The first item of business today is a member's business debate on motion 5106 in the name of Liam Kerr on cycle capacity on Scotland railways. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and may I ask those members who wish to speak to press the request-to-speak buttons. I call on Liam Kerr to open the debate around seven minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank all of those from across the chamber who added their support to the motion, allowing us to debate what is on so many levels and to so many different groups a very important issue. There are two things that I particularly enjoy, cycling and trains, and preferably together. Living in the north-east allows me to indulge both. I frequently will cycle along the old D-side line out past Bancary, down over the Cairn Amount to Montrose, where I will pick up the train back to Aberdeen. I and often four or five companions will stop and spend locally, perhaps at the Milton, the Crathus, the Clatteron, Brig or Feta Cairn, which provides a no-doubt welcome economic boost in the current climate. According to Sustrans, cycle tourism like that is worth £345 million a year to the Scottish economy. However, it is not just tourism. The Scottish Government has an ambition for 10 per cent of journeys to be made by bike by 2020, which requires commuting. That parking at stations has improved tremendously. However, many commuters not only want to cycle to the station, but to get on their own bike at the other end. Nearly all ScotRail trains between Edinburgh Glasgow and Inverness Aberdeen are three-car class 170 turbo stars. Officially, those have four bike spaces on board, two spaces in each of two carriages. If I get to Montrose with three friends in tow but there is a bike already on the train, one of us is stuck. However, from summer 2018, ScotRail will start introducing 26 refurbished class 43 sets. If you picture an intercity 125, like the Virginies Coast use, that is what we are talking about. The 40-years-old, but they are still the fastest diesels in the world, and they will serve Scotland's seven cities. They look fantastic. They will deliver a 33 per cent capacity increase, a reduction in journey times and a much more comfortable passenger experience. All that is with completely revamped Mark III coaches delivering what passengers told ScotRail they wanted. What is more, in February 2015, on the penultimate slide of a presentation to the cross-party group on cycling, the ScotRail franchise delivery team stated that the class 125s will have a capacity of at least 20 cycles. It was discovered by spokes, the Lothian-based cycle campaigners, currently celebrating their 40th anniversary, that ScotRail has scaled back. The new plan is for eight bike spaces per train, two in a vertical hanging rack in one of the coaches and three in each of the two power car luggage compartments. Furthermore, those latter six spaces will only be available for end-to-end journeys such as Aberdeen to Edinburgh and will not be accessible at intermediate stations due to the inevitable delays of getting a push-bike on and off at the end of the train. If I want to go from, for example, Edinburgh to Inverness, some services require a change at Perth, so the six would not even be available to me. For my trip from Montrose going forward, I take a chance on one of the two spaces on the coach, half the current provision. I am grateful to a transport expert who I have been corresponding with who made me aware of possible health and safety and loading concerns with those two. Will ScotRail review the situation? I believe so, hence the motion and the debate. I also wrote to ScotRail in April to highlight the issue and asked for a meeting, which duly took place on 9 May. We covered a lot of very useful ground because there are solutions and no doubt colleagues from around the chamber will suggest their own. To my part, I do appreciate that there could be timetable delays from loading and offloading bikes at intermediate stations, but any basic logistics adjustment ought to ameliorate that, allocating cycle reservations to a specific power car and putting the rider's seats in the adjacent coach, for example, platform markings to show where the cyclist needs to wait to load, station staff actively working with the cyclist or the guard of the cycle passenger, or an online system showing available, reservable bikespaces and the location on the train, just like Great Western, who are running the current ScotRail sets right now, do already. It is always difficult to directly read across, but I understand that French trains open their luggage door at every station. I do appreciate that it may be logistically challenging to do this at every station, but at the very least, surely consideration should be given to opening at the key hub stations, such as parths of Inverness and Dundee Stirling. The Virgin class 43s to Inverness seem to cope with bikes in coach A, and since bikes have to be pre-booked, the guard knows in advance when the door needs to be unlocked. Or maybe we re-look at general capacity. Dave Holliday, a recognised transport expert, suggests having two bikes per carriage, plus four or five in each of the two power cars. Questions have also been raised around space in the redundant toilets, i.e. unused in the new design, which will simply be locked up, spokes terms transporting air. An earlier upgrading of the Mark III coaches by Chiltern completely removed the toilet and luggage rack to create a kind of large vestibule. This creates flexible bikespace, but also extra for buggies, pushchairs and passenger surge at stations. Since the refurbishment work to fit the sliding doors will involve removing the toilets and luggage racks at the coach ends to install the door pockets, would it really be so difficult? Finally, a quick point, as I want to give the minister plenty of opportunity to clear up what I think is a genuine misunderstanding. I tried to draft the motion very carefully, because I didn't want to politicise this debate, but despite being out for nearly two months, as at today's date not one SNP member has signed, I'm genuinely surprised at this and a bit disappointed, because I think on issues like this we need to put the politics aside, we need to work constructively with ScotRail to find solutions, particularly given the cycling targets that we talked of earlier. The minister will know that that absence has been noted by those outside the chamber, and I just thought it fair to give the minister an opportunity in closing to explain that omission, if he would. The Scottish Government is desperate for a modal shift to cycling by 2020, but appears to be missing the target at the moment. ScotRail can play a major part in making cycle tourism easy, but also encouraging cycle commuting. With the new rolling stock coming in, there is a fantastic opportunity to do it, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with ScotRail with a view to a solution. We move to the open debate. The speeches are four minutes, please. Up to four minutes. I call Marie Todd to be followed by Graham Simpson. