirror as well as on-star capabilities. We'll take a quick look under the hood. Very clean inside. Under the hood we have a 6.2 liter V8 LS3 motor. Engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth. Once again all of our vehicles go through 130-point inspection, get a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids get checked and tapped off before being made available to our customers. And clean. Engine sticker right there. I'll do one more walk around here on the car. We'll listen to that course exhaust for a second. Once again I'd personally like to thank you for checking out the video and hopefully from this HD video you will have been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around. How good looking it is, that color. Really nice. How good it sounds. I highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint. And to see more pictures of this car, one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers, Chargers, you name it, we got it on our website right there, www.summitauto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com. 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Hi everyone. Today I'm going to be talking about the hardware versus software product management roles. What does product management look like when you're in the hardware space versus the software space and kind of contrast them. My name is Ruben. I'm a product manager at Square. And I have also been in the hardware space for a few years as a product manager as well. So let's get started. First things about me. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm a product manager at Square. I am the PM for the Square website. So the entire public web. Prior to this, I was a product manager at Intuit. I was part of the QuickBooks family and I was the PM for contractor payments, which is one of the products within QuickBooks. Before that, I had taken a small break to go to business school and I was a PM in the hardware space. I was working at Cypress Semiconductor, which got acquired by Infineon prior to my time at Intuit. My first job was actually in Russian banking, but I realized pretty quickly that I really enjoy working in tech. That was something I did during undergrad. I'm an engineer and I really enjoyed that part of my... I just enjoy working on technical solutions and solving problems using the power of technology. So I made that switch fairly early on back into the tech space. And I definitely enjoy every bit of it. I'm glad I made that transition. I do love... Like I mentioned earlier, I do love learning and writing about tech. I actually have published articles about IoT design in various leading journals because I really enjoy just kind of absorbing tech. I am a tinker at heart as well. I really... I spend quite a bit of time on the weekends just working on different gadgets like coding on Raspberry Pi and just little home automation projects. I definitely enjoy that. So that's a little bit about myself. During a conversation today, I'm going to be covering the different stages of the life of a PM and kind of contrasting them for hardware versus software. I'm going to... The first two topics, product development and stakeholders are going to be focusing more on the life of the PM. And the second group of topics, which is skills to succeed and how to make the switch, will be more focused on how to... What do you need if you are looking to make that switch from hardware to software or software to hardware? What skills you need and how do you actually more tactically kind of make that switch? There are a few things I won't be covering today. I won't be able to cover the specifics of my role at Square or Intuit. Honestly, it's not even relevant for what I'm going to be covering during the rest of our conversation today. I also won't be covering how to become a PM. That's the question that is addressed through a lot of other events that are organized for product school. And I'm sure there are a lot of better resources out there that you can get to actually know how to become a PM and introducing the basics of product management. I also won't be covering interviewing tips and tricks. I'm happy to do that offline, but I don't think I had the time to actually cover that today. The last thing is I frequently get asked this question, you know, what's interesting in semiconductor space or in the fintech space? Well, what would that look like, you know, a few years from now? Again, I really enjoy these kind of conversations. I'm happy to do that offline for anyone who's interested. So today I'm going to give you the key takeaway, you know, the summary of our conversation up front for two reasons. One, if you're kind of short on time, this summary should help you just kind of think through what is the trade-off and, you know, what is the key difference between hardware or software space. But for those who are kind of who those are willing to stay longer, this also helps you kind of have a lens with which to look at some of the other content that I will be covering later on and just contrast the hardware with the software product management. So here's my key takeaway. Hardware is has a lot in common is actually quite similar to enterprise software. But enterprise software is kind of very different from consumer software. So I see this somewhat as a spectrum. On the one hand, you have enterprise hardware products. If you're selling servers, for example, that's the extreme end of that spectrum. And the other end is the consumer software, you know, if you're, for example, you are a PM working on Messenger on Facebook, for example, that's a pure consumer software play. In the middle, you have enterprise software. You have consumer hardware. For example, if you're making iPhones, you PM for, you know, hardware product that actually sells as a consumer product, then you have, you know, they kind of fall somewhere in the middle. Culturally speaking, enterprise software is a lot similar to hardware. In terms of, you know, how, how do you think about the product enhancements? How do you think about your, you know, how do you work with stakeholders? How does the process look, etc. So that's, that's kind of the, the high level, the takeaway for this for our conversation. I'll be going into more depth as we go through the next few slides. So the first thing I want to cover is the product development process itself. I'm going to cover the, the day in the life of a PM and in two aspects of it.  