Hello, and welcome to the podcast for the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, better known as IEAM. I'm Jenny Shaw. The July 2015 issue of IEAM contains an article that uses life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental benefits of reuse. That's reuse, as in one of the three R's in the mantra, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The article is part of a special series that resulted from a CTAC Life Cycle Assessment Symposium held in Rome, Italy. Co-author Valentina Castellani is with us today to discuss the study. Valentina is a researcher at the University of Milan, Italy. Hi Valentina, thanks for joining us today. Thank you Jenny. Hi to everybody. So I think the term life cycle assessment is something that people hear a lot about, but they might not have a clear understanding of it. I know that's the case for me. Could you give us a brief overview of the field? Yeah, life cycle assessment is a methodology for assessing environmental impact throughout the whole supply chain of product and services. So from the extraction of raw materials through the production and use phase and to the end of life, so disposal or recycling. And it was developed in the late sixties, mainly as a way to account for resource consumption. Then it was later developed again and more deeply to include also other environmental impacts. And there are many methods for life cycle impact assessment. But the final aim of all these methods is to identify the main environmental impacts of products and services throughout the whole supply chain. And to find out which is the most effective way to reduce them. So in the paper, you evaluate the potential environmental benefits of reuse. Buying used items as opposed to new ones. Can you elaborate on the case study? Yeah, the case study was proposed by an Italian NGO working mainly in projects for international cooperation and developing countries. This NGO is called Manitese and they have shops where they sell items donated by people. And these items are sold mainly to other people who are in economic troubles or that are not so able to buy new items on the market. And moreover, the revenue of this selling is used for financing these projects of international cooperation. So this has mainly a social value. But in the last years, they recognized that this could have also environmental implications. So this can generate environmental benefits. And they asked to us in the University of Milan to identify and to quantify these potential benefits. So what we did was to analyze the products that were sold in the shop and cluster them into product categories and to select one or more than one representative item for each product category. Then we did the lifecycle assessment, so an evaluation of environmental impacts for these products. And we used the results to quantify the potential environmental burden avoided through the reuse. Because when you reuse an item, you are usually avoiding to buy a new one. So avoiding to produce a new one. So in the end, what we obtained was a calculation of the potential environmental benefits for each kind of product category. And multiplying these results for the quantity of products for each category that are sold in the shop during one year. We evaluated the potential environmental benefit of the whole activity of the shop during one year. Of course, this is related to a case study, so to one shop, but can be extended to all the second hand market and habits. And this can have a relevant implication for a sector of the market that is growing so much during the last years. Because people are more interested in reuse and are more environmentally conscious and so on. What do you think are the main challenges in getting people to embrace the reuse of products? And by people, I mean both consumers and industry. Well, actually, if we think about consumers, I think that small items are already reused in larger quantities. Because you can have these vintage shops or there's more interest in vintage clothes or vintage glasses or something like this. Whereas for big pieces, the interest is different because in these cases, they are bought by people who have a real need to avoid buying a new one, which could be more expensive. So I think it refers to different kinds of consumers. But as a general comment, I think that consumers are becoming more and more environmentally conscious and they are more likely to buy second hand products. And this is testified also by the enlarging of the second hand product market or also on the web, for example. But for what concerns the industries and mainly this kind of organization that promote the second hand selling, we have to think that big items can generate more problems because of course they need larger space to be stored and so maybe higher costs for the seller. So this could be in the end again a balance between the two. Do you think that the government and regulations could also play a role in facilitating reuse of more limited resources or materials? Well, they can play a role but sometimes the current regulation, which is very good and very detailed, the regulation about waste, for example, can sometimes prevent the development of these kinds of initiatives because the regulation is very strict about who can handle a waste. And this is good because it has the aim of preventing wrong management of waste. But in the end, it ends up with the fact that if you are not a waste operator and if you try to reuse the item, after they are, for example, delivered to a waste platform, they are considered waste so you cannot reuse it anymore just for a matter of regulation. So I think this could be one problem in the future that needs to be solved. I'm wondering though with more analysis like yours, if these types of analyses will have some effect towards changing the regulation to be more reuse friendly? Well, I hope and I think so because at the end of the project that I mentioned, we presented the results in a public workshop where also local administrators, local politicians were there and they were very impressed by the results. And they were thinking about how to enlarge this market and how to promote the reuse through the avoidance of waste, so through these kinds of initiatives. So I think there's room for discussion and there's room for improvement and for finding solutions to this. Great. Thank you so much, Valentina, for joining us today and chatting about your work. Thank you. It was really a pleasure to talk with you. You've been listening to Valentina Castellani discuss her article, Beyond the Throwaway Society, a life cycle based assessment of the environmental benefit of reuse. Access the article in the July 2015 issue of IEAM. Just go to ctechjournals.org. I'm Jenny Shaw and thank you for listening to the IEAM podcast.


Hello dear listeners and welcome to the historic event that is episode 100 of the Agile podcast. I'm Geoff Watts and I got together with my good friend Paul Goddard to record this landmark episode where we started off talking about the usual nonsense such as what's been changing for us recently after our summer hiatus, how our businesses have had to pivot and how businesses in the wider world have had to pivot. And then we went almost back to basics where we started talking about servant leadership what it really means and where it all came from and a little bit of a digression around the community, the Agile community as it is right now Well it was good to get back to the podcast and hopefully you'll enjoy joining us for this historic episode in more ways than one actually because we had a happy surprise for you after the jingle. Yeah, just off the A417, so a new build suburb. Easy trip down the dual carriageway for you. Yeah, wasn't too bad, wasn't too bad. In my daughter's little one litre Ford Fiesta. Oh you've got a new car, isn't it? Is it the blue one outside? Yeah, with the Minnie Mouse balloons on the dashboard. Sushi mate, my head touching the roof. Small car, sushi. I bet it's easy to park though isn't it? That's the benefit, easy to park. Well, not as easy as the other one, it poked itself. But yeah, it's pretty easy to park. A bit of a come down from the Tesla. You can fit it into a space quite easily. But yeah, nice to see you again mate. We were just trying to work out how long it's been. It's been a long time. Nearly six months, half a year. Kind of like a virtual Jeff for six months, long time. Well it's good to be back. I'm still an agile leadership coach. How about you? Business changed? Business changed slightly. Not so much as there's less of it. Deliveries and... That's a growth market isn't it? What's that? Delivery. Delivery of all? Yeah, yeah, I was thinking I could do that. I sent some stuff off with the DHL guy this morning, yesterday. And he said it's never been busier. I bet.  But no, unfortunately I'm not in the market of PPE, which I was. Apparently there's someone telling me, company in Bristol, a single guy in his garage bought a load of PPE just before, started his own PPE business just before March. Made £3 million, six months. Done very well. Out of his garage. Kenny's sleeping night though, that's the question. Happy birthday. Oh really? Well, you know. Happy birthday to the pubcast. Oh right. We've both had a birthday. We've both a year on this. We did one of these. But yeah, this is it. This is a completely arbitrary milestone, but this is episode 100. Cheers. Cheers mate. We're still here. Who'd have thought it? After what is it now? Probably four, four and a half years. You're still getting stronger. Jimmy Anderson. Yeah. 600 wickets. It's a nice milestone. I was never really bothered. There's no marching band, there's no 24 gun salute. No flyover from the Red Arrows. I didn't have time to arrange that. No cake. No party hats. But together, which is something that you wanted, all through lockdown, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, we've got to be back in the pub by episode 100. We've got to be. And we are. There was despondency, wasn't there? There was despair. Yeah. We made it. But we're there. Yeah. So you've had a bit of time off, haven't you? This month, I have. Yeah. Yeah. And really did try. It helped being, certainly last week, I was in deepest, darkest, rural Wales. And it did help the fact there was no very little signal. And when there was signal, it was very poor. Camping? No, we had a cottage. We had an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, which on kind of like a nice, a kind of a farm that's been reconverted to pods and cottages. So it was nice. There was only about, you know, kind of eight accommodation families there. So it was nice. It was remote. It was, it wasn't very busy. Did a lot of walks, got outdoors. Yeah. Just tried to, because just before August, I was pretty busy. I was felt pretty snowed under. So I think mentally as well, it was good for me just to disconnect for a while. And I've had a good two and a half, three weeks off. So I've got no news, no work needs. No, but I've got no, I've just been nice to me to kind of down tools for a bit. