Hello, and good morning, afternoon, evening, from wherever you are located. My name is Danny Skinenoni, and I work in product marketing here at Full Story. I speak for the team when I say we are truly happy to be here with all of you today. I am here to kick off our discussion around the challenges and opportunities of mobile app analytics and what that means for your app in 2023. And I have here with us Kevin Margeton and Matt Ware. Matt is our director of engineering and Kevin is a senior solutions architect here at Full Story, and I'll let them both introduce themselves. Hi everyone, I'm Matt Ware. Like Danny said, I'm the director of mobile at Full Story overseeing the development of our iOS and Android SDKs, as well as our React Native plugin. Before joining Full Story a year and a half ago, I spent the last decade plus working in native mobile. I've worked at places like Evernote, Verbo, HUB Digital for those Texans out there. I live in Austin with my wife Stephanie and our four kids. Kevin. Hey, Kevin Margeton here, solutions engineer for Full Story, specifically working with a native mobile apps team. Day-to-day basis, I help our customers realize and maximize the values of their digital endpoints, specifically the mobile application. On the flip side, however, my previous experience was in privacy, being a certified privacy professional against EU's most stringent privacy law, the GDPR. So when the two combine, it allows me to help our customers responsibly gather in-depth digital experience data from their endpoint, from the customers, with privacy in its core and in its mind. Now, a little bit about myself. I'm originally from the exact opposite part of the globe here in Indonesia, but currently residing almost quite literally right here right now in the Full Story Atlanta headquarters. And luckily, no kids yet. Good luck for Matt there. Awesome, thank you both. OK, on to the agenda. Agenda items one through five will be the bulk of our discussion moving through, again, the top five challenges and opportunities of mobile app analytics. We will include what is critical for you to consider when capturing user behavior and experiences, how our engineers have elegantly handled common digital experience intelligence or DXI problems, and what that means for the success of your app. From there, we will peek behind the curtain of our two experts, hearing their professional experiences and reviewing their real world use cases that can be solved with a mobile analytics or DXI platform. First, let's set the tone together. It is 2023 and I feel like what I'm about to say is a given, but we are becoming increasingly dependent on mobile apps to move throughout our days in this post pandemic world, the accelerated adoption of remote work, e-commerce and other digital technologies has led to an increased reliance on mobile apps, whether it's checking messaging apps for work, getting paper towels delivered because there isn't enough time in the day for a grocery store run or booking that much needed vacation, which I hope that we are all doing. We are constantly using the apps. And I'm not just talking about myself. So the average smartphone user opens 10 apps per day and 30 apps each month. I feel like this is just like shining a light on my experience. And furthermore, they spend 87% of their smartphone usage time on mobile apps. And really what that usage means is big money and big engagement for app owners. And according to Statista, mobile apps are expected to generate more than $935 million in revenue for 2023. So it is pretty safe to say that if you own an app, getting that app's user experience right is more important than ever. Users are also becoming more aware of what constitutes a good app experience. And they are keen to using only the latest and the greatest, therefore uninstalling apps that don't need their standards. And one of those standards is performance. Have you noticed your attention span decreasing? Same, same. And for me, that translates into expecting the apps that I use to be seamless, quick, without frustration. And according to our full story consumer survey, that tracks because most users, number one priority is being able to quickly accomplish what they open the app to do and that focus on a quick and seamless experience but gets the need for a well-attended app. It turns out that our fickleness when engaging with apps is not just anecdotal. So 75% of users are likely to leave an app after they encounter a problem or frustration without ever completing their intended action. That's a steep one strike in your house scenario. So expecting that's going to happen and outright planning for that is critical. Another one of those standards is privacy. So as users become more aware of the risks associated with sharing personal information online, app developers and owners really must be transparent and thoughtful about the data they collect and how it is used. And privacy staff booths can be costly, as I'm sure you've all seen in the news. A Google research study puts that pretty plainly. Users had a decrease in brand trust of 46% after experiencing an issue with a company and their personal data. That's a decrease in trust by almost half over just one negative experience. Mistakes are high. So succeeding in this highly competitive and privacy first market requires a deep understanding of users and how they interact with their apps. It's not just creating, deploying and tracking installs and daily active users and monthly active users. It's really understanding how users are engaging with the app, what features they find most important, what features they're looking for and where they might be experiencing issues. And if teams don't have this data, they really just don't have the answers to move forward. All that to say, delivering a superior app experience is critical to win in 2023. All right, mash bill is over. With that, I will hand it over to Kevin and Matt. Well, they'll take you through how to address the current market with the top five challenges and opportunities of mobile app analytics in 2023. Well, thank you very much, Danny. Without further ado, let's actually jump in to challenge number one, the web versus the mobile apps. Now, we all know the web technology, right? We sometimes kind of want to break it down into what called the good old web, the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or in my own language, I'd like to call it the skeleton, the skin and the brain. Simple, simplistic. Every single web application at the end of the day boils down to this exact format. And that's exactly why tracking is a little bit easier, really straightforward, and you can get a lot from web browsing data. So basic. But it's like about mobile, though, a little bit. Now, unlike web analytics, mobile is more complex and a little bit more nuanced. Firstly, let's look at the two biggest platform that we have over here, the Apple's and the Android's, things that you see on a day-to-day basis. They do their own things with each platform, introducing their own languages. Call it the Swift, Objective-C, Java, Kotlin, and from there on, however, there are third parties attempting what they claim to be the hybrid, and I'm using air quotes here because they want to run on both platforms and they claim that they are the one because they can run on both platforms. But with these hybrid models, though, you can already see the complexity forming already, like what should we be using? Now, if you'd allow me a shameless plug a little bit here, one of those languages that got a little bit more nuanced is what we call the Swift UI, which is essentially the future of building mobile application, which we're excited to now support in our full-store SDK. Now, few limitation. The language still has its limitation and it's still nice and but its ease of use and market penetration is pretty clear. It is important for us to support the frameworks that are used the most and make the most sense for a well-developed mobile app. So we know supporting languages such as the Swift UI right here was going to be paramount to the future of app development. Let's talk about the opportunity here, though, for a second. When you think about a digital experience intelligence platform and all these app development frameworks that you're seeing right here, you want to choose a DXI tool that supports the latest and the greatest of the app development frontier. So that's challenge number one. Let's look at challenge number two over here, the fragmentation and the offline environment. I want to just double click a little bit here, the proliferation of different mobile devices and environments that make it difficult to get a consistent view of user behavior across platform, across dramatically speaking, time and space continue. Now, web analytics is straightforward. You need a broadband internet connection to begin with for things to work.  And full story, for example, allows for a near-life experience on the web due to the simplicity, straightforwardness, reliability of web technology that we have. What about mobile though? Sometimes we're lucky to have a full bar of service and even then things are still not as quick as they should be.  And guess what?  Now, some companies trade off the completeness of their analytics to save bandwidth, especially those taking screenshots and videos as the foundation for mobile and DX analytics. This leaves us into what we call the Swiss cheese effect though. I want the full block of cheese. I don't want the holes in there. I want a full block. I want everything. And that's the tradeoff that sometimes we need to make on day-to-day basis. The opportunity that we must embark on today is finding the real balance between the completeness of your data while still being respectful. And that's actually the word here, respectful. Your customers are providing you with data, so we want to be respectful with their data caps, with their phone performance, and so on and so forth. So the result of that, on what we're thinking, how we should be approaching this, well, we'll build the suspense here and we'll kind of reveal that what we think will be a solution in a moment. But before, let's talk about the next challenge here real fast. Challenge number three is the real life of an app. Again, I'd like to compare this to the web, something that you're really, really familiar with, right? Changes can be made on the fly.  