Everyone, welcome to the Business in Hawaii show. I'm Daelyn Yanagida, and I'm joined today by my co-host, John Strandberg, Hawaii Regional Manager at Pacific Digital Science. We are live from our home offices on Oahu, Hawaii. If you want to tune in live, we are at thinktechhawaii.com. And while there, please subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people. And our guests share with us their expertise, trials and tribulations while building successful businesses right here at home. In the thinktech studio today is Thomas Ray, owner of Square Barrels. If you haven't been to Square Barrels yet, it's an awesome restaurant and bar in downtown Honolulu. Very well known to the lunch and pahana crowd for their extensive beer on tap and other after-work delights. My favorite, of course, being the triple butterfly fries, the charcuterie platter, and mac and cheese. So I'm totally hungry right now. Thomas, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Hey, we wanted to roll into this segment by first learning a little bit about who you are. Why don't you tell us about yourself? All right, so I've been in Hawaii since 2006. The Navy brought me here initially. And then I went to HPU and got a degree in finance and worked in finance for a little bit and worked in restaurants and went back for my MBA, which I had never finished, but I'm still a couple of classes away. And then I left to go play rugby in New Zealand, got back from New Zealand, and now I'm here at Square Barrels. And that's my story. And you're sticking with it. That's my story, I'm sticking with it. Rugby, wow. Maybe, is there a rugby league in Hawaii? Yeah, so at most we have about 12 teams, but on average it's about six to eight. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, it's a good game, and it's a great community to be a part of. Nice. You know, I played football and I have to give rugby players extra credit because I got patted up, you guys don't. You're asking to do it? Thomas, John and I have been to Square Barrels and of course, I'm a huge fan of truffle fries, truffle butter fries, but why don't you tell us a little bit about Square Barrels and how, you know, what was the inspiration for Square Barrels and tell us about, you know, what your vision is for Square Barrels? So I came on initially right after I got back from New Zealand and my business partner, Hideo, he had set everything up prior and it was originally just a craft beer and burger joint and we had 24 taps and we had a lot of wine too, but the inspiration was the great pair of burgers and beers and bringing them together in an artisanal way, right? So we do a lot to make sure we have the best possible product. So we grind all the beef and house. Our recipes are pretty unique, some of them are inspired from the West Coast because we're both from the West Coast and others like develop over time, but the concept evolved, right? And we all love whiskeys, so then we started collecting more and more whiskeys to put behind the bar. And then as we grew, we developed our cocktail program to be competitive with the neighborhood because when we first started, we literally had no cocktail program and we were just gonna go burgers and beer and then everyone was asking for cocktails and so we had to adapt to the market. So you had a background in the Navy and then, of course, you played rugby. So where is being a restaurateur fall into that? How does that happen? When I was 13, I started working in my uncle's pizzeria. He went to law school at Hastings in San Francisco and when he got back from law school, for whatever reason, he decided he didn't wanna practice law and that he wanted to open up a pizzeria with his friend from high school. And so they did that and they were partners and then eventually my uncle took control of the restaurant. So since I was 13, I started working in restaurants and I had pretty low level jobs like dishwashing, helping make pizza dough, but I would sell pizzas in the fairy lines in Washington so I'd have a stack of like 10 or 12 pizzas and I would run up and down the fairy lines because the lines can go for miles and scream hot, fresh pizzas, ice cold drinks, 5.95 on pop and that was my first sales job and then I kind of always gravitated towards the front of the house and I worked in restaurants while I was in the Navy too. Wow, fantastic.  Tell me about it.  It was, I was there for a meeting with a client and I told Tom as I was coming and I said, I want the chicken sandwich. And he had the chef put it on today for me and it was absolutely delicious. When you put bacon and avocado in a sandwich with a piece of deep fried chicken on Texas toast, how do you go wrong with that? I don't know, it sounds pretty fantastic. But I do have to share this with you in the audience as I actually got some on my lips. I didn't know I was there. I stopped, went to the restroom, put my mask on because you have to walk to the restroom with the mask. And I came back and realized there's some sauce on my mask and now when I wear the mask for today, I smell sauce. That's awesome. I would want to smell sauce all day. Sauce. So John, I know you frequent quite a few eateries around town often and speaking of having to put on your mask, things have changed around town, haven't they? Yes, they have. So my company and I, we do work with a lot of restaurants and everyone's still not sure how much they can open. And that's one of the pitfalls of the rules is no one's quite sure what they can or cannot do. And I give Thomas a lot of credit for finding ways of making things work. That's why I support square girls a lot. He's like, he finds what works with it until someone says otherwise. It's almost like the model of ask for forgiveness over permission. And that's something that I always admired about him. He just goes for it until it means work. So Thomas, we've been open now for almost a week. Tell me about week one. What was that like? The first day was pretty overwhelming. We didn't really know what we were doing in terms of just how intense that was gonna be because when you don't do anything for two and a half months besides to go, you lose all those skills that go with working in a fast-paced restaurant. And when you work in a restaurant and you're a part of this community, it's not as easy as it looks. You have to multitask on a very high level to make sure all your orders are in a line. You're dealing with potentially angry customers and then you wanna make sure that you're doing all the steps of service to ensure the guests has a great experience. So it was a learning curve at first. And then we had to, the problem with our location is it's been built for the last five years on relationships. And so it's really a part of the downtown community. So when you see all these people who have been essentially locked away for two and a half months and they've been friends for years prior to square barrels or they met at square barrels, they're going to want to interact. So regulating the parties was a challenge for us because we don't want to do anything that's going to put our restaurant in a negative light first, but the restaurant community as a whole. So if there's a cluster of COVID that breaks out in a restaurant, to me that would just be devastating because we've always been adamant about doing this safely and we're going to continue to do it safely. So it was a challenge and we're going to continue to rise to that challenge. And we got it under control as far as reservations go now. And that initial being sequestered feeling has kind of worn off and people are like less aggressive when they come in now. It's like, hey, they've been to maybe one or two restaurants and it's like they know the routine.  Now it's been at least a couple of months. What did you see from your customers' reactions?  Are they looking for certain safety measures? From what I've seen, everyone's pretty comfortable with the situation and they're out because they're willing to take the risks that are associated with going out. And also we have had tremendously low numbers in Hawaii, so that adds to the feeling safe. The only issue that I saw with people being concerned about the safety was the delivery drivers. So like when the delivery service like Uber Eats and DoorDash, they had been going to restaurants for two and a half months that were completely empty. And so I think they were taken aback seeing so many people in a restaurant without masks. And so we got a couple of questions from them, like what are the laws, what's going on with this? And I just told them like, hey, they're part of a party, they're together, they don't have to wear their masks when they're sitting together. And then a comment was made, oh, well, I need to get out of here as soon as possible. But as far as people who came to the restaurant, there didn't seem to be any anxiety or trepidation about the experience. Nice. Hey, John, what have you been seeing out there? Pretty much the same. I mean, opening night, I was at square barrels on that Friday night and the parties were respectful of each other in the space to wear a mask and to walk to your table and to the restaurant and so on. But the people that were there at the restaurant, you already know they're risk takers because they want to go out and eat like me. And B, they didn't mind going through the extra steps. So that really says a lot about the people who are early adopters. They're setting the stage for future restaurant visits.  