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. I haven't had a break. So you've, how, you sound like you've been busy. Well, busy-ish, you know. I've still got some, still got some people that I'm supporting, some teams I'm supporting. Ideas that I'm germinating and feeding. Yeah. Testing. Has this, has this time helped for that or has it just accelerated that? Has it just? No, I actually imagined it would help more. But I think I've had to put more effort in other areas than I, you know, didn't imagine. So, no, it's, it's been different. It's been different. And yeah, I've gone back to my roots a little bit. So I was asked to chair a track at the Agile Online Summit this year. Oh yeah, I've seen your tweet about that. And I asked, you know, what track do you want me to chair? And Tom said, well, make one up. So I made one up. And I've been going, thinking about, thinking a lot about how the term servant leader isn't particularly very well understood. Right. And what it actually means and how, I don't think many people in the Agile world actually have read Greenleaf stuff. I think it's quite interesting. And so I'll do that. I'll do a track on servant leadership. But because of the remote nature of things, we'll put the online spin on it. So what's the difference between a traditional servant leader, if you like, and one that's forced to operate online? And they've had some really interesting submissions. I'm looking forward to it, actually. So I get to pick five tracks and speak to people who've got different ideas about it. Okay. Different parts of the world and with different lenses. Yeah. So, yeah. Let's get you busy then. When is that? When's that summit? Well, so I'll be doing the interviews this month and next month. And then it's going to be live in October. Okay. So I'm, as normal, pre-praster-mating. Yeah. A lot of the other tracks. A lot of the other tracks are sort of spacing it out. I prefer to get things done. Yeah. So I'll be having my conversations soon, looking forward to them. I was supposed to have one this morning, actually, but things conspired against us. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it looks like a good track. There's women in Agile track. There's engaging Agile leadership track. There's all sorts of different tracks. There's culture and technical practices and things. I've seen a lot of that, that kind of more creative ways of looking at trying to get people to connect online and stuff, conferences or user groups. And all that stuff's become more accessible to everyone, isn't it? The fact that you can be on the other side of the world as long as you're prepared to get up at different times. Yeah. Well, I was doing a meetup group last night and I think they were about people from about 30 different countries. Mm-hmm. It's quite incredible, really. Yeah. You know, they're aiming for about 10,000 people, I think. Wow. Yeah. One thing I really liked about it that would sort of tip the balance in terms of me saying, yeah, all right, I'll put my time and energy into this was the format of it. So you and I used to conferences or summits, gatherings, where a speaker would submit a talk or a workshop. Yeah. Well, in this one, they submit a topic, an idea. Right. And I will interview them about it. Right. So they don't get to talk at me. Right. I get to ask them questions. They don't know where it's going to go and see where this conversation leads. So that's the bits that's online, is the conversation. Yeah. Okay. So it's like a fireside chat type thing. Pretty much, yeah. So all I get is the abstract of their talk and a little bit of, you know, why it's going to be important, why it's relevant, what's their experience, what are they hoping people will take away from it. But, yeah, they're not in control. Yeah. So they're going to know their stuff for a minute. Yeah. Well, either that or it's just, it can't be... It's the interesting topic. It can't be a sales pitch. It can't be a, you know, I've said this before and I'm going to say it again. They can't rehearse it. They can't read a script. Which I personally quite like. Not because I want people to be on edge, but I just want it to be a little bit more real and a little bit more from the heart. They've got to really live their stuff. Yeah. To be able to have those kinds of conversations. It can be interesting and interesting enough to engage a conversation about it. A little bit of a challenge for me as well, because I don't know what they're going to say. So you're playing Michael Parkinson. Kind of. For our international listeners, Michael Paxton, very famous interviewer, had his own talk show. Good at asking the right questions in a kind of homely, kind of warm way. Yeah.  Very good.  I'm busy enough, you know. I think it's a good opportunity to really focus. So, you know, I haven't done hardly any training. Which has made me think, actually, that's the direction I want to continue going and away from training. Yeah. Even more than I have been. So, yeah. Having different conversations with different people. Yeah. And focusing on different things. Which is good, I think. I think I'm getting a lot more a lot more contacts. People have started. There was a period where I didn't really get many emails from people. Yeah. It was noticeably dry. Well, I'll cover you at that. So those are screens of happiness, by the way. Children thoroughly enjoying the play. Well, not in some kind of dungeon torture situation. But yeah, I think the types of contacts I got had changed quite considerably. So I got very few requests for internal training classes and things like that. But I got a lot of requests for speaking. Yeah. So I would get sort of five requests to speak every week, at least. Yeah. At different things. But almost none from companies. So we'd like to give our some scrum masters a bit of training. We'd like to talk to our product owners or something like that. So, yeah, that completely changed. But I think it's, you know, people are starting to come out. I've had a few companies contact me about getting things going again. Okay. Online, albeit online. So that, I think, yeah, we've kind of crossed that point where the breaks went on when, and now that I think a lot more companies are used to the fact that this is going to be online for a while or remote for a while. We just carry on and adapt how we deliver various things to that way. So hopefully, yeah. It's given me the opportunity. So I've been pushing my whole improv that you doubt that. So I wrote this new course. When did I write it? June time? May June? Something that I probably was always going to want to do anyway, but just never had the time. Now I have the time and the focus, the direction, the push. I rewrote it into five modules. To be fair, it's done incredibly well. So that's kind of kept me busy. It's kind of more so than anything scrum related, anything certified from the scrum alliance type thing. But the same seems like different types of training and it's more modular and it's more flexible and it's less intensive. So yeah, that's kind of kept me busy. It's kind of given me a bit of hope to push. That's the thing that I kind of imagined I would end up doing longer term. So it's kind of sped that up for me a little bit really. Which is nice. I think it's been quite interesting to not only see what we talk about every day, every week for the last 20 years in action in a much more pressurized, focused way. So companies having to react to really big challenges. But also having to as we used to say it be to eat our own dog food or drink our own champagne. So almost everyone is looking at their business models and thinking is this fit for purpose anymore and pivoting that and the fact that some I found it quite useful to have a pretty varied pipeline if you like. Lots of different types of work. Some have flourished and some have floundered when the circumstances changed and that's from a resilience point of view. That's pretty good. Others haven't. And if you're too reliant on one thing and the market conditions change you can become extinct pretty quickly no matter how strong you are. And those conditions significantly changed. I'd realised we hadn't said what we were drinking. We're out of practice mate. We are, we are. I didn't really have to be honest a great choice. It was lager lager or lager pretty much. Compared to at home you were probably a bit more experimental with what you were buying but when you're in a pub you think there'd be more but there's actually probably less isn't there. So I'm drinking a Moretti Italian lager which wouldn't be my choice but it was better than Fosters and Carling. Well I'm drinking Stoford. Stoford Press. But I have another point of Stoford because you don't tend to see Stoford in cans in the supermarket as much as you see matches, no? I mean you should do really because it's all local stuff it's all west country based but it's harder to, it's more surprising sometimes maybe just as simple as I was going to it's nice to have a Stoford every now and again. But one of the pubs near me has gone into administration. Is it? The castle. I've been there. Yeah you probably haven't. On the ring about? Yeah, so it's, I think a guy bought it just before in February, like before locked down invested a lot of money in it and then Covid and it's gone into administration since then so. It's a freehold was it? It was, yeah it used to be brewery owned but I think this guy literally bought it off the brewery in February. Tough. Yeah, so one of many businesses I think that well, but yeah it's that explore versus exploit isn't it? About whether you're willing to and I've had obviously myself I've had to diversify and you do. Necessity is the mother of all invention isn't it? So that trying to push yourself into different areas. I'm quite pleased. I feel like I've been busy even though I've not been busy. Yeah. So from the balance sheet point of view I'm not very busy. No. But from my brain point of view I feel like I have been busy. Well it's a completely different part of the product lifecycle isn't it? Yeah. You kind of, yeah almost in startup mode. You've got to invest, know what to invest in and kind of ideas that you want to back and ideas that you want to kind of leave behind and so yes it's been good for me really. Probably it's probably been good for me in that respect because I think I was getting a little bit comfortable and a little bit complacent. Hmm. Yeah. It's how you respond to it isn't it? You can see it as a threat. You can see it as an opportunity.  