How do you actually go about building that empathy? And what are the key metrics that you use to evaluate your product success, either in the hardware side and also going to contrast that with what it is in the software side. The second aspect I'm going to cover is the actual engineering development part of the product development for two reasons. As a PM, you spend a lot more time working with engineers than you would with many other functions within the company. The second reason is there's also a lot that's common between hardware and software when it comes to, you know, you, in both cases, you actually work with engineers. And so it's a lot easier to contrast it. So I'm going to quickly cover how do the engineers kind of structure their work, how do PMs partner with these, you know, with your engineering teams and with engineers to ship products. How are the products and the features released? And lastly, how involved are you when it comes to, you know, what is your role as a PM in the product development process with engineers as well as later on. Once the product is shipped or ready to ship. Speaking of customer empathy, I think it's important for me to call out here that when I say hardware was software, I'm going to be taking kind of an extreme lens here. I'm going to be comparing enterprise hardware, you know, for example, if you're working on servers, just an example, versus more of the consumer software space. Like I mentioned earlier, you may find that, you know, there may be things that kind of fall along that spectrum. But just to kind of give you a real clear difference and going to take these extremes now. You may still find that some of these things, you know, apply if you've kind of fall somewhere in the middle, if you're, for example, hardware PM for the iPhone, for example. On the hardware side, you have dozens or hundreds of customers, not much more than that. It's not to say that you only ship to these customers or you only have, you know, hundreds of products that you release. You may have millions of products that you release. You may even have billions of, you know, you may be shipping billions of chips. For example, if you understand the conductor space, but what's interesting is that in hardware space, you're, you kind of have a small group of customers that control and that define, you know, 80% of what your product should look like.  And this might be even for some of the more consumer focused products where you may find out that, you know, some of these customers that may buy millions of units from you. Have an outsize a control in terms of what gets shipped and how it gets shipped and what gets prioritized.  Because of the fact that in the hardware space you have a small group of customers that you really need to be intentional about, you have high touch interaction. So you have emails, you know, you have calls, you may even visit them.  On the software side, usually lower touch interactions, you may be running a few tests, you may be doing a few studies and surveys with, you know, the millions of customers that you have. You may do a sampling and interview a few of them, but it's in general a fairly low touch approach. On the hardware side, your customers also are a lot more clear about what they want in terms of the features they want to see for your products. On the software side, on the other hand, it's less clear. They usually want a solution to the problem that they are facing and not as much. I want this button to look this way and to do this one function for me. That's what I mean by features versus solutions. And so as a PM, you are also, and I'm going to skip the technical understanding part, actually go into metrics and the revenue, because as a PM, since your customers are more particular about what features you want in the hardware space, for example, your metrics also focus a lot more on the functionality itself and the features that you're looking at. Your metrics are judging the performance of the product in terms of what is the speed, what is the bill of materials, what is the battery performance. You're also looking at yield and the cost aspect of it. And so there's a lot more of a direct focus on revenue. If you're able to improve your bill of materials, you're able to reduce costs and increase profitability. If you're able to make a product that ships a certain number of millions of units, then as a PM, you spend a lot more time thinking about the revenue itself. You're actually connected to the revenue. On the software side, it's usually abstracted a little, you know, one level away from a pure focus on revenue or cost. What I mean by that is a lot of your metrics focus on usage. You're either focused on adoption or retention on customer satisfaction. And even in terms of, you know, how it ties to revenue, usually your key metrics of focus and adoption, increasing lifetime value, increasing cost, reducing customer acquisition costs, etc. Not really focused on revenue, even though these directly contribute to revenue. There's just that one kind of level of abstraction that happens in the software space. There's some more extreme examples to kind of contrast it. You may find that not all of the supplies if you're, for example, working enterprise software. There's also another key call out here is that in the hardware space, there is a high level of technical understanding that is expected from PMs. I mean, it's even at the very early stages of Europe, where when I was starting out as a PM in the hardware space. There's a high level of understanding that they expect you to have of the technical implementation of that product. What does it look like for, for example, if you're making, you know, chips, I was a PM for random access memories, which are memory products. You actually need to understand for say a smartwatch, what is the exact technical capability that you need for a RAM chip. On the software side, it's a lot more creative. There's a lot more focus on how do you solve the customer problems. And as a PM, you