to take a shower. We've been packing and purging some more stuff and filling up the garbage can, finding things in nooks and crannies. We forgot we had. That's what happens when you live in a house for so long. My husband is actually cleaning out his toolbox.  Unless he's like my dad who, yeah, let's just say if I'm obsessive compulsive I get it. I come by it honestly. Yeah, anyway. So yeah, so that's what we have been doing today so far with our day. We're waiting for a business phone call. It is funny though when I was cleaning out some stuff and purging. I have a denim jacket that has lots of like little buttons and stuff on it and I really love little buttons that have certain sayings. I forgot I had this one and for some reason it never made it to the jacket. That looks backwards to me but hopefully that doesn't to you guys and if it does when I look at the video I'll flip it around. But yeah isn't that funny? I do whatever the little voices tell me to do. Yeah. Anyway I think it's pretty funny so I'll leave it out and try to stick it on the jacket. My work table's a disaster. I need to really clean it up. It is kind of on the agenda for today or tomorrow. But I want to get some of the purging then cleaning that we need to do done today and while the husband is home and tomorrow I can spend the day putting laundry away and cleaning up the art room and stuff like that. So anyway that's it for the moment. I'll be back. Hey guys good morning. It's Monday morning July 30th I think. I don't know if I said that already or not. I have no idea. I have no idea. The husband's working from home today and the painter has started painting the guest room. He's there working right now. I'm out running errands. So for some reason we had no green and yellow kitchen scrubby sponges anywhere in the house. How is that possible? I don't know. So we go buy some this morning. I was almost out of facial face soap and am I the only one on the planet that knew that smoke detectors only have a 10-year shelf life? I have no idea. You're supposed to replace the smoke detector every 10 years. I had absolutely no idea. I think one of the ones in our house is from when we bought it in 1993. I'm pretty sure. So yeah so I am headed out to go pick up smoke detectors. Yeah so I did a in half a mile. Exit to the right onto US 101 North. So I did a pre-order on target.com to pick up at a store that had the one I wanted in stock for the price I wanted. So I should just be able to go drive up there and pick it up and go home. And then have lunch and then we have fire extinguishers that are not rechargeable but expired. Yeah so they have to come off the wall and I've got to go down to the hazardous waste place again. Anyway my whole week is gonna be filled with things like that. So I don't know if you're gonna find it interesting or not but there you have it. I'll be back. Do I really want to know why it always smells like poop behind the Goodwill at the donation station? Probably not. Anyway that's done. I can go home and eat lunch now. Guys it is Tuesday July 31st 11 25 a.m. I only know that cuz again I spent the morning trying to get some errands done sorting laundry. The handyman is gonna be in and out today painting the guest bedroom. I was trying to wash the windows outside of the house and I got the front done but I went I went to go around to the backyard I couldn't get the hose sprayer thing off the hose. It's just stuck on there. I don't know I'm gonna have to have the husband to see if he can otherwise I don't know. Because we have that windex stuff you screw on to the end of the hose and then you wash the windows by the way it works like a charm and if I can find a link for it the product I'll put it in the description below for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. I'm zooming with some people today and chatting with them and catching up on projects. I had to mix up some essential oils for me myself and so I got that done and I started packing some of my diffusers and things there in a bin up that way there we go in the corner right in the upper right hand corner and I have been doing some cleaning and sorting and I worked on a journal page it's not the best page I've ever done let me show you all the way I wanted it to it's not the best page I ever done I don't hate it but yeah it is what it is so there you go. We're also having some iffy connection issues with zoom today and mine thing has frozen and dropped off a couple times so I don't know what that's about. Anyway I am going to eat some lunch and go get the mail in a little bit and that sort of thing and we have more people coming over for estimates today woohoo. Anyway that's it for the moment I'll be back. Good morning everybody it is Wednesday morning August 1st and technically it's still morning it's 1141 a.m. I know I don't really think I've done a whole lot this morning. I don't have any workmen here today. Woohoo the dishes sink it has some dirty dishes in it so I haven't done them I haven't done any laundry I spent most of the morning talking to my friend Mike Deacon who if you don't know if you don't follow him I'm gonna put his YouTube channel in the description below he did post on social media so I feel okay saying so his house got broken into today well like while I was talking to him he walked into his house and realized it had gotten broken into anyway he's a graphic artist by trade as his day job I believe and I was asking him some questions about how to do a new animated intro for one of my an upcoming YouTube series so he did help me with that before he found out his house got broken into anyway I got that done but it took most of the morning I'm not like him he probably could do it in five minutes it took me you know two hours anyway I'm gonna go get some groceries and pick up the mail I really I need to eat some lunch but there's not much here to eat so I'm like starving to death well you know what I mean so I'm gonna do that and then after lunch I guess I'll tack up the dishes I emptied another cabinet it's out here on the buffet of candles and stuff which were there there we are so at some point today I got to decide what's saying and what's going all right I'll be back it is Thursday morning August 2nd 844 a.m. don't get excited I only know what the day discusses my part that's all I got I got lists I got errands to run we're gonna take some hazardous waste recycling in I have another Goodwill donation I've got to go pick up some window cleaner I promised my friend Cindy Utter I would go over to my local Walmart and look for a particular thing for her new puppy she wants a backup toy you know when your pets or kids find a particular toy that they love but they have a habit of chewing it up and destroying it you get backups right am I wrong so anyway I'm gonna go see if they have the little toy for her and if they do I'll get one or two so fun fun fun I do think we're going out to dinner later for my birthday my husband was so sweet he bought got me a card and a big giant bag of pretzel M&M's it's so cute anyway all right so let's go get to getting and let's get our stuff done and yeah let's hit the road come on paperwork trying to clear off some stuff off my desk while I still have a desk and more stuff and I started working on a journal page which you just saw the clip of using some dotting tools playing with some dotting tools I got on Amazon a while back they're a lot of fun some of them are the way I used them today I now also have obviously in case you didn't notice I use the beach theme colors I love the beach live near the beach I wish just catching up on laundry and I've got some stuff to do around the house but nothing earth-shattering no workmen in house yeah husband's working from home today which is nice I think we're gonna just have a kind of eat up some stuff that we've got in the freezer so I'm gonna cook up some chicken tonight chicken and black beans just a quiet chill day nothing so I don't know if it's just the weather or if it's because so many things are on fire in California right now I don't know but the weather's really strange so that's a thing this is how the page turned out I really like it it was super simple and just has the one phrase on there which I love and it's just a study in mark making and movement the way I put the marks on the page I love it just breathe never true our words or said it is Saturday afternoon August 4th I only know that because I looked and it's already 2 30 in the after oh no sorry 1 20 to 2 30 is how many miles to empty I have on my gas tank so it's 1 22 p.m. just after lunch I just finished lunch is working from home today he's on call today for his job and spent the morning doing some more packing and sorting and purging and putting up new smoke detectors I think I mentioned before and if I didn't I meant to we found out recently that smoke detectors have a lifespan a 10-year one where was I and how come I didn't know that one of our smoke detectors was from when we bought the house in 1993 as of today they're all brand-new as of 2018 so anyway that was interesting I might have mentioned it before because I had to go run across town to go buy smoke detectors anyway they're all up now today so we did that and we did some more packing and purging and he's been working and stuff like that I was working on cleaning off more stuff off my desk and at the order that's got to go out I went to go plug my Kindle in last night I read every night before bed and usually it's on my Kindle every now and then I break out an actual bookbook it's usually my Kindle and I went to go charge sorry plug it into charge actually to sleep sleep and my charger was all like like bent over like this I don't know what the heck happened travel stuff so I went and dug that out of course by the time I did that I was wide awake and had to read some more before I could get sleepy again yeah but you out there who suffer from insomnia or our menopausal whole understand exactly what I'm gonna go get another charger I'm gonna go to Staples before I go to the mail place I want to get I need some clip boards just plain clipboards and I also need Kindle charger I want to see if they have one before I order one on Amazon I do have some credit over to Amazon but I'd rather save it and use it for something else and if they have it at Staples I'd rather just get it at Staples so we'll see what happens I've also been doing laundry because you know evidently we wear a lot of clothes and we're dirty people because it seems like we're always have laundry I don't know I don't get it anyway that's it for the moment I'll be back oh it's hotter than the hell out out again it's 96 degrees right now feels like a hundred and six I know it's not the hottest place in the country but it's pretty warm all right that's it for the moment I'll be back hey guys it is Saturday evening it's after 10 o'clock an interesting day we did a bunch more packing and my bro office I can barely get in here and my desk is empty the drawers are oops where are we there we are the drawers are all like completely I know right so anyway I did get a journal page done though and we got some things done we need to do around the house and the husband was working from home today he was on call for his company from home today so now we think he's off for four days so he can work on the honey-do