It's good. Yeah it doesn't seem, when I look at the wider agile world at the moment I see a lot of fighting again. It's, yeah I mean I try, I'm not as, I'll be honest, I'm not probably as clued up as others are and I see a little bit of it. I don't see all of it. I don't spend, I try not to spend too much time on social media and by that I mean immersing myself in the in the discussions and the comments but I see, yeah I see a lot more what's the word? Volatile. I did read that I read the court transcript from the Scrum Alliance versus Scrum Inc. So you have to update me because I knew that there was problems but from what I've seen it's all blown up more recently and that's probably since I've been on holiday. Yeah. Can you give an overview? Well it's so the court transcript is a public record. You can go and see what the judge said. Anyone can see it. But basically it's Scrum Inc. So that's Jeff Sutherland and JJ Sutherland's company who run Scrum at scale. They've been handed an injunction so they're not allowed to run some of their courses and it's based on the fact that they allegedly deliberately set their courses up to create confusion in the market so they copied the logos, the learning objectives and so on of the Scrum Alliance courses to sort of piggyback on their work. And so while there's all sorts of other aspects to the litigation that I don't really understand but so far, while the rest of the court case continues the judge has an injunction in place against Scrum Inc. So it's a shame that you see this fighting again. We've seen it before. We've seen really good parties fall out. But that's not necessarily a sign of the time because that was something that's been bubbling away for a while, isn't it? Oh yeah, I don't think it's anything from the last six months or so. So Scrum Inc. aren't allowed to do any training? I don't know whether they're allowed to do any training but there are certain courses that they are running that they're no longer allowed to run while the courts hear out the rest of it. Is Jess to the CST? I don't believe so. I don't believe so. J.J. to the CST? I don't believe he was, was he? We need Niger, Niger no. I see that and that's a bit disappointing. Not completely surprising, if I'm honest, but disappointing nonetheless. And yeah, there's witnessing some of their arguments on social media which I'm trying to stay out of, but it goes in waves, isn't it? There was quite a lot of animosity a long time ago and then there was an effort to bring people together and focus on what we agree on and our common strengths and things. And then it just went away again and then more arguments sort of comes and goes really in waves. Yeah, there's 20 years since the Anjan Manifesto next year? Yes. Which is another arbitrary milestone? 2021, isn't it? Yeah. But I know that Scott Sivrite is trying to organise a 20-year retrospective and he's got a lot of people involved. Yeah. Just to look back and sort of hold the mirror up and think, well, where do we go next? With the original, as many of the original authors as you can? He's trying, I think. Yeah, pretty sure he's got Ron involved. Alistair Coburn. Yeah. Yeah, I think there was, I think maybe, yeah, Van Benakim, I think, was maybe. Okay. Yeah, I think there were quite a few. Another, you know, John names that you'd be aware of that are influential. Yeah, it could be, it's one of those things that could be amazing and could be an absolute, yeah. But I do, yeah, I think maybe there's a bit of confirmation bias from my own perspective here, but when you are, when you've got, maybe when, let's say there's less work happening and obviously there's a lot of lockdowns and people have got a lot more time, they're attracted to that kind of news, that kind of controversy, that kind of social media. And that's where I get, I'm guilty of this myself, you get most of my updates from, it's LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever it might be. Devil makes use for idle hands. Yeah. But the people have that time that they'll, and I've noticed that as well, that comments seem to be a lot more quick and a lot more things can exacerbate really quickly, that's the wrong word, but escalate really quickly because all of a sudden you've got 100 comments on a thread and it's like, I know controversy brings that controversy anyway, but it just seems that people have got that time and it's just a little bit more bitey, a little bit more, yeah. It just made me laugh. I saw one of the most commented threads on Twitter the other day, I just stumbled across it. Some guy said, look, I'm sorry, I know this is going to upset people, but coffee just tastes the same, it doesn't matter what bean it is, it doesn't matter where it's from, it doesn't matter if it's been pulled out by a monkey in the depths of Indonesia, it's just coffee. And coffee lovers just went crazy. It's just like, petrol, plain and stand back. I think you would have seen the same thing, the Ricky Gervais humanity, I think it's his standard shape. He talks about Twitter, and he metaphorically describes Twitter, it's like having a notice board in the middle of a town centre and somebody writes up guitar lessons, phone here, and Twitter is basically someone walking up to that saying, the number is saying, I don't want guitar lessons. Those messages are not meant for you, so don't respond to them. It's very true how he describes it really. Some of the stuff is very inflammatory, I try and distract myself from it really as much as I can. It is hard though. I feel I need to have a voice there, but I don't necessarily want to be there. I tweeted something the other day, I was amazed. So I went through Greenleaf stuff again, and just looking for tweetable things just to try and get other people in the industries aware to it. And it was amazing how so much of the stuff that we come to take as new, he was talking about 50, 60 years ago, and he's not claimed he was new then either. He was Senghe, he looked like Stephen Covey, they were all influenced by him. And one of the things that I've mentioned before, but in very different words, and must have completely forgotten where I got that inspiration from, was wait before silence. It's a devastating question to ask, but it's necessary. How am I sure that I'm going to add value above and beyond this silence? I mean, if the answer is yes, that's devastating to hear, because you think you should be able to add value, but don't talk unless you need to talk. And I think that, I was asked the question yesterday about what are the key characteristics of a servant either. And I hadn't really thought of it before, hadn't really come up with an acronym or anything. But one of the things that I said was around, humility and reflection, flexibility. But that humility of, well, do you know what, I might be wrong here, so I'm just going to hold back. And maybe my opinion isn't needed right now. My opinion might, even if I'm right, my opinion might not be needed. It might be unhelpful, even if I'm right, which is perhaps a counterintuitive thing to think, but you find those servant leaders generally think that. What was that phrase you've used before? Listen, do they listen when I think I'm wrong or something like that, or speak when I think I'm right? Yeah, I'll argue as if you're right. That's right. Listen as if you're wrong. Yeah. In that sense, the other thing I thought was really important and relevant was this sense that certain leaders generally look at something that's going on outside as not going on out there, but going on inside, i.e. it starts with me. So I can see a problem over there or I can see a problem with this relationship. But is that problem really with that relationship or does that problem start with me? And whether it's right or wrong, it's probably more helpful to think that. I think that's where Scrum Masters look, isn't it? Look first within, look in the mirror first. Yeah. And we tell people, you know, the only person you can really change is the one in the mirror. Yeah, well that's it. You're expecting people to do things in a certain way but the number of people that, or Scrum Masters I work with, and I won't name names, but let's call them Ian, but would rather have emailed someone rather than pick up the phone and talk to them. Yeah. You're expecting people to exhibit these principles but you're not doing it yourself. You're not acting in the way that you expect other people to act. Yeah. Hmm. Another thing that I was asked yesterday, which I thought was, I spent a bit of time thinking about it, is so one of the conversations that, one of the submissions to this track included a sort of subtopic, so part of it was around servant leaders need to, need to serve themselves as well as others. So if you look at the Scrum Guide officially, the Scrum Master who is a servant leader is expected to serve the product owner, is expected to serve the development team and serve the organisation. Which is great, but there's nothing in there about who serves the Scrum Master. Where does the Scrum Master get help? Who looks after them? Who makes sure they're okay? Make sure their needs are satisfied and their needs are met. So one of the submissions is around as a servant leader you should serve yourself first. Now that's in direct contradiction to Greenleaf. There's nothing debate to have. And who does do that? If you're no use to anybody, if you burnt out and we've talked before about putting your own oxygen mask on first, but then it got me thinking about how, and again we've probably had this conversation, if not directly then, over a couple of different sub-part conversations. If I spend a day coaching, I could have six, maybe even seven sessions in a day. By the end of the day, people are saying, you must be absolutely knackered. I've got more energy now than I did at the start of the day. And it's genuine, it's true. But one day in a training class and I'm lying in bed holding myself because I'm physically in pain. So I'm more energised by a day being a servant leader than I am a day being an educator. Now I know that people would be the other way around. But that to me says that that's more natural for me. And that strength is. And so if you find yourself as a leader being drained at the end of the day or trying to be a servant leader, then it's not saying that you shouldn't be one, but it's saying that it's more unnatural. It's more unnatural, yeah. Then you start picking that apart and how can I help myself with that regard and how can I work on some of those aspects so it becomes more natural. And I think there's a lot of leaders where it is an effort and it's an unnatural state