All right, I think we're good to go Hey guys, my name is Alonso and I'm going to be doing I'm gonna be talking a little bit about Gutenberg So I guess my first question is Just to gauge the room who would describe themselves as primarily a developer cool What about primarily as a designer? Cool, what about primarily as an entrepreneur? Okay, and what about as just a user and Ain't nothing wrong with that just Cool, awesome. Well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about Gutenberg and the way that I'm gonna do a little demo And then talk about the ways that I think it's gonna change the wordpress paradigm And the I sure I assure use a reference to a movie I really like from back in the day clerks For those of you that get that So anyway, so feel free to text me during my presentation And I'll try and answer any questions I get by text at the end. I know some of you guys are Maybe not super excited to ask questions in front of a huge crowd So there's that and then also I'll be around the whole day And feel free to come up to me if you have questions or comments or thoughts Just to tell you a little bit about me I am the CEO at 11 online we're a software development shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico and We do wordpress still I think we're doing a lot more Application dev mobile and web application dev, but we still do wordpress. We started out as basically a wordpress exclusive development shop I've been working with wordpress since 2015. I and then our company started a block party This year, I think it came out in April when Gutenberg was supposed to be merged into core Supposed to being the important part there And as I mentioned, I don't really write a ton of code these days and that's probably good for everyone But wordpress is still a very important part of our business and I love wordpress and so yeah so You guys probably some of you guys probably know about Gutenberg and Mostly from the controversy of the implementation. Is that would you would you guys say that that's a fair assessment? people have heard about Gutenberg and I think a lot people have the idea that it's going to mess everything up or We're gonna you know, someone's gonna fork wordpress with the classic editor and I do I don't dismiss definitely the Problems with implementation the way that projects sort of started and the communication issues But I'm not gonna really focus on any of that stuff because it's coming You know kind of whether or not we want it to come it's coming So I'm more focused on how it's gonna change us and what we do So as of a couple weeks ago, I think it was announced that the plan is to merge Gutenberg into core in August And that in the very near future in July, there's gonna be a minor update of wordpress It's going to encourage people to install Gutenberg With 5.0, I think it's gonna get merged So what is it it's the new editor Right for those of you developers you guys know that the current editor is Uses this library called tiny mce spent around for a long time So tiny mce is getting replaced by this thing called Gutenberg And although tiny mce is a somewhat what you see is what you get experience I know you guys especially that build wordpress sites know that that's not really true At least certainly not in the wordpress context You might put in things in the editor and get something completely different on the front and depending the way the theme is coded But Gutenberg is set up to be a true WYSIWYG experience and The the paradigm is different in that your content is broken up into blocks And so if any of you guys have used Squarespace for example, I know that's like a dirty word around here But if any of you guys have used something like that, there's you know There's a kind of drag and drop blocks a bit. So it's it's kind of moving in that in that kind of direction, right? Wordpress 5.0 with Gutenberg merged. It's going to launch with some simple blocks I'm gonna demo all this stuff just by the way, but you can build custom blocks. You can install plugins that add custom blocks And as I mentioned before there's there's definitely a lot of implementation controversy But again, I'm not really gonna get into all that. That's that's probably someone else's talk All right I'm going to try and do a demo That's usually what happens when I do demos something to that effect So When you install Gutenberg, so by the way right now you have to install Gutenberg. It's a plugin on the repo. Just look it up Don't install I would not advise on installing it on a production site yet. It's not a finished product So take your whatever your favorite local Development environment, whether it's you know some kind of virtual machine or whatever it might be Or a staging site or you know something that you don't have to necessarily show in public Install Gutenberg and what happens is by default the You know any new posting pages Use the Gutenberg editor and what's really neat is when you install Gutenberg. There is actually I'll show you If you when you install Gutenberg, can you guys see that or should I zoom in? Zooming in is better. Yeah, when you install Gutenberg if you take a look See right there you get that menu and then it says Demo if you click that you're gonna see this and it's a demo of a Gutenberg post It says welcome to the Gutenberg editor and so This is what it looks like on the back end. This is a title This is a cover image block All right, what's really neat is if the theme supports it you can do full-width Blocks right like full width of the Other viewport, so if you take a look it's pretty neat and The way Gutenberg works is for many blocks, right? You have settings that you can adjust within the block. So I can make this There you go So you have settings within the block right you can do alignments and so forth And then you have advanced settings off Over there Right, so I have it on fixed background, but you don't need to right you hit update refresh on this side and It's it's it's a fixed image now, right Whereas before I'm sorry it what it If you take a refresh now it's now it's fixed and it's kind of like that fake parallax effects or thing going on So anyway, I'm just going to walk you through kind of some of these other this is a text block right you can do different alignments This is a heading block another text block. This is an image block You can do captions very similar, right? But I think what I want to highlight here an important piece is that this Actually looks very similar to this Just about the same thing and I Think that is the that is the big difference, right? How many people that build WordPress sites how many you guys use? Metaboxes custom meta boxes Like advanced custom fields or CMB to or there's different and then you know you have page builders that build in meta boxes and stuff like that so So yeah, it's a it's a it's a different thing right and you know You put content in each meta box each meta box is styled, but oftentimes on the front end it looks like one thing And back in it looks like a completely different thing So that's how this paradigm is different Again These are the very simple blocks that are going to ship with Gutenberg. So this is a gallery Gallery block right you can add add images, right? Etc. You can change the note. You can change the columns here in this In the setting for the gallery, right? How many guys use plugins to build galleries? Probably probably some no So yeah, this is actually a pretty neat and different solution Easier solution in my mind And again, you can check that out, you know, you have video embed blocks and all sorts of stuff, right? And that's it. That's the that's the default Gutenberg install with the default blocks, okay And so you might think okay. Well, that's not that big a deal. Who cares, right? It's a slightly better way to create content All right, awesome And I think from my standpoint if that's all Gutenberg was then I wouldn't be excited about that but I want to show you something different so This is a post I Made in Gutenberg. By the way, the theme is just using the Gutenberg theme There's a theme that you can use with Gutenberg. It supports full width. That's about it It's basically underscores that supports full width So what I did is I made I I was too lazy to actually write a Post on baseball and so I baseball Ipsum did a little bit here and So when I came to the United States as a kid my My dad was a med student in Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan, and we lived in Queens and Woodside and so we moved to the United States in 1985 so it's four years old and If anyone of you guys knows anything about baseball The great New York baseball team at that time was not the anchors of the Mets and we live in Queens and In 1986 they won the World Series. Anyway, long story short I became a Met fan at that that point I saw games in 86 and 87 and 88 and It's been a lot of sadness ever since but What I want to show you is the possibilities of what you can create with Gutenberg with some custom blocks and How many guys read? Sports blog posts blogs Okay, I like baseball. I like football and a lot of times you read these blog posts especially like the You know Saber metrics statistic blog posts and they have a lot of data visualization, right? Charts sheet, you know tables, etc and so So I you know using some custom blocks that we at my company made I Wanted to show you the some of the possibilities, so We take a look Here's the title heading block paragraph block and this is a custom block that we made called Pie charts for block party Okay, and if I click on it Here I can set the title and I can add values Right and slices essentially, right? Add slices over here. So let me add a slice And What's neat is you get a preview? Right below right and if you'll notice our chart updated With the slice added I can add more slices. I can Change the colors in each slice Over here. I can explode a slice Over here. So for example, I Exploded contrarians who hate the Yankees These are by the way, this chart is the origin of met fandom okay, and So I can explode a slice here. I can make my pie chart 3d over here right I Can adjust the position of the legend. So if I wanted to be on the left instead put it on the left I can set the height etc and Let's not make this 3d I can rotate the pie chart whatever way I want Etc. I can can make a donut hole Anyway, if you dig that sort of stuff and then I hit I hit update and it updates at some point Oh, yeah, I did and I give this a refresh and BAM I have a pie chart and and I don't know if there any met fans in the room, but I think probably these two cover it Majority-wise I Had to throw this in there because I I have a friend that this is exactly why Just has a bad relationship with his dad and his dad likes the Yankees. So Anyway Okay, so let me kind of scroll down and again more baseball ipsum and then I made I made a line chart and I Called it met losses in the last four years if you'll notice in 2018 the 47 losses so far. We're not even at the all-star break So that's bad and Yeah, you know you can visualize it you can set so the way we have it