Hi, my name's Leon Roe, Commentsy Trader and Trading Coach at Trading180.com and welcome to this week's supply and demand forex and gold fundamental and technical analysis. If you are new or warm welcome to you and if you are returning and equally warm welcome to you and if you like and find the analysis that I provide useful every week, please don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Please press that like button as it helps the YouTube algorithm and gets it a bit more popular and recommended. Anyways, let's get into the trading economics and looking at the week ahead. And in the week ahead, we have, and let me just zoom in a bit, we've got the US and China will be publishing inflation and foreign trade updates and that's important. Inflation being I guess the valuation of money, whether you know inflation goes higher, it devalues the currency, which kind of puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to have to, you know, do a bit more tapering and potentially push forward rate hikes, which is, which and rate hikes generally appreciate a currency. So let's see what happens there and foreign trade updates in the coming week. While central banks in Canada, Australia, those are the two that we focus on anyway, we'll decide on monetary policy, they're expected to hold towards the end of the year. I think all central banks will end up holding into Christmas. They don't want to make borrowing costs and loaning costs more expensive and really potentially damage the economy before it's actually got going. So other important data to follow include US consumer confidence, UK October GDP data, German investment morale and factory orders, Japan current account and producer prices and again something about India's industrial output, but a bit of market moving news, but I think that the focus really is on the Omicron variant and I'm going to get into that when I get into the technicals, which is next. So starting off on the dollar index and the dollar index is just a measure of dollar strength against the major currencies like the euro, the yen and the British pound. And so we use this as I look at it anyway as a measure, like I said of dollar strength and use it as get some confluence to understand where really the best prices to potentially buy are, right? I'm looking to buy the dollar. So we saw last week into this week, prices did come down again into this demand zone and bounced up from there. I think the dollar being a bit of a risk off currency anyway and risk off is when there is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt, which we do have with the Omicron variant. The dollar does act as one of the safe havens. The other one is the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, right? And the euro is, you know, slowly becoming a safe haven currency as well. So but for now, the dollar, the yen and the CHF, sorry about that, the Swiss franc are generally the safe haven currencies. So just looking at, I guess, the Omicron variant and things are still up in the air and ING have a great, I guess, article on the three scenarios surrounding the Omicron variant and the global economy. So nobody knows if the new variant will be more transmissible or deal a significant blow to the current vaccines. These are the best and worst outcomes for the global economy. It's important because money tends to flow in and out of certain currencies and obviously certain asset classes based off of whether they the degree of risk, right? So you've got extreme risk off, which is extreme fear, uncertainty and doubt. So extreme risk off would be what we saw last year, 2020, when the world was locked down due to the introduction of the COVID-19, right? Now things, although are quite bad, will never be as bad as that. Governments don't want to go into full lockdowns and we won't have the whole world going into a lockdown, right? So ING Bank have basically given three scenarios, an optimistic scenario, scenario a difficult but not a disaster and a Omicron deal significant blow to the recovery. So again, as I said, money tends to flow in and out of certain assets depending on the risk sentiment. So here we have an optimistic Omicron. The base case is for Omicron to be difficult but not a disaster. So that's ING's base case. And then there is Omicron a significant blow, meaning severe risk off, right? So then we have the Omicron assumptions, which are a faster spread in the optimistic Omicron. We have no basically Delta stays dominant, sorry, Delta stays dominant, or transmission advantage is minimal. The vaccine less effective is no, the vaccines work well, especially against serious illness and more serious illness is no milder illness aids path to normality, less relevant if Delta is still dominant. And the economic impact, which is always important. So what would the economic impact be? Or what do they see if we have an optimistic Omicron, which is the global recovery, I guess, continues and central banks continue to tighten and taper further into December and forecast, stay forecast, the US and also the Eurozone to grow as well as the Eurozone Euro dollar to actually fall. So the dollar to get stronger in a euro to get weaker, right? And we go go through the base case. When it comes to the Omicron difficult but not a disaster. And this is where the bank, I guess, see where see things as they are now and potentially into the future. So from an economic impact perspective, not going to go through each one of these, but the winter growth slow central bank banks pause on their tightening and taper, but 2022 tightening largely on track, which is what I would also have to agree with. And they still think that by the end of 2022, so in about a year's time, the Euro dollar should probably stay around about the 110. So any pullbacks on that Euro dollar when we get to it, probably setting opportunities if the base case or even a better optimistic Omicron, you know, you still want to potentially look for any kind of short trades and the dollar is a buy. So one of the other interesting articles on IMG currently is the central bank forecast. So they've recently updated their 2022 central bank forecast and European central bank, Federal Reserve Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Bank of Canada, Australian Bank and the Swiss National Bank. And ultimately, we're looking for great hikes or cuts. I don't think anyone is cutting at the moment due to high inflation. And we've got the QE balance sheet change as well, which is similar to a potential appreciation of a currency. And what we're looking for at the end of the day is for the central banks that are looking to hike first, yeah, the ones that are looking to hike first and hike more, as well as taper first and taper more are the ones that you want to really look to buy and the ones that are doing it least and last are the ones that you're looking to sell. Of course, there is risk sentiment that is the driving factor in the short term, but in medium to long term, once the world discovers a vaccine for the variant and once we get ourselves back on our feet, because that's what we do as a human species, this is basically what kicks in the fundamentals, right? So we've got the Federal Reserve looking to taper starting at the end, I guess, this year and into next year. And then we've got some rate hikes, potentially third quarter 2022 and the fourth quarter 2022, all things being, you know, working out as the bank, ING bank thinks, whereas the European Central Bank have PEPP reduced, which is a form of QE, but APP boosted. And then they're looking to potentially high crates in first quarter 2023, whereas you've got the Federal Reserve who are looking to high crates twice in 2022. So this should be where the money will ultimately flow over the next year, again, if this all plans out. So again, any short trades, any pullbacks on the euro dollar really should be looking for short trades for me anyway. And that means looking at the higher timeframe and looking for lower timeframe entries, the higher timeframe being the daily and then looking for supply and demand or supply zones on that daily timeframe chart and then looking for sell trades, right? So looking at dollar index, again, it's just really looking for pullbacks. The dollar is benefiting from its risk of safe haven status as well as potentially a monetary policy, right? Guidance. So any pullbacks, if you can get some as confluence, that'd be even nice. And then any kind of deeper pullback is at 95 area will be probably a bit more of a bargain if, you know, you're expecting prices to potentially be somewhere up here or the dollar index to be somewhere up here in the medium term, maybe the next three to six months, right? So any pullbacks, the trend is, you know, to the upside driven by, of course, fundamental analysis. So for me, that's where my bias is, again, anything can happen. And there are opportunities to get short, if you're looking for a short trade and prices come up to here to this 97 area, and you're looking at the euro dollar, potentially a buyer or any kind of dollar sell trades on any of the dollar crosses, then that's what you're looking for as confluence. So moving on to the dollar yen and dollar yen prices have come down to this demand zone, they did bounce up a bit and they've held so far. So, so yeah, again, my bias is, again, to a buy from a buy dollar perspective, not saying that prices are going to go up this week, because if, again, we're in a wait and see mode, and if the Omicron variant does get a bit worse, then you can expect the yen to strengthen over the US dollar. But again, once the fear uncertainty and doubt starts to dissipate, then this actually looks like an even better bargain to look for a buy trade. So my bias is to the upside, not too sure what's going to happen this week, but again, as we start to figure out the effect of the Omicron variant, again, we start to look for buying or selling positions. But this week is going to be a bit of a wait and see for me, or well, so far until some new information comes out. Dollar, Swiss, pretty much similar thing. Again, we've got bargain prices, price was a bargain at the beginning of November, prices made higher highs, obviously some risk of sentiment. The Swiss franc does strengthen more than the US dollar in a risk off environment, but that is a decent buy. I would look to the left though and see that this level has been touched several times. So for me, I think there is obviously a buying opportunity here, but for the guys that are in the group, there is a bit of a CPR around this area as well as a bit of a stop hunt towards these lows. So you may want to look for that rather than jumping in at these areas here if you see a decent entry and some entry candles. But again, if risk continues to go off, then you will have the Swiss franc strengthening, you should have prices continue to go lower, and then any pullbacks into that area of supply, which would be here, that would be your selling opportunity. Looking towards the dollar CAD and the dollar CAD, again, the dollar strengthening in a risk off environment against the Canadian dollar. Although the Canadian dollar, when we look at the central bank of Canada, they're looking to high crates actually quite soon as well. When it comes to the timeline, they're looking to hike one, two, three, four, five, pretty much every single, it's like every quarter for 2022, whether that happens or not, but it's really buying the rumour, right? If that's the rumour that the bank is expecting, then really the Canadian dollar should be a potential buy, but in a risk off environment, you're going to have this happen where the dollar is the dominant currency, and because the Canadian dollar is a commodity currency and commodity currencies generally don't do well in a risk off environment. So if risk remains off, you're going to see what is happening right now, but I do think these areas here could be actually really nice for a short, and again, just saying that this level has been touched several times. So in fact, if prices actually come up to this 130 round number, I do think that is a brilliant zone to look for any kind of short trades, but let's see what happens in the coming weeks. But again, any buy trades you're looking at, just look for a pullback to a demand zone, any of these demand zones before looking at getting long, if you want to continue buying the US dollar, pound dollar. So the pound again, in a risk off fight, you've got the money flowing into the US dollar, and that's what you've seen pretty much this week, prices really coming down into this, this demand zone continues to trend downwards. We've got a bit of a supply here.  