for them. They're fast tracked through that process. And maybe they haven't built those skills of over a long period of time. Maybe they've for whatever reason been chew-horned into something quite early on. It's very unnerving if you're not used to that level of seniority or whatever you're expected to do, responsibility or whatever it is. For me the biggest challenge for people in those regards in that regard is the definition of the internal definition of strong leadership. So they've traditionally been brought up on the view that to be a strong leader you need to make decisions. You need to be in control. You need to have the answers. You need to give off an air of confidence and knowing and certainty. Putting other people at ease delegation and stuff like that. And that's great in some circumstances, in more complex environments that's going to get you into problems. So you've got the culture that's expecting that type of leadership you've been successful with that type of leadership and now you need to change. So not only do you need to develop and learn different skills, more complementary skills you have to let go of other habits and in the knowledge that well, with the lack of knowledge with the lack of certainty that the environment is going to actually appreciate what you're doing because the culture still may well recognise and reward what you used to do. And I think that's the number one challenge for a lot of leaders even if they get it at an intellectual level that emotionally and culturally it's still, there's some dissonance there. Regardless of the industry I was just listening on the radio on the way here that we live in a culture where especially right now especially right now because the levels of uncertainty we have people are craving the opposite they're craving they want they're valuing decisiveness, certainty and leaders in government or whatever that are prepared to and the whole thing around the U-turn the government have gone back on a decision. Huge uproar in the community how dare these politicians admit that they're wrong. But you know, like saying in these situations then there's an air of experimentation that we made a bad call there. I still find it fascinating it's just because it's the forefront of my mind but even that was something that Greenleaf said one of the biggest challenges you're going to face as a certain leader is people are going to want more certainty than you can provide and that is a challenge people would prefer order to chaos even if that order results in them having less freedom less happiness they would prefer that to chaos and so as a certain leader helping them move towards that and that's why he emphasized don't try and go from where you are to the end result straight away don't aim for perfect because you won't get there and in the meantime people will just revert back it's got to be slowly it's very prescient so when was his book published? it wasn't really a book as such it was a set of essays so the servant as leader was in 1960 so imagine he wrote that 58-59 obviously it wasn't about Scrum it wasn't about himself but his background was academia no so he worked at AT&T and he was looking at culture in large institutions so one of his other essays was called the institution as servant how do institutions such as churches governments banks things like that encourage or discourage the right kind of behaviors he's quite focused on the fact that from a society point of view if you have this hierarchy where one person at the top and that pyramid then we're saying to our people to be successful you need to aim to get to the top of the pyramid now obviously by definition only one person can be at the top of the pyramid therefore everybody else is unsuccessful which is toxic and you get sabotaged and you get all sorts of dysfunctional behavior to try and achieve that whereas if success is that by being at the bottom I've created more servants who want to help other people to be successful then everyone can be successful at that and you've got innumerable people helping you that's better for everyone and we may view that as a philosophical idealistic stance but I think he was ahead of his time and said it's not going to happen in my lifetime and if you are looking for that whether at an organizational level or a community level while you're in the middle of it you won't feel like anything's happening you'll feel like things are standing still because you're in the middle of it is he still around now? he died when? I can't tell you what I'd say in the 90's but anyway right on that note cheers guys nice to be back cheers everyone


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards. We are ripping at 22 pretty flawless football hobby 1 box break number 19 Random left side serial number here is a look again at your random results As always you can find those on the website under the results tab as well as the link that's currently in chat So good luck here everybody. Let's do it. That's a yellow card on the entire channel to room.  Oh Like I said, it's the ultimate sign of disrespect I'll keep doing it till I die be the last thing I do when I die on my deathbed I'll give somebody a yellow card right here. We go. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Let's get started here everybody empty Go into the 11 spots. That is Peter M. We've got a Geno Smith to color patch Yes, sir Nice one there congrats to the Seahawks or congrats to the 11 spot Nice one there Peter go to Viviana the 16 spots 16 of 25 is a rookie showcase Chris Olavik Jersey patch sock, I believe and football got Going to the four spot that is Mike W all-pro ink Jonathan Taylor Jonathan Taylor nice one there congrats to the four spot It was Raven going to Joseph D at the sixth spot. How about a Thurman Thomas? Oh, I swung there for the bills Yeah, they could use it. Oh, they could it's a couple teams. I could definitely use them Oh, yeah Grats on that one six of 15 Thurman Thomas. It's sticky goes go bills Going to Jonathan L. E at the 13 spot Brian Robinson jr. On the RPA. That's disgusting Congrats on that that is awesome. There's anything with the stars Nice b-rob RPA This is awesome going to the sixth spot again Joseph D. We've got Adrian Peterson Three colored patch auto six of ten sick. That is freaking awesome, dude The red card didn't work. Yeah, I know never does the speaking of something that needs a red card is Sean Jane Nice AP that's so awesome, dude And go into Bob G at the 19 spot RPA of Alec Pierce Congrats on that one there Bob Bobby nice one there, buddy That's an empty inner before we keep going dropping you guys boofin go bills Uh 12 to go on the next one everybody 12 to go breaks next Let's get it filled up go dolphins Feel a bit like play-or-play Everybody spins up Lot of inter-Miami fans True. All right, we're gonna start with the Jamar Chase going to the five spot Stephen L five of 20 That is the Ruby Jamar Chase Nice one here at the seven spot Josh Jacobs Berry G and Grats on that one at Berry and go in it to The 14 spot Scott F Justin Herbert two color three colored patch auto congrats Scott Let's go man. Oh, it's really clean congrats to Scott Every time it's so good man awesome Herbie congrats on that Scott Hope you enjoy that no recap on this one empty case. Thank you guys again for the fill coming up next is number 20


So I believe they're gonna put a polling question up on the screen to start us off because I don't want to bias your own perceptions of what we're about to say and cue you on. So right now please text what is that 223 on this following poll which is which of the following Department of Defense or which which should the the DOD do in order to ensure that they are best equipped to face a future adversary. Nothing. Awesome. A reform the acquisition process, B be a part of the 4% for Freedom Crowd, C both or D none of the above.  So it looks like it looks like reform Wednesday day and that certainly is a topic of discussion. You would think that was the only topic of discussion in the Pentagon right now is how do we reform the Pentagon, how do we you know buy things better, faster, cheaper, how do we innovate, how do we turn DOD into Google. There's you know all sorts of goodness there and yet there is a separate component of that the discussion which is our simple ability to produce platforms or major military, major military platforms and this discussion is kind of encapsulate encapsulated two different ways one in Secretary Hagel's 2014 rollout of Forced Future at the Reagan National Defense Forum where he launched a number or at least codified a number of initiatives to include the Defense Innovation Unit experimental and with really a focus on a stupid nuts reform process inside the Department of Defense that has had a number of results some good, some that have been squashed or set aside for the time being and we'll talk about those the aspects of all of those. The other aspect that I want to talk about is McCain's Restoring American Power report that some of you may have read that came out earlier this year and in that he describes the force that we say we want lots of ships, lots of tanks, lots of men and women in uniform and yet the report also goes on to say that no matter how much we desire to get to 350 ships in the Navy in four years we get 59. We say we need and by the way we need 81. No matter how many men and women we would like in uniform now the report you know suggested 50,000 plus the report also highlighted that we get 8,000 a year before we start getting more Chelsea Manians and Bo Burgdolls. We are also short of the report underscores we are short several hundred several hundred combat aircraft so the argument really is multifaceted both from a reform stance as well as a rebuild stance so here with me today to talk about these issues are as Albert already introduced Raj, Jackie and Alana and to kick things off Raj so you're in charge of Defense Innovation Unit Experimental henceforth known as DIUX and you've been there as part of I guess the what I call the DIUX 2.0 the kind of relaunch of the initial initiative. Tell us how is this different from past efforts that had been aimed at reforming or enabling the acquisition process and and how are you guys unique amongst the current panoply of initiatives and organizations out there attempting to attack this problem? Sure thanks Stephen it's a pleasure to be here with with everyone so DIUX our mission is to access commercial technologies and get them rapidly to our men and women in uniform you know there's been I think 78 blue ribbon panels on acquisition reform since the McNamara Times our view at DIUX and our charter is we can't change everything but we're gonna focus and move out on the pieces that we can so what we do is