set up you can set the access label format You can set grid lines You can make a curve or not This is a kind of neat setting to just sort of make it bigger And then you can you can set an area Some of these settings, you know, so a lot of this stuff is just Google data visualization stuff that we hooked in essentially and Yeah, anyway hit update and This is what it looks like on this end And you know like I like I said that is going to be up here probably by the end of the year But yeah, so anyway, then I want to show off a Carousel or slider, right? How many guys use plugins make sliders? Who is happy with their slider plug-in? Yeah What is it? Revolution, okay. Hey not to talk smack on revolution, but Have you guys ever heard of the Panama Papers? Just look up revolution slider Panama Papers on Google in your spare time. Anyway So you look at the carousel you look at the carousel I've never used a carousel that I really loved and you know, I think most of the time It's like with revolution slider. You can do a lot of things, but a lot of times when we're building sites We don't want to give clients of five million options You know, we want to keep it simple for them so they can focus on the content And so, you know, I've always felt like this this process of making a slider and wordpress has always been kind of a pain and so This is how you make a slider with this custom Gutenberg block You can select images You can add a caption so see here traded to division rival All right kills us every time right and You can you know rearrange a position You can Apply a backdrop opacity, right so you see what happens there You can set and then the advanced settings for the whole slider you can Set an autoplay interval you can do rounded corners. You can show indicators or not You can show the image captions description so forth, right? Hit update and there you go made my slider of that's great and as you'll see in The spirit of a true met fan. I can't really focus on the positives Why would that be so?  He only became like one of the greatest pitchers ever But anyway, yeah somehow we'll screw this up, I know we will we'll figure some way out So so yeah, so that's a that's a slider in Gutenberg with with our custom block So we also made a pop-up block like a modal block, right and so It's called Mets no hitters Here's a pop-up title. I threw in a video And then you can set the animation, right? So if this is something it really Moves you you can set how it Display how the size of it you can set the animation You can do all kinds of stuff colors and so forth and Check this out you can watch a You can watch a Met throw no hitter. Sorry MLB. Okay, they'll probably sue me here. So But notice notice that his arm fell off right after this it did actually He threw the no hitter was amazing and then he was never the same Anyway So yeah, how many of you guys have like put in modals and pop-ups and things and wordpress in a post Let's say or tried to It's a drag, you know again. I've used wordpress a lot and it's just it's a pain. So, you know being able to have a Dragon drop solution That's that's fairly easy to use is good and then the last one I want to show off is Again, it's another custom block. It's called statistic, right? You know with a lot of the blocks that we built we tried to just you know build your your kind of basic Web design UI, I don't love sliders and I don't love pop-ups and I don't love Statistics, but we just tried to think of the kinds of design patterns and UI that people use all the time in wordpress and so This is one I see all the time right and for this one you can set the color and you can set set it to count up right and so So that's the way it looks There we go right 22 You know 1986 five years old A lot of sadness ever since But um, but that's not why you're a met fan, you know for happiness come on Anyway, so So so yeah, that's just an example of what's possible with Gutenberg I think that for a lot of people they might install Gutenberg they might play around the blocks and think okay, whatever This is what's possible And you're gonna see a lot of groups companies individuals put out custom blocks For for Gutenberg for the new editor by the way, it's it's Gutenberg now, but it's just the new editor very soon Right, it's just gonna be part of the thing So this these are the possibilities imagine giving your clients, let's say you're an entrepreneur You have a wordpress business giving your clients the ability to Create really really rich content easily like that Without having them call you and adding whatever it's you really it's it's I think I really believe it's going to Create a situation where you can deliver a lot of a lot of value for your clients Okay So that was a demo I'm really happy that that went relatively smoothly No burning Christmas tree Okay, so I'm just again. I'm just gonna cover Just gonna cover These are my opinions and they're always subject to change because things change all the time Just these are my opinions and I'm sure there's gonna be people that might disagree and that's totally cool So for content creators, it's it's WYSIWYG finally for real Why are there page builders Why does wordpress have a lot of why are there page builder plugins? It's a meeting a need right, it's meeting a need and so and One of the benefits of page builders is a lot of times it really is what you see is what you get experience or more So certainly than the default experience So finally We're creating something in core that's going to address a lot of those same concerns You don't need to do things in custom meta boxes anymore So when we build websites for clients We use CMB to We do custom meta boxes and we style the meta boxes all that stuff And I'm sure a lot of you guys that build websites do similar things It's a different paradigm and I'm really really excited at you know having all the post content in one place Again, this is what I was trying to highlight Potentially there's gonna be a wide range of blocks that are gonna let you do lots and lots of cool things easily again, no need to install a Junkie plug-in that has five million settings when your clients only need to There's gonna be a I think there's gonna be a whole ecosystem of Gutenberg blocks out there real soon and and you know it's Like the best of the page builder without all the junk. So Again, this is my opinion and I'm not saying all page builders are junk. That's not what I'm saying at all What I'm saying is a lot of page builders have a lot of cruft and there's a lot of other issues around page builders in terms of Post content if you want to change themes. You don't want to use that page builder Each page builder has a different way of storing content. So it's there's a there's a lot of issues So this is a This is going to eventually be a page builder without all the cruft of a lot of these page builder plugins For developers, this is really key here. What are the changes react? React JS it's not I'm not saying react. I'm saying react.js It's a it's a JavaScript framework for kind of more complex front-end stuff and Gutenberg is react-powered There's there's a PHP side to it But it's react-powered and so for a lot of developers that are very accustomed to being PHP guys and kind of In their in their lane for WordPress development. This is a major learning challenge What's really cool about this for for my company is we we do a lot of react work in our application dev work and so For us it was just kind of a natural Hey, this is awesome. It kind of combines a lot of stuff. We're doing right now With theme theme development, it's gonna be different. It's gonna be block based You're still gonna have templates, but they're gonna be templates of locked-in blocks And So I think I think the whole theme development standard theme development workflow that a lot of people use is gonna change I don't exactly know the how but I some ideas and We're starting to build sites for Gutenberg to use with Gutenberg. So I'm really excited to see how theme development involves So for those of you that maintain sites when 5.0 comes out You're probably gonna have to do things to keep your clients happy or at least not have them freak out That's that's challenging and I'm not certainly I'm not trying to be the preach the gospel of Gutenberg. It's coming whether or not we want it it's coming and And certainly those in the business of supporting clients They're gonna have challenges. That's that there's no doubt, but where there's challenges. There are opportunities Right. So for example a lot of our clients that we've been building sites for a long time, you know We've let them know. Hey, this is a new thing You know, we can build your site to take advantage of this and make it a lot easier for your content creators And a lot of people are really interested and then we're moving we're proceeding. So there's there's opportunities here So yeah, you know people focus on the challenges and it's important to think to think those things through but I think It's also equally important if you're an entrepreneur to to take the plunge And I think here's another thing is you know The custom blocks that we've built for block party. They're just for the world, but we're gonna be building custom blocks that are following brand specifications for our clients And so again, that's another you know, unless you do like beaver-builder modules You're probably not really doing stuff like that right now. Exactly. So that's another another change for developers For the site assemblers and and what I mean by that and I don't mean that pejoratively in any way What I mean by that is people that aren't necessarily developers, but they use page builders or other instruments to kind of create their sites well, eventually and Again, I say eventually because Gutenberg's still not there. It's it's you know, what is end of June? Suppose we merge in the core and there's still a lot of issues and still a lot things will work out And I'm a little bit suspicious that August is actually a real Merged date, but I think eventually it will be It will be the built-in page builder that is the go-to And then of course, you know just to let you know that there's a lot of legacy plugins I may not support Gutenberg right when it comes out Plugins that this haven't necessarily been updated in a while That's just something to think about Okay, this is where I get excited You know, I'm Don't really love the word entrepreneur, but I guess there's not really a business person For a long time in my professional life. I kind of fought against that at some point I just learned to just accept the fact that I am who I am I get excited about building things and Making things and making things happen So whatever that is I'm that and so for those of you that are on the same page with that This is an enormous disruption in the WordPress ecosystem. I mean, it's the biggest one in a long time and When there's disruption there is opportunity there's a tremendous amount of opportunity And for us the way we look at it is it's an opportunity for us to specialize To differentiate and it's an opportunity for