We've got a pretty good number joined now, but I think there'll still be a few more continuing to join in the next couple of minutes, but we'll make a start, so thanks again for joining. My name's Robert Grimshaw, I'm the convener of the Queensland Regional Committee for the Australian Evaluation Society, and I'd like to start today by acknowledging the terrible and yuggera people as the First Nations owners of the lands on where I'm joining you from today up in the Anjan Brisbane, and we recognise that these lands have always been places of teaching, research and learning. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to any First Nations people joining us here today and from whatever lands and country that may be on with the benefits and opportunities of virtual seminars. So just some housekeeping before we get going. As I mentioned, I'm the convener for the Queensland Regional Committee for the AES, but anyone who isn't a member of the AES and based in Queensland, if you'd like to find out anything more about the work of our committee or joining in, then please get in touch with us, get in touch with me on the committee, you can find our details on the AES website. I'm very much looking forward to the AES conference returning in Adelaide this year, but I'm probably biased, but potentially more excited that next year Brisbane will now get to have our opportunity to host the conference that we missed out, thanks to, you know what. Just in terms of Zoom housekeeping, I think if we can remember to keep ourselves on mute, just ensure the clear audio and avoid any feedback. Feel free to use the chat function as you're going, as we're going through the session, and then there will be plenty of time for discussion at the end, whereas use the raise hand function if you'd like to contribute to discussion or ask a question. This is being recorded today as I noted in the chat, so please let me know if any concerns with that. We'll ask for your feedback at the end of today's session in the feedback poll, and the slides will be distributed to those who registered, and on the AES website in the members section, and the recordings are posted on the AES YouTube channel in good time when our limited admin staff have had the chance to process that. So I'd just like to introduce Luke Everett, our presenter for today, and thank Luke for volunteering offering to provide this seminar or this presentation for us. So Luke is the founder of Project IO, a software as a service platform that guides teams through the design monitoring and evaluation of their program strategy. After the last 10 years, he's been working with international development teams to improve their technology services and provide greater insights into their impact data. And his passion and interest around this really came up when the Queensland committee we hosted the interactive session back at the start of the year around evaluation from afar and the challenges and opportunities and insights it might have gained in the past year when evaluation from afar or from a distance has been forced upon many of us, as well as those in the international development space have been doing it for some time, but now faced additional challenges around that. So yeah, Luke was participating in that discussion and offered to provide a bit more of a further discussion and presentation around his work. So with that, I'll hand over to Luke to take us through today. Thanks, Luke. Thanks, Robert. I'd also just first like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and paying my respects to elders past and present. I also have to apologize. I'm just getting over a head cold. So if anything's a little bit coughing or spluttering, I apologize for that. But we'll get started. So ask any questions obviously throughout this presentation. This should be, I guess, partially a bit of a conversation throughout as well, because I also want to sort of hear any of the challenges or trials and tribulations of remote evaluations. As Robert said, I come from the international development field, have worked across a number of countries and programs across the Pacific Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. And these have been through a variety of projects or thematic areas. Education was really a big one. A little bit of TVET in the Pacific Health in Africa, and then a few economic growth and sort of Mel platform projects as well. So in Indonesia, there were a few sort of evaluation specific programs that sat across their portfolio, which was really interesting. Three major donors and the EC through my time in the UK. And really what I was doing was working with teams around how they sort of capture, manage and secure their data for whether they were participants of programs or beneficiaries or those sorts of things and making sure that any of that information was managed effectively, captured properly against key indicators and those sorts of things. And as Robert mentioned, we're sort of working on a next generation Mel platform that helps teams collaborate more transparently, more effectively and building in some of those more adaptive management capabilities that that the industry is moving towards. So there's been a lot of challenges that have gone along with not only the pandemic, but also shifts in the way that donors and clients are thinking about and spending on, you know, evaluations, you know, based on our experience in the work we've been doing recently. So there's been more drive to do locally managed or driven implementations of projects, less opportunity for STAs or for consultants to sort of move into the field. Some of that is his travel restrictions. Some of that is just that they want to do more. And it's more sustainable and effective to have like driven implementations of these projects. We've obviously got a lot more hybrid work going on. What are the challenges with that with data retention and security and those sorts of things? You know, there's there's also been a lot of changes to delayed project inceptions because of COVID because of caretaker because of a lot of things. So a lot of these programs have sort of been delayed and are coming on board and needing sort of rapid inception phases. So how do we make sure that we're capturing the right data from the very beginning and that it's consistent and you have that evidence based throughout. And then also with we also work with teams to manage their projects more collaboratively where previously they were all managed in isolation and project teams would implement, whilst they might be managed by the same managing contractors, etc. They would all still be managed individually as as an individual project. So there was less lessons learned, shared and the data and information that goes along with that doesn't generally flow between teams, which is which is real shame. What I'm going to quickly do is just run a poll just to get a bit of an a bit of an idea of all of you and the different systems and those sorts of things that you're using. So I might quickly launch that. And that will just help me get an idea of where we focus some of this information on. Just give that a little 30 seconds. Okay, great. So it's good to see a spread of teams working sort of the whole way through the process, you know, not just point in time evaluations or those sorts of things, but really from that design and planning stage. That's, that's really helpful for us to understand. And as I expected, everyone's using the standards for Excel and PowerPoint. But some of the more sort of planning oriented SAS platforms aren't really being used at the moment. Okay. So how are we solving these problems? A lot of teams have really ramped up their technology adoption. We saw a lot of, oh, yeah, interesting. Sorry, yes, government was excluded from that list. Perfect. Yeah, so sorry, as I was saying, a lot of teams have been scaling up their technology adoption, sometimes with core IT teams sort of vetting and managing the rollout of that. But a lot of them also just, you know, individual teams going out looking for technology solutions. We saw a lot of Zoom adoption. And then sort of as teams came through that process, I think Microsoft teams really pulled some of that out. And the move to things like Miro to other diagramming tools like Lucidchart and that sort of thing. And along with that, you know, the industry is moved or is moving depending on where you are in the world to more of an adaptive management approach where you are able to sort of change project structure and those sorts of things. I'm not sure in the domestic context how much of this adaptive management work takes place, but historically with your international development programs, it was very difficult to get large changes to project strategy sort of approved and allowed for development. But now we're seeing more programs where that's sort of more of a built in core components of these programs. And as I said before, we're getting a lot more locally driven development programs as well. So with the increased technology adoption, it's really broken down into six key areas for assisting with adaptive management. So you've got your planning stage where people are using as we've seen with the polls, more of your Microsoft suite, and a little bit more Miro, but things like Lucidchart and Asana are still sort of or project management tools are still a little bit lacking. Where we're seeing a lot of movement now with planning is broadening the teams that are associated with that planning process, making sure more stakeholders are involved. And that's really helped by the technology shift so that you don't all have to be in the same room, you can get experts and specialists or more widely distributed teams on board. And this really helps with that sort of staff and participant adoption over time, you know, if they're involved with the planning stage, we see a lot greater level of involvement throughout the whole process. Communication stayed pretty, pretty steady. You know, a lot of these programs will have a public website with some of their impact data, public project intranets, which have more detailed analysis.  But now we're starting to see more of these structured dashboards through Tableau through Power BI come into play. Really, where we sort of need to get to though, is more user driven dashboards or data insights where your role might be a little bit different to how those structured dashboards in the past had been set up so that you can monitor and manage them yourself for the roles that you're doing. And this really should be not only just from, say, a management perspective, but all the way to anyone's individual roles, so that they can actually use that information for more operational reporting. Context monitoring, we don't do a lot of this, so I'm going to skip over a lot of that. But some of the areas of interest here are around open source data sets where you might already have people capturing impact metrics that you can use for your analysis, you don't have to then go out and also capture that information again. I think this is an area where there's a lot of room to move here and improvements to make. And then your data collection, so we've sort of gone through the maturity of how we do a lot of this. So from paper forms in country or in areas where there's low technology adoption, pulling those through previous reports and research and really surfacing those in a more meaningful way, whether it's contextually or based on better search capabilities, those sorts of things. And now most people are using web-based forms. But it's really interesting in areas where connectivity might still be difficult. There aren't a lot of people using offline web forms and those sorts of things where being out in the field is more important to get that data. But how are we starting to bring some of that offline data into our assessments and evaluations? Impact assessment, this is another area where we're seeing a lot of technology shift from mere compliance or audit perspective data, governance based data and information and more shifting over into that impact. So what's happening on the ground with our theories of change and our indicators from that perspective. And then knowledge and relationship management, I think a lot of this is still really manual and still really needs a little bit of innovation in this space. So how are we surfacing that data for individual people for their day to day jobs, not just sort of point in time evaluations more operationally. But then also stakeholder engagement, how are we helping teams or evaluators to better communicate that change? And then also tracking those evidence bases over longer periods of time and keeping that evidence a chain intact so that it can be validated. But also when evaluators come in at points in time, they don't have to necessarily be involved in the day to day minutiae of that data capture or that that mail process, but can then still see that history to make sure that all of the results are viable and accurate at all times. So, you know, we talked about