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you, Liam Kerr, for bringing forward this member's debate. Apologies for not signing your motion. I have to claim that that was an oversight, not politics at all, in my part. Scotland is, of course, a fantastic destination for cycle tourism. In the Highlands and Islands region that I represent, we boast some of the most scenic cycle routes in the whole country. Cycle tourism brings huge benefits and value to the Scottish economy. According to Sustrans, it is worth £345 million a year. That is particularly great for the rural economy because we know that cyclists will stop and spend money locally, injecting money into local businesses. Cycle tourism brings significant environmental benefits compared to many other types of tourism. That is mainly because cyclists tend to use public transport when they are reaching the start of their tour and for making onward connections instead of using their own car. The picture in Scotland is a bit mixed, in terms of bike rail integration. On the positive side, bikes are allowed on most trains free of charge and can be booked in advance. On the other hand, the number of bikes allowed on a train is typically pretty limited at the moment, usually only four. It often requires mandatory prior booking. Those factors provide a significant discouragement to allowing larger groups to travel together and reduce flexibility in travel planning, for example if there is bad weather or mechanical failure or illness. I heard from a group of four people who travelled from Switzerland to go on a cycling tour in Scotland. They had a really tight schedule and a week-long plan. Not being able to get a train would have thrown out their whole programme, because they had a book in advance. If another group had been trying to get on the same train, someone would be left behind. They mentioned that getting the bikes on and off the trains was hard and pressured due to timing, as you have mentioned. Looking at the situation now, I am pleased that ScotRail will be phasing in new high-speed trains into service in 2018. On the routes that serve Scotland's seven cities, those new trains will provide extra capacity. However, it is disappointing to learn that, rather than an unexpected rise in cycle capacity, those new trains seem to offer a reduction in what is already provided. I hope that the minister will clarify whether that is indeed the case when he sums up. As I understand it, there will be eight bike spaces, two vertical hanging rack in one of the coaches, and three in each of the two power car luggage compartments. However, I hear that six of those spaces will only be available for, as Liam Kerr said, end-to-end journeys. If you are trying to get on in an intermediate station—this is what I would really like you to clarify—for example, if you get on in Avymor, which is in the Cairngorm National Park, the top cycling destination, the two bike spaces that are already taken, you will not be able to get on the train. Given the social and economic benefits of cycle tourism in Scotland, that really misses an opportunity. Also, as a member of the health and support committee, I fully support integrating cycling and transport as a way to make cycle tourism and cycling committing easy and to encourage people to get fit and active. What solutions can be offered in Switzerland on popular routes with tourists and cyclists? There is an additional freight-style carriage at the back of the train for people to put their bikes on. It does not clog up the passageways, disabled spaces or risk bikes falling down or hurting someone. On other trains, there are carriages with less seats that are especially for people with bikes, as well as push chairs and other bulky equipment that keeps them all together rather than spread out through the train. The other solution is maybe more ceiling hooks that you put the front wheel of a bike on to and hang them vertically so that they take up less space. Could there be more of those on the train? I know that the key constraint is that the in the UK space is limited because the train gauge is small due to the 19th century tunnels. Hanging options might not be feasible, but accommodating the requirement of cyclists is no trivial task and it's not worthy. You really must close, please, Ms Todd. Were they endeavour when we consider the benefits that cycling and cycling tourism brings? I thank Liam Kerr for bringing this debate to Parliament today. It's a shame we're here, given that Abelio originally vowed to help Scotland go Dutch and to create a Scottish cycle revolution. They took on the ScotRail franchise with big promises and a grand vision and those of us who enjoy cycling got quite excited. Sadly, progress has not been what we hope for. Maybe it will get better. Let's look at Abelio's bold vision. In their cycle innovation plan, they say that they will bring innovation to the relationship between the cycle and the railway, firstly by increasing the priority given to cycles at stations and trains, secondly through the products and services that we can offer to cycle users and thirdly through the way that we communicate with our customers on cycling issues. It all sounds great, doesn't it? But as Liam Kerr's motion, which came on the back of a cycling Twitter storm, shows that the reality has been far different, far from increasing capacity for bikes on trains, they're cutting it on key routes. The CIP actually gives the game away and perhaps explains what they mean by going Dutch. It says, quotes, Our overall long-term strategy in the Netherlands has been to reduce the pressure on cycle spaces on board trains, by investing in better storage facilities at stations and encouraging regular cyclists to either join our bike and go scheme for their onward journeys or maintain a second bike at their destination stations. We intend to replicate this successful approach on ScotRail. Deputy Presiding Officer, we have an admirable but unrealistic target of having 10% of journeys done by bike in Scotland by 2020. That's less than three years away, but at the current rate of progress it will take us 300 years. 300 years. Abelio can be part of the progress that we need, but they need to do better. On 25 February 2015, the ScotRail franchise delivery team told a meeting at the Scottish Parliament that there would be improvements in 2018-19 with the introduction of four and five coach into city trains and an expectation that those would carry at least 20 cycles. Spokes have since discovered that the increase in bike space on trains has been gradually but significantly reduced. On the Edinburgh stroke Glasgow to Inverness and East Coast mainlines, there will be fewer spaces for bikes than at present. Abelio also proposed to cut bookable spaces from six to two on West Highland tourist routes. Transport Scotland has the power to specify that current bike capacity should be maintained, as it has to approve all new train configurations. In Europe, it is common for each carriage to have to have a flexible space in every carriage, allowing more people to not only travel with bikes but also prams and bulky luggage. That would allow more standing space in peak service trains. There is a mood in this chamber to boost sustainable transport, and that is why we have the cross-party group on cycling, walking on buses, on which I am deputy convener. However, there are those who just do not get it. Last week, for example, there was a crazy proposal to scrap South Lanarkshire cycle partnership. Thankfully, that was knocked on the head. We have seen cycle routes ripped up in some parts of the country after pressure from the anti-bike brigade. Councils and government need to stand up to those people. Getting people on their bikes helps health, physical and mental. It helps productivity. It saves the public purse. It matters. I do not think that Evelio is in the negative column for cycling, but they need to go the extra mile to do better. I want to thank Liam Kerr for bringing this debate to the chamber. As a co-convener, like my colleague on the opposite benches Graham, to the new cross-party group for cycling, walking and buses, and as a co-convener of the CPG for cycling in the previous session, along with Alison Johnson, I am passionate about the development of cycling opportunities, active travel and also integrated public transport. This morning, in the female changing facilities, I was discussing today's debate with cycle commuters. One said that she used to travel from Aberdeen to Edinburgh regularly for work by train using her bike at each end of the journey. Another told me that she regularly took her car to the park and ride and then cycled. Another highlighted the joy of taking bikes on the train to Gurwick and then the ferry to Danone for the start of a cycling holiday. Whether it is for work, leisure or a holiday, nobody should have to experience the stress of worrying about whether they can get their bike on a train. Research, as we heard from Liam Kerr by Sustran, says that £345 million is added by cycling tourism to the Scottish economy every year. As Transform Scotland research has shown, further development of the national cycle network and other cycle routes across the country would increase the figure substantially. The capacity for bikes on trains is fundamental to that. In my own region, we have Borders Rail, which over the last 18 months has proved successful in encouraging tourists