Mobile apps on the other hand, well, you need to put it in a box. You need to tap it, you need to ship it to App Store and Play Store and essentially go all over again for any code level changes. And we actually kind of made a diagram here for kind of a little bit of visualization, right? Now, without the SDK version in the picture, we can already see the complexity. What is the latest version that your users are using? Who knows where the users are in going to update to the latest version? When was the last time you go into the App Store to check for updates? Well, I guess this isn't really the right crew to ask, but let's say one of your loved ones who isn't really tech centered, what version do you think they are? Well, guess what? The old ones. Now, users do have to update their apps to the latest version to get the best, most updated experience out of the app because if they don't have the latest and the greatest, it risk poor experience, which from our survey, 65% more likely to leave your app. Now let's add a little bit of a layer complexity in here, right? What does that mean for third party analytics that you have running in the background of your app? This means you want an SDK to be relatively small, nimble, and require minimal code level changes. This is one thing in particular that I like about Full Story as a DXI platform, unbiased, of course, but many changes, especially privacy ones, which is critical, which we're gonna cover in a second here, can be made via the web user interface. Longer in the days where you unpack the application, tweak in the codes and make changes just for some privacy focus. That means we can prioritize minimal code level changes once the SDK is implemented. So your team doesn't have to go through the rigmarole of what you see on this slide right here. Now, one thing that is actually very important, by the way, to differentiate and to denote here between our Full Story SDK and the code backdoor, because the difference is here, Full Story captures all the full amount of data that you can tweak and adjust after the fact, while code backdoor allows people to remotely have developers inject code to change how the SDK behaves, how the SDK works. That's effectively a Trojan pose though.  And I think Matt, do you wanna talk about the privacy concerns here? Thanks, Kevin. So as Kevin mentioned, privacy concerns, there are strict privacy laws and regulations around collecting and using mobile app data, which can make it challenging together and use data for analytics purposes. Protecting user privacy is just the beginning. You've seen the news, Apple spearheaded the privacy front, Google slowly trickling behind with their own safety section and Google Play. And with that, there are companies allegedly trying to circumvent those stop gaps, those who shall not be named. For privacy, I like to share about some recent happenings in mobile privacy, discuss the philosophical differences and truisms between web and native mobile, talk a little bit about how our mobile teams at Full Story are thinking about privacy and share about some interesting technical choices we've made at Full Story. You might be wondering, what are my users thinking about privacy? Is it on their minds? Do they really care? Is it worth the investment? Well, to users, privacy is pretty important. As you can see from these first three bullet points, consumers are concerned and wary of apps when it comes to their personal data. These numbers coming from a recent Pew research study respond to us with an overwhelming yes when we ask whether customers care. Sadly, app users don't feel like they have control over the data they give your app. They feel generally speaking that the risks of using an app don't always outweigh the benefits. And 79% say they're concerned with the way you will use their data that you give them. I don't think this is an issue of marginal concern. I think privacy is critical to get right. Keep in mind that when deploying apps via Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store, you have to abide by their terms of service, often pretty strict about protecting consumer privacy on what data can and can't be accessed. I wanna call out some recent trends in the mobile privacy space. So cross-app tracking. This is probably getting the most attention right now from Google and Apple. You've probably seen headlines related to this in the last year, mostly around how changes Apple is making to privacy will cut Facebook's revenue in half, et cetera, et cetera. What is it? Well, it's when advertisers and other entities create digital profiles of users based on activity in various different apps. That is, a bunch of app developers might all use a similar advertising SDK, and that SDK will gather information about a particular user from all the apps they use that have that SDK. The advertiser will create a digital profile to use to target that person with ads and products. So do you ever get that feeling that your phone is listening to you? Like you have a conversation with someone about Argentina and then all of a sudden you're seeing ads for trips to Argentina? I swear, I feel like I've had dreams sometimes and then I see ads for them. You can think cross-app tracking for that. Google and Apple have both required that apps declare whether they're doing this. Google is trying to change the way these types of SDKs can work through their SDK sandbox, which makes it so certain SDKs don't inherit the same permissions as the apps they run in and aren't even in the same process. It's been a big focus, but there is a lot more work to do. I also wanna call out GDPR. Companies are getting more and more aware of what personal information they have on individuals or data subjects. And end users are becoming aware of what protections are in place for them. A lot of work has been done on the web, but there is even more work to do on native mobile for app developers to improve. And finally, I wanted to call out just some of the improvements Android is making. As of Android 13, they require developers to get permissions to post notifications and they're starting to push one-time permission requests and proactively revoking permissions as well, where it is more obvious when an app has access to something sensitive and for how long to your users. So why is privacy especially important on native mobile? I think it's because of some of the reasons companies and end users get value out of their mobile apps. For websites, they're great at building an audience. When you're just starting out and you get a landing page up and start getting customers quickly, you can iterate quickly, deploying changes that go out to 100% of your user base immediately. For native apps, I think they really shine at engaging your customers. You have access to a lot of things about a user in a native app. Their location, even geofencing data when they leave an intern area, their contacts, calendars, call logs, and even health data. You have everything to build something really useful and magical to them. An end user is trusting you as an app developer a lot when giving you that kind of access. And if you betray that trust, if you aren't clear what data you have and how you're using it, then you might not make a magical experience. You might make a creepy one. What does this mean for digital experience intelligence platforms like Full Story that gather very similar data on your app users? Let's take a look at this image here. You see here in this image an x-axis of fidelity and a y-axis of bandwidth. Normally, we'd want up and to the right, yeah? Well, in the world of mobile app screen capture, we want high fidelity, meaning high reproduction of what the user saw, high reproduction quality, and we want low bandwidth, meaning low impact on the user's experience and data usage. Getting privacy wrong happens on this side of the diagonal line. It's the MP4s and JPEGs and PNGs. It's the oops, we captured this user sensitive information area. As you can see, the higher quality you get, the more taxing it is on the user's device and in turn, the user's experience. Now, getting privacy right puts us in this sweet spot, this unicorn spot where we preserve bandwidth for users while also delivering high quality reproduction for app owners. Super performance plus sharp playback. Admittedly, that's where full story is, mainly due to the proprietary way we capture. Never taking screenshots of the user's experience are actually recording their screens. We don't have to do what others do. We figured out a way to use the app's layers to work in our favor, resulting in benefits for both app owner and app user. Taking a step back, our team has developed a sort of checks and balances card to use when building for our customers. That's how our teams are thinking about privacy in the context of building an SDK. Number one, private information should never leave the device. Number two, we must execute redaction and preservation of sessions. Every new feature we build, we consider how would we surgically wipe certain parts of what we captured from our servers if information did accidentally get through to us that we weren't supposed to have, while still preserving all of the session data that that little piece of data was in. Number three, quality and value is still important. We need to give our customers reasons to love our product despite our staunch privacy, non-negotiable stances. Number four, performance is paramount and so is privacy. Number five, privacy is part of the requirements of all new features. I'd like to share an example of a privacy related solution to an engineering challenge. Playback fidelity, like I mentioned earlier, is the ability for us to show you a session that is very representative to what your users actually saw. A first solution to this problem is capturing images and video of what is on the screen. There's a big problem with that. How do you prevent private information from ever leaving the device? Honestly, you can't. The other big problem is that in order for it to really help you see what the end user saw, you need a high bit rate video, which is going to eat up your end user's battery and network bandwidth. So we took a different approach. We don't capture a video of the screen. We capture a representation of what happened. It's analogous to a drawing. The puppy on the left, it's a photo. You see pretty much what the puppy looks like, but if you need to change anything about the puppy, it's pretty tough once you're gonna Photoshop. The puppy on the right, it's a drawing. You can see how it represents almost exactly what a person sees when they look at the puppy, but it's easily changeable. If this puppy had a name tag with his name on it and he didn't want it to be in the picture, you could easily change that. You could give this dog a giraffe's neck if you wanted to. You could color it different colors if you wanted. Well, we developed that ideal state. Instead of screen recording, gathering screenshots, we observed and captured the changes within the view hierarchy. At five times a second, we're logging the delta within the size of the shapes and orders of the view objects on an end user screen as they interact with the customer app. We capture not a video, but how various components in your app are drawn. Then we can alter those drawings to hide private information but preserve what the user saw and high resolution. Another analogy is instead of a sledgehammer and the form of screenshots, we prefer using surgical knife to create replay. Because of that surgical knife execution, we can go in and redact anything that accidentally got through without having to delete all the other things that you care about. And we simply erase that part of the drawing. We don't blow away the whole session. And then it's gone from all of our backend and logs and it never existed. This is important because sensitive information on the user's device doesn't leave the device. Meaning we don't have to capture that info and then redact or remove. This is one of the reasons I love working at Full Story Mobile. We're inventing some really cool things. So it's like clean capture, elegant replay, happy users. I like it. So on to challenge six, performance. And performance and privacy are very intermingled, but performance, this is the difference between engagement and the uninstall. If an app isn't a performance, users won't use it. Again, I want to follow the same pattern as I did with privacy. Google has done some good research on performance and native apps. I think the data shows that there is a big upside to having a performance app, but