some of the next generation of tools, you know, the need for greater online collaboration for planning and strategy development. So, you know, looking at tools like Lucidchart and other the SAS place planning tools to sort of and mirror as well to for a larger extent to sort of bring more people in and get that buy-in from the very beginning. You know, in the communication space, we're seeing or seeing the need for all of that impact strategy, reporting analytics to be in a single location so that it can be presented to websites so that it can be used by teams regardless of where they sit in an organization. They might be in a metal team. They might be sort of external doing evaluations or they could be, you know, TVET trainers or whoever, but really being able to open that data insight to everyone is really critical to make sure that we have buy-in from from everyone and also to help them understand how their day-to-day roles relate to the end impact goal statement or what the programs are trying to achieve. Also, with changes to the communication systems, we're trying to add more contextual data, context to the data. So where you have qual results, that's a lot easier, but when you're really capturing hard data, hard quant data, it's a little bit harder to understand that in the greater greater context because you are more removed from programs or geographically removed. So having the ability to also include contextual data with those, you know, trends or those sorts of things makes it a lot easier for people to understand that. And then there's some new data capture mediums that I'll talk about in the near future. And then the other parts are more specific around data capture and for adaptive management. But I think we'll talk a little bit in the next couple of slides about some changes to things like machine learning and knowledge and relationship management systems that are really helping to to improve these areas. So there's a few areas of interest that we've been keeping track of really specifically around PMEL platforms. So Torch, which is one of our products, Tola Data in the EU and Dev Results based in the US are really based around capturing data against your project strategy so that you can understand that teams not specifically evaluators or MEL teams can understand how that data impacts the overall approach of a program really helps with adaptive management because you can then track how that data is changing over time against your project strategy. And when you're tying it back to be able to use that data for benchmarking and really justifying any changes to that adaptation all in the one place so that you don't have to worry about who's got what version or who's got the latest data sets to back up those changes if it's all contained in one location. And we can also add client approvals to those sorts of things as well just to sort of cover off on any compliance related areas. There's some people doing really interesting work on video results capture so Folk Fogtail is a really good example of this but really starting to add video context to the results of our programs really helps to give that extra level of fidelity and it's in an area that was historically really difficult, especially for development programs where bandwidth is a challenge. You really had to send film crews out or people out to take those to make those videos and to cut them together. But now there's some emerging tools that making that really easy. So that's an area to keep an eye on. And also machine learning platforms. So even AWS from Amazon and Microsoft are doing a lot of work on sentiment analysis on automated text to speech or speech to text areas around automated translations for teams that need to work in multiple contexts. We can use these new machine learning tools to simplify that process and automate that process. But it also makes it a lot more accessible to teams in the fields. We can talk more about that as well. So just quickly from a project perspective, you know, we're working on a platform or we've developed a platform and now are looking to increase the sort of levels of hierarchy of how we extrapolate and aggregate that data. But we really focus on the teams individually and stakeholder engagement. So how do we democratize that data more increased transparency so that more people can use that impact data and, you know, do experiments, run new interventions with that data where previously it had been sort of locked down a little bit more into the meld teams or into the evaluation teams that. You know, apart from those milestone reports, it wouldn't get out into the wider teams.  You know, you've got your theory of change or your log frame or your impact model over here. And then you've got your indicators that you're tracking and then you've got your results against those. We combine all of them so that you're tying your results through your indicators directly to your strategy so that you can see how your say your theory of change is adapting over time and how that's affecting things from your results, as opposed to them being a little bit more isolated. As I said, keeping everything centralized so that everyone can see the context at all times. Some project management tools to make that sort of mail process a lot simpler. Everyone knows what's due when. We also have in-house mail expertise so that people that are using our platform can also lean on our experience in different areas to help structure indicators or, you know, if you've got requirements for tooling that you might not necessarily have surveys developed already, we can help with that as well. And then we're sort of looking now into the next stage. So how do we then help teams that are tracking their interventions make them better? So whether that's recommendations for indicators or changes to your theory of change or impact model, you know, activities that might not necessarily be performing as well as others, we can use that larger data set to start to recommend changes to your approach for different contexts and different locations. But then also surfacing research. So if you opt into our open source data sets, we can then start to make that data capture a little bit easier, share research from different teams across multiples. And if you're using this across multiple programs or multiple interventions, they can start to share data between them to sort of benchmark and adapt their approach. So we'll have a little bit of a discussion shortly about different challenges that you might be having with remote evaluations. You know, there's a lot of benefits and disadvantages of different technologies in this space, but definitely we can book a meeting to have conversations through our websites just on anything remote evaluation based. If you're interested in having a look at torch, definitely book a demo. And then you can also connect to us on LinkedIn as well. So I'll stop there. And we can start the Q&A. If anyone has any questions or comments. I might also say if there's any interest in the sort of newer platforms that are starting to help make some of these challenges easier that might not necessarily be torch based, I definitely get in touch as well. Thanks, Luke. And yes, if anyone wants to jump into the discussion, please just use the raise hand and great to hear from you, great to hear from your questions. Good opportunity to any technology problems, perhaps, like, like might be here to help. And. Robert, I might just answer that just with Allison's question. We can actually run a really quick demo if people are interested, like to have one available that can show you how some of this stuff work if you like. Yeah, sure. Yeah. That's cool. Well, maybe we'll yeah, save the Q and A for a few minutes, let's quickly jump into that and then we can come back to it. All right, let me just do that. Just while you're doing that, just a related to the the demo, just for the question around if you can describe the key functionality of torch and compare it to the platform, such as Amplify and SocialSuite. Which I'm hoping might mean something to you. Yeah, of course. So. So I'm feeling quite like a lot right now. Things like SocialSuite are really interesting. And I think there's a lot of work in the ESG space as well that we're seeing a lot of technology adoption where it's sort of really focused also on sort of the governance reporting and those sorts of things where we're looking to place torches really at that sort of impact measurement space as opposed to necessarily ESG, although it's interesting to sort of tie all of that together because there's some sort of there's some governance reporting that is more straightforward than and less I don't I don't want to say arbitrary, but less more difficult to sort of see those tangible benefits without more in-depth evaluation. So it's sort of starting at the at the other end of that. All right, let me just share this. Just what's ESG for the audience? What's ESG for us early? Sorry, one second. So yeah, there you go. Sorry, I was trying to share my screen at the same time. I think someone else helped me out in chat. Yeah, so let me. OK, so this is torch. So this is test data, so don't get too hung up on what the actual results of these are. But what I will do is just jump into our example case study project. So when we talk about a theory of change or an impact model, or a results chain, you're normally going to be looking at something like actually, let's get another example. You might be familiar with something like this. So where we build out and sorry, my screen's quite small because I'm working off my laptop, but we might look at, say, like a results chain like this where you've got starting at your you might map your activities and then to your outcomes through to your and in this example, they're not using traditional like a traditional theory of change hierarchy, but tracking your project strategy all the way up to your impact statement. Where we start to break this down away from its traditional model is. We take that attribution out so that teams can see really simply. An overview of your project, so you might say, this is your overall impact statement. You've got a number of indicators associated with that, and this is where we talk about attaching directly to the strategy as opposed to them having them in the separate evaluation framework or something like that so that you can really see which indicators are relevant at which levels and you might see that that sort of as it goes through that hierarchy, it might evolve over time. So you might track at the very lowest level. Let's try and grab an example here. Yeah, so number of unions invited to training, but further up the chain, you might say. You know, number of participants overall that that attend training as an example, where this then comes into play if we go back to this example. Is we help teams firstly structure their programs so we've developed a wizard that sort of explains if you're using a theory of change, how to structure a goal statement. This might come from a donor or a stakeholder group. It may not. So you may have to set that yourself. It may be related to one of the strategic development goals, those sorts of things, but we help teams through a simple wizard process structure out your project. And as you add elements, we're going to mark them off. And if you're using one of our templates, you also get instruction and instruction panel on how to manage each of those levels. Then for simplicity, we also provide an evaluation framework. So this just allows you to export that to donors or to stakeholders that are interested in that. And this is just a list of your indicators overall. That, as I said, you've got your diagrams and where we help with stakeholder engagement here is that each of these elements of your theory of change or your impact model have status indicators across the top. So you might see an at-risk element that hasn't had results recorded against targets or it might be overdue or those sorts of things. You've got elements that are completed. And so falling behind and then at-risk. So if there's an element that your targets are much higher than the results you're capturing, we're gonna flag that automatically for you to say this is an activity that you need to look at. From there, you've also got, we automatically build a performance view for you. So these are just automated dashboards out of the box that people can use to track different indicators. And we use a tagging system to create cross-cutting views. So in the international development space, we would talk about, say, gender or GEDC-related indicators. And we can use this to automatically cut some of these down for you. And really what this is doing is just saving time for teams not having to then pull that data into Power BI or tab-load to get some of this pretty straightforward data. Okay, then you've got your document management so you can upload designs or reports or those sorts of things at the project level. And then you can also upload documents at the results level as well. So you