into the Borders. Cycle tourism is a significant contributor to the local economy. It is a popular cycling destination with many bike trails and cycling paths to enjoy. However, access to the area is made difficult for cycling tourism when there is not adequate bicycle storage on trains. I have taken a keen interest in this issue for some time and I am getting a strong sense of deja vu at the moment. In September 2013, I asked the then transport minister Keith Brown, I quote, what provisions for cycling access and storage on trains and at stations will be included in the contract for rail passenger services to be issued in 2014. I suggested looking at solutions, as did Marie Todd, used on the continent such as cycling carriages to improve trains for cyclists. Those could be used in the tourist season and even relocated for specific road cycling events. The minister replied, the next ScotRail franchise will commence in 2015 in April. Bidders will be required to develop plans to improve rail's integration with the wider transport system, which includes improvements facilities for cyclists. I had thought of stating today that we must be sure that the next franchise tender sets even more robust and imaginative demands for bikes on trains in its criteria, but then I stopped myself. That is because it is years ahead, even though it is an imperative. As stated in Liam Kerr's motion today, on 25 February 2015, we heard that the franchise delivery team informed a meeting in the Parliament at which I was attending. We heard about the introduction of more bikes on rail. Now we hear that each train will only carry eight bicycles and that the interim stops are even more problematic. Spokeslothian has stated quite clearly that converting some of the redundant toilets into bike spaces is a possibility and Liam Kerr made many positive suggestions, as have other members, as to a way forward. Spokeslothian suggests that this problem could surely be resolved with a small cash injection from Transport Scotland. I give the example that, way back in 1998, this was managed by the Scottish Administration, which was then in government and arranged through match funding. Surely the present Government could do something similar. I strongly agree with the motion and support it. We need action now. I thank Liam Kerr for the opportunity to debate the subject and I thank my fellow co-conveners of the cross-party group on cycling in session 4, Claudia Beamish and Jim Eadie. I look forward to working with Claudia Beamish once more and Graham Simpson and other members in this session. I am also endlessly thankful to Spokeslothian's cycle campaign group for their tireless work on that and many other cycling-related issues. I welcome their representatives, Ewan Jeffery and Jolene Warren, to the chamber today. Like me, constituents are contacting you frequently with concerns over active travel infrastructure both nationally and locally. Following that debate, I am meeting constituents who are presenting a petition in Parliament probably at this very moment to ensure that it is possible for cyclists and pedestrians to cross the sheriff's hall roundabout in Dalkeith safely. The issue of a joined-up transport network that puts the needs of people at its heart is one that affects all of us and all modes of transport. It is one of the issues that I am asked most to push the Scottish Government for improvements on, and the lack of facilities around taking bikes on trains comes up in my inbox day after day, time after time. Although better bike parking and cycle hire solutions are welcome, they are not the solution for many people. If you are on holiday up north, a family of four or five and you are asking folk to hire bikes, that is an additional expense. There are many people who are absolutely in love with their pride and joy, their custom-made bicycle. That is the bike that they want to tour round the highlands and islands on. We seem to have some tension. Network Rail took some persuading that a cyclist should not be banned from Waverly station. When I took the opportunity to try out the Borders Railway, when it was newly opened with my bike, I tried booking a cycle space in advance, to be sure, but I was told that it was an unreservable service. This first come first served policy. It is an outdated way of approaching sustainable travel. With leisure cycling and mountain biking being rapidly growing activities and cycle tourism, as we have heard, contributing £345 million to the economy annually, the Scottish Government needs to do more to embrace the opportunities to make this an industry that Scotland is renowned for internationally, and that we are able to accommodate demand for the length and breadth of the country. I do not think that there is any good reason for provision to be so poor, so out of step with the experience that we have in other European countries. I have travelled by train in Germany a lot. I am just mentioning that. There are many other good examples where multifunctional carriages are the norm. There is space for 10 bikes. If they are not being used for bikes, then the seat folds down and people sit on them. Buggies can get on no problem. There are better models in the 21st century. Spokes have highlighted the issue that perhaps we could use former lws that are not going to be in use any longer. I am not sure that that is a comfortable solution, but Transform Scotland makes the point well too. In order to speed up journey times, we simply should not be preventing cyclists boarding trains. That is not progress. The Scottish Government has a responsibility to include provision for active travel in all new major infrastructure proposals. Greens have consistently raised this during budget discussions each year, and with others such as the Institute of Public Health Directors, we have called for 10 per cent of the total transport budget to go towards active travel, and we will continue to press for such changes. To honour climate change commitments made in Paris and to bring our infrastructure into line with that of many of our European cousins, we have to take a different approach. I am not sure who said that the vision of 10 per cent of all journeys by bike by 2020 was unrealistic. Well, it is only unrealistic because of the level of investment that we have at the moment. It is chronically underfunded. I think that the Government has to ask far more of those that awards franchises to I mean two bookable spaces is absolutely woeful in this day and age. We are going backwards after being promised more. I think that this is what's making us so very very angry. In closing, might I just ask the minister to stop back peddling on this issue? Thank you. I call Brian Whittle to be followed by Mark Ruskell. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I can also thank my colleague Liam Kerr for bringing this debate to the chamber. I was at best an occasional cyclist. I am now and again seeing battering down my head down backside up, flying around the roads of East Kilbride for an hour at a time maximum, I have to say. Recently, my neighbour, who has happened to have a boat down at Loch Lomond, invited me to cycle down to Loch Lomond with him and have some lunch there and get the train back. I have to say that it's a process. About 30 miles in that prospect, I thought I could probably just about manage that. Yes, I might look like John Wayne getting off a horse after a long day in the prairie, but I think I could just about manage that. Now, the thought of maybe having to cycle all the way back, there was no chance that I would have even have considered that. See these people here with all the gear. I am becoming more and more of a cyclist these days because, as my youngest daughter, she's now nine, she's got a bike now, and she's desperate to cycle to school, of which I can't let her do that. It's probably a bit of a mile, but the road network on the way there would certainly not be safe, shall we say, even if I cycled with her. So, what I'm having to do now is either put bikes on roof racks or get on the train, which we've done a few times, which is quite an adventure, I have to say, for youngsters. Get on the train, go to somewhere that's more conducive to cycling for youngsters, and then spend some time cycling back