also a steep downside. If your app is performance, users will keep it on their phone and if it's on their phone, it has a good chance of getting used. It has a good chance of getting new installs through word of mouth. If it isn't performance, then it'll likely get uninstalled. So here's what our team is thinking about in terms of performance. Think of these pieces like the building blocks of the performance DNA, drop frames, battery performance, networking, bandwidth, usage, startup time, app size, build time. We're not kidding. Who's gonna know? They're gonna know. If you have a slow app, customers have a great outlet for expressing their frustrations on native mobile with app store reviews, all of our favorite. It's a snowball effect and can erode your app's credibility. So how does rendering work on native bubble? If you have a 60-hurt device, which I know 120-hurt devices are getting more popular, which means for 60 hertz, you have 16 milliseconds to do a lot of things before the UI needs to render again. In this diagram, the OS has to finish all seven things represented by different color segments on the bars before 16 milliseconds represented by the green line. As you can see, you might only have a few milliseconds to run your code that has to run on the UI thread as the OS does all of its stuff and parts of full story have to run here too. So how do we keep making apps from skipping frames or scroll hitches as they call them on iOS? We do a lot of things. First, we try to reduce as much as possible what runs on the UI thread. But when we can't, we utilize advanced algorithms to more performantly scan the butchery. We use advanced caching designs. We also have ways to schedule an interrupt work that is taking too long on the UI thread so that we don't go over. Another challenge we have with performance is networking. How do we take what's on the device and get it to our servers without taking too much bandwidth? Well, let me explain a solution we utilize. For those on this call who may not be engineers, I'll use an analogy. Here on the left, we have a human baby with all its vibrancy and nuance that can be described by breaking it down into its DNA. It takes about 700 megabytes of A's, G's, C's and T's to describe a human in its DNA. You can write a book about what this human is like or make a movie, but it'll be a lot larger than 700 megabytes. This is analogous to an engineering technique we've used. We have to have some sort of serialization mechanism to describe what we have on the screen. Most developers use JSON. We want it to do much better. We went with flat buffers. Flat buffers are orders of magnitude more efficient in terms of memory usage and serialization speed. As you can see with the charts here, in this case, the smaller the better in terms of keeping light on bandwidth and CPU usage. With the amount of information Full Story is capturing and transmitting from a device without optimizing our tool choices and architecture, we would take up significant amounts of customers' data plans. As it is though, Full Story scans an app's UI every 200 milliseconds or about 300 times a minute. And we send less than 100 kilobytes of data during that span. Our network bandwidth utilization is wildly better than others on the market that use a heavier bandwidth sock like the JSON technique. But don't just take my word for it. In the spirit of transparency, in Full Story's network capture tab, Full Story even shows how much bandwidth we're using in your app by viewing the requests our SDK makes in the DevTools within Full Story of the app. So you can go in here and see it for yourself. And I'll pass it back over to Kevin. No, thank you very much, Matt. I really appreciate it. That was some great in-depth underhood details on how the SDK work. Now, given what Matt and the team built on day-to-day basis as a solutions engineer or solutions architect, what I love most about my job is seeing all the different ways customers are using mobile app analytics to the business's benefit. Now, I wanna pull back the cloak a little bit here and show you some of those example to spark inspiration in the work that you do and maybe even aspiration on where you can go with mobile analytics. Now, imagine a world where you have a slash time to resolution for a customer support. You know exactly what your customers are doing before even they contact your support. A world where you can forego a game of telephone. What did you do? What happened? When did that happen? Where did that happen between the customer, the support team? And don't forget to also include your engineers who would love to know the same information. Having worked in support myself in my previous life, when I didn't have to force the customer to reproduce the issue for us, which as you'll know, a huge time suck and can't waste a lot of time. It does also erode the customer experience though. So with all this benefit, I unlocked the ability to build as that trusted advisor relationship with the customer, knowing exactly what they're talking about. Imagine another world where you can do a research that is objective, cleaner and clearer with definitive result as well. No interviews, no surveys, which to be fair have their own place. But tend to be subjective for that, especially when you ask people being asked question, being monitored. Instead, you can test the edge on leisure asynchronously, which is a very key in this kind of life right now. Or even sometimes, retroactively, saving the effectively time, effort and ultimately money too. Not to mention, you have the complete data set that includes the logs from the device, the network activity like Matt showed you a little bit earlier. And oh, not to mention the visual proof in the form of a session replay that is privacy minded all in a single pane of glass. Now, when I started my presentation here, I did talk a lot about web, right? That's because we also do web on top of the mobile. And that exactly allows you to uncover all the different blind spots before they made a big impact. Now you have like a full end to end across platform analytics, right? This is very actually typical for a lot of companies that have blind spots specifically under mobile application. Because number one, it's hard to get this data right to begin with. Sometimes we have to deal with unsampled data, which I mentioned earlier, leads to a Swiss cheese effect. Sometimes we just can't even get that data to begin with. Now imagine, if you wanna get this data to an earlier stage in your development, beta testing, pre-release, or even when you're developing a brand new feature, call it on like test flight, right? For the iOS engineers out there. You probably wanna know earlier on how users are interacting not only with the platform that you're testing, but how they're affecting your existing web platform as well. And the keyword here I wanna emphasize on is earlier on.  Up next here, kind of sort of similar here with uncovering the blind spots, right? Shining a light on the unknowns. What I'd like to call like turning stones one step at a time. Now imagine you drop your keys on your web back home. You have to trace back the route powered only with your measly phone flashlight. Now imagine in a parallel scenario, the street is well lit with stadium-grade lights. You can probably already see the keys from afar, even on the corners where you don't expect them to be. That's exactly the power of AutoCapture.  Things are, AutoCapture tells you exactly where to look for to begin with. And if you forget something, well, here's the full set of data that you can look again at your leisure. So really, you're like, you know where to begin with and then you shine any blind spots along the way. Now, you built your product, you did some support, you're testing all the different feedback that user are using. But how do we get context on the customer feedback, right? Because sometimes users say, you know what, it'll be nice if this button is read. What button? I don't even know what you're talking about. Imagine if you have the full session replay, if you have the full contextual quantitative data that goes with the qualitative data. You know exactly what they're talking about. Hey, the app feels low. Where? Well, let me show you where. And these are the number. The app is lagging. There's an error message. Where? This is exactly where the app is doing there. So that's all the different five building blocks that we see here. We fulfill our customers' desires and needs on day-to-day basis. And in fact, double click a little bit here on the customer feedback. Matt, I think you have a personal experience with the feedback. Yeah, thanks, Kevin. So I did want to share this story because I feel like it really brings home how full story can help your development teams with mobile app development. So my first introduction to full story was when I worked at a well-known vacation rental company. We were releasing a new booking experience for hosts and it was a total redesign. Our current experience was janky, but our customers had gotten used to it. They depended on this janky experience to run their business and we depended on it for a large part of our revenue as well. That's why we allowed them to switch between the new and old experience at first as we worked out the kinks. When hosts would switch from the new to the old we'd pop up a feedback dialogue to them asking why they're switching back. As you kind of look like what you see on the left there. Oftentimes what they wrote didn't make any sense. That is until we added a link to their full story session and had it posted to a Slack channel. So that's kind of what this is mocking up here is just what we would see in our shared Slack channel and it would have a full story link as well as what feedback the user gave. Now when they said something like I clicked the thing and didn't see the quote we could actually see what they were clicking and why they expected it amazing. We also associated full story links with crash reports so we could easily see what customers were doing before their app crashed. The partnership between both quantitative analytics and our auto capture technology and qualitative insights with session replay solve my own real world issues in my past roles. This proved invaluable and is a big reason I work at full story today. Wow, Kevin, Matt, thank you so much for sharing your own personal experiences with building great apps and for all of the insights that you shared today such good stuff. So what we know now is that with the complexity of an app comes a great set of challenges and also opportunities and the importance with all of that comes the importance of getting the app experience right and relying on a mobile analytics or a DXI platform that understands and solves for those nuances was really what it takes to have a successful app. And a big thank you to all of our attendees for joining. If you do have any questions about what we discussed here today, feel free to email us if you wanna hear from you. And if you haven't already please join our first full story community. In the community, you can network with other customers get tips on creating better mobile app experiences sharing your experiences with others in your industry and so much more. This is a newly launched community so we would love to have you and I'll leave a few seconds here for you to snap the QR code if you'd like. Cool. And with that, thank you all so much for joining and I hope you have a great rest of your week.


