yours. Thank you, Tom. So hi everyone, I'm Martin Lambrex. I'm a big fan and a big user of open data. I'm a freelance data journalist and visualization consultant and I think I can safely say that I own a big part of my career to open data and the use thereof. But over the years I have noticed some things that annoyed me a bit when looking for open data and using open data and I think a lot of these things are also contributing to hindering open data to be used more than it is today. And so in the next couple of minutes I will walk you through some of these annoyances and I will try to come up with solutions to these annoyances so that open data publishing is more centered on users and so the subtitle of my talk is open data for humans so not only for computers but also for humans. Okay I think I might discourage some of you in the room as open data publishers but yeah don't don't be discouraged. I don't want to criticize your work as open data publishers because as I said I'm a big fan but I do want to raise some concerns and maybe there are some things you can take away from my talk and can implement in in your data publishing or in your data portal so please don't be offended or don't be discouraged. I just want to make you think about the user a little bit more. I'm going to start off with a little story about what I did with open data and this is a quote I think many of you can agree with but and it's not really a very strong quote except when it comes from this guy. This is Jan Pirmans the president of the Flemish Parliament and of course when he says that there are some people in parliament literally doing nothing well me as a data journalist I'm triggered I want to find out who those lazy members of parliament are and so I went looking for the data and the Flemish Parliament as open data API and policy and so I went looking for the documentation of this API and and it's all there of course all the data I was interested in is in the API but then when I went looking through how I could retrieve information about the activities of all the members of parliament I had to look into a lot of these API calls and I had to store a lot of information and then make other calls so in the end I ended up not using the API of the Flemish Parliament so although I'm inert I'm also a bit of a programmer so I know my Jason from my XML but I wasn't been able to extract that information from that API because it was for me it was a bit too difficult it was a bit too technically challenging and as a journalist you're under a lot of time pressure so I ditched the idea of you using the API because it was giving me too much headaches and I switched to another strategy and what I did was I'm going to the website of the Flemish Parliament where you have a nice overview of all the members of parliament and when you click through you get an overview of how many documents each member of parliament filed and how many times they had said something in parliament so instead of using the API I just wrote a scraper that went to this page then click through to the individual pages of each member of parliament and took the data from there so in the end I was happy I had the data I wanted and we also made this piece so we identified the lazy MPs I'm sorry this is in Dutch we made a nice graphic out of it and over here are the members of parliament well each dot is one MP as you can see and on the top right are the people what we called were the busy bees people talking a lot but also filing a lot of documents here are the chatterers who talk a lot but don't file a lot of documents and Herman the crow is obviously one of them these are the silent forces who don't say much but they are very active they file a lot of documents and then of course here are the lazy MPs we made a little button to zoom in on them and the most lazy one was a Gwendolyn Ritter who is now not in parliament anymore and surprisingly Jampoemans is there himself but I think his his activities as president don't count in these data set so this was a nice exercise but after I made it I started thinking about well this this wasn't really meant to be I had to scrape the website in order to get the data while there's an open data policy by the by the parliament and so this is one of the things I want to talk about if I as a technical journalist can't access this information then I think there's something wrong and that's really the baseline of what I want to show you next so maybe we can go check or talk a bit about what open data really is and for that I want to go to the open knowledge website and the print is a bit small for the people in the back I think but it stated here that everyone must be able to use reuse and redistribute there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavor or against persons or groups and so I think this is a really valuable definition or part of the definition but you can interpret this in multiple ways and if you focus on the first part everyone must be able to use reuse and redistribute you can interpret that as anyone should have access but you can also say that anyone with the knowledge they have already should be able to get access to the data and I think at the moment and that's not really the case and I'll illustrate this with a little analogy and I will keep on using that analogy throughout the rest of my talk so I think you can compare open data in an API as a can of soup and there are some juicy things in there there's value in there but in order to access it you have to have some tools and knowledge to get to the content so obviously if you want to open a can you need a can opener and you need to know how to handle a can opener and only then you can get access to the content like the API of the Flemish Parliament I didn't have enough knowledge to get to the juicy bits of the soup so I had to use another strategy my strategy was a bit like this this is actually a screenshot from a video on YouTube that shows you 10 ways you can open a can without a can opener and it's very interesting but I challenge you to open a can of soup with an eggs like that it will be really difficult and bit dirty I guess so my first point here is well is your data access accessible to non-programmers because if you interpret the definition of open data like I did then a lot of open data isn't really open because you need some skills and tools in order to access the data and it's also important to have the data human readable because you can say everybody has access but if it's only you and your peers that can read the data then you will also not reach a lot of the people interested in the data so instead of offering a can of soup or a can of food offer data in this way really open anyone can access it you can eat it with your bare hands there's no knowledge needed to to get the data or to access the data anyone really can can eat this juicy bowl of pasta so my first advice would be to provide non-technical and easy to digest views of your data instead of only offering data as an API for example that a lot of people will have a hard time accessing then if people have the data they need to know of or when they have found the data people need to know how to really start making a delicious meal with the data they have and so if you think about the data sets as ingredients then you also have to have some kind of stepwise guidance for your users for your users so that he or she knows how to process the data what can be concluded from it what not and how they can bring this data to to a product today they want to build or or use so my second advice would be to provide documentation and examples and tutorials on how to use the data the description on the API page of the Flemish Parliament was really cryptic there wasn't wasn't a lot of explication and it wasn't just it wasn't enough for me so I think if you want users to use your data more you have to offer some kind of guidance for the more non-technical users as well and this is an example and I think it's an excellent example is the website of transport focus which is the the organization that is well it's a trend rampus from from the UK I don't know what the equivalent the Wallonia is but they are publishing a lot of data about the surveys about quality of public transport and they have on their side these nice videos explaining how people can get access to the data and what can be done with the data so I think this is a good example of how you can lower the barrier for non-technical users to get access to your data okay next point imagine you are selling meat and in this of course you're selling data but in this analogy you're selling meat when you're selling meat I think you also have to talk about this little cutie here so you need to give a bit more context to what you're selling you need to explain where the data comes from and you see the tag on the ear of the of the little cow so you need to give the broader picture to your user you need to explain where the data comes from and how it fits into a broader picture and you can even go one step further and when you're talking about raising cattle you also have to mention things like deforestation and so when you're publishing data I think it's a good idea to