To start though, George is going to give us an update on the large block testing because he has to hop, yeah, George, do you want to recap what happened in the past week or so? Yeah, thank you Tim. So the update from last week is that previously we were blocked on providing transactions that are bigger than 128 kilobytes because of the TX pool limit. We got plugged into the Flashboots builder, which itself is connected to a good amount of relays who are in turn plugged into a good amount of hashrate on girly, which let us submit bundles which had one megabyte transactions. So we got a few blocks with one megabyte transactions. We've got a bunch of blocks with 10 or more 128 kilobyte transactions. We can do it reliably. So now we're at the point where over the weekend we got some blocks that were bigger and some people were monitoring their networks, etc. So now the next step is for us to improve our bin packing for the bundle, i.e. kind of like optimally bundle as many, what, like one megabyte plus one 512 kilobyte plus one 256 kilobyte plus one 100, you know, whatever, to basically make the block as big as possible. So that's the one thing that we need to improve to make the benchmark better. And the second thing that we'd like to improve is how reliably we can get multiple bundles included in a row, because we get outbid by others. And I just haven't figured out yet why we're getting outbid. So if there's more hashrate that we can get to, if there's more stake that we can get inside of the system to make bundle inclusion more reliable, that would be really nice. So that's the progress update. Another thing that we'd like to do is to start running this for the 484.4 dev nets like proper, because the code path might be different and also more importantly, because there's this mempool verification, there's a bunch of like new verification code for KSG, which we're not touching, obviously, right now with the call data benchmarks. So TLDR, the benchmark has been done at a small scale. We're trying to make it at a bigger scale and we'd like to try it also out for 484 in the near future. And you have to answer any questions or brainstorm or discuss if there's anything there. So we have a third of the network running MEV Boost on Gordy. Do we know another big chunk of validators who is not currently running MEV Boost? So I know client teams have like a fair amount of validators. I assume the ones who are involved in this are running it. But I don't know, does anyone have an idea of who we could reach out to you to add a bunch more? So all the client teams together should be roughly 80 or 90% of Gordy. Definitely not all the client teams are running. As far as I know, just the EF and I would, if I had to guess it would be Prism running it, but I don't know what the other one. Fegri is running 5k validators on Gordy, but we're using Flashbots. So you were, so the beads were coming from Flashbots really on Gordy? Yeah. And I think that's what we're using for this. So you would already be part. So we were part of it. But if I understand correctly, I think Techu has more than 5k validators. So there should be more that aren't running it. Yeah, but not all are running under MEV Boost. I think no need for us to go back and forth on this necessarily. But if you guys know more people that we could put on Gordy and MEV Boost, that would be fantastic. So I just message team that I've been bidding with 0.1 ETH. It doesn't need to be more like the bids. Like I looked at all the historical bids on Mainnet and like anytime. Yeah, anytime I get out bid, it's because somebody like just looks at my bid and outbids me. So it's not like, it's not like, it's not a static system. Like other people are also trying to get their bundles in because they're screwing around. But yeah, like if people want to send me a bunch of like girly hits, I'd be happy to take it with. So right now we're only getting these big blocks in through MEV Boost. Yeah, only MEV Boost. MEV Boost generically or do you have to hit, they have to be connected to like flashbots or a particular relay? I'm submitting to anything that conforms to the ETH and bundle API. Okay, so if we ran an analogous experiment on Mainnet, we would likely be able to hit a fairly large amount due to something like greater than 60% being connected to MEV Boost. Of course, of course, yeah. Yeah, this is designed so that it's kind of like one click change for Mainnet. And that's why to me it's important that I get the bidding algorithm proper and the bin packing algorithm proper so that I don't want to be overpaying for all my blocks on Mainnet. Okay, yeah, and we can look offline if there are clusters of 40 validators that we're aware of that we can reach out to. The main ask, so the main ask from the group is to just make sure that people's metrics APIs are up and if people are going on this or if there is like some of the blocked or whatever like let us know because I think this week by the end of this week we'll have like we'll have production as this or whatever you want to call it. And then we want to start hammering like reliably like all the time. Got it. I would like to run this for like 10 minutes, for example, like I don't want to run this for like five blocks. Perry and others, do we have initial metrics insights? Like things seem like we're gathering the data that we need? Yeah, that's actually one of the asks I've shared. Andrew shared a couple of dashboards earlier today. If you guys could have a look and let us know if something more needs to be added then we can work on that over the next week. But right now based on what we've seen there's been no like there's no cause for concern, like nothing changed, nothing was unexpected. To be clear, I don't think that we should be using the data that we got so far as signal because we haven't run really anything serious, right? Yeah, we just need to know that we're getting the data. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, just making explicit that the fact that we got, you know, three one megabyte blocks or three two megabyte blocks actually like with one megabyte transactions and over the weekend doesn't really mean anything yet. Yeah, and I think I got some of these metrics dashboards. Thank you, Perry. Yannick's attestation analysis that he just put out using some of those tools. This is all on-chain data that might be really valuable as well. I just shared the blog post. Thank you. Sweet. Anything else on this? Okay, we had a couple spec PRs issues from last time and new ones that we want to cover real quick. First one, DapLion had this PR 3141. I don't think he's on the call. And Danny, I think you literally just commented on it 30 minutes ago. Anything we should discuss here about it? So I think from my understanding, I think there's generally agreement to not allow this to grow unbounded in times of non-finality. So I think then one to reduce complexity and two to kind of know the load that's happening here. I think the question really becomes do you in unbounded in non-finalized period, if you're trying to reorg to something that you don't know is available of more than an 18-day or whatever the prune depth is, do you say is data available is true or do you say is data available is false? I think there's certainly some edge case attack scenarios to kind of consider here. Also some UX around if your client was offline and what the recovery modes look like. So it's kind of some trade-offs I think still to discuss. Happy to discuss a bit more here if people have questions about the state of the conversation, but also it seems like we're pretty active on the thread. Anyone have any other thoughts, comments on this? Okay. So yeah, we can just continue that. I think. And then Terrence, we had your issue also from last time, 3125. It seems like this is just ready to merge. Is that correct? Yep, ready to merge. Nice. Yeah, I think I'm good other than if you can just change the header comment to say what this does now just for posterity because it's a bit confusing if you read that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then the last one, I think it's another one that Brian asked for 3113. So, oh wait, is this the exact same thing? No, no, no, this is not the same thing as the previous one. And yeah, I'm sorry, I don't remember what we discussed about this last time. Is Sean or anyone who's been on this, yeah, give us a TLBR or? Oh, and Riko as well? Yeah. Oh yeah, both are here. Yeah, so the issue is about how we want to handle cases where we need to make a like get block and blob by route request for a missing parent block because when we do this, we don't know like at what slot the parent is. So that means we could be making a query for like before the 4844 epoch, for example. So we don't know whether to make a request for a block and blob or request for a block based on like the current spec. So the outline suggesting this might be a reason to uncouple the block and blob request because then you sort of have like just an optional sidecar in that scenario. And then the other solution we were considering was making the response to the block and blob by route request be in enum like a union type and as I see that's either a block or a block and blob. So yeah, it's the TLBR. I'm not sure where we're at with that. For us at Mythouse, we've sort of just kept the coupled request and not bothered to resolve this edge case for now. But yeah. Right, so from Chris's side, I don't think it's that hard to resolve the to basically resolve this case because you can just call the block and blob and check the error code. If the error code is stayed something like unavailable, you can try the block by route after just like a fallback case. I mean, it's pretty ugly, but I think like it's okay to work around. Yeah, this is also something that will fade into oblivion once we're finalized and kind of firmly pass this range, right? Well, it depends by, I think the error code, there is an error code specific for this situation there, but at some point you will not get any of this equation anymore. But if you got, yeah, I don't have the details of the error code, but if you can exactly catch this situation by error code and just retry in this very edge case that go away, it's okay to me. I mean, one thing is when you refer to a union, you're referring to SZ union? Yeah, right. I would want to avoid something kind of dirty in the spec for what ends up being like handling the transition cases here if possible. Yeah, so an error code would also be fine. I think we can resolve this in a few different ways. It's more about just coming to consensus on a solution. Can we move that to the thread? Or is that something that people want to discuss more or not? Yeah, I think so, okay. And the app line can jump in there. Okay, and we can, yeah, we can come back to it next week, call it if it's still being discussed. And there was one more CL spec PR that I had missed before, but shall we point it out? 3145, which updates the max blobs per block to four, which I guess matches what's on the EL side. Any comments or thoughts on that? I guess the question with that is like, should we target this for the DevNet 3 or should we follow up after the DevNet 3? It's just a simple constant change, right? So why not include it? Yeah, I don't have a preference. Yeah, that's fine with me. People are probably targeting master or whatever on the EIP, right? For configuration values? Yes, they are. Yeah, so we should align it. Yeah, okay. And I'll make sure to add it to the HACMD just in case it doesn't get merged like today, so we can at least know that it's there. Okay, anything else on the specs themselves? One thing is that Ramana, I think, merged the PR that makes field elements per block configurable so that we can have minimal presets also on CKCG, since that was causing problems for some testing situations. I'm not sure if it has been used or the client snowed. I guess the bindings also need to be updated, but this is something that is client relevant and happened this week. Yeah, we were waiting for this to be merged and we are ready for the binding to use it. Can you link the PR? Yeah, I'll find it and link it. Anything else on the specs? Okay, the next step, DevNet 3. Yeah, I'm curious where the client teams at and how are we feeling about getting this up? I know in the last week we were talking about potentially getting a single EL-CL combo. I'm not sure we quite got there. Yeah, does anyone want to give a quick update from their client side? Yeah, I can give a quick update. So we're passing for a 4.4 SPAT test as of last week. So thank