on the train and come back again. It's a real adventure for me as well, I still have to say, to be able to do that. It's a joy to be able to do that. I think that, if we can go back to the idea of cycling to school, I think that it's more of an I think that her desire to cycle to school and not being able to at the moment is kind of an endemic thing that's happening within the country. We're not really joining up particularly well. My personal view is that, in terms of cycling, instead of starting off by building massive, big cycle routes, I would really like to see primary schools developed so that they can actually have active travel. They have the ability to be active travelling to school, whether they want to walk or cycle or skateboard or scooter. I would like to see that as a starting point. When I go back to my own day, I did cycle to school or walk to school every day. I looked at the bike sheds that my school was absolutely rammed full. It was very difficult to find a space to put a bike in. I looked at my daughter's school the other day and there are six spaces for bikes at that school. I have yet to see a bike in those spaces. Now and again, there's the odd scooter, but they're not getting the opportunity to cycle to school. For me, that's where we need to be. I think that the cycle berths on trains are an end result of a policy that we could implement much earlier in life. If we can create an environment where—kids actually want to do that—there are about three or four children in my street who would cycle to school if they had the opportunity. We just don't have that environment at the moment when they could do that. If we can start looking ahead and try to create an environment where active travel to school is a viable option as a first step, perhaps we will debate that topic again sometime in the future when we will be calling for even more capacity for bikes and trains as cycles queue up to board the station. We need to think about this as an end-to-end debate, an end-to-end issue and try to treat it as such. Thank you, Mr Patel. I wonder if, next time, you'd maybe address the motion. We move to the last contribution in the open debate, and it's Mark Ruskell. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank Liam Kerr for bringing forward this motion. It's not often that we get to debate cycling in this chamber, so it's very welcome, and it's not often that we get to debate how cycling integrates with other transport modes. I think that it's a really good topic for debate and very timely. I will declare an interest, Presiding Officer, in that I've spent probably most of my working life travelling to my place of work, either by bike or taking my bike to station parking and getting on a train, or taking my bike to station putting it on the train, getting off the other end and cycling. I've enjoyed it. It's been good for my mental health as well as my physical health. I would say that the current provision that we have on trains, particularly in central Scotland with the Class 170s, is quite bizarre, because most trains around Europe, and in fact around the rest of the UK as well, when you bring your bike onto the train, it has a vertical hook where you can hook your bike up. As a result of that, it's very easy to get on and off the train and you can carry many more bikes. The current Class 170s have a kind of horizontal rack, which means that you have to choreograph your bike on there with loads of other people who are also trying to get on to the train and other cyclists. It makes it very complicated, because it means that you have to have a discussion every morning with the four, five or six other cyclists who are also trying to put their bike on the train at the same time. It's a great way to meet people. I've met lots of people who had great discussions on the back of it, but it is an absolute hassle. I have to say that the guards are very helpful. There are only two places that are available in every two-car set, but most regular cycle commuters know how to stack their bikes creatively so that they can get at least four bikes into the two-place parking area. I think that we need to make some progress on this. I recognise that the focus from ScotRail Bello so far as being around bike parking is about ensuring that there are adequate facilities at many of our major stations. I think that we are starting to see some great improvements there. I commend the bike and go bike hire scheme, which I think is working well alongside other initiatives such as the next bike. However, that does not suit everybody, and it certainly does not suit people who want to join up their journeys and take their bikes with them. I think that tourists are a particular case in point here. We have heard the figure from other members about £345 million coming into Scotland every year through cycle tourism. We are in danger of losing that. I consider taking my family up to Inverness this summer for a mini tour, and we are probably going to take the Sustrans route down to Fort William. It is a great route and it is getting a lot of coverage and it is very popular. However, the hassle factor is really putting me off. We could be getting to a point now where it may become more easier to stick your bike on a plane than it is to put your bike on a train. With APD cuts, that could have an impact on the £345 million that is coming into Scotland. We have heard from many members in this debate about what the solutions are. For the class 170s, looking at more creative use of the vestibule areas, I have noticed that peak times not everybody wants to sit down. People are just getting on for one or two stops and are quite happy to stand. Having more flexible vestibule areas would allow more bikes to come on board the trains, but it would also create more space for luggage and mobility aids. For the high-speed trains, we have heard a good set of solutions that are coming forward from spokes. I really hope that the minister will reflect on those and put some pressure on ScotRail to open it up so that at least the Ruskell family can have an exciting holiday in the Highlands. Ultimately, we will recognise that bringing ScotRail back under public hands again would help so that we can get access before profit. However, I really hope that in the meantime that the minister is able to put some pressure on ScotRail and that we can get a resolution to that particular issue. I call Hamza Yousaf to respond to the debate. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to thank Liam Kerr for bringing that motion to the Parliament. I want to thank him in a couple of ways, first of all, for the constructive tone, which he always seems to strike in conversations, which I very much appreciate, and for engaging with ScotRail, which I know he has done in the constructive manner in a constructive way. Also, for his enthusiasm, when I first met Liam Kerr, he told me that he was a real train buff and that he has done nothing to dispel that since I met him, although I regret having a picture of him in Lycra in my briefing that I looked at this morning before breakfast. I also thank representatives of Spokes for their ambition for cycling in Scotland, which is very well reflected by members across the chamber. Although there will be disagreements, that happens with campaign groups and lobby groups. There are differences between different political parties. It is very clear to me that everybody that is spoken today has been driven by their ambition for cycling in Scotland, and that is a good thing. I welcome the debate very much, and I will try to address some of the points that have been made up. If I may, I suppose that the offset that members have recognised is that, of course, the day-to-day operation of train fleets and how they manage passengers on board rests with ScotRail. They are finalising the layout and operational aspects of how on-train cycle storage will be managed to maximise the number that it can carry when the 26th refurbished HSTs high-speed trains do enter service on Scotland's intercity routes next summer. The reason why they are finalising that layout is because of conversations with members, campaign groups such as Spokes and many others have had with ScotRail about some of the concerns about on-train cycle