The technique series is brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching. Did you know that you can get a 100% free form check from one of our expert strength coaches? Seriously, absolutely 100% free. No credit card needed, no questions asked. Just go to barbelllogic.com slash technique and sign up for the free Barbell Logic experience now. Do that right now and then enjoy the show. Barbell Logic Rewind. Welcome to the Barbell Logic Podcast. I am Scott Hambrick and I'm with Matt Reynolds and we're going to do another one of these in our series about the big cues. We've done the master cue and the mid-foot cue. We've done the knees out cue and today we're going to talk about push the floor. Matt Reynolds' favorite, I think, in mine. Yeah, yeah. So in the deadlift, Matt will say and I will say push the floor away, push your feet through the floor, push the earth away. What other variants of that cue have you heard? Leg press, leg press the floor away. You're right. Well, I think the first thing that we need to talk about is what's the difference between a push and a pull. And the answer is, there is no such thing as a push or a pull, right? Oh, well, okay, I see what you're saying. Get yourself where I'm going. From an actual biomechanic standpoint, nothing is a push or a pull. Muscles just contract. They just get shorter or relax. They just get shorter, right? They just, they get shorter. Here's where I was going with that. We often call the deadlift a pull colloquially, right? Yeah, so I'm going to, yeah, I'm going there. So the thing that is important to understand it in our how to deadlift video on the Barbiologic YouTube channel, I make the comment that the deadlift isn't a pull, it's a push. So here I am saying that there is no such thing. And that's true, right? And there are times that we want our clients or even ourselves to consider or to think about something in a way that might not be exactly scientifically, physically, biomechanically true, but it still helps us to do it the right way. So we use cues all the time. Like we've talked about before, the cue of like, get back on your heels. We don't actually want people to get back on their heels. We want them balanced over the midfoot. But if they're constantly on their toes, constantly on their toes, constantly on their toes, then often we'll give them an overcorrection cue, which is not exactly what we want them to do, but we're just trying to get them to move rightly. So when I say that we consider the deadlift a push and not a pull, it's because it often fixes many things that are wrong at the beginning of a deadlift for people. Yeah, to call it a push is a cue that makes people behave correctly and move properly. Yeah, absolutely. So you might want to go back to our podcast about, you know, about cues, like what is a cue, right? And the cue is the thing that we use to get the lifter to move the way we want them to move. And so sometimes we can say things that are factually incorrect, but it means something to our lifter and gets them to do the right thing and move the right way. So if the person is pulling on the bar in the deadlift, what do you see them doing? Yeah, so let me just address the cue really fast too, because that was good. It's an important point. So the cue is something that we use that's more of a reminder or a trigger of something that's already been taught. This isn't the teaching method, right? So we're saying a thing that requires very little thought by the lifter in order to just get them to perform the movement correctly. So push the floor away or leg press the floor. It's something that anybody who's ever been on a leg press knows what that feels like. Your hips are static and you make the plate move that your feet are against probably. If you know, most leg presses are set up that way. And so what I see when people are not pushing the floor away is that they start to pull and their hips start to extend before their knees extend. And in a deadlift, we actually want knee extension to initiate the movement. We want to be able to use our most muscle mass. And so our knees are bent a little bit. Our hips are bent a lot. Our back is usually very horizontal in a deadlift at the start position, right? And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to utilize my quadriceps at knee extension to initiate the movement for a deadlift. The vast majority of people, we see the two ends of the spectrum look like this. People will begin to extend their knees hard and early and the bar doesn't move. That's a problem. We see this all the time. The hips pop up. The knees get straighter, but the bar doesn't come off the floor. That's a problem. Now I have body movement that occurred that didn't transfer into the barbell. And the other side of that is they keep their knees bent. The Rachel Reynolds problem. My wife does this. She pulls the bar off the ground and her back immediately starts to become more vertical and her hips start to open, but her knees stay closed just as close as they were when the bar was still on the ground. Well, that's also a problem because now I'm not utilizing my... So both fail to utilize the quads to initiate the movement. The quads being the knee extenders. Right? Right. Knee extension should contribute to the barbell moving. Boom. Wait a minute. Stop. So contribute. You're right, but we want to make sure that you're using both the quads and the hip extensors off the floor. That's right. Because once it's off the floor, you really can't use the quads that much. They don't help very much. And so if you've got a deadlift that's stuck on the floor, if you're not failing just below the knee, this is probably your problem. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And to understand that both ends of the spectrum fail to utilize the knee extension or the quads properly. So the quads are either extending and the bar doesn't move or the bar moves and the quads and the knees don't extend. Both problems. Right? Similar issues, but the way we cue it are completely different. So if you're someone who is pulling the bar off the floor, meaning that their hips start to open and the back becomes more vertical before the knees extend at all, then that's a problem when we say push the floor away. Also, if you're a person who tries to arm pull a bar, if you yank on the bar with your arms and your shoulders shrug or your elbows bend, that's a problem. Like the arms and the shoulders do nothing in a deadlift. There are two pieces of rope with hooks on the end of the cube by the way, right? So we think about pushing the floor away. And as I push the floor away, the bar must move. I can't push the floor away and have my hips go up and the bar stay on the ground because it didn't contribute to the movement of the bar. And that's how I want the bar to be initiated. So that's a cue that I use to get them to start the deadlift correctly. Yeah, it makes sense. And we actually say that in our changing progression too, right? We're like, hey, walk up to the bar one inch away. Now I'll hump over, grab the bar. Step three, put your shins against the bar.  Step five, push the floor away and drag the bar up your legs. That's correct.  Like don't worry about all this stuff. Like Matt just said about knee and hip extension and all that stuff. Push the floor away. Your arms are cables and set your back and push the floor away. And chances are you're going to deadlift properly. It seems to be the lift that takes the least technical expertise as long as their head's in the right place. My arms are cables. I'm pushing the floor away. I'm pushing my feet through the floor. It's a standing leg press. I'm going to push the earth away.  That's right. Now let's talk about what happens if you do that correct and what it looks like immediately after. Just right. Because there was also a tremendous difference between push the floor away on a deadlift and push the floor away on a clean. These are two different pulls. Pushes. Two different whatever, right? So on a deadlift and on a clean, the initial movement of the barbell is attributed primarily to some knee extension. The knee extension gets the bar off the floor. That's the first half inch. That's the first half inch. Literally, it's that little, it's nothing. It's very little. It literally gets the weight off the floor. How much off the floor? Not much. Almost none. Yeah, so I think all of us have experienced a deadlift that you walked up to and you're like, man, I got this. And then it was JB welded the floor. And you're like, did I misload the bar? No. If your programming was correct and you loaded the bar properly, you probably had a mechanical problem that took the quad out of it in that first half inch. It felt like it was glued down. That's correct.  The shoulders also jump forward. They lurch forward. When the hips pop up, the shoulders go forward. These are all problems. If I can get the bar to come off the ground, that half inch, one inch with my knee extension, in a deadlift at that point, my hips start to extend and my back does start becoming more vertical. So the two cues that I tend to use to get people to deadlift correctly after the five step setup that you just described is to start by pushing the floor away. And the second you feel the weight come off the bar, I'm going to try to get my shoulders behind the bar. Now, when do the shoulders come behind the bar on a deadlift? We're at the very top, the very last thing. At literally at the very top. So this is another- The last thing that happens. Literally the last thing that happens. So this is another sort of over-creshing cue. It's just a cue. What I'm trying to do, if the knees continue to extend and on a deadlift, my back angle is maintained and continues to be horizontal. The moment arm stays long in the back and that's what we call a clean pull. That's how you want to pull a clean. If the weight's not that heavy and I want to accelerate the barbell as I do on a clean because the weight's not that heavy and I can't accelerate it. If it's real heavy, like good luck. You can't accelerate the bar, it's too heavy. So if the weight is not that heavy and I want to accelerate the bar then I actually want to maintain the long moment arm on the back. Extend the knees almost fully before the hips start to open and I literally try to keep my shoulders in front of the bar as long as possible.  