us to stop being a Local agency. I mean we do work around the country, but still a lot of our WordPress bread and butter is local It's a chance for us to become something more than that in the WordPress space And it's not just for us. I think it's for everyone So there's a tremendous amount tremendous amount of opportunities Finally I Think it's important to when when thinking about this thinking about the controversy I think it's important to focus on a couple questions I'm gonna actually start with the middle question, which is why did I come to Grand Rapids to do this talk? I'm all I'm all the way out in Albuquerque, right? Why did I want to come out here? Why did I apply? Graciously accepted to talk Because I don't know too much about Grand Rapids my wife saw your guys's video the American Pie one and She was like, oh, yeah the American pie. Yeah, I was like, yeah, yeah I don't know too much about Grand Rapids. I've been to Michigan a couple of times, but never here and But what I do know, it's not a big city. It's not Detroit. It's not Chicago, right? And so I see a lot of overlap in that sense with Albuquerque definitely not You know what or was Albuquerque famous where we're, you know, it's where bug bunny made bugs bunny made the wrong turn, right? Breaking bad or something like that. Yeah, so so I See that probably there's a lot of similarities in our ecosystems and So for me, I'm just excited to Tell Specifically the entrepreneurs, but really everyone This is a huge opportunity. This isn't a tremendous opportunity and it's a tremendous opportunity to differentiate and I want to share that with you guys because You know, I'm a met fan. I root for the underdog You know, so who's WordPress for right, you know, what do I like we don't do a tremendous amount of WordPress work anymore at my company? Part of that is because it's really hard to scale and grow just doing WordPress in New Mexico, you know New Mexico is Like that, you know, it's at the bottom of everything You know If it weren't for Mississippi and Alabama, you know We you know, I know nothing against them I'm just saying, you know, like when they release all the statistics, you know, as we're like 48 or whatever So, you know, we're not exactly the wealthiest state and so so in order to kind of grow our company we've had to do other kinds of work, but WordPress what I love about WordPress and what I love about word camp is that This is the you know, this is the you know, for me, this is the people's platform In a way that other platforms and other technologies aren't it's for us the DIYers right it's for us that like to make things happen and deliver value to clients or just create kind of what we want online and so Fundamentally I see Gutenberg as just an improvement on the platform that has already given us so much and I'm all about that And what you know again, why are we so passionate about WordPress in the ecosystem because when I started with WordPress in 2015 I went to the Albuquerque WordPress meetup and People were so welcoming and so excited and you know, I didn't know what I was doing It was just starting out as a you know developer in WordPress didn't didn't know a ton They're so welcoming so excited. You know, I've been to other developer conferences software development conferences it's a different vibe and So, you know for me, I don't do things just because you know, I'm not completely motivated by money You know, I'm an entrepreneur but part of the reason that I'm an entrepreneur is I get to do what I want be independent and You know make the life. I want for me professionally. So To me like I've always felt like WordPress gave my company an opportunity to grow and and you know, we're very much indebted and so again like Focusing on the controversy is fine. I mean to me it just It is what it is. There were a lot of mistakes made a lot of miscommunications and so forth, but If you try it and you use it and especially if you get a chance to use some custom blocks It's better Again, that's my opinion It's better. It's a better experience and that's what we want We want a better experience for clients and we want a better experience for ourselves So yeah, that's about it. That's all I got Let me take the questions If I had any Okay, how will Gutenberg handle what is currently in meta boxes For instance on one side I have CPT that uses advanced custom fields blah blah blah, etc. Okay Lot of plug-ins will so the plan and currently what what goes on is like let's say you use like a plug-in like Yoast Right and probably a lot of you guys use Yoast or some something like that Right and what what happens is you get meta boxes below, right that allow you to make tweaks to the SEO settings They just show up below the post content right now Specifically what happens with ACF? I don't know. We don't use ACF So I don't have a complete answer to that boy. I will say is that You know like that the default behavior is that the custom meta boxes will stay they'll just be below the post content How easy will it be to create custom blocks great question It took our senior dev who's a react guy a day to kind of wrap his head around what was going on and It took probably a week for him to build the pie chart block to where it was in a stable place But you know he's a talented guy And I think it won't be it depends where you're at if you're just a PHP guy and that's what you do You're gonna have to learn react and that's a different paradigm right so with react you have you're gonna need to Know how to use npm You're gonna need to know probably how to use web pack There's a whole JavaScript Implementation and deployment workflow that you're gonna have to learn So I don't think it's gonna be easy And also by the way the Gutenberg documentation. I can't say is great right now So you have to you just kind of have to figure it out on your own to some extent come up with creative solutions But Gutenberg, you know, it's open source. It's on github. You can contribute to it And so I encourage you guys to take a look at that and contribute as you can See here. What else? Okay, will there be tons of them available on the plug-in repository? I Don't know There are some right now if you type in Gutenberg you'll find some stuff Like the pie chart thing we built I don't know if there's that yet data visualization stuff I don't think I can really talk about our product in any kind of meaningful way Here but feel free to ask me afterwards and I can kind of show you What we've built it's not on the repo yet, but I can show you what we've built You know to me again to be first to market and Ready for when 5.0 comes out and all of a sudden millions of websites are using Gutenberg as a default editor. I think would be a smart business move if you have an agency I'm sorry, I just gonna go through all these first, but I'll get it. Yeah, I'll get to you What happens with the legacy plugins will they still work Yeah, plugins will still work, but but there are some plugins that depend on Tiny emcee to some extent that obviously won't work as as you as you might want There are a lot of really great plugins that are really dependable, but they haven't been updated in a long time I can't speak for that. I think you're gonna have to test it out There is a plug-in There is a plug-in on the repo I believe I can't remember what it's called, but it's a plug-in that lets you test out your sites with Gutenberg It gives you kind of like a report card. So you might want to check that out. I don't Google it I can't remember the name right off the top What do user roles look like with Gutenberg I think the same I don't think that I Don't know for sure, but I haven't run into any issues You know, you're gonna have the same permissions and same same similar idea with the reuse roles as it currently stands More fluent in PHP I thought of becoming more fluent in PHP should I instead now focus on react? oh I don't know like so I went to a coding bootcamp and Long to years ago and I so I go back there and speak sometimes at the coding bootcamp And people always ask me well, what should I learn react? Should I learn view? Should I learn, you know, whatever and I'm just I'm always encouraging people to be polyglots and Just be good software developers You know stick with something learn and you can take a lot of what you learn in PHP and take it to JavaScript It's just different different syntax But a lot of the same principles, you know, they stay the same So if you're just committed to learning the syntax learning the workflow learning some of the quirks You'll be fine So that's not really an answer. Sorry But there's there's still there's still gonna be a lot of work for PHP. I mean there's gonna be you know You know, there's gonna be legacy work and WordPress forever And you know, I think plug-in development is is you know, still gonna be largely a PHP affair depending on what you're doing Okay, any other questions from the crowd? Yes Okay Good question I'm not necessarily sure beyond that. I suspect that Gutenberg posts Are going to be more performant than let's say other page builder posts, right? because the way Gutenberg stores all the post content is HTML comments and and With the depending on which page builder some page builders do all kinds of crazy things like add tables and So so anyway from a performance standpoint, I think that's probably where you're gonna see the biggest difference But Good question. I wish I had a better answer. Sorry. Yes Yeah, so like I said, I don't write a ton of code anymore. My guys built most of the stuff, but Yeah, I think roughly that's right And and the way we have it set up is that we have a plug-in that has a whole bunch of blocks and each block Has its styles, but you know purposefully we try and keep it You know minimal as possible and inherit as many of the theme styles, right as possible, right? It will kind of depend how you build sites What that looks like and I would say this also there's not a clear way to build a Gutenberg block yet I mean, there's not a best practice. This is exactly the way you do it. A lot of people are experimenting with a lot of different Ways to do it so I got like a minute When are they going to add a font list? Make it do it do it yourself. Yes Yes There's a plug-in for that you can go back to tiny MC, but why? No, no, I mean, I know why because your client that has your vintage 2010 site that you've been maintaining for a long time doesn't feel like changing and that's fine Cool. Yeah, so there there will be options. Yes Yeah, I mean, I think yeah, that is a as a best practice. I'm sure that that is going to be the same thing I think the way theme development is going to play out I don't I don't know yet for sure but I think it's going to be templates of blocks that are Kind of laid out so a client will create a new page Using a template and there will be blocks that are just part of the page that they can fill in with content To some extent, I think that's the way it'll start playing out Yes. Oh, yeah, good question. Um, so yeah, that's they haven't tackled that one yet with widgets and and But I suspect That it's gonna go in that direction But yeah, no widgets are yeah, okay. I'm out of time Please feel free to like I'll be around please feel free to come up to me talk to me Thank you guys so much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you guys. I really appreciate it