Of course, the Bank of England are looking to also taper, as the QE potentially ends in this month and potential hikes into the first quarter of 2022, but that's all things being risk on. So I think there is a bit of a turnaround for the pound coming. I do think that if the data supports a narrative, of course, then I do think that the pound could be a potential buy in and around these areas. I'm not necessarily looking at the year, the pound dollar pair, but because you've got two currencies that are looking to, where the central banks are looking to high crates, and the best trades to take are really divergent type trades where you've got one central bank looking to high crates, and at least a central bank that's not looking to high crates anytime soon. So at least they're holding. And as I said, you really want to buy the currencies that are hiking first and short the currencies that are going to be hiking last. So for example, the Swiss National Bank are not looking to do anything with their currency, the Bank of Japan are looking to do anything with their currency. So those are automatic sells for me in a risk on environment, but in a risk off environment, a bit more difficult from the pound's perspective. Again, I don't think they're going to be hiking rates anytime soon, especially not this month into Christmas. But I do think at some point there may be a into next year, there may be a buying opportunity to buy the pound. And in fact, I'm going to probably delete that one year. And so I think there is an opportunity to buy the pound, but again, not against the dollar for me, I'm not looking at that currency pair. But again, if you want to look for any continued short trades, any pullbacks into that zone, and then look for any kind of short trade there, looking at the euro dollar. And we have looked at the euro dollar, and we did get a pullback, of course, and then we've got some selling opportunities. I'm looking to get involved in this as a short trade. But there was some criteria that wasn't really met for me. Anyway, there was a trading opportunity, a bit of a capture pain relief zone on the intraday. But on the higher timeframe, I'm really looking for a bit more of a stop hunt or if that doesn't work out, I think a higher move into that one 1450 area. And that for me would be would represent a bit more of a bargain price. Because if this is a bit of a high to a low, then you've got in between that expensive and bargain area, then you've got your fair value somewhere around here. Of course, nobody knows, it could actually start right here. And if that's the case, then in fact, that one 14 area is probably going to be a decent fair value to look for their fair value price to look for any kind of short trade. So for now, I'm not looking to buy the dollar, but I don't think the setup is just right technically for me to look for any kind of short trades just yet. I think better prices, if we can get some, then that'd be brilliant. If not, if prices continue to fall, for example, if prices continue to go down, then that, you know, I'm just waiting for a pullback into a supply zone before the connect getting short. That's what, you know, my plan of action is. But buying the euro at the moment, I think is is not really the one to, for me, it's not necessarily an option. I don't really want to buy the the euro, not at all. So moving on to the next currency pair, which is the Aussie dollar, again, Aussie dollars, Australian dollars suffering really from it being a commodity currency. Again, the US dollar in a risk-off environment in a straight fight is going to win. So you've got, this is the reason for, you know, this, the set off in this environment, any pullbacks into that zone are going to be really nice short trades. Again, going back to the ING forecast, central bank forecast, looking at the federal, sorry, the Reserve Bank of Australia, they're not looking to hike potentially until what a bank doesn't think they're going to hike until the first quarter of 2023. So again, they're lagging behind, right? The lagging, the lagging central banks are really the European Central Bank, the Australian Central Bank, as well as the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, whereas the leading banks are the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Canada, right? So those are the banks that you want to look towards potentially buying, or I'm looking towards buying again, not financial advice. But again, just waiting for more risk-on sentiment to come into the market. If risk-on does come into the market, then I do think it probably is going to be a bit of a pullback, but I still think that the dollar should potentially be still a buy against the Australian dollar. So that's pretty much where we are. If you are looking to buy the Australian dollar for whatever reason, then technically I think this area is okay, but not fantastic as it's not the freshest level of demand. And then finally moving on to gold. Gold has been a bit surprising because given the risk-on sentiment, you would assume that gold would have gone a bit higher from here, but obviously during the week, it hasn't, right? Again, we understand what typically happens, but over the medium to long term, but price in the short term over the week or the month can be pretty uncertain and a bit random, but you would expect with the uncertainty that price should continue to go higher. But if the dollar is also going higher, that could put a spanner in gold's work, but I don't think with higher inflation going on with a lot of Omicron uncertainty, in fact, I think what the market is actually doing is looking to buy gold for a lot cheaper than they would want to buy here. So the banks and the financial institutions don't buy in the way that retail traders buy in the sense that they're looking to scale in over a period of time via iceberg orders. They're not looking to just take one trade or 10 trades this week and place a tight stop-loss. They've got massive orders to fill. So if they've got massive orders to fill and there's not enough liquidity for them to fill, then they will look for the best prices over a couple of weeks to a couple of months before maybe turning price to the upside. So let's see what happens with that. But if you do want to get short on gold for whatever reason, there is a supply zone between that 1815 and 1788. So I'll put it at the top of this supply zone, which does have actually some confluence of, you've got a bit of resistance there, level of past support and resistance, which is actually just supply and demand zones, past supply and demand zones that have been projected into the future. But you've got some some confluence there. So technically a really nice zone for a short, but overall if I was looking for a bias, I would probably say gold should be a buy at the moment. So regardless of what happens in the short term. Anyways guys, that is it for this week. I hope you all stay safe and take care and until the next week's video, I wish you all the best.


and welcome back to our channel. My name is Andrea with Food and Mentory Adventures in Food, and I am here today with a really small Aldi haul. I went in just for two things, grabbed a few more things, wanted to show it to you all, and I also grabbed something I'm really excited about from Walmart and I'll show you that at the end. So let me jump in. So initially I went to Aldi for this tote bag. I love utility totes. As you can see it's pretty big and this is what it looks like. This was $9.99. So I'm excited about that. I'm going to use it for groceries and anything else that I can think of. They also had different patterns, but this is the one that I liked the most. I also grabbed this for my two-year-old son Harrison. It looked pretty cool. It's water wow and you just put water in that little pin thing and then he can color on it and then I don't know exactly how it works, but he can color on it and then you can color on it again and again and again. As you can see there's different pages, so I really wanted that. I think it was $3 or $4, $3 or $4.99.  I tried this for the first time. I don't know, maybe a few weeks ago and it was really good. So I decided to grab some more. This is new. I've never seen this before, this pork chorizo and there's actually a recipe that I want to try and it's frozen. So I grabbed that, grabbed some beer battered cod filets. I have bought these before and we liked them a lot, so I just decided to grab them for quick dinners. Always need green onions, grabbed some of that and then some Asian chopped salad. An Asian chopped salad kit. I like this, Howard doesn't, so I usually eat this for lunch. Sometimes I'll throw some grilled chicken in there as well. Grabbed this watermelon sparkling juice. So I've never had watermelon flavor before. I love watermelon. I'm the only one in my household who does, but I've never tried watermelon juice or anything like that. So I'm excited to give this a try. You get four cans. Let me try this. Oops, let me try to show you what's in there. So it's water and then watermelon juice. So I'm going to give that a try. My two-year-old son needed some milk. So I grabbed two organic milks for him. I've never tried their organic milk, so I hope he likes it. And then I grabbed some of these cookie thins. They also had, these are lemon. They also had lime and I have had these before. Howard and I both like them. Grabbed these two seasoning mixes. So this is carne asada street taco seasoning mix and pork and I already have another one in my pantry. It's not the, I can't remember the flavor. It's actually, I think it's ranch, like buttermilk ranch. So I just grabbed these to try them as well. Grabbed some crescent rolls for a quick meal. And then I grabbed these. My two-year-old loves Pringles and I've never tried these before. I'm going to see if he likes these. So this is everything that I picked up from Aldi. It was I think like $43 and some change. And then ran to Walmart to grab this. I saw this. I don't remember where it was exactly, but I knew I had to have it. It is a divided glass baking dish, eight by 12. And it's perfect. You can make meat or vegetables. You don't have to worry about the juices combining. But I plan on using this for is baked chicken. Howard and I both like baked chicken, but we don't necessarily like the same seasoning. So he can season his chicken the way that he wants to or meet however he wants to. And I can season it how I want to season mine because I love lemon pepper and lemon and citrus and he's not into that. So this is perfect. I can season mine my way and he can season hits his way. Can bake it at the same time with this divided glass dish. And like I said, I got this from Walmart and it was I think 16 something. So I think it was less than $17. But anyway, I'm really excited about using this. So this is everything that I picked up today. I hope you all enjoyed this quick haul. If you did, please give us a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, we'd certainly love to have you. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you all next time.