try to solve our customers problems and our customers are the services the Air Force the Army the Navy the Marine Corps the combatant commanders we focus on capability gaps that they have and try to use some of our unique vehicles and access to non-traditional vendors to solve those problems very quickly we so there's kind of three core aspects to the methodology that we've put together one it's fast two it's flexible and three it's collaborative and I'll quickly kind of walk through that so fast if you're going to work with companies that normally don't do business with the government you've got to move at the speed of business so we since last May since we started 2.0 as you said have done 21 OT contracts the represents about 42 million dollars of capital the average time from solicitation to contract signing has been 78 days which I think is still too long our goal is to get it below 60 and so we'll get back there but that's at the speed where a young company can make a decision do I want to go service J.P. Morgan or do I want to solve problems for the Department of Defense so the speed part is critical flexible is the other part so from IP rights to requiring two sets of books we're not requiring two sets of books the type of contract we kind of cut through the things that a young company again can't solve or handle and then finally collaborative right I think one of the biggest things my observation coming back into government is the separation between the operator and user and the person that's going to go buy or build that right so the operator says hey I have this need it goes through some requirement process sent somewhere else and then five years later you get you get it right and and that makes sense for certain types of products that we're going to have very long life but if you're buying software if the half-life of that software is shorter than the time it takes to buy it you'll never catch up so collaborative we take us we take the customer and we take the vendor and we literally sit around the table and negotiate what's going to be built what's the milestone payments how do we get what we need for the for the government and you know as software goes it we can be flexible and continued rate so those are some of the things that that we do and and I'll highlight and I'll preface that everything that I've described we have no unique authorities or powers at DIUX these are things that are available through the entire department and we're just the the first ones pioneering it that's great so a lot of times when it comes to duty engagement with the private sector and by private sector I'm referring to companies and individuals outside the conventional defense industrial base there's a sense that either the private sector or DOD can or should do more to enable their enable their business or their capability kind of like what you were talking about Raj enable the company to even get to the position the starting line to engage the Pentagon right the assumption I think sometimes is that all companies are at that starting line already right some may still be in the locker room like putting on their you know put on on their their game uniform Jackie a lot of the work that you've done with hacking for defense and other initiatives appears to kind of get at this we have other people in the room like Christopher Zember who been involved with this as well how do how do you kind of view private sector engagement with DOD and more importantly what can DOD do to better enable that private sector engagement yeah I think that's a great question and typically when that question is asked you get the same response that we got in the poll today which is its acquisition reform and you know while I think and the acquisition reform is absolutely needed there there's plenty of far exceptions and commercially friendly contract vehicles you've got DIUX you've got other rapid prototyping places that use flexible contracting methods so to me especially because we've staked our business on this in the last three years we opened up in Silicon Valley with the purpose of being able to enable this engagement between government and and and the private sector DIUX is one of our clients and we work across the DOD as well and the IC but what I really see as a problem and in terms of what's happening and not at DIUX I think DIUX has us right but what I what I see in other places when they start doing this engagement is that it's a lack of agency on the government's part so a government person say a program manager will start talking to a private company they'll start tech scouting and that private company then gets a signal that this person has the agency to make the decisions that need to be made for the deal to get done you know or for some contract to be put in place and they're going through the process and this company's told okay you're going to have a contract in place at this time for this type of work and that time comes and then it slips 12 months or it slips 15 months and I say this because it's actually happened to us now several times and I've seen it happen at many other companies and the most frustrating aspect of that to a private company is that what it shows on the government's behalf is that they didn't do their homework correctly they didn't account for the realities of their own system oftentimes program managers or whoever's doing this tech scouting doesn't understand how money moves within their own organizations and that is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of this of this interaction it's something that I think DIUX gets right very well and what Raj has talked about and how they plan all this out before they go and actually start engaging with this private company and so it's not necessary it's not about okay we need to go do more policy it's about how are we changing and empowering the people within the system to adopt this non-stove piping mentality when I was an engineer in the Air Force I got very good at contracts and people in my company think that I'm some kind of contracting expert and that I must have been a contracts officer when I was in the military but I just understood contracts because I had to to get things through the system and I think we need to be encouraging people inside the government to adopt more of this mentality great so Alana you used to be a DASD for MIB or sorry Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Based Policy there's saying in the military that the enemy gets a vote well so does the industrial base and the building itself from your perspective on a policy level you know how to how do folks like Steve Welby who's here former ASD R&E how to folks like him and you and your previous job how do you guys create and craft good policy how should the current administration craft good policy that enables both the defense reform initiatives you know enterprises like Rajas as well as these prototypes throughout their life cycle and the hopefully the really good ones in the program of record or in MDAP yeah thank you for that question and a quick shout out because Steve Welby was indeed an amazing colleague and Raj is doing some great things and it's indeed piloting the way DOD should do its work but he has not invented anything that wasn't there before there are an enormous amount of exceptions there are two different systems for purchasing there are there's even been a piloted authority to keep a little bit of your the extra savings that you might have so things have as Raj had said there have been a ton of studies and laws on the books and the last couple of NDAA's have put more laws on the books that are now making themselves felt into in a new commercial purchasing handbook which will be done sometime this summer which is the way you can the the Pentagon can purchase using the commercial rules instead of the military rules which are much simpler all that is good i continue to be concerned though that that won't be enough and i'll put it down to three simple things which is leadership culture and incentives because all of that has been there for such a long time but what i've seen when i've seen at work i've seen the three those three assets being brought to bear so special operations command has a reputation for being able to do procurement really really well i think that that's partly because they've got great leadership i think that's partly because they have a great reputation for warfighting that lets them take risks like other people don't take risks so we need to help our procurement core take risks we need to put in the right incentives right now when you're a contracting officer and you're somewhere around a GS 13 or a GS 10 which is sort of a early to medium stage career person everything is a disincentive you make one mistake the i g's on you you didn't save a penny that's that's a problem in your personnel file but when you create savings when you get something out to the field quickly that doesn't show itself in your personnel file as easily and it's something Eric Schmidt started to allude to a little bit in his earlier conversation so we need to rethink some of those incentives to give people that cover i mean people have to do a good job they can't be corrupt they have to be smart but they need the incentives to do the right things and to be risk takers diux was set up to be a risk taper risk taker but we can't just do this around the edges as much good as Raj has done it is pennies compared to the budget that do d spends all the time and that's not at all a hit on you it's just you're you're you've got a universe to play with that is showing the way but guess what the whole building and all the buildings around the country can can take that way as well so the right incentives and the incentives are not just around personnel it's also about the flow of money again i think erica was talking about it earlier that you know savings disappear well congress actually provided a tiny little pilot authority a couple years ago that that would allow you to maintain some of the savings and it's a long story as to why that didn't continue to evolve but there's a precedent and so that's that's sort of on congress to think about extending authority for some of the the funds that people may have when they're able to save or be able to transfer between programs in an easier methodology than you have now when you have to go through all of these offices and finally get your whole package together make sure that somebody didn't trade away your pack part of the package and then it goes to congress and then there's another set of briefings and debates i'm not saying no to oversight at all as a former congressional staffer i am saying sometimes it that means that it's a 12 month or a 24 month program so and then and then