There isn't a whole lot to do where I come from. The nightlife is comprised solely of a sad little tavern shoved in behind a bakery on the main strip, an afterthought to the town's development. Had to put the drunk somewhere, I guess. No recreational halls or places to dance to speak of, everything shuts down at the hint of dusk and you can forget trying to get a drink on a Sunday. Such is the fate of being born in a small town within the American Midwest, the only beacon of life was that archaic white church that towered over the center of town. You could spot its pointed roof while approaching from a mile away. My ma would drag me to every sermon. The preacher had a talent for terrifying those in attendance. Despite this, the church was packed every Sunday. The fear of God was easier to have on one's mind opposed to the other issue that plagued the town. This threat was easily explained. You could be saved from it. Just follow the rules. The other threat had yet to be defined. People were beginning to disappear. Cars were found abandoned on the side of the road with no sign of the owner. Some seemed to vanish from within their own homes. They would be seen entering only to never leave. Neighbors often claimed to hear glass shattering late in the night in these cases. Rumors spread rapidly. Each one more absurd than the last. The only thing that was certain was that they all disappeared after sundown. Some paranoia gripped the town and it became silent past 9pm. I'd recently graduated high school. This was to be the first summer I would share with many of my childhood friends. Most of them had big plans for the coming September. Off to the city, off anywhere really, off to somewhere better than here. I didn't have such plans, not for lack of wanting to. My family was not from money and I wasn't exactly a prodigy in school. I'd hardly figured anything out by the time high school concluded. Watching everyone preparing to leave me behind was depressing, but I did my best to bury my feelings and be happy for them. I'd received word of an impromptu party happening out by this wooden bridge that crossed a river not too far from town. I'd been across it a few times when my parents would drive out to visit my cousin's farm. Based on its appearance, one could be forgiven for believing that its construction predated the town itself. I hated the way the boards creaked and groaned as our family station wagon would pass over it. It felt as though the vehicle would fall through into the water below at any moment. We couldn't remember whose idea the bridge was. Typically, we would load our trucks with booze and head to the abandoned barn house up north.  The bridge seemed like a decent alternative. It was far enough from the town, so we didn't need to worry about noise and the embankment provided some additional privacy. An ideal place to get inebriated. Drinking was the only thing that seemed to make this place remotely tolerable. No one my age really observed the unofficial curfew and my folks never tried to stop me from going out. Ma had decided against cooking that night, so I dropped by Sal's diner. The food was more akin to what was found in a pig's trough, but I was going to need something in my stomach if I was planning on drinking that night. The sun had set as I picked apart my meal at a rusting metal table outside of the restaurant. Light cast upon me from the windows of the prefabricated diner as staff rushed around trying to finish their shifts. The remainder of my food had become cold at this point. I decided against finishing my burger when I spotted a few glowing orbs to the right in the diner's parking lot. Raccoons. I figured life was hard enough for the little guys, so I tossed the remains of my meal their way. The eyes didn't move, they just stared back. The sound of a horn startled me. I turned to see Claire and Dax and his rusty pickup out on the road. Come on, you waiting for the seasons to change? Dax shouted while leaning out of the cab. I sighed and looked back towards the raccoons. They were gone, probably thought I was a threat and scampered away. I shrugged, stood up from the table, and ran off towards the truck. In moments we were under the bridge getting hammered, I had just lost count of how many cans I had pounded back. Jake, a guy I may or may not have sat beside in history, was passionately recounting another time when he was drunk. I was just nodding on the verge of fading out when he slapped me on the shoulder. I'll be right back, but I'm just about ready to piss myself. Jake slurred and giggled. Jake pointed at me with dual finger guns and turned around, walking out from under the bridge. I looked down at the gravel beneath my feet as I heard him trudge towards the tall grass off the embankment. The river flowed in front of me, barely making an impression on the soundscape that had been dominated by our presence. I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I grabbed one and placed it between my lips, lighting it. I took a deep inhale and exhaled, watching the smoke fly forward. To my right, a symphony of slurred conversation hit my ears. There was at least nine of us under the bridge, not including Jake, who had been singing show tunes in the distance as he urinated. What a douche, I said to myself, as I chuckled under my breath. I wasn't sure how I'd separated from the rest of the group with him. He was the kind of guy that didn't talk to you, but rather at you. To my left, wind whistled, disrupting the silence beyond the party. My brain took a moment to process the information. Wasn't Jake singing a moment ago? I turned to look. The tall grass swayed in the breeze, but Jake was not there. I dropped my cigarette, stomped it out, and stepped down from underneath the bridge to get a better look. Hey, Jake, where are you at? I shouted playfully. It was difficult to see too far out. We were submerged in a darkness you could only really be familiar with if you grew up in a rural area. The only source of light was coming from the headlights of three parked trucks on the right side of the bridge. I became nervous. Jake, cut it out.  We'll leave without you. You want to walk home alone? I tried to sound angry as I said this, but that really wasn't my thing. Yes, what are you doing? A sly feminine voice rang out. I turned to see Claire's silhouette in the backdrop of the headlights with her hands cut to her mouth. Dak stood a few steps to her right. I can't find Jake. I called back. Well, he's probably pissing, she said, hardly containing her laughter. Yeah, he was, but he disappeared. I responded. Probably because he noticed you watching. Now come over here. He'll come out when he's ready. I could sense her teasing grin in the dark as I stared back at her awkwardly. I threw my hands up in the air in defeat and began walking back to the bridge. A gust of air rushed past behind my head the moment I stepped forward. I stopped and looked around instinctively.  What are we going to do with you, Wesley? Her infectious smile sneaking out of her smirk. Please, just Wes. I said sheepishly as I made my way back under the bridge and approached her. Dax wandered over and placed a hand on Claire's shoulder. She slapped it away and raised her eyebrows. Dax shrugged and raised a beer bottle to his lips. The rest of the party mingled amongst themselves, dancing to the country music blaring from a blown out speaker in a cab of one of the trucks. I couldn't even make out what song it was, but I guess it provided the necessary background noise to fill in the dead air in between whiskey soaked conversations. If I were to be honest, I wasn't too familiar with most of the grad class. I knew most of their names found them friendly enough, but I didn't quite know them if that makes sense. Most of these parties, I would find myself hovering around Claire, Dax, and whatever group of people they were interacting with. Claire must have noticed my drifting gaze. What's going on in that head of yours, Wes? Claire spoke with only a hint of mockery. It's, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I did my best to meet nonchalant. Claire looked at me, pursed her lips, and nodded unconvinced. She could read my insecurities like a flyer on a telephone pole. Claire playfully shoved my shoulder and smiled. There's a life waiting for you out there, Wes.  She said softly, I was going to miss her. The music cut out along with one of the truck's headlights, son of a bitch, Brad, the school's jock sighed out. He walked out from under the bridge and approached the truck, pulling a flashlight from his pocket. He swung the driver's door open and leaned inside while muttering to himself. I zoned out again as the party's chatter became the night's primary soundtrack. I watched on as Brad fiddled with the stereo and the familiar faces across the way became absorbed in their own anecdotes and inside jokes. I realized it had been some time since Jake left. I felt that I had to look for him. He could have fallen and cracked his head on a rock or something. I was about to speak up. When something peculiar caught my attention, it wasn't a sight, but rather a sound. I was unsure how to describe it properly. I could be compared to someone gasping for air, yet the sound was a much lower pitch. It seemed, to repeat, somewhat like a bird call. I hadn't heard it before when the radio was blaring, but now that it was out, I could easily hear it over the sea of chatter. The longer I listened for it, the more it seemed to multiply. I couldn't pinpoint the location, it seemed to come from all over. I began to look around, but no one else seemed to notice it. I looked behind me at the brush. It was far too dark, but the noise wasn't coming from there. A troubling realization struck me. It seemed to be coming from above us. A gust of wind blasted past us from the other side of the party, immediately followed by a metal screech. All of us turned to face the noise. One's truck was rocking back and forth, much like a seesaw that was pressed to one side and let loose. It came to stand still. Brad was not there. The entire party stopped what they were doing. The night became dead silent. Brad said a girl whose name I couldn't recall. She slowly broke from the rest of the party and approached the truck. Alex began to walk in her direction, but I instinctively put out a hand and stopped him. I could feel him scowl at me in protest. The girl walked up to the driver's side and looked around. After a few moments, she stepped away from the cab. She turned to look at us in confusion, and as she began to walk back, a spiraling beam of light fell from the sky and landed at her feet. It was a flashlight. She looked down at it, then looked up.  