might wanna also, you can record the aggregate rows of, say, a survey or one of the eventations or one instrument to use and then upload the evidence for those. And this is how we sort of start to track that evidence base over time. We've got user access controls at the project and platform level. So you can give stakeholders access, read-only access to a specific project or you can give your teams, full access to all projects just helps with that management. And then we also have a version control system where you can save versions and variations of your theory of change or your impact model so that you can go back over time and have a look at, at the start of your program, what did your theory of change look like versus at the end or if there are, points in time where you wanna create variations. Say, as COVID hit, your project needed to pivot or change to a COVID recovery model. You could create multiple forecasts of your theory of change. Take that to your donor or stakeholders and say, this is how we expect these changes could happen and then choose one of those forecasts to become your core project and they're fully featured as well. So you can go through and have a look at how those targets and results would change over time. From here also, just gonna stop sharing for a second because there's one other feature that I wanna quickly show but I just need to do one thing. And all of this is exportable to, if you wanted to pull that into Power BI or something like that, we allow that really simply as well. The idea of this is just to make it easier for teams so they don't have to pull it into something else to do that, to do that evaluation. Okay. Just really share this really quickly. Okay. And then for each individual project, we can also create impact insights. So these are dashboards that you can simply create to give an overview of your results. You might wanna show, have a dashboard just for your stakeholders that shows. This was a volunteer program. So total number of volunteers broken down by location. All of this is built around the ability to capture results and set targets for indicators at disaggregated levels. So you might have, maybe a five, 10, 15 disaggregations of a specific indicator and we're recording results against any of those so that we can build these visualizations over time. So if you were to go into one, obviously tracking quant and qual data in the same place, but we've definitely focused more on the quant data capture at this stage. So you can see here, disaggregations broken down by category and then by name, setting baselines at the start of the program and we provide the ability to add descriptions to them so that you can define them that aren't necessarily the designers of the program just gives that ability to sort of translate that out a little bit for non-evaluators or all mel teams. But you can see here, this disaggregation is broken down by gender and location. We also have an approval or certification process. So when people record results, they're then centrally certified so that they can be QA'd before they appear in any stakeholder or client reports. And that's all set up through our user access system. But that's really it. So this is the starting point for all of this, but as we get more access to data and research, we can start to use some of those more machine learning based tools to surface more recommendations and those sorts of things. Terrific, absolutely. Okay, there's a lot of questions. Yeah, I was just going to say I have been keeping an eye on the chats and I've pulled them out for you so I can guide you through the questions. Okay, cool. So if we start with Hannah. So this is designed to be really lightweight. So we know that this works in low bandwidth locations throughout the Pacific and Indonesia, but it is an online system. But anytime we talk about using offline data capture and those sorts of things, you can then take that offline data and import it directly into Torch. And just on the data capture, there's one later about where the data is stored. Yeah, so data, so each of these tenants is designed to be managed in isolation. The reason why we did that is so that we can get around client data sovereignty problems. So we can deploy a tenant in an Australian Secure Data Center or in a country-specific data center. Yeah, we just work with clients on a case-by-case basis to move that around. Cool, and I think the next one, I was around, is it useful for routine program monitoring as well as evaluation or just for standalone evaluation? Yeah. So the idea of this was to make it operational. So you might be only using, you might be only capturing data at specific points in time because you might have a survey that goes out annually or those sorts of things, but we really wanna make this an operational system that people can use to adjust their programs, month-to-month if they had to. So it's really about when those indicators are recorded, but for example, we're working on a finance integration at the moment so that activities could be tagged against your finance system and you could have those come through monthly so that you can really use it for routine monitoring. And then next one around what do you recommend for complex human systems innovations or where linear theory of change may not be appropriate? Yeah, so we haven't done a lot in this area, but with our customization with your programs, you can sort of set up your own hierarchies or structures so that you can capture it in the way that you want to or that your team needs to. And then especially for things where you're doing a lot of adaptation that version control process really helps to sort of guide through that process. But yeah, it's definitely not an area that we've focused on initially, but it would be great to talk more about that if you would like. Okay, so with the one from Alison around lists of indicators, et cetera. So yeah, so the lists of indicators, when you look at your evaluation framework, that's fully searchable and filterable based on any of the data sections that you fill in. So the standard is really based on DFATS indicator categories, but anywhere where you would click a heading or have a look at open the advanced search section, you can filter on any of those fields that you capture. And really that's to help things, when I'm working with teams, not using torch, it's an area which takes a lot more work to understand what indicators they're using, what instrumentation they're using and when, where this sort of really helps filter and cut that down. The other part of that was transfer a project to a client's account. Yeah, so at the moment torch tenants are designed to be isolated for an individual project. And we did that exactly so that you could transfer that to whether another contract that took over that program or any of that sort of thing happened throughout the contract process. What we're working on now is an overarching platform that sits across multiple torch tenants that can then aggregate that data up so that you can get access to, say you've got 10 clients, you can then get access to all of those or pass them off as needed and export. Yeah, so you can export any of the diagrams, any of the data into Excel or into PDF. Editable formats are a little bit more difficult unless they are sort of that Excel model for the diagrams specifically because diagrams are quite difficult to programmatically manage just in terms of where things sit and when. But it's an area where we're gonna be putting more effort into as well. Integration, so we're at the moment talking to a survey platform that does a lot of machine learning work. So that will be our first data integration. At the moment, we use a simple import like from Excel format to take aggregated data from say Qualtrics or from SurveyMonkey or whatever that happens to be into the platform. But yeah, that's definitely an area where we're actively working on as well. Can you aggregate data from across different programs? Yeah, so, and this is what I was talking about in terms of that organizational layer. At the moment, if you have multiple projects on the OneTorch tenant, it's not how it's designed but you can definitely aggregate them at an organizational level. So there's two different dashboards and they work exactly the same but they are limited in their scope just for that sort of security perspective but at the platform level dashboard you can add visualizations and data sets regardless of which project using our tagging so that it can automatically pull those aggregates up. So for example, if you had use like value for money as an example, if you had a value for money tag and then use that tag across indicators for all of your programs, you could create a BFM visualization and it would pull all of that data together with all of these aggregations to show you that at an organizational level. And this is an area where we're really sort of pushing forward in a big way because I think that's one of the problems at the moment is that it's a lot more difficult to do that and it really shouldn't be. Thanks, Luke. I think it has addressed that pretty wide ranging from the chat panel but thanks everyone for your great engagement. There was a question earlier prior to the demo just around which tool you'd recommend to the transcription of interviews. I think you mentioned sort of machine learning and a bit of the developments in the text-to-speech speech-to-text space. There are really specific tools and platforms to do it out of the box but AWS provides probably one of the most advanced products to do this where you can just send it audio files or video files and it will automatically transcribe them for you. But definitely if you want more information we can take that one offline and unpack it a little bit more. So we've got a few more minutes for anyone who does want to jump up with any other questions or discussions. Now discussion points. I was wondering a bit as we're going through and particularly looking at the demo about where the use of technology or tortures the tool in particular fits with then the capability building of the evaluation teams or the non-evaluators that you're encouraging to use the tool, do you find that it's sort of built it and they will come and you build them up because the tools, technology is hugely capable but people might not be as much, do you build them up or do you build them first and then go now you've got that in place? Here's the technology to sort of unleash your potential. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I think the more you can, like from a torch perspective, the more you can bring people along at the planning and design phase and then really understanding how a project comes together within the context of the platform is really helpful because you're sort of guiding them through the process of how it all fits together within the tool that you're using as opposed to all of these different stages being sort of isolated and put together in a file share or something like that. Really what we've also tried to do with torch is build translation of language in for the sort of industry jargon that we use. So where you talk about building a project within torch, you can use the theory of change approach and call your project a theory of change based evaluation project or you could call it whatever you wanted for the local context. And similarly with the hierarchy levels, working with FCDO programs, it was really clear that whilst they use a theory of change approach, they customize the hierarchy language to the local languages that they're working in so that people can understand it more effectively. If you talk about a long-term outcome in some hour, that's something different to different people. So using different language really helps with a lot of that challenge. And then we specifically made the system as simplified as possible. So that it wasn't intimidating for teams to pick up. So it's really designed to be quite hierarchical in how you watch your data and then how you visualize it so that it's not overly complex. Just definitely helped with that as well. The other part of that is also have side one system. They can really understand how those results relate directly to the project strategy. So that they can see how their day-to-day job impacts those metrics because they'll see the data capture all the way through. Terrific, thank you. And just mindful of time within the couple of minutes to go. Just thank you again for the presentation and addressing everyone's questions there. And thanks everyone for your engagement. I just launched the feedback poll but we do have a couple more minutes. So firstly, I would really appreciate your feedback on today's session, awesome. And if you've got any last minute questions or comments then please jump in now. The feedback poll should be coming up for people now. And I'd just like to say also thanks to everyone for coming along today. And if you want to learn any more about torch or have any technology challenge questions in this area definitely reach out.