the other thing about you know i don't know if you want to put it in i guess in culture you have a lot of really really dedicated people and a lot of really smart people but a lot of them have spent their entire life in government and that means you're not necessarily as nimble as the private sector when you're trying to negotiate especially with the non-div the commercial base and especially the silicon valley the brooklyn navy are to like harken to new york or even which talk cancels with you know some innovative planes that the textron had put out at no tax no no taxpayer expense so i saw when i was there a pretty modest sized fellowship with that i think was created in the mid 90s and it's a secretary of defense's fellows and they get to go spend i believe it's just a year or two out of the private sector cyber security at a bank or contracting for one of the defense contractors they come back and they they you know we all know what it's like to experience as opposed to here in a lecture they've experienced what it's like to do business a little differently and then their follow-on assignments have nothing to do at least that was my experience have nothing to do with what they just did and so all that knowledge dissipates we should be doing this for a lot more people i would love to see it for the entire procurement course somewhere in the course of their career and i'd love to see them have to go back it's sort of like a payback when you get a scholarship to college you have to stay with the company for a couple years i'd love to see them stay and then and then um use that investment in their fellowship to to bring about a different culture in the procurement core so that would be my prescription so so let me turn this on its head uh raj from your perspective i mean in my opinion i think i think you guys have had pretty solid early success um since last year and i guess my question to you following on alana's comments uh what what can you attribute that early success to um and then more importantly how do you scale or or grow those early early wins into uh you know alana's domain right where you start to you know you start to chalk up programs of record and then they they grow on the you know 30-year sustainment cycles yep no great questions and and i agree with a lot of what lana said and particularly around you know so you asked what made us successful i think it's those things that you highlighted right we leadership we had senior level leaders in the pentagon that supported us and and candidly protected us from from some of the folks more resistant to change we were allowed to to fail and experiment and try things differently um but more importantly uh how do we scale right because we are a rounding error of rounding errors if you look at the defense budget um i i kind of view you know dx's is mission uh is to do agile culture change right so if you're going to write a big piece of software right so if i use a software analogy you don't go and write all of uh a massive program over five years and then release it you build little pieces of it and you take it out and you test it and some things work some things don't work you fix bugs and you get this continual feedback that few years in you have a great leading software package i feel that's our mission at diox to do culture change right we are never going to be the acquisition arm of the department we're not the r and d arm of the department uh we have existing structures to do that i think our job is to try new things and on a low cost basis the things that work we can scale the things that don't work it was a great experiment it didn't work we can at a very you know without wasting a lot of time money remove it so you know what kind of changes uh do i mean by that so incentives right uh and uh incentives for agility right so we the way we structure our team we track how long these things take and we incentivize folks that are able to move it through the through the system faster you know what of those can now be be scaled the entire ot system uh is again not exclusive to us so we wrote a a guide on the website anybody can go and download it on how do you do a commercial style ot and there are now other established groups procurement officers and groups within the department that are starting to do this which is great and then you know there's finally you know if i think about the the technologies that will be very important on the battlefield of the future things like autonomy things like artificial intelligence some of the best engineers and best minds working on those are working in commercial companies that uh have their own markets right they can better recommend a product on their website and they get a one percent growth there will be hugely rewarded but those same technologies have applicability to the defense world and you know we the department has traditionally been a monopsony buyer right yeah but now these we're a competitive buyer and so we have to change our our culture and process to to achieve it so you know so long term we experiment with things the things that work scale you know if in an ideal world i'm nervous to put a timeline on it but you don't need a d i u x anymore right because those things have been adopted and and then we move on so jackie hacking for defense and the the enterprise around that and the the people who support it it's also appeared to me to be more of a movement than a particular you know program or a class you go through at georgetown or stanford or whatever piggyback you know of some of the previous comments how do you take that that culture and the i guess the the people who kind of self-select for a program like that you know for especially from the military side how do you take that and grow that whether virally or through mandate or fiat how do you grow that across the pentagon or is it something that should grow across pentagon and instead of just being in a petri dish yeah i mean there's two versions of hacking for defense the for people that don't know what it is there is a hacking for defense course that we taught last year at stanford university where we basically took national security problems brought them through stanford and applied the lean startup methodology and how basically the science of innovation back to those problems just to see what would happen and it turned out it was a successful course there was a a group that came out of it that got venture capital funding a number of the teams went on to get continued government funding and now there's been other universities that have adopted this course including georgetown and part of the the rationale behind this is that the culture thing goes both ways right it's inside the government yes there needs to be a culture change and we all recognize that but there's such a divide between government now and this new generation the millennials in terms of there's just no connection there unless they actually go and enlist in the military or they go and become a government civilian and so this is one way that we saw to provide students an opportunity to participate in national security issues using their classroom knowledge of entrepreneurship on the other side of it through my company we provide hacking for defense for our government clients and the our rationale behind this is that there's a lot of talk about innovation and being in silicon valley what we've seen as the most the most interesting aspect to this is that nobody goes out and says we're going to be innovative they do it by what they do right whatever it is they're building but but through that process there's definitely a framework a science behind innovation and so we have wanted to take those same principles and basically bring them back inside the system that we think we're that needs it most and so through that we've taken the lean start-up methodology which basically encourages people when they're looking to develop something just like the entrepreneur to be able to identify very early on the the value proposition your key partners come up with hypotheses around what it is that you want to build do iterative testing and and really understand the feasibility and and the desirability of what it is that you're building for your users and this is coming off the problem before that we coming from acquisitions myself we built a lot of things for a lot of money that didn't solve anybody's problems and so we're hoping that through this process this will impact culture and how we look to putting our dollars our taxpayer dollars to the things that we're building great so Alana quickly and then we'll go to Q&A a lot of innovation in fact increasingly so at least to the extent we're aware of it happens outside the United States MIBP certainly has a role to play in the CFIUS or foreign investment process review process what are your thoughts in terms of engaging compelling foreign technology but at the same time protecting our own IP and our own kind of supply chains as we try to be more innovative yeah no that's an excellent question I would I would actually add to it and it's the CFIUS that's the internal investment from overseas but also export controls and how do we protect what we've invented so my predecessor used to say you know not we everything all the best stuff used to be invented here but that is just no longer true and so that creates a dilemma for DOD one is that we want to probably buy some things that are not invented here and we can but not we anymore but DOD can but it just has to go through a process where it has to get through the defense security service particularly if it needs clearances for facilities clearances for personnel which can be more cumbersome depending on the the nation from which this company is coming we also have the issue that there are some amazing things being done by US companies but with two problems one is DOD is no longer the largest buyer so they if they're going to sell to DOD they run the risk of being prevented because they're in a classified setting for example from then exporting that and there's also the broader risk of export controls stymying their growth and often even some fairly modest sized companies are using engineers from abroad or they have their their manufacturing abroad and so that creates all kinds of classification and export control issues and that is something DOD I think has to really grapple with it's not a DOD only issue the state department has a huge role to play the commerce department the Obama administration actually did a great deal in terms of updating the export control rules but things move so quickly that certainly around software and hardware and certain types of you know like infrared or certain other types of very specified technologies I think those export