Please subscribe to this YouTube channel mentor talk can do press bell button for notifications. Well, the more you talk about the legal issues and facts connected with Sushant Singh Rajput's case, the greater gets the anxiety expectations of the people, audiences, viewers and listeners. I gather that the entire nation, especially the youth, are interested in knowing the real truth behind his unfortunate untimely and tragic demise. I have been asked to keep on giving updates from the objective legal perspective without any bias either way. So, let me now update all of you who are interested regarding the current facts status in Sushant Singh Rajput's case. I'll be speaking in a mix of English and Hindi as requested by the viewers, audiences and the listeners and the team of mentor talk. Firstly, today the central government has told the Supreme Court has apprised the Supreme Court that it has agreed with the Bihar government's recommendation for a CBI probe in Sushant Singh Rajput's case. That is, the central government has told the Supreme Court that they have accepted the request of the Supreme Court. But obviously there are two investigations, as you all know, which are going on, one by the Mumbai Police and another by the Bihar Police. And both relate to the same case. Let us understand the validity, legitimacy and facts surrounding both these investigations. The Mumbai Police registered initially an accidental death report, which is known as ADR, as per section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. As per section 174 of CRPC, when the concerned police officer receives information that a person in his jurisdiction has committed suicide or has been killed by an accident or has died under circumstances, raising a reasonable suspicion that some other person has committed an offense, he shall immediately make an investigation, drop a report of the apparent cause of death, describing such wounds, fractures, bruises and other marks of injury as may be found on the body. And stating in what manner or by what weapon or instrument such marks appear to have been inflicted. So he has to make that investigation report. The officer concerned, the police officer concerned, then records statements of the near and dear ones, family members and those who can shed some light behind the cause of death. If no one makes any allegations, suicide note and the suicide note, if at all there is any, does not blame anyone and the post-mortem report does not indicate murder or any foul play, then no further investigation is required and the matter ends there and then. Mumbai police apparently is still investigating the matter and is at the ADR stage, as there is no FIR to my knowledge, though they have recorded statements of more than 55 people. So Mumbai police has taken action according to the law 174 of Dhand Prakrya Sahita, according to which, when the police officer is unable to think that a person has committed a suicide or he has been killed in an accident or he has been killed in certain circumstances, then the 174th section of the CRPC will be investigated and that is what Mumbai police is doing, under ADR, under section 174, but which has not yet been lodged by the FIR, which is being found by the media and Mumbai police has also not claimed anything like this. In the Bihar police FIR filed by Sushant Singh Rajput's father in Patna, Rhea Chakraborty, three of her family members and two others have been booked, under Indian penal code sections 306 abetting suicide, section 341 which is wrongful restraint, section 342 which is about wrongful confinement, section 380 that deals with theft and dwelling house, section 406 that deals with criminal breach of trust and section 420 you know dealing with cheating and dishonesty, dishonestly inducing delivery of property, these sections have been included. So in Patna, Sushant Rajput's father lodged the FIR, under which Rhea Chakraborty and her family members and two others have been booked, under Indian penal code section which has not yet been lodged by the police. So strictly speaking there are two different police agencies of different states that are investigating. I haven't seen two police authorities investigating simultaneously in my career. Now the issue here is that the FIR lodged with the Bihar police is also legitimate on the face of it because you know for the convenience of a grieved and affected citizen and as per section 154 of the criminal procedure code section 154 of the criminal procedure code a police officer is obliged or was obliged in Patna to register the case of Sushant Singh Rajput's father you know because it was a cognizable offense and it was in the territorial jurisdiction of Mumbai but the complaint could have been registered in Patna because that is for the convenience of citizens so that they don't have to run around. So ordinarily the Bihar police ought to have registered a zero FIR for convenience and should have transferred the case to the police station under whose jurisdiction crime has taken place. So it was legitimate to register for Patna police because the provision is its responsibility but now obviously you know CBI will take over the complete investigation and as it appears from the court proceedings of today's in the Supreme Court. Rhea Chakraborty had moved the Supreme Court or has moved the Supreme Court seeking that the FIR of Patna of Bihar should be transferred to Mumbai police but now with CBI's entry into the matter I'm not too sure what is the significance of that prayer because CBI is a premium agency you know it's a central agency. The court has also refused to stay the investigation by the Bihar police as was requested by Rhea Chakraborty through her petition. The court has granted three days time to all the parties to file a reply you know and they have even directed the state of Maharashtra to update the court with regard to all the investigations which have been done by the Mumbai police until now. So if I briefly tell you in Hindi Rhea Chakraborty had asked the Supreme Court for the FIR of the Bihar police to be transferred to Mumbai police. The court has not yet accepted this because they have asked the court to file a reply to all the parties but they have refused to stay on the investigation. And now CBI's role has come in between. Let's see how far it is formalized. But Supreme Court observed today that you know the allegations which have been leveled against the petitioner Rhea Chakraborty are of serious nature and that she had applied for transfer of proceedings from Patna to Mumbai. However Bihar has entrusted the matter to CBI which has been accepted by the center government. The court acknowledged that you know Sushant Rajput was a talented artist who passed away under unusual circumstances. The court noted that in its observations. So now whether you know there is any criminality involved that needs to be investigated in accordance with the provisions of law and not in accordance with the opinion of the people that that's what the court observed. And the court also by the way reprimanded the Mumbai police for putting that Bihar police officer the superintendent of police in quarantine as it did not send the right signal to the public at large. So things which had got complicated in the last few weeks I think are getting simplified now with the intervention of the Supreme Court as Supreme Court is getting on to the helm of all the affairs. So quickly in Hindi I will tell you that Supreme Court said that Rhea Chakraborty has a very rock and the judges have alleged that Sushant Rajput is an illustrious artist. He was an artist who passed away under unusual circumstances. He did not act as a broadly lawful investigation in the court but saw the Supreme Court According to the opinion of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has observed this matter today. And the Supreme Court put a lot of effort into quarantining the Mumbai Police, Bihar Police. So, you know, as I had noted that, you know, that things, complicated things of the last few weeks are getting resolved with the Supreme Court's intervention. And I hope that the matter will reach the rightful conclusion soon.


Hello and welcome to Days Click. Did the U.S. almost launch a war on Iran? According to media reports, yesterday, the United States defense establishment was entirely prepared for missile strikes on key facilities in Iran. But the U.S. and President Donald Trump withdrew at the last moment. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pogastar. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so the media reports say that in response to Iran downing a U.S. drone, the U.S. military establishment was completely prepared for a full, at least a limited strike on key facilities. So how do you evaluate this possibility? Was it actually the beginning of a conflict or was it just saber-attling in response to the drone? You know, let's look at the wider context. The kind of sanctions the U.S. has imposed in Iran are actually equivalent to war. In fact, if you look at what the international law says, that these sanctions are in fact acts of war. So let's therefore say that they have been in a tacit war scenario for quite some time. For Iran to have retaliated or not is, of course, an open question. This particular case, the drone, when did it fall, when, what was the actual location, is something we need to discuss later. But there is no question that for Iran and U.S., they have been on a collision course for some time and each is expecting the other to back down. The Trump's argument regarding the sanctions or the U.S. administration's arguments regarding the sanctions is that Iran not only should give up all future nuclear weapon making capability, which means dismantle their entire nuclear infrastructure irrespective of whether it is for peace, for shall we say radioactive isotopes or medical purposes, anything. And it should also give up its missile capabilities, rocket capabilities and should also not support Hezbollah, Houthis or Syrian forces on the ground. So effectively it is to ask Iran to disarm completely and submit, essentially, surrendered to the U.S., Israeli and Saudi forces. Now that's something Iran, 80 million people, it has fought a war with Iraq, supported at the time by U.S. and Britain and France and other powers. So I think that's not likely. In this particular case, when you talk of the conflict with the Trump administration as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we really don't care whether they had a scenario where the defense establishment was preparing for a strike and Trump had actually a given signal or not, had pulled back or not. I think are irrelevant to the rest of us. The question is U.S. has been poised for military action against Iran and Iran has been responding in different ways. Now there have been some argument that they also did launch this tanker, shall we say, sabotage activities. But there's no question that if you see the Houthis stepped up drone attacks, it's very clear that they have got new drones over there. It's quite likely Iran is a source and that is also being directed now at the oil infrastructure of Saudis and also the last one, which was a couple of days back yesterday, that was also at an airport which did suffer some damage and also now it is desalination plants. It's important to understand electricity and desalination are also crucial to Saudi Arabia's infrastructure and 75% of Saudi Arabian water comes from desalination plants, which are coupled with the power plants. So this infrastructure, if it is hit, then it is also catastrophic consequences for Saudi Arabia. See Iran is letting people know that they are not without any, shall we say, capabilities with respect to the sanctions. Without going to war, they are in a position to make this whole, shall we say, sanctions and trying the containment of Iran by Israel, United States and Saudi Arabia. They are willing to make it costly. So their argument is, either you negotiate after removing the sanctions or this state of near war, which you have wreaked upon us, will continue. I think that's a message Iran is trying to send. And of course, this particular case, the drone, the question is not an usual drone. You know, we tend to think of drones which hover on the sports fields, which comes in India also in the marriage ceremonies, taking pictures from there. These are drones which are like toys. This is a drone, which is bigger than a most passenger aircraft. It was flying at 60, it can fly at a ceiling of 60,000 feet and above. It was worth anything between 130 to 200 million dollars, not because that's a cost to the drone, because it packed a huge amount of equipment, which is to take pictures at different spectra and really map out the quote unquote enemy territories, armaments, defensive as well as offensive. So that's the purpose of this drone. So it has a quasi-offensive purpose. It's basically