list anyway it's been an interesting week it's been an interesting day and yeah so we're gonna just keep moving forward but I hope you've all enjoyed this little glimpse into what's going on around here and if you haven't already guessed news about exactly what's going on will be coming soon in its own special series if you are following intervals of sanity the other YouTube channel I'm doing with some friends of mine it's a non art channel at least not necessarily an art channel it's more of a chat about life maybe art frankly honestly with humor and love channel so anyway I will put the link in the description below check it out there's a few it's alive we only do lives over there we do save them on the channel so you can watch them later and we've already done one on menopause and one on the Google home thing that one of a couple of my friends have I don't have one but yeah anyway I'll put the link in the description below I forgot where I was going with that oh yeah so if you're watching over on that channel then you already know about what's happening here on this channel you don't but you guys are getting your own series about it coming up soon towards the end of August beginning of September I'm working on editing the clips now and yeah so anyway it's a lot going on but it's a lot of good stuff so I hope that you're having good stuff happen for you too and if you aren't how can we make that happen for you what do you need to do differently what do you know people need to help you with yeah I don't know but let's make it happen anyway have a great day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it make your life what you want it to be find your truth and I'm good with that as long as you're doing right for yourself that's it for right now don't forget to like share and subscribe hit the little bell icon if you want notifications of new videos and that's it I'll see you next week


The London Eye is the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel at 135 metres high, I would say it's the best place to see London from above. We chose to invest in a new washroom project to improve our customer experience which is one of our primary aims and also to keep up with the latest technology. The existing toilets were very tired and the client wanted to bring it up to date with the iconic feel of the London Eye. When you think of London, you think of the London Eye and our washrooms must reflect that quality attraction. Something that people when they actually walk into toilets are going to go, wow, this is really nice. I think we've achieved that. I was blown away. I thought it was pretty efficient. They say more sanitary because you don't have to push the button. Apart from looking really stylish, they have actually helped us to reduce the amount of water drips on the floor. Very quick, very effective, it's very helpful that it's all in one so you've got to take yourself away from the basin. Not only are the taps on the dryers in the same place, it only takes 12 seconds to dry your hands. The process is slicker and more simple. Installing the Dyson tap has meant that our visitors spend a shorter time in the washrooms. The wall-mounted wall dryers really weren't doing that, people were queuing. Because we haven't got dryers on the wall anymore, it means that we've been able to utilise the space a lot more effectively. So for instance we can put in additional baby-changing facilities. People can dry their hands immediately after washing them. People can use the bathrooms quicker and get out to enjoy their experience. My hands were actually dry, and often you walk away and they're not dry. It looks really modern. It's just easier to just get your hands up to the bar and it just looks brilliant. Obviously there's 10 people in the toilet, you can't have 10 hand-dries obviously. It's convenient that it's there for you to use at the same time as when you're washing your hands. Working with Dyson was really good. We're really, really happy with how the project has turned out. From viewing the tap in the showroom to getting on-site, the whole process was pretty simple. A really positive experience.


King looks for help. Wilson! Oh there, Francis. There's the ball in! And he's been picked off by Callum Wilson. Callum Wilson! How about that? It's still Wilson. It's 2-0. Wilson played through by Iron. Wilson, but he's all on his own. Pass one. Pass two. Brilliant goal! What a majestic solo goal from Callum Wilson! Wilson, lovely touch.


Thank you for your very, very kind introduction. I would very much like to have it in writing for further purposes. May I first of all really say how pleased I am to be here. Something that I have not told even the Ambassador here is that I do have an Irish connection. My son-in-law has an Irish father. So that's an additional reason and whenever I go and meet them, they live outside London. I hear a lecture about what's going on in this country. I'm really happy to be here this time in order to share with you some views on the recent Finnish domestic politics. It was customary to say for a very long time that politics in Finland is a great bore because nothing happens. Every government is more or less behaving in the way as if they were civil servants rather than politicians. But there is no political life at all. That was a very common complaint, not so today. I would also like to pay tribute to those who chose the title for my speech. A little bit of sarcastic humor in it and I can very well live with that. Well, our offence through Europeans. If previous record is of any importance, we should really say that we are through Europeans. We have been so for a very long time and from the beginning of 1995 as we joined it, we had an aim to be as much as possible in the core of the Union. History is my university background and that is perhaps the reason why I tend to approach today, things of today through the lens of history because you won't understand what is going on today unless you knew what happened yesterday. Both of our countries are in a way in a periphery, in a geographic sense, not in any other sense. But in a purely geographic sense we are in a periphery seen, say, from Berlin or from Rome or those kinds of places and that, of course, to some degree at least brings us closer in our approaches. We have been aware for a very long time outside the main roads of European integration during the Cold War and the decision to join the European Union was therefore a very momentous decision. During the Cold War we had built bridges into Western Europe in various ways and the single most important direction from the war years onwards was our very close cooperation with the Scandinavian countries as a region. The participation was very easy because our cultures are very similar, our political systems are almost identical, the fact that there are three monarchs in the area doesn't really mean that they would be very much monarchical in their political life. So our political cultures are close and that makes our cooperation easy. Scandinavian countries had a shengen of their own 30 years before the union did, a passport union which made travel the same thing as domestic travel and we have had a common labour market since 1954 which again is much earlier than anybody dreamt of in the rest of Europe. All social services are extended to the citizens of the five countries since 1956. So from that angle again, this region is a very particular region in the degree of its integration. The European Free Trade Association was founded in 1960 and Finland joined it one year later. Among the original members were Britain, Sweden, Denmark and Norway plus Austria, Portugal and Switzerland. In other words, the European neutrals of the day except Ireland were members of EFTA and the difference between EFTA and EEC was mainly in the fact that EFTA was strictly and only a free trade area whereas the EEC had from the very beginning also political goals. So because its origins were different from the Cold and Steel Union onwards. EFTA was in a way an association of those who were not prepared to enter into political cooperation and that made it appealing to the European neutrals. Finland having in those days the Soviet Union as our main trading partner had also a country which from time to time felt the cold Siberian winds blowing our way. We were in no position even to contemplate the idea of joining EEC in those days. The matter of fact that although the European Union is not at least yet a military alliance nevertheless membership in it meant for us a political association with a group of states with similar values and similar goals and therefore it meant some sort of a political guarantee rather than a military guarantee to our independence. There were several arguments which were of an economic nature to join the European Union but there were others against it and from the political viewpoint really the fact that we were now in company, the other European democracies was a decisive importance. The Finnish public opinion at the time when we were preparing ourselves for the negotiation was pretty much divided, almost even really divided, for those against. And if you ask what were the arguments for those who were against one could simply say that they were not very different from many other countries in Europe which contemplated membership at one time. Similar discussions took place in many instances. In a study which was made before our membership comparing Norwegian and Swedish debates on the issue showed that their worries were pretty much similar to ours. The Danish case of course was rather different because Denmark made their decision much earlier than we did ours. But similar arguments were raised there too, about independence, about national culture, about the system of government and so on. Many things felt that we are somewhat superior in certain areas and our standards are more demanding and those of the Union. But after membership we noticed that we had been exaggerating. That was not really the case. We were pretty much in line and in some instances we had to improve our own performance in order to meet the requirements. So this self-confidence, self-congratulatory confidence was perhaps somewhat overstated. So many of the arguments against were more about feelings rather than facts. But feelings and politics are just as important as facts. Agriculture was of course like in so many other countries a very major problem in those days. Not that it would constitute a large part of the economy. Only about 1% of our GDP comes from agriculture although it employs about 3% of the labour force. But agriculture has in Finland like in many European countries a very powerful lobby. They are the best organised lobby and they have much at stake. Finland being a large country, in the land area the same as Britain, has a population of 5.3 million but three quarters of them live in less than one quarter of the country in the south. And the rest of the country pretty much has lived on agriculture. This is no longer the case but the mentality is that of a farming society even today in many places. Although they do not really win their bread through farming they still have emotionally a very close and strong attachment to the value of a farmer community. And farmers of course were very much afraid of joining the European Union because they did know that the system of various supports that we had on a national level would be abolished and we would have to settle for a European system. And farmers widely thought that this would be less favourable to farmers than the national system had been. Now we have somewhat of a mix and most farmers nowadays believe that membership in the European Union is in their own advantage. They do understand that having common goals with farmers of other countries in Europe may be in their best interest. But as I said, emotionally things are still difficult for them in the process of integration. We joined then in 1995 and we had before that a referendum where 54% voted in favour and that was a clear case. Sweden came a few weeks later with a somewhat slight margin. But although the referendum was only an advisory one it was in fact politically binding because the parliament would not go against it and nor did it want to go against it because the political class was much more favourable towards membership than the majority of the voters.  