And the people who are there to serve you will actually take care of you and tell you what needs to get done. Hey, Thomas, I know for the past couple of months, we've, the media has been talking about the CARES Act and PPP and keeping people employed. How have you been able to use some of the government programs, PPP, CARES, IDLE, what have you, to maintain your staff? So the rules regarding the PPP changed pretty significantly from point A to point B. So initially it was eight weeks, you had to use your PPP money for 75% of employee wages and then 25% for additional expenses like rent and then utilities. And then those guidances have changed, I believe they're at 60, 40 now in terms of payroll to expenses. And now they've opened it up where it doesn't just have to be rent because the main issue with a restaurant is that we sell perishable products, right? And the main issue for us as a restaurant is we were in Alaminute Kitchen, everything's made from scratch. We grind our beef, like I told you, each burger is handmade. That's a significant process to get down and it's very tedious to do that, but we're, we did the best we could and we got as long story short, we did the best we could with the circumstances that we were given and we brought back our cooks and we used a lot of the PPP money to do renovations around the restaurant. So this beautiful wall behind me was repainted. We cleaned everything from top to bottom so you can't see it, but the ceiling actually took about three days to clean because we took each individual pile down and then we put them in our dishwasher which is extremely hot. So it gets them very clean and the ceiling is nice and bright and COVID free depending on what was worried about that. But yeah, we just did as many projects as we could and then we tried to minimize our loss in terms of food so ordering was a challenge, but we did the best we could and we're going to continue to fight and be a part of this community. I appreciate you sharing with us how Square Barrels and how you managed the time that we weren't able to be open. We're going to go to a short break, but when we come back I really am really interested in you spent your time, not just focusing on Square Barrels, but on the larger community and that initiative was Be Local Support Local. So let's go to a quick break and when we come back, I want to hear all about it. Perfect. This is Aloha, I'm Kisha King, host of Crossroads and Learning on Think Tech Hawaii. On Crossroads and Learning, our guests and I discuss all aspects of education here in Hawaii and throughout the country. You can join us for stimulating conversations to enrich and liven and educate. We are streamed live on Think Tech bi-weekly at 4 p.m. on Mondays. Thanks so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. Today in the studio, we have Thomas Ray, owner of Square Barrels in downtown Honolulu and my co-host John Strandberg with Pacific Digital Science. Hey, both of you running businesses that were impacted by the recent pandemic. I'd love to hear how business during that pandemic impacted both of you. So Thomas, I know that all the restaurants went to take out only and I think the community may not have a sense of how really, even though locals are patronizing businesses, how really our restaurant business was impacted? It was a significant impact. So we saw 80% revenue decline, which is terrible. So, but we did have some shining moments. It was tough at first and we all quit about four times during the entire process and we were just always there, whether it was my wife having a tough day and then I was like, hey, we gotta do this. We're not giving up no matter what, whether it was me who was going through my emotions and not wanting to do this. My chef was there for me and my wife and my business partner. So we all kept each other going through the entire process. Yeah, it was tough. We were just willing to fight it out because if I shuddered, then it would be a mental block for me that we were completely done and I didn't want to even risk that because once you shudder something, you're almost defeated. You're saying that's it. Yeah. John, in your line of business, you see, you have a ton of clients from different industries. How are they impacted? Well, I think our largest industry is impacted because of closed hospitality. Hotels are closed down so we lost a significant customer base there. Even restaurants have gone to take out models only and darken their screens because we provide the services to running our menu boards and so on. So they've gotten a little quiet and especially retailers have been hard as hit and our retailer partners have always been our front line of how we judge things and they're telling us, hey, can I pay my bill next month instead of this month? Kind of on the top of my head. But for us as a company, we just take it one degree a time. One foot forward to provide the board and we promise our customers will be there for them. I know that everybody in the state was impacted by the pandemic and how our state completely shut down. And so all of our families and our local businesses were impacted. And it was probably hard to focus on anything, but hey, what am I gonna do to make it through this time? But Thomas, what you did with your time was to become a voice for all local businesses and you created the local support local. Can you tell me about that program? Sure, so the concept came just looking at different economic data and I still believe we're in a significant amount of trouble because right now we're in this phase where the economy is kind of being short up by PPP money still as well as the additional money that people who are on employment are receiving from the $600 bonus CARES Act. I wouldn't call that a bonus, it's not fair to say that, but that's due to run out on July 31st and just walking around different neighborhoods. I've been in downtown for a long time, HPU graduate. I saw a line out the door for a subway, but across the street there was an Aloha subs and I know the owners. And I was like, why? I've never seen a line out the door for a subway, not since like subway first became prominent in like the late 90s, no one lines up for subway and this local business had maybe one customer. Then I was looking at other like large chains and just seeing fleets of cars that were just waiting to take delivery orders. And I just thought to myself like this has to change, we need to get the word out that even though people might think business is okay currently because they have the PPP money and whatever, it's a temporary fix right now. And our largest sector of our economy is tourism and without tourism, and I'm not suggesting we reopen tourism, we're gonna be in some deep trouble because there's a lot of secondary and tertiary businesses that thrive because of the tourism ripple effect. And until tourism returns even at one six, which would be 6,000 tourists per day, it's gonna be a long difficult road for small businesses. And I just wanted to get a simple message out that the B vocal part is if you are going and supporting local restaurants, tell people about it, tell people post about it on your social media and just come together as a community because no one in the history of the world has gone to New York City for a visit because they have the best Buka de Beppo in Times Square, which they do have a Buka de Beppo in Times Square. And I used to work for Buka de Beppo as a waiter. There's nothing wrong with Buka de Beppo, but people don't come to Hawaii for our chain restaurants. We have some of the busiest chains in the nation, I know Cheesecake Factory is one of the busiest chains in the nation, but they come for the character and the charm that our islands provide. And that's what our tourism is built off of. And we need to really foster and protect our local businesses because our culinary experience is gonna be defined by large chains if we don't. And the road is tremendously long. So that's basically in a nutshell why I did it. And then there's a different, I guess, question of how I did it if you wanna know. Well, that actually leads me into the question I was gonna ask you is how you did it. I got wind of it through the Chamber of Commerce before I heard it from you. Right, so to make something blow up on the internet, you either have to be a very influential person. Like, I hate to use this example, but we're gonna use Donald Trump, right? Anything he says on his Twitter people talk about, right? And I don't have that kind of marketing power, I don't. But what I do have is lots of different friends that have large enough networks in my own network where we could all come together and do a unified post with the unified message. So I tried to pick people in different sectors of our economy.  