you, Shaowei and all the people that's working on the SPAT test. I'm working on sync. That's close to done. One thing I like to finish before finding the DevNet 3 is that I do want to do some sort of local interrob test and I'm targeting Roboto's branch for that. So thank you for that as well. I haven't tried. I believe there is time-based or slot-based fork now. So that should be compatible as well as what we're doing with the Capella as well. I guess one thing I do need is that last time I checked, so the NG API for 4.4 is still using V2. So I do need those to be V3 to try it. And I'm wondering if there's a status for that. Oh, Roboto just said that he just added it. So yeah, sounds good. Thank you. I will try it today. That comment was actually with respect to time-based forks. But V3 APIs were also added last night. Thank you, Mofi, for sending a PR for that. And that's now merged. Okay, sounds good. So no more block here on my end. I will try local interrob today. And I will give you guys an update. Yeah. Also share your configuration for CL side, please. It would be interesting to test with you, too, as in your mind. Okay, sounds good. I will prepare an interrob dog for this. Nice. So for Lighthouse, we're in a similar boat where we're now just trying to test locally against the latest geth updates. We can test against Nethermine, too. And last week, I'd say the major outstanding work was in sync, but we've made a lot of progress there. So now we have an implementation, but it's untested. So after we get Lighthouse execution layer interop working, we'll probably start trying to make a local Lighthouse network working and see what sync looks like. And then we'll try to hopefully work with Prism or Lodestar to see if we can get sync working there. That's it for us. Nice. We start, sorry, apologies. Yeah, it's too jerry, I like to say. We started working on it more, more, it's only this week. So I'm now working on the SSZ serialization and more people are joining me working on it this week. So let's see what the updates will be next week. Sweet. Ah, I like to say. Yeah, just want to remind RLP side has some tricks there, too. I mean, you will need it for a transaction hash like that. And it's quite tricky. Never mind. So we tried to synchronize with get to run get at least it looks fine. And we need to see a set line to make a network. We will try to run session network next couple of days and hope for we will synchronize soon. And we're working on benchmarks for pre-compile tool. This is the other client team. Hey, this is Andrew from EthereumJS. I think as I noted last week, we're joining late. So we're still behind. I have over the last week, I've kind of honestly gave up trying to get EthereumJS to cooperate with Prism. Not sure why it's not working on the version on the interop. But I'm not that experienced with operating with the CL client. So I've been working with load star just because I'm more familiar with that one. And we have got it up in sync. We can sync past the starting block and using the current kind of three, you know, the block, the starting block based hard fork switches. So we're got that working. We're just I'm working through basically finding all the bugs that I made or it wrote in my initial implementation of 4844. So still working through at this point is kind of getting the block, the blobs to actually get transmitted to load star so it can validate. Then we haven't actually successfully transmitted a blob from EL to CL yet. But that's currently where I'm at. So slow, sometimes the steady progress on that. And we are hoping to also implement kind of related the time stamp based hard fork management within our client over the next week or two. I'm working with good gender who kind of does work with us and also with load star. So hopefully we'll have some of those other building blocks in place for when we're ready to join the DevNet. So hopefully by the end of the year, but I'll just see how much progress we make. Nice. Thank you. I continue chipping away at the Aragon client. Still has a bit of a waste to go. I didn't have a lot of time last week to spend on it, but coming along. Any other ones? I think we covered most of the ones that had said they're going to be part of the three. Okay. I guess then for the next week, does it make sense? So it seems like a lot of the clients are just trying to get things up and running and fix some issues on their own. Is there a client pair that we think might be still more ready to start on the DevNet so that others can try to pair with that when when their implementations are done? I mean, after we do some local testing, it might work. So maybe Lighthouse. I think it sounds like probably the same for Prism too. Okay. So let's try to get Lighthouse or Prism up and running with I guess, potentially as an EL. And yeah, if we can get those two, that'll be good start. Sweet. Okay. Then the next thing I wanted to cover real quick is last week, we covered Martin's benchmarks for Geth. And basically it seemed like the pre-compiles were maybe a bit underpriced. I know there's been some work done in the past week looking at that in more detail. And potentially the benchmarks were like a little bit pessimistic. So I guess I was curious to hear from people who've looked a bit more into the benchmarks. I don't know if Kev is on a call. You know, what your data is thinking is there and then how we should approach doing this like generally maybe across more clients or to make sure that we get the right pricing for the pre-compile. Hello. Yeah. So I was looking into switching out the GoKZG for a more native library and it reduced the allocations by around 80%. So it seems like GoKZG might not be as optimal. Even after switching it out, I was still getting some fluctuations, but I don't know if Martin's on the call. I think this was from the GC. So if you test it with CKZG, for example, you'll probably get more consistent results. And so I think that was the main problem. But on the same order, right? In terms of timing, it'd call it 50 instead of 67 or something, but it's not changing the order magnitude, right? Yeah, it's not going to immediately do a 2X, but it might be the difference between what Martin was saying with 67K gas and 50K gas. Right, okay. I just ran it on my computer. I did an EC recover. I think there's one more optimization to add. The EC recover was 42.2 M gas per second, and the pre-compile, I got it at around 17.9. But there's optimization in Konroc that needs to be applied. So I think it can get closer, but I need to just re-benchmark it. And then the fail case, there was an issue there, and that actually the fail case should be the same as the succeed case. Right, I think this was because CKZG was basically doing all these allocations and the GC was kept kicking in. Right now, when I'm only testing against the fail cases, they're roughly the same. There are sometimes when the GC kicks in and then it goes to like 15 M gas per second, but I don't know how to sort of solve that because you can't control when the GC kicks in. Okay, but we're probably more in the, even 100K is probably very pessimistic, and the 60K would be if we end up going with not fully optimized go KZG, but in that 50 to 60 range is probably very realistic. I think with go KZG it's kicking more towards at least 60. I don't know whether the allocations are quite a lot that it's doing. We haven't tested with CKZG through go. I'm using the Konroc sort of bindings instead, which is where I'm getting closer to 50, like 50 to 60. There's some low hanging fruit to optimize go KZG. Yeah, I think because all we're all benchmarking is the pre-compile, which is pretty simple. Like it's not anything to do with the aggregation. So yeah, if there's low hanging fruit, it's not going to be on the go, it's going to be sort of on the BLS side because you're just deserializing points and skaters and then just doing a pairing. So yeah, once this last optimization goes through, then I'd like to benchmark it again and see if it goes to 20, which would be closer to the 50 that we talked about. So then Tim, you wanted to consider how we need to play this in relation to other clients and languages as well. Are other clients and languages utilizing, going to be utilizing the native CKZG? Because in that case, I think a lot of this can and should translate, but if they're not, then maybe a more benchmark should be done. Yeah, but I guess my question is what happens if there's a discrepancy between the GIF code and the other clients? In terms of the easy recovery comparison? Yeah, I think it's worth at least knowing what it is, right? If, because either A, the clients, if there's a large gap in one client, that client can probably try and improve their implementation. If GIF is significantly quicker than all the other clients for some weird reason, then it might make sense to use something more conservative in terms of pricing. So that's, but yeah, this is kind of why I, yeah, knowing that they're all within the same ballpark would be useful. But if they all use basically the same library, I guess, yeah, the thing that's unclear to me is like what overhead do other clients have from like the bindings to their specific language and how big is that relative to, yeah, the, the overall execution time. Yeah, I guess, I feel like we know generally what the cost of pairing can and should be. And if overheads are more than 2x that, then I think that's like a sign for optimization rather than changing the price. But nonetheless, it'd be good to know that, so that the optimization is going to occur regardless. Yeah. And I think, never mind last week, you were kind of the other team that was sort of ready to look into this. Is that right, Alexei? Yeah, we're going to wait. Okay, nice. And we have Yasek on the call. I hope I'm saying your name correctly, who, who can probably help look into this. So, Yasek, are you in the KZ, I assume you're not in the KZG chat on Telegram. I'm not, no. Okay. But yeah, maybe I'll add you to that. If you want to just send me your Telegram handle, I'll add you to that. And then, yeah, it probably makes sense to just get started on, on another mind and see did the numbers roughly line up to what we saw it would get. Sure. Thank you. Okay. Anything else on just testing benchmarking? If not, the last quick thing I just wanted to cover is when do we want to have these calls in the next few weeks? So, I think it makes sense for us to have it next week, and then you're sort of moving into the holidays. The people want next week to be like our last call this year. Do we want to do one more after that? Yeah. How do people feel about that? Roberto is around for both weeks. Okay. So, we'll do next week. I was going to say I'll be around for both, too. So. Okay. So, let's do that then. Let's do the 13th and the 20th. Then we can take at least the 27th off and decide if we want to, yeah, it might make sense to do the third as well. So, like, if some people are around then we can do that. Yeah. Next two are okay. Okay. Awesome. So, let's do the next two. Take the 27th off and I'll be back on the third. So, if people show up, we can have that then. Yeah. Go from there. I have one more quick point. How to handle, if people are giving consideration how to handle fork identifier and the time-based forks, essentially an EIP 2124 extension or modification. I think naively looking at this, if we no longer would do forks by block number and only timestamp, timestamp strictly much larger than our latest block number. And thus I think you can kind of layer an extension on here where you use the UN64 fork next as a timestamp instead of a block number. But I think we would just need to get one, that's my very cursory look at this. But if somebody has some other ideas and then two, I think we just need to agree. That's probably something that we want to, certainly by the end of January, be agreed upon. It's minor, but would be annoying if it was being a blocker. Yeah, I agree. And generally, we're going to need this for Shanghai, regardless. Right. Yeah. I can knock on a couple doors of people that maybe the co-authors of this and see if they have a quick ideas. Yeah. And I know on AlcordEVS a few weeks ago, I think the teams are saying, we want to get some prototype implementation that we're kind of happy with and then write like a new EIP to specify it. But it'd be good to just follow up on where that's at. Yeah. Make sure we do have something in the next month or so. Anything else? Well, thanks, everyone. See you all next week. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thanks.