Well, what was true 16 years ago largely still is true. The Finnish farmers and their children and people around them still feel the same way that although it is in their economic interest in the Union it works against their emotional way of seeing the world. Among those who were opposed to the membership one argument that was raised is that as soon as we are members we have an influx of immigrants in very large numbers and the trade union movement published a report according to which the day we joined the European Union we will have some 300,000 immigrants the first year. Now what really happened is speaking about hundreds not hundreds of thousands the first year now the numbers are somewhat bigger. Estonians today constitute the largest foreign born element in Finland and the Russians are almost of the same size but for Estonians it is very easy to come to Finland because culturally we are close enough and even the languages are not all that different. The fears that people were coming great numbers from tropical countries have proven to be quite naive. It's true that last week we had in Helsinki 30 degrees but so did we in winter minus 30 degrees. So this is a good barrier against unwanted immigration and if we add to that the fact that our immigration policies and immigration bureaucracy is not exactly inviting all that explains it why the numbers are among the smallest in Europe for the time being. In the early days of our membership we had a government led by the chairman of the Social Democratic Party Mr. Pavoliporen and he was prime minister for two consecutive terms or eight years. As a prime minister and party leader he was and still is but no longer a party leader no prime minister but is a deeply believing European and I use the word believing advisedly. He really does think that our proper place is in the heart of the European Union and that it is in our very best interest to do everything we can to stay there. Now we had elections this year in mid April. Before the elections in the public opinion polls it became rather evident already pretty early about half a year before that a party which used to have six members in the parliament of 200 was likely to gain good many more. As soon as politicians became more or less convinced that this is going to be the case they started to analyze the public opinion shall we say prevailing wins and they came to the conclusion that one of the reasons why this new party is likely to gain very many more seats is it's rather shall we say reluctant policy towards the European Union. A policy where all evil comes from Brussels where the fact that we have the euro was a great mistake. Sweden does not have the euro and their economy fairs even better than ours so that was proof for them that euro was not a blessing it was a curse. And since they did have and do have a very skillful leader, Mr. Timo Soini who happens also to have an Irish connection he was able to gain support from various groups, very different groups but groups which put all together did form his party. The party is not easy to define for instance on an axis left right. On some issues they are right on some others they are left. And when Mr. Soini replied to the question are you a rightist populist or a left wing populist? I am populist for everybody. And that was an honest answer because he does identify himself as a populist and in the party program the word populist does appear so they are not at all afraid of being identified through that group. They of course explain what populist means in their terms not very different from the American term of populist as it was used about a century ago. Well among the ranks there are three PhDs of the 39 and there are two Lutheran ministers. There are a number of small time businessmen, three policemen, one entertainer. So really it's not easy to say what group of your population they represent. The common thing for them is that as politicians they are rather unexperienced. The 39 less than 10 have previous parliamentary experience of any kind. The others have experience on a local level in municipal councils and the like. During last winter something very unusual happened on the political scene in Finland. We have been in the comparisons that Transparent International makes about corruption. We have been the least corrupted or among the three least corrupted in the world for a very long time. And now about half a year ago or somewhat earlier it became obvious that the group of businessmen had formed some sort of a fund for funding politicians of their own picking from the various parties and they funded their election campaigns. Then it became obvious that in their ranks there were some businessmen, shall we say questionable reputation. And those businessmen also did have projects where political influence could come in handy. And this was blown up in the news media as a very big thing. People are unused to the idea of quid pro quo in funding elections. And therefore this really meant a great deal. It so happened that the prime minister's party, the center party was the chief beneficiary of these funds. And the prime minister himself had also benefited or rather his campaign or his person had benefited from this. And on the top of that the prime minister probably say led a personal life which was too often in the tabloids. And all this put together meant that his prestige and his position became intolerable and half a year before elections he had to resign and left also his party. And his successor, Madame Kivini, an experienced reputable good politician was prime minister only for half a year and of course in half a year nobody can change the course. So the nation went to the polls. In an atmosphere of an emerging new party, political corruption and so on. That of course compared to most European nations was nothing big, nothing big at all. But in our case it was. And of course of the election then which went smoothly and without anything out of the ordinary. We when watching TV, when the counting was finished by before midnight on the election day, learned that 49 mandates went to the so-called true fence of the 200, everybody including themselves were surprised. Nobody had even thought of it being possible. Those who thought that they would make in a serious way spoke at 25 or something like that and that was 39. And then it became obvious for the center party which had been in the government to the leading party that they were the great losers. They had lost more than any other party in that and they had lost mainly to the so-called true fence. Incidentally, true fin is not a very good translation of the Finnish name. A more proverb translation would be basic fin because that's what they claim to be. They are, as they themselves think, the original fins. Now negotiations after the election for forming a coalition government started and it was obvious that the center party, being the big loser, would not come in and that the winner of the true fence would be member of the coalition and negotiations started on that basis. But it was soon obvious that their program was incompatible with that of others, especially on European issues. And the big thing all the time was Portugal. Not Greece, it was Portugal because we had to make a decision on our participation in the Portuguese bailout just before the elections and therefore everything was concentrated on Portugal. But earlier on it was already clear that in the Greek case there has been some cooking of the books of state finance and the fact that Greece was in trouble because of its own misconduct that made the true fence message, these are all corrupt. We must not support them. Kind of a thing went very well with the population. So this was some kind of a protest movement. A protest movement in the country where the GDP grows handsomely, more than 4% per year, where employment situation is improving steadily, where the public debt is well below the 60% limit, where the budget deficit is well below the 3%. In other words, if you take these criteria, people should have been happy. The contrary was true, very unhappy, very broadly, partly because of the reasons I gave you a moment ago, but also partly because of the fact that after the Lehman Brothers crisis, we did have a crisis of our own and our GDP sunk by 8%, which of course had serious repercussions for our economy and the employment situation. But things are improving now, but that measures still didn't influence people's voting behavior. After all this, we may come back to the title of this speech, our things through Europeans. Well, in the sense we are even more so than before because now we too have an anti-European party like the rest of the countries in Europe. So in that sense, yes. In all likelihood, a new government will be installed next week and the true things will not be in that coalition. So in that sense, that issue as a coalition partner is solved. But the issue that they still have 20% of the parliamentary seats will of course mean that they have indirect influence in the political life of the country and much will depend on how they behave. The party is not racist. Mr. Soini, the leader has disciplined members of the party who have made racist statements and he very clearly, there's clear of that, but of course there are within its ranks people who are not easily guided on matters of this kind. The Conservative Party will be the leading party in the new coalition and the Conservative Party has a long and strong record as a pro-European party. The Social Democratic Party will be the junior member of the coalition and they too have a very strong European record. It is only in Finland where it is possible also to have the conservatives and the former communists or the League of the Left in the same coalition that's the way it looks like. So my conclusion on the basis of all this is that we have had a political storm, but it's not a hurricane. This will have an impact upon our politics in the future, but it's not going to change the course in any dramatic way. But I would like to say in the end about the true things is to paraphrase Mark Twain when he was asked how he felt about Richard Wagner's music. It ain't as bad as it sounds. And the same of course is true also of the true things. They ain't that bad. Thank you.


Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha, and welcome back to Talk Story with John Waihei. Here we are just before the general election, and we have an opportunity to get some inside advice from two of Hawaii's most well-known political pundits. With us this afternoon is Mr. Chad Blair. That's right. And from Civil Beat and the pundit that watches all the politicians doing whatever they're going to do. I try. All right. And Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii. Happy to be here. Both of you have been here before. We've talked about local politics in the past, but I thought that today would be more interesting if just before the primary election we sought to scoop the national pundits. And take a look at the national races. See, this is a la NFL football. Right, right. All right. This is a la NFL football. So we're going to talk about the games out there and maybe make some predictions. Let's do it. All right. Well, let's start with Chad. So Chad, what's interesting out there? We're talking national politics. Yeah. All national politics. You know, with this general election, I think the one thing I would say starting off is think about how things went two years ago, and we were all sure Hillary was going to get in there, and it didn't happen. And so I'm a little nervous, very cautious. What's happened in the last couple of weeks has been astounding. What has happened in the last few days. But there's a couple of things that are really at play here, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Right. How's that going to affect particularly women voters, the pipe bombs from someone who was a sworn Trump supporter, and then this awful bombing of the Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 Jewish people died. And just this week, as we're recording this today, the president is out there talking about immigration and the caravan and asylum. You know, what's interesting is the juxtaposition of all of that. Now, ordinarily the first three ought to wipe out this election.  And yet, that hasn't... I think there's a reason why President Trump is so focused on immigration. He is playing up his base. He knows he's got 30, 40 percent of the vote. They need to turn it out. They don't know what happens historically. Colin, in particular, during a midterm election, you know, the incumbent party, particularly this one, which controls all of his government, is going to lose. Well, this is Trump's best bet, because he's looking at Bob Mueller down in the House of Representatives and potentially... And it seems like, Colin, he seems like he's getting some traction with all of these rallies that are going on. Well, he certainly is from his base. I mean, and I think Trump has taken the strategy of, you know, really throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. I think that's made some of the Republicans a little nervous. People in the Republican Congressional Campaign committees, but Chad is right.   And I think that's one of some of these swing states in the general election. Well, one of the most interesting, well, frightening, statistic for me was the reports that just came out saying that Fox News had the highest viewership. Double, twice. MSNBC, CNN. Yeah, well, so something is very working. This is the mouthpiece for the president. He watches Fox and Friends. Remember where these swing voters are. Remember where this core base of the president is in states like Florida. Talk about a swing state. Well, let's get to Florida. You've got potentially the first African-American male governor in the state of Florida. Florida is as diverse a state as there is. I mean, California, obviously, in Hawaii, but you're looking at Andrew Gillam potentially defeating DeSantis, is that his name? Right, that's his name. Yeah, Ron, Ron. Ron DeSantis. Yeah. A real Trump party. And since that primary is over, right on that very first day, DeSantis is using words like monkeying around, but somehow raises the specter that Gillam is a monkey.  But what about Trump going down there and calling him a thief? Well, that's exactly so. It's raising all the great stereotypes about African-Americans. Very unfortunate. But you've also got a critical Senate race between Bill Nelson, not exactly the most exciting US Senator, and Rick Scott, the governor who wants to be in the Senate. And both of those races, last time I checked, are pretty much too close to call. They are, yeah. Well, it seems like Bill Nelson is pulling ahead. That's what I saw in the last week. But it's still very close. I mean, for an incumbent, I mean, he is running in a swing state like Florida. Bill Nelson has been around for a long time. He's been in the Senate for many years. He was first elected to politics in Florida back in 1972. But he does sort of represent an older version of that Florida Democratic part. I mean, this was really back when Florida was mainly governed by white Democrats. Right. And he's seen this whole shift. And now I think he has to play in this more aggressive environment. And Rick Scott is, he has a lot of personal wealth. He's taken out a lot of ads. And I don't think Bill Nelson really is used to campaigning as hard as he's had to. Yeah, he's not exactly the most charismatic. No. No. Now, Governor, right next door, Georgia State that's usually reliably read, although it wasn't 30 or 40 years ago, the possibility of having the first female African-American governor anywhere in the country is astonishing. Stacey Abrams, where Oprah Winfrey, that's right, campaigning, can't do better than that. No. Well, you know, Mike Pence thinks he can't do that. He was hanging out there saying, I'm as important as it is. That's right. And he got laughs for that. But this is Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee, who is the Secretary of State who has oversight of the voter rolls. And he's kind of banned like 50,000 voters, mostly minority votes, mostly potentially Democratic votes. Right. So if President Trump, and now with this new ad that's running this television commercial, which is kind of the R version of the Willie Horton version. Remember, that was Mike DeCoccas and George W. Bush, the inmate who got let out of prison, killed somebody, and then somehow DeCoccas is soft on crime. In this case, the president is saying Democrats are soft on crime. And by the way, he's using a Latino looking type of person and saying, this is the people they're letting across the border. And I got a caravan full of people heading here. And this is what you're going to, you know, let my work. It could work. Although, I mean, I think one thing that's happening is a reaction to that in Georgia, where you're likely to get strong African-American turnout because you do have the first opportunity to elect a black female governor of Georgia of all places. I mean, and Stacey Abrams. She's proven herself. She has. She was, what, 10 years? She was Minority Leader in the Senate, you know? And she's worked with Republicans. I mean, she really is an effective politician. And so I think it's been tough to try to frame her as much as the Republicans have tried as kind of this radical liberal because it's really not who she is. One of the interesting things is that I read today that the registration numbers have really gone up, especially among young people. That's what the column's getting to. Remember, this is a state where Abrams did get attacked when she was in college for burning the Georgia flag back when the Stars and Bars were prominent. Remember, this is a state on, is it Stone Mountain? Is that the name of it? Right. Anyway, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis on a mountain. Yeah, on all the Black Hills. Exactly. So I think when, I mean, these are very vulnerable cases. Another border state, although this race looked very, it was difficult to call. We're starting to see Ted Cruz perhaps pull away against Beto or Rourke. But that's a really big race as well. And there you actually have a border state that borders Mexico and the real grass. See, that's an interesting race because it's actually attracted a lot of national involvement. And huge amounts of money. You went in there to back up Beto. Beto or Rourke in Beto. Is it Beto? It is. No, I've heard others make that mistake, but I was just in Texas a couple of months ago. In Austin, which of course is the capital, very blue, you'll see Beto, just Beto, that's all it says. You drive to Houston, you won't see many Betos. You'll see a few Ted Cruz signs, but a couple of months ago, even a few weeks ago, it looked like Beto or Rourke, who I believe was a congressman from El Paso, was going to give Ted Cruz a run for his money. And the last I checked, Cruz seems to be edging ahead. We'll see, but that race, again, young people coming out. They said that the absentee voting at the moment apparently favors the Republicans. But it's rather close. And that might not be so unexpected if you imagine the traditional Texas voters are. The traditional Democratic vote always needs to be dragged from the beaches. But the fact that Ted Cruz is even in danger at all, or almost loses, is a remarkable development. Well, you know what's... I just have this horrible fear that if by any stretch of, you know, by some wild imagination, Trump prevails this time. If it is close, it's not a matter to him. I mean, he's going to treat it like the Supreme Court victory. We want to kill the guys. You know, the same thing. Trump is all about winning. I mean, that's entirely his focus. No matter what happens, he's going to claim victory. What is the impact of the, do you think, or if any, of the massacre in Pennsylvania? Well, I think, and this is part of all of the things that Chad already mentioned together, it really has spooked suburban voters who are on the fence. I mean, that's when you look at the house districts and you look at the ones that are real competitive. They mainly are in suburban areas, you know, generally wealthy traditional Republican areas, but really object to Trump's rhetoric and his behavior. But it's more like the wrongly Republican. Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly.  What about Florida? Florida with a lot of retired people from New York and with Jewish background. Florida is an interesting state because you almost have four or five states in the same state, you have the Miami area, you have the, you know, what is really the south in North Florida and you have a bunch of retirees on the Gulf Coast. And you've got the Latins, which are often... Well, it's primarily Cubans who are around the Miami area. Who can go Republican. Yeah. Who generally go Republican. And, you know, that was sort of the deviation from most of the analysis regarding Latino voters. Right, right. The Cubans go a different direction. You know, usually when crime is the issue, it tends to favor Republicans. I mean, Nixon used that in the 68 campaign and very successfully. What was the famous phrase from Nixon's race in 68? He's going to keep things, say, oh, the quiet American. The quiet American. The quiet American because of the people. And our streets are going to be kept safe. And you're hearing the same thing with Trump. So when he brings up immigration... He's actually trying to... When he talks about having troops, our troops, shoot people on the border because of throwing rocks at us. I mean, that's a strong message. I'm going to be the anti-crime president. So how does a former Cuban refugee relate to that? Well, they're going to vote Republican for one thing in Miami for sure. I mean, that's going to be the case. At least the older Cubans for sure. Yeah, Rubio. That's his power base. Exactly. But I think if we're talking about the Senate... You know, he's sort of slipped out pretty lightly. Well, remember, he wasn't even going to run for the Senate. He hated the Senate. He was public about it. And then suddenly it's like, well, Trump beat me in my home state. I guess I'll run again.  Not 2020 probably, but 2024. He's a young guy. He's very charismatic. We all thought it was going to be him. It was either going to be him or Jeb Bush. Boy, were we wrong. Well, yeah, he was Jeb. But I kind of liked him personally. That was the kind of mainstream Republican that we used to have. We used to get elected to office very much. So what about North Dakota with Heidi? So Heidi Heitkamp narrowly won when she won the last time. She wasn't expected to win six years ago. She won by 3,000 votes. And this is a really interesting race, really, for two reasons, I think. The first is that she did not support Brett Kavanaugh. She had a tremendous blowback in North Dakota as a result of that. She did get a ton of money from national donors. It's $1,000,000 in one week after Kavanaugh. The most of anyone, I think, in that short period of time. But she's, is it by double points behind Kramer, is that his name? And so that's a real concern. But you wonder if that Kavanaugh vote might actually help. And I'm sure she's spending all that money, as much as she can, trying to win two votes. But she is a lot more competitive, apparently, than people. Well, I think that's it. In a small state like North Dakota, sometimes it's unpredictable. Sometimes it's hard to poll. I mean, I think the real wild card here is our Native American voters going to turn out because they overwhelmingly supported her. North Dakota has a big Native American population, about 30,000 people. But it's controversial because the North Dakota State Legislature decided and the Supreme Court affirmed that you have to have a physical address to vote. And on the reservations, a lot of people didn't have physical addresses. So now the tribal governments are going around trying to find people to their physical address. Yeah, they're trying to purge it.  Well, you know what's interesting and very important in this election is all the gerrymandering that happened. Well, it's the entire reason why the House is controlled by Republicans. But gerrymandering has made that entirely the case. Even though there have been rulings rolling back, including in Pennsylvania, the way they gerrymandered. That's right. And actually, Pennsylvania, there's one Pennsylvania district that's competitive now because they did basically eliminate the gerrymandering. Well, we're going to have to take a break, guys, and we'll come right back and folks, join us.  We are actually going to vote on this show. Come on back. You're not going to check her IDs, though, right? No, we're going to gerrymand it. I have Bill Sharp, host of the Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Aloha. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that, you know, may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Y. Hei and the pundits. So, Sybil Beat and the University of Hawaii are here to give us their inside look at national politics. So what about, well, give me another race. What about Arizona? Well, do you want to do Arizona chat? I can do Nevada. I'll take Arizona then. You can do Nevada. I remember Arizona as a state that it's really kind of turning blue in a lot of ways. And you see John McCain coming from that state. Remember, he's the guy who famously upset Trump by his vote on health care, very outspoken. But you have this race to replace John McCain. John Kyle was appointed temporarily to take the seat. So it features McSally, two women, McSally and Sinema. McSally's a veteran and Sinema, the Democrat. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He has sort of a fishy background. He may have been homeless for a while, very vulnerable. But in recent days, McSally has started to come on strong and take the lead. And in part because she has used her veteran status to attack Sinema for something she said a couple years ago, many years about the Taliban, employing off about how serious the Taliban is. But something just happened very recently. I think it was really in the last day or two. The Green Party candidate, a third party, dropped out and said, I'm going to back Sinema. And you got to wonder if those votes are going to drip over and help. The first thing about Sinema is that she is one of three Democrats who voted a great deal of the time with the Trump agenda. She actually didn't challenge her party more often than Trump in some respects. And McSally was doing the exact opposite for most of her political career. And all of a sudden we're in this race and they sort of switch sides now. Except Sinema is going out of her way to say that she's not involved in any kind of national thing. I'm not talking about that. I don't think Trump has actually gone to air. No, I don't think he has. There's a lot of states that don't want him to visit right now. And it may be that he might be being nice to her, actually. By not showing up. By not showing up. It's just that. Yeah. And I found that kind of interesting because they sort of switch party sides in the normal course of events. Now, doing the election, obviously. And a lot of the themes were seen nationally. These are old themes in Arizona politics. The sphere of immigrants. I mean, a lot of tension between basically white transplants from California and the Latino population. And the sheriff. That's right. Sheriff of Pio. He actually ran in that race. He did. He lost the primary. Sorry, Joe. Sheriff Joe. He lost to this veteran. So right next to him, we have Nevada. Right. So Nevada. I mean, Nevada is always an interesting state because it's almost a city state. I mean, you have these big population centers in Las Vegas and Reno and then just very conservative. Very old Nevada. I mean, essentially nobody's out there. And it's become a purple state, more or less a blue state now. But Dean Heller, the incumbent, is pretty popular. He's managed to hang on. His support is still pretty robust. He even has pretty good support from the Latino voters. And his challenger, Jackie Rosen, is not a very talented politician. And so I think she's had trouble connecting with people, getting them excited about her candidacy. How important is the union vote out of the casino? I think essential. I mean, you have to get that vote