Thank you, Min. Hi, everyone. Our first talk is about interfacing an OLAP cube with a chatbot written with React. So let me first introduce myself. I'm Nida. I've been working with Active VM company for the past 12 years. I'm coding mostly in Java and JavaScript. Used to be coding in Perl, C, C++ a few years ago. In Singapore for the past eight years. And I will be co-presenting with Lisa. Thank you. I don't know if this is going to work. Hi, guys. I'm Lisa Martini. I'm also a software engineer in Active VM. I joined Singapore one year ago, and I love it. It's really nice. I just graduated last year from a French engineering school. And mostly I'm full stack, but I really like front-end technologies. So yeah, mostly done for me. Nida is going to explain you the rest. OK. So before Lisa introduces the amazing chatbots, so let me give you a bit of context. So what you're going to see is a prototype that Lisa built that has been integrated in our product suite. Our product suite is made with a back end. Named Active Pivot, which is an OLAP in memory database. I will introduce OLAP later on. This is written in Java. The front end is named Active UI. This is the one you will see in action. This one is written in JavaScript with React.  And the company age is almost 13 years old. So when we started building our product, we tried to build the next generation multi-dimensional database. Active Pivot, the back end, the server is not only in OLAP, but it is also an OLTP, which means you can query this multi-dimensional database. And you can at the same time add transaction, which is almost impossible in all the old OLAP technologies and even the current ones, where you need to destroy this database and to rebuild it again when you have new data. In our case, we are incremental, and you can keep adding data into the engine. So it's an aggregation engine that allows you to browse your data. You feed this multi-dimensional database with a lot of data, and then you can build your own reports. You can start browsing the data. This runs in memory, in the memory in the RAM of the server. I won't give more detail on the topic. If you want to know more, just catch me. Let's give you an idea of what OLAP is. Usually, when we mention OLAP, we usually say OLAPQ. So to introduce the concept, usually we use something like this Rubik's Cube, where we tell you, OK, there are three dimensions, three analysis dimension here. One is called product. One is called time. And one, special one, that holds the measures. The measures are those metrics, those values that you will see, look at, and make decisions while looking at them based on your business and your use case. And usually, when you are in the OLAP world, we always speak about slicing and dicing. So in this case, if I want to check what the profit made with alcoholic beverages for February, I will definitely look for that light blue dice. So OLAP is no more than in this multidimensional structure looking for the dices I need to build my report. And the query language for the OLAP structure is called MDX, multidimensional expressions. You will see some of it later on. It looks like SQL because you have select where from. But this is the only thing they have in common. It's really misleading. So do not, if you want to learn this language, which is kind of standard implemented by many players, started by Microsoft. Documentation is on their MSDN. But do not try to compare it with SQL. So Excel, Tableau, and many other tools support this language. Are able to query our back end. And we, of course, implemented our own front end. That queries this back end implementing MDX. The data model we're going to use today is quite simple. So I have employees. Those are my salesmen. They're doing some orders for some customers. And every order is related to a product. It's as simple as that. The database has been already fed with the data. So you will see only the results.  So it will be in this context. Just for you to see how it looks like. Oh, wait a minute. You have to show it under. Sorry, yep. Sorry. Oh, yes, sorry. Would be better. Oh, come on. Slide it again. Sorry. Come on. Yeah, thank you. We're good. OK, so I'll pick up something that we call pivot table. Similar to the pivot table you see in Excel. This one runs within a browser. So here you have the data model that I was mentioning earlier. So all the data is loaded in the back end. There is no canned reports here. There are no canned reports. So say I want to check my margin, my revenues per product.  And of course, those are the dices you're looking at. If you want to do a breakdown, you can see by product. You can see directly this.  So most of the time, the MDX is generated by the front end that are interacting with the back end solutions. Even among our clients, most of the, there are some proficient business analysts who are writing MDX. But most of the clients, they build their report by browsing the data. OK, I want to see my products, my revenues by products. I want to add this by this way. I want to add salespersons here. So now I have products and salespersons that are stacked together. I want to stack it the other way. So as you can see, you are free to build. It's a self-service reporting. However, for the aim of the prototype that Lisa did, what we wanted to do, we said, OK, even some, maybe one day we'll have the issue where some end users, they don't even want to play with the pivot table. Let's find another nice way, a funny way, that will bridge the gap and that will take some normal sentences and send them to the back end. So of course, Lisa will introduce you to the architecture and will give you a demo. Thank you. I think it's fine. So now I'm going to present you the chatbot. So just before that, I'm going to explain you a little bit the flow. Oh, sorry, yeah. Yep. OK, yes. Yeah, good. OK, so the first thing is the user is going to ask a question to the active UI, so to the browser, to the chatbot, who's going to send a, sorry, it's quite loud, who's going to send the request to an external NLP service, so natural language processing. And I'm going to introduce you just later on. And then I'm going to receive an entity's object. And from that, I'm going to build MDX queries to send it to the active pivot to our server, get the response, and display something. So either a simple sentence or pivot table has neither showed or even chart or whatever. So let's go for this. OK, so we get up here. Going to load. Yep, I hope I will have this sound. And let's start to interact with the chatbot. How are you? OK, yes, I think that's fine. I'm going to turn off the sound at the end. It's going to be annoying. Thank you anyway. Oh, sorry. So it works for real. Yeah, so let's say something else. No. What were the revenues yesterday? OK, let's try that way. All right. It's really good. What were the revenues yesterday? OK, great. Again? Yeah, what were the revenues yesterday? We get. Nice, worked. That was nice. So for that, I just ask a simple question about the revenue yesterday. I can also ask something like maybe I don't know what to ask. So I'm just going to say, I can do it. Help, help, help, and we're good. OK, so I'm just going to shut down the sound. It's going to be kind of annoying at some point. And I can go here on a simple request. And maybe I can ask, like, are there purchases for Betrayage on the first of Jan of this year? And that's something. And it works also. So something pretty simple also has a question, but that works. So I think you understand the concept, understand that I can say something. I'm going to write it down now because it's going to be complex. So now, let's say I want to ask something just a little bit. More complex. So with more measures, more dimensions, you're going to see. So let's try what are the revenues, margin, and purchases for Cheng, the beer, which is a product, condiments, condiments, and confections, which are products category four days ago. Oh, sorry. And here you have the same pivot table. I'm just going to resize this part. And here you have the product, Cheng, which is in the category beverage, the two categories, condiments, and confection. And you have the revenues, the margin, and the purchase. So just to remind you, these kind of data are not pre-computed. It's like it's aggregated data that it's computed on demand. So just a few reminder of what's happening here. Come back here. So earlier on, you were demonstrating that you could build this multi-dimensional thing. So when you send it the commands, are you just executing a predefined multi-dimension thing, or are you actually telling it to construct a model on the fly? I'm constricting the model on the fly. Yeah. It depends what you mean exactly by model, constructing the model on the fly. The structure of the cube will not change. However, when you fire a query, you pick up the dices that are related to your query. Sometimes you want to get all the dices related to a certain category of product, or a product name. This is what you do.  You fire the query. So in a sense, you're- You drag and drop the things like that's happening on the fly with a chatbot. Oh, yeah, definitely. So instead of, yeah, exactly. Instead of dragging and dropping and then expanding to look at Chang beer, what I do is directly having that done through the chatbot. The chatbot is basically doing my job. Yeah, exactly. So just a reminder. So I send the normal request, the sentence to the NLP service is going to tag and give me all the words I want. I build the queries on the fly from the sentence, send it to my server, and it's sending me the result, and I can display the pivot table. So coming back, so the same way as NIDA works with it, I can, for example, drill in. So I want to have more insight on the products from each categories here. And here, we have all the categories who expend it with all the products in it. And from there, I can do, like I can remove a measure. So now I only have revenue or margin. I can select a new product, maybe in beverages. No, maybe not everything. So Cheng with it, and maybe hyper-coffee. And here it is. So I can basically do the same thing that NIDA was doing and much more that he hasn't presented. I can do it directly from the chatbot. And the chatbot is also going to help me do this kind of thing. So for now, I can do a drill out for all. So it's like it's going to shrink all the categories to just show me up here, to show me the result. So let's say now I've finished the analysis on this pivot table. Good. Now I'm going to go back and help, because I don't know exactly what question I want to ask. And here, I can select from multiple measures. I have few different weights. So mainly, the differences are about the date, how I can ask for the date. So four days ago, in between, et cetera. So I'm going to try this one. So the margin on mozzarella, Italian cheese, for between two days. So here we have three dates here. And from here, you can see a master. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to do a simulation about the purchasing price of the mozzarella. And I'm going to say, OK, let's see what's happening on my margin. What are the impacts? If I'm changing the price on the fly of the purchasing price of the mozzarella. So up here, I can do create a new what-if. Do we call that a what-if? Or a branch, OK? So I'm going to say, mozzarella, good. And let's say, so I know the current price, because I know it's my data. I know the current price is $18.77. So I'm going to say, maybe the purchasing price, it's going to increase until $19. And let's check the impact on my margin. And here we are. Sorry about it. Just showing more. And here we have further margin and the purchasing up here. So we can see that the purchasing price has slightly increased and my margin has decreased for these days for mozzarella. I can also do another what-if. Just one remark related to this what-if. This is possible only because of the back end allows you to add extra data. Everything is held in the memory. You can add, you can remove the data the way you want. Here with this what-if, what we did is we defined the scenario where I can see side by side if tomorrow the purchase price increase or decrease of one of the product, what will be the impact immediately on my current data, and I can make a decision right now. So the chatbot is no more than a way to reach that functionality in a simple way. But the functionality is available thanks also to the back end. Thank you, Anita. So now I'm going to try another simulation maybe with a lower price of $16. Same way. You're going to see so we have now three different branch master sorry about it. Cannot show you up here. So you have two different branches. I can show you the name of it. So one for 19 price and one for 16. And you can definitely see the difference. So what I can do now, it's also delete the last created branch. The branch for us is like this simulation, this what-if simulation. And I can also delete one branch with the name. When I copy it, it's going to be easier up here. Bam, bam. And here we are back again. Good. So now I'm finishing the analysis on this pivot table. Obviously, I did the what-if directly from the pivot table. I can also do it directly asking a new price of something to the chatbot. So I'm going to say, hey, what-if the price of Cheng, again, the purchasing price of Cheng is half $3. And here the same thing. I'm going to have half the Cheng, the master branch, the new branch, the other simulation, and the impact on the purchases in margin. So I think you understand the discumcept very clearly. And finally, what I'm going to do is another kind of request that we can do through our chatbot. Let's try again some voice. Maybe it's going to work. Give me the top five product with highest margin. Yeah. Give me the top five product with highest margin. And here we are with a good chart showing the top five product, Cote de Blay, which is a wine, and everything, and the margin. So I can also ask something different, like give me all employee or salesperson contributing to 60% of my revenues, let's say, the past two days. Let's try that. Just to show you the difference. And here you can see all the employees, quite small because of the layout of the pages. So you can see for two different dates, actually you cannot here. So you can see for two different dates, the breakdown of employees contributing to 60% of my revenues. Now just a last question, just for the fun. Maybe an enhancement. So just for the fun to see that it exists, I can also go there and ask for, for example, this one. So give me the two best region in terms of revenue for each country. And bam, you'll have a good chart with the colors and everything. So this kind of chart are from our core, but the chatbot is just here to display it. So I'm done with the demo of the chatbot. And now I'm going to talk a little bit about the stack and what I used. So I used simply React Simple Chatbot, which is a React, open source React component made by Lucavacity. It's pretty straightforward as you can see on the GIF. It's something I can show you also later on on this web page. So basically it's the conversational flow is done through a step object, a GS object, which I show you on the right side, where you define the step you want to do, what you're going to do. So it can be a message. It can be a user input, or it can be a custom step, what I mainly used for my purpose. And then you explain what you're going to trigger the step afterward. You can customize the chatbot pretty easily for the icons, the colors, and everything. And as you can see, there is a speech recognition and speech synthesis that already embedded it. It's not perfect, but it works as you saw. So I also use natural language processing. So NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the computers and the humans. And the goal is to read, understand, and make sense of the human language. So what I use is weed.ai, which is help you to extract relevant information. So you can categorize the user intent. You can tag words. You can use building entities, such as the date, the age of people, or whatever, a lot of building entities. You can define some roles. And you have different lookup strategy. I can also answer a few questions about that later on. In terms of integration, it's quite straightforward. So you have a Node.js integration, Python, Ruby, HTTP API, or even Facebook Messenger. So you can check on this link if you want to see. So what it's going to look like. So weed.ai web app looks like this. So as you can see, the scroll is all the entities tagged. And how it works, you launch a sentence. And you are going to basically tag all the words you want. And then if it's a keyword strategy, what I use, you can define all the keywords that are going to be in these entities. So it's quite nice. You have logs also. So it can help you to see what went wrong or not. What went good. So yeah, basically this. And what is a little bit of code for those who like it. Just the way we integrate this weed.ai connection, I use the HTTP API. So it's just a simple HTML HTTP request. And once I receive the full answer, I can actually process the entities object I received. So for me, it's like check and run MDX. So a bit of feedback on what I did for this project. So weed.ai, it's pretty simple. Easy to use, fast integration, fast training. I had a good result super fast. There are many built-ins entities supported by Duckling. So weed.ai is a Facebook company. So good support. The only downside are if you have specific use case, it's going to be quite long to tag everything from the web app. And there is less reliability on your own customer entities, which is quite of normal. For the React component, same thing, fast integration, good results, super fast customization, speech recognition. I already mentioned that. The only downside was it's really hard to keep a state between the steps, unless you have Redux or something above the component. And finally, who we are at TVM. We've been here for more than 13 years. We are more than 120 worldwide. We have Five Center, New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Singapore. And if you have any question about a company, if you're facing any, I don't know, aggregation challenge use cases, feel free to contact us. Our office are in a moist street. So we are super close. So yeah, we'll be here. And thank you for your attention. And I'm here for your question. We are here for your question. Thanks. Thank you. So questions today, so who do you want to answer? Yeah. Or we were super clear, crystal clear, and you understood everything. Oh, no. Yeah, go ahead, Charles. So when you're actually getting all these keywords you tagged, are you also looking at some connectors, like the what if, or words between, to understand what the query is? So do I have to say a specific words with the names of the columns? No, no. So when you are training with .ai, you're going to send them like a message, a sentence, and you are only tagging the word you really need. You could actually say what is a question, a word, and I needed to have the intent. But first, when you start a question, so like top five products for revenues. So this here, revenues. So here, when I started to train the wheat.ai, I created the old sentence, and then I'm going to say, I'm going to create an intent. So the intent is what the user wants to achieve. So for me, it was a top count multiple whatever, like it can be whatever you want. It was a top question. It was really something I was using for the processing of the result. And then, I train because I use several sentences and say, you know what? After the top, there is a number. So I tagged in. I say that it's a wheat number. It's a wheat. If it starts with wheat, it's a built-in entity. So he found it really quickly. And then I say product is something that I use for, has a dimension. Revenues is something that I use as a measure. And because I'm going to do it several times, it's going to understand that the five after the top is something that I want. And then with Wittea, you can define some roles. So if you have, let's say, two, top five, top 10, you can actually give them a role. Or for example, if you want to have, like say, three bathrooms and two bedrooms, something like that, you want the two and three because you're going to do a processing on this. And you're going to explain and create some roles and say, this one with bathroom is going to be related to bathroom number, and this one with bedroom is going to be related to bedroom numbers. So you don't have to tag everything. It's with all the sentences that you're going to create what you want. Did I answer your question? And just so you know, in term of time, this was pretty straightforward. So overall, if I removed all the understanding of the product or on product and all the processing and the difficulties I could have faced, trying to integrate it to our products, I think you can use Wittea and React Simple Chatbot really quickly. And it can be between three to four weeks. You can have a good chatbot that works easily, super fast. So that's a good thing. You can also, in Wittea, so I use the web app. But what you can do also, if you have use cases, there is an API for the Wittea. So you can actually use an API and fit it with a file. Like, you define in a file like a CSV. You can define this word is going to be this kind of entity. So entity one. And this word is going to be entity two. And you're going to send it to the Wittea through the API. And it's going to be just done the same way. Just a different way to train the app there. Hello? Yeah. So instead of asking what products has the highest revenue, if I ask what item earns the most, is the chat box, is the library that you're using the Wittea simple React chat box, are they going to answer this kind of question? All the processing on the question, you want the chatbot to answer, you are going to build it. So if I didn't, I could. I mean, if I had this question, Wittea, because I trained it, might actually understand all the word I want. But if I didn't do any processing on my part, you're not going to see anything. But it's going to work. Like, if you train the app correctly, and if you do the processing of your entities, of your object, and of your answer, everything is going to work. OK. And also, in terms of the OL app, OL app, the three-dimensional stuff, how does it work? Like, there are time, there are products, and the other dimension was called that. But yeah, can you just talk more about the OL app? So you want me to talk more about OL app, right? Oh, yes. For