New year from us here at Time2Football, putting up a new calendar means that postseason football is right around the corner. Which teams could surprise us as the DOR courses in the playoffs in their row to Super Bowl 55 down in Tampa? Dwayne Haskins has officially been released. What does this mean for the future of the Washington football team? Week 17 news and notes going into Sunday's games and much more on a brand new episode, the very first episode of Time2Football of 2021. Hello everyone, my name is Hasan Khan, the host of this show. You are joining us on this Friday if you guys are premiering this video on YouTube. I know it's Friday, I threw you guys off, I did not expect to release this video on Friday. If you kept up with us on YouTube in the comment sections under the community tab I posted that I came down with a stomach bug on Monday so I had to push everything back a day or two just kind of delay everything so the ads and drops videos that's why I didn't release that this week came out with a source of sits but that was a day late on Wednesday and so the podcast got pushed back to Friday because of that. So with all that said, regardless I'm feeling a little bit better and probably 80-85% right now. Enough energy to talk about some football and get through this episode and finish out the regular season. It's crazy to think that 2020 is over, we needed that year to be over but it's crazy to think that the regular season is coming to an end so quickly and it's going to be ending all in one day on Sunday, all these games are going to be happening in just one single day. We're going to get you caught up on all the drama and all the playoff scenarios as well and all the news and notes going into this week. If you guys are premiering this on this wonderful Friday, how you guys doing? I'm going to be joining you guys in the chat as well. Any sort of questions that you may have is the fantasy football championship for some of you. Most of you guys ended your seasons in week 16. Because week 17 it just doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of guys to play fantasy football if a lot of players are being sat. For instance Patrick Mahomes, which could mean Travis Kelsie, Tyreek Hill, Ben Rothesberger is not going to play. There's rumors out there that Josh Allen may play, he may not play and a lot of guys that made the championship, you probably have Josh Allen or even Stefan Diggs. So there's just a lot of question marks for surrounding week 17 so I encourage you guys if you're the commissioner of your league or if you can just reach out to the commissioner of your fantasy football league, please tell them next year do not play a championship on week 17. Just end it. End it week 16. Everybody will be happy. It makes a lot of sense. But if you are playing in week 17, ask any sort of questions that you may have and I'll try my best to respond to you guys. If you guys are listening to us on the audio experience, rate and review this podcast, be sure to head over to youtube.youtube.com and subscribe to us on there. We're going to get into the podcast and all the topics that we have for you guys. But first before we get into everything, you know what we have to do every single week. We have to give the most prestigious award to a player every single week and that is the hungriest player of the week. Hungriest player of the week, the one that wanted it the most. My hungriest player of the week, not the check downs. Even though more than likely it's probably going to be given to the same player and that is Alvin Kamera, the New Orleans Saints. Who else can you give it to other than the guy from just in my backyard in Gwinnett County from Norcross High School, Alvin Kamera, 22 carries, 155 yards and six total touchdowns in that fabulous Christmas Day game against the Minnesota Vikings. What an amazing thing that the NFL did. Had an amazing historic day, Alvin Kamera did. In terms of fantasy football goes, in terms of record tying production and then they decide to find him 5000 bucks because of his green and red cleats that he wore that was against his dress code. So congratulations NFL. That's amazing. Six touchdowns does tie an NFL record that someone set back in the 1920s could have been a record setting performance by Alvin Kamera. If he just got seven touchdowns, just seven touchdowns against the Minnesota Vikings. He was so close. The Saints were on the goal line prior to his six touchdown. He could have gotten his six touchdown in the third quarter, but something about Sean Payton and his man crush with Taysum Hill decided to give him the goal line carry and that might just cost Alvin Kamera that record touchdown, the seven touchdown. But that's OK. Alvin Kamera, great performance, deserving of the hungriest player of the week award. Week 17 news and notes around the NFL, a lot to talk about with the playoffs scenarios which we're going to get into in just a bit. But first, the biggest news across the league has to be that Washington's football team, the Washington football team released Dwayne Haskins. Their starting quarterback, their number one overall pick back in 2019, no longer on the football team. It's been released after some, obviously his performance has been struggling and as well as some character issues as well. And he was being stripped of his captain badge just last week and just wasn't a right fit. So we're going to dive much more into that later on once we get into the topics of the show. But Dwayne Haskins has been released. A big, big name for the Green Bay Packers. David Bakhtiyari, their tackle, has suffered a season ending ACL injury in practice just yesterday in Thursday's practice. So he's going to be out for the remainder of the season. That's big news for the offensive line and protecting Aaron Rodgers. So let's see how the Packers can respond to that. Activated off the COVID-19 list, those four wide receivers of the Cleveland Browns that they missed so much last week and that lost against the New York Jets, Jarvis Landry, Rashad Higgins, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Kaderah Hodge have all been activated off the COVID-19 list. Another big name that's been activated for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and eligible to play this Sunday. That is Ronald Jones. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are running back. We'll be getting the start over Leonard Fournette against the Atlanta Falcons. Has been missing the last couple of games. Placed on that COVID-19 list so they will not be playing this Sunday, that is Keenan Allen, Cooper Cupp, Jalen Mills, the defensive back of the Philadelphia Eagles, Denzel Ward of the Cleveland Browns, Michael Brockers on the Rams, Ryan Fitzpatrick, the quarterback on the Dolphins, and Brett Kern, the punter on the Titans, who the Titans have dealt with so many special teams' issues. All of these big names are now placed on the COVID-19 list. More than likely they're gonna be messing this week, this Sunday's games of action. And for those teams that are going into the playoffs, those players are in doubts of missing probably the first round of playoff games as well. So those are some big names that are placed on that COVID-19 list. Some non-COVID-19 inactive.  That is Daven Cook, unfortunately gonna be missing this week because of some family tragedy his father passed away. Christian McCaffrey, I'm sorry for you guys that you're after Christian McCaffrey and fantasy football. I would put him up there next to Saquon Barkley as the biggest draft bus this year. Only had three games of production. When he played those three games, he was productive and it was amazing, but he is now gonna be sitting out. So his backup, Mike Davis, is not gonna be playing as well. And James Robinson, another big name running back will be missing this game as well against the Indianapolis Colts out with an ankle injury. Kenny Galladay, just like the same route as Christian McCaffrey, you thought he was gonna be coming back sooner than what we thought, but it turns out that they just shut him out for the rest of the season. He's gonna be finishing the season with only a couple games under his belt so Kenny Galladay will be missing week 17 against the Minnesota Vikings. Some players that have been sitting out because the coaches elected to rest them, Patrick Mahomes, will not be playing. No word has been said about Travis Kelsey and Tyree Kale, but those are two big names that we expect to be sitting as well. Adrian Peterson, the line's running back. Doesn't wanna be a part of the Lions rebuild.  He wants to be a part of a championship team. This late in his career, he's still expected to be playing in his head at least if he gets an offer from an NFL team. Wants to be a part of a championship team, so let's see what happens for Adrian Peterson in the 2021 off season. And then the last note I wanna bring up before we talk about the playoff scenarios, Kyle Trask, the Florida quarterback, the Heisman finalist, announces and declares for the NFL draft, so he will be drafted this year in the 2021 NFL draft. Kyle Trask, Heisman finalist from Florida. Looking at the playoff scenarios, let's first start off with the NFC, a lot of clinching scenarios. First talking about the Green Bay Packers, the New Orleans Saints, and the Seattle Seahawks, the three guaranteed number three seats. All three teams are eligible to clinch that first round by. Green Bay, what has to happen? They have to win or Seattle has to lose. New Orleans, they have to win, plus Green Bay has to lose, plus Seattle has to win. For Seattle, they have to win, plus Green Bay has to lose, and New Orleans has to lose. A lot of different scenarios with that three way tie with those top three seats. The Washington football team can clinch the NFC East division title, the dreaded NFC East, if they were to win against the Philadelphia Eagles. That's all that needs to happen. Now, if they were to lose, then they're eliminated because the winner of the Dallas and the New York Giants game would get the nod as the NFC East champion. You've got the Rams, the Bears, and the Cardinals all fighting for those two wildcard spots. For the Rams, they need to win or Chicago needs to lose. For Chicago, they need to win or Arizona needs to lose. As for Arizona, they have the toughest route to the NFC playoffs. They have to win and they have to hope that Chicago were to lose as well. As far as the AFC goes, very competitive for the Tennessee Titans. They clinched the AFC South with a win against the Houston Texans or if Indianapolis loses against the Jacksonville Jaguars. So it's a little bit easier for them. For the Colts, they need to hope that the Titans were to lose and that the Colts were to win. Now, if the Colts were to win and the Titans were to win, that's okay. The Colts still have a chance of making the playoffs if the other 10 to five teams, at least one of them were to lose. That includes the Dolphins, the Browns and the Ravens, all 10 to five. So all these teams need to win because you never know what's gonna happen with those other teams and the fate of them if either one of them is gonna go 11 to five or 10 and six. So all of them are hoping for a win this Sunday. But that's kind of the crazy scenarios that we have for the playoff race in the AFC and the NFC. Dwayne Haskins has officially been released by the Washington football team. He ends his tenure with the team, starting 13 games, throwing for 12 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. Head coach Ron Rivera stated this past Monday that he did what was for the best interest of the team after some bad performances on the field, yes. But more than likely coming down to the decision because of some bad character choices on the part of Haskins. So what does Haskins release mean for Washington's future?  