certainly as a Democrat. And if you want to win the general election, you have to make sure those folks turn out. And remember, Hillary actually won that stage. She did. That's right. That probably helps. Gosh, I've already forgotten her name. Rosen. Rosen. Thank you. Jackie. Jackie Rosen, exactly. In fact, also helping her is Harry Reid. That's right. Democratic Majority Leader. And he actually reversed his position on birthright citizenship. This is basically reversed. Yeah, you remember Trump. The 14th Amendment is pretty clear. If you're born in this country, you're a citizen. But Harry Reid is coming out recognizing in particular the large immigrant population, a lot of them working in the casinos in Vegas. Well, a lot of people from Hawaii. That's right. Working in the casinos in Vegas. Playing the casinos. Yeah. Vacations in Hawaii. That's right. But over 10% of the population of Las Vegas originates from Hawaii. God, is it up to that? Yeah. So I remember in the last couple of elections, even I've gone up there and campaigned for some of the Nevada. I wonder where they would stand in all of this. I have just no idea. It's also possible they've kept their voting residency in Hawaii, too. I wonder. I don't think so. The real question is whether they are voting. Yeah, I think that's the question. Well, they're likely to be union voters, democratic voters. I think it's making differences in Montana. Yeah, we haven't talked about Montana. John Tester, he's the guy with the crew cut. Yeah, he's about six, five, 300 pounds, big-sky country. But he's got this guy, Rosendale. He's running against him. Who's not from Montana, which is an issue. Exactly. So Trump has actually gone out there several times. And they say Trump has a vendetta against Tester because he's the one who famously called out the president's doctor in the White House, Johnny. Oh, right. Oh, whatever. It'll come to me. I haven't written to my notes. Ronnie Jackson. That was his name. Saying he had a drinking problem. And essentially, you know, he lost his own. Well, Trump is going around to all these states. Yeah. Where they will take him. There are a lot of house races, which pretty much looks solid for the Democrats, but is not welcome where the candidates in the Republican Party are actually being very careful. You even have some of them talking about health care and saying maybe Obama care is not such a bad idea. Recognizing that that is a valid issue. They don't want to talk about immigration because their constituents don't want to. Well, you know, they're running two national ads. So the Republicans did two big national ad buys. And it sort of demonstrates the extreme. One is this, you know, be afraid of immigrants. It's very dark. It's about people from Central America coming over the border. The other is a very traditional Rockefeller Republican ad, which is about a woman looking after a daughter going to a music concert and then reminding everyone of the dark days of the economic crash and trying to link that to Obama and saying don't go back. I mean, it's sort of reminiscent of the classic Reagan ad. How effective has Obama been? I would say he's been fairly quiet. He has not appeared as much. Joe Biden has been much more visible. Even Michelle Obama, I think, was down in Georgia. That's right. She's actually more popular than Barack Obama. But the president has remained largely quiet, although he has warned that this election actually means more than two years ago or even when he was elected in 2008. He's doing a lot of fundraising. Yes, I think he's been effective on raising money. In fact, the Democrats as a party have taken in a lot more money than the Republicans. Well, that's if you count the contributions directly together. Sure. And Mike Bloomberg himself accounts for a lot of that money. Almost 100 million or something like that. He's spent an extraordinary amount of his own money. And of course, he's also looking ahead to 2020. Sure. Now he says he's a Democrat. He was a Republican. He was an independent. Now he's a Democrat. We can have two billionaires run against each other. Well, one of them were not quite sure. Yeah, that's right. He may not be. He may not be a billionaire. Okay, let's talk about, well, first of all, who's going to win the Senate race in Florida? I think Bill Nelson is going to win. That's pretty much. I think he is. What about the governor's race? That's top. Well, I think it's going to be Katherine Cruz from HBR calling to get a quote from the governor. We are live. This is not a fake news program. That's right. Andrew Gillam, I think the momentum is with him. It is. I think just the demographics that are changing in that state. You mentioned the strong Jewish communities that are there. Many of them retirees from the Northeast. And I give them the edge. But there's a reason why Trump has gone down to Florida a number of times, not just to play golf, but because he is really worried. How embarrassing should Nelson keep it? And a Democrat, African-American governor, run the most important swing state two years from now. Yeah, so Gillam, Gillam? I think Gillam as well. I agree with Chad that the momentum is with him. It's going to be close, but I think he's going to win. Okay, you heard it first here unanimously.  We're going to play this back on Wednesday. So get to Georgia. Georgia, boy. I mean, I know we have to decide here. So I'm going to say Stacey Abrams. The polling is a tie, or maybe I saw one that was plus one Abrams. But again, I think there's a lot of momentum. And when the African-American community turns out in Georgia, I mean, they're big. Women voters. And women voters in particular. I think that could put her over the top. I think it's the higher bar in terms of an African-American getting into office because of the more diverse population in Florida for Gillam.  Yeah, well, I'm going to go with my heart too. So we'll see. We'll have another triple vote. Abrams, Abrams. Okay, we're all there. Where are we going to go next? Texas. Texas. Ted Cruz is going to keep his seat. Beto O'Rourke had a lot of support, a lot of money, but he's not going to be able to seal the deal. I think a lot of the Texans are going to come home to the Republican Party, but they don't love Ted Cruz. I think he peaked too early, O'Rourke. I think he looked like the next Bobby Kennedy. And they were already talking about him as a presidential contender. And the dynamic changed. Ted Cruz woke up. Yeah, sometimes. And there's Ted Cruz with the president in Houston. This is the same guy that attacked his wife. His wife. His wife used his father being involved in the Kennedy assassination. There they are. Beautiful Ted, you know? And that's going to mean a lot. The president's support in Texas. Yeah. You know, I'm going to go the opposite way. All right. All right. That's good. I like it. And the reason why I'm going to go the opposite way is because I think that Texas has more progressive young people than people count. And they're going to have a registered job. And I think that they're going to go out and it's going to be real close. But maybe, is it Beto Beto? Beto. Beto. Beto. Beto. It's Beto. The thing about Ted Cruz is he's, nobody really likes him very much. Real quick. Well, that's it. Missouri. I think, I think, McCaskill's going to lose. McCaskill's going to lose, I agree. I think Josh Hawley was not a great candidate. But McCaskill's gotten really lucky a couple of times. Yeah. And she's not going to do it this time. And that's as swingy as state as Florida is too. It's right there on the border. But it's been trending Republican. Missouri's gotten more conservative. And what about North Dakota? I don't think, I think it's going to be Kramer. It's probably going to pull it out. And by the way, we're talking about the Senate. I don't think the Senate's going to flip. Real quick. Is the Senate going to flip? No. I don't think so. What do you think? It'll be 51, 50, 49? I think I'll think up two seats. I think there's a pretty good candidate. One of the things about this particular election is that there are a lot more Democrats running. That's right. They knew that going in. The next cycle. The House is pretty much going to be. It's going to be a big pickup. Nancy Pelosi is already measuring the curtain. Yeah, I wish she wouldn't do that. Her problem is she's got a young membership, a new membership that wants new leadership. And she's been there forever. Had Hillary Clinton been elected president, she said she would actually leave the house. But that's not the case. And I think even though she's kept the impeachment word quiet, she very much has a lot of things that she wants to do. Okay, so House, Democrats, Senate, McConnell is still there. I think so.  I think so. Well, guys, look, we'll see. Wednesday's coming up real quick. We're doing this just before the election. And we'll see how accurate our pontificating may be. I hope we're right. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you in two weeks. Join us for another talk story with John Whitehead.