instance, the demo we were playing with, if you can come back to the chat box, try to solve the slide, if you can drag the data explorer. And also, the local house, the first page you showed us, is that the database, how it looks like on this one? Is it really the? I don't know. Which one? Which one are you talking about? Let me ask you your first question first. So what you see here, OK, all this, if you can expand some of them, all those are called dimensions. In the example I was showing in the PowerPoint, just for human brain, if you show more than three dimensions, I don't even know how to write it down, because it's impossible. However, here, we are in a world with several dimensions. Every time you process a record from your data, that record should, I'm talking here about generic of OL app, every record should contribute to all what we call levels. So every record should have a product category, product name, date, salesperson, et cetera, et cetera. If you remember what you did in school, you have XYZ, three axes. If you have a point in that space, you need to contribute to every axis. This is how OL app works. You need to have a coordinate on every axis. Here, you're not even seeing the data we played with. Maybe you can do a drill through in the active. It's your fault, you're bringing me there, OK? The lady showed us, she added, what do you call them, right? What are your item? So when she add that item, how does the three dimensions were defined for that? There are more than three dimensions. So what I showed on the PowerPoint, that was just to introduce the concept. Here, we moved far from there. We have something that looks more the realities. When you add a what-if scenario, you do exactly the same thing. You need to bring the same type of data. I don't want to dive there. You take the original data, and you move a pointer only with the changing data. So we change only the price. We don't duplicate the data. We know that we changed only the price. So you still have the same universe of data. You still have the same attributes that contribute to each of axes. Sorry, it looks a bit strange. But usually, when I train people on OLAP, I spend four or five days to train the whole thing. So I have a short window to introduce that. But see it that way. And anything, if you want to understand the OLAP in a quick way, if I give you a table and I tell you, give me all the aggregates, give me the sum of an amount by product, what will you do? You will do a group buy. So OLAP does a group buy by everything. Every level you see here, every level, every axis, does a group buy. This is what the database is doing behind the scene. So it's not a relational database. It's a multidimensional database. Every group buy is already materialized. This is why, when you come and you query, you're super fast. And especially, if you are in memory, you are faster than others. Hope that makes sense. Yeah, any other question? And the first page. You mentioned local host there? Yes, this page. Because everything is running on the laptop there? That's it? What do you want me to show? I don't know. What's the question, actually? OK, if you come back to the slides, there is a front end, the presentation layer, which is, or maybe you show the Dev console, the Chrome Dev tools. Yeah, it's very mental as in production. The product is there for the past 10 years, most of big financial institutions are using it. So the product is there. The database is there for the past 10 years plus. The UI is there as well. Only this chatbot work is our prototype. This is experimental. But the product is, if you want to buy it, please say hi and let's discuss. If you have any issue related to aggregation, we'll be happy to sell you that. I'm not the salesman, but I will send you our MD. However, if you see here local host, because we're running everything locally, the back end, press the front end. So this is the only reason why you see a local host. We have time for one more good question. I imagine you would take this product to your customers. Would you sit down with them and train the NLP with them? Or would you teach them how to train the WIT AI themselves? Or would you listen to their queries and then you train WIT AI for them? With this product?  Do you want to integrate a chatbot for you, for your own project? Or if I have the chatbot in our solutions? What is exactly your question? I'm just wondering how I work with new customers who want to make new questions for the bot. Would you arrange the training of WIT AI? Would you do it yourself, or would they do it? Would they talk to WIT AI? Since it's a prototype, right now we can do anything. But I think the easiest part would be for us to, we have a kind of a system to know what the user wants. Ticket system. So with this, they could say, hey, you know what? They're missing some question. I have this question I would like to ask to the chatbot. And we can take care of it. But since, as I mentioned, you can train WIT AI remotely by submitting, maybe you have like a big CSV file. So then potentially you might build kind of interface so that they can drop the new questions and then send it to the backend to keep training. Or you train on daily basis. Or maybe you have all the errors. You get your logs and you see what's wrong and you keep training till you reach a decent level. Yeah, you can get the logs and say, these people ask this kind of question and that hasn't been answered yet. So we can use it to build a new question, train the model. But actually, it's not actually the most difficult part. It's not training the WIT AI. It's more the processing of creating the MDX for more side using our library, creating the MDX from the sentence. Because actually, from WIT AI, I'm just receiving some words. I'm receiving a design object I can show you here. So for this one, I don't know if you see here, this object is what I receive from WIT AI. And I'm going to receive just a normal object with dimension. There are two object in it. So this one is a region. This one is a country. I also receive a measure. But you see, I just receive words. So even with this, I need to extract these words and create my whole MDX, which is going to look like this at the end. Quite not funny to see like this. Oh, maybe I can. Yeah, here. So yeah, so at the end, from this object, where I received only words, I'm going to create this whole thing. Thank you. OK, is it a quick one? Because I don't want to take too much time for the next one. Hello. You mentioned that the server runs on Java. And what's the role of the Java here? It looks like it can push everything to the data. So the database itself is running in Java. I didn't hear the question. I don't know if you're OK. So yeah, the server is running and written in Java and is doing all the heavy lifting for you. The UI remains only the presentation layer. Even in this case, the case of the chatbot, the UI is the one talking to VTI, getting the words, and then doing some logic to bridge the sentence you're writing, the result coming from VTI, with MDX. However, the heavy lifting is coming from the server side. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about that. But the server side runs in memory. We run on servers of like 4 terabytes of RAM. This is something that you can easily get even on AWS or equivalent. So you can have a huge server that is leveraging all your cores to provide the query as fast as possible. We are, we try to remain being in memory. We try to remain in the world of second seconds. So you send your query, you receive the result. There is no heavy lifting done on the UI. So yeah, the Java side is doing most of the job and is interpreting the MDX, getting the dices, answering you. So this is what we literally do. So every query goes to the server. Here's the server comes back. Of course, in this use case, the server is why you see the local host. The server is running locally. The UI is deployed locally. But the VTI is deployed somewhere, I don't know where. Yeah, in the cloud. So this is how this prototype is made, if you're wondering where things are. But things that could have been done differently. Like I could just get the sentence, send it to the server, and then the server could have asked for VTI and do some more check than what I'm doing. And then, I mean, it's just a choice. And it was easier to do it on the front end part. And the goal, again, the goal of this prototype is we wanted to see how complex is to do a chatbot. We're not coming from that world. We're more from the analytics world, kind of, let's say, big data slash BI. We wanted to see how can we do our own. Because like chatbot and AI and all that stuff is part of the high port. You listen a lot, but we wanted to do something ourselves to see how can we make it work end to end. And by what Lisa showed, you can do the same with SQL database if you want. You can bridge. You can take VTI, you have the component, and then you can do the same thing by translating everything in SQL if you want to. Thank you very much for the talk today. Thank you. Thank you.


Garrett, was there one particular point tonight where you felt really locked in? There wasn't one, I mean not really. I thought that when they pressured us we fell into a couple sequences I thought were just a bit predictable and they were able to fight some pitches off 0-2 and the score was relatively tight at that point and we had to make some pitches to Ramos who has hit me quite well in the past and that was that was probably the most I needed to be locked in right there. You were dominant once again when you look at the outing as a whole what stands out to you the most what are you most pleased with? I think just the execution of the game plan and you know being able to just stay focused on cold night and some long innings.  When you're executing the way you did tonight and players come to swing the bat like they did a near flawless victory how satisfying is a win like this for everyone inside the clubhouse? Yeah it was it was a nice win tonight you know we got in you know road trip flight yesterday quick turn around tomorrow you know so it was important that we came out and got off on the right foot you know because we got we got a quick turn around tomorrow and and so it's not easy to adjust to you know those kind of scenarios really quick and and so you know we executed our game plans on both sides of the ball tonight. Jake Siner please unmute. Hey Garrett the numbers for you over the first month of the season that's some of the best performance you've had statistically the strikeouts in the walk to particular I'm just curious if it feels to you like you're pitching the best you ever have so far and you know what the confidence level is that you can kind of keep that going as the season goes on? I mean I came out with a goal to try to settle in a bit earlier this year and I think I'm on the right track to do that you know it's there's still still making some still making some adjustments you know have to have to stay sharp in terms of you know counter punches and and and you know continuing to continuing to find all four corners of the strike zone so but I'm certainly I'm certainly pleased you know how we've how we've gotten off to and we've put ourselves in a good position to continue to get stronger.