And it's that trebuchet and it whips the bar up and the bar lands on your shoulders. That's a clean. But on a deadlift, because it's so heavy the second that my quads and my knees- my quads extend my knees and the weight breaks off the floor I am now in a fight to try to shorten the moment arm on the back, which means as soon as the quads, as soon as I've pushed the floor away and the bar's broken off the ground I immediately try to start making my back more vertical and the way I do that is I think about get my shoulders behind the bar as quick as possible and it makes it more vertical and the moment arm gets shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter as the angle changes. Like the length of your back is the same. The only two things that can contribute to moment arms are the segment length which is fixed based on the person and the angle of that segment. And so as the angle becomes more vertical I'm fighting that fight to get the moment arm shorter so that I can get that really heavy deadlift drug up my legs and locked out. I find that people who are good squatters like if you're saying to yourself and I don't mind squatting but I sure hate deadlifting. You're probably built in a way that makes squatting easier for you. You probably have a little longer torso than I do. I find Matt that those people want to get vertical too early and they want to get their shoulder back too early and if you like squatting do not listen to any of the things that Matt just said. Yeah, that's true. Because you're going to get your shoulder back too quick the bar is going to swing away from your shins and you're going to try to squat the deadlift up. And for those people and for those people I yell at them to keep their shoulder in front of the bar as long as they can. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. That's a great point. This is why coaching matters, right? This is why you can't just say this is sort of a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. What will tend to happen is people who are great at squatting will try to squat the bar up on a deadlift. Yep. They do not want to lean over. My brother-in-law, charity. You can't squat. You cannot squat a deadlift heavy. You can't. It won't work. Yeah. So, you know, these cues don't work. Not everybody uses the same cues but I'll tell you what everybody needs midfoot. Everybody needs knees out and everybody needs to push the floor away. These three that we've recently talked about I think everybody needs to start with those. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. The push the floor away communicates so much about what a proper deadlift should be in so few words that it's almost as good as the midfoot cue. Yeah. But you don't shrug the bar. You don't row it. Your arms are cables. You push the floor away. Your knees and through the middle of your foot by the middle of those cues actually work together because you'll often see people try to push the floor away on the ball of their foot or they'll try to pull the bar on the heel. So the back on the heel they're often are trying to over pull and not push enough. So sometimes I'll say push through the middle of your foot. Push through the middle of your foot. Yeah, often we'll take a new lifter and put my hand on the shoulder and I'll say, okay, no, we've already done some deadlifts, you know. And so I'm going to say, okay, midfoot and push the floor away. And if they do that, they're going to get what they need. And then at the end of the deadlift, your knees and hips are going to lock at the same time and the shoulder will go behind the midline, try a millisecond later. And so those are the things that we're looking for and if we don't see those, then we start giving these other cues about keep your shoulder in front of the bar or get your shoulders back or whatever. So we're going to push the floor away, Matt. And then there's another cue that we use that I use in conjunction with this or just after it, if I need to, which is something like squeeze the bar off the floor, make the bar heavy in your hands, take the slack out of the bar because we don't want people to jerk the deadlift.  We want them to gradually load up and then the bar comes off the floor and they stand. So I think that's important as well. And I think that was pretty important. That one's agnostic too. It doesn't matter how you're built. That's right. Push the floor away with your midfoot and squeeze the bar off the ground. Yeah. So I'll usually actually use the make the weight heavy in your hands before I push the floor away, right? So they kind of are occurring at the same time. But if you think about it this way, go back to the leg press thought. So if you've ever been on a 45 degree leg press, what they call a hip sled, just not really what it is at all. But that's what they call it in high school. You would not, you would not have your feet off of the plate, right?   And yet people often do this all the time on a deadlift. You know that there are two telltale things that show me that they're yanking the bar off the ground before they ever yank it off the ground. Like a lot of times you can just see them yank it off the ground. Yeah, but there's a foreshadowing that occurs when they get ready to yank it off the ground. One of two things occurs. One, they open their fingers and then close their fingers right before they pull. Yeah. Or two, their elbows are straight and they go bent and then straight. Yeah. The hands or the elbows will tell you if someone is about to yank the bar off the ground. If that hand opens up, it ain't heavy in the hands because it's not in the hands. And sometimes they drop their hip just a little bit. You can see, of course, they're trying to get a run at it. You're like, yeah, that's exactly right. And then they yank, right? So this is the way you think about through those that five-step setup that you explained a minute ago that stance is number one. Bend over and grab the bars, number two, loose. Chin to the bar, knees out, number three. Squeeze the chest up. And between squeeze the chest up and push the floor away. I make the weight heavy in my hands. While I'm pulling my chest up or while I'm squeezing my chest up, I'm going to feel that bar get heavy in my hands. I'm gonna feel as the weight is heavier and heavier and heavier on the bar, more slack will come out of that bar. We'll bend more and more and more and more and more. And just like when it feels like it's about to break off the ground, push the floor away right through the middle of your foot and it goes.  Okay, that's fine. It's a fine distinction. Yeah, so the reason, let me explain why. This is, okay, let's actually break this down and talk about it. I'm saying this out of my own experience, right? So this is the way I lift. It is, I'm a big guy. I'm long-legged. I'm relatively short torsoed. I'm very bent over on a deadlift, right? So every little bit of bar bend flex I can pull out puts me in a better and better and better position. My hips get a little closer to the barbell, a little closer to the gravity vector. The moment arm on the back gets a little shorter. And so what I'm trying to do is get myself in a more mechanically advantageous position before I push the floor away. Because once I push the floor away, nothing else changes. I'm in that position. So I don't know that we're actually arguing but I set my grip, set the knees, squeeze my chest up and I can feel the weight get heavy in my fingers. And I keep doing that. And I keep doing that. I keep doing that. And what will happen is my back will become a little more vertical, a little bit more vertical. And remember, I'm not that long torsoed, short femur, good squatter. I'm the opposite. I'm a bad squatter. So I'm trying to get my back a little more vertical. All that flex pulled out of the bar, all that weight heavy in my hands. Let's say I have 600 pounds on the bar. I want 550 pounds of heavy in the hands. I agree with that. Before I push the floor away. But how do you want to get it heavy in your hands? By pulling on it, by hip extension, or by pushing the floor? Yeah, that's a good question. I do it by squeezing my chest up. Now, everything is taught in my legs, right? So my legs aren't, maybe that's, maybe I'm just, we're not communicating this super, super well. I don't go from loose. Like I'm obviously pushing the floor away a little bit. Just not enough to make the weight break off the ground yet. I hope you're enjoying this episode in the technique series of the Barbell Logic podcast. You know, at Barbell Logic, we believe that barbell based strength training is literally for everyone and that the only thing holding most people back from all the incredible benefits that come from it is good technique, inconsistency, and we can help with that too. And whether you're just getting started or you've been lifting for a while, it's difficult to know if you're performing the lifts correctly or if there's anything you can do to make your lifting better. We have tons of free resources online from basic how-to videos that'll get you lifting safely and efficiently right away to podcasts, articles, and videos that will help you troubleshoot common errors. All you have to do is visit barbelllogic.com slash technique to see our best technique focused content in one place. And while you're at it, you can sign up for a consultation with a Barbell Logic coach. This is a free form check and a chance to ask an expert all your training related questions. There's no reason you should be struggling to get started or to make progress. Check out barbelllogic.com slash technique for more information and sign up for the barbell logic experience. Again, it's 100% free. There's nothing better for your training than knowing you're lifting safely, training efficiently, and on the right track. All right, let's get back to the show. People often think like everybody that comes over to the house and watches me deadlift. The amount of time it looks like I'm pulling on the bar before the weight breaks off the ground, freaks everybody out. Like, man, you pulled on that for four seconds before it broke off the ground or whatever, right? That's actually not the case. I'm feeling for how much flex can I get out of this bar before I actually decide to go. And if you do that right, everything is so tight that when you get efficient, I don't actually think about squeezing the bar off the floor. Now, I use that term all the time for novices to yank the bar. Yeah, yours is heavy enough that the bar flexes a considerable amount. It's heavy enough that the plates come off the ground one at a time.  Yes, the novice can't.  Absolutely. So we squeeze the bar off the ground because if we don't, bad stuff happens.  