Majority of small and privately owned businesses will struggle to recover after a major fire. Keeping an eye out for possible hazards will protect your business, employees, and members of the public. According to stats provided by ElectricalSafetyFirst.org, 19,300 domestic fires and 12,000 commercial fires a year are caused by electrical faults. These fires are caused by a variety of reasons, the most common hazards are, faulty electrical equipment, loose connections, overloaded sockets, poor installation, and faulty connections. So what is an emergency electrical service? How do you prevent a fire caused by electrics? In this video we will outline some of the main hazards you should look out for. Hazards discussed in this video. Fire or Sparks. Emergency electrical power outage. Water damage. Wiring exposure. Fire or Sparks.  When an appliance is connected, an outlet can create a spark. Some of these sparks are identified as normal. For example, when you plug in your appliance and there's a small blue spark. Electricity runs through a circuit, these circuits have outlets where you plug in your appliances. The spark is caused by the plug joining this circuit. These small sparks are safe, and you don't need to contact an electrician. If you see a big spark that lasts longer than a second and it takes a while to go down, this is a sign of a faulty circuit. In addition, sparks of different colors are also signs of a bigger issue within the electrical circuit. Other signs of a faulty electrical circuit are burn marks on the plug and the smell of burning. If you see these spines, turn off the plug immediately and do not use the appliances. What you may be smelling is the start of a fire. There are several reasons as to why your electrical outlets are sparking. If you notice any of the above, we highly recommend you contact a licensed commercial electrician. Making that call immediately could potentially save lives as well as your business. Emergency electrical power outage. Something as simple as a power outage can potentially be hazardous, especially if the neighboring buildings are not affected. If your property is the only one to lose power, it's likely the issue has been caused by something within your own space. Water in the wires. As you know, water and electricity should never mix. When there's a flooding or plumbing issue, water can potentially access the wiring systems. If this has occurred in your building, it is important to contact an emergency electrical engineer. Depending on the severity of the situation you may be required to call the emergency services to be safe. It's also important to note, even if the water is not visible it may have already gone through false floors, ceilings or cavity walls. These areas are often used as a pathway for wiring. Electrical wiring exposure. Much like everything else, power outlets can suffer from wear and tear. Repeated use of outlets can cause the contact points to wear down. The old socket will require your immediate attention. Failure to address this hazard will eventually lead to sparks of electricity that can be dangerous to both you and your employees. Similarly, wires are also prone to wear and tear. If you spot wires that have become exposed from their casing or a plug with frayed wire, you must fix this issue. Unprotected wires can often be live wires. If this not properly insulated, it can present an extreme health and safety hazard. Emergency electrical services conclusion. To reduce the likelihood of a fire in your commercial building it's important to do a regular assessment of your electrical wiring and appliances. A simple visual assessment may save you life, employees lives and the business. Furthermore, a portable appliance testing, pat testing, should also be part of your maintenance plan. Although this is not strictly a legal requirement the government has put regulations in place to ensure pat testing is performed as part of other regulations such as the Electricity at Work Regulation of 1989, Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation of 1999 and the Provision Use of Work Equipment Regulations of 1998. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in fines of up to £5,000 and, or six months' imprisonment.


spread out across time zones. The blue site of our co-workers kind of lose touch. So, in New York City, highly recommended even if we're not in the developer, to check it out. It's one of the best conferences I've ever gone to even as a support lead. So, if you go into the video section, there is a speaker at this conference, Melinda Secington. I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. And she talked about hiring in the sense that you need to foster in your team part of that, writing blog posts, getting people out to speak on behalf of your company. The easiest way to do this is to empower people to do this. Suggestion of doing lightning talks in your company. So, I'll do this for you. So, I brought this into Travis and I think last week or a week before was our second ever driving steps and things that you want to do this in your own teams. So, the first thing is to find a time that works for most people. And I'll mention why you just have to make sure most people can attend. For us, for Travis, we just, we had a time set aside on Fridays that there was a meeting posted but no one's ever attended. It just was there. And it started way back at the beginning of the company. At least when I was there, we did an 8 o'clock Friday check-in with everyone. We would go around and everyone had their chance to say they were cool projects. When we grew to about 20 people, it just wasn't practical anymore. So, we moved to being just a check-in with the teams. How's your team doing? What is your team doing? That stopped working. So, it turned into just being a check-in with leadership or if a team had a big process update that they had to share. And that stopped working after a while. Doing it weekly just wasn't practical. Not everyone could make it every week. So, we changed it into a monthly all-hands where Matias, our CEO, does a big update overall. So, then we had this void in our lives where we weren't communicating with our coworkers, having that water cooler channel. So, someone created the fireside channel in the place of what we had before. But no one was curating it. No one was getting people involved in the chat room. So, kind of fell by the wayside. So, I used this time, the meeting that was already scheduled that no one attended, and filled the void with a bi-weekly Friday lightning time. So, now you actually want to do this. You've found a time to force for most people. You have to get speakers. I do this with a really simple form. There's three questions. What do you want to talk about? How long are you going to talk for? And do you have to screen share? Because that will be something that you need for the tool that you're going to use. And talks can be about anything. I tell people you can talk about your hobby. You can talk about side projects or work projects. You can talk about blog posts or books that you've read. The most important thing, though, is to set an example in the first meeting and to present a lightning talk yourself. I talked about how to give lightning to us. I'm trying to talk about crafting at every single lightning talk event if no one was set up to present. That thread still stands. Just kidding. Alright, the third point is to use the right tool. For us, we'll use Zoom because we can record and screen share. I highly recommend it. It is a paid tool, but it works really well for us. Create a schedule using the form that everyone built out for you. It doesn't even have to get stuck on formalities and releasing the schedule every week and making sure everyone's available or time slots. What order do you want to go in? Do something that works for you. I think everyone has laughed at it before and just say, this is the order. Here's how long you have. So it doesn't have to be formal about it. Then hold your first ever lightning talks. You can determine the frequency for what works for you. Like I said, we're trialing by weekly. Whatever works for you. So in that first session, you need to set expectations. For us, that included talking about our code of conduct because even internal events need to be held to substandard. And so we do have our own Travis internal code of conduct and Zoom. So I record the recessions. So even the people that can't be there still have the opportunity to feel like they were part of something special.  There's this mechanical HR process you have to get through. So the bad thing is you have to be linked and up to date. It's got to be something like what your resume looks like. And it's got to have the buzzwords there. But I'm sure I haven't sold you on that part of that because who has a great story or maybe a thousand stories about Unlinked, some of you don't know endorsing you for things you don't do. Trust doesn't, does it? I also said that when you start a new job, you join a new organization, you should make sure Unlinked, you connect with everyone in the country. Anchoring the dumbest person in the world thing I understood.  This is the upside down web of trust for LinkedIn. You use it as a web of distrust.  Unlinked, it's either a web of mistrust. Somebody knew they joined a new big company and within two weeks, endorsements for some pinnacle skill that, you know, master a problem smarter. What kind of gravity in their jungle? Yes, you have to use LinkedIn. Just don't use it the way they want you to. I'd love to write a bomb to just do this for us.  Maybe I'll write it in a secret literature. My name is Jose and today I'm going to talk to you about Elixir. The oldest purpose of walking is really meant for like technical people that know Ruby so you're not much of a technical person or you don't know Ruby, feel free to reach them afterwards and they'll just explain you everything they mean here. I'm just going to talk to you about this program in a language called Elixir. So what is Elixir? Elixir is a national language. Yes, Elixir is a national language so you basically don't really use all text, you just shape everything you do in terms of passions. Elixir is created by this guy that I'm sure I've named him with, call him Jose Baleen. And Elixir runs on top of the Erlenberg tool sheet which I think is one of the most interesting things of this language. The Erlenberg machine is what runs Erlenberg and it was created by Erlenberg so I think in the 70s to power these telephone switches. So the core of this machine is reliability because if you're making a phone call that lasts a month the system kind of goes down. But at the same time they had to build shape like Zapparat they had to know that so it had to be very, very resilient. For the ones that don't know Jose Baleen he was, I don't think he's still anymore but he was part of the Rails 4 team so he's like a super active member of the Ruby community. And Elixir is heavily inspired by Ruby. So I thought that I would just introduce you to some of my favorite features of Elixir and if you want to know more about it just feel free to reach me afterwards. So one of the first things that was impressed by Elixir is this thing called pattern matching. I don't know if you can see the code but basically what you tell the language is that it shouldn't match whatever's to the left to whatever's to the right. So in this case I'm telling it to assign to the variable first and to the variable second the first two elements of the data array that you see over there. So then this is kind of like DRB, I mean like IRB. So first people have the value one because it's the first element and then two people have the value two. And it's kind of like algebraic and if you give it an expression that actually is not valid it will just create an error for you. The cool thing about this is that it's super, super, super powerful. So what you're seeing here, what you're seeing here is that for example I have this sort of like a Ruby hash that has the username being whatever and then it has other values. And then on the second line what I'm telling it to do is basically to sort of extract some information out of that hash. Oops, there we go again, out of that hash so then I can use the variable which I think it's also super, super interesting. So as we go deeper you'll see why this is nice. We also have like we saw yesterday in crystal function of Ruby. So for example you can define the same function but the difference is actually