Before she could make a sound, a dark shape swooped down and lifted her up out of sight. The party went silent. Panic set in. One of the party goers let out a shrill scream. Everyone began to dart towards their vehicles. Dax pushed past me, holding Claire's wrist. I quickly threw myself between them and the vehicles. What are you doing? I said, monotone, still in shock. We need to get out of here. Did you not see what just happened? Dax shouted. What we need to do is stay under the bridge. I shouted back, holding eye contact. I had no evidence to back this up. I was just going off instinct.  Dax said with venom. Dax shoved me to the ground as he dragged Claire forward. She wrenched her arm away from him. Don't I get a say? Also, you put your hands on me like that again.  Claire attempted to speak with her typical confidence, but she was visibly shaken. Look, I'm sorry, but considering the circumstances, I didn't take etiquette into account.  I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped. I was looking upon the others as they crowded around their vehicles. The screams were becoming louder beyond that. The noise was back, but it was different. Those deep creaking gasps became more frequent, excited, even Dax and Claire noticed the direction of my gaze and quit their argument to see what I was looking at. None of us spoke a word.  It happened too quickly to see what it was. A girl was gripping the hand of her partner. Suddenly something lifted him up, pulling her with him. She was flung towards the tall grass and mid-air. Another blur snatched her. One person managed to get their truck started. As they backed up, the driver's side window exploded and they were dragged out of the passenger's side and into the sky. Unmanned, the truck rolled into the river, its headlights projecting into the air and dying out as the water reached its electronics. It was just the three of us. Everyone else was gone. Dax's truck sat a few paces from the bridge's cover. It was the last operational vehicle and only source of light. The gasping calls became unbearable. Did you hear that? I said, unsure of my own words. What? Claire said, frozen in place. I don't know. It's like someone struggling for air. I think it's what's taking people. I shuddered as I spoke. Dax curled his hand into a fist and walked towards the edge of the beam. What are you doing? I said sternly. Dax looked back at me, then pointed towards the area Jake and I were hanging out earlier. I left my pack over there, away from the party. Didn't want anyone going through it. His voice was steady. He stood at the edge where the light melded with the blackness of the night. What good is a backpack gonna do us? I nearly shouted. My old man's gun. I nabbed it from under his bed, figured we could shoot cans or something. A nervous laugh edged its way into Dax's voice as he spoke. I wasn't sure that a gun would be of much use. Whatever was out there was fast, even if we were experienced. I doubt any of us would have the accuracy necessary to protect ourselves. There was something more pressing on my mind. How had we been spared? Was it the bridge above us or the light coming from Dax's truck? Jake and I were engulfed in darkness earlier though. Before I could react, Dax took off into the dark. Claire shouted out after him, but his shape had already been absorbed into the darkness beyond. The gravel crunched under his footsteps as Claire and I held our breath. Then there was nothing. A few moments passed. An explosion of light and sound rang out into the night, revealing Dax's location. He was firing the pistol. Three muzzle flash revealed Dax frantically pointing the gun in a different direction like a slide show. Five shots rang out, then silence. There was a gust of air, a final gunshot rang out. I caught a glimpse of Dax suspended in air, being pulled away. I heard the faint sound of the pistol landing on gravel. Claire cried. I just stood still, shaking. It was the light then. It was the only thing that made sense. As long as we were in a solid amount of light, then we'd be safe. Perhaps we'd only been noticed when Jake left the cover of the bridge or maybe whatever was out there was just playing with us. As Claire gripped onto me, I turned to look at the vehicle that was providing our salvation. Were the headlights getting dim? Or was that just my imagination? Our bodies cut out replicant shapes in the light. Were we unknowingly making pathways out of our shadows for whatever was out there to reach us? I chose not to think about it. The headlights flickered. There had to be something we could do. Then the obvious occurred to me. In the whirlwind of panic and inebriation, I didn't consider the cell phone in my pocket. I reached in and pulled it out, examining the home screen. Mostly charged with good enough reception. Without further hesitation, I dialed 911. I pressed the phone to my ear and waited for someone to answer. They would probably think we were crazy. If I said too much, maybe they would write it off as a prank and not even show. I had to keep it cool. I would say there was an accident. Then hit their head. It didn't matter, as long as it was in the realm of believability. The call connected, and I opened my mouth to speak. I felt a lump in my throat as I stared into the darkness. 911, what's your emergency? A gruff voice answered. I cleared my throat, tried to quell the terror enough to speak. There's been an accident. My friends hurt. He fell. Send someone, please. I spoke. All right, just calm down. What happened? The operator seemed a bit disinterested. We were drinking under the bridge, and... What bridge? The operator interrupted me as their tone became stiff. The one just on the edge of town, the wooden one, I was almost shouting at this point. Then there was silence. That's where they sleep. You should have followed the curfew. He said in a quiet trance. There was a click, and the call ended. I dialed 911 again, but I couldn't connect with an operator. If I couldn't contact the authorities, what could I do? Assuming anyone would believe me. I'd only be putting others in danger. The darkness beyond our light source began to swirl as if it was oil on a liquid surface. Was I perceiving things moving in the night, or was I staring into a wall of ink? Are they coming? Claire spoke as if she already knew the answer. I looked at her without saying a word. She gripped her left shoulder, taking my response as a confirmation of her fears. Whatever was out there stayed just on the edge of where the light faded off. There were sounds coming from all directions now. We found ourselves drifting towards the truck's headlights until we were at the edge of the bridge's underside. The light appeared to be the primary source of our salvation, but I was not yet comfortable with losing the mass between us and whatever may have been in the sky. There's a good nine hours until dawn.  Claire said, you saw what happened earlier. Something took that guy straight out of the cab. I said frustrated. So we're just gonna wait here until the battery dies with the keys and the ignition. Only a few feet away, she said. There was a look in her eyes that I knew far too well. She'd already made her decision. I'm not waiting to see what happens. I don't want it to end here, Wes. And then Claire darted for the truck, throwing herself into the driver's side. I chased after her. She turned the key and the ignition and the engine roared as I slid into the passenger's side door, shutting it behind me. Drowning out the engine was a chorus of gasps and hisses coming from every direction. Claire stepped on the accelerator, launching the truck through the underside of the bridge. Something collided with the rear passenger side wheel well, causing the truck to make a sharp right turn towards the river. Claire twisted the steering wheel, narrowly missing a nose dive into the water. The night hissed with rage as Claire floored the gas pedal, driving through the gravel and up the hill of tall grass. Something punched a massive dent into the roof of the cab. Claire drove up onto a paved road and cranked the wheel towards town. We just about flew over the bridge as the speedometer climbed. Claire's knuckles turned white as she gripped the wheel. In the distance, I could see the few street lamps that marked the main strip of our town. The gasping and screeching stopped as if a conductor held up their hand. There was an absolute silence, save for the engine desperately working to keep the vehicle in motion, along with the wheels rolling over the poorly maintained asphalt. And then the driver's side window exploded. Claire's head was whipped out towards it. Something had her. I attempted to grab her right arm, but I was yanked from the passenger side. I lost my grip and she was pulled into the night, screaming. The truck began to fishtail. I latched onto the steering wheel, trying to regain control, but the truck went off the road and into a ditch. I hit my head on the steering wheel and blacked out. I was staring upwards at the driver's seat when my eyes opened. My face was warm with blood. I was on my back, lying on the roof of the cabin. The truck had flipped, turning myself over. I began to crawl. Shattered glass sliced my knees and forearms as I progressed towards the dark of night. I managed to pull myself out of the vehicle and into the tall, dry grass. My right hand was throbbing. I looked at it. My ring and pinky finger were pointing in the wrong directions. I was in too much shock to pay attention to the pain. My head was ringing, but I could still hear that sound. It was close, incredibly close. I sat myself up, my back to the ruined truck. One headlight had survived the accident. This dying beam cast out into the night. That low roar became even lower, then silent. I looked forward into the darkness, and then I saw it. A pair of eyes followed by another pair, then seven more. Their numbers increased until I stopped counting. I was looking at a constellation of glowing orbs all trained on me. The same orbs I'd seen before, I'd fed them, mistaking them for something else, and they'd followed me, whatever they were. The scraps I gave them weren't enough, but it had labeled me as a food source. One by one, the eyes shut, and I was left in the darkness. In the morning, a driver noticed the total truck and called the authorities. No one believed me. The police operator denied the contents of my phone call, and there was no record of it. The scent of alcohol on my clothing led most to believe that I simply took Jack's truck and went for a joyride. As for the disappearances and abandoned vehicles, despite the outcry from family and friends, not much came from it. It was as if there was some unspoken understanding not to tread in certain places. After the authorities let me go, I became a mess. I try to stay indoors as much as possible. When I look outside my bedroom window, I'm met with those eyes peering in on me. I haven't fed them anything but the occasional food scraps, but they won't touch it. People are disappearing in our neighborhood at an increasing rate. I fear they will try to take me next. At night, I stay indoors and I keep all the lights on, but even then, I can still hear them calling out to one another in the night sky.