I think we all owe New York, talking about the Giants, an apology. An apology, when Daniel Jones was drafted over Dwayne Haskins in the 2019 draft at number six overall, the backlash, the criticism, people flipped out, people could have fathomed it. People didn't understand why would you take Jones over Haskins, who people are saying is the better quarterback. And we just criticized the Giants for so long and it turns out the Giants were right in their decision. They knew exactly what they were doing. They know more about the situation than we did. So we owe them an apology. Here's a thing about NFL drafts, mock drafts especially. There's only five to 10 people total that actually do hours and hours and hours of research on every single player to come out with the mock draft. And what we do, as far as thousands and thousands of people go is we read these articles posted by these five to 10 people, these mock drafts. And I'm talking about people from ESPN like Mill Kuiper or Todd McShay. And I'm talking about people from NFL.com like Bucky Brooks or Daniel Jeremiah or Mike Mayock prior to him being on the Raiders.   That's what we do. That's what we did with the Daniel Jones situation. That's what happens all the time. Every year I come out with a mock draft on this YouTube channel and I say, okay, I think that this team is gonna pick this player. And if just one person disagrees, someone says, no, that's factually inaccurate even though it hasn't happened yet. It's an opinion, it's okay. There's no such thing as a wrong opinion. And that's exactly what we did with Daniel Jones and Dwayne Haskins. We thought that since these five to 10 people and that thousands and thousands of people were reading the opinions of these five to 10 people, we're coming out saying, yeah, Haskins is better than Daniel Jones and the Giants should draft Dwayne Haskins. We immediately thought to our head, yeah, that means Haskins is better than Daniel Jones. That's a fact. And that there's no other logical choice but to get Dwayne Haskins when in reality, the Giants knew exactly what they were doing and avoiding Dwayne Haskins and avoiding the lack of productions that he's had because in his NFL career so far, when you want to compare the two, yeah, Daniel Jones has had some trouble with turnovers here and there but so far as far as offensive production goes, it's been Daniel Jones that has been better on the football field than Dwayne Haskins. Dodge the bullet with Dwayne Haskins. There are several teams interested in Haskins according to multiple reports. One of those being the Carolina Panthers. That's the only team that's been revealed that has shown interest in Dwayne Haskins. A lot of that could be attributed to, yeah, Teddy Bridgewater isn't your long-term solution. You want to just go ahead and grab a player with some long-term upside if he were to turn things around, if we were to get his act together. That could be the route for Dwayne Haskins. But as far as the Washington football team, what do they do now? Not that they don't have a quote unquote franchise quarterback. Now that Alex Smith is getting up there in age is not gonna be your long-term solution. You have no one really else on your roster that could step up as a franchise quarterback. What route do they take? You have to think about Washington looking at the NFO draft if you want a drafted quarterback for the future. But here's the tricky situation for the Washington football team. The NFC East is so bad that if they were to win this division, this Sunday, they would get in the 20s and up as far as their draft pick goes and they wouldn't have a good pick in landing a solid franchise quarterback, one of the better touted quarterbacks this upcoming draft. 20 and up means that you're gonna miss out on guys like Trey Lance.  Currently they hold the 19th pick. So for the draft, unless you trade a lot of draft capital, unless you trade up, it's almost unrealistic to get a solid first round, top five, top 10 quarterback and the NFO draft that you can consider. Yeah, this is my franchise quarterback moving forward. Another route that they can do because of that is go down the free agent route and you could bring in a veteran. That's what free agency is for is bringing in a bridge quarterback. Like some quarterbacks that are gonna be free agents that are up there in age this year. There's Phillip Rivers. I don't think the team wants to bring in Phillip Rivers given that they have another agent quarterback and Alex Smith. Maybe you go down the route of getting a younger quarterback in free agency. Maybe someone like Dak Prescott. It's possible. The Cowboys may elect and not sign them to a long-term deal following his injury, even though Stephen Jones, the vice president of the Cowboys has stated that Prescott is a long-term solution. He's been saying it for the last couple of years, but just keeps on signing them to the franchise tax so there's no guarantee that he's gonna be the future of that franchise. Could he go over to a division rival in Washington to be their starting quarterback and their franchise quarterback for the foreseeable future? If not, I understand. He's a lot of money. That's okay. Another big young name quarterback that could become a free agent this season, Mitchell Trebisky, could be in the market to sign with other NFL teams after the lack of success that he's been having with the Chicago Bears in the broad sense. I know as of the last three, four weeks or so, the Bears have really turned it around because Trebisky has been their quarterback, but in the broad sense, they could elect to move on with Trebisky, not pick up his fifth year option and that could open the window for Washington to swoop in and sign Trebisky as their potential franchise quarterback. But what do you guys believe is gonna happen with Washington and their future? Do you believe that they're gonna go down the route of signing someone like Dag Prescott or Mitch Trebisky in free agency? Or do you think that they're gonna really focus in and hone in on the NFL draft? Leave your comments down below. Every now and then in the post-season, you get those teams that surprise us for the New York Giants in 2007. A wildcard team went on to beat the undefeated New England Patriots. The Baltimore Ravens led by Joe Flacco in 2012, a wildcard team, the Green Bay Packers in 2010, wildcard team, the Tennessee Titans last year were playing in the wildcard round, defeated the New England Patriots, defeated the Baltimore Ravens and were kind of close to reaching the Super Bowl and beating the Kansas City Chiefs. Every year you get surprise teams, it seems like. The question is, this year, who's gonna be that team? That's gonna be surprising because who is the dark horse that a lot of people aren't really talking about and making a run at the Super Bowl that could really have a legitimate chance of making it down in Tampa? In the AFC and in the NFC, there are several teams that we wanted to talk about. I went through all the teams that are a little bit less known or not so much covered in the media or not really talked about. So this doesn't include teams like Green Bay or New Orleans or the Kansas City Chiefs or even the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Buffalo Bills. Obviously those teams are the quote unquote favorites but this includes teams like the Tennessee Titans or maybe the Miami Dolphins and teams of that nature. So I went through and I picked five teams. My top five teams that could be potential dark horses for the NFL playoffs. Now granted, this is week 17 prior to week 17. So there's no guarantee that any of these teams have clinched just yet. But just keep that in mind that these teams are in position to clinch if the playoffs were to start today, they would be in the NFL playoffs. So starting off with the number five team, I have the LA Rams as a potential dark horse. Not really talking about that much even though they are a pretty decent football team. You sit at nine and six. I had them ranked higher originally. I had them at number four, but I had to drop them down a spot because they're kind of dependent on Jared Goff and his status and his thumb injury. Some are saying that it's season ending because he had to have thumb surgery. So a lot of people are saying, yeah, he could be just missing the remainder of the NFL season but we just don't know yet because they haven't announced it. They haven't placed on IR just yet. They have hope that he could return for the NFL playoffs. Tough dude, by the way. If you caught that shot of him, the Fox cameras caught that him dislocating his thumb but then popping it back into place and finishing the game. Man, that takes a lot of guts for his throwing hand as well. But John Wolford is gonna be starting for the LA Rams and the time being in the interim until Jared Goff can get healthy. So that's why they're the number five dark horse. I would have them ranked higher, but I don't know. I know their defense is really good and they can lead the way. Cam Acres is the number one back if you can get healthy in time for the playoffs but it's all dependent on Jared Goff. Now, if the playoffs were to start today, they would face the Seattle Seahawks. They beat them once already, 23 to 16 in the first time that they met up prior to last week. But again, Jared Goff is a difference maker on that team. So number five, the LA Rams. Number four, an AFC team, the Miami Dolphins. Listen, they've already exceeded expectations this season. Why not just give them a chance for the NFL playoffs? We kept on doubting them all season long and now this time around for the playoffs, I'm not sure if you wanna continue to doubt them. In my opinion, this is all dependent on Ryan Fitzpatrick. I understand what Brian Flores is doing. Give two a tug of eye low with some experience. He's your future, I understand that. But production wise, Fitzpatrick has been the better quarterback. Let's give Fitzpatrick a shot. So for Brian Flores, I think that Fitzpatrick would be the best option. Now, if the season were to end today, they would be in the NFL playoffs. They would be the number five seed and they would face the Tennessee Titans. The Titans are slight favorites over the Miami Dolphins but the Dolphins, again, could be a dark horse just because of how they just continue to defy expectations. We thought that