They could, you know, there could be some injury stuff. The shoulder will take the shoulder jump. That's right. The shoulders jump out of the out of position. The shoulder blades pull apart.  I guess the right word. The knee will extend in the hip and the shin pulls away from the bar. Right. And the bar almost always jumps out in front of the doesn't maintain contact with the legs. It's one of the first things out. It swings out in front and now it's two inches off the shin. The devil is very interesting because we don't have the weight on us when we start the thing on the squad. It's on your back. Clearly in the press, it's in your hands in front of your body and you're supporting the whole thing on the bench press. It's clearly over your shoulder. You know, and so the center of gravity when you initiate those is where it's going to be. Yeah. So so let me say it. Let me say it in another way. You just said it exactly right. But think about maybe some of you haven't thought about this. The deadlift is the only lift that starts at the bottom. It starts with the concentric phase and ends with the eccentric and all the other lifts start with the eccentric and end with the concentric. Right. That's why it's called a deadlift. It's starting from a deadstop in the bottom. By the way, how much more could you deadlift? If you pick them, if you had the ball on the pins on the safety pins well above the knees, you get a very high rack pull.  And then you wrote it down. Road R. O. D. R. O. A. D. W. R. O. A. D. Road it. I don't know whatever. So you let it come all the way down and tap on the ground and stand back up with it. Well, you could deadlift more weight that way. Yeah. Because there's a stretch reflex that occurs. You get that big, that rebound that occurs from the eccentric. It doesn't happen on a deadlift. That's why it's dead. That's why it's dead. That's why it's dead. That's why it's dead. That's right. So when you bend over and you grab the bar before you push and take the slack out, your center of gravity is based on your body weight, right? So Matt Reynolds weighs 347 and he humps over and grabs the bar and before he pushes his feet against the floor and starts to load his hands and take that weight in his hands, center of gravity is somewhere between his thighs. He's humped over, right? But as you start to take the weight in your hands and press the floor, the center of gravity moves down, down, down, down, down because the barbell is heavier. Center of mass. I'm sorry, center of mass. Yeah. The center of mass starts to move down, down, down, down because the barbell is heavier than us. So when we squeeze the bar off the floor, we allow ourselves to gradually move that center of mass. And so it's less shocking. And so that's important. And then Diamond Darren Deaton has taught me that we have our concentric, our muscles can have the concentric action and eccentric and then isometric like they can fix their length. Sure. And they can resist loads more efficiently in isometric contraction than they can in concentric. Yes. They're stronger isometrically than they are concentrically. Correct. So if I can set my back in the isometric and then squeeze off the ground, I can more strongly hold the position of my back than I can if I have to concentrically tighten up my spinal erectors and pull my chest up under load. So we want to get that all set in isometric contraction and then squeeze it off the ground.  Yeah, so that's a really good point. So this is that those there's two polar ends of the spectrum here too. So most people who are built to deadlift and not built to squad with a yank on the bar if they jerk on the bar too hard and too fast, their shoulders will lurch forward, their hips will go up, their knees will extend, the bar doesn't move and then bar jumps two inches off their chins. But if they're built the other way, what they tend to do is they go from being sort of rounded to try to get themselves into extension and they scoop and they go right from loose to tight to pull. Right and they'll scoop underneath the bar and the knees will actually often become go into more flexion. The knees will scoop under the bar as the back becomes more vertical and they'll try to squat the weight up with a vertical back. This is what my wife does, right? So you can see that if I yank on the bar, my knees go straight and my shoulders lurch forward and the bar jumps out in front. If my wife yanks on the bar, her knees actually go more bent, her back becomes more vertical and she tries to squat the thing up. Both are wrong. This folks that had the longer torso, they're good squatters.  It's actually not extension, by the way. It's normal anatomical position, really. Yeah, really in the normal anatomical position. They get that posterior pelvic tilt. And their lumbar rounds a bunch. It's gross to look at.    So push the floor away and squeeze the weight up. Yeah, the hard thing to fix with a client is when they actually do it all right and they still lose some extension in their back. You know, like the Nikki Sims problem. So, you know, Nikki sets up perfectly on the squat. She gets her back in perfect extension, normal anatomical extension, not overextension. Perfectly flat and starts to pull. And as the weight breaks off the ground, she loses the extension. She doesn't have the ability and part of that's because, again, she's her torso so short that she's so bent over that she's so horizontal that she just can't seem to maintain that. She's certainly not the only one. They've got lots of clients that do that. That's, well, it's a better problem to have than a person who just will not set their back in extension, but it becomes a strength issue that she's like, man, I don't exactly know how do we fix this over time? Right? When we back it up a little bit and start working our way up and it tends to often be one of those issues where the person who lost, who was able to set their back in extension and then lose it in the middle of the lift or in the first third of that lift, it used to happen at 225 and now it happens at 375. But it often is sort of the bane of their deadlift for their entire career.  And that's okay. And that's actually, you know, that and requires something else other than cues. It's going to be rack pulls and, you know, to help them, help them get their back stronger so that they don't do that. There's another one of the big cue shows. I don't know. Do you have anything else to say about push the floor away in the deadlift? No, I think we made a good point there that as sort of the wrap up is that everyone, regardless of your anthropometry, should think about pushing the floor away on a deadlift. Yeah. That's where you start. That's where you start. If you don't do that, the way you'll screw up the lift will be different based on your anthropometry. People who are built to squat with long torsos and short legs versus people who have long legs and short torsos. The way it will go badly for you, the way it will go poorly, if you do it incorrectly will be different. But if you push it away, if you get tight, squeeze your chest up and push the floor away and squeeze the bar off the floor, regardless of how you're built, that's the right way to start a deadlift or to consider starting the deadlift. Knowing that there actually is no such thing as a push or a pull, we're just setting our body in the correct position to let the muscles contract the way they should. I like it. We'll do a couple more of these big cue shows. I think they're helpful to people. Help us now. Help us. Go to iTunes and give us a five-star review. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you guys in just a few days. Thanks.


Our next speaker is Amit Dutta, who has given us the title Transparency in Online Targeting. A couple of years back, a man furiously walked into a target store of Saint-Miniapolis and demanded to see the manager. He said, my daughter is still in high school and you're selling her few pots for baby clothes and ribs. Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant? The manager profusely apologized and said, I'm sorry. And then he called a few days later to apologize again. On the phone though, the father was somewhat abashed. I owe you an apology, he said. My daughter is due in August. We are now living in a world where the targets and Facebook's know more about you than your parents do. Such accurate predictions are possible by carefully processing tons and tons of data and creating accurate mathematical models of you. These models are then used to make predictions about your lies, your dislikes and more importantly what products you might want or might be persuaded to want. The ads that you see are very different from the ads that your neighbors use. This is because these ads depend on the websites that you visit, the views that you've seen, the ads that you've clicked in the past and God knows what else. The algorithms that make these predictions are often so complicated that even the programmers who write them can't always comment on why a particular prediction was made. Moreover, they don't want to open up their source code to public auditors in order to maintain their competitive advantage over business writers. My thesis work aims at increasing the transparency into these predictions without requiring access to the source codes or the algorithms that exist in the first place. I have a mechanism which can detect the flow of information from inputs to outputs for any given recommender system. By learning simple experiments from the consumer side, I can tell which inputs influenced a particular recommendation. I have already implemented this technique to study Google's advertising system and the recommendations that it makes. I found some pretty interesting results. For example, I found that visiting carbonated websites increases the number of carbonated ads that Google serves for you. This sounds marvelous, maybe even useful to some people. However, what I found interesting and also concerning is that the same behavior also happens with websites that are about sensitive topics, like those related to disabilities and substance abuse. I have made my scripts and the code based open source so that any privacy conscious user can run their own experiments and detect information flow in instances which interest them. Thus in conclusion, I have devised a mechanism which increases the transparency in complex data processing and recommender systems by learning simple experiments from the consumer side. Thank you.