matching. So say you want to call the function make sound and the first argument is how, this is like a Ruby symbol. It will just say boom if the second argument is cat it will say meow and if it's something else it will just put like a shrug which I think is pretty nice. But it goes as far as that so then you can also put after matching this. So the same way I extracted information from the hash before, what I'm telling it here is that now this function will only work if I pass it a hash and the value for the key animal is going to be cat. And the same way I do the after matching I can extract the value of the key animal into name and then I can use it in the value of the function which I think it's also super nice. And just like I think we saw this morning about Swift we also have ARC classes. So here we define two functions and say you're passing a variable that's called downtime. This one will only execute if the content of the variable is less than 10. The other one will do the opposite. You get a data. Person features and you can mix all of that. In Elixir we also get this byte operator so what I'm doing in the first two lines is basically defining one like functions. So the first one is just add one by passing an number and they will just add one to it. The second one is called multiply by three by passing an number and you just multiply by three. In Ruby you would do something like multiply by three, add one and then the argument is one and then you get six out of it. In Elixir you can use the byte operator which is this funny thing that you see right there that what it does is basically whatever is to the left is going to be the first argument of whatever is to the right. So over here I think it's much, much simpler to read actually what's happening with the code which you can extrapolate and I think it just makes the code much, much more readable whenever you're working functionally. So those are some of the features and you can mix all of that. As I told you before Elixir is built on top of the Erlen virtual machine which is one of the core features it has is distributed computing. So apparently this is slightly more complicated. This is very similar to the code channels that you were seeing before. What I'm doing over here is that I'm assigning the current process alright so in Erlen and in Elixir you get these processes which are sort of like very, very lightweight threads. They're not really threads but they can act like that. So what I'm doing over here is I'm assigning in the first variable the current thread. Then I'm spawning a new process that will send to the current thread a message saying hold world and then this other one will block until it receives a message and then it will just print the content of the message. So if you know about our channels like what we saw yesterday this is very similar to that. The same with crystal channels I guess. The cool thing about this is that without changing any piece of code this message passing can run in different computers. So say I have two machines. In the first machine I just say it will block until it receives a message. In the second machine I create a reference to the first machine and send a message and then the Erlen virtual machine takes care of passing the message from one machine to the other. So if you're an architect you're coding the right way you can just have it running on parallel computers without having to change anything from your code which I think is really, really amazing. So that's like a very small intro to Elixir. What is Phoenix? Phoenix. So according to the website it's a productive web framework that doesn't compromise the speed and maintainability. I think of it as basically Rails but we'll learn. I just want to talk about one feature because lots of things are very, very similar but this is a code example of one of my favorite features actually from Elixir. By the way you can tell that Jose really suffered. Jose really suffered from Ruby in the Rails community and he saw the mistakes we sort of made over there and tried to make it better in a more functional way. Over here I'm doing what you were doing at the broker though. This is kind of like a mix between strong parameters and validation in one line so I'm defining this method that takes two arguments. Say the instance of your model and some parameters this line extracts the email address and first name sort of parameters from the parameters cache and then passes that and validates that the email address is present. So say you can use this for the new user sign up so you don't want it to enforce the first name but you want to enforce an email address. With the second function you can build on top of the first one and say that it will also require the first name that you can use for like when a user updates a profile afterwards. Which to me is like composing validations is something so essential for web development but we just don't have it in Rails. Oh yeah, I work for Shopify, we're hiring so if you'd like to work there, hit me up. My Twitter account is ldodo and that's it, thank you. And what's his name? Oh yeah, PJ. Over Twitter he said, do you have room for a live talk? I can talk about stuff. And he said, yeah, come on up. So I'm here. And by the way, now I'm at school because somebody else did the same thing. And there's lots of stuff I can talk about and actually I feel kind of safe at this conference to talk about a lot of those things. And one of the things that I'm going to talk about is PTSD because I have it because of a trauma a long time ago actually. And then just in April it happened again at the conference and it sucked and so I don't know if just being is in this room. She says nope. Seeing her talk yesterday was actually really painful but then seeing everyone's reaction to her talk was very healing. And so I wanted to thank you guys and actually, I swear I'm not kissing ass, thank PJ and whoever the other guy is that didn't show up for organizing this conference. And I wanted to ask you guys, do you like what's going on? Is there anyone here who doesn't know PJ or a speaker? Like someone who was like Googling and was like, oh I'm going to go to this conference. I want to know what you guys think actually and it's going to be recorded if you say now. So is there anyone brave enough to tell me what you think of this conference? Just like 10 seconds or less. Who didn't know someone at this conference who Googled. So I wanted to incite a round of applause for PJ. I thought it would be mostly technical. Delta is something I think it's a good thing that you approach and think about those things. Yeah, exactly. I'm blown away by prompt. Actually I heard about it at a Stockholm conference and I've been following and encouraging ever since because of what I'd go through privately and don't talk about it in public. And I've said I'm going to skip very quickly to if you would like to join a couple of us at an escape room tonight and trapped at 7.15, sign up for it because there are five slots left. And then we're going to carry a gaffer. Thanks. The first lightning talk. So bear with me as a little scatter. This is titled, if we go to karaoke, what will you sing? This is an interview question that I use when I'm screening candidates for database or application support positions at engineering. And one of the reasons we ask, or I ask this question is because I don't actually meet the people I hire until six months to a year after I hire them. We're pretty much a completely remote team. So this is the type of question that doesn't have a right or wrong answer. But it's designed to reach out and make a connection with the candidate that you're speaking with and get a sense for how that person might or might not fit on your team. It's about generating a conversation, hopefully something that lasts longer than two or three minutes. And of course, I still ask about technical details. So my SQL, somebody applying as a MySQL DVA, I have my mask. What is the most important feature you see in MySQL 5.7? Make it a conversation open or something that becomes a free-flowing discussion between you and the candidate that you're talking to.  We have HR for that. Well, we used to anyway. Have you ever attended any technology conferences? And here again, there is no right or wrong answer. A lot of people don't get the opportunity to go to technical conferences. But it is an important aspect of what we at Engineering do. And we do try to send our team to technical conferences at least once a year for each employee. And we want to see if, is the person even interested in going to a technical conference, will they get involved in the community? Which leads to the question, have you attended any local meetup groups? You know, that's something that whether your company sends you or not, you can be involved in it. It's kind of a matter of making the time. And yeah, we all have busy schedules, but I mean, what's once a month or once every two months or once every six months, right? Like to ask is, have you written any public blog posts or documentation or contributed to any open source projects? Again, no right or wrong answer. We're all busy people, but this can give you a sense for how people write, what their thought process is, and how well they write. You don't need everybody on your team to be the most expert writer. And that's fine, but it gives you a sense for who this person is. So, when we go to karaoke, what are you going to sing? Say all shucks. We're fortunate I did not bring, I did still write a label for this. So I won't try to show you my 20 minute talk, it usually takes an hour, and I'm just going to give you a couple of high spots. And essentially this is something that I blank for everybody in the world to think about. This week, recently, Slash Dot told me that the Guardian had an article that said, Forrest, who are controlling people, said, we'll lose 6% of our jobs by 2021 to automation. I'm going to be surprised if that's a whole number. I guess there's no way to really know. I know because I've been following this for a while, and lots of jobs have been evaporating. And people complain about sending work overseas on manufacturing work. I read an article several years ago. G.D. brought more than one manufacturing line for one appliance back here, but they do it with about a third of the people because everything is automated. It's not only in manufacturing and service jobs, it's in middle management jobs. There used to be a lot of people who told your office to pass notes back and forth up and down the ladder. They've been replaced for being assisted by systems that do diagnoses. There's just all kinds of things going on. We can give you numbers forever. When you talk about this, there's optimists and pessimists. The optimists are saying, well, this has been real. You always have new kinds of jobs that take the place of the old kinds of jobs. So we don't have a problem. The pessimists say this is happening so rapidly and so dynamically and so much that this time is different. And we don't know what's going to happen. What this is, new jobs are created. They're usually not appropriate jobs for the people who lost their jobs. I started teaching Buffalo Tech for Buffalo Stasis, around the time that steel land closed in Lackawada. And we did have some people came in and struggled to educate themselves to find some new career because they knew what they were doing was dead. God bless them. Not everybody does that. Not everybody is capable of doing that. So even if there are new jobs, people in transition get hurt. Like right now it's a little different, there's a lot of talk on the political scene about coal mines losing jobs because we want to fight global warming and those jobs are going away and there's no magical thing we can ever do to make them come back. What are those people going to do when we should train them? I don't really know the answer, by the way. Tech doesn't edit that. Everybody's looking at me kind of blank. Think about this. A couple things that impressed me. I recently reread a book entitled Player Piano that Kurt Monaghan wrote by around 1950. And the theme of this was machinists being replaced by automated machinery. And the real thing about it was interesting. They gave these guys an income. We had a universal basic system as kind of an income, but they didn't have anything to do. They didn't know what to do and they sat around the bars drinking and being pissed off at the people that still had jobs. And that's kind of the theme of this business. Another