storage. We are to make this issue because, as we know, those HSTs will come into service next summer, with £54 million being plowed into them. They will, of course, be of the later standards of comfort and accessibility that will be welcomed. As Liam Kerr said, the passenger experience will be very much welcomed as it will be improved. However, there is a recognition, I think, from those across the chamber and some have reflected on it, that spaces on trains, of course, are always limited. There needs to be a range of users, cyclists of course, foot passengers, those with disabilities—I think that that is obviously incredibly important—people with luggage, those with small children. However, not thatwithstanding, we have heard from some members about innovative solutions where everybody can possibly be accommodated. As I said, the ScotRailer is finalising the layout of the operational aspects. I would encourage it to listen carefully to what members have said about the end-to-end destination and the issues with intermediate stops. That point has been made very strongly by Liam Kerr, by Graham Simpson and other speakers across the chamber. I encourage it, as it has these discussions, as they are finalising the layout of the operation that they take into account what has been said and looked for an innovative solution. On the motion, to clarify the point that you asked me to clarify, as a member of the Government, I would not necessarily sign a motion that I am sure he understands. I think that where there was some confusion was perhaps in the line where he says that there will be fewer spaces for cycles than at present. Can I just address that, that the HSTs, as members have said, will have eight spaces, whereas currently, we will only have four spaces for cycles. No creative accounting suggests that there are fewer spaces, but there will be more spaces. However, the point that Liam Kerr was trying to make, which is a valid one, is that there might be fewer spaces on the intermediate stops. Again, as I can reiterate, that is something that I would encourage ScotRailer to look at. ScotRailer will continue to keep the policy under review. It is committed to training its staff in cycle capacity procedures and how to provide additional ad hoc spaces where it can as well. It should be said, because I have mentioned the retention of the 170s as well, which is great news, particularly good news for the central highlands, particularly good news for Murray, for Aberdeen down the east coast as well. However, I do not want to take away from what members have said that ScotRailer should always look at whether there can be innovative or inventive solutions to cycle storage, and I think that some of those have been mentioned. Can I just touch on the cycle integration point that has been made? I think that a lot of members have characterised that there has to be a choice between either the cycle storage solutions at stations versus on-board cycle storage. I think that there does not have to be attention between the two. I think that both should be looked at as ScotRailer are doing. I am very, very pleased with the Scottish Government and ScotRailer's investment in improving facilities. There are 194,000 from the Scottish Stations Fund to significantly expand Cycle Parking Facility at Haymarket with around 90 spaces. 100,000 from the same fund to install 200 cycle spaces at Waverley as well. 5,000 cycle storage spaces at station across the rail network during the franchise. From those, 1,269 have been created at 44 locations already. Bike and Go facilities, as Mark Ruskell has mentioned, have already opened at 11 stations, including in Vaness, Aberdeen, Stirling, Falkirk High and Haymarket. There is a lot of focus on that, but that is not to take away from what members are saying that there should be an encouragement to look at both cycle facilities and storage facilities at stations, but also on-train cycle storage. My Transport Scotland will continue to encourage, and I will continue to encourage, ScotRailer, to work with spokes and campaign groups. I reiterate that there will be an increase with the high-speed trains entering service next summer. We have four spaces to bookable at the moment. There will be eight spaces, and they will not be reduced because of the layout and the design of the train. They will not be reduced due to wheelchair provision, and that is very welcome indeed. We will continue to record investment in active travel over this parliamentary term, which we have committed. I know that other members in their interventions pushed us to go further, but we will certainly continue that record investment where I can. As I said, we will continue to have those conversations with ScotRailer. There will be an increase in those spaces, but in the meantime, until those trains enter service next summer, I will continue to urge ScotRailer to do what they can with the current stock. I certainly would not want to deny the Ruskell family a successful holiday in Inverness when that comes. The meeting is suspended until 2 o'clock.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2020 virtual brought to you by Red Hat, the CloudNative Computing Foundation and ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2020, November 17th to the 20th, a virtual event. Normally we're there in person, but again, 2020 has been a crazy year. We're not going to be able to be there in person, but we're here remotely. We've got two great guests, the co-chairs of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, even it got the senior open source engineer at VMware, KubeCon Kubernetes Chair and Constance Garminolas, principal software engineer at Splunk. You guys, the co-chairs of KubeCon, big responsibility. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Okay, so the number one question every year is before it gets started is, how'd you make the selections for the talks? What's the hottest thing going on? What's the focus for this, this KubeCon? Well, so actually we use a Ouija board to choose the talks. No, I'm joking, that doesn't happen that way. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty much all out of a hat, but seriously, we spent a lot of time with talks that showed, I guess, diversity and integration in the community. So what projects are starting to pick up steam, what projects are starting to integrate more deeply with other ones? So you'll see lots of commentary around multi-cluster items within cloud-native technologies, as well as lots of content on security, which I'm excited about. Yeah, I also feel like there's a little bit, like kind of to your point about like things layered on, like we're starting to get to the point where people are talking about like, hey, I deployed Kubernetes and Envoy and something else. And like, these are starting to be a lot more of these kind of joint talks there that actually even make it harder for us to place, like, does it belong in networking? Does it belong in application development? Like there've been some really good challenges trying to figure out where things are slotted and what's right. One of the things I love about KubeCon besides being fun to go to when it was face-to-face is even with the virtual, it's still a great community. The talks are awesome, people are submitting talks, but you got the sixth year, I think it's a sixth year, fifth year, we've been there for all years, I think this is the sixth year for us. The maturation, the growth and of Kubernetes now is pretty clear, this glue layer is gluing things together, the API is extending to more services. Can you guys comment on what you guys are seeing in terms of some of the practical projects and how they're playing out for developers? Because you're starting to see more clusters, you got cloud, you got multicloud around the horizon. So you got more of these conversations where you have more capabilities, but the focus on the modern application building is the number one business focus. So the developers are trying to build out under the covers and say, how is scale this? So this seems to be the kind of a growth year and inflection point for that next level. It seems that next level. Stephen, what's your thoughts and reaction to that? Yeah, absolutely. So as a former, I've been at a