a BP to Cyrus so he can do some lightning attacks even though he's like level potato and we'll do a SP steal here 25 let's in the hunt beginning does anybody do lightning no but the great condor please target the main dude oh my gosh well he's gone there we go I got all those weaknesses Cyrus is gonna start to hurt cuz he's got like no defenses so she can't do anything to him but I can attack this guy poor Cyrus Cyrus is it cut out for this kind of stuff all right so lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt that guy sight come in if thou darest all right all the means are gone and just hit them check out some of this shield oh boy we gotta interrupt this uh was that his indentation okay never mind not that big a deal lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt can't do anything with that I think I'll reduce that wall actually I'll do HP faith yeah that'll do good damage good damage not quite decent damage the site let's begin it using this did he get debuffed he did uh how do I get rid of this see I don't know what these herbs do man so frustrating I wish that I had like a way to see what they do from this screen I feel like I need to open up a wiki or something to see what they all do so I can have a reference and the icons too I don't know what the debuffs are but I'll just do that there's half his defenses nope I didn't do anything I'm just gonna start going through some tells me he's about to get hit hard okay I should be able to break this back nothing there's a thousand damage hand it what next it's pretty good girl all right Chad I'll be right back I gotta help my wife she's coming in the house so I'll see you in a little bit thanks for watching enjoy this guy being stunned I'm gonna run ads while I'm away as well but I gotta help her bring in it's probably gonna take like maybe five to ten thanks so much for being awesome I'll be right back I'm back guys sorry about that okay about this nope didn't work just so say it is not so coffee thanks for the raid man everybody welcome all the coffee viewers thanks so much for coming by I don't know when it was that was uh about 15 minutes ago I was afk my bad I was afk during the raid I just saw it in the chat my bad you had to go afk for a while my bad it's awesome okay what's up with kung fu welcome dude my bad kids just barge into your classroom brought professor albright good thank you Lucia yes head master something tells me he's not about to offer a commendation professor albright a most troubling report has reached my ears a report sir an anonymous source claims that you have abused your prestigious position to enter into an illicit relationship with her highness the princess oh wow that girl jealous and you believe this report sir if it is untrue then say so it is unfounded unsubstantiated boulder dash of the highest order I would like to take your words at face value professor but I fear the situation is not so simple congrats a rumor regarding the royal family even an unsubstantiated one such as this is sure to spread quickly if we do not take swift action princess mary's good name could be forever something that is something that simply cannot be allowed to happen surely you understand and so what do you intend to do with me sir it is not an easy decision to make dismissing you outright would be tantamount to an admission of guilt if I may be so bold head master what about a sabbatical professor albright has put on extended leave while official account state that he's doing fieldwork in a distant land what say you Cyrus this way both the academy's reputation tells me chapter two is gonna help remain intact explain this more my reputation we have a problem professor not at all head master on the contrary this might prove the perfect opportunity opportunity for what as a matter of fact there is a matter which has piqued my interest of late I was just wondering when I might find the time to do a bit of research in the field I think I will set forth on a journey in search of an ancient tone that disappeared 15 years ago besides if I am not permitted to share what I have learned with my peers and the public there is little point in continuing my research here is that so do tell professor I'm not telling you is it that you intend to investigate as regards a certain tone now if you will forgive me I must begin packing for my journey good day to you an enigma is ever that one professor oh Therese what is it I heard that you were leaving the academy how'd you hear that fast I just walked out then you heard true I see so you were the source of the rumor a little brat not until just this moment when you apologized and yet I cannot fathom your motive why would you tell such a terrible lie you're always helping her highness answering her every question just wanted you to pay more attention to me well if that is some stupid logic I never heard logic in my whole life you paid too much attention to her I want you to pay more attention to me so I said a lie that you were having a relationship with her yeah that'll do it that'll fix it that's why you went to the headmaster a little trouble yeah it's always freaking little trouble professor my dear yeah whatever for some time now I wanted to travel continue to lie my dear it's for a good purpose you see there's a certain matter I simply yeah so fret not my girl if anything you've done me a favor besides I am not entirely without fault in the matter uh-huh indeed I have not been as attentive to you the highness is in doing so I may have given you a question that I if only I had these stories have about six or seven too many sentences to explain something there's some there's some repetition of information quite a bit in some of these stories we get it you had a crush on them in that case I should never I do not see why hello no male welcome or dead huh that's one of my side quests I think and so he left the academy behind in search of a lost home uh-huh let's save all right so we got that story done the next story we have to do is Ophelia just do north and I think we'll do that one tomorrow we're gonna call it here guys I gotta take care of some stuff


Hi Steve, this is Ivo van Eyre, on Van Eyre Publishing. I would like to congratulate you with those 25 years. Happy birthday to the Open Group. We have been publishing with the Open Group for many years, many publications, always a lot of fun and a good message to the rest of the world to make standards widely available. Here in Covid we didn't have much time to see each other or go into conferences and meet those working groups so we are really looking forward to the next physical conference where we can meet, talk and discuss these things. Thank you for the future. We are keen to work with you and to make those standards work and to make the standards widely available. I wish you a very good conference. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to my career in data a podcast where we discuss with industry your leaders and experts how they have built their careers I'm your host Shannon Kemp and today we're talking to Doug Laney from West Monroe More and more companies are considering investing in data literacy education But still have questions about its value purpose and how to get the ball rolling Introducing the newest monthly webinar series from Dataversity Elevating enterprise data literacy where we discuss the landscape of data literacy and answer your burning questions Learn more about this new series and register for free at Dataversity.net Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity And this is my career in data a Dataversity talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management To understand how they got there and to be talking with people who help make those careers a little bit easier To keep up to date in the latest in data management education go to Dataversity.net forward slash subscribe Today we are joined by Doug Laney the innovation fellow and data of data and analytics strategy at West Monroe And normally this is where a podcast host would read a short bio the guest but in this podcast Your bio is what we're here to talk about Doug. Hello and welcome Hi Shannon, great to be with you Likewise very well and you Very well. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for being a long time Dataversity friend No, new and met you at many conferences and your speaker coming up at enterprise data world. I am looking forward to it That will be covering monetizing data as as an asset and a little bit about data and analytics maturity as well Oh, very cool. I love that So tell me You're the innovation fellow of data and analytics strategy at West Monroe. So first tell me about West Monroe What is it? What's the company do? Yes, so West Monroe is a digital services firm. Um, that kind of brings together technology related expertise and business related expertise About 2,500 consultants focused mainly on North America. Although we've been Recently went in some projects across the pond. So that's good. Maybe Maybe we'll be expanding over there beyond our our london office, which focuses mainly on mna activity So, yeah, we can cover most most industries and Kind of again bring together data and technical technical and industry expertise For our our clients. We don't do time and materials type work It's very mainly project work and Deep relationships with the clients Very nice so What is it you do for west Monroe? What's your typical week look like? Yeah, so it was a innovation fellow. My role is really got three components. One is doing market-facing things like you instructing at a diversity and speaking at events and I publish in in Forbes and in cdo magazine and elsewhere I also work to develop new innovative offerings for west Monroe. So one of those That's now a core offering of ours is data monetization strategy and approach. So we help organizations Design conceive and design and develop and implement data products or even set up data Data product functions within their organization. We also do some data valuation work And we help organizations evolve to becoming more data driven by Really managing data as an actual actual asset. So I participate as a Senior data strategist on engagements. I develop new offerings and then I do these market-facing activities Oh, very cool So so tell me that so I've known you a while and you're actually really well known I don't know if you know this but you're really well known in the community you I'm sure he You were very popular so but so is this gonna make me blush This is what you wanted to be when you grew up when you were just, you know, six years old. It was just a dream when I was Probably the time I was six or seven years old. I wanted to be a photographer My father and I built a dark room in the basement and Shoot and develop photos and I would spend Two three four nights a week sometimes in the in the dark room Experimenting with different techniques or whatever and just kind of learning that learning the trade Smelling all those chemicals must have done something to me, huh? So but then my when I was 13 my dad brought home a A personal computer and I found it to be a much more powerful creativity tool And pretty much never stepped foot in the dark room again Wow So yeah, it was a it was a real quick shift learned to to to code and experiment around with the with the pc and Yeah, so that was kind of my journey and then You know, you talk about being known in the in the industry I remember sitting around in university with With friends and everybody was like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be rich. I want to be famous. I'm blah blah blah I'm like, you know what I just want to be respected in my profession whatever and So, uh, yeah, that's