build a lot more of that intuition about what does it look like to solve the customer problem. And not as much of what does it look like to ship a specific product or to have a particular feature set. Next, I'm going to cover the engineering development side of it. This is this might be actually more clearly defined around hardware versus software lines. What I mean by that is even if you are, for example, in the enterprise software space, you might find out that there is you, your engineering development methodology is actually more in line with what software looks like and very different from hardware in terms of development. Usually you have consolidated product releases in the hardware space versus software space is usually I trade apart releases. What I mean by that is in the hardware space, I just, you know, I'm going to give you specific examples that might kind of help you understand what I mean by this. I worked on memory products that took over a year.  And so you're actually dealing with a much longer timeframe and you, you only get to release every, you know, few quarters or maybe even a few years. And because of that, you have larger code teams because these are massive projects that, you know, spread out over many years. You may have to give you an example as a PM I've probably had, you know, some products. I've had teams of maybe 30 or 40 engineers, maybe even more, if you, you know, consider some of the engineers that may kind of work in phases on the product. And yeah, yeah, actually, before I go into the hardware, let me go a little more down the hard before going to software space. I'm sorry. Let me go down the hardware points here. You have longer development cycles. As a PM you also have to build a long term plan. What I mean by that is you have to think about what the product is going to look like two years from now and prioritize accordingly. There is very little scope for you to reprioritize and, you know, kind of change course midway through because it's a much more, it's a much bigger ship that you're sailing there. And because of this, like I mentioned earlier, because you don't get to do repeated power releases, there's a much higher level of quality and oversight that that you would have as a PM hardware space, you would have more executive reviews, more presentations to your EVPs or even your CEOs. And there's a much higher bar for, you know, you cannot have any bugs as you ship. It's got to be a perfect product.  I've shipped a product and you know had a bug that was discovered. And usually in those cases, you're dealing with having to do a recall because it's not, you know, something that you can just fix quickly over a weekend and have it go out there and impact, you know, and benefit customers. You might actually have to withdraw the products that have the ships that have been shipped and, you know, re issue new chips to your customer. So it's a much bigger cost when it comes to quality control. And so because of that you have a lot more oversight. The last thing is, you also have, you know, post release, you're doing a lot more focused work on production monitoring, making sure the chips are, you know, the yield is good. There's no sudden cost increases. And you're also doing a lot a lot of sales support. You're working with your field engineers to make sure customers are happy with the product and it's, you know, performing as it was intended when you started working on it. So on the software side, it's kind of like you're building a ship while it sails. You have I trade as part of releases. You have smaller teams usually, you know, you don't really need a program manager to actually monitor these massive projects and shipping, because it's a lot more creative. So you, you know, might have a team of six or 10 engineers and you work and work with them to actually ship enhancements to your product. You have shorter development cycles, which probably is just weeks. It might be like a two week sprint, for example. You also have a shorter term roadmap, because you can constantly change and update your prioritization based on, you know, what you ship and how customers are adopting to that. That allows you to not have to plan a roadmap that's, you know, two years or three years down the line or maybe even longer time period, because a lot of things can be changed and updated based on that based on, you know, how your product is doing currently. There's less organizational aside, because like I mentioned earlier, there is no, you know, you make a you have a bug in your product. It's fairly easy to fix it in the software side. And so you might still have release reviews and you might have status updates that you might have to share with your leadership, but it's usually just to make sure that you are kind of going at a big picture level, you're going right direction.  So that's kind of the engineering development side of the product and process itself. After this, I'm going to go into the stakeholders. I'm just going to briefly cover the stakeholders, because I've, you know, I want to spend a lot of my time focusing on the, the transition how to make that switch. Yeah, so on the hardware side, you can see that, you know, engineering is fairly common. They might go by different, you know, they might have different organizations of engineers, we might have design was some engineers was the product engineers. Whereas on the software side might be more front end with the back end, you know, like platform engineers, for example, product marketing is still fairly common your relationship with product marketing is very similar to hardware and software space. Interesting thing is you might actually on the hardware space you might be working a lot more with financial analysts because like I said you are actually looking at more revenue versus costs improvements on the software side since it's abstract a little bit. And since you're dealing with, you know, millions and even billions of users, the skill set is very different for analytics and so you might actually be dealing data scientists who might be, you know, combing through millions of data points, billions of data points to actually give you key insights and, you know, you might partner with them differently. From