to map out what would be the quote unquote enemies, air defense as well as other forces' disposition. And therefore, the fact it has to come close to Iran's borders. Did it enter the territorial waters, above the territorial waters, something that we can discuss later, but there's no question. These are not friendly drones and they're really large pieces of flying machinery and they're packed with stealth and other equipment. If it falls in Iran's hands, it would really help Iran a lot in learning technologies and it'd be interesting both Russia and China as well. So going a bit further into the drone incident per se, so how do you also see the Iranian act of downing this drone? Because like you said, there's a bit of controversy over whether it was inside the Iranian water space or it was just outside, which the Americans are claiming. So is it also an act to indicate that these are some of the options that we have in addition to of course, say, blocking the state of Hormuz? See, let's look at the path itself. That the drone actually flew in this direction. In fact, it went through the states of Hormuz and was taking a return pass. Now, as we know the nature of this particular global Hawk drone that it takes actually, it has to come quite close to the coast because it takes a huge number of pictures and also maps out the enemy's defenses completely. So the closer it comes, obviously, the better is the resolution. So it was obviously making a pass again over Iran's shall we say or close to Iran's maritime boundary or its coastline. Now, the issue that comes is the Iranians, the Iranians have also shown a drone path. So have the Americans. They don't differ by too much. What the Iranians have shown is when it was going on its return path, it actually veers towards the coast and it crossed into Iranian territorial waters and it was eight nautical miles off its coast. This is what the Iranians have said. The Americans have said it is 34 kilometers away from the nearest coast point of Iran. Now, it's not very clear from this statement whether the mean as measured from the drone to the ground or measured horizontally, what this 34 kilometers are, but assuming that it was 34 kilometers measured horizontally and not in this particular taking height into account, which will actually reduce the horizontal distance quite a bit. But assuming that it was really a horizontal measurement, it would still make a difference of say about five to six kilometers. That would be five to six kilometers or four to five nautical miles outside, three to four nautical miles outside Iranian territorial waters, which is real 12 nautical miles. The interesting part is if you take what the Iranians are saying, then what it would seem to show that it was veering towards Iran's territorial waters because only that explains how they have got the debris of the drone in their territorial waters. They have said it was shot down at eight kilometers, eight nautical miles above Iran's, I mean, eight nautical miles distance away from the coast. So it is well within their territorial waters. And they have said they recovered also drone, the drone parts of the drone, drone, drone debris. It would also be explained if the American map is correct that it was actually veering towards the Iranian border, Iranian coast, when it was shot down. So that will also explain the trajectory and why the drone debris fell inside. So I would say that looking at all of this, the more important picture for us is not exactly where the drone was shot down. It is also the fact the Iranian air defense was able to pinpoint a drone which was at a distance of 60 feet or above in terms of height, 60,000 feet and above at a height of 60,000 feet and above and also able to shoot it down. So this is not a minor issue because the reason that these drones, the reconnaissance drones or this kind of spy drones fly at this height is because they are supposed to be immune to surface to air missiles. The fact the Iranians could shoot it down, that is also significant because it shows that they have really maybe the S 300s, the Russians have given them or they have bought are important here. They have really good air defense facilities, radar facilities, they have pinpointed where it was, and they have been able to strike it with a missile. So I think those are do also show that this capability today, if there is a war, certainly the Iran can be bombed back to storage. That's possible. But it will come at a huge cost to the Americans, to any other forces that are alive with them. Certainly it will mean serious damage to Saudi Arabian infrastructure because of the Houthis who are also fighting a war in Yemen against Saudi. So they are delighted to have a go at the Saudis at the moment. And if they have drone equipment of the quality that Iran can deliver, and if they've just got a small sample of them, it will really devastate the Saudis, Saudi infrastructure. Saudis have proved to be very poor fighters. So that doesn't help them too much. So I think this is something that makes it clear that Iranian capabilities are not going to be like Iraq's. They have a much bigger country. They have much more resources. They have had more time to prepare. And their offensive capabilities are significant enough for causing damage to Americans and their allies in the region. Right. And although we have discussed this before, it might be good to once again take a look at what would be the immediate impact in terms of Iranian responses to, say, an US assault, for that matter, and how would this affect the global situation. So as we have discussed earlier, that the biggest oil choke point in the world is the states of Hormuz, where as we can see, you can see the line of tankers that flow through the states of Hormuz. You can see the amount of oil that flows to it. The choke point that it is 90 million barrels per day is a flow of oil through states of Hormuz. The three countries directly affected by this, four actually, is India. It has huge oil imports, and it gets it from the states of Hormuz because Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, most of their oil ship takes place to the states of Hormuz. So that is one. Then you have China, Korea, Japan. All four countries are going to be affected and affected severely if this attack takes place, the war takes place. If the war takes place, let's be very clear, oil shipment from this area is going to stop because infrastructure, the pipelines as well as the tankers, they are not going to flow through that. It's very easy to sink one tanker, one or two vessels, and the states of Hormuz, then it will become impossible for next few months. India gets 70 to 80% of its oil through the states of Hormuz or countries which are in the littoral states of the states of Hormuz or the upper regions of the area. So if states of Hormuz close, we are going to see a huge crisis in India. We are going to see actually rationing the oil. It's not going to be so easy to supply for rest of the world to supply through tankers around the Cape and bring it to India. It'll happen, but it'll take time and it's got a huge extra cost. The price of oil will go through the roof, but the sheer availability, suddenly losing 80% of the oil is a disaster. I think this is something that is going to be true also for China. It's going to be true for Korea. It's going to be true for Japan. China at least has access to Russia, has access to overland also to Iran, though the pipelines are still in the process of being made. But I think that this is going to be a global disaster of a major variety. And you can see oil prices go up to as I said, $200, $300 earlier. You also see certainly a global recession. So all of this put together, I think we are being very in a very bad place for any war to break out of this. I think so is globally the global economy at the moment. It's not doing particularly well. The last thing I'll say is I have not understood why other countries are still muted in their response to what is happening because it affects them directly. Why is India, Japan and Korea, which are supposed to be close to the United States, not saying don't do this. Russians have said, we have Putin who has said this is a catastrophe from the world. The Chinese Prime Premier has said also that it's going to be a catastrophe. But the European Union and countries like India, South Korea and Japan, they are sort of muted protest, muted statements. I just don't understand because they're all of them going to be vitally affected by this. Thank you very much. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.


And they have come back fighting this season, really been impressive. A late drop in the 10. And that pretty much jump started him. Sean Rash, he was 110 pin width away from having two titles this year. It was battling that paraformist muscle injury last season. Those pins exploded without one. Phil O'Neill and the round of 16 took care of Jesper Svensson. And a roll off in the round of eight. He was just sweeping the racks today. Strike, strike, strike. Left the five. Yeah, the paralyzer five. It got hit a couple of times. It didn't know what to do or what side to fall over on. Watch this. Phil doesn't know what to do with it. What are you kidding me? Oh, so now you've got balance five pin. Here's Sean Rash's path. Kyle Sherman, Dom Barrett, the round of eight. Makes it a triple. Back in it. Nowadays. And then he told us walking into the building yesterday with the Fox Sports signs everywhere. And the vibe that was created here on the west side of Bayside Bowl. And he continues that momentum. He's like, man, this is cherry on top of the Sunday type stuff right now. She was amused by me as is much of the bowling community. I was going to say as a most small children. Exactly. Oh, really? Really 10-pin? We have a little change in venue now. So Bill O'Neill could have struck out to shoot 279. Max score for Sean Rash is 258. But now with that 10-pin, if O'Neill converts, we could have the possibility of a tie in game one. I love when he teased me with a tie. Full-pins vine to drop the 10. Rash in trouble now. And keep in mind, folks, these lanes were re-oiled for this match. After the Prather-Simonson match, the lanes were stripped and re-oiled. So O'Neill and Rash got a fresh pair of lanes. Missed it. That is his second open frame. Yeah. It cost him a title in Lubbock Texas where he missed that, giving Dick Allen a chance to strike out to win. Dick Allen steps up, strikes out wins. He's got a costume game. It may not have cost him game one. However, it certainly didn't help his cause in it.  How can it not? How can it not, at some point, get in your head and go, man, what are you doing? Yeah. Matching strikes to start this one off. Not quite the same way. Well, O'Neill won Rookie of the Year, the same year that Sean Rash won a tournament. Back-to-back opening jacks for Billy-O. The big difference, though, was that Bill O'Neill had a full-time exemption. And he got that through Q-School, through the tour trials. Took that paycheck of the 2007 Masters at Miller Park in Milwaukee. An event historic because why? It was your very first show. No. Through three. Those emotions in check, not easy in this environment. Rash working on a three-bagger. What team was that, Randy? Knacks out at a 300. Neither player, a game and a half, has missed the pocket. Nine, split in game one for Rash. Missed a 10-pin. O'Neill, he just left a five-pin and a 10-pin. Hey, Randy, you thirsty? That's six-pack. And then this crowd. I mean, how awesome has this environment, this venue been, for bowling? Not only today, but through the years. Well, it's been incredible. Yeah, late drop of the 10, so that's his second three-bagger here in this pivotal second match. Again, it's a game Sean Rash must win. He won the opening tournament of the season, the PVA Hall of Fame Classic in Arlington. Great run at the World Series of Bowling. The only player to make all events match play in every event at the World Series of Bowling as it's so difficult for me to get English out right now. I'm so jacked. That needs to occur. But it's been a great story about Bill O'Neill all season long. Trying to stay alive here in our second game. Another strike. It's not over yet, Rob. No chance. You're watching perfection right now. You are witnessing potentially history here. Nine straight strikes. Keep it cool, Billy. Keep it cool, kid. The year for me, Bill O'Neill and what he's done. And we've seen a lot of them. Yep. But you're right. I think this one tops it. To the finals. Can Bill O'Neill add to that two more? It's a perfect 300 game. The only thing we have not had this season. Listen to that chant. Real deal. Bill O'Neill. Show from Billy O. And guess who denied him the perfect game. Everybody's worst friend. The 10 pin. Sean Rash cheering for him as well. Pen to paper. Our title match is set. Prather O'Neill. 12-30 tomorrow. Here on Fox.