few cloud native companies at this point, so Coral S. Redhack before heading over to VMware. And as a former field engineer and solutions architect at some of these places, we spent a lot of time thinking through what is the day zero, day one story, right? And it's very clear that as a community, we've gotten to the point where like, that is officially the boring stuff, right? Seeing a lot of the features within projects like QBDM and Cluster API come to maturation, we start to focus a lot more on that developer story, right? And ultimately that's what we care about, right? Businesses are not necessarily looking for a new tool to play around with, right? There are business goals that are tied to the new technologies, right? So the velocity in which you deploy your applications, the feedback loop in terms of understanding, what ties into your application, where things are going wrong. And you know, Constance can definitely speak to the observability layer for all of these cloud native applications. Constance, observability here is really hot right now. What would you take on it? I mean, there's observability everywhere. New startup comes out, you work a Splunk, they're the king of observability. They started out with a very small observation space. Now it's a full platform. You have to look at the observation space to get the data. That's the internet, that's every application. What's hot in that observability? Take us through your thoughts. I think what's also starting to like, so you're still like, there's some, I can think of like one talk right now. It's a little bit talking about like, you know, observability at scale, the sense of just like, now we have these massive applications and saying we globally and to observe, and monitor observe, right now I'm not gonna use a tool where it's interchangeable. I know that's a totally different debate. The available topic, but for now I'll just keep it at that. But it's also now, I think one thing as observability space and maturing we're not talking only about like, hey, I used to write my like application with metrics, logs, traces, or some other thing there. It's now being a little bit more critical about how, if I'm using all three of these or all different telemetries, like how do we be smart about it? Like, okay, I only need to use traces for some things. I only need to use logs or something else. And like kind of getting to a richer part of like, now that we have that data, let's actually think about better ways to use that data so we don't, you know, collect everything. Cause you can't collect everything as much as we want to. Well, I mean, this is something that I want to get your both thoughts on because one of the countries we're hearing from developers and we hear it from the, on the business size, everything's as a service. That's like the ivory tower, you know, the CXOs, everything's as a service. And then it gets down into the developers and the engineering communities and they're like, well, it's not that easy cause you got tools for every platform, right? And that's a problem. You've got these siloed tools or tools that are built for certain products. And then you've got the systems thinking. You guys talk about this integration is a key area. So making everything as a service just isn't that easy, right? So the goal is to make it easy, right? So this is the systems conversation. How do you guys look at that from a KubeCon cloud native con? Because cloud native does enable a lot of good things. It's horizontally scalable cloud from a resource standpoint. You've got programmability. You can look at it as a system but people are stuck with these tools for the platform. I mean, you have tools for this, tools for that, five different tools. How do you make observability work? How do you make security work? These are tough questions. What's your reaction on that? I think that a lot of it comes down to from a builder perspective and taking the builder perspective and then also taking the consumer perspective for builders. And I actually spent some time with but some developer heads in New York. We sat down for a dinner and kind of talked through some of the problems in the space. And I think what it really comes down to is when we build tools, we need to think about who we're building the tools for. There are multiple personas that you might look at in the cloud native space. And one that might be the persona of that systems integrator of the classic Opsi, DevOpsi, SRE role. Then you've got someone who may be building tools on top of one of those ops platforms. And then you've got the consumers that maybe in your company, maybe they're external. That's for their experience, they're really only interested in how do I ship my app? So whether we're talking about building out Kubernetes or whether we're talking about a serverless platform. So serverless and the cloud, you often hear it's running on someone else's machine. It's not really. So I think in that space, you have to consider developer experience. So I think one of the overarching themes that you'll see throughout this KubeCon is how do we talk about the developer experience? Who are we building these tools for? How can we actually get outcomes that end users are looking for, right? Because it's not, again, it's not about the tools. It's about the outcomes for the respective businesses. Constant, what's your reaction to this trend of tools and edge computing? Because you don't want to have to build security for everything single thing. If I got an edge device, I want to have that be software operated, right? It makes total sense, but making that happen is hard. Yeah, I think this is something that as a community, like we're really, I guess like kind of how I use example, like end user docs versus reference documentation. I think that we've been done a really good job at creating these really powerful tools, but like in terms of, we still need to simplify them for anyone who doesn't want to learn, like say Kubernetes or Envoy or a book in telemetry like the back of their hand. And I think that's where we're starting to, we're finally starting to close that gap. And that's why I think also why KUKAN is getting all more popular is like now things are a little bit more accessible to those who don't have, you know, either don't have the bandwidth or it just, it isn't in their interest to learn all these things in deep details. And so we're slowly going from those who want to be deep, deep experts into, yeah, I kind of want to play around with it and make it more manageable. And I do think we still have quite a bit of ways to go. Like I think, you know, what's been helpful, like at least like our end user stories that we get and like the application development track, especially that one, like the case studies that, it's no longer a track, but it is highlighted as like these talks in case studies. I think that shows it's kind of giving people more like, hey, these are stories of how I can take these tools and start making them more digestible in my own way. Cause going from like, oh, this feature does XYZ too. This is a whole story that you can do around it. It's been a little bit of a gap. We're closing. Yeah. And I think one of the things about you kind of being shy there, I'll say at KUKAN and cloud native con CNCF in general has been very successful because of the end user focus, I will say that. But also the ecosystem of the vendors out of there. So you have kind of the best of both worlds and they all want to, they all want to get better, right? But they all had to make money at the same time. So you have this balance, this open source is what it is. It's out in the open. Can you guys comment on how the community is thriving and surviving? We're in a tough time with the pandemic. It's been a big challenge. Obviously we're not in person, we're remote. How is everything going with the community? Because it's such a great end user vendor community working together out in the open shipping code, trying to make things better. What's the state of the community? Yeah. So I would say that honestly, what it comes down to is that word community. We are all friends, right? There are people who, as we moved towards this kind of like cloud native consolidation of companies, a lot of us have worked