Actually, I think some barbers were on there, coffee shop owners, a real estate agent. So I knew that if we all posted simultaneously, that would cast a big enough reach to different people where it could have a large impact. And that's what we did and that's what I'm currently trying to do. So we started with 74 people. And then now the email list has grown to 420-ish, I believe. Yeah, and that's just people who have processed orders. That's not including people who've bought in shirts for their friends. So I think we're approaching, we're definitely in the sixes for how many t-shirts I've printed since this campaign began, which is fantastic. I know it's hard to show this, but is there a way to stand up a little bit? Can you see the rest of that shirt? Yeah. You can just be vocal. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I chose the color too because it fades nicely. So once this gets washed about 30 times, it's gonna fade into a really nice light green. So there's that effect to it. Yeah, I know I bought my shirt. I'll be wearing it Sunday because there's an event you have planned for this coming Sunday. Right, so for this Sunday, I want everyone to focus on local breweries. So Honolulu Beerworks, like a Hebrewing company, Beer Lab, Inu Island. There's so many great local breweries here and the brewery, I wouldn't call it a bubble, but the brewery scene culture in Hawaii really took off in 2015 when we opened. So that year, I think Beer Lab opened, Waikiki Brewing opened that year, Lonnie Kai Brewing opened that year, and it was pretty small prior to that. A lot of people think of Kona as a local brewery, but it's actually owned by Anheuser-Busch Embed. So, and there's nothing wrong with people who drink Kona, there's nothing wrong with that, but our focus is on local independent businesses that operate and live in Hawaii, where the money is gonna stay in Hawaii and be recirculated throughout our economy. Well, Thomas, I wanted to thank you for getting involved and getting people to be vocal to support our local businesses. And I knew this was gonna happen, but we are out of time, but I want you to be able to tell everyone how to get involved with Beer Vocal Support Local and how to get in touch with you because I know you have some pretty exciting things coming up in the near future too with a brand new restaurant. So how do people get in touch with you? So we have a Beer Vocal Instagram page that it's not like it's on there, right? And then you click on the website and then when you click on the website and order your shirts, you then submit your phone number and your email address. And I send out maybe two or three emails a week with, hey, this is what we're focusing on this week. Last week it was blight. Blight is a consequence of businesses shuttering. This week it's gonna be local breweries and I'd like to continue with that positive message instead of focusing on the negativity, focusing on like, hey, we have great coffee roasters in Hawaii. Here's a Lee E. Coffee in Chinatown. Here's Kai Coffee in downtown. We have a lot of positive... We have a lot of businesses that are doing great things and creating great flavors and then we have like just even dress shops like Vallejo. So it's, you don't have to buy the shirt to be a part of the movement. It's merely just a uniform. You can join the movement by hashtag and say Hawaii's businesses, hashtag be vocal Hawaii. That's it. That's all you have to do and use those hashtags with by supporting local businesses and then taking a picture of those businesses. Awesome. We would love to catch up with you again, maybe in a month or so and also to hear about your new restaurant that you have coming up soon. Unfortunately, we are out of time. I wanted to thank Thomas and my co-host, John Strandberg for joining me today in the studio and a big thank you to the production staff. If you would like to be a guest on the show, please like us, subscribe and leave a comment below. Business in Hawaii airs every other Thursday at 2 p.m. and we look forward to seeing you back soon again. Thank you so much.


Today, IOM celebrates the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and the encouraging progress that has been made over the past year to advance disability rights around the world. In June, the United Nations Secretary General endorsed the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy, which calls on the UN system to accelerate change on disability inclusion. And just a few weeks ago, the Interagency Standing Committee launched guidelines on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in humanitarian action. These are the first humanitarian guidelines to be developed with and by persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in collaboration with traditional humanitarian stakeholders. So what does this mean for IOM? The data shows us that persons with disabilities are among the most marginalized people in crisis-affected communities and are disproportionately affected by conflict and emergencies. Therefore, we have an obligation to address their unique needs in our own work. In South Sudan, IOM consults with persons with disabilities to find ways we can improve their access to humanitarian services. In Ukraine, IOM tackles stigma and discrimination through inclusive sports programming. And in Bangladesh, IOM works with a local organization of persons with disabilities to train our staff on identifying and responding to the needs of refugees with disabilities. And IOM's obligations are not only towards people on the move. We will also stand firmly beside our staff with disabilities. Guided by the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy, IOM is taking concrete steps towards improving the recruitment and retention of persons with disabilities. We believe that it is crucial to listen to their voices because it is through their unique experiences and insights that we will be able to create a more inclusive workplace. Today and every day, IOM is committed to ensuring persons with disabilities have equal access to services and opportunities to participate meaningfully in the design, implementation and assessment of our operations. It is clear that we have a long road ahead of us. But we will continue to move forward with the energy and commitment it takes to make a real difference. Thank you.


I started Mr. Bannock in 2018 officially. We registered and launched the business, but I've been in the cooking industry for over 10 years now professionally. Ever since I was little, I was in the kitchen with my grandmother and my mom. In the indigenous food culture, a lot of the teachings are oral, and I learned a lot from both my grandmothers and my mom while I was in the kitchen with them. Some of that stuff you can't learn from a textbook, you know? I'm actually a Witzel at the end from North Central British Columbia, and I actually grew up traditionally in the territories. I've thoroughly enjoyed that, but also knowing that the world is changing and evolving. Taking that aspect of my life and moving it into a professional realm, the process of doing it properly with respect and how to respect the land and taking only what you need and that kind of stuff. So that's where we're going with what we call food security. That will supply the indigenous professional cook program that we're creating with the province of British Columbia that will be carried out with the training providers throughout BC. Working with indigenous chefs and indigenous communities, we're able to really bring pride and honor and respect back to the indigenous youth. Reintroducing some of those wonderful products that we've always lived on. And actually doing it in a modern form, basically, when you look at it. Everybody really loves our food and the style of indigenous cuisine that we do, right? Until this day, we're still the only indigenous food truck in Vancouver, and there's only still one restaurant, indigenous restaurant in Vancouver. If I'm not going to do it, then who is? You know? It's like stepping up for my people and my nation, and that's all I've been doing since I started professionally in the culinary world, representing my family and my nation. And what's exciting about the chef is today's youth. It's a very different world than I came into here. And look at the food that they get to utilize. A lot of them are women. And man, these are passionate, talented, good young chefs that are coming up that'll take my place to take this to the whole next level.