Next presentation, we have Liang Yan, a senior software engineer from Digital Ocean. Hello everyone. Today I'm going to give you a topic about how to optimize your rescheduler and autoscalar on the Kubernetes cloud, but from a heterogeneous task perspective. So before that, a little bit about myself. I'm the software engineer from Digital Ocean, infrastructure fleet work team. I'm a software engineer, but I'm super interested in the hardware. So I'm focused on the hardware visualization for GPU network. I'm also quite interested in the heterogeneous architecture acceleration and optimization for distributed machine learning. So today we are going to look about the re-optimization. So first we will see where the story begins, what is the problem we are facing, and then have a quick look at the recovery and see some of our work currently doing and planning doing in the future. So first, yeah, where the story begins. You probably already have noticed that when looking at HBC cluster today, we kind of all the system kind of assume that the hardware in the cluster are identical, or at least even don't care about it, or the controller just distributed all the workload to the worker, and then just wait thinking back from the later I think organization. However, it's kind of a different story from this one. Like the operator performance, the operator here is like the PyTorch operator, not the Kubernetes operator here. So we noticed that the performance of it is not kind of related to the input data, but actually because of the GPU type. And also we also noticed that even if we choose a better hardware there, we may not get a better result as expected. So this gives us a thing that maybe we should take a look at different heterogeneous GPU situation. So we start from the flex flow, the first distributed machine learning that could provide automatic parallel strategy. It's from CMU, it's task-based and logical resource map, state test graph. Another reason we choose it is because it's based on LEGEN and REALM, MIT HPC system, which could support the simulator. So it gives us the flexibility to do verify things. And also we tried machine learning operator in Kubeflow, but there are just too many restrooms there, we'll see later. But during this work, one day one of my best friends introduced me, Ray. So I had a look at that, I was so fascinated by it. So for a quick introduction, Ray is kind of a popular distributed machine learning today, which is back behind chat GPT or open AI. And me and myself are so interested in three main features of it. The first one is the reactor model. It has two different jobs there. Task is a kind of a function, state list. You can put it everywhere when the worker ready. The other is actor, it's a class. Which has the state file. You can't just assign it anywhere. You need to put it somewhere where it already has an actor there. It also has this remote function. You can set up the resource you're going to use. It also has the weight to coordinate your dependency during the setup. The other one is the resource. Similar with the flagged flow, I just talked about that. It also has this map idea, conception here. So it has the logical resource. And when we set up like the remote function earlier, it's actually not the pure physical resource. And even if we set up the resource quarter there, it's actually not like we set up two CPU, five GPU. It may not really use this exact one. So this gives us the flexibility to try different machine type, device type later. The last and also most important one is the dynamic task graph. Also similar with the flagged flow, it's a static task graphic. So that one is easier. For this one, it's much more complicated. Of course, it also has the flexibility for setting up. So it needs like low latency scheduling. It also needs like when scheduling things there, you need two different work nodes there. You need to make sure all the data is also there. So they kind of have this in-memory data center, a database there called the epic arrow there. I think that's for this purpose here. So yes, we could also run on the Qubri. Similar with all the other training operator in the Qubri flow on the Kubernetes. Here it's kind of interesting. It's also like using this Qubri operator. Every time you launch a job, it actually launch a cluster there. And it has all the resources there. You can set up CPU, GPU. And this gives us the idea to try different results set up. It also has autoscaler. But similar with other Kubernetes scheduler or even the Qubri flow scheduler there, it's quite straightforward and quite limited on the function. We can like, yes, not so much we want to do, but we definitely want to improve. For our dev environment, we are lack of the hardware. So we're only using one server with eight GPUs, 830 GPUs there. And we set all the Kubernetes environment on the VMs. We have these three Kubernetes. We set up a GPU and a CPU computer there. You can see we actually use a different flavor for that set up on purpose. So what we are doing is that we are so far only focused on the deep learning. But we are also implemented on ResNet, but we are also thinking to implement a transformer model later. And we actually add this task level. The idea behind that is we're trying to ramp a series of tasks going to the worker there. And it's actually pretty good. I think there's a PyTorch operator there called the operator fusion. It's kind of a similar idea. And based on that, we found that sometimes instead of giving it a more similar node, it's better to give it some bigger node, like from the vertical prod autoscaler. Like we said, one, two, four GPUs there. So I think that's also kind of verified that because the dynamic graphic, task graphic there, they needed to think the debt for different tasks. But if we put it in one node, it actually has better performance. We also tried to put the device topology into consideration. So far, we only add the PCIe locality and the different GPU types. In the future, we may put more information into consideration. We need the new hardware there for sure. Like we can also add the NVLink RDMA for the epic arrow there. So like even so far, the in-memory database is already very fast, but still not quite enough in some specific situation. So we may think maybe we can put the NVLink or even RDMA into consideration. So yes, this is for time to do the lighting. Thank you so much. And like I said, this is just a new project to transfer from backflow to query. Feel free to raise me if you are interested with ideas, questions, or collaboration. Thank you very much.


Well, we are expecting, we had 10 people so registered so we'll be expecting a couple more people in the session. I'll just wait a minute, it's just gone 12.30 so we'll just wait a minute longer. People might be rushing to get here and then we'll make a start. Yeah, the session is going to be recorded so I will make a start in a minute. Martin's doing something on YouTube as well and streaming it so that'll be going out. So I think that we should make a start. So thank you everybody for coming today and this session is going to be recorded and so you can listen to it later and other people that aren't here will be able to listen to it. So you've all tested your audio and I know that we can all hear each other which is absolutely great. Please feel free to post any questions at all in the chat pane as we go along and we can pick those up as we go along. And so thank you very much for coming. So this session is about becoming an Alps trustee and I shall hand you over to Doug who shall take the session forward. Okay, thanks Shirley. Right, I'm Doug Gowan, I'm currently Vice-Chair of Alps. Shirley's been talking to you already. She's a trustee and Chair of the Membership Development Committee. We've also got another trustee with us, Sarah, Sarah Sherman. Welcome Sarah. We've got a number of Alps staff, Martin, Carolyn and Alison. So we're well staffed here. The session is going to be to follow this schedule. First of all a few words about Alps and about the new strategy that we launched this year. Something about the role of Alps trustee is what they do, what the responsibility is. Some discussion about among the trustees about what they do and what they get out of it. And very importantly questions from participants, things they would like to get answered. And finally how to contact us. So first of all about Alps. First of all we are an educational charity, an independent charity. All charities have what's called an object. And that is on the screen you can see the object that Alps has as a registered with the Charity Commission. To advance education through increasing, exploring and disseminating knowledge in the field of learning technology for the benefit of the general public. That's something that all charities have. You have to be able to show that they're benefiting the general public. We are, we cling to the case of leading independent professional and scholarly association in the very technology field. I think that's increasingly recognized too. And we pursue that charitable object by what we say by improving practice, by promoting research and by enforcing policy. So that's what we do. We are growing, we have over 1300 members. We're international. Covering 27 countries across all five continents. We have a large number of organizations linked to us. Schools, colleges, universities, life-long learning bodies, skills bodies, research bodies, industry and government. And people like me who are freelancers and independents. These six points you see on this page are directly taken from the new strategy that we launched in February. And I think the important thing to note is that strategy was done after quite a big consultation exercise with members. So members were involved in saying what should all be doing. And these are the six points. The intensive learning technology, strengthening research and practice, developing strategy and policy, representing members, improving leadership and professional development. For example, through the CMOD scheme and finally communicating, giving clear information about who we are, what we do and what our views are. And there's a visual about all the different sorts of activities that all gets involved in journal, conference, CMOD, special interest rates, policy responses, events, open access, networking, et cetera. In fact, that graphically is out of date because you'll see it actually mentions 650 individuals whereas in fact we're over double that in October. Yeah, the second October just started and it's got over 1,000 participants already. I think this is going to pass this over to you Shirley for the role of a trustee. Can you just take us through this one? Yes, absolutely great. Thanks very much Doug. Now, you will have seen obviously, that's why you're here, the call for trustees, it's on the way. Shirley, I think we've lost sound. Can you hear us still?  