good morning everybody it's another new day where else are we going to start our day so how's everybody doing on this wonderful friday morning actually you're probably watching this saturday or something some other day but how are you doing it's friday it's going to be a fantastic day we're gonna go drive some trucks bring people their stuff oh when i'm getting cut off right very nice very nice well it's time to wake up the beast and go hook up oh i was gonna leave the shop somebody's closing the door on me uh-oh are my lights not on aren't those lights on up there that's better pre-trip uh just at the back at the top the marker lights aren't working that's a pretty big ticket if i were to get caught with it like that you know the thought didn't cross my mind i mean i'm doing my lights inspection or a roadside inspection hint or something and the truck gets inspected and it's found that i had faulty equipments that are burnt out doesn't matter if it contributed to whatever accident happened or not they could they could issue me a big ticket and who knows what else if there was people hurtfully in the worst case scenario it was best to get it fixed right away and we got a great mechanic there who on the ball right it was every time i've had an issue with this truck like i haven't been there long had an issue with this truck while you want to do your pre-trip and make sure your equipment is working because you know i really don't need my lights i need my lights now but after an hour or so the sun's gonna be up but i always do have my lights on anyways for safety always whether the sun's up whether it's nighttime raining daytime snowing whatever the weather i always have my lights on that's so that people can see me better all right i want to be as visible as possible to everybody on the road even though i'm a big truck some people i don't know light catches their eye better than a big moving object i don't know how it i don't know i always have my lights on so it's important to me that all my lights work properly at the beginning of my day i don't want a ticket and i don't want to be responsible for uh you know getting a fine or something or god forbid the worst case scenario someone has an accident because they didn't see me or my signals weren't working or always make sure your lights work okay plus another day so now that we got the truck all the lights working properly everything's running great we're on our way into winnipeg i got some stuff to pick up on the west side of winnipeg it's gonna be great it's gonna be huge we got three skids i think and then from there there will probably be more but for now we're gonna head around to uh the seasons uh around south of tuxedo what what areas of lindenwoods south of tuxedo south of ica around road 90 around migilvery area there is no what i'm talking about right everybody from outside the country it's like ha canada has roads we sure do you know a funny story okay funny story there's a lot of these funny stories and i'm gonna tell a funny story and this doesn't apply to everybody i'm not going to generalize and say everybody but i was in florida once right long time ago and i just gotten my truck license well not my truck license i just gotten my over the road job so this was like 10 10 years ago one of my first trips was to uh florida because i was excited to be down there right i was excited i was telling people yeah i'm from canada isn't that cool and i'm in florida look palm trees i'm excited and they were kind of excited like wow we never met no one from canada before but yeah that's that's where we are and i'm not lying and i'm not saying this to make anybody look bad but it was hilarious and it's worth a share they looked at me it's a seer from canada and then they looked at my truck serious face they said well how'd you get down here in that it was like four days it was great actually first out laughing i hope i didn't make them feel bad but i'm like what okay well did you buy it down take your sled down here and then jump in it here and then drive to here like did you get in your truck in minnesota and then come down no i i got the truck in canada and drove it from canada to florida they had this idea honest to god they had this idea unless they're very good actors but this has happened to more than just one person so they thought that canada had nothing but dog slits that we didn't have any roads that maybe we had snowmobiles and stuff but they thought that we were just an open open line with no roads and you know they're not completely wrong if you think about it because manitoba especially we're like the least developed province and we like it that way at least i do it's quiet not a lot of people here so southern manitoba along the us border is exactly like america you've seen it in my videos here exactly like america the roads aren't quite as nice maybe in some areas i don't know depends who you ask but if you were to be blindfolded and brought from north dakota into manitoba from the road signs and all the speed limits being in metric you would still think you were in america and vice versa you did the other way and you dropped yourself in north dakota you looked around you would think you were still in canada it's exactly the same people for the most part look the same we talk the same we speak the same language we have the same heritage mostly all farmland all our buildings look the same we drive the same kind of vehicles we all drive on the same side of the road if i didn't tell you i was canadian would you know just first glance people usually think i'm from wisconsin americans come up here if they don't tell us they're american if they don't have that southern twang if they don't tell us they're american we just assume they're canadian that's how similar we are so back to the story this person from florida obviously well they live the long ways away you gotta hand them it's a long way canada's a long way from florida okay what's the school bus doing why are you putting your hazards on why don't you turn there they are there they are see now i turn my hazards on and i slow down and i let everybody behind me know that i'm coming to a stop because the bus is going to be picking up some kids i'm always very careful when there's kids around i never want to be in a situation where i have even a close call with a kid almost getting run over or something one day i want to have kids and i hope that other drivers are just as careful let me pass what a nice bus driver what a nice bus driver a lot of them wouldn't do this let's give them a friendly wave everybody's give them a wave hazards there you go flash your lights back at him so that he knows that you're grateful that he did that he didn't have to do that that's my story from some yes we have roads very big country i don't know bob from toronto i don't i don't know anyone from toronto actually no one opposite part of canada from where i live so when you look out my camera right now you're looking at your screen and i'm telling you to me this is canada this right here this is where i grew up this is what i think of when people say canada there's people who live in british columbia completely different experience there's people who live in toronto completely different experiences people who live in newfoundland completely different experience and completely different accents good luck trying to understand what they're trying to tell you i love going to visit there they're very friendly but they talk so fast they're like born auctioneers great people go and visit sometime when they when all this pandemic's over great place go in the summer though avoid it at winter avoid it in winter but anyway the point that goes around the perimeter of the city what should we call it i say we call it the perimeter it better here than that there we go there we go one more there it is okay you guys ready for this urge of mr flatbed is gonna give us room check this truck coming out coming up here on my left you know i try to help other drivers let them know when it's safe to merge back in turn the lights off and back on and they don't see it if they don't want to hey you know i won't judge you too harshly unless you stay in that left lane at the red light that's a pet peeve of mine but see it's gonna turn red he's gonna come back in this lane see he's a good driver that is a professional right there when there's a stop light if at all possible you want to be in the right hand lane leave the left hand lane open for cars like this guy so that they can get moving they got places to go to and they're their quicker accelerating than us now if a truck comes up in the left lane here beside us now we're plugging up both lanes and we're both accelerating very slowly and it's just not very nice to the cars that have places to be right you just want to be a little courteous and extend that courtesy try to be in the right lane at the stop lights on the highway especially in the city i know it doesn't really matter because it's the city but on the highways if there's a truck you get it you get it see we're gonna take off nice and slow here and all these cars can you know get past us and get on their way to wherever they're going they got places to be we're at our first stop want to make sure we're straight everything looks good let's go in and see what they have for us so when you go in you always got to make sure you got your mask on you've got to properly cover the nose mouth and chin i always bring my gloves along just in case they need me to help out with anything or if i need to move the pallets around in my trailer with a pallet jack i'm always prepared and i always bring my phone with me too just in case i need to make a phone call i was talking too much on the way in i was too excited to wire up my coffee i can feel it now gosh you've been talking too much and it's not even what's the time not even 9 30 in the morning yet my body's like why are you talking so much stop it okay so i picked up two skids here they're going across town somewhere let's get this and start let's get out of the dock so it's open for others figure out where we're going with us most times i can just google the where it's going