a customer facing front. I've seen that hardware side you might have sales and field engineers working with you closely as a PM. Whereas in the software front you might have more kind of user researchers partnering with you there, you know, a lot more focused on what the customer experience is and they are parking with you on that. Similarly, on the software space you have experienced designers who think a lot about you know what the experience should look like for your customers. On hardware space that role is often done by applications engineers who are thinking about, you know, what, what, how do chips look for the smartwatch or for connected devices or for, you know, IOT sensors, for example, how do we design, you know, at chips to actually address those needs. So they are focusing a lot more on the customer experience side of things. Cool. Now we are in the later part of our conversation. I'm going to be covering what are the skills that you need to succeed in hardware versus software space and also how to make that transition. The first key call out is there's a lot that's in common between hardware versus software PM. It should not feel like you're kind of moving between different jobs. Or different industries altogether. You are irrespective of whether you're in the hardware and software space. Your job is to be your product's biggest proponent, right? You're supposed to, you know, as in terms of skill set, as a PM, you are spending a lot of time thinking about what your customers needs are, how to translate them into products and into features. You are tying your product success to what your key business metrics are and you partner with stakeholders to build a long-term vision for the product. All of that stays exactly the same whether you're in the hardware or the software space. Where it changes this in the hardware space, you are kind of playing the long game. Like I mentioned earlier, product development cycles take a lot longer. And so you spend a lot more time and this is where, you know, your skills would differ.  You have to have a good eye for understanding complex technical implementations and understand technical trends. Like I mentioned earlier, even at a very early level in your career, you might actually be thinking about, you know, what does the smart, again, taking an example, what does an autonomous car, what are they going to need for autonomous driving? And, you know, how do you actually connect that to what chips you're making? Or, you know, you might, if you're a product manager for, say, for example, servers, you might be thinking about what does the internet look like two years from now, technically, you know, from a technological perspective and how does that transfer into your product needs? As a hardware product manager, you are, you should be spending a lot of time to prioritize perfection or speed. You really want to make sure that there are no bugs before the designs are handed off to production engineers and who actually, you know, go and build it out in silicon. On the software side, you might, you know, a quick summary of what your skill is, you should be able to scale that iterative wins. There's a lot more of a short-term focus of being able to make iterative improvements, focusing on tomorrow rather than, you know, two years from now, for example. In terms of the skill set, like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of, it's a much bigger customer base you're dealing with on the software side. And so being able to gather insights by combing through, you know, billions of data points and getting those key insights is very important. Also, being able to isolate and test the core solution, what I mean by that is you might get a lot of signals if you're dealing with large data points. Being able to pull the key insights and the key solution and then being able to test that and get those learnings iteratively is a key skill set you need in the software space. The last one, like I mentioned on the hardware side, it's a lot about prioritizing speed or perfection. You want to be able to keep testing, keep releasing, and so your skills are going to differ accordingly because you are expected to move faster as a software product manager. Cool. The last thing I'm going to cover today, and I'm going to go a little more in-depth with each of these, is how do you actually make the switch? I know a lot of you are considering making the switch, and that's why you're on our call today. And so I'm going to talk about how to make the switch. A lot of the interest I've gotten is making a switch from hardware to software. That's something that I myself, that's a switch that I've made in my prior experience. And so I'd probably be focusing a little more on that, but a lot of these concepts apply in respect to if the direction you're going, even if you're going from software to hardware, for example. So one of the most common ways I've seen folks make that switch is what I call transition products. What I mean by that is you work on products that are kind of in the middle in terms of the skills, in terms of the process for product development. I've seen enterprise software and consumer hardware kind of fall in this transition product space. So like I mentioned, if you think of this as a spectrum from enterprise hardware to consumer software, you want to try different products that kind of fall in the middle that help you make that switch easily. Some of the benefits of making this switch is that you have a much smoother learning curve because a lot of things will stay common. So for example, just give an example, if you're moving from say Intel to Apple, you'll find a lot of things that are common in terms of the process. And then I say Apple, I mean the hardware side of Apple, you find a lot of things that are common. There is very little financial cost to this. In fact, if you play cards right, you'll probably go with the hike and you'll be able to make that transition. It's also the least disruptive to your lifestyle. You're not having to like learn complete new skills and have to change how your lifestyle works as you make this transition. Some of the challenges with this one, you of course have to apply for jobs. So there's job search