Hello and welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, how can we engage learners who lack confidence and motivation? And I'm in conversation with Rachel Thin. Hello, my name is Rachel Thin. I currently work in a special provision for SEMH needs and I'm an outreach teacher, so my role is to go into mainstream schools and support staff when children are presenting with different SEMH needs. So-called challenging behaviour, distressed behaviour, things like that, so I go into schools and try and support staff to help these children to cope and to thrive in their schools. I've taught in mainstream for about 18 years and then I moved to specialist setting and then I've been doing outreach for six years. And I'm currently writing a book called Behaviour Barriers and Beyond and yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell. I'm also mum to two lovely girls. So you are working on the topic that everybody needs to hear about right now. So thank you so much for coming along and talking today for the podcast and I hope there'll be some practical ideas we can share and also some perceptions we can challenge. I think that there's a bit of that to be done. So our episode question, our kind of jumping off point if you like is, how can we engage learners who lack confidence and motivation? So do you want to maybe just speak to that for a little bit and get us going and see where this takes us? I think the first thing to do is kind of be curious and to wonder why they're lacking motivation and confidence. And I think the main way to do that is through adult child relationship and to form those relationships. I think that's the biggest resource in schools and it's what sometimes kind of gets missed in the day to day running of everything. Yeah, why are they not motivated? Why are they finding things difficult? And the more we can find out about what's actually challenging them the better. So is it, are they lacking a skill? Are they lacking some understanding? Is there something else going on at home? There's so many reasons aren't there, but it's that why? And once we know why then we can obviously put in steps to support them and to help motivate them more. But yeah, I think that was what struck me when you asked the question originally is like why are they lacking motivation? And then once we know why then obviously we can talk about kind of steps for each. So we're almost jumping at one point. We're trying to tackle the behavior that we're seeing whereas actually we should be working out what's the cause for the behavior in the first place. Yeah, the behavior is communicating something, isn't it? Is it communicating distress? Is it communicating anxiety? Are they lacking a skills and they need a bit more help? Do they need tasks broken down? That I think. And then once you know why then obviously the steps can be put in to help and it might be scaffolding the task, chunking it down, giving them little steps to help. If it's anxiety, putting in those little steps to get them there, easing those anxieties, things like that. So how do we find out why we're seeing this behavior? What are the mechanisms that you use for working out the answer to that question? I mean quite a lucky position I guess when I go into schools because I can just observe that one child and I can focus on that one people which in a class of 30 you don't always have the luxury of doing that I can often pick up on, you know, are they looking around the room? Are they seeking help? Are they distracted about something environmental going on? Is it something sensory? So I think if you have that luxury observing the child and talking to the child, talking to the once you've got that relationship as a teacher or an adult in school, I wonder what that was like for you. You found that so difficult and just being curious about what is going on for the child and then to help. So then if they need help with the task, we can break it down into chunks. We can put those supports in, we can give them the knowledge and the visual supports that they need. If it's something else going on, we can give them the outlet to express their feelings and to talk. And it's all those, I wonder, as Louise Bomber would say, all those I wonder scripts and wondering about the child and being tentatively curious about what's going on for them. And do you find that children are quite happy to engage with you on these kinds of questions when you ask them? You know, if you do become curious and you begin to wonder why these things are happening and why you're seeing the behavior that you're seeing, are they up for chatting about that or can this be difficult? In my role, I tend to work with the staff and give them the skills because I obviously have got no relationship with the child and I think the relationship is so, so important. So I would talk to the staff and give them the tools to do that rather than me doing it. Because I think me going in and, yeah, like you say, why would they talk to some stranger coming into school? So, yeah, I would give the staff those tools to have those conversations and then they can take it on a longer term rather than me kind of dipping in and dipping out again. So, yeah, that's my role to give the staff the tools to then carry that on. So who is the best at having these conversations with the child? Is it the teacher or a support member of staff, the parents and carers get involved? Who has these conversations and gets curious and helps to find the why? I think anyone who's got a really good relationship with the child really, ideally someone in school, yeah, support staff, the teacher, if they've got time, it's so, so important. And I say if they've got time, everyone needs to make time to build relationships and be curious about the child's needs. And I think that's the foundation that we can then build on for the learning. So, yeah, anyone who can build a relationship with the child, but mainly that kind of small team of key adults within the school would be ideal. And talk to you about some of the things that you see. So it seems like understanding why we're seeing the behavior is really important. And you've mentioned a couple of times things around skills or confidence or anxiety that might underpin why we're seeing what we're seeing. Are those the things that you're most commonly seeing and what should we be maybe looking out for? Because I think it's important that we learn to ask the question. But having some idea of what might be the motivations and the drivers here is presumably quite helpful for those adults. I think for children I support or for staff I support, it's those big behaviors that it's coming out as generally. So the so-called challenging behavior, which I would like to reframe as distressed behavior. Or overwhelmed behavior or dysregulated behavior, just something a bit more positive than challenging. But yeah, by the time I get involved, it's generally coming out in those big behaviors where things are being thrown, the people are leaving the room, the inappropriate behaviors that we see in school and more and more. That's by the time I get there. But I think we need to get in earlier, don't we? And give the teachers those skills to manage those behaviors a bit earlier and to know that the behavior is communicating something and to find out what that is. So there's a couple of things there. One I think is around really unpicking that idea around challenging behavior and what the issues are with that term and why we need to look at reframing it. And then that question of behavior is communication. So maybe if we start with the idea of challenging behavior, and that's a commonly used term and one that I'm picking up on the subtle cues that you maybe don't really like it. I think if we change the way we view the behavior and see it as communication, see it as communicating distress, it's more easy to be compassionate. It's easier to kind of have that empathy that we need when helping the children and supporting them and putting measures into, I think if you've got the relationship and you've got that empathy and the behavior automatically improves. So yeah, I think renaming and reframing how we talk about it is kind of a step in the right direction and being more positive in how we support, maybe. Yeah, so you think that we should be talking about seeing distress rather than challenging behavior. Is that right? Or are there other terms that you find helpful? Distress, sometimes it's overwhelm, sensory overwhelm, some form of emotional dysregulation, I would say. And is a compassionate and kind of kind and caring response. I completely hear what you're saying that if we see this behavior as a child who is distressed or overwhelmed that perhaps it's more obvious to us how we should respond kindly with care, with compassion, with empathy. Is that always the right response? You're talking about kids who are throwing chairs across the room and saying we need to be kind. Is that what you're saying? Is that the right response? I think we always have to be kind and empathic, don't we? Obviously in the moment it needs to stop. So I'm not saying there doesn't need to be consequences or boundaries. Obviously children need structure and boundaries, but maybe after the incident how we react, that reacting within relationship, time in rather than time out. Giving them, for an example, there was a pupil who was throwing chairs on a daily basis, the class were getting evacuated. And he was obviously taking up an awful lot of adult time. He was getting a lot of SLT time and it was taking about an hour to calm down outside on scooters, bikes, things like that. So we were looking at the need of the child and obviously he got an awful lot. He got a lot of task avoidance and he got an awful lot of adult time. We were just talking about giving what he needs but without him having to escalate the behaviors. So in the mornings we gave him some adult time with his favorite SLT member, playing games, building relationship, doing fun things, going out on the scooters with a timer. Then he went into class and the behaviors reduced because he wasn't having to escalate his behaviors to get those needs met. I don't know if that's kind of answering your question or not, but it's kind of how can we get those needs met proactively without him having to escalate or without them having to escalate to get them. Does that make any sense? It does make sense, preventing the behavior rather than simply managing it, I suppose. Understanding what's the cause and consequence here, what's in it for the child, behavior anyway and therefore how can we meet that need without the behavior kind of being a necessary part of that cycle. I think that's what I understand. Yeah, that's what, yeah. Trying to see what they're communicating by their behavior and putting that in a more appropriate way. That tends to work, but obviously in the heat of the moment, they need to be bound. I can see you're angry, but chairs are not for throwing. Yes, and when does the need of the individual child kind of stop? I guess I have a question here around, a member of staff who might have 30 children who they have a duty of care towards and you're working with one of them. When do they need to trump the needs of the other 29 and at what point do we have to say, well, we maybe need to do what's not optimal for one in order to keep the others safe or calm or engaged or what have you. How do we make those kinds of decisions? Well, we always have to keep the others safe, don't we, and engaged. And I think by looking at those behaviors and putting in a plan proactively, we were kind of the other children were at the heart of that as well, because he was taken out in the morning, he was having his needs met with the child so the class were all settled. He was out of the picture, having all his needs met with the relationship and I guess it was a sensory need, the scooting and being, you know, getting energy out. And then he was more able to come back in class more settled rather than escalating. So obviously the needs of the masses must be taken into account and all those children need to be safe, don't they? So definitely. And how much of this is the responsibility of the adults around the child? So I'm a big Paul Dix fan and when the adults change, everything changes. Absolutely. That kind of thing. But then how much of this is also about a child's understanding of self and their