Yes, hello. Yes, it was on and then it was off. That's strange. So, yeah, the general role of a trustee is about ensuring that the organization complies with its governing documents, charity and company law, and other relevant legislation or regulations. And about ensuring that the organization defuses its objects as defined in its governing document. And obviously Doug's already talked about our key object, the key object of ALT, and ensuring that the organization applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its objects, and gives firm strategic direction to the organization, setting overall policy, defining goals, setting targets, and evaluating performance against agreed targets. The role isn't just on your own. It's part of the team, part of them working with the other trustees to put that in place. It's about safeguarding the good name and ethos of the organization and ensuring the effective and efficient administration of the organization and appointing the chief executive officer and monitoring his or her performance. So those sort of general aspects of a role. And more specifically in terms of for an ALT trustee, and attending meetings of the Central Executive Committee, and that's three times a year, participating in policy discussions and the production of consultation responses, and contributing to the drafting and monitoring of the three-year ALT strategy. We've just gone through that process. It was very, very productive and very exciting and interesting and to work sort of on that consultation. Charing subcommittees of ALT, and currently there's the membership development publications and further education and cross-sector engagement committees, or any task groups which set up from time to time. And helping to promote the association, which I've done a few times recently, which has been very exciting, very interesting and sort of developmental as well. So that's been absolutely great, great opportunity. Has anybody got any questions so far? Can I come to the mic or put them in the chat pane? No? Okay. Doug, over to you. First of all, I think we should welcome Diana. Diana Laurelard, who's the current chair of ALT. Welcome, Diana. If we get some questions perhaps you might like to respond to them. Hi. Okay. So this is a session where we just actually share some experience as trustees. I'd just like to ask you, Shirley, can you say a few words about how and why you got involved in ALT and how did it go? Yeah, absolutely. I first became involved with ALT about 15 years ago, back in 1999, back in the turn of the century. And I was working in the college and was tasked with looking and researching into virtual learning environments and whether they could be used by blind and visually impaired students and really didn't know much about VLEs at all at the time. And so I looked at these sort of technology arena and ALT came up as a vital, if not the key organization to get involved with. And I found it just absolutely brilliant and valuable source of information, support, networking with experts in the field. And they also welcomed the opportunity to look at the sort of aspects that I was interested in, accessibility was much, was new at the time. And so that's sort of how I came into it. And I was involved for a few years in presenting at the annual conference and attending events. And then I had a change of job role that still kept up my subscription and was spent several years sort of dipping in and out. But it really helped me to keep up to speed on the sort of big stuff happening in technology and learning and teaching. And so that's how I first sort of got involved with ALT. What about you, Doug? Well, mostly I've been involved in building technology for 16, 17 years or so. I've also been, I've done quite a lot of work with charities, actually set up a charity called Overland Partnership. And so I like working with charities. I like working with third sector organizations generally. It is an opportunity to actually be creative and do things that you perhaps can't do in different sectors. And the third area that I've been engaged in quite a lot is membership organizations. Membership organizations can be quite exciting drawing on the kind of experience and wisdom of the members. I've done quite a lot of work in trade unions, for example, where they depend very heavily on the kind of voluntary effort of members and representatives and that sort of thing. So I was very attracted to getting engaged for those three reasons. First of all, the living technology angle and secondly, charity work. And thirdly, membership and membership organization. So I tried to get involved, stood to be a trustee. He didn't at first succeed but came back at it. And then that took it from there. Well, I sort of went off into this sort of different role and was dipping in and out. And then sort of re-emerged a few years later in this sort of technology focused role and attended the old conference that was about 2009 where I was really sort of quickly brought back in really into the community. And I was applied to a call and was appointed to the membership development group. And about that time, I completed my CMort portfolio and became an assessor and then subsequently a member of the CMort development group. And then proposed and so to be in the size chair of the membership development committee when Hayden Blackie moved on to become treasurer. And therefore then I became a trustee of all. And this was a very proud moment in my life and it sat quite a pivotal point in my own sort of self-belief and professional awareness and development. So that's what happened to me and that's why I'm the trustee, I would say. Great. I wonder if the good ask Sarah to comment about what sort of things would you have wanted to know when you were getting involved and what were the questions that you had? So, hello everyone. I'm Sarah and I'm probably the newest of the trustees so this has been my first academic year on the board. And what was it I would have wanted to know about being a trustee, probably still do in a way. I think it's just the activities involves what kind of things you can do. And from my experience of being a trustee, I was really lucky because I came in just at the point where we were developing the new strategy. So that was a perfect opportunity to me to help reflect what all has done and the past has done in 10, 15, 20 years. And look forward to what it should be doing as an organisation. And being part of that development group was really an exciting and quite a privileged position to be in. Other things that I've been supporting all time as a trustee and Shirley's already mentioned it is getting involved in projects with other organisations. So for example, working with JISC on developing their co-design strategy but representing Ault as a partnership organisation. And it's nice in some ways to be representing Ault, a membership of you rather than representing the institutions I work for. So it's quite refreshing sometimes to come from an organisation. Does that help, Doug? Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think that's spot on. Yes. I think what a lot of people say to me is that one of the nice things about being active in Ault is that precisely that you're not in your institution, if you like. You're remembered like everybody else and you can actually take a fresh perspective on things. It's also a very flat organisation, Ault. There's no real hierarchy unlike many of the organisations that we might work for or have worked for in the past. And I agree and I think that's part of the reason I actually wanted to get involved in Ault from a trustee point of view. My relationship with Ault has been over 10 years. I think I went to my first Ault C in 2004 which I believe is Exeter and I've been an active member of the community and the M25 Learning Technique which has a relatively new regional association with Ault. And I was co-chair of Ault C in 2012. So I really, you know, I have a lot of compassion for the organisation so for me becoming a trustee has meant that I've kind of been able to put something back into an organisation that I really believe in and not when I feel that I've been a trustee. I can actually put my money where my mouth is and help them out. Great. Really we're looking for any points from Malcolm or Julian that we can respond to. Anything you think we should spend a bit more time on? I suppose there's two things actually that interest me. First one is a very practical one about time commitment. I mean I see that it makes specific reference to three meetings per year and I imagine that if one's involved in a task group then that would be additional time. So that's the first question. What is the normal time commitment? And the second one which is perhaps a little bit more open I'd like to know what excites you about being a trustee? Okay, time commitments. Would you like to say something about time commitments? I mean that varies. We've mentioned the meetings three times a year and some months it could be somewhere along the lines of something like one day a month you could say putting to this but to ALT. But for example I've recently represented alterly just co-design a consultation and an event to promote ALT Wales Special Interest Group and another meeting. So in that particular month it was three days or so but it doesn't have to be, it can be flexible to what your other working commitments are and it's very variable. I don't know how Sarah would you say that's your sort of understanding and your experience. Yeah, I mean so far as I said I haven't gone through a full academic year of being a trustee but the minimum are the three meetings per year but I mean it's actually I would say it should be a lot more than that because those three meetings once a term I think should be compulsory and they tend to be face to face and sort of we've been in Birmingham but coming to London as well and the other thing is try to be kept to a minimal but as Shirley says it sort of up to the individual how much they get involved and I think from my point of view I think it's not really that cost someone put a dog in that one. I feel that I'm in a privileged position because I've been elected on to the trustee and I really want to make sure that I'm doing what I can to make a difference and so a lot of it is all voluntary of course but I want to put myself forward to 10 events on behalf of Alton. There are the additional meetings as well as the three face to face meetings a year there are also I think a bit once a month once every two months we have a web conference meeting with chairs at the committees as well so there's sort of as much or as little as you can do but there's probably a minimum of what you should do as well I think that helps. Diane has got her hand up. Simon what did you want to say? Yes I agree with what everybody has been saying about time commitments it's flexible and it's really up to you but one of the reasons you become a trustee is because you're excited by the organisation so you inevitably find yourself doing things because you're a trustee which are over and above the things that bear minimum so I think that's a personal issue but you also asked interestingly Mark and what excites you and certainly what I was looking forward to and have found as being a trustee for the Association is the enormous value of the membership because the membership is an extraordinary group of people very experienced, long experience, great enthusiasm wide knowledge and just watching the email that comes through on a daily basis of the exchange of ideas and experiences, questions, answers a very supportive group and I think what Doug said about it being a very flat organisation it's absolutely right and it really does feel like it's a meeting of minds and it's a meeting of equals when people are keen to contribute infuse the artistic supporters collaborative all those things that make it a real joy to be involved in so I think it has become a more partial organisation in recent years certainly that process began under Seb and certainly when I was in the department developing the e-learning strategy for a while enormously valued the role that sports played in that and now Marin's continuing that and developing it even further and the role that sport is able to play at a policy level is extremely important because we've all got to battle to make sure that learning technology overuse as well as they possibly can be in all sectors and really do drive innovation so we have an extremely important job to do and the means to do it with that huge community out there so I'm hoping that that will in the e-tag the education technology action group for ministers unfolds further throughout the year that will become even more prominent a part of our role so that's the reason for the excitement Malcolm I thought that was a very good question okay I think that was a really good discussion there I think the opportunity that Alt presents is to actually contribute to making a difference and I think that's what we're all about actually we want to make a difference to learning to widen access to learning and Alt gives us that opportunity Martin wanted to say something okay, Martin please come in it's truly optional but I think I'm perhaps going to encourage myself as an Alt member for many years who's recently become an Alt member of staff and I think everyone who is a member of Alt really values the community that you become part of but you perhaps don't really understand how it's governed how it's looked after how it's prospects for the future seem to and it's only as becoming an Alt member that I've actually began to see some of that and one of the things I would say for anyone considering becoming a trustee is your opportunity to to shape the association we have a very small staff team and that staff team is there to respond to the trustees and the committees we help them administer the association so if you're looking for a reason to become a trustee if you love Alt like a lot of people do and you want to shape its future then becoming a trustee is the perfect way to do that Excellent, I can see that Julian is I think you're typing a question Julian it's a compliment really just that I'd like to see the mixture that the trustees have said about how important the organisation is and that's holding its role and its initiative but also that it's actually personally and professionally satisfied with that Right, excellent, okay and yeah, so thanks a lot for that and I think the links with the staff are absolutely central to all of this and things are going from strength to strength Right, I think possibly we can we can move on There are some things that you do need to be aware of as a