together before, right? A lot of us are active in multiple communities and what comes out of that is really open and honest collaboration as a result. Even today, there's a Twitter thread going. I started talking about the Kubernetes release cadence, and if and how it should change. Given 2020, we had an extended, we had an extended release cycle for 119, right? And questions became, what do we do? Like do we continue with three releases a year? Do we try for, do we switch back to four? Like what does that look like, right? And reaching out across the Kubernetes community, across the CNCF TOC, the contributor strategy sig in CNCF, and getting feedback from all of these people who depend on the products that we build day to day is huge. So I think what it comes down to really is open and honest collaboration. I think when you are strained, I know that everyone has a lot going on in life right now. What's great about it is being forthcoming with that, right? We have all of these teams that are built to support the people that are around them. So if anything, I'd love to see all of the collaboration and feedback coming from everyone who works on these projects today. Yeah. Constance, what's your reaction? I mean, one, I've talked to some developer friends and mine, they're like, hey, this is great. I can work virtually. I've been doing it for years anyway. So no big deal. It's not like the people who have to go to the office every day. So they're used to virtual format. The other comment was, I get more time to do some gaming too. I'm trying to make light out of the bad situation, but you know, it is serious. What's your reaction to the survival and the continuing thriving of the community? Yeah. I also want to eventually go back to you because you're making a comment about vendors. And now this is my first time as vendor. I have interesting, it's a really interesting perspective to come from, but let's talk about the community. I think, like, you know, it's like one of the things that I think actually has been one of the highlights of this year for me for 2020 is like to be co-chair, but it's also just to be able to work with Steven and Nancy and the rest of CNCF community and also like any attendees, has actually, even though this is a big year of change and it's, you know, it was a change that no one was planning, it has definitely been like really nice to just get, like, I guess I'll say as an example of the story, like for Cook County, you like, I was surprised by how many people were engaged in the Slack channel and asking questions and like Priyanka had set up these happy hours and people are just joining and we're starting to talk. And so it wasn't quite hallway track, but we still had that connection. And there was definitely, there are people who are attending from all parts of the world. And I thought that was really nice. Like we, I think CNCF has made it, like they have made the statement before that there will always be a virtual component to it to address the fact that, you know, our community we're so used to being in person, but that does, you know, does reduce accessibility to those who can't travel away or for whatever reason, they can't be there in person. So now it is becoming more open.  And so this is my first time being a part of a vendor. And I think what's really interesting is like, there's this natural like, you know, tension between like, oh, some were like, oh, I don't want anything from the vendors or like, I only want things from end users. But I think the thing we've kind of forget is that both of them are like active, you know, they're active in the community, both in either contributing or enabling others to be successful using the CNCF projects. And so we all have, you know, valid points and perspectives on it, right? Like you can maybe sometimes argue that sometimes being a vendor is almost a bonus because you get to talk to maybe more people who are trying to adopt technology and you get to see trends. And then after as an end user, you can say like, hey, I have this really unique problem here and this is how I try to solve it and share that story with other people. So. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, as a checks and balance, I've observed over my years in open source, you've seen certain things thrive certain ways. And I think that balance and, but having the mission and kind of a rules of engagement always seemed well, worked well for CNCF.  I would be too. Like, you know, I want to get their fingers on the pie, but they're also contributing. So there's always been that checks and balance and that's what's been magical, I think about it, is that they fostered the community, they fostered the engagement and they fostered that balance. And I think that's where the give and get comes in. I think that's a healthy community. And I just love to see and love to be involved in so super, super good approach. Now, putting back the vendor hat on, if I'm a vendor, I want a competitive advantage. So, you know, this brings us to the next gen conversation. Open source goes and going next gen, you're seeing a big focus on AI, you're seeing a big focus on, you know, edge computing, which is going to be software operated, software defined, which cloud native will leave. I got to get your perspective on something Steven said at the top was security. Every conversation for the past five months with Debs has been shift left. So, okay, where are we going left? We're shifting left. This is about security. How do you build security in, this has been a big conversation, it's not easy problem. I know it's a top focus.  Yeah, sure. So security, security is tricky, right? And I think that people start to put the focus on security when it's a little too late, right? The move is always preventative as opposed to reactive, right? And security is an onion, right? So it's not enough to just think about security on one axis, right?  Infrastructure, the cloud providers that I'm running on, right? Are they a certain level of compliant, right? Especially when that comes up for federal customers, right? On the application side, right? You know, if you think of, you know, if you think of all the different ways that you can break an application that hurt security, now with the cloud native space container security, right? Am I building safe Docker files, right?  And ultimately you have to, you know, and then there's also the supply chain, right? Am I getting, how am I moving that stuff from some physical infrastructure, some cloud infrastructure into the hands of the developers into the hands of the customers? How do I react to changes once those applications have actually been deployed, right? So like all of these things to consider, and when you look at that space, these are multiple teams, right? These are dozens and dozens of teams across, you know, multiple companies, right? You may not have full control of your security story, right? So I think that what, you know, what you need to do is start the conversation internally about how we can build security at multiple layers, right? So some of the things that are kind of interesting to see pop up during this KubeCon and some of the last ones, the continued work that's happening on OPA and Gatekeeper, Spiffy Inspire, right? And, you know, all of these frameworks for authentication and authorization that are kind of cropping up, right? I think, you know, Spiffy Inspire, really interesting story because, you know, the first thing you think is I have, I have these cloud native applications that I'm building and I also have these legacy applications, right? How can I build a bridge between the two, right? And then you've also got things like, you know, service mesh, right? And you start to talk about service mesh and, you know, the security within applications that live inside a cluster or across cluster, right? And how you negotiate that. So tons of things to think about.  