give your user also a bit of context to explain how this data fits into the rest of the data you offer but also how this data fits into a discussion that the public debate or the news for example and you need to explain why this data is important and and what can be done given the broader context of society so my advice would be to give more context and this can be just a little text describing what the broader context is or you could give some experts some room to write about why this data set is important and what could be done with it and next point this is what I imagine to be a real delicious meal so okay I wanted to the Google translate but it doesn't come up so doesn't matter I think if you don't speak Arab it's there okay so when when the man the recipes like this I think most of us won't understand but maybe some people speak or read Arabic and they will be able to prepare this delicious meal it's I think there's something lost in translation here potato with rice and sauce I think the original name will be something else but my point is here if you offer the data and your documentation only in one language then a lot of people will simply not have access to the data and so what you should do is publish in multiple languages and I'm sure in Belgium most of us do one example is for instance Todd Bell they have here a lot of their content is published in four languages so that's really great also in English and two weeks ago I gave a course about data visualization to statisticians from national offices from across Europe from official offices for statistics and one of them is a Swiss guy he did a survey about on the data portals of the official bureaus for statistics and he said to me that almost all of them are publishing information and data in English as well so I think this this is really great because otherwise if you don't do that you're you'll exclude a lot of your possible users this is also an interesting book it's actually a recipe book or a cookbook for blind people so it's a cookbook in Braille and I must admit I make a lot of data visualizations and I almost never take into account people who have problems with their site but at the course I give at these statisticians there was one guy from Slovakia he had bad eyesight and so that was the first time I really started thinking about this group of people that is also very interested in data and with some simple measures we can give them some kind of access to the information we are publishing so I would say try to publish data or descriptions and documentation compatible with screen readers once again the transport focus website is a nice example if you go there you can see they're really investing in making their content accessible to people who have bad sight or blind people so I think this is also once again a good example okay that that was the first part about the data itself but I also want to talk a bit about data portals where the data is published so if we go back to the open knowledge website or maybe I can just skip to the quote this is also part of the definition of open data from open knowledge and so the data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form and so it should be convenient to handle the data but you can also interpret this as the portal or the way the data is accessible is also very convenient and I think in a lot of cases and that's not really the case so we'll keep on using the food analogy I think a lot of data portals are a bit like this this is a giant supermarket and as a user you don't know where to start looking or you there's no good guidance on where you should go and I think in a lot of cases also there's just too much information and before you start opening more data I think you have to think about how to open data better and my apologies to Elaine the next the next image is from open data portal as you can see at that time there were 804,000 data sets there are already more but for me as someone looking for some kind of information or a specific data set this is a bit intimidating when I see this I think I'll never be able to find the data set I'm looking for so I think this is also something to take into account okay this is collect and go the call rights webshop and what I wanted to show you here is that you could compare this to data portal we saw the European open data portal where you have here the countries now we have here different kinds of food but what they do really well of course is showing you this the things you can't miss and if you go down a little further you also see what's new and on top you also have the opportunity to just where it's the menu of the week and they just give you a recipe for each day and you can order the the ingredients directly from there so why am I showing you this I think you also have to think about how you can market your open data if you're just showing the all the data that's published on your portal chronologically then you're missing out on a big opportunity you could put the most popular data sets on top for example or the most relevant ones or the data sets which have the highest quality and you can also track which data sets are downloaded the most or on which pages people come the most and I think it's a good idea to put these things on top of your portal and not bury them somewhere somewhere below and one good example of this is data USA so this is a website collecting open data from different sources in the US and making it available in a very attractive way and so you can see here the new data sets are highlighted and I'm sure they also are tracking which of these pages is the most popular and so they put the most popular ones on top because a lot of users are interested in these data sets. Okay next one at the university I had a friend and when other friends had their birthday what he did was going to the supermarket and buying some cans of food then stripping of the labels and giving these cans as a gift to other people so you had cans of soup but also cans of cat food for example or dog food and without the labels you don't know what's in there so it's a nice idea but it's not very usable what you of course need to do is offer some kind of a teaser or a monster so people will know what's in there and people will know if what they are maybe going to buy is really what they are looking for and if we translate this to data publishing and then this this is offering a preview of the data if you don't offer a preview of what's in a data set people will have to download first then open the file and then then only see what's in there if you can give a preview directly on the website where people are searching then they will have a much easier time knowing or selecting the data sets and they're interested in maybe yeah data USA is doing this I'm just going to open an article and there should be visualization appear here and what you can do directly here is view the data and then you will get a preview of what's in there and as a user you can then decide well okay this is what I want or not if you don't have the preview you have to download first before you can even see what's in there so I think giving a data preview can help users a lot okay if you want to prepare a meal with different ingredients people would want to go to well we have here seven ingredients and people are not interested in visiting seven different shops to get all these ingredients they want everything in one place like sweet like we saw in the the collect and go by by call read people don't really care about where the data is coming from for example if I want a list of addresses of schools in Belgium I need to go to the flanners open data or the institution responsible for education I need to go to Wallonia I need to go to Brussels as a data journalist it's much easier if there's one authority offering all these data in one place so users want everything in one place and they don't really care who is responsible for generating the data they want the data they're interested in just all in one place so I think aggregating things also has a lot of value for end users okay this is a picture from supermarket and it says the choice is yours but the message obviously is not in line but with what is offered there in this shop and so I think we need to talk about usability here and I did a little bit of research and maybe I'm wrong and I think some of you know better than I do but my feeling is that there is not a lot of research about how a data portal should be more aimed at users that there's not a lot of user testing involved one thing I found was this study and I think it's really interesting so what these people did these researchers just put people in front of the data portal and asked them to look for certain information or just basically use the website and then they just they follow people along their journey on this website and so if we can quickly look at what they found so in the end they have some suggestions for making data portals so better meta description descriptions really showing that if you select multiple things that these filters are and filters or or filters for example sorting things and other elements so I think if you're serious about data publishing and if