trustee trustees are legally financially responsible for the charity they have to act with diligence and prudence in a way to run that's because there is a body of English law about charities which are governed by the charity commission who sets out guidelines However, there are a couple of points to add to that, first of all at the present time, ALT does not actually employ its staff the staff are actually hosted by Oxford Brooks University now that's not necessarily something that will last forever but it does mean that trustees are not actually at the present time employers which is an important point and the last point is that like all charities trustees do have what's called indemnity insurance in case something does go wrong in case anybody is serious which is unlikely and it's never happened and generally never that does happen but there are those points to be aware of and that might be concerning you Okay Anything further? Is there anything to add? Okay If not, if we can just remind you of if you're still interested in taking this forward you can actually all of the stuff about the procedure for trusteeship is on the ALT website you can contact the chief executive if you wish to clarify any of those points but otherwise it's all there on the website you can see hands up by Diner and Malcolm Malcolm do you want to come in? Yes I'm not sure if it's appropriate for you to answer this question but I'll ask it anyway as some of you may know I took early retirement recently so I'm not currently in an institution where I'm actually seeking re-employment but I'm a long-standing member of ALT having joined in its first year of operation and been a member ever since and very involved in the organisation and co-chair of the conference last year as you probably know so I'm interested in becoming a trustee in part because I have more time on my hands I still have a brain that works 21 years experience of working across a large number of education sectors but when I look at the blurbs on the website for everyone else who's on the committee it appears that everyone who's a trustee they're all currently employed and deeply engaged in things within different sectors so I'm just wondering whether being a retired learning technologist makes me not suited to be a trustee well I personally I'm not employed I don't work for an institution I'm self-employed if you like so being employed or your employment status isn't accrued flat to me anyway I think what a trustee is what is a balance of experience across a trustee but then again anybody who's a member can stand so that will be my view I'll get from Diana which is the comment on that or anything else I'm going to speak in because Diana gets there my opinion now comes from the trustee you're representing yourself not an organisation that you work for so you're bringing your experience and your interest and your passion to help develop an organisation and working with its members so I don't think personally I don't think it's relevant whether you're currently employed or not and I wouldn't imagine there are any regulations about it that might be something you would need to prefer to mine okay Diana I just agree with that yeah I'm just agreeing with what Sarah said but I think you want people with a lot of experience of the way things work in the sector in all the sectors actually we have some people quite a few people I guess from HEE but also we've got increasingly representation among the trustee from FE and we need more of that we also want to have more international connections we want to be able to reach more into schools so we're really all the time trying to broaden the range of experience and expertise among the trustee and that means you cast the net wide and people who are towards the end of their career have a lot of information ideas, experience experience of what works and what doesn't experience of how to make things happen in the different sectors engagement with people at all stages of their career so I think why would we be so silly to exclude people because they happen to be retired that's a lot of expertise and experience that we can make yourself there so currency is always an issue this is a fast changing field if you're retired you've got more time to keep up with it than any of us fresh with it I've had an enormously difficult problem to keep up with all the trends in this incredibly diverse field so you know I don't think that's really I would not see it personally as an issue at all okay I did see a few people typing there if we've caught up with all the comments it seemed weird to me to have in which case to welcome the fact for the session I think it's the first thing we can actually do do you have any closing words for us Diana to discuss the very issue of what it means to be a trustee and to try and make clear that this is not a closed circle it's very open we welcome enthusiasm and people with a range of knowledge to contribute to what we're trying to do here so very grateful for everyone who's turned up for the session what I think we must do now is try and tweet it as widely as we can and this will be available we should tweet the link so let's see if we can get that round to those who have been part of it and make sure that other people come in and check out the recording and get a sense of what we're all about so thank you very much to both Doug and Sherry for organizing this it's really helpful, thank you okay, thanks very much Diana so the recording will be available and Martin it's being it's on YouTube as we speak is it? Martin's just through the line I think okay, right, well that's it we've got the session up and thanks to everybody for taking part it's been really useful, it's the first time we've done it but I'm sure it won't be the last time and it's created a resource that we can just build on and improve thanks very much everybody thanks very much Doug and Sherry for putting that together


What's good y'all it's your boy Ross back again with another video man. So just finished recording Doing the live stream reaction on Monday night raw with the homie dub on the main page if you missed it go check it out We always have a great time But I had to talk about this. I had to talk about this promo segment Once again another week in a row Cody Rhodes is involved in a fantastic promo segment And that is involving Sammy Zane this time. I'm loving hoodie Sammy Man hoodie Sammy is Is something that something about it. I appreciate him coming out with the black hoodie.  So We we cut to the ring Sammy pretty much calls out Um Cody Rose is like hey Listen, I need to talk to you Cody. So they have an interaction. They're both over. They're both make over It's not even a question and it's cool to see them in the ring And I'm gonna give my thoughts on opinions or where they're leading things with them both being in the ring And both having one goal is to make sure that Roman Reigns isn't their champ no more Pretty much Sammy wants to Re kind of get some reassurance like the stuff that you said about me about being the one to beat Roman Do you believe that and he was like yeah I do believe you are you can be the guy to beat Roman at an elimination chamber or whatnot But the question is and it what it always comes down to do you believe you can be the guy to beat Roman And I love this promo because Sammy was really selling this of He believes he can but at the same time he has that little bit of doubt because he knows how Roman operates He knows he's playing in on another level right now He's been in the bloodline and he he has a little bit of doubt and I like how Cody was the one hyping up Sammy to get the job done like you are the one that is finally Gotten the bloodline to show some cracks in their armor. You're the one that did that So if there's anybody that can get the job done, I would think it would be you Sammy and I love that and it makes sense Reason why this makes sense and reason why this is a good move and what they're doing is really to Ultimately help Cody in the end at WrestleMania. I do believe Roman still will win It's gonna be a very close fight. I do believe Roman will still win the match But I also do believe there's still gonna be some dissension With the bloodline. I don't know how it's gonna play out But there's gonna be some issues still with the bloodline, but I do believe Sammy will lose the match Roman will somehow find a way to overcome Now here's an interesting thing a thing that I do feel like it's gonna possibly happen I have mentioned this before I do think Sammy needs to be involved in the ultimate loss of Roman losing the championship I feel like he needs to be an integral part of that I don't think his story needs to per se end here His championship storyline may end here, but the story But Sammy and the bloodline doesn't end at elimination chamber. You don't end it there There's not nine months of build to end right there. No, I think The story continues into something where Sammy may be one of the key pieces to help Cody beat him at WrestleMania And I think that's what they're doing here their interaction the two over baby faces. There's a lot of people that want uh Want Sammy to be the one to the throne Roman at At WrestleMania this year they would love for him to the throne them at elimination chamber But I still think people want him in the main event of WrestleMania So you can have kind of the best of both worlds here Instead of it being a triple threat, which I don't think they need to do I know people would love that but I don't think they need to do that I think honestly, you know, I think this story needs to be more so about Cody Overcoming his options schools and finally getting the job done for his family for his legacy So I don't think you need to add Sammy in that mix in the match itself But I do think you involve Sammy in some way of fashion Being the one to help out Cody to screw over Roman Because I think the only way you beat this this This this type of this force of the bloodline and what they've done for so many years now you beat them By one breaking them from within which Sammy has done And I think also taking the tag titles if he teams up with Kevin Owens I think that's another way that knocks down it breaks down Some more of their armor and then finally I would have Sammy be one of the reasons why Roman loses, right? Maybe some interference at WrestleMania. Maybe Cody's he's kind of by himself He's you know, he's down and out. It doesn't look like he's gonna win the number game is probably too much and maybe Maybe Sammy comes out there with Kevin Owens or whatever And he's the one that evens up the odds and now it's just a one-on-one situation between Roman and Cody Rhodes in the ring finally Cody hits the the crossroads one two three win You can do something like that because the crowd is going to pop if Sammy comes in Not only beating the tag team champions, but if Sammy comes in And is also another reason why Roman and his bloodline are not able to get the job done And they make sure they don't interfere and none of the like the rest of that main event match The crowd will go crazy The crowd will lose they shit once they see Sammy right out there with maybe Kevin Owens and they start attacking the bloodline Roman Reigns is he's looking at the chaos. He doesn't know what's going on and then finally Cody gets the upper hand you get that maybe give them like maybe 10 minutes five to 10 minutes of them Just by themselves Roman has nobody else in this corner and you can see the momentum shift Have Cody win right there. Boom. It's over And the crowd gets the best of both worlds. It seems like that's the route they're going they're trying to Get the crowd to invest in Sammy Endorsing Cody and Cody endorsing Sammy because they both have the same goal in mind to make sure Roman Reigns is no longer the champion and I love this segment. This was fantastic So comment down below. Let me know. How do you guys think things are going to play out? Do you guys think That sammy zane will be involved at some point? Um and in the main event of WrestleMania this year and I'm not saying well particularly in the match Maybe do you guys think he will be in the match? Maybe you think he wins at elimination chamber? I don't see that happening. But do you guys feel at some capacity? Sammy zane will be the reason why Roman Reigns lose at WrestleMania this year and ultimately helps out Cody rose Do you feel like that's going to be the situation or the scenario? Let me know down below. This is honestly the best segment the best storyline WWE has right now, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out But I appreciate all the love and support you guys have shown on the channel road to 150k and I am still The unsputed youtube wrestling champ of the world. Amen. I appreciate y'all man and uh more videos on the way