overhead, you know, preparing a resume, interviewing and going through the mental ups and downs of the interview process or job search process. There are also maybe limited opportunities. You may not find too many companies that are kind of in the middle. You may not find too many roles that are in the enterprise software space. For example, you might find over a thousand PM roles if you open up Google's career portal today. Just in terms of the size of the opportunity, you might find fewer opportunities in enterprise software, for example. You also may run the risk of kind of getting pigeonholed into a specific segment. Again, just to give an example, you might be working on enterprise software for payroll for large businesses that have over 2,000 customers or 5,000 customers. That might be a very, very specific niche that you might run the risk of getting pigeonholed into if you get into that and spend too many years in that space. So that's again pros and cons. If that is something that you're really excited about, there is no harm in that. It's just, you know, the trade-offs that you need to keep in mind as you think about these options. The second thing I've seen is stakeholder roles. What I mean by that is you transition to roles from product management that are more kind of product agnostic. So marketing, program management, business development, corporate finance, corporate strategy. These are roles that you could easily transition from hardware to software space when it's easier, I mean more easily than a PM making the transition between these different industries. They're more product agnostic. Usually I've seen a lot of people are able to make these transitions internally within their company. It's much harder if you're, you know, product manager and you want to get into business development in a completely different company. You might find that harder, but if you're willing to do that within your company, you might have a much easier time recruiting. You might just be, you know, having a conversation with your, for example, with your marketing manager and, you know, see their interesting opportunities that you might be kind of able to flex into. Easier onboarding. You have a ton of social capital in the company, since it's a company that you're already working at. And you also would be able to build cross-functional skills and experience. What I mean by that is, you know, a lot of your work as a product manager benefits from having prior experience in marketing or having prior experience in corporate strategy. It just kind of helps you build those skills that you can then take over, transition over to product management whenever you make that switch. The last benefit of this is also reversible. You can decide, you know, two weeks into your new marketing role that, you know what, you actually did enjoy product management and you actually want to go back to it.  One of the big challenges with this is it requires certain amount of, you know, certain tenure and it requires you to have a certain level of social capital within your company. You cannot, you know, if you joined your current company two weeks ago, you cannot be able to make that switch as easily. It also requires you to have relationships within your company and, you know, be able to make that switch. I also want to call out that one of the big challenges with this is that there might be potential lifestyle disruptions. For example, if you get into this development, you might have to, you know, travel more often or you might have to work different hours. If you're in marketing, for example, you might have to work with folks in different countries and so you might have, you know, there might be some lifestyle disruptions that you might face. The last challenge that also is something important to keep in mind is you might have income and growth limitations. What I mean by that is you might find out that, you know, you might be at the highest income bands for, you know, if you're moving from, say, product management to product marketing or program management. In general, I've noticed that product managers are on the side, you know, the higher side, you know, for the same level, you might find pms or the higher level compensation compared to some of these other roles that I've talked about. And so you might be at the top of the band and you might also be limited in terms of your growth opportunities because you might not, you know, for example, if you move from a senior product manager to senior marketing manager, you might not be able to make it to the next level, which, you know, for example, might be staff marketing manager. Just because a skill set of that level would require a certain level of experience in the marketing domain itself. And so you might face some growth limitations in this. But if you're looking at this more of a short term switch, you know, for like a year or two years and then you're able to make the transition out into product management again, then this makes sense as a kind of a middle ground for you to be able to switch industries more easily and then switch into product management. The, the last option and which is I've seen a lot of people take I myself have, you know, followed this path is to kind of do a full career pivot or career reset. What I mean by that is you either go back to school, get, you know, get a master's program, get an MBA or a master's in program, product management or engineering. Another option is you could join a consulting firm, but often I've seen consulting firms are only they also often require MBAs to be able to make the switch. So if, for example, you, you know, already have an MBA, then you might be and you're looking to make the switch from hardware or software or software, consulting firms might offer you some of these interesting roles that help you make that transition. You might be, you know, doing copy charges specifically for certain industries and so you can build those skill sets to make a transition. The benefit of doing this, you know, kind of career reset is that you have a very high likelihood of success. You go to a good master's program in, you know, engineering product management or business administration. You're almost guaranteed to be able to make the switch very easily. You know, you have a ton of opportunities out there. A ton of companies have recruit from these, you know, top programs and they, you know, give you the opportunity to make that switch very easily. There's also a lot more of a career flexibility.  