you invest in a data portal then you should also do some user testing because otherwise you will miss a lot of users who will simply not find the information and they're looking for okay we're almost there this is someone looking at the menu and I think it's pretty obvious that you should provide an index or some your data should be indexable or searchable by search robots in a lot of cases this is not really the case because if you only can get to data when you have to select from a drop-down menu for example this information that's in the data will not be indexed by these search robots so you have to know sure that you have good descriptions for every data set and user rights keywords and that those are not hidden behind UI elements like drop downs or filters for example and here my food analogy stops because I couldn't think about about a good example of this one so number 12 is about embeddable yeah embeddable data and one good example of that is our world in data which is a website publishing a lot of data from research mainly about the long longer-term trends on different topics in our world and they have this excellent module I think so here you see a visualization but you can for example we can look for Belgium here and the charts then updates and then if you use this one I think you get an embed code so you can simply embed this chart in your own website and it also respects the filter you set so you can see here that now the data is filtered on Belgium and so you can embed this chart in your own website and why is this important I think is that a lot of people or institutions are interested in publishing data visualizations but it's oftentimes very hard to make good visualizations and if you offer something like this you you're giving the power to the user to just take your your data and publish it without any technical knowledge or without any knowledge about data visualization and they can just go and embed this in an article they are writing for example and this also lowers the barrier for using the data you are publishing so that's the URL for this for these slides so you can access these articles as well these are two articles I found very very interesting and I basically took the points from these articles to make this presentation so if you're interested in getting more users to use your data I think you should read these articles because they are they make excellent points about usability and lowering barriers for users so these are really great articles and so these are my slides all the links are there you can click on the images and they will lead you to the things I showed and with that I think I can conclude this and I thank you for your attention


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I've had this camera, the Canon EOS RA, for over a year now, and it's been a journey, but I've learned a lot along the way, so I think it's finally time for my full review. And let's start with the elephant in the room. Last time I talked to you about this camera, I was having a number of issues with it. Well, I'm happy to say those have mostly been resolved. The issue where the screen froze up and it was impossible to film anything more was fixed by Canon. The service center tried their best to fix the issue with the red halos on bright stars. They actually replaced my entire CMOS assembly, but unfortunately the red halos were still there even after Canon's valiant efforts. So, luckily with the red halos, I did discover a workaround. Thanks to a commenter on my last video, I got a crucial clue that Tenman Guide, a popular astronome magazine in Japan, had identified that the red halos may be an issue in the extended infrared response of the camera. This led me to try out different filters to see if blocking the near infrared, basically any waves longer than 700 nanometers, would work. And I was so happy to find that the Astronomic L2 clip-in filter for EOS-R cameras works great at eliminating the red flares on bright stars, while still passing the HA and S2 emission lines at over 95% transmission. Here's a comparison without the L2 filter. And now with it. And notice how the flaming star nebula is just as bright and red in both, but the red flare on the bright star is very noticeable in this first one with just the stock array while the L2 clip-in filter basically completely eliminates it. Now, for a long time, I thought this filter worked equally well with all telescopes and lenses. But recently I discovered this is not the case. I found there are some lenses where the downsides of using the L2 clip-in completely outweigh the upsides, the red halo fix. One such lens identified as the Sigma 14 millimeter f1.8 art lens. And this has nothing to do with this particular filter. I think it's just that the lens design is very sensitive to any small change in back focus. So I know this is early on in the review, but this is a major con of this camera, the EOS-R A for me, which is that I found it work around for the red halo issue that Canon couldn't fix, which is this clip-in filter. But now I'm finding that this clip-in filter is causing other issues with certain lens combinations. So it's just a little bit complex. I want to stress that this is a recent discovery I've made, so I don't have all the answers yet. But I'm going to try to keep an up-to-date list of my test results in the text version of this review on my website. Now, let me wrap up this section by saying the red halos don't bother everyone. There are a number of reasons other Canon EOS-R A users may not see these red halos. For instance, they may be using a filter that blocks the IR, even if it's not called specifically an IR cut filter like this one. For example, I recently processed some data from Astro-Backyard, Trevor Jones, he was using a radian triad filter. The radian filter is a multi-bandpass filter that also blocks the IR. So as expected, when I looked at his data, I didn't see any red halos on bright stars. I'd say the red halos are most problematic if you're planning to use the camera for deep stacked images with wide-fast lenses. And you might ask, so why am I saying stacked images with wide-angle lenses? Well, I found that the red halo effect is typically not strong enough to be an issue in a single image. So if you're doing like single image Milky Way shooting, if that's your thing, I can still fully recommend the Canon EOS-R A to you. And I probably wouldn't even get the L2 clip-in filter in that case because I don't think you're going to see red halos in single images. But I still plan to do some wide-angle, tracked and stacked images with this camera. And in that case, if I'm using a lens that the L2 has a problem with, I'm probably just going to fix the red halos in Photoshop. It's actually not too bad to do most of the time. I just make a quick feathered selection and then bring down the saturation a little bit. That won't work every time, but it works a lot of the times. I also just want to put in a really quick note here to say I fully understand that artifacts on bright stars caused by the camera as opposed to the optics is not only an issue with the Canon EOS-R A. I've had various artifacts with various cameras, some of them quite similar to the RA artifacts, meaning red halos offset. But I'm not going to get into big comparisons here because there are just too many factors to consider when going down that rabbit hole. So to sum up on the red halos, my advice, if you're considering purchasing this camera is to think about your style of shooting and consider if this red halo issue will be a deal breaker for you or if it's something you're either willing to live with or deal with. For me, I found I can deal with it. For most optics that I use, that means using, again, this astronomical L2 clip-in just goes right into the camera body and works most of the time. For everything else, I can fix the red halos in Photoshop. Okay, let's now talk about the most misunderstood but also the most amazing feature of this camera, which is how it handles colors for daytime photography with a white-bound shift in the firmware of the camera. And to me, the most confusing thing about this feature is that it is unadvertised and undocumented. There is no special manual for the RA, it just comes with the manual for the EOS-R, and I can't find any documentation on the Canon website about how this feature works or even that it exists. I did know about this feature before I bought the camera in spring 2020 due to Alan Dyer's reports on the RA in Sky and Telescope magazine, which I read every month. Alan Dyer found that when you shoot in RAW, the Canon EOS RA automatically in all white balance modes shifts the white balance through firmware. What this means is if you shoot RAW, there's no need to set a custom white balance with a gray card or an original white balance filter, as you would have to with a third-party modified camera. Now, something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is the color correction doesn't apply the same way to JPEGs shot with the camera. And let me show you a quick comparison here. This is an auto white balance JPEG straight from a Canon ESR on the left and on the right is an auto white balance JPEG straight from the Canon EOS RA, all settings matched and using the exact same lens. As you can see, the color shift is pretty dramatic. Now, here is a comparison of the RAW files, same exact shots, but just the RAW files with nothing done to them other than opening them up in Adobe Camera RAW and saving them as JPEGs. And you can see the white balance shift to correct the colors in the RA works pretty well when you shoot RAW, but much less so with JPEG, where it's very saturated. I'll note that I had Maggie pick this sweatshirt in particular for this comparison, as I knew it was an example of clothing that really changed colors with the RA. And I'd say that black clothing in particular has a tendency for pretty dramatic color shifts with the RA. But other than dark black clothing, sunsets, some flowers, I found that when shooting in RAW, the daytime colors with the RA are pretty good matched to the RA. I did a number of comparisons. And in fact, let's play a little game.  