For yours Hello, everyone. This is the TSC call not so weekly anymore, but almost so this is a public call anybody is welcome to join in and Listening and even contribute There are two requirements that must be met to doing so though The first one is to be aware and live by the anti-trust policy that notice of which is currently displayed on the zoom meeting window if you're online and The other place is the code of conduct which basically ask you to behave like a decent human being So We have a bit of a special call this week as I announced in my email Earlier this week. We have guest speakers who will be talking about DCI issues and I will let Dan Introduce them Yeah, so for those who don't know I'm Dan Middleton and I'm also on the TSC with our knowing the others here and A few months back in the diversity civility and inclusion working group We started building out more initiatives and learning from other groups in best practices and We're going to share more of those in their entirety over the next week or two We're going to be giving a report from the from the DCI working group after what will be about our first year in operation But one of those recommendations is to look for opportunities to bring in diverse speakers from other organizations to enrich our thinking and You know diverse speakers can mean anyone who really is going to be bringing in a new perspective to what we do We're going to be looking to be recruiting from other open source organizations other technical domains Variety of places So far we've we've already heard if you've attended our DCI working group meetings We've already heard from Swarna Padilla and Caitlyn O'Connell from the Cloud Foundry We've got a lot of best practices from them on community development and then a couple weeks ago We heard from Jim Gordon at Intel about how some of us can play roles as allies and how to get started in that Stay active in it and today's talk is in some ways a little bit closer to home We're delighted to have Rob Platnick and Keisha Bell from the DTC see with us Many of you know Rob as our governing board chair at hyper ledger. So that's sort of why this is a little bit closer to home in some ways Rob and I have often discussed the importance of Diversity and growing a diverse and strong contributor base here at hyper ledger and we thought it could be really useful to have DTC see given their leadership here at hyper ledger come in and talk about how that is conducted how that's valued within their organization In part because what we have at hyper ledger while we've got a completely open Contributor opportunity here a lot of what we have is a reflection of the member companies and the contributing companies here So we're excited to hear more about how that's conducted at DTC see and Rob wanted to make sure that While this is important to him while he's very familiar with it We brought in like the real expert there and so we're really happy to have Keisha along with us. She's the managing director and Head of diverse talent management and advancement at the DTC see And she's also got a lot of experience at the DTC see having previously done risk management reporting government Governance analysis and program management Also as a managing director. So we're happy to have both of you here Keisha and Rob and I will turn things over to you Great on so I'm just going to give a really short intro and then handed off to to our beating heart of Our program our diversity program and our talent management Keisha so DTC see is The premier post-trade market infrastructure for the financial industry and that's for the global financial industry we do clearing and settlement of Trades from exchanges across the country and we do regulatory reporting on trades and institutional processing for trades around the world. So DTC see is a Critical market infrastructure for the financial industry, but in a lot of ways We're also a proxy for the industry where we're we represent the entire industry We work on behalf of the entire industry and we're governed and owned by the entire industry So a lot of our our focus on on trust and integrity And our core corporate values are intentionally reflective of what the financial industry as Highest level and highest bar should be DTC see was a premier member of hyper ledger and we were founding members. So we joined early on We saw the promise in distributed ledger technology in in really the core Proposition is built-in privacy built-in integrity built-in trust built-in security all built into that Ecosystem and then when hyper ledger started and certainly working with Dan and Chris and Blythe masters And some of the others who who were coming together and say let's take this distributed ledger model and create enterprise-grade Software around it that the entire world and the financial industry in particular Could help drive but that industries around the world could benefit from and we've seen that realized DTC C's been contributing code since 2016 and we have an internal set of Skilled people who work on it, but we've also Shared that with our intern classes. We're working with with various organization like girls who code and Across the organization from the very top diversity has always been a critical issue at DTC C and and the mantra and the focus On bringing in diverse talent and really bringing in diverse perspectives and hearing all points of view and being open and Not closing your mind and saying this is this is the way it is because there's the way I think about it but talking to everyone in the room and bringing in as many diverse perspectives as possible as is pervasive at DTC C and one of the reasons for that and one of our beating hearts that is helping driving that Is the leadership of DTC C and in particular Keisha? Who I've worked with for for I might be getting your 20 years I'm there much longer than 20 But we were we were She was my project manager when I was I was leading a portion of technology helping wealth management service and we were delivering Systems to clients around the country So we've worked together and and I'm really I was really thrilled to be asked by Dan And Arnaud to to bring our perspective and to ask Keisha to show D to share DTC C's view So Keisha, please over to you. Thanks Rob If someone could just bring up the presentation, I'm going to start on slide five and Thank you all for having me here today And I'm starting on slide five because I want to talk about our commitment and our definition of diversity And as Rob alluded to this is something that underpins all of our efforts across the organization It is recognized as a business imperative. So it is our employees success and DTC C's de and I journey is not just about a specific group. It's all of us together It's about diversity that everyone has a seat at the table and the table looks like society at large Inclusion for us means everyone you've invited to the table feels welcome and recognized We have a clear vision and a clear mission that is articulated Repeatedly throughout the organization and that is to fully integrate de and I Into DTC C's community into our culture Where all employees feel valued respective and played respected and play an active part in the company's success We can go to the next slide as rob alluded to That commitment To de and I Started at the top of our organization And I feel I feel strongly that if any organization is going to be successful with diversity inclusion And any diversity inclusion initiatives no matter how large or small You have to have commitment from your board of directors and you also have to have commitment from the c-suite Mike bots and our ceo has led the way for diversity inclusion by doing things like publishing an op-ed Talking about diversity Talking openly about what we do at our company talking about the progress we've made and also saying that there's more to go leading the way and signing on Signing on to see pwc ceo action for diversity pledge Making sure that in any of our business engagements with our customers at our technology summits and client summits diversity and inclusion is part of our business discussion Going forward then also on let's go to the next slide Our board of directors is 35 percent women that was intentional again. I want to talk about mike's leadership as a ceo, but I also want to talk about The board of directors Leading the charge and understanding that in order for DTCC to succeed as an organization. We need to have as many diverse perspectives as possible financial services firms tend to have Somewhere around 20 gender representation or lower on their boards So I'm happy to report that we're leading away with 35 percent women We have some more work to do in terms of ethnic minority representation on the board But it is an active discussion in our organization And we realize that leadership needs to model the behavior that we want from the rest of the organization And starting with diversifying the board is key To organization successes in their diversity and inclusion effort Next slide, please Some of the awards we've won Some solicited some unsolicited again forbs 2020 the best one of the best employers for diversity. It's an unsolicited award forbs Canvases employees from an organization Without the organization's knowledge Asking for asking them to complete a survey and compile scores and we were Super surprised to receive this award. We've been working at d&i for about 10 years. And so a pleasant unplanned recognition forbs 2019 america's best one of america's best mid-sized companies again Something we are very very proud of Best places to work eight consecutive years in a row. I was actually one of the co-leads of our lgbtq plus ERG employee resource group Which is a key lever to pull or to have in a successful d&i strategy But i'll talk about that a little later I was one of the co-leads when we did our first assessment for HRC cei corporate equality index for best places to work for lgbtq employees And our first score was i think 