one that I think is pretty good is Elvis Huxley and Brave New World had the consumerism thing nailed as well as some other things. So I might encourage you to look at those kinds of things. The other thing I can encourage you to do is a book. The second machinist is written by a couple of smart guys from MIT. One guy is McAfee, which he's built on C-A-F-E-E, which he's about what you'd expect. And the other guy is Byrne Jolson, which if you look for the title if you're really interested, they got pretty extended analysis a couple years ago that one of the things I've stolen from them, they have one section towards the end of the book and says, well, what are we going to do? One suggestion they have, distribute capital to everybody so that everybody gets dividends. That's a bad idea. Another one, I really like this one, promote man-machine partnerships. Pay people to do socially beneficial tasks. Not characteristic, I don't know. Reserve some work for humans. Interesting idea, I don't know. Capitalistic, I don't know how you can do that. But it's something to think about. Provide vouchers for basic necessities. That's this universal basic income to the extent that anybody brings that up. Everybody thinks, oh, that socialism, socialism was terrible. We can't do that. I'm not a socialist, by the way. I think both socialism and capitalism fail us because there are ways of allocating resources that they don't care about human beings. There's a great depression back in the 1929 timeframe. They spared up a lot of things like building roads and parks and they hired people to go out and do documentary photography and all kinds of things to give people work and pull money into the academy, which always seems to me like it was a pretty bad idea. So what's going to happen, and next maybe I'm not, things here I think is when you listen to either Hillary or the Dattles, we're going to save our jobs. It's either one of us, either one of them telling us what they want to do about this. If they are, I haven't heard it. I've heard somebody correct me. So anyway, I can talk forever about this and like I said, if you're lucky, I didn't bring my table. I know you guys can turn to me. It's a big issue. I should be thinking about it. Like I said, if you're a CJ, I'm not wrong, CJ works, I'm sorry. CJ took the RTT, say that again, ckwt.tz.wordpress.com and post, look for one that says unconference and you will find a little write up and you will find a link to the slides that have been shared with you. Think about it.


Hey guys, I'm super glad to welcome you at a new IITTT's live stream. I'm going to wait for a moment until some people join me, but today's topic is devoted to a really challenging issue for those teachers who are unaware about their abilities to find a job and I'm going to dwell upon the problem of getting employed as a non-native speaker. So basically this is a tough issue for all new teachers and for some current teachers. I'm going to share my own experience, but at the same time, I would love to give you a piece of advice on how to build on your successful teaching career. And I should say that actually today's live stream isn't for those people who expect that everything comes super easy and that someone will do everything for them. So basically this live stream and this discussion is going to be useful just for those people who are motivated enough and who are proactive enough to work on the teaching career. All right, thanks, guys, for joining me. Hello, Tikaram. I hope to pronounce your name correctly if I'm mistaken. Just let me know. I'm glad to see you guys joining. Thanks a lot. There is also for us. I'm I'm really good today. Thanks a lot. By the way, in my place, in my region, it's getting colder. And I should say I couldn't sleep at night without my warm blanket, but it is still too hot if I use it. So let me know what is the situation in your places? Is it still hot or it's cooler? OK, so as I have already mentioned, we are going to discuss the problem of being a non-native teacher and being a little bit unaware of the situations related to employment. I hope to help you out with this problem. But basically, I should say this this situation is like your mostly mental situation, like psychological issue. I don't say that everyone who is not aware of getting employment is a psycho or something like that. It's just like, you know, we all have to work on ourselves a lot. So let me change the slide. And first of all, I would like to introduce ITTT. So this live stream is provided by ITTT. We are a leading table and T sole provider. So if you see myself or if you see this company, this logo for the first time, just make sure you subscribe, you follow our social media.  Yeah, that's that's it. And we are presented on various social media. So if you're interested in Pinterest, for example, we've got nice boards over there which might help which might help you with finding ideas for your lessons and stuff like that. So check it out. And also every live stream, we share this QR code and this link so you can get a 30% discount of any ITTT Tefl courses. So make sure you save it and you use it whenever you need. So it's like a special offer for live streams only. So if you if you consider getting Tefl certified, it's a great bonus. So all right, let me check the chat box quickly. All right. So where I am, I am based in Yekaterinburg, Russia. So it's it's a place located located pretty far from Moscow. It's like the central part of Russia. Even even the Euro region. Yeah, it is the Euro region. So we are, by the way, pretty close to the Kazakhstan border. Yeah, like that. But it is really far from the western part of Russia. So it makes me a non-native speaker and a non-native teacher.  And I should say that this experience like it I didn't get it overnight. I had to work for several years in order to get to where I am now. OK, so that's that's pretty much. So the point I'm going to ask you the question I'm going to ask you is this. So when it comes to finding your employment researching your employment possibilities, it is really important to clarify if you actually plan to build a teaching career because many people consider teaching as a side hustle. Many people don't think that they are going to do teaching job in several years. It's more likely that they want to take to have it as a part-time job or as something in between.  And yeah, that's what you try to do because you have this English speaking abilities. But if you expect that you get a really nice job, a really great employment opportunity, this mindset from my point of view, of course, you you might be. You might not you don't have to agree with me. So it might be not such a great way to think like that. So if you are going to change jobs recently, if you are going to change, like, your positions in a couple of years, so maybe teaching career teaching isn't actually for you. And from this perspective, it's going to be a little bit more challenging to find a really nice job. But that's what I believe. Basically, there are many life situations when people just combine different jobs and make a lot of money doing so. But yeah, it's it's totally up to you. From my perspective, it is always better to choose some specific track and follow it. So in my belief, it is really important to decide that teaching is my career for life and I'm going to work on it. The next point is here. So when it comes to teaching itself, it is also necessary to decide which mode of teaching you actually prefer. Is it online teaching or probably you want to teach in a traditional classroom like one-on-one or maybe work with a whole group? For some other people, teaching abroad is a really interesting career path and some people choose this option. But anyways, you have to consider one specific mode of teaching and stick to it because if you change your approaches, if you change those modes of teaching, it might also be difficult in terms of building this whole career track. What I mean by saying that is that, for example, if you work as an online teacher, it's actually my situation right now. So I've been teaching online only for the past two years. And I can't imagine myself being in a real classroom, communicating with real like not with real people, but I mean in person. Face-to-face, I don't even know I don't even know what approaches to implement. Of course, I know all of those methodologies and stuff like that. But I have been stuck to online teaching and I'm more or less active there. So I believe that my teaching mode is online teaching, not in-class teaching. Okay, and what should you consider next? What you should consider next is like what you are going to teach exactly and who you are going to teach. Because usually people, especially those people who have recently been TAPL certified, they have this major training. They have got that major training and they are like those teachers who are able to teach anyone, who are able to work with whatever types of students, with whatever types of groups. But this track is also not really successful and clear because you can work with these people a little, with this one, with those people a little, but you are not professional in a specific niche. So my recommendation to you is that it is always better to niche. So to choose a specific group of people to target some specific age group to choose something clear you are going to teach. For example, my situation right now, so last year I worked with children from seven years to 15 years. But then I realized that working with young children is really challenging for me and I didn't succeed that much with that age group. And it was like every lesson was stressful for me as a teacher. I had to prepare a lot. I had to reconsider a lot of activities during our lessons and stuff like that. And moreover, there are some emotional situations when children don't want to see it or don't want to do some particular activities. When they don't want to listen to me, when they switch off their cameras and stuff like that. So after the previous school year, I decided to stop working with young children and chose those kids I really adore. Yeah, I started working. Well, I just decided to work with teenagers only. So my age group now, my target age group now is teenagers from 12 to 15. And I don't have to spend time on preparing for younger kids for choosing like various activities related to lower levels of English as well. Although some teenagers still have like the A1, A2 level, but the approach is absolutely different. And I feel like it is more comfortable for me to work with teens compared to children. So let me know what you think about this point, please, guys, because I know that many teachers still prefer to target whatever students possible just to make money. So what is your opinion considering the age group, the audience in general? So I would love to hear from you. So use the chat box and let me know what you think. And I'm going to comment on the second point from this slide, which is right here. So after you've chosen your niche, after you've limited your services, it is really important to build on expertise. So basically, when you work on your professional development in general, you actually build your expertise. But in general, when it comes to niching your services, you have to narrow down to some specific skills you have to work on. So once again, my personal example, I mentioned that I started working with teens only but I also decided to limit my services. I stopped delivering general English classes. I chose an absolutely different approach. I decided to offer exam preparation. So these young teens and older teens, like from 12 to 15 years, this age group in Russia doesn't have to pass any governmental exams, any public exams. You know, they actually study this general English at school.  