And I want you to guess, you can write this down, which came from the R and which came from the RA. Alright, let's see if you guessed right. Camera A was the RA and Camera B was the YASR. I do see some differences. The RA is slightly more vibrant. But when shooting JPEG straight from the camera, the color shift from the RA sensor definitely appears way more dramatic than it does in RAW. And I should also note that the JPEG representation is what you see on the screen. Even if you're shooting RAW, you get the JPEG look in playback mode, which does make sense. And I'm guessing this is why Canon doesn't talk about this feature anywhere. It may just be too confusing to explain exactly how it works. But in any case, most of the time, I have to say, I'm perfectly happy with the daytime color performance of the RA as a RAW shooter. I usually don't change the colors much. And remember, though, the key thing is that it's only when shooting RAW that I feel that RA's colors are somewhat accurate and not super accurate. With video performance, it's a different thing. You know, the default colors are closer to the super saturated JPEG style. But I've been using the RA to film almost all of my YouTube videos. I use it in 4K, which does do a one by one pixel crop of the center of the sensor. And in my opinion, that looks quite good and sharp. I don't mind the, you know, the crop. I do use a profile called log. And log is desaturated, it's very flat. And so I find that I can get a lot out of that and don't have any issue with color. Sometimes I will use my X-Rite color chart. But I've also shot videos without remembering to use this. And I think they came out just fine, at least for YouTube. I'm not super worried about getting things incredibly color accurate because I'm not a professional. But I don't think that a professional filmmaker or a photographer who does a lot of daytime shooting would necessarily gravitate towards this camera anyways. But for hobbyists like me, I think it's perfectly fine. If you are a JPEG-only shooter, you might not want to get this camera because I think the colors are a little bit too saturated in JPEG.  With all of that out of the way, let me just tell you why I think this is an amazing feature. I take a lot of photos and shoot a lot of video. I fully expected when I bought the RA that I would want to hold on to my Canon 5D Mark III, which to that point had been my main everyday camera for many years. But I found that a few months into owning the RA that my 5D Mark III was just sitting on the shelf because the switch to mirrorless was a lot of fun for me. It was so much faster and more responsive. And I did want to do one more final test. So I brought both cameras on a hike to see the fall colors in New Hampshire. And I found that looking at these pictures, even the image performance, when I looked at them side by side, every single time I picked the RA. And for video, it was no contest. The RA is a way better, more versatile video camera. So I sold my 5D Mark III and the RA is my daily driver camera these days. Would this have happened if I instead had bought a EOS R and had it modified for astrophotography? I'm pretty sure no. And the reason is, is because if I want to go take a snapshot of a person or a landscape or my cat or whatever, I don't want to worry about finding a special original white balance filter or a gray card to set a custom white balance. It just takes too long. It's too much of a hassle. And it would make me feel like the camera is too much of a chore to use as a daily driver. I have modified DSLRs and I only use them for astrophotography or infrared photography. Because I don't, you know, when you just take a photo and you don't set a custom white balance, it's completely hard to edit because it comes out all pink. So if I'd bought an R and modified it, I would have saved about $400 off the cost of the RA. However, because the RA is so versatile, I was able to sell my 5D Mark III for $800, which I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing with a modified R. So anyways, in the end, this undocumented white balance shift feature of the RA when shooting RAW photos and the log mode and video also looks nice is what makes the camera's price actually pretty reasonable for me as a Canon shooter who wanted to jump to a mirrorless camera. Sticking to the price of the camera for a minute, another question I often get is if one is only planning to use the RA for astrophotography, is it still worth $2,500 or is there a better camera option? If you want to be able to use the new RF lenses, I'd suggest save about $400, get a modified R. If you don't care about daytime shooting, the only thing you're going losing by not getting the RA is the 30-time zoom feature, which I'll talk about later, but I don't think the 30-time zoom alone is worth $400, even though I do really actually love the 30-time zoom feature. If you don't care about compatibility with RF lenses and you also don't mind using a computer in the field, in that case, I'd suggest a QHY 268C. And I know that's not a fully fair comparison since the 268 is a crop sensor and these other cameras I'm talking about are full frame, but honestly, if it's just for astrophotography, especially if it's on a telescope, a cool dedicated CMOS astro camera with one of these incredible Sony sensors that are back illuminated will beat a modded Canon R or RA hands down just in terms of raw image performance. Because these astro cameras calibrate really well, they're much lower noise, but again, that's a crop sensor camera. If you did want a full frame astro camera, they do make those two, but not for under $2,500. So to finish off this little section about competitors, if only buying for astrophotography, other Canon R cameras, the R6 I don't think is a good value for astrophotography. The modified R is definitely a better contender, I'd say. The modified RP could also be good, but the sensor is substantially noisier, but that makes sense with the price they're selling it at. If you're into Nikon or Sony, there are of course a bunch more choices in full frame mirrorless, you could mod it around the same price point as the Canon R, like the Nikon Z6 or the Sony a7 III. I don't own any Nikon or Sony cameras since I have so much Canon glass and accessories, it really doesn't make sense for me to own a different brand or to switch brands. So I can't tell you much about these cameras other than if you aren't locked into a brand like I am with Canon, then you maybe should consider Sony or Nikon. Okay, the next thing I want to talk about is the lens mount, adapters, and lens selection. This is a mirrorless camera with Canon's RF mount, which is their new mirrorless mount, and by getting rid of the flip-up mirror, they were able to shorten the flange focal distance from 44 millimeters, which is what their EF mount uses, to just 20 millimeters in the RF mount. And by moving the lens elements closer to the sensor, it opens up new lens designs, and although I haven't purchased any RF glass yet, I did rent Canon's RF 85 millimeter f1.2, and wow, that is a very impressive lens. Here's a single JPEG image taken with it and the RA, and that's really a match made in Astro Heaven, the RA and the RF 85. I just wish the RF 85 weren't so expensive or I'd really get one in a second. One element for me of thinking of getting the RA was I was interested in RF lenses, and now I'm even more interested that I've tried that 85 millimeter because it's I think it's the best 85 millimeter I've ever used. Another element though was I already had this large collection of EF lenses, and that extra 24 millimeters introduced by not having the mirror opens up some interesting possibilities. For instance, Canon has already released a drop in filter that goes in between EF lenses and any Canon R body. And what this means is that I can use much smaller, less expensive filters that go in between the lens and the camera body. HuTec is offering a wide range of IDAS filters that work with the official Canon adapter. For instance, I have their Nebula Booster 2 filter as well as their Clear Glass filter. And the Clear Glass filter is a must because you can't leave this adapter empty. It's shorter than the standard