control rules have to be constantly updated because there there is so much happening overseas that either we're going to want to buy or we're going to not want to prevent our companies from selling abroad because they're no longer so far ahead of the curve that it makes sense to stymie their commercial development but back to Syfias really quickly it's just it's also very interesting as an issue because you know I wasn't those Syfias conversations and case decisions which I can't talk about here but what I will say is they were becoming more and more complex people think about it in terms of oh you're buying that wind farm next to a particular installation in Nevada which is all public knowledge it's all you know in the front pages don't forget about Smithfield now that's a big deal or Smithfield you know but but what's but they're more and more complex kinds of cases where there are all kinds of relationships between the various stakeholders and investors and how much say do they really have and how much insect will they really have and what are they buying will that technology that they might be buying impact so many different systems on that are in our critical infrastructure and possibly a dog needed hardware etc and it's very very hard to draw all those pieces and you can't just shut off all investment so it's becoming a much more complicated set of problems that don't envy the people around that table now boy wouldn't it be great if we had a graphic graphic user interface that depicted our entire industrial based supply chain imagine that so we've got a couple minutes left for for questions so if you have a question please raise your hand wait for the mic to come to you tell us who you are and please actually ask a question right there in the back Liam Collins from the Modern War Institute at West Point Alana I'd agree with you that special operations forces there have been uniquely successful and primarily because of leadership and culture but do they also have authorities I mean this isn't a question it's leading into it but don't do they have authorities that allow them to you know short circuit the process and and if that's the case you know can the military the larger military make the changes to the innovation or the acquisition process that it needs to or does it require some kind of major legislative change if you look probably in the last 75 years probably the most significant changes from the military weren't some kind of new technology but more of the you know legislative changes to the National Security Act in 1947 and Goldwater Knuckles in 1986 so do we need some kind of major legislative change or is it something the military can do on its own in order to kind of reform this acquisition process and move beyond the 1960s PPBS system you know I'm a big believer in understanding what you need to fill once you start doing it and there's so many authorities that are already on the books I'd say there's a lot that can happen before you go to Congress and then you can look for much more modest slivers of changes then you could explain better to Congress when you actually show specifically what you need I know Frage if you have a doubt yeah there's tons of authorities recent from the 16 NDA from the 17 NDA that apply tons of flexibility and not just outside the far in the OT world but also within the far having now spent a lot of time actually reading it there there's actually quite a lot of flexibility it's just it's getting the cultures and the incentives right to empower contracting officers to feel like they can do that can I say one thing if you're if you're sort of looking at this and researching this you might want to take a look at what cybercom is doing because cybercom had only recently gained some acquisition authority and they were going to SOCOM to get their sort of advice around how to do things so it's an interesting experiment right now okay right right there up front Colin Clark breaking defense Alana and this is directed all three of you I think raised the issue of incentives but you also have the training and the length of time that an acquisitions officer actually spends in a program the services run those for the most part how do you get across the board change for that workforce when each service has the authority to keep fiddling as it wishes now Colin you're you're totally correct if I understand you correctly because for the long programs of record for example clearly requirements continue to be changed and that's partly what drives the cost and what makes it so difficult for companies who have huge gaps in their production so you know that is that is partly what AT&L I think was meant to fix obviously didn't get all the way there and now there's a question of is there an AT&L in the future but that's definitely you know internal reform that that needs to happen as well and perhaps we we can look at incentives for that kind of internal reform and whether a disincentive could be created when you continue to fiddle and you have to wait for the 95% solution but you wait for another five years or you take the 80% solution you get it out to men and women you know in the field today one other thing the labs are an amazing resource the labs know more or less what's going on they're a great way to just put a check on hey does something already exist you know do we really need to reinvent this or can we take something that exists and maybe slap on some classified equipment or something that hasn't existed yet but not invent the entire thing I one of the things I've noticed working across contracts organizations is that the ones that are reimbursable meaning that and I think it's I think GSA does this there's other organizations that do this but basically they they are their salaries are actually tied to how many contracts were let through their shop versus a case where you know if you did one or if you did 50 you're going to get paid the same the same exact amount of money and I I do think that there is a model that for support organizations in the government there can be some of that I think incentives put in place in terms of your salary is actually tied to how much you put through the system I guess in the last 30 seconds the thing I would say is we it's difficult to take a one-size-fits-all approach to this and incentives so we have processes that I would say arguably work well for buying large programs so the way we buy an aircraft carrier should use one set of processes that are more deliberative and requirements based if we're going to try to build a UI system for data you know that changes so rapidly that we need an alternative set of incentives and approaches and try not to use cost plus yeah small programs yeah and by the way the next session will be how to do all this in a classified setting so don't hold your breath thank you very much please join me in thanking our panelists today


Hi, I'm Auburn Mulock, one of the product marketing managers here at Red Hat and I'm joined today by my peer Eunice. We wanted to kick off just by talking about what makes Red Hat a different and special place for us to work. I remember interviewing and the people who were trying to bring me in were trying to say, it's just, it's different, like the culture is different, the people are different. And then you interview and they're like, we're different because we're open source. Like, but it's hard to explain what that means. And to me, I think it means culture and community. You're not only embraced when you join Red Hat, but you have a group of peers who genuinely care about you and about your work. They want to know how your weekend was, how your vacation was, your dog's feeling better.  Definitely. And I'll say for the open culture, just like you said, one of the things that I was told when I first joined is everybody knows everything. If you hear about somebody working on a specific project that usually appeals to you, you can just ask them and they'll give you all the files they've been working on. So I think that's a big plus. Yeah, the sharing for it. And I guess that does go back to the open source community piece too, right? Like people don't have to be here. They want to be here and they are wanting to collaborate. They're wanting to communicate. They're wanting to contribute. And that's what makes it different. Selfishly for my AIML, which is where I work on open source communities, the future of AIML, that's where all the innovation is being done. So being part of Red Hat, being on the largest open source company in the world is definitely the place to be out there. Sure, AIML. Definitely. All the new technology, all the upcoming features, there's always somebody learning about the newest, latest, most interesting technologies and then try and figure out how to apply it back to what we do on a day-to-day basis. Exactly.


So I'm kinda scared. I'm not gonna lie to you guys, kinda scared for today. Today I'm basically gonna be telling Janice that she will never be a good wife. You guys always ask me and so did she recently when I'm gonna propose to her. Guys, like I said, I'm never gonna give up that information. Just know that it will be coming soon. And of course I would love to marry Janice. I think Janice would be the most perfect wife. She'd be the best wife that any man could honestly ever ask for. But today I'm gonna be telling her otherwise. She's on the phone right now in the living room with a hair salon. She's making an appointment for something. I don't know, she's doing girl things. But today we're gonna be vlogging it out. We have a couple things to do today. She also has a doctor's appointment so we're gonna be vlogging that out for you guys. But yeah, like I said, today we're gonna be telling her that she's never gonna be a good wife. And I don't know how she's gonna react to that. If you guys are ready for today's video, make sure you guys smash that thumbs up button, comment down below Team Isaiah all day every day. Let's get into it. What's going on, infinite fan? Welcome back to another video. If you guys are new to the channel, make sure you guys hit that subscribe button, turn on your post notification bell, leave a positive comment down below for a chance to get a whop. For a chance to win a shout out in the next video. That is right, guys. So right now we are in, what do we call this car? What's her name again? Ah, Luna. We are in Luna, they named her car Luna. So we are in Luna right now, that sounds kind of bad. We're in Luna. We're in Luna, period. Yeah, anywhere. See, don't add the period because that makes it sound worse. All right, anyway, so we're on the way right now to go somewhere to eat.  