google has most of the answers what's next come up with clever slogans and make you laugh makes you want to buy their product right now i sort of want to go out and buy some peanuts you got to go right through the city right now these skids straight there keep buzzing around the city today but have i mentioned yet today is friday more and more this is becoming a a highlight of my week sort of like there's hump day where you're excited that you're over the hump what is that guy doing making sure that ground was i days of obviously friday so what do you guys have planned for this weekend what's your big plans go out to our spot let the dogs run around because they've been cooped up inside because of the extreme cold what a lot of chance to go out and exercise so this weekend we're probably going to spend a good we shall see this guy he's speeding up slowing down the city here my experience delivering pepsi back in the past he comes into play here i know where all the truck roads are and i know how to get through the city i know where the low bridges are definitely comes in very handy and gets me from point a to point b a lot faster knowing where i'm going already not having to sit there and figure out what's a truck road and what's not i'm not sure how it is in the city you live in or cities you drive through but a gps for a truck driver in winnipeg is absolutely useless there's no point it doesn't know where the truck roads are it'll always route you through the most tight streets where you can't get into and it won't warn you even the truck gps if you use those to get into winnipeg useless the only way you can really learn how to get through the city properly efficiently and quickly is by experience that's the only thing that's going to help you out and i'm sure a lot of cities are like that but i did notice that when i was in the us because most gps manufacturers and people who build these gps systems right and google maps and everything they're all americans they're all built for americans and they just you know throw in the rest of us just to include us so that we don't feel left out right so when i'm driving around in the us the gps works great there for the most part the truck gps will route you around low bridges most of the time a lot of not all the time but then you come up to canada especially around montreal where everything's in french no you can tell that the gps was designed by a foreigner who's never been here because nothing makes sense see the train is way up there but these lights here won't turn green otherwise you know people will plug up this whole intersection and then block it for the people going that way right so they just leave us here at the light so if you wanted to make a left turn too bad you got to wait till the train over there is gone we are going straight so we got to wait anyway doesn't matter all right train's gone we're free sometimes they take forever when you catch a train in the city because you know they're slowly going through the city or they're going into the train yards whatever they do and sometimes they slow right down sometimes they stop sometimes they reverse and you're stuck sitting there forever look at this big lineup on this side trains are a big convenience that's why most modern cities build overpasses and underpasses you know but that's fancy that's way too fancy for winter pegs so we don't have those they got to fix the road somehow but it looks like they're fixing a water main over there winter peg is well known at least around here I think to have water main breaks in the winter time because the water systems aren't designed for the cold temperatures I think I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure that's what's going on because they keep whenever it gets really cold that we had a really cold week this week the pipe seemed to freeze and then burst and then you get a mess like this where they got to close down a busy road to fix it I'm thinking that's what happened it would make sense seeing as we had such a cold week in a town here might be mistaken though one thing you'll notice if you visit winter peg is there's a lot of these wall murals everywhere this one's a little old already but on the right there shows what winter peg looks like in the current day and ahead of us here this is the first settlement along uh upper for gary adley it shows the history of the area and how it's changed I'm supposed to be in that was facing the wrong way until it was too late I'm in two weeks today so two weeks ago almost exactly local city driving that there's more soot being built up two weeks that'd be twice a month well we didn't get very far we ran this thing through three cycles of a park region or a forest region whatever you want to call it and uh all three attempts were uh failures because the light is still flashing and that means that an urgent park region is needed it's going to start derating the engine I believe uh feels like I've already lost a little bit of power maybe it's just in my mind check engine light came on as well so the shop back home uh said don't take it any further so we're parked here on the north side of winter peg at maxim truck our shop mechanic is driving all the way out here he's got his scanner that he can plug in here find out exactly what's going on why this thing is acting up hopefully get it fixed right here and then I can take it home then I have another driver that's coming to take the stuff that I have in my trailer and put it in his truck and he'll deliver it for me and this is probably going to be the rest of my day I'm thinking depends how quickly our mechanic can fix it he is pretty good at what he does I was just talking about him just before like he he's very quick to fix things and this thing like I said two weeks ago the same thing happened and he had it fixed before I even got to work the next day so he probably knows what to look for already but he wants to come out here and be sure uh because with these trucks any repairs get very expensive very quickly believe me I owned my own truck for several years and or at least the truck and I was responsible for all of the maintenance and if you don't fix things when they're small they turn into massive things very quickly so we don't want that we don't want a small thing to turn into a big thing so I've been instructed to sit here and twiddle my thumbs and wait the mechanic is about an hour away at least so uh well I guess between now and then the other driver's going to show up here and that'll probably take up a lot of the time while we shift freight over it's a little bit of awkward freight they're really long pieces they're heavy but they're narrow we gotta sort of lug them into his truck he's gonna back up to the back of my truck oh that'll probably take a good 15 minutes at least and then the rest of the time I guess I'll just babysit the old grumpy girl I don't know why she's so grumpy at me it's Friday she's supposed to be in a good mood it is what it is but at least we're getting it uh looked at now before anything bigger happens because I would hate to see the uh the truck you know get thrown into the shop for something big again they they just did a I believe a top end rebuild on this truck I think that that's what it was and the owner is a really great guy and I I don't want him to have to pay for a massive repair bill I know how big they get you remember that weekend we had in uh in uh BC around new years right wasn't just after new years 2020 I think yeah that was just before this whole pandemic thing started they were still sort of talking about it but it wasn't here yet right it wasn't a big deal yet we had we still hadn't heard of masks wearing masks at that time yet now look at us a year later I got mine here and I got an extra one in here just in case and if those both go I got a box of disposables just in case oh here's my guy and I throw the stuff in the back of his truck right okay came to save the day he's behind me over there backed right up to me like a boss and now all of the stuff that was mine is now he is he will deliver it to its rightful place and I wait here for the mechanic and twiddle my thumbs boss's orders he didn't actually say twiddle my thumbs but he did just say sit tight getting tired of twiddling my thumbs I'm getting a little sore it's like it's stroke my beard like a wise man for a while I need to shave this thing should I let it grow again I don't know I'm not really big into my big beard look you can already see how it grows this way it's like swoosh this way that's why I never grow it out anymore because it doesn't grow straight it's very hard to maintain but maybe now because I'm home every day maybe it would be easier to maintain I don't know our mechanic guy came and saved the day really nice guy I got to sit and chat with him for a while when he was working on the truck he's following me now to make sure that everything goes well that I can get back to the shop and he'll take a much closer look at the truck in the warm shop so that's where we're headed now I guess that'll be it for this week that's it go home for the weekend and and hopefully get this thing back in tip top shape Monday morning or maybe over the weekend I don't know when he's gonna look at it probably Monday morning I'm guessing that is what it is he'll get her all fixed up probably won't take him long once he's there he's got all his tools and equipment there we did what we could so we can get it back there there we go guys today's vlog was very long I got a little bit yappy today I no I don't apologize I was gonna apologize I don't apologize regret nothing I'll just keep this end clip kind of short so I hope that uh how I explain things makes sense to you guys and uh I keep getting comments about why I don't show my truck I hope that that makes sense to you now as well I have an agreement in place and I want to honor that and make sure that I can continue to make videos for you guys here as well as drive the truck uh daily because there's nothing I love more than driving trucks well I shouldn't say there's nothing I love more there I mean I love my family more but that's why we're doing this being home every night and on the weekends right but I really do enjoy where I'm at I honestly think that it's a great position and I hope to be there for a very long time so I'm gonna follow all the guidelines that we have set up and we'll see what happens in the future other than that the truck got back to the shop all right the mechanic followed me all the way back he's gonna take a look at it either over the weekend or Monday and hopefully uh it'll be a quick fix I don't I'm pretty sure it's all just codes he has all his equipment that you can just plug into the truck and shows you everything uh we were trying to do another regen there but since the temperatures are so cold he was saying something about uh uh that he couldn't get the exhaust temperature up to where it needed to be to do a proper regen I'm not a mechanic so I'm not gonna say anything because he was talking mechanic talk but it made sense the way he explained it to me anyway so it should be okay it probably just needs to be warmed up and he'll be able to fix it in the shop it'll all be good so thanks for watching today everybody tomorrow is going to be another video it's the weekend I hope you're having a great weekend I'm just putting this together here on Saturday it's 3 30 p.m central time here in North America by the time you watch this it'll probably be the evening already take care and I wish you all the best see you tomorrow