I love that. So what did you end up majoring in? Well, there's a story I'll tell you the story So originally I was a math computer science major at University of Illinois And I got into differential equations in my second or third year And uh, and the first day of class the professor grabs a handful of chalk and it's one of those old classrooms with the The chalkboards that slide left and right and up and down, right? Like in goodwill hunting, right? Yeah, and um And he spends 30 minutes just writing this these formulas are Just scribbling on all the all the chalkboards and we're all looking at each other in the classroom What the heck is this and finally he turns around he says does anybody know what this is? And we're like, we have no idea So we start guessing any kind of what's called an NP complete problem an unsolvable problem So we were guessing in grandma's last theorem and Traveling salesman problem. He's like, no, no, no, this is the proof to the four color map problem So cartographers have always known you only needed four colors to color a map With no two borders, you know this this touch the same colors It was considered to be an unsolvable proof until this guy proved it in like 1968 or whatever and interestingly You can look this up on wikipedia of professor apple Did this and it's the first proof that was validated by computer Interesting So I was in very intimidated and I'm like is it too late to drop this class and I was really more interested in the business aspects of computing but back in this is 1984 at University of Illinois. There was no MIS degree So I created a individual plans of study program Submitted it to the committee That integrated business and computer science and it was unanimously rejected Wow They're suggesting that Why would anybody ever want to use computers for business? So A dean ended up helping me get it pushed through and so I ended up getting a degree in software engineering and business administration And then I learned that the next year they they used that That curriculum as the basis for a full-time MIS program at Illinois Oh, that's amazing. And now I'm honored to teach there So I teach my infonomics MBA class there each year Oh, I did not know that that's Cool coming full circle then full circle.  What's the first job out of college? So the first job was with talk talk about coming full circle was with Arthur Anderson back when it was Anderson consulting before it was Accenture and And interestingly westman row who I'm with now is sort of born from the ashes of Arthur Anderson After the Enron scandal when Arthur Anderson kind of blew up They had a business consulting group and four people from that practice formed westman row 21 years ago Wow, it's kind of like coming first full circle for me working at westman row Very cool. Yeah, so how did you go get from there to uh westman row I guess the quick story is Five years at Arthur Anderson building batch data data architectures mostly I'm working on methodologies I ended up going into the expert systems world because I had an interest in AI So I joined some early stage AI companies back in the late 80s early 90s working with natural language query and forward and backward chaining algorithms and crazy stuff like that And then I followed a colleague over to a company called prism solutions formed by a lot of your listeners Will know build the name bill inman The father of the data warehouse concept. So he hired me to run the consulting practice in the midwest and then in Australia would move there for a while And uh, and yeah, and then I was remember I was speaking at an event Whether it was like it wasn't data versus it was a dci event And someone from Gartner heard me talking about data warehouse methodology. We had built the industry's first data warehouse development methodology while at prism called iterations, which in fact IBM used for about 25 years after the acquired prism And um, I was speaking on on the top. I can somebody from Gartner came up Actually, it was metagroup back then came up and said, hey, did you create those slides yourself? And I said, well, yeah, why you said you want a job with metagroup? I'm like, well, sure So Move back to the u.s. Join metagroup meta was then reacquired into Gartner And and then I went back to Gartner after doing some other things for a while and pretty much Spent the bulk of my career as a senior analyst with Gartner helping to set up the chief data officer research group and Yeah You mentioned that you you built data architect art Data architects for For the initial company. Where'd you learn that? Did you learn that as part of your degree? Did you make that out like it's like how did you figure out how to do that? You know, my degree was was not as vocational Not as vocational as a lot of other degrees. There was a lot of theory At University of Illinois. Yeah, we learned to code and program and all that but it was very much more theoretical So we learned a lot about relational Irrelational databases and the theory behind them and that translated really well into Everything including data warehousing Like it so So Doug, what was the biggest lesson so far in your career that you use maybe daily or by Well, there's my father was it was an engineer as a world-class engineer several patents to his name and And you know when I started messing around with the with the PC He said, you know, it's good to know how to program But you know that may only take you so far He said, you know, you really need to learn to speak and write and that's what's held held him back in his career And so I really focused on my writing and and speaking The speaking kind of happened accidentally I Got a job as a comedian at university Kind of accidentally and I took that Did that for several years. So that got me really comfortable You're talking in front of any size crowd whether they're throwing tomatoes at me or not But yeah, I think the big lesson from my father, you know, what it was to You know learn to speak and write and that might never take me further than you know, just learning to code And then I think more recently it's been about building a personal brand using social media and networking And and then connecting my brand to the company is with whether it's Gartner or or west Monroe So I think everybody today should be thinking about how to how to build their own their own personal brand Networking is so important and those soft skills like you say like um, and I don't want to say that writing is a soft skill necessarily but um, you know, but speaking and I love that you're a comedian. I didn't know that I bet that was what was the difference between the first time you got on stage and at the end As a comedian. Yeah Well, I just did my little five minute act and then it led to being asked to mc at a club at a couple of clubs and Yeah, and then I actually at Arthur Anderson my manager caught wind that I was doing stand up on the side Just just you know, open mics and things like that And back in the days when we could only wear white shirts and had to wear your jackets in the elevator He said listen that this is this hobby of yours is unbecoming of a young consulting professional and I was dissuaded from Oh But yet it served such a good purpose in being able to communicate It did it did. Yeah Visit dataversity.net and expand your knowledge with thousands of articles and blogs written by industry experts Plus free live and on-demand webinars covering the complete data management spectrum While you're there subscribe to the weekly newsletter. So you'll never miss a beat That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah, so um So tell me that having worked with data for so long, you know, what's your definition of data and how do you work with it? Oh, wow definition of data. I guess it's just a digital representation of something an event or an observation or Um, or an entity of some kind. I guess that's a little technical But it's it's really just a digital representation of of something, right? Yeah, so how do you work with data in your current role? Um, really really most of my work is around helping organizations generate ideas for creating new value streams from their existing data assets and it's really been kind of a Focus or journey of mine since I first kind of came up with the infonomics idea this idea that that information is an actual asset And started thinking about all right. Well, what do we do with assets? Well, we we we manage them, right? We measure them and we we monetize them or generate value from them So a lot of my work really has been around helping companies move beyond just building pretty pie charts and bouncy bar charts and dashing dashboards to to really put data to to work build data products from it that others can use and Do things that are much more, you know diagnostic and predictive or prescriptive with their with their data and help them come up those ideas You know when I rejoined Gartner, they said, um, you know, hey, Doug, you're the you're the big data guy you came up with the three v's of big data, right and uh, and so we want you to cover that for our clients and the the questions initially were around what is big data, you know back in the those You know around 2010 or so and and then the questions quickly turned to You know, how do we do big data?  Which led me to start collecting use cases on how organizations are using data in innovative and high value ways that really inspired me as well and dozen use cases and stories turned into 50 turned into 500 plus stories That it used to inspire clients to to do more with their data than just report on it, right? And then I was compelled or cajoled by some colleagues to Put this into a book So my latest book after infonomics is called data juice and that's a compilation of 101 stories of how organizations are squeezing value from from data so Exciting Yeah, so that's really what my focus is on not anything too technical, but really helping business leaders and data leaders Do more with their their data assets Okay, so I have to ask what's your favorite story in the book? Do you have one? Oh, I can remember which one is in the book either all sorts of just Great examples. I remembering this Well, here's one that I actually inspired Was speaking at a conference on and I was talking about dark data And someone in the audience raised his hand and he said, well, what dark data could we possibly have and of course dark data is data That's unused or underutilized data And I said, well, you're you're with uh, he was with one of the big four consulting firms And I said, well, your your goal is to run successful projects if you ever thought about Analyzing the project communications on projects to identify where there are issues leading issue You know leading indicators of issues on projects like scope or budget or personnel or technology related issues and Someone in the audience will behold wouldn't took that idea Someone from from Lockheed Martin And so he actually spoke at a Gartner event several years ago showing how they analyze project communications and other documentation To get leading indicators of project issues Well before the traditional method of typing up status reports right and sending them upward and then Aggregating them and so forth So they they claim they have three times greater foresight into project issues now and are saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year On the product line where they've they've applied this so that's one of my favorite stories because it's one that I think I inspired so Oh, I love that story. Yeah that's uh I have a lot of practical reasons are use of cases for that mm-hmm for sure Wow, so Then do you see the importance of