responsibility for themselves and you know, whether that's about self-regulation or asking for help or whatever else it might be. And then also how much of it is about the understanding and support of their peers as well. Because presumably like in this example, if the other children were able to, I don't know, recognise early warning signs or understand a bit about what was going on for this particular child, that might have a big impact for everybody involved. Yeah. And a lot of what we do is helping the child to begin to spot. So starting with co-regulation, but helping the people begin to spot those early warnings that, oh, I can see your fist of clenched and your head's gone down. I wonder if you need to go for a walk. I wonder if we can go and do some drumming in the hall or things like that. So yeah, getting them to begin to spot those early warning signs. And yeah, that's interesting. What you said about getting other children to spot them too. Yeah. I think the more we can do about emotional regulation, the better, because we don't always understand. And I think I'm still learning, even now, what, you know, take, when I've been doing this work, think, oh yeah, I've just taken a deep breath. And I didn't, I don't know if I really knew I was doing it. So the more we can kind of voice and model what we're doing to regulate and help children understand what they're doing, given those skills. Yeah. I can see your foot tapping. I wonder if you're getting a little bit frustrated. Let's go and do this and come back to it. Or let's break this task down into smaller steps for you. And spot those signs and help. It can be a whole class discussion, can't it? Ask or we do like the zones of regulation, but it's a whole class discussion of what you do with the different zones and how you can use those strategies to regulate yourself. Or allow yourself, if necessary, to get back into that zone where you're able and willing to learn. Absolutely. And do you find that with the children who, you know, from whom we are seeing sort of more, I don't want to say, challenging behavior, just, responses or whatever is our appropriate way, where we're, you know, it's more difficult to work with them. And they are finding things more difficult. Are there kind of, one of the things I'm hearing quite a bit at the moment is about children who've got perhaps undiagnosed needs in terms of special or additional need. Or where there might be some underlying trauma, for example, that's gone either unknown about or unsupported. Is that, so firstly, does that speak to your experience? Are you seeing that too? And secondly, how important is it for us to actually do that kind of job therefore of identifying, identifying, diagnosing, or do we just need to treat each child individually? We definitely need to treat each child individually. Yeah, it's not, I don't go in and label or diagnose. Obviously there's, forgetting needs met, that people have found that useful. But I think, we need to kind of, teach all children those skills and, yeah, look at where the child's coming from, look at, because they might have some, you know, something that's going on that we don't know about and we'll never find out about something that's triggering them, that they might not even know what it is that's triggering something. So I think, yeah, definitely treat all children individually. Give them those skills they need to regulate, to calm, and do this all through, it's through good relationships, good modelling. Absolutely. You're writing a book at the moment. I am. Tell me about your book. So Behaviour Barriers and Beyond, which I already love, because it is alliterative and anyone who's ever been to any of my training will know that I do this even without meaning too often. So I love the title. Tell me about the book. So the book is, it came about because, I basically thought, I'm telling people this all the time, let's write it all down. So it's basically what I do in my jobs. There's a general chapter about behaviour and reframing the behaviour, talking about general kind of behaviour management strategies, and positive behaviour management that teachers will need to implement. So yeah, strategies and at the end of each chapter, there's a strategy checklist as a quick reminder that the aim was is to get a bit for everything to all be in one place, that people that teachers and education staff can pick up really practically and run with ideas that I've found to be working in mainstream schools and specialist settings, but supporting those children very, very quickly. It doesn't take an awful lot of time to implement things like that. So Behaviour, and then the following chapters are chapters that I'm having, I deal with quite a lot. So when you talk about labelling, there is a chapter on autism, there's a chapter on PDA, ADHD, fetal alcohol, spectrum disorder, sensory processing. So the aim is for it all to be in one place for teachers to pick up very quickly and then signposting them on once they've read a particular chapter if they want to go further research. So I've kind of signposted them on as well. So yeah. How are you feeling? Is it going well? Oh, I'm absolutely loving writing it. Yeah, it's brilliant. I love it. I keep going through moments of absolute panic and what have I done? And why am I doing this? And you have very kindly agreed to write the four word for me. It's one of my greatest pressures in life when people ask me to write four words for their books. It's a thing that people do ask me more now than they used to. And I feel like it's such a privilege because this is your baby that you've poured everything into. I get the joy of being, A, one of the first people to read it, which is always my advice. I hope you like it. I'm sure I will. And B, I get to kind of help it land if that makes sense. I think that, I don't know. I don't know how much people always read four words and I find they're sometimes a bit boring, but when I write them I try to do them from the heart and to think about what is the ding that this book could have in the universe. And that's kind of my starting point. So thank you for asking me to do that. I was so excited. I did a little dance when you said you. Well, I'm excited too. You said when we were like in the the pre-podcast sort of chat, you sent me some info. You said that the writing the book caused quite a lot of self-reflection and looking back at your own kind of travels through life and stuff. I wonder if that's something that you're happy to kind of touch on and talk about. I think your own journey, if it's one that you're happy to talk about a little bit is interesting and yeah, I think probably that's what you do. Yeah, it has made me very self-reflective writing this and I think as I've learned different things I've kind of reflected on myself. I guess the biggest thing is that I was situational should we call it mute when I was at university and before. So I spent my university years absolutely terrified of talking to anyone but definitely in a seminar or in a lecture I don't think I spoke at all and I think once I got made to speak by a lecturer who asked me a question how dare he but I remember that absolute terror and my heart was pounding and my face went red and I could almost feel and I didn't know it at the time but I could always feel that my brain kind of shutting down and I could not think what to say and I was panicking then about an hour later I thought oh I should have said that but yeah, I remember just being absolutely paralyzed and unable to speak so it kind of amazes me now that I go into it still terrifies me and I'm pretty terrified even just chatting to you here so I do still have those feelings but I go and give conferences to loads of people and I give training to groups of adults but I think that's the biggest thing for me is overcoming that kind of absolute anxiety and terror of talking and it's taken an awful lot of time to be able to do it I remember my first job when I was moved to a nursery coordinator and I was asked to speak to a group of parents and the horror when my head teacher asked me to speak to a group of parents I know and it was awful. I stood there hiding behind a piece of paper that was shaking and yeah it was terrifying and I think that anxiety helped me to kind of break things down for pupils to think about what would help and how we can kind of help pupils to get through that and relating it to it doesn't have to be about anxiety but breaking tasks down breaking things down into really simple steps because what helped me was tackling things very very gently taking a step by step approach so I would if I knew I had to present then I would talk to myself, talk to the mirror I would over prepare make sure that I knew everything there was about the subject and more and then I would talk to the mirror and then I talked to my husband and then I talked to a small group and then I talked to a bigger group and then I then I would be able to do it in the setting that it had to be in but it was definitely breaking it down yeah and the other thing that worked for me somewhere else so not talking but I was terrified of putting my face in the water and I learnt to scuba dive so taking it out of out of my comfort zone elsewhere I think gave me the confidence then to be out of my comfort zone in this terrifying sorry so you were putting your face in the water so you decided to learn to scuba dive it was a very complex decision it was a personal challenge I was terrified of it in my face was it a conscious decision? No it was probably nagging from my husband who was desperate to scuba dive so we learnt to dive in Spain and then on honeymoon we did like two but then we moved to Malaysia for five years and each time I got a bit more confident and then we did the rescue diver so yeah it was it probably wasn't a conscious decision going oh I need to get rid of my fears let's do that it was oh I succeeded in that I maybe I can succeed elsewhere so it's almost like you could learn those skills in one setting and apply them to another and I think that maybe there's something very practical there for yeah staff or parents who are working with a child who's very anxious about school so it's actually picking maybe another bit of their life that feels a little bit less low stakes and tackling perhaps a fear there might be a way in from what you're saying you know yeah I thought well if I can do this I can do anything if I can scuba dive and not drown then surely I can talk in front of a group of people Do you find that having had that history is that something that you talk to students about are they aware of this in you or do you just does it just inform your practice quietly I think it just quietly informs my practice I talk to staff about it when I've talked to staff in staff training about it yeah when I bring it up it definitely spikes my anxiety levels because I'm talking about about it but yeah I have linked it to like the 5 point scale and things like that I've linked it to stress levels within my training and talked about it then but I haven't talked about it with students I've talked about the diving with students and overcoming fear but yeah not because I wouldn't but just because it hasn't arisen I think I'm hugely interested by mutism I've done a couple of podcasts on it already and explored it a bit with people and I've found it very interesting learning more about it and how it's been recategorized as an anxiety disorder and actually it's really informed a lot of my work and understanding of self so I have and I've mentioned it in other podcasts where it's only really through learning about mutism that I've suddenly had like penny drop moments of like oh yeah all those weeks when I was forced to do group therapy when I was an inpatient and I didn't speak that yeah that's an anxiety response and like it feels quite obvious now looking back but at the time I don't think I even knew it was happening I just was in complete start or freeze I can't do this like mode I don't think I knew what it was I think I thought I was shy it's only looking back I thought oh yeah that was my brain shutting down I was absolutely in flight and I think the other interesting thing there is you saying and I don't want to make you feel more anxious than we need to so we can move on but that thing of that when you start talking about it that it provokes those feelings and I've I've got myself into this real