EF filter to account for the back focus shift from using a glass filter in the light path. So if you try to use the adapter empty and just tape over the hole, you'll find that you won't come to infinity focus with many lenses is what I found. Another thing I'd like to point out is that you can actually adapt standard two inch astronomical filters to this drop in system. You will need a spanner wrench, and then you can order 3D printed parts from Pierre in Canada, who sells them. I'll put his website link in the description. And Pierre also sells handy 3D printed holders for keeping all of your drop in filters organized like this. Now in addition to all these drop in filter adapter options, you can also still use clip in filters, one of which I've already mentioned. You know, I'm using the Astronomic L2 clip in filter and Astronomic offers their full line of astronomical filters for the Canon EOSR bodies. So you have a lot of filter choices with this camera. The next thing I want to talk about is using the camera itself. I've like the usability. I've used Canon touch screens a number of times in the past with like the modern rebel line. And I've always found them very responsive. The UI makes sense to me. The screen is fully articulating, which is great for astrophotography because you're often pointed up at the sky in general between the flip out screen, which is very responsive, very fast, and this little setting screen up here at the top of the camera and all the normal buttons and tiles. I find this camera very easy to use once I got used to where everything was located and got that into my muscle memory. There is one thing that's sort of a miss, which is this little multifunction bar to the right of the viewfinder here. That didn't work for me because I found my thumb was too big and I was constantly just accidentally touching it. So I turned that off completely, which I'm glad you can do in the menus. And in fact, you can do a lot of customizations of how all of the camera buttons and dials work through the menu system. That said, I think overall the menu design is just okay for Canon. I think Canon really missed the mark by not adding in the additional menu features or options for the RA over the R. For example, there is no internal interval timer. It would make so much sense for the RA to have an internal interval timer that would have no limit on exposure length. The RA does have an internal bulb timer, but it can only be used to take one photo at a time. So what I need as a deep sky astrophotographer is a way to program a sequence of long exposures. The only way to do that with the RA is to use a tethered computer and software over a USB 3 cable or even more often what I do is use an external intervalometer. It's just sort of like a remote where you can put in a sequence of exposures. Of course, the problem with a tethered computer or an intervalometer is that they're a single point of failure like if you ran out of battery or it just ended up not working and then your night is over. Canon could have avoided that by just including an intervalometer in their menu as another option. Another missed opportunity is there's a buried option in the custom function menu five called release shutter without lens. When you buy the RA, this function is turned off, meaning you can't take a photo unless connected to a lens that's providing electronic communication to the camera.  They should have turned this setting on by default so the new user of this camera doesn't connect to a telescope and think their RA is broken because it won't take a picture. One cool thing Canon did add to the RA firmware is a 30x zoom in live view and this can be really handy for zooming way in and focusing on the stars even with very wide angle lenses. And I've now been out several nights with the R which I'm filming with right now and the RA side by side with wide angle lenses and it's much easier to focus on the RA as I can actually see the stars when I'm focusing zoomed in. The R goes five times and then 10 times zoom the RA goes five times and 30 times. There is no option on the RA to ever get 10 times zoom goes five times 30 times all the time. This does make it more difficult to focus manually on landscape features or things that are closer to the camera and I've talked to landscape astrophotographers who want desperately for it to go five times 10 times then 30 times and that would make a lot of sense or at least have that as an option you can enable. While I'm on the subject of focus another interesting aspect is auto focusing on the stars with fast lenses at dark sites. This is not something I don't think that's unique to the RA but it was new to me and I was pretty amazed to find you can just tap on a bright star on the screen and then any fast lens seems to do a good job now of quickly finding autofocus if there's enough contrast with the the night sky. I've done this several times now I tap a bright star with the autofocus on the camera focuses and then immediately takes a photo I then check the photo in playback mode and if it looks good I just carefully switch the lens with the manual switch back to manual focus and it will retain that focus position from the autofocus and this is a really easy way to focus when it works it's not a foolproof method because I have had it occasionally not work but between the tap autofocus and a 30 time zoom I've had a better time focusing with wide angle lenses than I ever have which is a big deal for me because wide angle lenses don't work very well with a bottom-up mask since the stars are so small it's very hard if not impossible to see the diffraction pattern from a mask. Last thing about the usability of this camera is Canon has continued to update their LPE6 style battery which I have many of the newer ones are the LPE6N and the only difference is the old ones have an 1800 milliamp hour and the new ones have 1865 milliamp hour. Astrophotography is interesting in terms of battery life and battery conversations because so much of the time when doing astrophotography we're shooting long exposures and the screen turns off when taking an exposure and so this can dramatically increase battery life as the always-on screen is a major drain with mirrorless cameras but if you're most of the time you're taking exposures the screen is off that saves a lot of battery. Another thing I do is I turn screen brightness down all the way and that's in the menus too. With those two things combined turning screen brightness down and taking longer exposures I find that if I start the night with a fully charged battery I'll still have a little bit left at the end of a good six to seven hours of shooting. Another thing worth mentioning quickly is the performance of the sensor inside the Canon EOS RA in regards to noise at different ISO values. The sensor is basically the same sensor it looks like that Canon used in the Canon 5D Mark IV in terms of specs but of course the RA has a different filter stack in front of that sensor. Canon has always laid behind Sony and Nikon in terms of ISO invariance which is the measure of how much the noise changes at different ISO values. Read noise will almost always go down as we increase the ISO but invariance is a question of how much does it go down. Is it dropping more dramatically which is a camera that's very variant or does it basically stay the same which is an invariant camera. The reason this is important is it's always better to use the lowest ISO we can get away with because at lower ISOs we have a larger full well capacity which can then translate to a wider range of brightness values that the camera can record. We can look at ISO invariance by plotting the read noise and electrons of various camera models on Bill Clapp's excellent website Photon to Photos and if we compare the Canon R to the RA you can see the RA does very slightly better I'm not sure exactly how to account for that but I did send Bill Clapp some data from my personal RA to check and he said it was consistent with the other RA he tested which you can see has slightly better noise performance than the R. Another comparison on here I think it's worth making to is the Nikon D810a which is Nikon's last astrophotography camera and the last full-frame astro interchangeable lens camera before the RA. It's still considered a legendary camera for what it's capable of and as you can see the RA is besting it in terms of just read noise figures from ISO 400 onwards and if we look at a more modern Nikon camera like a mirrorless like the Z6 you can see the RA is not quite as good but it's holding its own if we go to their top of the line the Nikon Z7 that's definitely a very low noise camera. I should also say this does not tell you the whole picture of how these cameras perform for astrophotography because fixed pattern noise, unadvertised raw noise reduction and banding can be issues with many cameras including all of the ones I'm comparing. A lot of times the best question is how well does any fixed pattern noise and banding calibrate out when using bias darks and flats and I can say with the RA calibration does a pretty good job but I have noticed increased banding at lower ISOs so I typically use the RA