I would like to first say, thank you very much to the Clear Bank team for being here with me today and we're going to talk about how the FinTech Clear Bank leverages open source to accelerate crypto payments through their cloud API and infrastructure. I'm James McLeod, Finoss director of community. Thank you everybody for being at our event today. It's good to see so many friendly faces from Finoss members and also new faces from people who have found us here today. But firstly, I'd like to introduce you to Stephen Hawkins, head of DevOps Transformation at Clear Bank. So Stephen, maybe you'd like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your history. Yeah, of course, yes. So yeah, Steve Hawkins, I work for Clear Bank. I've been at Clear Bank for just over four and a half years, so a large part of Clear Bank's journey just before we had our first live customers. It's been a very, very big rollercoaster ride of growth and innovation. Before that, I was at Hiscox, an insurance company. Before that, I was at Nationwide, Bill of Society. So my career path's been in financial institutions, financial services, FinTechs, the whole time. And through that, they've always been either configuration management engineers then moving into infrastructure engineer, then moving into DevOps engineer into that sort of space. So the toolset has generally been open source and some paid for services as well. That's fantastic. And it's so great to have a FinTech as part of our discussion today. As people know, we have a lot of enterprise banks within the foundation. And I'd really like to explore the differences between a FinTech and also an enterprise bank. So maybe Stephen, can you tell us a little bit more about Clear Bank and the services provided to FinTech's crypto platforms, banks and credit unions? Yeah, of course. The key thing is we are a FinTech. Our biggest department is engineering. So we are hugely mindset focused towards innovation, driving differentials for our customers, and key part growth.  We have that license. We provide FSCS protected accounts to our customers.  So although we are, we always portray that we are a FinTech, we are absolutely a bank at the same time. Absolutely. And so what is it that sets Clear Bank as a FinTech aside to a large scale enterprise bank? Yes, sure. I mean, we started six years ago with the start date. So I say I'm going to have for the vast part of the journey. And with that FinTech mindset, we go towards cloud-based technologies. We go towards moving our code base forward as quickly as we can, as often as we can. And we offer all of our services up via a single API. So we want to make that interaction with those banking services as well as transactional solutions as easy as possible for our customers. So the kind of customers we're looking for are EMI's. They are also bigger banks, but they are a FinTechs that are looking to streamline that solution for their end customers. Amazing. And so as part of your role within leading DevOps, within Clear Bank, at Clear Bank, can you explain maybe some of the open source tool chains that you're using as part of your automation and DevOps strategy? Yes, sure. Maybe it helps if I start by explaining a bit about the area and structure that I work with in Clear Bank. So we firmly follow the idea of team topologies. So we have stream-aligned teams which focus on delivering those end-user products out. And then we have enabling teams and platform teams. So that's my main focus, is looking at enabling teams to figure out the frictions for those stream-aligned product teams. And then also those platform teams that are building that underlying infrastructure to again enable those teams. So if I just focus on one of the main areas to look after their infrastructure, we want to make sure that's completely compliant, secure, has high performance and quality, but it must change quickly as our products change. So we're a massive user of Terraform. So if we're linking in the open source community, I think Terraform are one of the better examples of how you can blend both an open source offering, which is outstanding, along with a paid-for and licensed offering as well. So we use Terraform and infrastructure code to build all of our infrastructure. So note no hands touch production. And yeah, we're a huge contributor back then to those. So we're using Azure as our cloud service provider, as the main one. And I think if you look at the top contributors, a few of our engineers are up there with the Azure Terraform provider. So I understand that Clearbank is also regulated. So you're accountable to your customers in the same way as any other bank within financial services industry. So with your use of Azure and the public cloud or the hybrid cloud, how do you make sure that you are hitting those governance and compliance obligations when moving in those circles? How do you provide evidence towards that? OK, yeah. So we are kind of hybrid because there are a few payments devices which have to be physical. HSMs, they have to be physical. Although you can get that device up in a public cloud, the rules around how you engage them require it to be physical. But yes, as far as our Azure build out, which is mostly public and that private one, compliance is our top priority. Security, safety, but also speed. The way we assure that is, I say, we don't have any hands touching production. So we've made sure all infrastructure changes are via a pipeline. That pipeline is automated with many gates in it. So we can do compliance checking on the type of code we're releasing, the type of open source packages we're using in that chain. But also we encourage individuals to become better at things like security, QA, become champions of them. So we've got some quite good internal programs where we can develop those individual skill sets to do poor request reviews on the security side. So yeah, we very much include not just technology as a compliance check, but people. Probably another benefit of the size of Clearbank against its status as well. We're trying not to have a huge amount of people in the organisation to what we're trying to achieve, is that the people which are facing off with the regulatory concerns in the organisation aren't just auditors that then go to an SME. They're auditors at SMEs and the actual engineers that are going to be building these products. So we can have a lot more technical conversation with regulators on what exactly they're trying to cover and secure for our end users. And therefore we can hopefully, and I truly believe we've done this, we've actually got better compliance than I've seen at some previous organisations I've worked with because of that automated check, because of that cultural buildup of education as well. So with your relationship with the regulators and being able to provide evidence to them both as a firm but also as engineers within the team, are you finding that the regulators are actually wanting more automation of regulation? Are they asking for evidence in an automated way as code or as a particular standard? There's definitely been change in that way, but I would like to see better automation asks from the regulator. So the way we show evidence generally has been interviews or screenshots or those sorts of things. I'd much prefer it to see move towards, so this is the output of my pipeline results or the quality gate checks or things that have actually been stopped on its way through. It'll be much better if we can somehow get that information which is readily available directly to the regulators rather than having to do things like screenshots, create attestations and send those back. That's fantastic feedback. So within Finals we have a special interest group called Regulation Innovation which is actually created to speed up that relationship between engineering teams and the regulators. It'll be awesome to have clear bank comments, talk about how regulation and also engineering could be accelerated from your perspective, what those blockers are and what kind of tools could actually be provided to enable more efficient types of DevOps engineering. Absolutely. DevOps is there to try and make movement in product faster and realise that value to our customers faster. Just listening to a couple of conversations earlier I was really excited hearing Jennifer talk about digital dollar. This whole central bank digital currencies and how they're going to interact with fiat currencies is incredibly interesting. If we don't get that speed up of regulatory output, if we don't have that connection between different jurisdictions' regulations, it's just going to really slow down that part of the world which I think is incredibly exciting. Clear Bank are quite heavily focused on what does digital assets, stable coin, the central bank digital currencies mean for our end users, how can we best turn that into products for them to leverage themselves. I really want to catch up with Jennifer and Ella today, Ron. Yeah, that's fantastic. So, I'm really pleased to see that Clear Bank has a GitHub organisation. So, if people want to check it out, if you go to github.com. You have a clear presence online. It's also good to see that you have repose within there and you also have repose with stars. You also publish all of your API integration documents in there. So, with your community facing approach for Clear Bank, how has having your documentation presented to the open through github enabled you to be able to integrate with your customers? Do you mean why we choose to get our pages specifically or the API documentation? Has there been any clear advantage having your API documentation and repositories that enable authentication on github for people to use? I mean the accessibility. The reason why we use github is that that wonderful toolset has around getting the community to engage. Issues being raised, issues being tracked, the whole PR process and I guess that's how you get a pulse check on the health of a project is how quickly they're being passed through. So, having our API documentation on github pages was twofold. One, we had the repository and github anyway. Github pages and github actions are something we make heavy use of and it made sense that we had github in the title of our API docs. At the end of the day, all of our products are sold via an API. So the end customer really is the engineers in the company that are using the Clear Bank API. It makes sense that we advertise that we're on github and that's fantastic. And staying within the open source world. What have been your successes, challenges and lessons learnt since publishing either a project in a repo or your documentation through github pages? Yeah, it goes back to that pulse check on a project. I think we are fast paced, we're growing in that quite quick rate. We have a lot of investment behind us. So we're starting to have better manpower or people power to look after these projects. So I think that's the biggest challenge is when you start putting something out there especially if it's not just a fork but you're contributing to someone else's project it's your project you're putting out there. If you don't look after that open source community by responding to issues in the right amount of time especially if someone's is a great plus for open source contributing a code change to fix an issue that's even bigger use of someone else's time. So if you're not respecting that by reviewing that PR giving the constructive feedback and ultimately hopefully merging it into your project in time that's the biggest pain point I'd say for any open source project. So have you had the scenario where an external member of the open source community has either raised an issue opened a pool request watched your repose or starred them. Is there a feedback loop that kind of goes through the open source community? Exactly is that. We're getting a real chance to understand what the customers think where they have complete free reign to do at any time of the day and any which way they want to feedback on issues on the project. So it is the biggest plus and it is the best way to understand how your products actually being used. So knowing that we have a financial services community I'm in open source here I mean what can Finos or the wider financial services industry kind of like provide clear bank in order to make your contributions to open source even more successful? Maybe we go back to I want to quite completely flip it around but if we go back three years ago we were a very early stage at clear bank when we first met it definitely felt like a luxury item for us then to become a member of Finos and we didn't truly understand what was the driving the main goal was the driving force for Finos obviously you've approached this again more recently we've got this funding this is much more attainable to be a member now but