They never grow, they stay the same. So that is why I decided to offer this opportunity to learn how to pass exams. And there are nice exams. There are a lot of awesome exams, international exams, I mean. So I decided to focus on preparing for the Cambridge exams. And this year, one of my students have already passed B1 preliminary, which is a B1 level exam, like an intermediate level exam. We are waiting for her results, but I believe that she did a great job. So I helped her during the whole course. We learned different strategies, how to pass those exams. But at the same time, we worked on her abilities. One of the crucial abilities was speaking to other people and working in collaboration. So we learned those strategies that are actually important in our daily life. So she actually succeeded in communicating to other people. And after the exam, she said it was a piece of cake for me. I wasn't nervous, I didn't worry. So I just talked to another teen, another girl, and that was it. So we worked on building necessary skills in general, but at the same time, we worked on different sub-skills related to the exam. So coming back to the building, your expertise, I should say that when you pick a specific niche, you have to find some ways that can help you work on your personal skills of preparing for something you want to prepare for. In my case, I was to seek some training in exam preparation. So I actually joined several workshops related to exam preparation and what else. I also read a lot of handbooks for teachers. And I worked with teacher's books related to the course. So this is something you can do for free absolutely, except for workshops and some specific trainings. But if you want to understand how exams work, it is absolutely accessible. So you can find it on the net and build on your expertise on your own. So it is really important. And I believe that if you decide as early as it is possible who to work with and what to teach, it's going to be much more beneficial for you. And don't neglect building on your expertise in different ways. It's also crucial. Okay, let's move on to the next point. So how to build on your expertise. Basically, three steps to do that. Invest in your professional development. It can be something related to trainings, workshops, whatever. You have to invest your money. You have to invest your time. Yeah, it takes a lot of time, but you have to be frank with yourself. If you build on your career as a teacher, you have to invest. You have to spend a lot of time, energy, resources on becoming a better teacher for your students because you want to make sure that your clients get these perfect services. Maybe not perfect, but at least decent services. The next point for all non-native speakers is work on your English skills. I am actually, I actually have a teaching blog on Instagram. And a month ago, I asked my followers, there are several teachers actually among those followers. I asked my followers if they wanted to pass IELTS or exams alike. And to my surprise, teachers said that they don't have to pass any international exams. I was really shocked by that because basically, if we want to provide those high quality services to our students, especially in those cases when we prepare students for some international exams, we have to pass international exams ourselves. As a bonus, when you prepare for international exams like IELTS, you also build on your English skills. For example, I took IELTS two years ago. At that time, I wanted to enroll into a university, so I decided to pass IELTS Academic, which was much more challenging than the usual type of IELTS. But while preparing for that exam, I worked on my listening skills, on my reading skills. I learned several reading techniques myself, like those speed reading techniques. They are actually really important for all English speakers and for not just passing exam, but for doing this research work while studying at university or while being a teacher. We have to work with lots of information and we have to be able to pick only that relevant information. So I improved not just my specific skills, but not just those reading skills, but also some sub skills. And finally, yeah, I got that certificate. I proved that my English was of the high level. And yeah, I believe that these days, one of the things my clients choose me is that I have different proofs of my professional skills. And English skills are absolutely important for English teachers. And the last point is to get relevant experience. It is pretty challenging, especially at the beginning of your career. However, do not overestimate, do not underestimate any, you know, voluntarily jobs or internships. Whatever lets you get this relevant experience. So for example, if you want to work with children, try to find some opportunities to work a couple of times for free, probably. Why not? So anyway, experience is much more valuable than the money you get. So try to find at least one or two opportunities to get this first experience and then you can add it in your CV, in your resume. And you can also use it as a story when you reach out to new clients. So something like that. It might sound easy when I talk, when I speak about it, but in fact, this is the way you get this experience. And when I was at the beginning of my teaching career, that was like that. I worked for, I didn't work for free as a teacher, probably with my brother only. So I taught my brother. He was six years at that time. And I restarted working with my brother again these days. So this is probably the only case when I work for free. But at the beginning of my teaching career, I actually charged really little.  So these days we have a different currency. So probably it's even less than three dollars. But anyways, it helped me to get that relevant experience. And then I worked as a tutor with school kids. It was also really cheap. I wasn't an experienced teacher and I wasn't a teacher on the first place. I was a linguist. So I actually was a student at that time at the linguistic department. And yeah, I didn't know anything about teaching. That is why I decided to get some initial experience and then to reinvest those money I made on tutoring and some side jobs into my studies. And that's how I got to my TEFL certification. So I got that initial training, the 120 hour TEFL course. And yeah, that was my first step on how to build on my teaching career. After that, I started narrow down my services and got some other trainings. When I went to China to work in a Chinese kindergarten, at that time I tried to get as much training as possible in early childhood education. That was one of my strategies. But when I came back to Russia, I understood that teaching children wasn't for me and started changing my career track. So that's in a nutshell. I hope this information is relevant to you guys. Let me know what you think in the comments section and if you agree or disagree with the points from this slide. I am actually going to check out the chat box right now, the comments section right now, because I saw there were some questions or yeah. Yeah, let me check. Karam asks about a TEFL course. I'm going to answer such questions related to TEFL certifications and stuff like that at the end of my presentation. But stay tuned. I'm going to answer your question. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah, so Zahra says that they prefer teaching to teens and adults. Yeah, I believe that this age group, these age groups are really interesting to work with. Of course, they are also challenging. For example, when it comes to teaching adults, it is always difficult to, you know, to synchronize schedules and to understand if it's going to be a long term relationship. I have a lot of examples when we started working and there was a lot of motivation, but because of the top schedule, because of the hectic lifestyles, people just left after a month or so. And yeah. But, you know, you can't do anything about it. If people want to go, if they are not able to prioritize English, you are not who to be blamed. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, as for China, I stayed in China for almost three years. I worked in two different kindergartens. Actually, even in three different kindergartens because after one year in one of them, I was relocated in a different branch in another city. And I worked in the first kindergarten, I worked with children from two, two and a half years to seven years.  That was really difficult, especially for me being not skilled, not experienced at all at that time. And then I found a job in a different kindergarten and taught a small group of 16 children. Yeah. That was much easier and much pleasant because I stayed in one classroom during the whole day. And after like nine months of my work, I could actually see the results because children could, you know, could speak out, could express themselves a little bit, and that was really nice. Yeah. And yeah, that's it. So let me know if you have any further questions related to this slide or maybe related to something about your training and stuff like that. So let's move on to the next point. By the way, yeah, here on this slide, I would like to tell you a little bit about specialized courses at ITTT. So we've got a lot of specialized TEFL courses. By the way, this presentation contains different links. So if you need direct links, let me know in the comments section. I'll send you the link to this presentation and you will be able to have it. So as I have already mentioned before, it is important to narrow down your services and then build on your expertise. And getting specialized TEFL courses might be that training you actually want to have because such trainings help you learn specific skills you need when you teach some specific groups. For example, if you want to work with businessmen, why not taking a certificate for teaching business English? If you want to work online and you don't know how to start, we have this TEFL course for teaching English online. And a couple of other interesting courses, they are actually brand new at ITTT. So you can check these two out. They are related to academic planning and teaching grammar and phonology. So if you want to learn a little bit more on how to teach grammar, for example, this last course can be a really great addition to your general training. And by the way, these two courses can be taken outstanding. You don't have to take any other trainings if you want to learn just these particular skills. And these two courses involved, they are a part of our expert packages. So you can't take it without any previous training and you can do it just in terms of the expert package. So if you're interested in this information, let me know in the comments section because I can share all necessary links and stuff like that. And just let me remind you that we offer this 30% discount. So if you consider taking a TEFL course, feel free to scan this QR code or you can follow this link from the chat box. And you will get this nice incentive. Yeah, I think that it's a really valuable discount because it's the highest at ITTT. Yeah, just feel free to use it. And let's move on. I think it's one of the last points I want to discuss with you today, guys. But anyways, it is really important. So when it comes to teaching abroad, I usually meet those people who consider it for the sake of money only. But the truth is, unfortunately, it is not 100% guarantee that in another country you're going to get more money than in your native country. The truth is, it is really subjective. This teaching business is really subjective to the current situation in a specific location. And for example, if it comes to different Asian countries, maybe in China you can get paid higher than in Thailand. At the same time, it is more challenging to get a job in China than in Thailand. Because in Thailand, it is legal to work as a teacher without possessing this native speaking country passport. So in Thailand, it might be easier to find a job. I don't guarantee that as well, but you can research this point and from the legal perspective, it might be easier. And if we get back to the problem of China, if you know that this country is really subjective on the first place, and then they try to regulate everything, every business, every area. So you have to know that recently they have created a new policy. And nowadays it's actually getting challenging to work as an online English teacher via different platforms. So even for native speakers. So there are online schools like VipKid, they actually either stop working at all or they change their scheme. Because from now on, it is actually not allowed to provide extra services, extracurricular activities to Chinese students. It is actually just about schools. So if you work with teenagers and some other school kids, it might be challenging to work with them online, even online. But at the same time, yeah, it's challenging to get a job in China as well in the location. Yeah, and of course, if you consider this situation slightly different, if you approach it different. Yeah, as Mahmood says, first you get experience, then you build on your expertise and then you may get more money at the