55 60 percent Eight years ago And so we went about the work with our hr department with the backing of our ceo with the backing of our management committee To do the work to improve our benefits in our organization and to Improve our policies and procedures so we could score 100 percent and we've managed to keep all of those things in place For us as an organization But again the support of the c-suite the support of management committee is key in making sure these initiatives are successful 2016 editors award for diversity global custodian gate reader leadership open finance corporate leadership award All wonderful wonderful recognitions for our organization We can go to the next slide One of the ways, um, we've also fostered an inclusive environment is stepping out in front of Certain societal challenges and taking a stand Signing on to the hrc's amicus brief signature for us versus wednesday For the business coalition for defense of marriage act repeal Was key for us back in 2013 even though some of our policies didn't necessarily align With inclusion for lgbtq plus employees while we were doing that work We thought it was important to step out in front and sign on to that business coalition as well as the equality act and more recently we signed on to Ascend it was 100 plus corporations and partner organizations to support a covet 19 Action agenda, but one of the main focuses of that agenda was to combat anti-asian American violence and backlash because of covet 19 and some of the language that was going around That was very incendiary towards the asian-american community so again Making sure that you you are out front in on these issues and in illustrating to your employee population that You care about things that they are advocating for We can go to the next five Some of our milestones in our our 10-year d&i journey, but more these things are more recent For the first time in 2019 We promoted more women to managing director in a single year and that's significant for us And that's significant in terms of changing representation in our organization And for the second year in a row for 2019 More women were promoted to the executive director Level than men Those first two populations executive director and managing director are our officer population Right, and they are indicative of the pipeline you might be building in lower levels For promotion and progression and so we were happy to be able to do that But that took some work and i'll talk about some of the things we did To make sure that we had a pipeline of women to be able to promote We continuously improved our employee engagement scores for diversity inclusion We are now at eight points above a benchmark in our glint survey and that that Directly correlates to some of the work around our policies our procedures Our employee resource groups our voices of inclusion series And recognition and or training of a diverse population so that they can move up into The officer population new organization We also in 2018 and and excuse me in 2019 Completed our response the first sec diversity and assessment diversity and inclusion self-assessment Which is stipulated in god frank 342 which is called their diversity clause And that is it is an assessment and it measures you on in certain diversity frameworks But it's significant because as a financial services firm Even though this is self-assessment went out to i want to say about 500 firms Um, I think we were one of maybe 15 in financial services that completed the self-assessment Which was noted by the sec and also Um, noted by the house financial services committee Subcommittee on diversity and inclusion. They use that as a source of information to understand how what big banks are doing to include to Change or improve diversity inclusion in their workforce We also introduced inclusive partner benefits way before other firms are doing that and we expanded military and parental leave benefits Um at the bottom of this slide. Those are the logos for all of our employee resource groups Um, one of the key uh, or foundational elements in starting a successful Um diversity and inclusion strategy is to Understand your workforce and provide an opportunity for people to come together around Their offended their affinity Um, so we have a rise we which is our asian american Erg bold which is our black employee erg ignite, which is our What we call our millennial or younger? Generation erg mbp is our veterans erg pride plus is lgbtq plus Unitos is our latinx is an hispanic american erg winds is our Women erg and we thrive is actually our newest one we launched this year, which is to address people with Disabilities or varying abilities in the organization 42 percent of our employees are actively engaged again This is a key tenant in building that inclusive culture in the organization So let's go to the next slide One of the ways uh that mike continually illustrates his commitment to diversity inclusion was actually creating The office of diverse talent management and advancement. We did have diversity inclusion prior to me taking on this role in the end of 2018 We had a diversity inclusion department along with our corporate social responsibility department And they reported into hr, which is a typical structure in organizations But we'd been at this for a number of years and while we had a lot of success We had not managed to change representation significantly in the in our organization And so mike and the board recognized that and thought that um diversity needed a different lens and it also needed to have A talent acquisition remit added right so in 2018 he pulled diversity inclusion out of the hr department and had it report directly to him and and charge me with leading it with um talent acquisition lens To help build a pipeline for our director level Our executive director level and our managing director level into in our workplace And the latter to our officer population. So I took over the role In 2018 But what that did was signal to the organization that what we've done so far was not enough that we needed to do A bit more and that um, we were going to invest We were going to put leadership there and provide direct accountability for successes and failures To the ceo of the company and also to the board, which was I think differentiates us from other financial services firms So we can go on to the next slide, please So my strategy and approach has been advancing talent build communities Diversify the workforce and strengthen our inclusive uh work environment So i'm just going to spend a little time on a couple of things in advancing talent One of the things that I knew from my experience as being an african-american woman in financial services The only african-american woman who's a managing director at our organization even today I knew from my experience in the organization that I got a lot of mentorship I got a lot of training, but I was missing something that could help me Move along in the organization. So one of the things that I wanted to do in all of our talent programs was incorporate um a formal executive sponsorship and accountability Um program and sponsorship should happen organically and it does and it's that invisible list that we all get it's that that that Someone advocating for you and banging the table for you when you're not in the room and saying rob Is absolutely the best person for that role or keisha's the best person to take on that stretch assignment or that project What I knew from my experience and what we knew from some surveys we took some sentiment surveys We took in the organization was that a lot of women and women of color and the organization Felt like they were ready and knew the roles They were in or felt they could Were ready to advance other roles, but we're not getting that lift and and weren't getting that sponsorship And that was born out in the data that I looked at one of the data points That I reviewed in the organization was that I looked at talent ratings I looked at performance ratings But I also looked at promotions progress and progressions and what I found is that The talent the highest rated talent in the organization were women And were women of various backgrounds But promotions did not match that rating of those women So that said to me sponsorship was missing for those women, right? So and then I want to move over or move down to diversifying the workforce Some of the things that stood out to me Was that we didn't have a pipeline Of top diverse candidates And we needed to refine our sourcing and recruiting practices. And what does that mean? We need to look where there's diversity We needed to engage with historically black colleges and universities We needed to engage with hispanic serving institutions So we developed a strategy where we looked at our geographies In the u.s. And we mapped out literally a physical map of the u.s. And said where are their historically black colleges and hispanic serving institutions with The curriculum that we need technology risk management product management and finance And where do their skill sets match up with ours? And how can we leverage those schools for either young talent Or experienced talent by going to their alumni organization? So that's just one of the things that we did from a recruiting and sourcing practice In in in the organization. I'll move over to strengthen our inclusive environment One of the things we wanted to do Was to add a bit of gravitas to our business professional networks Which are now known as employee resource groups. You've heard me refer to them as ergs And so I wanted to make sure that our ergs were fully engaged and and and it's not Just a social function right that there is key a part of our execution on our business Strategy and our business imperatives is everything else. And so we realign them We gave them three pillars to work from and one of those pillars is professional development And so that all of the Programming that the ergs offer up or most of the programming that they