at a minimum of ISO 800 if I don't dither and I'm subtracting heavy light pollution from an image the fixed pattern noise can definitely be bad even at high ISO but that's true of any camera I've tested from a dark site with a reasonable amount of signal I think the Canon RA really shines and banding shouldn't be that big an issue at least not anymore than any other modern Canon camera. Okay I've been sprinkling images I've taken with the camera in here and there in the review but I'd just like to take a moment to share a number of images I've taken with the camera over the past year and I'll just quickly share the details of their capture. Unfortunately I still haven't found time to do a really long integration like you know at least 10 hours with the RA so all my photos so far with it range from about one to four total hours here's this is my first light with the camera this is the very first night I had it this is just under an hour of 90 second exposures with an 86 millimeter refractor from a portal five site here's my first test using the IDAS nebula booster to drop in filter with the camera this is a faint supernova remnant called the jellyfish nebula here's my first dusty region image with the RA something I'm really into showing that you can bring up really faint stuff with the camera and again this was a fairly limited integration just three and a half hours for this one I used the Rokinon 135 telephoto lens on a sky watcher star adventurer with that exact same gear I later did another region of very faint nebulosity this is the integrated flux nebula or IFN around Polaris and one of my personal favorites I did this with an 8 millimeter circular fisheye lens and a mix of the nebula booster to filter and the IDAS clear filter and I think that came out really nice another pretty limited just 1.3 hours and here's about one hour of 30 second exposures of their Ryan constellation with my Canon 200 prime lens and then this last one I'll show this is untracked so just the Canon RA and the Canon RF 85 millimeter at f 1.2 on a fixed tripod 568 exposures at just two seconds each for 20 minutes total and for considering those specs I find this picture pretty amazing how much nebulosity would come out with two second untracked exposures well there's actually plenty more to say I could like go on about this camera for hours but I need to stop and get this review out I plan on keeping my RA for a long time so maybe there will be more videos to come probably I can say after getting past that early rough patch I've come to really enjoy the camera and if you enjoyed this review please consider subscribing to the channel or supporting me on patreon till next time this has been Nico Carver, Clear Skies


Swamp mommy swamp mammy and Thank you for that. We wanted to come down. We're not gonna be able to get inside But this house here a 12 year old boy was in there exploring around and he found a dead body hanging in the closet and It apparently been there for five years So this is the house here that it was found in so we wanted to get some outside shots for you This is the house probably shouldn't go back in here, but but apparently he was in here he 12 year old boy. He found body hanging in the closet. I Guess the guy bought the house in 2009 and shortly thereafter apparently hung himself in the closet. So This is just gonna be a quick video because of all the neighbors But we wanted to get this for you if we are here. Maybe someday we'll get to sneak inside I see a realtor lock on the door so but There it is and we are here Like to get inside there for you, but I probably better or not should I know not say you want to go in I'd like to go in but go bye I'll keep an eye out for you. No So there it is. I don't know what that says on the door probably condemned or something but Anyway Pretty weird. We're going to get out of here. So thanks for watching YouTube and She bear I'm gone


Aloha. This is Rob Hack with another episode of Exporting from Hawaii. Today's guest is Jamie Lum. She's the Business Development Program Manager at DBET, and we're going to jump in and start speaking with Jamie about what Hawaii State government resources are available to help exporters. And first, maybe Jamie, you can tell us, what is DBET? So, DBET stands for Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, and basically DBET is the state agency charged with implementing policies and programs to spur economic growth for the state and to be able to provide jobs and industries that are supportive of our residents and our lifestyle. So, the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, that's a big charge. Yes. And the person that runs DBET reports directly to the governor. Correct. So it's an appointee. Yes. And what is your department? I'm with the Business Development and Support Division. So we work directly with businesses. We have our, which we'll talk more about our High Step Program, but we have other programs like our Enterprise Zones and our Community-Based Economic Development Program and Opportunity Zones. Programs that help small businesses to grow in Hawaii. We also have some responsibilities dealing with international relations. That's kind of a carryover from previous administrations. So we, all of our sister-state relationships with prefectures and provinces in other countries, we oversee those relationships. So I just, I recently saw you at the Taiwan event celebrating the sister-city or sister-state relationship with Taiwan. I think that's 25 years. Yes. That's an important export market for Hawaii that I think a lot of our companies don't necessarily take advantage of because we do have a close relationship with Taiwan. It goes back, as you said, 25 years. Right. And we've actually leveraged many of those sister-state relationships, particularly in Japan and China, for some of our trade missions and, you know, economic opportunities. So what's, do you recall, what is the sister relationship with China? What city is that? We have with, of course, I'm going to say Guangzhou. I know, Japan is Chigasaki. There's some relationship with Guangzhou. That might be a city in the county of Honolulu. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Because ours, with the prefectures. Oh, that's good. Okay. So how long have you been with Tibet? Actually, almost 30 years. Wow. So you know the ends and outs. In your department of business development and support, how many people are working on export-related topics, international topics? I would say there are 10 of us total, probably about six of us, are either fully dedicated to that or spend, you know, a significant amount of time with helping companies and interested in exporting. That's great. And do those people in your office, including you, do they work with other parts of the Hawaii state government to talk about the Department of Agriculture? Yes, we do. We do work across with the Department of Agriculture, you know, helping companies that are food and egg related. We do work with the University of Hawaii and other, actually other educational institutions on our international student attraction program, which is not part of our export program for just reasons of definition of what is an export under the SBA. So we do work with a lot of educational institutions. Education is an important export. Yes. It's a very valuable export for Hawaii, too. And I think in future episodes of this show, we'll cover that in more detail. Can we bring up slide one, please? What I'd like to go through very briefly is I've talked in the past about the ecosystem that is available here in Hawaii. And I find that the organizations that are listed here cooperate quite closely and do a very good job of helping companies export all over the world. And maybe we could just talk a little bit about this for a second because we'll jump into high step right now. Maybe you can explain in general, what is step and then what is high step? Sure. So the step program is the state trade expansion program. It's a program that is administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration. It's been around for going on eight years now, and it was implemented as a way to really increase U.S. exports. And that's the whole goal is to get U.S. companies exporting and increasing, trying to increase market share across the global economy. So high step is simply the Hawaii state trade expansion program. Every year, SBA puts out a call that funding is available. And so it's done on a competitive basis. So we do put in an application along with other states and territories. And so we've been fortunate enough to be awarded funds for the last several years to be able to put together high step and bring together all of these people that, as you say, are part of the exporting ecosystem for our Hawaii companies. And I think year after year it's really becoming better and better. We're working more closely and better to help our small businesses in Hawaii. Yeah, I completely agree with you, especially compared to some other states that I've met with people I've talked to. I feel like our ecosystem here works very carefully together. Not a lot of egos involved and people cooperate and try the goal is to just get