beginning of your career. But yeah, you have to understand it's not easy, it's not fast. You have to be patient and you have to work hard. Yeah, and in my case, I can give you an example. Last year, I couldn't charge more than $15. That was just, you know, just challenging for myself because I thought that I wasn't ready, that I wasn't experienced enough, I wasn't trained enough. So the whole year, I spent on getting more relevant experience and getting some additional training. And this year, yeah, I started charging $18 to $20 depending on the course type. Yeah, that's it. So, let's move on. And another point I wanted to mention is that when you want to work in a specific country, in a specific location, the thing is you have to research it on your own. So there is a question in the comments section, is there a chance to get a job in Vietnam? There surely is, but I can't guarantee it. Unfortunately, you have to research it on the first place. You have to see if you are eligible for this location. You have to consider if there are any open positions. You also have to research what is the situation with this COVID-19 problem because many countries are still closed, many borders are still closed. And it's basically impossible to get into the country, even getting this work visa. So, yeah, my suggestion is research and then you will have more information and understanding what areas, what gaps you have to work on. If it is your experience, you get more relevant experience in your home country. If it is something related to your English skills, you work on your English skills and the like. And by the way, if you want to work in a specific location, you can get relevant experience online as well. I usually recommend teachers who reach out to me to consider teaching online, but to work with those students who are actually from that destination of their choice. It can be a great idea because online, you can understand if you actually want to work with this or that country without relocating there. Okay, yeah, probably this one now. Yeah, almost the last point, how to get employed. I have already mentioned that nothing comes easy, you have to work hard, be frank with yourself. Nobody will come right after your temple certification and offer you a job opportunity. You have to carry out a really thorough research related to the niche, related to the age group you want to work with. You have to work on your CV, you have to learn how to present yourself. So lots of things are important.  My example once again, so half a year ago, I got a job in an American company. It's a really niche company offering pronunciation courses to students who actually live in native speaking countries. So their audience is adults with higher level of English. So they are able to speak pretty fluent, some of them are really fluent, some of them are proficient. But they have some problems with their accents and they want to reduce accents because they can't be 100% members of the native speaking society. So that's why they come to that company and they start taking courses in that company and yeah, they work on their sub skills in English. So I got a job in that company as an English teacher and I deliver English grammar classes and speaking clubs. The CEO of the company is American. She is from the US and she is a really, you know, proactive lady who wants to give the most high quality services to her clients. So how I got the job. I researched, initially I was her student as well. So I saw the company from the inside as a student. And then I noticed that many people who get enrolled into the course, they are actually not that advanced, they are probably like intermediate level.  Oh, so there was some error, I hope you can guys see me and hear me let me know. And I'm going to continue my story. So I noticed that those people needed some help with their basic skills and I created a proposal for the CEO of the company and reached out to her via email and said like, I can give you this value. You can actually benefit from it and your students can benefit from it. And she decided that it was actually a great idea because this type of training is a great bonus for her pronunciation course students. So this is another approach you can get a job, but you have to work. You have to research and you have to find opportunities, even if there are not many opportunities at all. So another suggestion is try freelance work. Sometimes people stick to working through some providers through some employers, but basically you can find students on your own. When I was a student myself, I mean, when I started at university five years ago, even more, I started tutoring just to make some extra money, some cash money. Yeah, and I found students on my own. I offered people my services. I used placements like Craigslist. Yeah, and I just advertised myself that way. So you can try that too and you can start as a freelancer and then it may lead to your own business. Don't underestimate this experience as well. It is really valuable. Don't stick to just direct employment or stuff like that when you work with some specific employers. Also, if you consider teaching online, there are many teaching marketplaces like properly, italki and stuff like that. So you can work there as a freelancer as well. It's possible to get your direct students working for such companies versus for some specific online schools. So it's a better approach from my point of view because you have this, you know, you have a place to move. You can decide what to do on your own and how many hours a week to work. So something like that. Yeah, I hope, guys, you're on the same page as myself. Let me know what you think in the comments section and I'm going to bring some water. Okay. Yeah. So now the last point of today's presentation, how ITTT can help you. So basically we have really useful sections on the website. First of all, if you haven't taken Tuple Courses at ITTT, you can still check out our job postings because we post for the whole public, for the whole audience. You can find this job posting. Oh, yeah, here it is. You can find this job posting via this link. Or you can follow our Facebook group and check out our feed because we post different job prospects weekly. So just have a look. We work with different recruiters from all over the world with online recruiters as well. And we try our best to pick out the most relevant vacancies for you. Here you subscribe and you turn on the notifications button so you get updated. At the same time, you can check out our website. That section we have postings based on different locations. Another point, we at ITTT offer an instant job support, so a lifetime job support. If you took a Tuple Courses with ITTT and you are a graduate at ITTT, you can get this job support anytime. You must have been notified about that in your final email from your tutor or from a Tefl manager. So check out your inbox because you should have access to a private platform where we share specific information related to job support. Okay, what's next? Let's see. Okay, that was the last slide. Oh, and I haven't mentioned the expert package. So the expert package, so if you consider taking a Tuple Courses with ITTT, I would recommend you checking out the expert package. It is probably a huge decision for most students because this expert package is the most pricey one. However, it's a great investment from my perspective because you invest one time and you get various types of certifications. So let me share the link to the expert package as well. You can check it out. Yeah, you can see all of the points related to this type of certification, but basically you get all necessary skills from one training. But I'm not sure, no, it's actually not one training, but trainings that follow one and another, something like that. But it is really valuable because there is that teaching practice component. It is valuable for those people who want to build on the teaching career from scratch and who don't know where to get the first experience. So that's why I recommend it. Yeah, just consider it. And that's my last point. I hope that today's presentation was clear to you. And if you still have any questions related to the employment process as a non-native teacher, let me know. You might disagree with me on some points, but I still believe that only your own pro activity helps you get whatever you want and build on whatever teaching career you want. So make sure you do your job, you do your homework. Yeah. I see there are no questions except for Tikaram's question. So let me answer that one. Okay, one second. All right, so Tikaram, thanks for the question. So Tikaram is a student and his major is English. It's actually a great advantage for those who want to start teaching. Yeah. What's the taffle course to choose? Well, I have already recommended the expert package, but you should choose that course, which fits you best. So think about your needs. So for example, if you don't know anything about teaching and you just start looking at that direction, check out some initial trainings. The minimum requirement for taffle teachers all over the world is 120 hours certification. So check out that one. Let me, let me send you a link. So here it is. Oh, thank you for us. Thanks a lot for such a nice feedback. Thank you for saying such great words. It is actually so, so nice. I'm going to blush right now. Thanks a lot for your kind words. Okay. Yeah, so Tikaram, I recommend you checking out our online taffle courses. You can consider some initial certifications like 120 hour course or 170 hour course. You can also choose an option with tutor help because if you don't know anything about teaching methodologies and stuff like that, tutors might be really helpful. Yeah, you can ask whatever questions you have and yeah, they will assist you. If you want to narrow down your niche, you can actually choose some additional trainings like teaching business, like business English teaching or teaching to children, online teaching, so whatever fits your needs best. So make sure you choose, you check out the website and if you have any further questions, feel free to ask so you can email us or you can actually direct message us on Facebook group. Yeah, that's pretty much. Do you guys have any further questions? Let me know. And I am going to invite you in my Facebook group. So I created my own Facebook group and you can actually see this QR code on your screen. Let me change, yeah, like this. So you can join in my Facebook group. You can add me in your Facebook friends. Yeah, yeah, that's right Tikaram. So two options, self-paced, well basically all online courses are self-paced because you work at your own pace, but you can choose an option where a tutor helps you out via email. So if you have whatever questions, you can ask them and if you have any challenges doing some tests or you know, projects on the course, you can also reach out and your tutor will help you. Yeah, and let me send you a link to my Facebook group now. Right here, I will be glad to see you guys as a part of my Facebook group. Feel free to join in. If you want to add me as a friend on Facebook, feel free to do that as well. You can also reach out to me if you have any questions related to TAPL certification, I will try my best to help you out. But I believe that is all for today. So I hope to see you next week. Yeah, that's pretty much for today's meeting. It was actually so, it has been so, you know, fruitful in terms of discussion. Thanks a lot for your questions. Yeah, that's it. I'll see you next week, guys. If you have any suggestions for the coming live streams, feel free to message me as well. I will try my best to create a new live stream devoted to your problem. Okay. And make sure you use your, yeah, make sure you use this 30% discount. If you want to take a TAPL course, because it's a really great discount. It will save you a lot of money. Yeah, next week, I believe next week I will go live at the same time because in the previous live streams I did like in the early morning and that wasn't probably convenient for most people. And today I see there are a lot of active listeners. So I will do my live stream next week at the same time. But stay tuned. I will create the event on YouTube and Facebook, and you will be able to subscribe to, you know, to click on the notification button and join in when it's time. Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. Hope to see you next week. Thanks for joining me today. And that is all. Bye-bye, guys.