offer up is about professional development Of their constituency And not just kind of the social engagements and then our voices of inclusion series This is where I think we've done the most work in bringing Different perspectives to our organization bringing in different speakers to talk about racial injustice To talk about socioeconomic injustice To talk about women in the workplace to talk about the broken wrong for women in the workplace All of these subjects that matter to a particular constituency in in the organization We give voice to it to our through our voices of inclusion Programming so let's go to the next slide. So I say all that and all the wonderful things we've done Here's what we've looked like as an organization And i'm showing you this because I want one of the first things that I wanted to do was one have data drive my strategy I didn't want to do anything necessarily out of a motion or out of my feeling of my experience in the organization or in financial services I wanted to look at where we were in terms of representation and let that drive the strategy But I also wanted to impart Some transparency into the numbers. I think for minority populations Or people who are minority populations and organizations When organizations Don't provide that kind of transparency It it feels like you have something to hide right and it leaves people to make their own Draw their own conclusions about what the organization looks like by what they see visually, right? So I wanted to make sure that we shared our representation this Slide is divided into executives mid-level officials professionals administrative support workers and all others And I want to focus on the top two levels the executive and mid-level officials and managers These are SIFMA categories because we participate in the SIFMA diversity study Executives include our officers our mds and our eds And then the mid-level officials is our director and associate director population And professionals is anybody below our associate director senior analyst analyst associate senior associate All of our ethnic diversity or our ethnic diversity looks best in the professional area in the lower levels of our organization Which said to me, okay, we've done a great job Of building a pipeline But why are we not progressing those people in the organizations and by in the organization? And by the way, do we know who the superstars are? In that professional category, right? Because if you look at the upper levels of the organization Ethnic representation gets smaller and smaller. You see the same phenomenon happening in gender representation at the top 42 and 58 professional male to female It looks significantly different the further along you move or the further you ascend in the organization Again, the same thing the data is telling me we're doing a good job of getting people into the organization We are not doing a good job of having people ascend in the organization and So one of the things that I wanted to do was make sure we were offering programming training and development For those populations and also identifying people early enough in their careers Um, one of the things that I also studied was the mckenzie women in the workforce Survey and this year's survey or 2020 2019 results pointed out the broken rung for gender for women women in that professional category Have a difficult time Breaking into that first level of management and there's a knock-on effect for the rest of a female's career In not breaking through that first barrier or taking longer than men to break through that first barrier or that step up Into management or an officer population. I saw I see the same phenomenon happening in our company. So I wanted to address that so let's go to the next slide I came up with a theme for the year. It's the year of allies and sponsors I wanted to focus the organization on women of all diversity Because overall DTCC is 37 percent female which in 2020 didn't seem to make a lot of sense So that said to me again, we needed to do more With the women we have in the organization of all backgrounds and then also draw in more women of different backgrounds So recruit retain promote That's my mantra more targeted outreach to hiring sources partner with our talent acquisition team because we still do Have a full talent acquisition team within the HR organization An expansion of hiring sources, which I have a bit more later in the presentation retain focusing on women of all diversities Create access to sponsorship Promote a more inclusive workplace what I did there. I realized that we could not divorce men from the Expansion or inclusion of women in the workplace if men are in the position to make the hiring decisions and or promotion decisions I recognized that we needed to create allies and sponsors And so I embarked upon training for men and women in the organization about how to be allies and sponsors So we can go to the next slide That training was mark men advocating and advancing gender equality in a workplace or men advocating for real change and The target for this training was the officer population. I believe there's 300 or something of us And it was it's about the importance of engaging men. It's about individual and shared identity It's about mark leadership is about culture cultural systems the in-group and the out-group dynamics They cover privilege in the workplace They cover male privilege in the workplace and gender norms They cover unconscious bias accountability and credibility It is an intensive day and a half training For men and women to kind of sit together And go through a number of exercises addressing privilege unconscious bias individual and shared identity And at times it's uncomfortable, but it's absolutely necessary To get folks in the place where they can be allies in the workplace Another one of the things that I did in talking about creating a cult but an inclusive culture and addressing sponsorship in the organization was that There were really talented women directors in the organization that had not been promoted They were rated in our nine block enterprise leader emerging leaders, but they were not being promoted in the organization so we Started a program called advancing women leaders where we have 16 women directors Who are on the cusp of moving from director into the officer population to executive director, but had some um development needs and so it's a year and a half formal training program very individualized very high touch with Access to sponsorship and customized coaching and development and so this is Three or four of those women have been promoted already into the executive director And this year we expect a number more to be promoted into the officer population But again a very specialized high touch program We also have something similar for our emerging women leaders. That's our associate and associate director population plus senior associates Again addressing that broken rum rung and that pipeline into director and executive director Similar six month formal leadership coaching program for women identified as upcoming leaders and then another key lever that we want to pull is Getting more mid-level and senior level women into the organization. And so we Partnered with a program called i-relaunch that's run out of columbia university These are women who left the workplace for mid-career for one reason or another child care parental care Whatever who've got a wealth of experience But who when seeking to re enter their workplace are usually downgraded several levels Some women have held executive director managing director positions at other organizations when they seek to re enter their workforce after the break They are not even offered officer level roles and what is typically missing is Some they need some re-skilling. So we launched on upon a re-emerged internship program I think we have about three women in the organization mid-level women So that the hiring manager can try out this mid-level resource for 12 to 16 weeks and at the end of the 16 week period we bring them in at the associate director level and we've had some success with that already So let's go to the next slide And I just want to do a time check. I show I have about three or four minutes left and I'll try to cover this and leave some time for question so Reflections from the men advocating for real change workshop These are some of the things that we've asked The participants to do after they leave. It's not a one and done. It's not a day and a half training This is something that we will continue continually check in on Determine your personal perspective and position on the topic of women's advancement Recognize and accept your own biases be mindful of them as male leaders You must accept recognize and accept your privilege Recognize the barriers that exist for women's advancement educate yourself Raise your hands as allies and as sponsors Advocate actively advocate for women As male colleagues or people managers of women in the organization Evaluate your daily practices. Is there bias in that? Is there bias in your behaviors? Commit yourself to objective listening Listening with empathy and learning how you can understand more deeply and incorporate all of this in your annual plans as appropriate Again guidance for these managers to go forward when they bring this training back into their own organization Let's go to the next slide And then uh recent events, you know the murder of george george floyd Really brought to the surface Things that african-americans or black and brown people typically don't bring to the workplace, right? And we tend to cover compartmentalize Um Our there's a fine lot. There's a very thick line or wall between Your existence in the workplace and your existence outside the workplace, right? And so we felt that we needed to address this as a company not necessarily externally by making a statement Or putting black lives matter on our workplace, but addressing our employee population So one of the first