data management and the number of jobs working with data? increasing or decreasing over the next 10 years and why? yep probably increasing the commensurate with the The you know the volume and velocity variety of data that we see out there Plus the drive by organizations to leverage their data more than they already are and layer on top of that um The the new wave of AI and generative AI which puts even more importance And value on a company's data assets I also think that and I wrote about this in infonomics. I think that Many organizations treat data as kind of a second-class second-class citizen they talk about Data as an asset, but they don't really manage it with the same discipline As other assets as their financial assets or their physical assets or even their human capital and it may be because it's not a balance sheet asset And until the accounting profession recognizes data as a balance sheet asset, I think It's going to be difficult You know to see for many organizations to rise to that level of managing and Measuring their data as an actual asset, but I think there's an imperative to do so and especially with This new wave of AI In particular unstructured data is really coming to the fore Very nice. So then what would advice would you get give to people looking to get into a career in data management? Yeah, again, there's always going to be room for people who are technical and you know learn how to You know set up your databases and data structures and do data modeling and handle master data management and implement data quality functions and and all of that but I think There's a lot of value in people who are able to connect the dots between Data and business value and there's there's still a big gap there. I think We often refer to it as data literacy, but I think it's more than just literacy. It's really getting organizations to treat data as an actual corporate asset not just talk about it like one And whatever kind of role that takes or what kind of roles that takes to help an organization get there I think those are going to be the ones that are really important one one example would be You know, most organizations have an entire department dedicated to procuring office supplies Right, but they don't have a single person Dedicated to procuring data supplies, you know, they're only thinking about data within their own four walls And not really recognizing That there's this wealth of external data out there or maybe they're they're aware and they go to a data broker or Or a data marketplace, but they don't really have a defined function Dedicated to identifying potentially valuable data and determining how to license it and integrate it and and leverage it So that's you know, we talk about the data scientists being the sexiest job of the 21st century I think I think a data curator or or something like that is is important if not Equally important if not sexy That's really really good advice and and very great that it's so important so, you know Doug I would be remiss if I didn't ask how people would find you at westman row or look up westman row Oh, yeah, we're just at westman row.com. We actually had to buy that url from a town in louisiana or mississippi I think I forgot what louisiana bought the url from them a few years ago So it's westman row.com and everybody can find me on linkedin And I usually post everything that I post on linkedin. I usually put the hashtag in phonomics So if you don't want to follow me you can follow my content on the phonomics. I also publish in Inforbs and cdo magazine and elsewhere I love it. So how many books have you written? Oh, so, um, we had two and a half We we published a book while I was a gardener on big data It was a new book through the financial times and then I published in phonomics On my own after that and then last summer published data juice Yeah, even though my wife told me if I ever wrote another book it would have to be titled how I use big data to find my next wife I am now working on a third book No I gave my my mba students a An assignment to pick any economic model and apply it to data. Yeah, and Explored does it doesn't work would they revise it? How would business and data leaders actually use that that economic concept like supply and demand or productivity frontiers or marginal utility? And so I have I have Hundreds of papers from students and I'm thinking about how to compile those into Into the next book on that really gets into the economics of of information No, I love that we get to that question all the time. How do you how do you monetize it? How do you show the value? How do you create that roi? Especially for the jobs needed to to manage the data For sure. It's a great place to be great a great time to be in in data and information And if somebody wanted to find your books Um, they're all online booksellers amazon Walmart whoever yeah Perfect. Well, actually data juice is only available on amazon. Yeah, I self published that one. Oh, very nice. Yeah Very nice, um and a little bit more about infonomics and then The book there Yeah, infonomics. I published while I was at uh a gartner And it's about how to monetize manage and measure data as an actual corporate asset So it's kind of three books in one and then data juice as the Is meant to be meant to it's 101 stories of how organizations are using data and innovative ways or squeezing value from data in innovative innovative ways And um or high value ways and most of them have a value proposition associated with it So the that book is meant to really inspire or or shame organizations into doing more with their their data than than just again reporting on it Very nice. Well, Doug. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Thank you, Shannon. Real pleasure We'll see you at uh upcoming events Yeah, yeah, I'll see you in and I am and uh any plans to go to disney world or disney land Fantastic Yeah What ride are we going to go on together? I don't know we got to think about it I'm too sharp for roller coasters I I meet the height limit, but barely And there's like a foot between me and the top of the uh shoulder pad. So like it's so scary Like I feel like I'm gonna fall out every It will go on some kitty rides then Yeah, exactly Probably all of my inner inner ear can handle anyway I love it Well, Doug, thank you so much and we'll make sure and get all those Links posted to the page when it gets published. So and for all of our listeners out there If you'd like to keep up to date in the latest podcast and the latest in data management education You may go to dataversity net forward slash subscribe until next time Thank you for listening to dataversity talks a podcast brought to you by dataversity Subscribe to our newsletter for podcast updates and information about our free educational webinars at dataversity net forward slash subscribe


Okay, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org and we're live here. Silicon Angles coverage of VMworld 2012. We're here with our good friend Jason Buffington, a multi-time CUBE guest. Jason, welcome back to theCUBE. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to see you. We love your insights. ESG, you guys are doing a great job. Really growing like crazy. Every time I see somebody from ESG, you got more guys there, more research. You guys are pumping it out like crazy. It's fantastic, so congratulations on that. We're here at the spotlight on VMware Backup and Recovery, an area that you know well. Well, first of all, what's your take on the event here? What do you see, what's interesting, and particularly from a data protection standpoint? So this is actually my first VMworld. I've been to all the other events this season, but this was actually my first time to come to VMworld, and it's a pretty neat event. I've had a really good time. It is. It is. Certainly I think my favorite announcement of the day was with vSphere 5.1 and the introduction of VDP, the data protector product that's now built in. That's a really big deal, and I'm surprised that in fact the only time they saw it on the keynote part was when we were doing the demo Palooza competitions and Chad nailed it from a demo perspective, but there's some good stuff in there.  I mean, I always go back to the days of VCB and finally VADP had the ecosystem to solve that problem and VDR, you know, it was a good effort, but really just didn't get there. So I think finally, I mean, Chad was on theCUBE talking about the efforts and Stephen Manley and Guy Churchill as well, talking about 60 engineers. It was not a trivial task. No. But so what do you make of that? I mean, so now it's embedded, it's free, so it's going to potentially eat into some of the high end. Yeah. But that's a bold move. What do you make of it? So a couple of things. So I like how you set that up. There's, you know, we had VCB, the 1.0, that just min bar, let's get something in the box so you can back it up. And, you know, coming back from my old history, I know that when you develop a platform, if you're going to put all your eggs in a basket and you can't protect the basket, no one's buying it. So VCB had to be out in there out of the box, but it was days that we'd like to forget, right? And then there's VDR, and with a lot of things in technology, it really takes to about a 3.0 kind of perspective before you really kind of get it right. And VDP looks like it's going to do it right. It was not a trivial effort, right? I think the thing which was really interesting to me is, you know, typically when you look at a built-in something into a platform, the built-in's kind of wimpy, and you know, you're going to have to still do something else for almost everybody. It's muted, right? Yeah, yeah. So this is built on Avamar code, right? So this is not untested, this is not immature stuff. This is built by a product that knows how to back up a virtualized environment. That's step number one. And then certainly, you know, we did some research earlier this year, and I'm hoping we get a chance to kind of talk about that a little bit more, but one of the big trends that we saw there was DDoop is a must. Back up to disk without DDoop is non-viable, particularly when you're talking about virtualized environments. And so the fact that DDoop is in there, that you still have granular file level recovery, I mean, this is not a wholly neutered thing. It's certainly not Avamar for free, right? There's certainly some scoping issues there. So for example. It's a low end solution, it's for SMB. Yeah, but for the SMB market, this is a big deal. Yeah. You know, and you very rightly mentioned that for the virtualization specific backup vendors that are out there that have been selling to that low end of the market, some of their low hanging fruit just went away. Yeah, so I want to get into the study. So I want to pick up on something you said. You said DDoop is a must. Does your research talk to what percent of the base is using and adopting data deduplication? Yeah, so between those that are using and those that plan to use within 12 to 24 months, it's like 80 some odd percent. And I got to tell you, if you have me on the cube this time next year, that other 20%, that number's got to be lower. Those people just haven't done the math yet. So DDoop is absolutely a must across the board. When we did the research, so the project was actually called Data Protection Modernization. And so what we did was we looked at about five different vectors for how people are looking at changing their current data protection strategies and why. And that included things like DDoop, it included better use of the hardware, like for snapshotting and array based replication, included a big piece on how they're handling the virtualization scenario and then also what they were doing with cloud. And so on each of those vectors, we looked at what they were looking at, why, what they're doing now, why and why not, and then where they were planning on going next. So a lot of really good interesting stuff that came out of that. So what other findings did you have that stood out? So I think the one that probably stuck out to me the most was the non-stickiness of the status quo backup. You know, you and I've been doing IT for a long time now and for as long as I can remember, I've been doing backup for 22 years. And for as long as I can remember, backup was always like a religion, right? It was kind of like, you know, one of those things, once you signed, or political party, once you signed up for it, you were in for life with whatever that vendor was. Fossilized. Yeah, yeah. So the, about 50% of the respondent base for this last survey have had their primary backup solution regardless of version for three years or under. Really? Yeah, it's not like, you know, they've gone from V2 to V4 to V8 or whatever, three years or under. That's amazing.  