I want you guys to comment down below right now. No, it's not Chick-fil-A. If you know me and really follow me on Instagram, you already know what this is. You guys have to think. What was Janice's nationality in her past life? That's what you really have to think about. But yeah, so we're gonna be vlogging out today. We have a couple things to do today. You have a doctor's appointment, I'm very excited for that. I have my appointment for my follow up, for my surgery. I'm kind of nervous to see the results and how everything went. I'm just kind of scared because there's always that like what if, like oh, you might have to get another surgery or something like that. So that's a little scary, but. He said that there was like a very slim chance you would ever need to know. Yeah, I know, but you know, it's always worrisome. We have a couple things to do today that's one of the things. So, you have to log it out with us. We'll see you guys at the food spot. I can guarantee that no one commented this down below. Guaranteed no one did. You think anyone did? Maybe, if they know I love ramen. Absolutely not. There's no way that they guessed this. No shot. So little do you guys know this is gonna be Janice's face when that food comes out. There's been a series of unfortunate events. While we were eating, Janice got a phone call from her doctor and basically just tell them what happened. Pretty much he had to go into emergency surgery. So I had to reschedule my appointment till December 1st. But this is the second time my appointment's been rescheduled. But I understand because there's a lot of pages with endometriosis and they need to be catered to, so. You know how badly the people must feel that they wanna be catered to because you were in a lot of pain. So we're not gonna get mad at that. It is what it is. It's a good man right there. So yeah, that's gonna be, we're not gonna be doing that today. Next on the agenda is I have to go back to the house because I forgot to bring it. I have to go back to the house to get some coquito. If you guys know what coquito is, it is basically a Puerto Rican liquor type of drink. It's like a Puerto Rican eggnog. I have a bottle for my best friend Miguel.  If he has time to talk, maybe I'll put him on camera, something like that. Maybe mess with him a little bit. But yeah, that's next on the list. So let's go back home. All right, friend and fam, I'm gonna need you guys to send me right now in the comment section of prayer because I'm about to go into this cold. This cold ain't no joke. It's windy as hell, so it feels way worse than what it really is, but I'm gonna run inside and I'm gonna get what I gotta get. So wish me luck. Run, run, run.  I'm back. It was tough out there, almost didn't make it. But this is the coquito. This is what it looks like. So it is basically rum, coconut milk, cinnamon, all that good stuff. Tastes really good. Supposed to drink it really, really cold. But now we're gonna go drop this off at Miguel. I wanna tell him to like drink on the job but not drink on the job. No. I don't promote that, but you know what? I'm a little simple here. But we're gonna go over there now. This is my dream car. This is what I want. Janice, let me have it.  All right, forget the blue. Just the car in general. Like that is so fire. What do you guys think about that? That is so hard. Oh, come on, babe, let me get it. That's so fire. Oh, no. If you don't pick up the phone, I'ma throw the bottle through the window. Estoy aquí. I'm coming. All right. I saved this boss from a busted window. Now imagine. I feel like he left that phone ring for like, so the last ring was like a real pick up. All right, see now I don't even wanna know if I wanna give you the bottle anymore. Don't drink it on the one sitting. I don't promote drinking on the job but I think that's an exception. That's a great exception. I think you guys will have a good time. Have a great time. You seem busy. Your hands are dirty. Yeah, always. Can I touch it? Yeah. Oh. Ew. Yeah. We don't vlog. You guys busy too. I'm gonna let them chit chat and then we'll catch you later. All right, guys. So just left Miguel with the bottle. I haven't feeling that bottle's gonna be halfway done before he gets one. Miguel is Dominican and as you guys know, Dominican's like to party. Dominican's get down and whatever me and Miguel have liquor near us, it's a fun time. So. Yeah. Fun time for y'all. It is. It's not so much fun for you because then you be having to take care of us. You and Gab have to take care of us. Yeah. But it's always a good time for us. You know what I was thinking about though? What? Because you know how Miguel's like engaged and all that. Yes. I still find it crazy. I think it's crazy too. That's like literally insane there. It is. Freaking engaged. Like we're getting old. I used to think back in middle school when we get to that point, I feel like we're gonna be so old and here we are about to be 24 years old. And I'm like, wow, that came really fast. But it made me start thinking like you asked me the other day, right? When am I gonna propose to you or whatever?  I'm kind of like iffy about it. Why? Because like, let me ask you a question. What? Do you personally think that you would be a good wife? I, like what do you mean a good wife? Being a good wife just means like being a good girlfriend. I feel like I've been a good girlfriend to you. So you think you'd be a good wife then? Yeah.  You don't think I'll be a good wife? I don't know, babe. I don't know. Do you guys think she'll be a good wife? I don't. I think I'll be a good wife.  I don't think you'd be a good wife. Why? I'm not joking either. Like I hope you're not taking this as a joking matter. I'm being serious. Like I don't, I honestly don't think you'd be a good wife at all. Why? I just don't, I don't, I don't think you, I don't think you have what it takes to be a good wife. Well, what does it take to be a good wife now? I really, I really wanna know. I don't know, babe. I don't like, what do you consider a good wife? What do you consider a good wife since you're saying I'm not gonna be one? I'm just being honest. What do you want me to do? What do you want? Am I supposed to be like, wiping stuff down all day and asking, oh would you want to eat? That's so old school, that's not me, sorry. I'm not asking for a housewife. That's what I call a housewife.  She's ambitious. Exactly. I feel like you have that, but I don't think you'd be a good wife. I really don't think so. What about me is not wifey material? I don't understand. I know how to cook. I know how to clean. And I taught you how to do majority of that stuff. I taught you how to do laundry. I taught you how to cook. You didn't teach me how to do laundry. Yes I did. You didn't know how to do laundry until you met me. I know how to do laundry. No you didn't. Yes I do. I just was confused about like, how do I separate colors? Like what's colors and what's not colors? No, I feel like you didn't know how to do laundry because whenever we would try to do it, like you would just be like, yeah, I don't know what to do. And I would help everybody. Irregardless, those are like two things. One, why are you getting defensive? Because I don't understand what you think a wife is supposed to be like. I'm just saying I don't think you'd be a good wife. I'm not asking you to define a good wife for me. I'm just saying I don't think you'd be a good wife. But I'm just saying, what would make me not a good wife? Like I don't understand why you would say that to me. I'm just being honest. That's why, like, I don't know. I think about it a lot and I'm like, dang, I really don't think she'd be a good wife. Like at all. But why? Like at all. At all. I'm saying you don't think I'll be a good wife. Okay, why? Can I be honest with you? What?  You're gonna be chill about it?  What? I don't think you'd be a good wife. I think that babe, but you're not listening. I am listening. All right, but you're getting fed up. Let me like just listen. Look at me, seriously. Look at me, babe, look at me. No. Babe, look at me, seriously. I don't think you'd be a good wife. You can't do it. You won't let me finish my sentence. Third time, I don't think you'd be a good wife. I don't think you'd be a good wife. I don't think you'd be a good wife. I think you'd be a great wife. Give me a kiss. No! Give me a kiss, come on. I don't think you'd be a good wife. You'd be the best wife. You'd be a great wife. No. You'd be the best wife of all the wives. Gimme, gimme a kiss. What all the wives in the world? Not mine. All the wives in the world. You'd be the best wife ever. Gimme. Mmm. You'd be the best wife ever. You're not gonna be just good. We're not gonna put you right there at that level. You're gonna be the best. You're gonna be the best wife ever. You're everything like I already told them in the beginning, but I did an intro on the bedroom when you were on the phone with the hair salon I told them that you would be the best wife a man could ever ask for your everything and more There's nothing I would add to you to make you more wifey material. I feel like you're everything already You have the whole package. You mean that I do mean that 100% and I'm looking at you. Just strain the eyes Can be more serious than this. Okay. That's on period. That is on period. Give me a kiss I know I will be I'm not a lot guys I had to cut this one short because I don't know I kind of felt bad I feel like I was like hurting her feelings and I feel like it's kind of wrong to say that that's like Saying like I don't I feel like you were taking it as like oh, I'm saying that I deserve better I feel like that's how you were taking it and I didn't want you to feel like that So I thought you were coming for me like because sometimes I do be lazy and I'll be wanting to cook So and everybody's lazy and all that but who isn't lazy you watching right now I know you being lazy you being lazy right now. You watching our video That's gonna end the vlog here because like I said, you know her appointment got rescheduled So it is what it is But I guess that's another thing for another vlog that is it for today's video if you guys enjoyed it and you Guys want to see more content like this make sure you guys smash that thumbs up button comment down below team Isaiah all day every day you guys already know what it is time for today's post notification shout out Today's post notification shout out goes out to Sunita core. I hope I pronounced that right Thank you so much for the love and support if you guys want to post notification shout out all you guys Like comment share and subscribe until your post notification bells on see you know If I whenever we post a new video will tell your girlfriend your fiance your wife Husband whoever tell them that they're the best person in the world and we're gonna end it off like that See you guys in the next video