things that we did Was um our ceo issued a statement our board of directors issued a statement to the employee population And I as a leader in one of the more senior african-american leaders in the organization Posted a blog post about how I was feeling covering the topics of covering and compartmentalizing in the emotional impacts of the intersection of my identity as an african-american woman and As a professional in the workplace and what this Social unrest was doing to me as an individual and what that does is Open the doors for other people to have those same types of discussions And then we followed that on with a perspective taking or perspective discussion with Some of our uh employees Our first perspective discussion was with african-american men in our organization at black and brown men in our organization talking about their experience with policing And when I tell you it was Revolutionary, um, it was eye-opening to a lot of people. It was painful that their colleagues who they worked with for years Who they sit next to They don't know That some of them have are repeatedly stopped by the police Some of them have been arrested on their way to work right The second conversation that we had in the workplace and the reflections discussion or perspective taking discussion Was around with black and brown women talking about their experience with the talk I don't know if everyone's seen the proctor and gamble video About the talk about having the discussion with black and brown children about societal racism at a very young age And these women were quite open about their experiences with their children Or their extended family members in having those conversations again Very painful very eye-opening but absolutely Necessary to build an inclusive environment. We could not um, just pretend in the workplace that this was not happening and Affecting a part of our population So let's um move forward because I know I'm running out of time Um, I'll skip this slide. Let's go to the next one. I talked about diversity sourcing a bit and where you look for that talent Here's some of the organizations that we've um engaged Alpa association of professionals for america that is uh, latinx and hispanic serving Organization center for talent innovation lesbians who tech reaching out mba Grace hopper for female talent fairy godboss.  Well out women in business working mother media again You have to reach a lot further than your typical sources to get that talent but that talent is out there Um and ready and then on the next slide. Um, these are the hbcu's in hispanic serving institutions That we have targeted for either a junior level talent or or alumni association Level talent at lanis clark university, which is clark atlanta university more house and spellmen florida a&m morgan state north carolina a&t university Prairie view a&m and university of maryland eastern shore and for hispanic serving institutions Baruch college polytech university of portorico Rutgers university of portorico university of south southern florida And university of texas dalas again. It's just about thinking about those sources of talent very very differently You could have never told me two years ago. I would be looking at university of portorico But why not right? Why not look there for talent if that's what you you really need So that's the end of my presentation. I know i've talked a lot. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have Um on the presentation or some of our strategy or what we've done Hey, thanks kisha. That was fantastic Um, I bet we've got some some questions in the audience. Maybe people thinking about well, how does Uh, how do some of these professional considerations relate to what we do in open source? Or maybe you've got some ideas about how they relate in the audience. You want to share that out? Um, I'll go ahead and kick things off with two very difficult questions one for each of you And I'll ask them simultaneously. Maybe give you a chance to to think for a second Maybe the hardest one to kisha hardest because I'm going to ask you to think back 15 years I think that's what I heard for for when you joined the DTCC Can you think of an interaction that you had around the time that you started there that made you want to continue? And and might be one of the reasons that you're still there after 15 years And then um rob we heard from kisha repeatedly about the importance of support from the board About the support from the the ceo Uh from our perspective in hyper ledger Can you reflect on the board's ability to help us grow our diversity and inclusion? Sure, I'll start. Um, you know, I've got a number of stories, but um I reported to and rob alluded to this earlier I was in product management and I ran a business and wealth management for alternative investment products And I reported to one of the only women that led a business there Um, and I had always been out as a lesbian, but I had never really was really open about it, right? and um Anne bergen who's the woman I'm talking about and who's still running a significant portion of our sick move business Said to me, you know, and I was younger in my career and a little more tentative and One day in our 101s. I walked into her office and I sat down and she said so tell me about your girlfriend I said what she said so tell me about your girlfriend. Are you planning to get married? What are you going to do? and it was a series of questions about my personal life and Anyone else might have considered that intrusive But it opened the door for me and it made it okay for me We always talk about everybody should bring their full self to work But a lot of us don't do that it opened the door for me and made me able To bring my full self to work because in that moment she asked some wrong questions She asked some right questions But she wasn't afraid to be vulnerable and say the wrong thing But was really interested and curious about me and from that point forward I committed to myself that I was not going to hide Um my queerness that I was going to be out, but she made it okay for me That's great. That's a great story. Thanks for sharing that So from from my perspective, you know, I know at the board level We've been we've been spending a lot of time talking about diversity life left us with a challenge In terms of trying to get the board to a certain level of gender diversity in a very short period of time Which I think we actually Decided was was like too far. They were there just weren't enough candidates in the pipeline We all wanted to focus on on building out that pipeline but I think In the broadest level, we've been sponsoring diversity scholarships in our global forum We've been working on on outreach to various academic institutions And to Keisha's point it really it really starts with filling a pipeline and making sure that there is a good pipeline of talent that that's in there and quite honestly I I think there's a lot more we need to do as a board, but I think there's a lot more we need to do in particular as Worship in the industry and the open source community I think the open source community Especially in stem in anything in technology is just hugely white male And we we need to change that pipeline to be more reflective of the rest of the world What I find particularly interesting in the distributed ledger community our community Is there's a tremendous amount of passion, but that passion often manifests itself as very Stubborn opinions about the way something should be built or the way something should should be um, you know implemented to maintain some view of purity to some Uh hyper ledger or blockchain Uh Standard or or bible or or something So I think more than any community We could benefit from a real open mindness and a diversity of perspectives and bringing in more More of different points of view and in particular one of the beauties of the distributed ledger model and of all the different conversations around it Is the potential for inclusion and the potential that a digital model And a decentralized a more decentralized model could bring more participation from the undamped and from different parts of of our community and the global community So I think there's tremendous opportunity. We've got the the best possible story to sell The issue is really driving it down and having the structures in place as key should describe To say we're going to get to do this with intention You know, we've brian and I have talked a lot about academic outreach And we've got a number of different colleges that are part of the open source community But we need to spend more time reaching out to some of the institutions that keisha listed and other institutions You know that are in geographies that dtcc doesn't necessarily necessarily touch But in other parts of the of the, you know domestic plane in the u.s. But globally as well To bring lots of different views and perspectives and lots of different talent into this community So I think we've got a tremendous opportunity. I think we have the right mindset, but we need to do more That's great. That's great. I think it would be really interesting to have a good discussion with the board about that pipeline aspect Since it is really, you know, a lot of a lot of the contributors that come into hyper ledger are from member companies or premier companies And even the companies that aren't actually contributing talent right now, you know, what a perfect opportunity for them to help Get in the the diverse talents that we're lacking All right guys, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to jump in there We have a couple of other items we want to cover today. So we have 10 minutes left, but thank you very much for your time It's very appreciated. Thank you. Bye feel free to drop off now. Thank you. Thank you very much All right, so with that being done, I would like to focus the last few minutes We have uncovering some of the rest of the agenda The quarterly reports are pretty straightforward. I went