It was. It forced a lot of people to reconsider their solution. The other part of how non-sticky backup is, we actually asked folks, if you could go from scorched earth and start everything over again, only 32% of the respondent said they'd keep what they had. A third, right? It was like 18% said they'd go the cloud and just under 50% said that they would go to a new solution. Backup is not sticky. And I think virtualization as well as just, you know, unfettered, unstructured data growth, those are the big drivers around, they're going to have to reconsider how they're doing stuff and they're trying to do smarter. Virtualization specifically, the big challenge is around VM sprawl. You know, one of the things we saw in the keynotes we saw in a lot of demos this week is VMware and the other hypervisors for that matter have really made it just too darn easy to stand up VMs. You know, sub one minute at a time, new VMs get stood up and as soon as that happens, all of a sudden you're consuming gigs of storage. And oh, by the way, a lot of that is repetitive. The Windows OS in a thousand VMs still looks like the Windows OS. You just got to back it up. Right, so it's forcing DDoop. It's forcing a different change for how people are looking at backup. And so the status quo is not sticky, Dave. How did, Jason, how did cloud play in your study? So cloud is still certainly on the up and coming. So some basic math numbers on the two extremes. Tape is not dead, by the way. Tape is only in use in 56% of all environments. Cloud is in use in seven, okay. Now that includes, of course, some of the consumer angle that's out there, but and specifically when we looked at cloud, we looked at a couple things. We saw that direct to cloud, or what I call a D to C, was 2% of all environments. And then disk to disk to cloud, which I think is my preferred model, is at 5%, about two and a half times the adoption rate. And that makes sense, because if you look at environments of any size at all, they're going to want that fast recovery capability. Or more importantly, in fact, ESG is going to do a study later on this year. We're going to look at what I call Baz, DRAZ, and tertiary. Backup as a service, DR as a service, I think a lot of people are going to skip right over Baz and go straight to DRAS. And then cloud tertiary, meaning let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, let's not get rid of that on-prem solution that we've made an investment in that's working well for us, but we still want to have the economics of cloud for that off-site copy. So let's use what we've got and take it to a cloud as a third instance of that data. So D to D to C comes in around 5% of the market. So you said earlier, tape is not dead, okay, you see that. There are some customers that have gotten rid of tape, but many, many have kept it as a last resort. Sure. You saw the Amazon Glacier announcement, I guess it was last week, which is, I guess, kind of aimed at those holdouts on tape. What do you make of Glacier? So I haven't gotten to put my hands on bits. I haven't gotten to see a demo on it yet. So I'll hold off on Glacier specifically, but here's what I want people to understand. It's never really been around tape is dead. That's just one of those exaggerated things that kind of kicks off a fun conversation. You're marketing from this guy. And this guy's liked that comment. But the point is, is that tape is also, let me say it this way, I think tape is dead as a preferred recovery medium. As the primary recovery medium is. It is not what you should be pulling data back from. It's a mistake to make tape a primary recovery medium, is what you're saying. That's your advice to customers there. I mean, if you're on tape, get off tape as a primary recovery medium. Yeah, if you want to use tape as a tertiary copy or cloud as a tertiary copy or tertiary disk, that's great, but really our data shows that around 78% of all environments disk is the primary means of recovery and then it goes someplace else as that tertiary and I think that's the right thing to do. Right, okay. And so let's talk about some futures here. You've had a chance to talk to some of the practitioners here, see some of the demos, listen to the keynotes. What do you see the future holding for VMware backup? So the thing that was most interesting to me is, so I've been spending a lot of time, once I saw what VDP was and I got excited about that, but I spent most of my time looking at private cloud. And when you look at private cloud, I think one of the things that's still kind of a gap when it comes to data protection as it relates to private cloud is there's a lot of ideas where basically the private cloud architecture says if we build it, someone else will back it up. And there's a couple different approaches to it. Some folks just use a brute force method of saying, oh, you launched VMs, I'll back those all up the same way, which I think is messy, right? Or you can just stand up VMs where there's agents inside and I think that's not scalable. Or, and this is the one that pet peeves me the most, is you go to this really elegant self-service portal, you bring up this private cloud thing, you launch this new service, and then you shut down that pane of glass and you open up something different and say now I'm going to go choose how to back it up. And there's just a gap there, right? One of the things that really impressed me about what I saw with VMware this week is with that sweet portfolio and seeing how they're really trying to look at the private cloud management stack, I think there's a lot more opportunity for them to say, look, this is gold, silver, bronze, as far as how something gets stood up. And that means, okay, so what does gold, silver, bronze imply from a data protection perspective? Maybe gold is protected every 10 minutes and retain it for seven years, bronze is protected once a day, retain it for 30 days. So I like that idea of letting the private cloud architecture decide the retention and the RPO, the RTO, the SLA. I want that to be an aspect of how private cloud launches. I think the thing that was missing from that was how does the private cloud architecture then go talk to that myriad of backup vendors and tell them, hey, I just got this new service, I just launched it, this is how you need to back it up. That glue is missing. Some of the things that we saw during the briefings this week around what the management stack looks like for vCloud director, what I think I'm seeing there is between that and what we see in VDP, there's some good potential where now that private cloud stack will know enough to at least tell VDP how to back it up and provide some constructs so the other guys can come on board as well. So that's encouraging to me. So you're basically putting forth a vision of data protection as a service. It's not one size fits all. Customer decides or maybe it's based on application or SLA decides what kind of protection I want. Do you also see snapshotting increasingly coming into the picture? Absolutely do you see snapshotting. But I'm going to twist one word that you used earlier. I don't think of data protection as a service. I want to see data protection as an attribute of a private cloud offering. So that whenever you define a service, quality of service of that whatever gets instantiated, the data protection aspects are just an aspect of that. And I think five years down the road, we'll start seeing how primary storage has that same effect and where you'll simply see RPO, RTO, recoverable points in time, availability, all just being aspects or attributes of the primary store. But until then, at least comes off with that. So you communicate with the private cloud service in those terms, let's call those business terms, and that sets the SLA for the backup. Exactly. Yeah, great. But let's talk about snapshotting for a second. You know, one of the things we saw in the data protection research was, one of the reasons I think that the status quo is not sticky, we saw that 86% of all backups are completing successfully, which isn't great. Better than half, which it was a few years ago, right? So it's not great, but you know, it's respectable for most environments. Here's one that bothers me though. 80% of recovery is complete within their RPO, RTO, SLA. So let's unpack that for a second. It's not 80% of recoveries, because that'd be a technology problem. What we measured was RPO, RTO, SLA. So after the IT guys sat down with the application stakeholder and said, okay, this is how fast it works and this is what my team can do. And they negotiate out the SLA on that. Even after that, they're only making the mark 80% of the time. That's a problem. And I think when you look at that kind of how can I recover it faster and where my limits are, I think the only way you get better than using traditional backup and recovery to get you better than 86% backup to get you better than 80% restores is to start being smarter about how you use the hardware in conjunction with traditional backup. And so I think that's where not only snapshotting comes into play, but also array-based replication as well. RTO, are they also missing RPO? They are. So against the entire SLA. That's really problematic. It is. One out of five times they're failing their SLA. It's unacceptable. It is unacceptable. And that's why I think the snapshotting is part of that. And in fact, we looked at how folks were doing that and about 55% of the responded base said they were planning on integrating either snapshotting, replication, or both in conjunction with their traditional backup and recovery mechanism. So this is a hardware plus software better together story. So that's like a great piece of research. How can people get access to it, get more information? So my blog's the best place. So technicaloptimist.com. Obviously all one word. That's my blog and you'll see all my write-ups from VMworld this week. I'll have a link to this video before the end of the week, hopefully. Oh yeah, absolutely. You'll be up on YouTube within hours and our man, Art Lindsay, he's the machine. Well, the report, the link from that is also up there and I'm gonna be doing some podcasting of my own over the next couple of weeks trying to draw out some of the more interesting graphs and sharing with the folks. Great, all right, Jason, hey, thanks very much. Really appreciate the insights. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. All right, thanks for watching everybody. This was the spotlight on VMware Backup Recovery Live from VMworld 2012 SiliconANGLE's continuous coverage. We'll be right back to wrap it up after this.