their defense was gonna get run over all season long. We thought that this offense was still not gonna be as productive. Turns out they're gonna have a shot at making the NFL postseason. So the Miami Dolphins, my number four dark horse. Number three, the Tennessee Titans. The team that speaking of facing the Dolphins, the Tennessee Titans, the slight favorites over the Dolphins. So that's why I had them ranked at number three. I said the Dolphins at number four. Great offense, would be ranked higher if it weren't for that defense. We didn't expect this defense to be as bad this season but somehow, some way, we find themselves not really being as good as we expected. They're 10 and five despite the lack of success on that defense and a lot of that has to be accredited to that great offense. Derek Henry just continues to run over people every single week. Ryan Tanehill never missed a beat. Last year was not a fluke. Turns out he actually is a very good quarterback and he is doing really well for the Tennessee Titans and that is why they find themselves in position to win the AFC South this Sunday against the Houston Texans. Now this team is considered a dark horse and they did so well last season. They were a dark horse last year as well against the New England Patriots on the road in Foxboro. Now against Baltimore Ravens on the road in Baltimore and against the Kansas City Chiefs even though they lost that game for a good amount of time for at least the first half in contention of winning that game or had a shot of at least pulling off an upset and making the Super Bowl because of the culture of that team. Mike Vrable, a lot of people are saying a lot of players are saying including Taylor Luan and so many others are saying that the culture in that Tennessee team, something about it, it's just different. It's something about them can push them and wanting to win and wanting to make the Super Bowl down in Tampa. So the Tennessee Titans are my number three dark horse team for the NFL postseason. Number two, a team that's just not really talked about that much, the Baltimore Ravens. I don't understand why, even though they are gonna make the postseason even though they have a very good team not really talked about it as much but the Baltimore Ravens are considered a dark horse because Lamar Jackson, the beginning half of the season, look maybe you just needed some time to just catch up with this office or this office needed to get its act together but now he's starting to come alive in the second half of the season. Hollywood Brown, Marquise Brown is starting to come alive as well. Complaining about not getting enough targets, what's the matter or what's the point of having soldiers if you're not gonna use them. Tweeted that out and now they evolve in the offense every single time. The defenses declined slightly, their secondary has not been as good in the first half of the season or compared to the first half of the season but they're still talented. They're still one of the best defenses in the NFL. So a good offense, that's really turning it around and a good defense as well makes them my number two dark horse. If the season were to start today they would face the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now there's no guarantee that the Baltimore Ravens are going to make the playoffs just yet but if it started today they would face the Steelers and they had some pretty rough games against the Steelers almost picked up one victory in the start of that skid for the Pittsburgh Steelers so they have a shot at pulling out the upset against the Pittsburgh Steelers. So that was with RG3 and Trace McSorley at quarterback. So who's to say that Lamar Jackson at quarterback now with a new improved offense is not gonna be any better. So the Baltimore Ravens my number two dark horse. My number one team that could be a dark horse a lot of people would say that, hey, they're the favorites or they're one of the better teams they're in contention of getting a first round buy. How do you consider them a dark horse? Well, that's because a lot of people just aren't really talking about them. People are sleeping on because of the lack of production that they've had on offense in the second half of the season. But I say that the Seattle Seahawks are up there for being dark horses and the NFL playoffs. Listen, I understand that Russell Wilson losing his MVP candidacy to Aaron Rodgers or even Patrick Mahomes. A lot of people are saying, well, okay, because of that because the offense hasn't been looking that great because Tyro Lockett and DK Metcalf have declined as well.  Can't really talk about them, but I'm here to tell you, yeah. Go ahead and give him a shot. Russell Wilson, even though the lack of production that he's been having is still one of the more reliable quarterbacks that you will find in that NFL playoff race. The offense has cooled down a bit, but guess what has been red hot as of late and has gotten better. The Seattle Seahawks defense. And it was kind of projected that after the first half of the NFL season that this defense has had that Pete Carroll and this team and this coaching staff was gonna do everything that they can to focus in on this defense and get them much better. So even though the offense hasn't been looking that great, the reason why they're 11 and four, a big reason has to do with that Seattle Seahawks defense and how they've really stepped it up. So the Seahawks, we don't know if they're gonna get a first round buy just yet or if they're gonna face the number six seed if there are the number three seed. But what we do know is that the Seahawks should be considered legitimate contenders to make a Super Bowl run. So to recap, the five dark horse playoff teams I have that could make a run for the Super Bowl and surprise us, number five, the LA Rams, number four, the Miami Dolphins, number three, the Tennessee Titans, number two, the Baltimore Ravens and number one, the Seattle Seahawks. All five dark horses in the NFL playoff. So if you guys have other names or other teams that you guys wanted to mention, interact with us. Comment down below and let us know who those teams are. We're gonna kinda wrap up this podcast just because I mentioned the beginning of the show. I had a stomach bug still recovering from that. So don't wanna make this too long. We're gonna go ahead and wrap it up with fantasy football questions. Listen, we mentioned that this is still a thing. Fantasy football is still a thing in week 17 and I encourage you guys reach out to your commissioners and encourage them to stop making the championship in week 17. It does not make any sense. Oh, it doesn't make any sense. A lot of you guys made the championship because of Josh Allen, because of Patrick Mahomes, because of Ben Roth, because of Stefan Diggs. Now they're gonna be sitting more than likely. I feel for you. I really do. But I'm gonna choose six questions and answer them on this show. First off, I'm Edgar Chavez. So you're saying I should start Lamar Jackson over Josh Allen this week. Yes, 100% because listen, Josh Allen was my bus of the week in that sorts and sets video. I love Josh Allen. I would have never said that he's gonna be a bus of the week ever. But we don't know if he's gonna play or not. We still don't know. Sean McDermott, the Bills head coach has stated that we don't know until the game or game time. When it comes out of the decision, we're gonna find out. So if they play their starters against the Miami Dolphins, if they really wanna clinch that number two seed, sure, they could play them. But I doubt that they're gonna play them for so long. Maybe just the first quarter, maybe even the second quarter, take them out a half time because you have nothing to lose. You already made the NFL playoffs. And if you lose out on the number two seed and you get the number three seed, that's okay. Because the teams that you face, if you're the number two seed or the number three seed, it's not that big of a difference. You're gonna face one of those 10 to five teams, whether it be the Dolphins, the Ravens, the Browns, the Colts, whoever it may be, there's just not much to play for. So Josh Allen and Stefan Diggs, any of those Bill starters, I'm gonna pass on them. I'm not gonna take any risks.  So Lamar Jackson over Josh Allen, Chad Boyer, states, championship week, no Tyreek Hill, no Travis Kelsey or Keenan Allen. Oh my gosh. Pick two for running back, Zeke, Gaulman or Chris Carson. Okay, so Tyreek and Travis Kelsey are because of the chiefs electing the rest of sorters, Keenan Allen was placed on that COVID-19 list. Pick two running backs, Zeke, Gaulman or Chris Carson. I'm gonna ride it out with Zeke. Man, if you draft into number three overall in the NFC football draft, but more than likely over, or behind Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley, just ride with him. Just do it. Tony Pollard has really stepped up and taken some carries away from Zeke or Elliott, but he's still the future back and the potential that he has to put up RB1 numbers, especially in the last game of the season when they just really are competing for the NFC East title and they want to bring their guns out, their big guns out and get all their star players to carries. Yeah, play Ezekiel Elliott. And then over that, I'm gonna play Chris Carson over Wayne Gaulman because the dip in production that Gaulman has been having, it's been because of GameScript, because the Giants have been having to play from behind against the Cleveland Browns and then last week against the Baltimore Ravens. But that does kind of scare me and worry me a bit that I wouldn't put him as a must-start, at least I would put him as a sleeper. So someone that could surprise us and could do well as a sleeper running back because of the matchup that he has. But Chris Carson is guaranteed to get those touches for the Seattle Seahawks, had 16 carries last week, is clearly the number one back for Seattle and is a guy that's gonna be playing all four quarters because the Seattle Seahawks wanna clinch that first round by. So Zeke and Chris Carson are my two options. Armand Sood, Tannehill or Cousins at quarterback. I feel like the Titans are gonna run Henry all over the Texans, which is why I'm leaning towards Cousins, especially with Cook Out. I understand the logic and I have both as must-starts. It's tough, it's tough. Cousins has been looking really good as of late. Tannehill on the other hand last week was kind of disappointing against the Green Bay Packers. The Houston-Texas defense is not that great at all. If you want to fact-check that and want some evidence of that, check Brandon Allen's stats. The Cincinnati quarterback in fantasy football last week put up 23 fantasy points against the Houston Texans. So I'm gonna put in Tannehill just because of that. Cousins, yes, he's been looking great, but because of Cook Out, who knows? Maybe the opposing team, maybe the Detroit Lions are gonna be playing against the pass and really focusing on that. Now that Daven Cook is out, not really trying to stop the run as much because your star player is out. So Cousins could not do as well as maybe Ryan Tannehill. Plus Ryan Tannehill has the rushing upside as well, so I'm gonna go ahead and stick with Tannehill over Cousins. Tied a bear 13, I see you commenting a lot. Time to football. Brady, Tannehill or Herbert at quarterback? Ooh, good question. I'm gonna stick with Tannehill over this. I really am. I understand. Brady against the Atlanta Falcons. Listen, the first half against the Atlanta Falcons, the first time that they faced this season, did not look that great. And for a second, I actually had Brady as the sleeper of the week in that sorts of this video.  