You can do that.  It's going to use your clean slate. In a lot of cases I've seen there's also a sharp income boost, especially for MBAs, but also for a lot of the master's programs.  They usually bring you in at a much higher level than you were initially. So you would see a sharp income boost. A key call out here is that to really take advantage of this, you want to be going to a top business school or top engineering school because that makes a big difference. You don't want to be going to a low-ranked school and then face a lot of limited opportunities. And then you also have a lot of these challenges. You will have, irrespective of which kind of school you go into, you might still end up having significant lifestyle disruptions. If you have kids, it might involve relocation. If you're going full-time to school, it might involve significant financial implications. You might even have no income for a year or two years if you're doing it full-time. If you're doing it part-time as well, you would have significant lifestyle disruption where you might have to put another 20 hours, a week on your education for this. It's also still going to have a job search overhead that's going to come here because you're going to have to go through the process of finding a job, even though it might be easier at school just because they might have career boards and job boards and all those things. But yeah, these are the three common ways I've seen folks be able to make that switch from hardware to software or even from software to hardware if that's something you're looking to do. I'm happy to talk about this offline and if you're interested in these options. Yeah, that's about making the switch. I'm going to quickly summarize. Like I said earlier, hardware has a lot. It's kind of a spectrum. Hardware versus software.  You might find enterprise software often falls kind of in the middle of the spectrum. In fact, there's a lot more in common with hardware than it is with software. And so if you are looking at just doing hardware to software, enterprise software might be a much easier transition for a lot of people based on the skills that you have. The last thing is, you know, happy to connect. I have my LinkedIn profile here. I have just joined Substack maybe a couple of weeks ago. So I've actually been writing on this, but I intend to be writing on Substack as well about this, about, you know, the hardware with software. About product management, about tech trends, things that I generally enjoy kind of reading and writing about. So yeah, happy to connect with all of you offline and all the best with it as you make this transition. And thank you for, thank you for joining this conversation today. Thank you for being here. I'm happy to connect. All right, thank you.


Okay, thanks very much. So I'm here today to just have a brief talk with you about a project that myself and my colleagues in the digitally enabled education team at the University of South Wales worked on. The session is called virtually the same for everyone, and it's a project considering practices to support the decolonisation of the traditional virtual learning environment. I will say now we have not decolonised. This is really typically iceberg stuff so don't get your hopes up. Okay so session outline basically a bit of a definition about what decolonisation is and how it applies to digital education, showcasing what USW already does University of South Wales to support decolonisation and then present some of the findings and the outputs from the project that we've worked on. So really briefly just a little bit of scene setting. I really wanted to this project to kind of challenge some of the implicit Western frameworks that the kind of implicit as part of the modern VLEs. I've listed some things here you know VLEs definitely reflect implicit educational discourse, the icons the graphics the tools the applications that kind of sit within them, often draw from European or American cultural contexts. The VLE functions and activities are very often influenced by Western educational systems, and all of these elements kind of lead into that that idea that somebody's already talked about today of digital shock, the digital shock that are international students experience when they first open up the VLE. And if you want to know more a bit more about international students and kind of digital shock, do read the JISC international student digital experience report which about to write down because I couldn't remember it off my heart. If I find a copy there are apparently I've been told 26 members of JISC here today at this conference so you must, you're going to bump into somebody at some point today so do ask them about that report. But what is decolonisation with the simplest kind of idea I could I could get really was this first one here the process of undoing all the legacies of colonialism that currently kind of sit across, not not not just the VLE but in higher education and everything else. In terms of digital technology, and I've got quite a few long quotes here but I kind of put in bold the bits that are really important I wanted to pick out. Digital technology really is seen as re-arming forms of colonialism and what we wanted to do as part of this project is look at what we can do to start to disarm some of those elements. And this quote comes from somebody called Professor John Traxler who some of you may know. I've been assured that John is going to be online watching so John hi if you're there. John is the UNESCO chair, Professor John Traxler by full title he is a UNESCO chair. The reason John got involved in this project is because we had an initial just kind of off the cuff email really asked him a copy of a presentation he gave was available online. He said it wasn't. Then we had a bit of a chat. We talked about the project we were doing with our team and John said, can I be involved somehow is there something I can do to I'm really really