Welcome to JSA TV, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Barb Mitchell coming to you today live from the floor of PTC 23 in beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii. And joining me is Terence, managing director APAC for ZendLayer. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thank you. That's what happened to me. Yeah, how's the show so far? Well, it's been busy running around having lots of fruitful meetings. So really happy that we have good layups and lots of signatures going on. Makes me very happy. Yeah, I know. It's good, right? You can feel the energy and everyone's busy. It's so great. It's good to hear. You're having a lot of great meetings and I know that I'm looking forward to seeing you all tonight at the awards. I know you're up for two awards. Yes, yes. Really excited. Looking forward. Hopefully we get one, maybe two. Maybe both. Maybe both. Yeah, well, we'll be cheering for you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And so for our viewers, can you just tell us a little bit about ZendLayer and give us a bit of a background? Sure, sure. Definitely. Thank you. So ZendLayer is a leading cloud computer age service provider, right? So what we do is that we improve latencies, digital experiences immediately. We cover 85% of the world internet population and we are able to provide latencies less than 25 milliseconds, which means that it's almost a blink of an eyeball. So the moment you request for content on the internet, you blink your eyes and the content is available right in front of you in most cases because 85% of the world internet population. We also work very closely with application service providers to ensure that they have a lot of global audience to cover. And where I come from, Southeast Asia and maybe in parts of Latin America, India, Middle East, there's some challenge about latencies and getting internet access smoothly delivered. So we do quite a lot of that. And we are quite happy that we run a huge global infrastructure that enables to support these use cases. And so at PTC right now, I know that there's some exciting news brewing for ZendLayer. Can you share any of that with us? Yeah, definitely. So I arrived on Saturday. On Sunday itself, we signed a very meaningful MOU with digital age. They are actually a data center provider focused on East Asia as well as Southeast Asia. We are working with them to put in our technology so that we enable a lot of content to be delivered because we need to make sure that we have a lot of pop and data close to the users so that they have very good experience. As I mentioned, 35 milliseconds is not easy. So we need to do a lot of that. So that's the first one with digital age. The second one is Cisterna. So they are also data center provider. They have a huge footprint in the US and Europe. So we work with them to make sure that the delivery of this content from these data centers into emerging markets like Southeast Asia, India, Middle East, and Latin America is as seamless as possible. These are the two announcements. That's a lot to have accomplished already here on day two, three, I guess of the show. Day three. So when you start to think about beyond that, those are some big conversations and some big obviously things in play. What other sorts of trends? What's popping up in conversations for you? Definitely, we see that hybrid work is still the norm. We have witnessed and seen office workers going back to their workplace. But we are also seeing that there are many people who are not going back because the employers are arranging a hybrid situation. So you don't need to go back to office every day. So for these workers and employees, Internet may be still a challenge for them, whether it is for work or for play. So what we are seeing that remains a challenge. And then we have a solution to help these employees so that they can access to the company resources securely and very quickly. So this is a trend that I see 2023. And then what about from an industry perspective and now sort of zooming in a little bit on ZennLayer. It's always kind of nice to chat in January as you're planning for the year ahead. What do you see what's coming up for you in the next year, six months? Yeah, so for the next six months, I see that as far as mentioned earlier, you know, hybrid workplace and assessing content for work and for leisure continues to be a challenge. We are working on an application where we can be installed on the mobile phone so that anyone can download the application whether it can be hosted from the company website or App Store. And they will be able to have good latencies assessing this. They are content that they desire securely and safe and fast manner. Yeah, so this will be available in the next few months. And that's what 2023 for us. Yeah, good. Well, that's a lot.  So important work that you're doing. Thank you. And so for, I know that you already said, you know, you're so busy meeting with people that are here. Some people are not so fortunate to be here with us and may not have the opportunity to meet you in person. How can they connect with you? Well, they can. Right to me, I'm on LinkedIn, search for Terence Teal ZennLayer. I'm always responsive to messages. Please reach out to me if you need to talk to me. Or you can visit our website, ZennLayer.com. Thank you. Perfect, ZennLayer.com. Yeah, thank you, Terence. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for making the long journey over here to Waikiki and thank you for your time today. Enjoy the time. Yeah. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV, coming to you live from the floor of PTC 23. Thank you. Happy networking.


My name is Ms. Sheena and I'm a children's librarian at the Long Beach Public Library. Today I'm going to be reading you books about space and if you haven't signed up for our summer reading program yet, go to longbeach.beanstack.org to start earning prices for all of the reading you're already doing this summer. And if you're already signed up, make sure you get credit for watching today's video by entering the code Nebula into your activities tab on your Beanstack account. Today's story is called Sheep Blast Off. It's written by Nancy Shaw and illustrated by Margo Apple. And I'm reading this to you today with permission from Houghton Mifflin Publishers. Thanks guys. Sheep Blast Off! Oh, it looks like they've landed on earth. They've got their tool belts out and they're checking out the environment. I wonder what they'll find. Sheep see a shape in the mist by a tree. Something has landed. What can it be? Sheep snoop. Sheep explore. Sheep climb through the spaceship door. Sheep stumble. Sheep bumble. Engines slowly start to rumble. They grab a knob. It seals the door. Lights come on. Engines roar. Uh oh. Do you think sheep know how to fly a rocket ship? Everyone gets into gear. They blast right through the stratosphere. Blush. Around the world the rocket zips. Weightless sheep do jumps and flips. What's that? Thump. They hit the deck. Two sheep float outside to check. There's just a scratch. It looks okay. Back through the hatch. They're on their way. They tinker with the main controls. The rocket lurches. Swoops and rolls. Lights flash. Computers beep. Beep beep boop boop. Blaring sirens scare the sheep. Womp womp. Sheep guess. Which button should they press? Looks like they got some help. Leaving orbit. Nicely done. Prepare for touchdown. I like how the sheep are going to sleep now. While the little alien sheep drives them home. Ah. Home at last. And look they're all tucked in and ready for bed. Rocket sheep have had a blast. The end. Now we're going to be doing a rhyme called five little aliens. One alien went out to play in the milky way one day. She had such enormous fun. She called for another alien to come. Oh alien! Blue and yellow. That's right. Let's do two little aliens. Two aliens went out to play in the milky way one day. They had such enormous fun. They called for another alien to come. That's right. How many aliens are there now? Two. Three. Three aliens went out to play on the milky way one day. They had such enormous fun. They called for another alien. Let's count them together. One. Two. Aliens went out to play on the milky way one day. They had such enormous fun. They called for another alien. Hop into our rocket ships and fly to the moon. This song is called we're going to the moon. It goes like this. Zoom zoom zoom we're going to the moon. Zoom zoom zoom we'll get there very soon. If you want to take a trip climb aboard my rocket ship. Zoom zoom zoom we're going to the moon. Zoom zoom zoom take a trip climb aboard my rocket ship. Zoom zoom zoom we're going to the moon. Thanks for joining me today. Don't forget to sign up for the summer reading program at longbeach.beamstack.org. Bye.