companies exporting. Exactly. Oh, that's great. Okay, let's jump to slide two if we can. We'll dive deeper into what is high step. There's three components that I know of. Can you walk us through these very briefly? Right. So high step is an export development program. And so we've basically come up with three components for it, starting with laying a foundation for companies with the export readiness program, which is basically a training and business advising mentoring program for small businesses that are either just exploring exporting, starting to export, or they may be already experienced exporters but are looking to expand in some way. We do work with that, as you know, with the Hawaii Pacific Export Council. They are contracted by the state to put that program together. The second component is our Hawaii pavilions. And so basically, we've selected various trade shows throughout the US, international trade shows in the US and abroad that are beneficial for our Hawaii companies to participate in. And we go in as a group under the banner of Hawaii. And companies come in and exhibit and basically are looking for buyers and distributors for their company and their products. And then the last component is our company assistance, which is, again, it's a competitive process. Companies can actually apply for funding that it's on a reimbursement basis, but it can help them to implement certain portions of their export plan, which they would put together when they go through the export readiness portion of the program. That's great. Yeah, the export readiness program, I've been working with several companies, mentoring them and consulting to them on how to develop an export plan, get ready for an export market. And as you know, most of our companies in Hawaii gravitate towards Japan, but HighStep is not aimed at Japan. It could be Germany, Brazil, some export market. Okay, if we could, let's go to the next slide and talk about eligibility very briefly. Okay. So basically, the program is open to any company that's registered to do business in Hawaii. They first of all must meet the standards of the SBA standards as a small business, which basically 98% of all companies in Hawaii would be able to meet. And one of the one of the other criteria which SBA has implemented and is strictly implementing this year is that it has to be a product or a service that is of US origin or 51% US content. So right, right. In the past, we have stated that we give preference to companies that meet that same definition for Hawaii made products, but we haven't said that it would only be for companies that meet that Hawaii made. But now that is something that needs to be adhered to as far as the US content. And then some other things like basically making sure that they have enough resources to be in exporting and so forth. Other than that, they have to be they can't be barred from receiving federal funds. And then they just have to be registered with our Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs here in Hawaii and and the tax department and have a tax ID number.  We have other criteria if they're applying for company assistance, but we can go into that later when we talk about. Sure. And then let's jump into the next slide is on high step ERP, which is part of the program that I'm very familiar with. But maybe you could just walk us through this a little bit. Talking about how the Hawaii Pacific Export Council or other organizations will mentor companies and get them prepared an export plan to follow and start exporting or market expansion. So we have two parts. We have our training seminars, of which you're very familiar with. You help us put those together. But the as far as the business advising and mentoring part of the this export readiness is when companies go on to our website, which will have several times on their invest.hawaii.gov, and they fill out a high step. It's not really an application. It's really a registration form. So we get information about the company. And so they get into the system. And then what happens is then our partners have different roles. They get sort of an initial consultation with the small business development centers to kind of figure out where they at in terms of their level of exporting expertise and what are some of the problems or issues that they might have. And then they get referred out to other partner organizations. So SBDC is one of those Hawaii Pacific Export Council and the Patsy Minx Center innovate Hawaii if they have manufacturing issues. So each of our partners has a particular area of expertise, and they have a role to play in helping companies. And then they contact companies and work one on one with mentoring them and helping them with their export development plan and any other issues that they might have. So it's, you know, it's we encourage companies to, to register so that they can get into this into the pool, because it really is like registrations free. Yes, yes. And, and, and then they can get just getting into the mailing list. Right, right. But you know, eventually they they can some of them get very, very valuable advice that, you know, sometimes you have to hire a consultant for sure. So it yeah, it's it's very beneficial. Okay, with that, we'll take a break and we'll be back to talk about more about the High Step program with Jamie Lum from the bed. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. For more than 100 years, American Humane Association has been teaching kids to be kind to animals. Those in our homes, on the farms, on the silver screen, and wildlife conservation caring for the world's vanishing creatures. But we can't do it alone. Visit kindness 100.org to find ways to teach kids how they can make a more caring, compassionate, and humane world for all of us. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3pm, I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Island. Hi, welcome back to Exporting from Hawaii. This is Rob Heck, and we're with Jamie Lum from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. We left off talking about the High Step program and the ERP, which is the export readiness program, part of High Step. And in the ERP, what D-Bed is doing is helping companies develop an export plan. And SBA class, we should say SBA is Small Business Administration, SBA classifies exporters in this category. There's two different kinds, market expansion, meaning a company already has done some exporting, but they're trying to do more of it. And then possibly there's more of these companies than there are market expansion, but they're new to exporting or NTE. Do you have any information in Hawaii? What's the breakdown of NTE versus market expansion? I'm just going to assume it's like 95% to 5% or something like that. Because it's sort of self-identified, sometimes companies might identify themselves in one category or another. And as you know, working with companies or when we work with companies, we might consider them more advanced than they think they are or vice versa. Some companies I think that do a lot of online sales think that they might be a market expansion when maybe that's not quite, they're really still newbies. So just looking at the registration of when people register and again, just knowing that these are self-identified, we give them some guidelines on how to, you know, what category to mark. But I would say about two thirds are new to export and about a third market expansion of the ones that have enrolled with companies ask me about that 51% US content. How do they calculate that you have an algorithm? Actually, so we have a worksheet that we use that we've actually borrowed from and then they know that we've used it with the Maiden Hawaii. The people that organized the Maiden Hawaii Festival because in order to be in that event, which is August of every year, you have to meet that 51%. So it has to you look at what, you know, what you're bringing in from out of state and then calculating the cost of various things, labor, and if there's any packaging or if there's any, there are direct and indirect costs. And then so yeah, there's a formula that has been put together for that. But this is this is clearly made in US versus made in Hawaii. Is that correct? Do you give any preference to companies that are made in Hawaii more than companies that can say made in the US? We Well, I mean made in made in US made in Hawaii. But we do say we do state we give preference to that. And that that would be if you know if say we have a waitlist of companies for you know, a Hawaii Pavilion or something like that, we would tend to go with the made in Hawaii company. Okay, great. One that's doesn't meet them. That's a good segue into pavilions. Can we bring up the next slide please? Because you're actually traveling soon to a pavilion. Yes. And that's Orlando? Yes, I'll be going to Orlando for that surf. So yeah, which is I know it sounds like surf expo, but it's really become a resort lifestyle show. So there's the sport part of it. But a lot more and more of the exhibitors are people that have apparel and footwear and gifts and souvenirs and just things that are kind of that resort lifestyle, which a lot of our companies fit into