interested. So we got John along to facilitate a discussion on decolonizing learning technology for our team. From that John was really keen for it to be involved going forward to have a chat with us to be kept abreast of what was happening with this project which he called, and I put it bold they're fabulously stimulating and relevant. Thanks for that John. And there's a quote from John here which I think it's really really important in terms of what we're trying to do with this project, you know, we never went into this thinking that we could decolonize hardware and software systems you know we're not that naive. But what we really could do and this comes from the conversation with John is to help make our students colleagues and technical staff, more critically aware about what it means to decolonize the virtual learning environment, and we could do this, excuse me, for example could be talking to UK tech companies that we're involved with as part of a part of our higher educational package and seeing what they're doing to support decolonizing VLE. I want to play this very quick video of john which unfortunately I've discovered doesn't work so has to bounce me out to YouTube to play it. So I'm just going to play it quickly. I'm John Traxler. I'm a professor of digital learning and the UNESCO chair in innovative informal digital learning in disadvantaged and context. In the last two years I've been engaged in a variety of activities and initiatives focused on decolonization in different parts of the education system. So, in very general terms, decolonization is asking ourselves about the ways in which our work, our institutions, our resources, our professions, our values and our thinking are representing and reproducing the dominant urban white European global culture. And in doing so, depriving our students of a wider richer educational experience and disempowering and discriminating against students from outside that mainstream. This work so far has embraced the curriculum, science, education, academic writing, research methods, but understandably most of it has been around digital technologies that people, not just students, people use for any kind of learning. And so I'm delighted to be working with Carl and the USW team, who I think to my knowledge are leading the way in exploring how to decolonize the VLE. I think this work is very important in allowing us to understand the techniques, the criteria, the barriers that might be explored and used across the sector. So I look forward to seeing this work progress and good luck to everyone. I'm sorry, I'm playing again very, very second. There you go. So, yes, there's really kind of words there from John. So kind of really got us enthused about the project, a little bit of information about what we're currently doing USW, we're doing some stuff but not enough I don't think at the moment we do have a community of expertise on decolonizing the curriculum. And we do use Blackboard Ally to try and help students to kind of engage more with their kind of with the technology and give them a bit more of a feeling of empowerment in terms of the technology that's available to them. But that's really again just kind of scratching the surface there's more that we could definitely be doing. So what was our plan, it's a bit small, but don't worry. These are some of the things that we decided we would plan there's lots and lots of things on here. I've highlighted a couple of really important ones I think. We wanted to consult with students to see what tools they're familiar with and what they'd like to see within the Blackboard VLE that we currently that we use. And we also wanted to speak to suppliers of teaching assessment tools regarding how they're addressing decolonization. So we did exactly that. So I approached a couple of tool providers we use Ponocto for our lecture capture and Ponocto said Ponocto aims to bring equity of access to learning for all we contacted Vvox who we use for our polling tools and using Vvox today. They said we've never intentionally thought about decolonization but we intend to actively think about it more going forward which is really positive. We then spoke to Turnitin who gave this really long response but I've just highlighted a couple of bits. They said it's probably important to think about whether there are default ideas and values that are rooted in colonization. And how do we empower the educator who can then apply the lens of decolonization to their decisions. And really that's that kind of spurred on our two part two prong response to this project which was to look at how we could better engage with students to make sure that the VLE worked for them. But also what could we provide to our academic staff to give them a sheet of quick tips and ideas that they could use to begin to just think about decolonizing their VLE pages. But we really wanted to make sure we incorporated the student voice in everything that we did and that was really, really key to us. A little bit of background and aims I've covered some of these already. There's very limited research out there on decolonizing the VLE anything you do find will lead back to John Fraxler trust me, if you look it will. We've met with John which was great, but we wanted to kind of make sure we move beyond this traditional Western European technology that we all probably use. But for me and for the rest of the team is really, really important that this phrase nothing about us without us was kind of implicit across everything that we did we wouldn't want to run any sessions we didn't want to have any discussions. Unless the users we were talking about were in the room with us. So every time we had these discussions we ran these sessions we wanted to make sure that our international student body representation were there. Our home student DME representation were there. We wanted to make sure that we had the people in the room that we were trying to support. And we wanted to create resources that would help our staff and students understand what decolonizing technology actually was. So we created some co creation workshops, these were ethically approved 60 minute events, collaborative activities were set to kind of guide the discussions that took place. We had two groups student and a staff group, but they both addressed similar themes. Now, I want to play this video, but I've just realized playing the last one that although the video the audio played the video didn't actually play. So I'm not sure if anybody's, oh fair with this we can know how I can play the video because it's kind of there's no audio on it it's just a video. It didn't actually play so I'm just going to. Oh, that's fine. That's exactly what I wanted to do. There we go. I'll play it for you. There's activities really important because every student has different set of priorities they want to show up and show. And also with the blackboard, it's, it should be more personalizable rather than being as it is.  