We're moving on to our next subcategory and may I invite on stage to do the honours Mr. Sachin Kapoor who is also our panellist and co-founder CMO nearby and Ms. Kamini Rupani CMO network solutions to please do the honours. Mr. Sachin Kapoor and Ms. Kamini Rupani requested to please come up on stage while we figure out who the shortlisted nominees are and metal to be given in this particular category let's find out who that goes to.


In this video, I'm going to talk about more nitty gritty of like the things I loved. I didn't love the things that I would love to see in the future because I really think that this conference is going to grow and become more than it is. Of course, the first one's always, it has like such unique, beautiful things. But then it also has some things where you're like, this could be better. I am going to talk about things that I would love to see in the future, not because I didn't love this conference because I did, but because I get excited about the potential of things when I really love them. The conference was two days and the first day it was just a mixer. A little sad that it was only the mixer because I would have loved to just experience more, especially since I traveled all the way to Arizona from California. I met, like I counted on Instagram that we follow each other now. I counted 23 people, but I am a very outgoing person. Like if you want to talk to me, I'm going to want to talk to you. If you're a nice person, I'm going to want to talk to you. I met all of these people, basically the first day of the mixer. Maybe like two or three I met on the second day, but mostly during the mixer, I would introduce myself, talk to them a little bit and be like, okay, I'm going to go, you know, say hi to other people. Not because I wasn't interested in them, but just because I know if I started talking to one person, I can talk to them for hours. And I don't know that everybody wants to talk to me for hours. And also just want to meet other people. The day of the mixer, I got to talk to Mel Mack. She's a casting director and also an acting instructor. And then everybody else, I believe were actors as far as the mixer itself. A lot of the speakers made appearances in there. Of course, Bella was in there and I got to say hi to her. The mixer being on the first day at the beginning, I was like, oh, I wish it was at the end after you got to meet everybody. I was so wrong. I loved that the mixer was on the first day because I got to make friends. And then the next day, I just had so many people that throughout the day, I was having conversations with, taking them to the savage booth, sitting next to in classes. In a nutshell, day two of the conference was like a buffet. And you got to sample each person's style or classes. Most of the people there also offer courses or something like that. So you were able to be like, okay, I do enjoy their work. Let me continue and take their course. All of the speakers that I saw were also all on Instagram. So it was really easy to follow them and continue to develop this relationship. So I think going to a conference like this is really, really great in creating that relationship with these people because you can comment on their stuff. You can post and tag them. You can audition for them. But then it's an even other step of actually being able to meet them in person. And at the beginning of the day, the keynote speaker was Melanie Mack, which she did an acting workshop, basically live. She got two actors to come up, which I think that's a great opportunity. It's almost like paying to go to a casting director workshop during the conference because there's a lot of people that are instructors and casting directors. It's like a mini audition. Like you're paying to have them see you live and see that you take direction. That's what Melanie did. She got the actors and she would give them feedback and she was able to see how they worked. If you go volunteer, I know it's so terrifying. You might mess up, but it's such a great opportunity to especially be live with them because you're maybe going to be able to audition for them in a self tape, but to be live and make that connection live.  Thanks so much for choosing me. As far as the speakers, I definitely grabbed a little bit of information from each person. It was interesting to see the perspective of each person, the tips that each gave. But because I have been acting for a while, a lot of this stuff I already knew. There were moments like that, even for me of like, Oh, I'm going to use that. That's actually really cool. Or like, yes, I needed to hear this because I'm obsessing too much about blank. I mostly think it was worth it for me to pay because I made so many connections, so many friends. It's like I paid for 23 new friends. I love it. Totally worth it for other people. Like I was sitting with friends and after one of the sessions, one of my friends turns to me and was like, wow, that was amazing. Like I really needed that right. That was so good. And I was like, Oh, interesting. Because after that session, I was like, Oh, that's a really cool approach to this. But I wasn't like amazed, you know, and that's the thing that everybody is going to have a different experience with these kinds of things. At one point, they did say, raise your hand if you've been acting for less than a year. And there were a lot of people. There were a few actors there that I didn't recognize. But then afterwards, I did look them up on the IMDB Pro. And I saw that they had a bunch of credits, which was really cool that they were able to come to this for the most part. I think this conference, at least for this year, was geared towards like, people who weren't like brand new, just trying to see if they were getting into acting.  Like, you know, like on the on the brink of really taking off and being able to make more money from acting and being like consistent work, I would recommend it to anybody who can afford it. Because even if you are a brand new actor, it's going to be a lot. Like just make sure to take notes. But it's going to show you so many different things about the industry, like all of the different classes. You're going to get a lot of information in one day, super compact. And you're going to get to meet so many people. And even actors are a little bit more advanced and like have a lot of this information already. I think it's really cool because like I said before, you get to sample all of these different people's techniques and perspectives. And then you can potentially find somebody new that you're like, actually I'm going to hire them to coach my next audition because I really liked their perspective. I really liked the way they did this, you know, this little workshop in their, in their session. During the break, something you can do is go and visit the vendors. There were a lot of local vendors, which wasn't so great for me because I'm not in Arizona. I would have loved to see more vendors. I don't know like, hello, where was everybody at? Like all of the actor apps. There's just a lot of really fun opportunities for vendors to come and make it really interactive. Like for the Savage booth, I was taking photos, they had a backdrop, they had a ring light. That was really fun. But where were all the apps? Like we audition, casting networks, casting workbook, actor, trade, castability, headshot photographers. As actors, we really spent so much money.  That's one of the things I was actually looking forward to. I was like, oh, I wonder what new things I'm going to learn about as far as vendors. Because I recently started using the app Castability. Please next year, let there be a plethora of vendors. Something that scared me at the conference is the fact that I make YouTube videos. The fact that I share a lot of me, a lot of my process, a lot of my mistakes, and my just information. A lot of people, especially like casting directors or acting coaches in the conference were like, oh, you really shouldn't do this. Oh, if you're if you're doing more than three takes, you're out of pocket. Like you're crazy, which I agree. Like I understand. And they did help me realize like I'm not putting enough time during my rehearsal and preparation for the audition. And that's why I'm doing so many takes. Recently, I think I did 59 takes for a commercial audition. And that is what really scared me that I feel like I'm exposing myself to them. If anybody's watching this, that's potentially an agent or a manager of mine, or somebody who I'm auditioning for, like a casting director, like I'm a little scared that I'm showing this. So that gives me extra pressure of like feeling like I need to be perfect, which I know is not true. I know if somebody really lacks my acting and they trust me and they know I'm hardworking, they're going to want to work with me. But I post maybe 20 minutes of my life a week onto social media. And if that week what I happen to post is like things that don't represent me that well, like that can be really stressful. But I'm going to continue to just post whatever feels right to me. Like I am definitely not perfect. I for sure have done way too many takes in the past. And maybe I will again in the future. On that note, let's talk about my audition recap. Every first vlog of the month, I will tell you what I auditioned for and how I auditioned for this last month. So in September, I got 12 auditions. Six were commercial. Four were like internal use or for their website. And one was a like gift, like a Christmas gift. And one of the commercial auditions was also a Christmas commercial. One of my auditions was a friend referral. So a friend recommended me, they heard about the job and they were like, hey, contact her. Five of them were self-submissions mixed in LA and the Bay Area. And then the rest of them were for my agency and those were all San Francisco because my agency in San Francisco, Marla Dell Talent, MDT agency, they do just represent me in the San Francisco Bay Area. And how many of them did I book? None of them so far. One of them I was on holds for, but this month I didn't book anything. It's okay. And every week we also do an actor check-in or accountability buddies if you didn't know. I practiced memorization four times, seen study three times. I did two practice self-tapes and I did gratitude four times a week. I didn't skate because I've been hurting pretty bad. Watch this video next to see what day two of the actress conference was. And if you already watched it, I would super, super appreciate if you went and watched it and leave a comment because that was my first ever like officially sponsored video where I got cash money and not just free products for. So I would, I would really appreciate it.