that space. And so you as an international expert, you are going to surf expo because there are foreign buyers and distributors that will have you coming to that show. It's been recognized as a yes, as an international expo. Yes. There are, particularly attracts a lot of buyers from the you know, European market from the South American market, but they are there are a lot of actually buyers from China and Japan, we've seen that come to the show. So yeah, it's been it's been a good show for our companies. And again, it fits in with the types of products that that a lot of our companies are manufacturing. So it's been a good show for if the company were to apply for funding from deep and they had all the criteria that and they were able to get funding, they could go to an international show that is not in your list of approved show. Correct. Correct. But there are pavilions that DBET highlights and goes to every year. How many, how many pavilions will there be? Let's see. I know we have six. Yeah, I think so. We have surf expo. We have our biotech show. We have outdoor retailer. Hong Q. Oh, we had Dima. And and then the Tokyo International Gift Show. So I guess it's the dive equipment and marketing show. That's in Las Vegas. That was it moves around. But it was in Las Vegas. Yeah, next year, we'll be in Orlando. Okay. And I bring up the slide again, please. I've been to the Tokyo International Gift Show, which is called TIGS several times, but only this past year that I take part in the Hawaii Pavilion. And it was very interesting and very helpful. Now, I don't think companies understand what a good deal it is for them to take part in one of these Hawaii pavilions because really, your organization is subsidizing the bulk of the cost. Right. Right. So for example, you could a company could get into the pavilion at surf expo in Orlando for some hundreds of dollars or $1,000, something like that. But if they were to organize it and go on their own, and try to get boost base and furniture and electricity and carpet and all of that stuff, you could easily be looking at five or six times or more that fee rate. Of course, you have to travel and hotels and food and all of that stuff. Nonetheless, I find that it's a fantastic deal. Tokyo International Gift Show I know is probably, is that the biggest one you would take in? Yes, definitely. We have over 70 companies, almost 80 companies that went to the 2018 shows. Yeah, it's a big pavilion. I'm just guessing off the top of my head, there must have been 40 booth spaces or something to that effect. 38, I think. I think our companies need to get involved in these things more because a trade show like that, you might see 50, 60,000 visitors or more over the three or four days of the show coming potentially past your booth, past your products or service, your advertising. I mean, it's really remarkable. And for the amount of money that they have to spend to take part in that, I think it's a fantastic bang for the buck expenditure. When you go to Orlando, how many companies are going with you? We have about a dozen companies going. That's great. Right. And so companies would apply to go to a pavilion, a Hawaii pavilion through your website at invest.hoi.gov. So what happens is when a company fills out the high step application form or registration form, they do check off what components are they interested? Are they interested in the export readiness, pavilions, company assistance? And then when they say, Hawaii pavilions, they check that off, there's a drop down menu that then they can check off the particular shows that they're interested in. And then when we actually get four to six months out, and we really start heavily recruiting, then we go back and see, okay, which companies expressed interest through the high step registration. So we'll go to those companies and say, hey, you indicated you're interested. And this is what we're, what the fees are, and are you interested? And then they come back and give us more information. So Does that carry over from year to year? Yes. So we'll always go back to the companies that participated in past shows. They're already in our database. We have a database of, gosh, I don't know how many companies now, hundreds of companies that we use to recruit. Good. Let's talk for a minute about the bio show because I've never been to that one. But I'd like to go. What is it? Do you go to that one? Yes. And where's that? That that is also one that moves back and forth between the east and the west coast. This year is in Philadelphia. Okay. Yeah. And how many Hawaii companies? That is a smaller number. We have anywhere from, say, four to eight companies. Because you know, our biotech industry is, is pretty small. But there's a lot of potential. And because of the the amount of work that they also do with with the university and our Cancer Research Center, there's a lot of overlap and a lot of work that goes on. So we actually work with the university to help recruit companies to that they, you know, through their office of innovation and research, because they're always looking at some of the technologies that are coming out of the university to, you know, spur into to companies that are, you know, so, so we work closely with them. But the potential for partnerships and just, you know, across the globe is there's a cost to go to the bio show roughly the same as it's a little less because we organize that one a little differently. We don't give them dedicated booth space, like they don't have their own 10 by 10 or half a booth. We we organize it a little differently. But they have a presence in in their and yeah, it's a little different to because you don't have necessarily buyers coming by, you know, because a lot of it is research technologies that they're trying to sell. So, you know, you have different types of people that you're working with. So a lot of a lot more meetings going on in the looks good. So lots of networking. Yes. And does DBAT help facilitate those meetings or are companies finding those meetings? Actually, bio has a system on their website. Once you register as an exhibitor, you can go in and request this matching. Yes, business matchmaking online. So if a company joins the pavilion, are they automatically included? Is that covered in the cost? They're able? Yes, what a good deal. Yes, it's already included. Well, that's great. So typically, when a company goes to one of these pavilions, how many staff from the company are attending? Usually about two, maybe three. Usually about probably three is the most but there's probably some companies that just go one. Yeah, no, there are. And in the high step participation in general, are you seeing mostly Oahu companies? Or is it expanding out to the neighbor islands or Big Island and Maui companies? Yeah, we're getting involved. We're definitely seeing a big increase in the neighbor island participation. I think a lot of it is in the last two years.  We actually went to each of the islands to do a kickoff and you know, did a face to face to inform them about high step and how they can get involved. So I think that's helped. And I think the seminars that you sponsor that are put out by webinar to that helps get more and more people involved. I hope it does. Okay, that's great. Can we bring up the final slide, please? And let's have Jamie tell us how to get in touch with her or her team at Debat. Again, they have a very good website at invest.hawaii.gov. If that's all you can remember, go to that website and then there's a tab at the top that's called exporting and then everything about exporting is underneath that it's very easy and well laid out site. You can access it from desktop or mobile. I've done it many many times and I know that it's has a lot of good information there that's easy to digest. And you can also register for everything that company would want to register for free, free to register. Correct. Correct. And how would people get in touch with you in the future if they had direct questions about high step or other debate programs? Actually, if you go on to the website, my email is there. So, yeah, it's, well, it's Jamie, yeah, Jamie.k.lom at hawaii.gov. But if you if you go on to the website, my email address is there. Again, invest.hawaii.gov under the exporting tab, go to high step and fill out the registration form. Again, we ask questions about your company about, you know, if you're new to export or if you're a market expansion as we talked about, we do ask some questions about your revenue so we can kind of figure out where your company is at in terms of just the business itself and your exporting sales. Of course, this is all kept confidential, but it's it's again to give us a profile on where the company is at and then based on what you indicate you're interested in, you'll be contacted for, you know, pavilions and so forth. And then you'll get into the pipeline for all of the export readiness, the business advising and so forth with our partners. Great. Well, thank you, Jamie, for being here today. This is an excellent episode. I really appreciate it. And this is Rob Hack, finalizing this episode of exporting from Hawaii. We'll see you in two weeks. Thank you.