Blackboard is it always a lot of potential, and I really liked using it it's just as everything it does have room for improvement. And so we have some of the students that we that we worked with, and we worked really closely with them to make sure as I say that their input was was key to everything that we did as part of this as part of this project. You can see here, some of the sort of word clouds that we created just in terms of what students and staff expect to see on the homepage. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly it's eventually look at it. They're very, very similar. There's lots of words there that you can see across both the kind of modules assessment links key things that we expect to see there but yeah lots of parity between what staff and students want to see across our virtual learning environment pages. So what changes that we made based upon the workshops we've done the conversations that we've had well we've got a new homepage with representation representation across our student body and what that means is, we've not tried to use stock photos we've tried to use photos of our student body wherever possible, but we know there's a tension here in regards to screen scraping it's just not good enough to just go, we'll put some pictures up of kind of multicultural students having a chat and whatever and that's fine. They're still concerned there and that's something we're still working towards. Fantastic. Thank you. We're using more inclusive language in our module templates where our module is much more mobile responsive. We're very heavily making use of the pronouns and pronunciation features that are built into the VLE. And we're doing a greater promotional push of Blackboard Ally so these are changes that we've made to the VLE itself and these are just early stage changes this project is going to continue. We've also created a decolonising the digital learning environment tips for inclusive education document for our staff. This QR code is on the last slide as well so don't worry if you don't manage to get it now I'll put it on at the end. But this was presented at our USW learning and teaching conference for the first time about a month ago so our staff are now aware of this and we've already had staff approaches asking to be involved with the project going forward. So some reflections and if you didn't get that don't worry as I said it'll be on the end so so where do we go next where we're conscious we're only scratching the surface is a long way to go. And there's no quick fix to this we know that there's no quick fix it's something that we need to embed in our working practices all the time going forward. We're working with staff and students to support them on the journey decolonising their own VLE areas. And we've got ongoing scholarships such as coming here today to be invited to present at the conference. And we've already got evidence of this inclusive education flyer being utilized at other institutions it is created commons license so you can take it with you and do we want to make sure people do something with it. So we've already had conversations conversations with colleagues and other Welsh institutions have already picked up and are working with it. So that's a really quick update just a few references there and I just want to finish really say thank you very much there's a QR code again I'll leave it on the screen if you want to scan that and go and have a look at the document. I've also got some hard copies flyers here if you want to pick one up and take one away with you. But thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Carl, and to Celia as well for these two sessions. Any quick questions before the drinks reception which is starting at 15 past. Yes, Dustin. I work at Glasgow University I'm a co lead of the decolonize and the curriculum community practice there. Can I suggest that you look beyond John Draxler. He's a newcomer to this field. He, you're actually engaging in a form of neocolonialism by giving him a voice. There are others who've done work on this. Maxine Adam is one example and there are tons more. He may be UNESCO chair but he got that. Why, because he's an old white guy. Are those are those specifically rated to decolonizing the virtual environments specifically and even looking for this gap of the VLE like you need to look beyond just the tool. Right. Yeah, yeah, it's education, it's knowledge production so on and so forth. And I studied this as well. So I'm not talking out my behind. But there are others that you can look up. We have a reading list. I can send it to you. Yeah, great. But Taskine Adam is one who's done a lot, especially in the context of MOOCs, but it would still apply to this. He's a newcomer. He's taking others' knowledges and reporting on it. So I think you need to go back to the roots. Yeah, no, and I appreciate that. Absolutely. I mean, we're new to this. This is an entirely new area for us to be looking into. No, no, no, absolutely not. And it's appreciated if there is anything that you can send to me. You can see my email on the screen. It'd be very much appreciated. So yeah, absolutely. That'd be fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. And good point there. There's lots of educational developers in this space like Mahab Bali at Cairo University, for example, is another person is doing that kind of work as well. Any other questions from people obviously do contact Carl or Celia if you've got any questions afterwards grab them at the drinks reception.