through it I think most of them have been reviewed by the majority of the tsc members. I didn't see any Issues being raised And so I think we can just skip that part I would like to get to the hip process Move to github. There was an attempt to try to come to resolution on in via email And rye, I thank you for trying that It didn't completely work though. So I was hoping we could just close this very quickly There was already a motion to move this From Who is it the mark I think made the motion and so some of us voted by email But not everybody so I will just kind of shortcut the process here and ask is anybody objecting opposing The move Is there any concerns? Let's just be more open Okay, so anybody wants to be Listed as abstaining on this issue Okay, hearing none. I think it's a non controversial issue. That's why I'm trying to hurry up I think we can close it and declare it approved Okay, thanks Thank you And so that brings us to the other part of the agenda, which is a discussion item that brian wanted to bring up brian the floor is yours. No, no It's not I'd said I would put some stuff online first. So So what's over that later? Yeah, oh really? You made me hurry up and push everybody around and now you're just saying No, I did No, there's I okay, so Since we have just a few minutes, um, uh, there's a Standing monthly meeting that we have been having between the maintainers and the uh marketing committee To try to help Folks who are out there talking about hyper ledger, you know, beyond the maintainer and core contributor community be better in sync with upcoming releases with Features they want to highlight that sort of thing and attendance on that had started to wane. Uh, and so Really? So this is great. Actually if we do have some time for conversation because it might be high bandwidth here It just what it didn't it was starting to feel like whether it was a question whether kind of a monthly phone call like this was an effective way to reach the maintainer community And and then I you know if the participation on that I think, you know, we had Dave enyart from fabric attend Sarah from eroha. So we didn't have zero but I just wanted to bring out what are more things that we might do or a different way of of trying to Have a productive engagement. So the maintainers want to come and attend. Um, so let me leave that open and then You know, maybe we can talk about specific actions Does anyone have on the tse of thoughts on that? Yeah, one one quick thought off the top of my head is if the maintainers aren't coming to The the marketing and and dev relations meetings Then could we reverse that? So most of the projects have some sort of standing community meeting. Um, maybe we could have the The the marketing people go to those as an agenda topic That's certainly possible. I think those meetings seem to be very focused on uh, you know making what feels like pretty concrete technical decisions. Um, and and I think the making room for conversations about Deverell and and marketing feel at least historically when I've been on those calls have felt, uh You know, like they might struggle for for oxygen from the from the agenda If you think though, that's that's better The challenge might be getting, you know, the marketing committee to be able to attend many of those calls, right? And so this is a way to try to Uh optimize kind of time on everyone's part right rather than Having having 10 meetings a month try to have one meeting but Yeah So I have a question the I'm sorry Dan. Did you want to finish that conversation before I go to the next topic? Just the last trail I thought was it doesn't even have to be a recurring thing Just get it in on their their radar by getting into one meeting might help Sure, okay. That's a good idea Tracey. Yeah, sorry. Um So I guess, you know, one of the things that I'm thinking about is this meeting was originally created in order to attempt to get additional contributors to some of the projects that weren't Seeing as much traffic if you will and so I guess I wonder what What advancement has there has been made in that regard with these meetings and you know, how we met that goal And do we need to refocus ourselves on that particular goal? I mean the the meetings I was talking about were framed as let's get the the the the people very active on the projects Maintainers presumably but but you know, certainly these are public meetings. So anybody could attend Um together with the people who are most active and not just hyper ledger staff, right? the people in our community who are out there giving talks or or you know Otherwise out there advocating You know who are part of the marketing committee as well thinking about our balance of spending on our and which events we go to and those sorts of things, right? I and it's also partly to say here's some Standardized things we're doing for outreach, you know, like this upcoming month Here's the social media tag that we'd love to organize a bunch of content around And so if anyone knows of things happening related to trade finance and any of your projects, let us, you know, like that kind of cross-project kind of conversation um And I think the hope is that these marketing activities are not just kind of, you know focused on businesses and use cases and and such but on Attracting developers as well new developers and and such I don't think they were intended to necessarily be meetings about How do we make the first time user experience? Uh, you know fantastic or the latter from being a new user to becoming a core maintainer Better, uh, which is which is an important part of dev rel. Um, but does seem to be very project by project specific. Um Uh, it certainly can be but I I yeah, I mean if that's if that's a something to to put on the agenda for these calls That would help attract the maintainers to them. That would be that would be interesting as well But we haven't formally measured anything against uh, uh, like people like that Yeah, no, I just I remember that, you know, we had so many of the projects coming into the tsc reporting on, you know lack of diversity lack of new contributors um and wanting a avenue of Reach out to new developers and so Um, yeah, I guess I think I was under the impression that that's part of what these calls were attempting to accomplish Yeah, definitely to get the word out to to developers and and and new potential users. Yeah And we send uh hyperlider sends one or two emails a week, right for And we're always we're always looking for like technical topics to add to those Uh, so that's like another venue that it seems pretty hard to get participation on Yeah, I mean right talking about like there's a weekly email. It goes out to everybody who wants one. It's like a newsletter with kind of the the top three things going on this week or that that have recently happened pointing people to recordings of of uh, you know conversations, you know Recent releases that sort of thing. Um, but often our content channels just don't know what's going on in our projects You know, I mean we read the status updates and that sort of thing Uh, and uh, and we do reach out when we when we hear hints of things. Um, but uh, uh You know, we also know it's it's really hard as a project to do things like maintain You know product roadmap kind of documentation and that sort of thing or to be predictive about what's coming when a lot of it is driven by pull request and and Um an opportunity so uh, I do want to highlight the the Bezu and fabric uh communities who've done a really great job in this and sarah Doing this with a lot with the roja. So Um, you know, I think it was just broadly stated as a way to especially for the projects that have a bit less participation Or that are younger like like haktis and avalan You know understanding what those are and where they're heading is is is sometimes a challenge. So But but my main question is is the format of a monthly call The right thing because calls themselves have uh challenges when it comes to participation You have to find a time when everyone's awake Around the world. Um, and everyone is you know, I would wager probably too many calls in their lives and their weeks and their months Especially right now. I feel like I live on zoom Uh, but sometimes it feels like email threads kind of you know, go into the void and don't get responded. So Happy to continue doing the calls. I just felt like in particular the format Yeah, I mean speaking for myself by and I've attended a couple of those calls and I thought they were interesting Yeah, just you know, usually I can't because there's some conflict and that's the challenge I guess a lot of people have but I think it would be interesting For people in tsc to take it as an action item to go back to their projects and and talk to the the maintainers And ask them try to understand is this, you know, not of interest to you or You know, why isn't anybody attending because clearly a very few projects are represented on those calls So we should try to find out I think the best idea that we've heard and we had talked about this as well was going to each of the maintainer calls Once at least once to talk about this directly with the maintainer groups Even if it's not a technical topic for the agenda, hopefully we'll get some room Not all the projects have been having regular maintainer calls. So, um, well, you know, that'll be a challenge for some but But we'll fan out and report back All right, so thank you. We're out of time. So I'm going to close the call on this but thank you all for joining I do want to point out that brian posted on the dco issues and so if you haven't seen this I invite people to have a look And react to the proposal he's made to basically close the issue And uh, you know, we can use the wiki to exchange further on this So with that being said, uh, I Expect we'll have a call next week might be the following week. I don't know yet I will let you know in email. So in the meantime, thank you all for joining Have a good day. Bye