the biggest thing I think anyone out in this room can do for us is look at the products we've got use them if they're beneficial come back with feedback on new feature requests for them or or contribute to them would be amazing I must carry out obviously the things we're releasing on our get up pages are more internal tools to help build infrastructure for financial services to get compliance so it's not the actual clear bank products available to pick apart from there It was really interesting to see Declan earlier in the keynote talk about that West's approach to also publishing documentation around their APIs as well and so clearly having API documentation in the open is a way forward so tell me about the engineering team at ClearBank what's a day in the life of ClearBank engineer how do they operate how do they collaborate how do they solve problems so we actually use Azure DevOps for source control workflow pipelines rather than get hub for our internal source code and pipelines so that's their main point of interaction but we also created something called a developer portal which is an idea started with Spotify and it's a great way of getting those kind of announcements put out across the floor so if you want to tell an engineering team that an end of life for something is coming up is a great way of putting it out there on a tech radar and moving it to retire so we have we don't have any sort of architecture people roles in the co-organisation but we do have architectures forums so we try and get our engineers to contribute their friction points in their day to day life through that forum so as a group we can collaboratively find the best way to move it forward for everyone because more than likely if one person there one team in our group has got a problem it's probably the same for someone else as far as open source goes I would like to see more open source contributions from the wider floor but also I understand that there's a lot of focus on product delivery from our engineers so I think most of the open source aside of clear banks engagement will be that platform and enabling team so with one of the conversations that we had earlier in the FOIA we were talking to Github about how they could potentially remove friction for regulated clients of theirs if Github or other people who are supplying tooling for open source firms within the regulation industry could remove friction for you what would that be? Do you have any examples of how things could be made a lot more easier for you to be able to contribute to open source? Yeah, I can assume open source, I've seen problems in other organisations where there's almost a risk problem there, is that project going to be there going forward those sorts of things so I think if we can somehow and we take a risk based approach on taking on any product supplier or open source led so is there a corporation backing up this open source product or is it a publicly owned one? Are you seeing poor requests and issues being addressed in a timely manner that helps you with the risk profile of what you're taking on if Finos or someone else was able to help financial services bring that risk down even further that would be a huge enabler I think for financial services if we can look at it in the same light of saying this it's going to be supported, we're not going to be left in hot war we're not going to have to look after this ourselves there's a group of people that can help us to maintain it if the worst does happen that would be a huge enabler I think So early you were talking about how Clare Bank looked to Finos maybe three years ago I mean when we met just before the pandemic and it was nice to have have you had the opportunity to look at any of the other Finos projects or special interest groups what's your appetite now for getting involved in a foundation like Finos? Like I said we've got the bigger investment now so it's much more attainable for us to become a full member of Finos where I see the benefit is seeing there's a couple of compliance whether it's asset management whether it's service catalogs I've seen a few of those repositories in there and they're things that we've we've even got paid for supplied products to look after or it's something we've built in to house ourselves so I see compliance as something that the financial services world needs to band together on to make sure it's more consistent across all organisations I say sometimes feel like we're treated as a ffintech so we've got a slightly different risk profile it's clearly not the case but it's very interesting to see how some of the more incumbent financial institutions have been around for a lot longer going through this process for a lot longer how they deal with compliance and how aligned are we? So within the ffintech industry not necessarily clear banks specifically for us to be able to invite the wider ffintech and maybe crypto world into open source and into Finos what would be kind of like the main hang-ups and hurdles that we would need to overcome in order to invite more people in? Transparency absolutely of what's on offer as in what the what the goal is for Finos but also what the success criteria is for the next 6, 12, 24 months what's the roadmap for Finos what is the driving force for the whole group getting together and why new people should come in I think that's critical because for us again we saw it as a luxury item initially and we also didn't quite understand exactly what it was about first our first initial force was is this open source or is this closed source? Honestly so we weren't really sure but obviously meeting again it's very clear that this is about trying to erode those misconceptions within maybe older or larger organisations that open source is a bigger risk which it's not it's just another risk like all the other products So that's fantastic so I'm pleased that being here today and also speaking within our previous conversations has helped to start to remove those and maybe we can do a lot more to invite other FinTechs and other players maybe challenger banks into Finos as well Can I ask around a different question then from my side what can Clearbank do for Finos How can we make Finos successful through Clearbank engagement? What's the biggest thing we can do? Yeah that's actually a really good question So within Finos we have a number of different projects that may be of use to you that we may need to take you through and introduce you to our catalogue of projects that you can leverage We are creating compliant cloud services which may be of use and value plus we also have associate members such as the EDM council and CDMC that also work with us to make sure that we're creating those services in a compliant way so by getting involved in such projects and even by just communicating your perspective on the work that we're doing can actually build it will enable our roadmap and could also influence how features are actually created in a great deal of our projects but even outside of projects where there are main code contributions we also have special interest groups which are open for everybody within financial services to get involved whether you're a bank, whether you're a ffintech whether you are a consultancy or a tech provider in order to give industry points of view and help prioritise what the issues are of the moment so the regulation innovation seek as we were talking about earlier on stage has helped bring in for new projects around regulation in order to help describe regulation and also accelerate the relationship between engineering and also the regulators we also have open source readiness which is about educating banks and other regulated firms within finance about how they can actually join the open source community and how they create policies tool to compliance teams and governance teams in order to bring both all sides of the bank on the journey of open source include in engineers and then many of the banks that we have here are applying DevOps sorry not DevOps in a source within their banks that also includes DevOps and so if you've got any kind of different perspectives of how engineers can work together on the inside of organisations please bring it in because the more points of view that we have from different sides of financial services the better because we can all learn off of each other and there isn't one single answer either and so the more perspectives you have in things the better kind of like and also more successful the projects are so you can bring in a whole new perspective to everything that we're doing Excellent So what does success look like next three, six, 24 months for Finos? Yeah so that is also a great question so we have a governing board that helps create our OKRs so at the moment top of the list is bringing the regulators and also the banks together so automating all of that evidence trying to do regulation as code writing regulation that can be published across multiple different exit points into different systems and services we also want to make sure that all of our various different projects join together so where within our journey into open source we've had lots of successful projects contributed into the foundation we want to make sure that those projects are joining together so they actually build an ecosystem that people can actually bring on board and you'll find that projects such as legend which is a project contributed by Goldman is being leveraged by Morgan Stanley and is also being integrated into their project which is called Morphher and so all of these different touch points within Finos are also being like technically and also system architected so we have cross collaboration across all of the various different firms and then we're just going to multiply that across the years so you know more vendors, try and break down more barriers, remove silos and bring people together in a more open and collaborative way I like this a lot of this engagement with regulators like I say I feel like we've had a very different experience than I've had at previous organisation so if we can have that joined up experience and actually have them in the same room as a group of financial services have a very interesting place Yeah so as associate members we have the Alliance for Innovative Regulation who are bringing in the regulators so we're working in partnership with them we have the Canadian RetroTech Association which are doing pretty much what we were just talking about you know speeding up regulation as code through engineering all the way from the cloud platform through to in a bank infrastructure we also run meetups so we come together in conferences but we also come together in more federated meetups within different cities and locations where we talk all of this stuff through so last month we were in New York City which was red tech themed previously we were in London and we were talking about waltz and then previous to that we were also in New York talking about compliant financial infrastructure plus we also have meetups in Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds and London as well you know that we run on a ongoing basis so there's plenty of time to get together with the Finals community Excellent I'm where we've been talking with each other a lot are we open up to questions as well I think say we've just had the minute marker that if people have got questions feel free to just shout them out I don't think we've got time for people to put their hands up so feel yeah feel free to So you mentioned that if you were to go out and what would you take to scale up that success in an organization in three, five, twenty, nine or so So I imagine those organizations have quite robust functions around procurement around audit like I say for the size of the organization we are procurement, audit is the day job of the leader of that area that's reporting back and I said that's got its benefits because we've got direct conversations with engineers and the regulatory body we're trying to comply with so I would say break down the barriers, bring as many of the people who are actually building designing the products and architecture that need to be compliant in the room with those regulators try and stop any sort of Chinese whispers of translation from regulation to what it is you're actually doing on the floor That's actually a really good question and one that both myself and Mick Walsch have been breaking down a lot of this as well Right, I think we're at the end of our time so if the people at the back can just confirm that we're there now we are. I'd like to say thank you to everybody for being here today and thank you Stephen for such an insightful fireside chat it's been great speaking to you and I look forward to working with Clare Bank a lot more Now me too, it's been great, thank you very much for inviting me Thank you everybody