And they had that amazing second half and came back because the Falcons loved to blow leads. But I'm not gonna put in Brady over Tannehill just because the Atlanta Falcons' defense still has those games here and there where the defense does look that great. Yes, I have both Brady and Tannehill as my starts, but I'm gonna be going with a safer pick in Ryan Tannehill knowing that the Houston, Texas defense is much worse, much worse than the Atlanta Falcons' defense. So I'm gonna stick with Ryan Tannehill. And over Justin Herbert as well, I didn't really talk about him just because Keenan Allen is gonna be missing this game as well. I understand Mike Williams might be stepping up, but it's gotta be Tannehill over any of those two. Aspen asks, pick one, Robbie Anderson, Michael Gallup or Mike Williams. Speaking of Mike Williams, number one wide receiver, makes sense if you wanna start him. Now that Keenan Allen is out, I wouldn't say that he's a bad flex spot in 12 to 14 team leagues. Yeah, you could flex Mike Williams, but if you wanna pick between Robbie Anderson or Michael Gallup, are you in a PPR league? Cause if you are, I'm gonna go with Robbie Anderson who had seven receptions just last week. It seems like this whole season he's been getting a lot of receptions. So in PPR leagues, I'm gonna go with Robbie Anderson. Michael Gallup has been getting that connection with Andy Dalton as of late, but with three different receivers on that team with Omari Cooper, CD Lam and Michael Gallup having to share the love and spread the love. Robbie Anderson just having to split it with DJ Moore and even Curtis Samuel. DJ Moore and Curtis Samuel aren't that big of a threat to Robbie Anderson as much as Omari Cooper and CD Lam are to Michael Gallup, if that makes any sense. So Anderson is gonna be my choice. Let's do one more. Lewis Ryan Sopeta is the Eagles defense still a start without Fletcher Cox. Yes, yeah, that Washington offense is not the greatest. I think Antonio fact-checked this for me. I think Antonio Gibson might be coming back this week. It might be playing. So that could help a lot, but you'd expect that this defense will be playing against the run and really stacking up the box because they know that Taylor Heinecke is gonna be the starting quarterback for the Washington football team. That's not taking anything away from Taylor Heinecke. Now I graduated the same year as him. We grew up in the same county. Went to Collins Hill High School and went to Archer High School. What a county shout out. But Taylor Heinecke, I am rooting for him. He's my guy, but I don't see him really doing as well against the Philadelphia Eagles offense just given that this isn't, he hasn't had a lot of starts underneath his belt. Has only had one career start so far. Yeah, I would start the Eagles defense over the Washington or against the Washington football offense. That's gonna wrap up this week's edition of Time 2 Football. If you guys were so gracious enough to premiere this video as we are showing you on Friday, spending your Friday night with us, be sure to subscribe to our channel so you can stay up to date when we come up with more videos every single week. Believe it or not, we come out with much more content, amazing content throughout the week than just fantasy football. So you guys want to stay up to date with all of that. If you guys are listening to us on the audio experience, on iTunes, rate and review, five stars, nothing less, and be sure to head over to YouTube, youtube.com, such as Time 2 Football, subscribe to us on there. That's gonna do it for this week's episode. It is week 17 of the 2020 NFL season and Adam Gase is still the head coach of the New York Jets. Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you next week.


Welcome to the Everton News Daily. Ffondite has given his pre-match press conference a head of Everton's trip to Tafmore on Saturday night at 5.30pm, it's obviously live on Sky, Everton looking for their fourth victory on the run, and not just the fourth victory on the run, but they're also looking for the fourth away win on the run, and it will be a huge result to go to Tafmore and get three points. It's not a ground we've done particularly well at in the Premier League, we've played them on eight occasions in the Premier League and we've lost five of those games, but the two times we have won there in the Premier League we've won there convincingly a three-one win and a five-one win which is the last time we've won there, so hopefully one of those two results will be excellent at the weekend. The manager was asked in his press conference for an injury and suspension update, this is what I have to say. Suspension, so Ganna and Jared, injuries, Youngie, Seamus won me right for this one, we're hoping for a quick recovery from them too. Kino has trained today so as long as there's no reaction he'd be back in the thinking, trying to think of us, me quite a bit of a niggle but I think he'd be okay, Dom's fine, trying to think of us, we've got a few, but they should, oh Delhi's still on the grass with us but just going back through the motions to get back involved. And Andres, he's been training with us for a few weeks now, he needs 90 minutes, we're hoping he gets that tomorrow. I don't know why, he asked about the suspension update, doesn't he, he's had a brand-thwaith in the Trisha Garnagai about suspension, therefore wouldn't be playing this, the update. The manager after that one was asked if there was a correlation between evidence obtained in form after the 10-point deduction. Obviously, we won a Crystal Palace and went into the international break and we were doing okay, I think we had 14 points and we then were given a 10-point deduction. We then lost the next game at home to Manchester United but we have won three on the run and it does look to have galvanised the team but the manager was asked whether a point deduction did give the team, the players an extra incentive which has led to their winning streak. This is what Sean Dates had to say about that. It's not a red herring but I just think that the team was operating well before that. I said early season we didn't get a winning the early games but I thought some of the performances were excellent. We transferred that into winning performances, then the news of the 10 points and then other than the Man United game which I thought would play very well in that to be honest. We've gone on on one three and looked like a team, a competitive team but the work was already getting done. I was pretty happy with the way the team were going before the 10-point situation. What it has done I think is enhanced it with our own supporters, enhanced the feel of the club. I think everyone was shocked and I think not just Evertonians, not just us, I think the greater good of football were all shocked. We'll have to answer what the appeal brings but to be clear on it with the players I said right we've got to act as if that's it. It's a done deal so our focus is challenge ourselves now, no excuses. Let's imagine it's done for now and then anything that comes our way hopefully would be a bonus if there is anything coming our way. Thank you Tom. He's right, the manager is right. We were already in good form. I just said at the start of that we just won a Crystal Palace. Going into that I think I've won nine of the last 12 games which is a hell of a run. Not many people seem to be talking about that in the press but that is the kind of good form Everton were in going into. Obviously ahead of this point of deduction we've carried it on after the point of deduction so it might have brought the fans and the club closer together because we're all in it together. But in terms of the team I think they were doing alright anyway. It was just a case of getting our home form right and we've been going away from home under Sean Dighton. Obviously the last couple of games we've won and won comfortably. I think we've won three of the last five home games. We've won 3-0, 3-0 and 2-0. Obviously you can include Burnley in that as well. We've won 3-0 against them in the cup. I think it's four wins a draw in the defeat in the last six games. Starting to turn that form around the home will be massive for the rest of the season. Lewis Dobbin came off the bench last week to put the icing on the cake against Chelsea and seal the victory. We obviously saw the brilliant celebrations on Sunday night that were being put back on social media on Monday Lewis Dobbin. Obviously delighted with his first goal. The manager has asked the effects of Dobbin's first goal on not only Lewis Dobbin but also on the rest of the group as well having a young player that's come through, come on and scored an important goal like that. This is what Sean Dighton has to say about that. I loved it, I loved it. I loved the reaction from the team and the fans alike. When I talk about that kind of bond with the fans, I think moments like that add on to that bond. I think it was an authentic moment for the team, the way they all responded to his goal. Good lad, great lad in fact and he's learning all the time. Frustrated by, he wants to play, he wants to be part of it. Frustrated by not getting as many minutes as he'd like, which other players are as well. But he's also got that nice, healthy respect for the fact of how the team are going, who's playing, et cetera, et cetera. But for him it's come on a fine goal as well, a fine finish. What a first goal for him. There you go. The manager did confirm that Andre Gomez is set to play in an under-21 game tomorrow against West Bromansalbyn. The culture staff want Gomez to play 90 minutes, to get that under his belt before he's considered for first team action. I think if he comes through that 90 minutes tomorrow, I'd imagine he will be in the squad for when Everton take Fulham on a Gooderson Park on Tuesday night in the quarter-final of the Carabao Cup. The manager obviously had name-checked Delhi as well in the train, but he isn't ready yet. And I imagine when he is ready to play in games, he will do at least a couple of under-21 games. Gomez has already done an hour. Like I said, this is the next natal thing for him to play a 90-minute game and just get that into his legs. So we'll see how we get on there. That is it for the news daily. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't and if you want to become a Toffy TV Premier Member, the link is in the description and the QR codes on the screen now. See you later.