muddle when I'm public speaking that I talk I teach a lot about communication and I it's going to happen now I have this really awful cycle that started happening a couple of years ago and it perpetuates that when I start talking about communication I lose the ability to communicate completely and I'll find I'm on a stage and suddenly I have nothing and those fears that you know I don't have any fear of public speaking that doesn't worry me at all but those fears that many people have about public speaking about you know there's 200 people in the room and you go completely but it actually happens to me pretty much any time I start talking about communication these days inconvenient say the least yeah I have a great strategy for it now though and that thing we learn all the time don't mean I think when we practice the things that we we preach I basically now have like a little toolbox of different strategies that I find helpful to teach people sort of regulation type strategies or breathing strategies and I find that if ever I'm beginning to feel panic rising or I've lost my words I just have scripts that I go to and I just teach people these things and it calms me down and it calms them down and then we move on but yeah I guess my I just find it interesting that you're saying that talking to people about it makes you yeah about that anxiety makes you anxious yeah it sparks all those all those feelings that I had before and I do I kind of massage my palms a lot and I didn't realise that it's a sensory thing but it's only me and I get that rushing feeling of anxiety and that's what that is but it's only since kind of reflecting and doing this that I've realised so we need to teach the children those do you teach them early don't we because I didn't know and I used to feel sick before school every day and I didn't know why and you know that was anxiety what do you think would it help so it sounds like for you maybe things got steadily sort of more challenging to the point where at university you were finding it very difficult to engage what do you think you know if you're able to plant yourself now to support the staff that perhaps helped you at school or university what would you have told them what could have made a difference I think if they could have recognised it for what it was not just being shy or being defiant because I wasn't being defiant I was desperate to see and all my assignments you know all my written assignments were fine I engaged and I engaged in everything that I was asked to do unless it involved speaking so I think if someone had recognised it or I had recognised it which I didn't and that there was something that could be I thought it was just me I didn't realise there was something that could be done to overcome that I thought this is me and this is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life I think maybe if someone had said all right okay so what can we do to make it better and do those little steps so okay so tomorrow I'm going to ask you this question we can prepare what sort of things could you answer I think I was terrified of getting it wrong and making a fool of myself so that kind of escalated so if someone had been beside me and said okay well you know this is the right you know this is an answer you could give you know this is this and broken it down tomorrow I'm going to ask you and then you can and I was prepared for it and maybe I could have spoken if I'd rather than it out the blue and just shocking me I think that yeah small steps to prepare for it chunking it down maybe I could have just spoken to the lecturer first then to appear then to a smaller group then to the whole group maybe if it had been broken down in that way I might have I might have just disappeared from it well maybe but I think what you're saying is that's exactly the approach we would hope to take isn't it is that you know building I always talk about ICANN cycles so building up cycles of things that we can do no matter how tiny those steps are and yeah and building on those successes what did happen in the end I know you said that obviously the scuba diving and the realisation that you can do that you can do other things but was there a kind of moment when things changed was this a gradual thing um I think it was a gradual thing there's the speaking in front of people do you mean I think that it was a gradual thing because it just kind of I had to do it for interviews you had to present and I would have not got any jobs so I had to do it it came out of a need but the way I did do it was very very slowly talking you know over preparing and presenting to a small group or one person first and a small group first then and is there a day that girls like you because you know the kinds of kids that maybe people have come to listen or what's the podcast today about are more the kinds that we've referred to earlier who are you know kind of throwing chairs or where they're essentially they they're more difficult for us to manage in a classroom situation for whatever reason children who are kind of maybe quietly disengaged for whatever reason but that are producing the work and not causing any trouble I fear that sometimes they just pass by under the radar and that they don't really get much connection with people and I'm really deeply worried about those children right now and I think there's going to be more of them following the pandemic where they've had very quiet life for a long time and just wonder what your kind of thoughts are on that whether yeah whether your thoughts match mine and it's fine if they don't and what do we do about it absolutely I think there's a real danger of those very very quiet pupils being missed and I definitely was missed because the work was produced I would never seek help so yeah and I think the more we can be aware that even though they're not doing these big behaviors that those pupils need need support those children need support and for adults to engage with them I was talking to someone the other day actually and she was talking about reading with some really really quiet children and we were talking about little steps that she could do to put in to just kind of give them that voice and building up that relationship they have got a means of expressing those feelings and but yeah they're definitely in a danger of being missed because who are you going to go to? You're going to go to the one who's throwing the chairs or you're going to go to the one who's sitting in the corner doing their work yeah and that's the thing I quite often myself thinking back to when I did my first day training and I remember the learning as a six year old for the first time about first aid I used to go to Badgers with St John's and for some reason it just really stuck in my mind that you know if you found yourself at a scene of a big accident that would be people who were screaming out for your help but you had to ignore them because actually they were okay and it was the ones that were quiet that you had to go to and I kind of feel like maybe it's the same in a classroom but maybe I'm over extrapolating that's a good analogy we did yeah how do we miss how do we go to those ones who might get missed and we need to form relationships with them don't we and I think building self-esteem as well telling people what they're doing well especially those quiet ones that they're doing really really well because that's helped me as well I work in a really supportive setting and my outreach lead before me was just amazing at telling me what I was doing well and building on that and I think if we can do that for our pupils build on what they already do but just build that self-esteem and help them know what they're doing well we need to be told I think and how do we do that not obvious I mean some children there might not be anything that when we kind of look in there might not be any obviously good things we might hear all the bad things particularly for someone that you who's being brought in because you know this child is causing us a problem we need help how do we find the good and I always start with tell me what he's good at tell me what she's tell me what her strengths are tell me what she likes tell me what you get there there's always something good and I think it gets missed in this negative spiral sometimes and for those quiet children let's not maybe go oh you're sitting really nicely and quietly maybe that's not what they need praising they need praising for other things that they're doing well but yeah definitely fine even if it's the smallest thing oh you've picked up your pencil I can see you're ready to write now catch them those little steps of success we've got to catch them being good and do they say 10 positive interactions for every negative so we have to find those positives and turn it around and I think just turning the language around sometimes just gets out of that negative spiral and gets us more positive even if it's just the way we view a child I did say to a teacher once and it seemed to have got into this negative spiral but before the lesson I want you to think of 10 things that you really really like about this people things that she's good at things that she that you like about her things that she said that made you laugh just and before you go into the lesson I want you to think of those 10 positive things and I want you to praise her for every single one of them doing the lesson she was like oh okay but it just turned that negative spiral around and it more positive that's a really nice exercise actually both in terms of stop and focus on a child who might not have the kindest thoughts towards always but also in terms of literally building that relationship and that self esteem might have felt a little bit odd to the child do you think in that first instance if they weren't used to receiving that praise um yes maybe and praise is always sometimes difficult isn't it to take if you're not used to it um so yeah I think it was successful but yeah I get where you're coming from and sometimes we say put the praise a little bit less direct so just to post it on the desk and walk away sort of thing but if they do have trouble with praise but yeah I was trying to change the teacher's view of the pupil I love it I love it but actually particularly if there's become that negative relationship going on I think that's really important and you know I have occasionally found myself um because I'm not very good at not just saying what's in my head quite bluntly um but occasionally talking to a member of staff and going I don't think you like this child very much and actually being able to just tackle that and go we need to think about what what do you like about them because it's obviously quite a toxic relationship and if you don't like them it's going to be really really hard to to be the adult they need to enable them to thrive isn't it and they'll know won't they they'll pick up on this teacher doesn't like me and we do need to um sometimes bring out our Oscar winning performances of like but sometimes just turning our own perspective actually I've got this wrong I just it's easy isn't it to get into a negative spiral and just think all negative things about someone especially on a Friday afternoon when you've had it and you think that those behaviors are out to get you but you need to think underneath them and what's going on for that pupil and I think again kind of coming full circle to that idea of that what you're seeing is um sort of distress behavior child who is is experiencing for whatever reason some kind of trauma response in this moment can help us just to think about what is the response that they need from me as an adult right now even if it doesn't feel like they're the most natural place to go wow we've covered a lot Rachel in a short what um what kind of thought would you like to wrap up and close with what thought would you like to leave people with as we come to an end um I think uh I think let's should we go back to what we started with be curious wonder why the behaviors are happening or wonder why the children aren't motivated to go back to that question that we started with um I think if we if we kind of be curious we wonder why we build relationship then we can offer the supports that are needed but I think I think we need to to kind of understand the people and what's behind those those behaviors a bit more and then we can put in all the strategies to help