I'm Elijah Gervais and I'm 15. I am Leanne Mathurin and we are in West Ireland. What was your earliest memory, like a first bad experience, maybe first good experience? I have so many fond memories of St. Lucia because as you know I was raised without a mother and a father and so my very aging, sickly grandmother took care of me. But the universe always balance things off. I remember growing up in a household where there was no electricity but it was so full of love and laughter. When you grew up what did you want to be? What did you want to aspire to be? Had a lot of dreams like you, my mind is always wandering. Days that I was so sad that I didn't have my mom and my dad, I would write. And so growing up I thought I would be this renowned writer.  How did you survive? How did you deal with the new influences of America? Had to go to work right away. It was not the work that I was used to back in St. Lucia. You see in St. Lucia I was an airline employee going to work in high heels and red lipstick and I arrived here and I was on the floor in someone's home working as a nanny. Sell my first job, you were four months old. It was the saddest thing to leave you behind. And take care of all the children. So I would go into a home and take care of nine month olds while you were four months. I was always driven by the fact that Elijah you would never experience the life that I experienced. Mom, I always thank you. I didn't grow up on an island. I don't know what it means to work that hard. I don't know what it means to make sacrifices yet and all these things that you've done for me I look at it and I say what has this woman gone through and I'm proud.


Hey there friends. Thanks for checking in. Happy New Year to everybody. But as we close out 2020 It's important for me to take a look back and see what exactly happened in the handgun world And that's what this video is about. We're gonna talk about many of the best of for handguns for 2020 So let's get to it Let's start by talking about the best Expansion from a single handgun and that belongs to Sig Sauer. What they've done with the P320 is incredible. It started out with just a new Modular type of handgun, but that expanded to the X carry, then the X compact. Now we're looking at the metal frame AXG Scorpion, the RXP compact, the X5 Legion, the P320 M17 It just goes on and on and on and they have so many optic ready P320s out there. They call it the red dot revolution They've taken that single gun and expanded far greater than anybody thought they would and each time they come out with a new model People's heads are spinning and they're lining up to get them The best handgun teas that started out in 2019 that is near impossible to find even in 2020 is the CZ P10S Now I realize when I don't say everything glowing about CZ on this channel It's like blasphemy But there was so much excitement over the P10S and nobody could find it and we thought that you know Maybe importation issues they have a plant in Kansas City It would change all that and I still get comments today people saying I want the P10S the optic ready model And I just can't find it. I'm starting to see them now But I consider that one of the greatest teasers in handgun history coming right from one of my favorite manufacturers CZUSA what I consider the most innovative handgun of 2020 is the Kel-Tex CP33 they took a handgun and created a 33 round magazine standard in 22 long rifle There are also rumors that they're coming out with a 5.7 by 28 millimeter model called the P50 that offers 50 rounds Now if that is true There were leaked photos which suggests that it is true that they are extremely innovative now What Kel-Tex is also a master of is artificial scarcity They get everybody all excited over certain models and they are near impossible to find and when you do find them The price is so high that it becomes Unaffordable but I still think what they did with that CP33 is pretty amazing I'm fortunate to get my hands on one and review it But it would be nice if it became more available for everybody else The most customer-friendly upgrade that I saw in 2020 without raising the price has to go to the Taurus G3C They took the G2C made it better by improving the trigger adding front serrations interchangeable sites and a third magazine with an MSRP remaining at 305 and the G2C was so popular people consider that the best gun for the money now The G3C with a third magazine I remind you has the same budget price with the same size weight and specifications for the most part that People really enjoyed it and Taurus made it available to their customers and people were eating them up as fast as they could The best pistol to raise 5.7 by 28 millimeter from the dead in which FN had a stranglehold Upon that round they were the only ones at the time almost to make firearms chambered in 5.7 by 28 millimeter is the Ruger 5 7 they did an amazing job. They came out with the 5 7 20 round magazines They created a great full-size handgun that a lot of people wanted It took the world by surprise and they brought that round back from the dead And now what you're seeing is so many other companies are jumping on board Ruger leads the way in so many areas and they most definitely did in 2020 with that Ruger 5 7 and what they did with that model brought that round back from the dead and Many people including yours truly is really enjoying the variety The manufacturer that has made a comeback better than any that I've seen from where they were to where they are now to Where they are going is hands down Diamondback look what they did to the DB 9 They now have a gen 4 that remains one of the smallest and lightest pocket guns in The entire industry, but yet it's extremely reliable with a better trigger and many other upgrades that people wanted With that line the AM 2 it is an amazing handgun that people were picking up for a little over 200 bucks Look at the DB X 57. They took that growing round and created a sub gun That is an incredible shooter and people love it. I love it and it was so happy they did that and then you look at their rifle line Okay, what you're looking at here is my DB 15 and midnight bronze. They have their own upgrades to it including the the muzzle the upper many of the Parts that they use are not normal Parts that you would get when you purchase an AR 15 so diamondback You are the comeback kid of 2020 and I don't see you slowing down at all the manufacturer that has created some of the most beautiful Customizations of their existing models is Magnum research. Look what they've done with the Desert Eagle line They now have a website with in which you could build your own desert eagle everything from the colors to the upgrades to The barrel length like you name it you could build your own custom desert eagle And that's what I did and what you're looking at is my custom Desert Eagle with gold and black with some upgrades to it It's incredible the way they have made customization the the norm amongst Desert Eagle handguns in 2020 you can also look at their 1911 line with all of the Seracotes and custom engraving you're looking at we the people Desert Eagle But it goes much further than that and I think it's amazing if you're a collector You love the the beautiful one-of-a-kind look at Magnum research provided that for us in 2020 the best underrated pistol in 2020 in my opinion is the Rex Delta. It's a great handgun It's priced under $400 and it offers everything that the Glock's the Smith's the Walther's offer But with less money, and it's actually a little bit lighter, and it's an excellent shooting hang on now when the Rex Zero one came out the gun world was taken by storm. They loved it They said this thing looks like a sig but in many ways it's better They did the exact same thing with the Delta and nobody's talking about it and nobody wants it And I don't understand. I have it. I've raved about it all year long I'm shocked. It's a great gun and it disassembles real easy It just the slide just pops off. It's accurate. It's reliable. It has interchangeable sights It has a little heavier trigger, but it sure does function fine It's passed many different reliability tests and why aren't people liking or loving the Rex Delta? I don't know, but I'm hoping that 2021 changes things The best gun to push the industry boundaries when we talk about magazine capacity for subcompact handguns Is none other than Springfield Armory with the Hellcat 11 rounds with a flat base plate and a little subcompact magazine. That's amazing Then they have the 13 round mag now I know people are gonna say well sick did it first and then sick now as a 12 round mag and in shield S15 now makes it for the Glock. That's true But it was Springfield Armory who pushed the boundaries and they created the situation where other people had to Catch up and we see that all the time in the gun world, but Springfield started it now in terms of the shield S15 they did a great job, but Glock didn't do that Glock is the master of Aftermarket parts and accessories. They are everybody wants to customize their Glock's but Springfield Armory started it with the Hellcat It's a great carry gun and that magazine capacity did it really did push the industry boundaries Prior to 2020 Rock Island Armory had two plus P rated 38 special revolvers They were fine, you know snub nose and another with a little bit of a longer barrel But what they have managed to do when they started to Import from the Czech Republic from alpha prize those revolvers into the US the AL line that included 357 magnum 38 special now 22 magnum 22 long rifle 9 millimeter has been Amazing their high-end revolvers they make them in stainless and blued equivalent to some of the other makers out there But for a little less money and we're used to that with Rock Island Armory, but their revolver line now has expanded with Extreme quality and I don't know if it has caught on but they sure are Nice revolvers. I think people should take another look at these because I certainly have been impressed So that was my best ten handgun situations for 2020 I'm interested to hear what you think let me know what I missed I will also mention the best followers of any channel on YouTube for 2020 and prior is right here and you are Appreciated if you like videos like this, please subscribe and share. I always appreciate thumbs up button Thanks for watching and you guys be safe