Tell me about your thoughts on the role of private contractors doing government work in military zones. I think it's something we've jumped into without thinking about it. I think it's inherently bad at the strategic level. There's been a great deal of study about fraud, waste, abuse, contract issues, a number of different organizations, including the U.S. Congress, have done detailed studies. What we really haven't looked at is the strategic impact of contractors and conflict zones. In insurgencies, there are three major problems. One, you have no idea who you've hired.  So you don't know who he is. If you don't have a government employee riding with him, you literally don't know what they're doing, as we saw evidence by Nozure Square and some of the other problems. But you're responsible for everything they do or fail to do. And that's what makes it strategic in an insurgency, because an insurgency is competition for legitimacy of governance. If you have an armed actor who's not accountable to anyone, and you have no control over what he's doing, that strikes at the very legitimacy of the government. Is there also, I guess, an issue of just not knowing exactly what their base level of training is and not having detailed information on their backgrounds, as you would with military personnel? Yeah, you essentially know nothing about them. We were in Iraq, a contractor was, again, the Bush administration really liked contractors, so they hired a contractor since he recruited the Iraqi army. Well, their recruiting station got attacked, so we went out to see about security and they said, under the contract, we will hire the security and, of course, charge the government for it. So they promised them a platoon of Gherkas. What actually showed up was a platoon of Nepalese villagers. These people had never handled firearms in their lives. They had a former Marine at that place who took the job of training these guys so they could at least load the weapons and handle them safely without killing someone, but that was the level of training we had. What are the legal implications? I would leave that better for an international lawyer, but, again, one of the problems is rather than legal, I would focus on the moral and strategic implications, which, again, you hired them, you brought them here, you're responsible in the eyes of people for everything they do. So every time they run a local off the road or they take a job from a local or they hire locals away from government, they're impacting the insurgency and you have no control over that. But the people see it, even if you don't get out and see what they're doing, the people see it. Right. Increasingly, I guess, military are expected to not only address their strategic objectives in a war zone, but also the humanitarian objectives. Is there a role for contractors to assist in the humanitarian side of the objectives? Yeah, in fact, I'm not so sure contractors as humanitarian organizations. And I guess you could say it's a contract because you pay them to do this or assist them to do this. In Somalia, we had to put out dry feed sites. We had to deliver 72 tons of food through 36 sites in quantities of one kilogram or less. You think about that, that sounds incredibly complex to you. When I talked to an NGO about it, they said, oh, that's no problem, we could do that. But we don't know how to do the security. I said, that's no problem, I can do that. So we did the security, they did the grain distribution, and in less than an hour a day, from the time the truck rolled up to each of the sites, until it was gone and all the people had been given, essentially, a one kilogram bag of food, was less than one hour. Those were unique skills we didn't have. So yeah, there's roles for NGOs, not so much for contractors. It's hard for me to understand how humanitarian assistance and profit making fall in the same box. I can make more money if I cut back the quality of the rations a little bit. If I substitute a lower grade grain for a higher grade grain, I let you inspect it, well then there's profit to be made there. The control, the inspection and the control is very difficult in a conflict zone. And the way at least the United States is set up, we do a lot of our contracting over the internet. So actually the person supervising the contract I had for some bases in Iraq was in Kentucky. His counterpart was in Saudi Arabia. So resolving a dispute on what was happening on the ground was essentially impossible. I guess different countries take different positions on the role of contractors. What do you think lies ahead in the coming years? Well, the Secretary of Defense has said that we should assume when we go to war about half of our force will be contract force. So that's for the essentially governmental functions that are part of any conflict. So that's pretty much the position of the United States right now. Def assigned the memo, our military planners are planning on that. Now that means you've got to think about how you want to do this. I would say I have what may be too simplistic a division, but as a default position, if it's in the conflict zone, it shouldn't be contractors. If it's outside of the conflict zone, you should aggressively look for places that contractors can do the job. If it's measurable, repeatable, kind of bureaucratic, same thing all the time, then it can be easily governed by a contract. There can be a contract officer living with them because there's no risk. And so you can get really good quality. For instance, the maintenance of equipment in Q8 outside the conflict zone was done by contractors, did a great job. Don't know if they did it cheaper than the government, there's a huge dispute about that, but they did a great job. So I think there's a legitimate use. Once you move across the zone into conflict, you create as many problems as you solve. From your personal experience in conflict zones, you've had a long military career. What are the things have you taken away from the interaction between military and contractors? It's a mixed bag, like anything else. One of the things that militaries try to do is kind of smooth things out. So everybody's kind of at the same level of training. You've got tears, you know who's who, by what unit they're in. That's not true at all with contractors. You don't know when you walk up to the person. Am I talking to a former gherka with 30 years in the British army or the Indian army? Or am I talking to a Nepalese villager who's farmed rice for 30 years? I was a little confused as to what he's doing here. Some of them didn't seem to be clear that they were actually going inside a rack. They thought they were going to be doing labor in Q8 where nobody was shooting at them. Some of them were a little surprised to find themselves, essentially the front line. They were there to stop the car bombs. So you don't know. And I think that's been part of the most difficult thing. It's a bit like working with allied forces. There's some allies you work with all the time so you know the quality, how they are. Other times you go into one of these operations in its country you've never met before. They come from a very different background. Some of the initial discomfort will be just you don't understand each other. So there's that problem, but it's massively magnified with contractors. TX Hammers, thanks for your time today. Thank you.


Very soon I'll have the new Esperano vlog up, so you'll be able to check that out. And you'll probably understand what this video is about. Yesterday, I believe it was. Yes, it was yesterday. We're walking along the street, me, my wife, and my in-laws. And we see this little, like, set up on the side of the road. I said it's a set up because it was meant to be like a shop, but it looked like someone had just opened up, like, a little restaurant type of thing in the back of their garage. And it was just like, it was opened up, it was very dirty looking. It was really, really not that shabby. So I'm looking in my Mrs. like, oh, we're going to try real traditional Vietnamese food, you know? This looks like the place to get it because these are real Vietnamese people. They're not, you know, catering to Westerners type of thing. And I'm like, okay, I'm not sure. That looks pretty dirty, eh? But, you know, we went in there and I was right.  But anyway, we were sitting there, we sat down at this little table. It was just this like plastic makeshift thing with one leg too short. And it was just a little cover over us and it was like one table and that's it. And there's this person there and they're like attempting to take the order, but no one speaks English, no one speaks Chinese, or any language, obviously, apart from Vietnamese. And we're sitting there and my Mrs. is like putting out this big sign on the wall which has got like a picture of three different meals, Vietnamese meals. And she's like, one, one, one, repeatedly, one, one, one, trying to get this order happening. Eventually later on we find out that they've only got one thing on the menu.  You want three? That's what they're thinking. Oh, three in total, but there's four people here. Why don't you want four? And she's like, no, no, no, one, one, one, putting at this thing. Anyway, eventually we get through all of that. We order, we sit down. Everything is like really, really dirty and grummy looking and stuff like that. I'm sitting here going type of thing. But you know, we start, we start munching on it. And my wife is like discuss the price of them. And Vietnam is one of those countries where you have to basically barter backwards and forth nonstop to get a price that you like. You do that for everything. Okay. In Australia, we never barter. But in China, you barter for certain things in Vietnam. You do it for everything. Taxi, food, absolutely everything, even hotels. It doesn't matter what. So we're sitting here, my miss is going through this and she comes to what she thinks is a good deal. And I thought it was a good deal. We get the price. I can't remember how much it was exactly. We sit down, we eat and they bring us out these chopsticks and there's still like food attached to the end of the chopsticks from where like the previous people were eating and you're looking at this going, oh my God, my mother-in-law actually grabs all the chopsticks, walks out to this tiny little makeshift kitchen which is literally just a bowl in a dirt with water in it and starts cleaning them themselves because she just doesn't trust them. So she cleans them, comes back.  And we walk away after all that and we're thinking, okay, we've done that, we've had our experience with what's probably the real Vietnamese food. And later that night, we go to the restaurant which is actually attached to our hotel. And it's quite a fancy restaurant, nice restaurant. And we're looking at the prices and it's actually the same goddamn prices. That little shitty little restaurant attempt, whatever it was on the side of the road which my wife negotiated down the price was actually the exact same price that the restaurant will win. And this is a fancy restaurant with nice clean utensils and everything. So they totally did us in. They completely stole our money and even made us clean our own dishes. The dodgy bastards. But you know, that's it. I just wanted to share that with you. You're gonna see that within probably the video that comes out tomorrow, whatever. You'll see like little shots of that place but I don't talk about it too much because I don't realize that I'm being brought in. But yes, that's it. So if you've liked this video, give it a like, share it around with your friends and sub to the channel if you haven't already. And I'll see you all in the next video. And if you're not there, I'll come to your house and clean your dishes. And as always, I always want to thank my subscribers on Patreon. Donate a dollar a month to support the existence of this channel. I am now a donor. Sarah, Joe, Miguel, Bard, Tommy, Alex, Jake, Rafa, Chuck, Craig, Marvin, The Igor, Cuba, Jacob, Jason Knuckles, Shane and Greg.