But I think that, you know, good security is only built by having the conversation and having the conversation across all teams and doing it before, before you get into trouble. Do it before you get in trouble. Have it baked in from the beginning. Brush your teeth, make sure you're all healthy. Constance, your reaction. Your reaction. So I will say like, I am unfortunately one of those people that like security, well, security is just not something that I guess I'm gonna say I find super exciting. And mostly just because I really love observability and like service mesh. And so I usually defer to the experts on that. But I do want to like, I guess, plus when some of what Stephen said, obviously using GitHub, you know, terminology for plus, you know, enhancing things, like definitely start early and I, but I think, you know, just start early, start a conversation. But I think we also need just be cognizant of, like for any of the technologies, like if it's security, say networking, whatever, all of these things are behavior changes and just bucket more time than you think you're gonna need. There's gonna be so many roadblocks and especially when it comes, like especially when it comes to behavior changes, like if you're in behavior, but not necessarily like a personal, but like, you know, technology behavior, like you're used to sending things without MTLS, right? Or, you know, with our RBACs, things are gonna fail and, you know, it's, there's gonna be that initial friction and so definitely trying to make this move as possible. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the focus. I like to see more of, which is having it be built in, so if you're really not into it, but you don't wanna screw it up either. So you wanna be on top of it without doing it, right? That's the end game, right? That's what DevOps is about, right? So if you don't have programming infrastructure, write code. So all these things, this is the trend. This is the trend that we're seeing in Cloud Native. Can you guys share your thoughts this year on the most important stories that you think people should think about or lean into or at least look at for KubeCon? What are some of the things that attendees or people watching remotely or participating virtually are in Slack channels? What should they pay attention to? So starting with, I think even with the last KubeCon and some of the products that have recently come out from certain vendors, we're starting to look a lot more at the, what is that conversion story for someone who is a classic sysadmin, right? Who may be learning about Cloud Native technology for the first time or how do we welcome a new KubeCon attendee to the community? So I think one of the best things that we did was instantiate that 101 track, right? So with the 101 track, I think we got a bunch of great feedback. So we worked to make sure that there were, actually we eliminated, I believe we fully eliminated the lightning talks and worked to include more 101 content as well as tutorials within this program. Constant, your reaction to our thoughts on the most important story to pay attention to? I think it's more, right? Cause I know this is like a common line that we say at KubeCon and like, you know, it depends what journey you're on. But since so many more of our talks are now talking about intersections between like, you know, using X and Y try to build Z, Z. Oh my goodness, I'm turning, I'm losing my Zeds. I think trying to, like, you know, looking for those talks that at least somewhat resonate, like, hey, I've already adopted communities. Let me see how I add Envoy. Like trying to find those there cause there's a lot more of that content now, right? Cause maybe, you know, about like two, even last KubeCon or like last KubeCon North America, a lot of the things were more focused on like one project, maybe a hint there and you're just going to see more of these combinations. And so there are a lot more, there's a lot more of that content available for you to find I'm doing two to three, maybe four. There's a lot of projects at once, adoptions and seeing how that works too. Oh yeah, one-on-one track has definitely been, definitely like a great hit, I'm going to say, right? It was the first time it was launched and we got so many CFPs for one-on-one. It was just amazing to see all these ways that people wanted to make KubeCon word accessible to everyone else who hasn't been a part of, you know. It's every year, it's every year, the onboarding of new members of the community have been impressive. And having that track or laddering or different ways to work as a community to help people along has been another thing I noticed you guys do really well on. There's a real camaraderie amongst the community. So hat tip to you guys on that. Final question for you guys is more about the format. I'll say it's virtual this year. The game is still the same. There's talks, there's people, there's hallways, but they're virtual. I guess you're virtually walking through Slack and Discord or Twitter, whatever. What's the learnings from last event as we're going into virtual? How does an attendee maximize their time, their engagement? There's times to lean in and be present, attending a talk, you mentioned Slack, Constance. What's some of the learnings that you guys have learned from virtual and what can people think about and prepare for for KubeCon virtual this year? I think one way you started, so there's actually a resource that came from our debrief for me.  And we even provide a template to provide to your manager, say, can I please get this day off so I can focus on it? And I think that's one thing that, and I think we've all probably seen on Twitter and blogs is that even though it is virtual, it is still a brain drain, right? It's still, you have to engage with the topic. So set aside time. I would probably even say attend fewer talks than you would normally do in person, right? There is Zoom fatigue. I guess it's been Trotto fatigue. So just give yourself a lot more space to consume the information and just debrief and also join the activities, right? Like ask questions in Slack. There's a lot of the virtual events, like there's Bingo. There's even Escape Room, which sounds like a lot of fun, all these different activities too that you can do with everyone. So like definitely enjoy that part, right?  You just say, like, hey, you mentioned this project. Let's chat offline. And then a few weeks later, you may be on a four hour long Zoom meeting talking about the project and so, yeah. Yeah, I noticed the hang space kind of mindset of virtual is pretty cool. Be mindful to introduce yourself and either do a sidebar or jump on some back channel.  So good point. I want to call that out. Good point, Constance. Steven, your thoughts on learnings from the virtual format and then things this year, people should pay attention to and jump in and use the site for. Yeah, so I would say if anything, the previous attendees gave lots of thoughtful feedback about how to improve the overall program. One of my favorite parts of any conference and it's the part that I prioritize more than anything else in the conference, even the talks, is the hallway track. It's one of the few times, especially with KubeCon and the various contributors across the cloud native space, that's the one time every quarter or so that I get an opportunity to see these people face to face. So we wanted to do our best to bring an experience that felt it's not the same as the physical hug or the going out for dinner after a long day. But we tried and we heard it through lots of crazy ideas at the event team to see what they would come up with. For me as a New York resident and having a conference that is NA virtual but would have been in Boston, I thought it was important thinking about screen fatigue as well as just the physicality of where people would have been at the time was the start time of the conference, right? So as Constance was mentioning screen fatigue, it's, I think with all the virtual conferences going on, it's very hard to have that time during the day, right? So this KubeCon for folks on the East coast, it starts basically at your lunchtime.   That's awesome. The other thing I love about what you guys said is the hallway tracks. And I think one of the things I've noticed going to a lot of virtual events and doing them is Constance, you're right.  So taking time to get involved in the fun activities or just wandering slack or doing the sidebar with the hallways is kind of a, not some time off, but the time to regroup and not be so leaned into a session. I find that to help on the fatigue side for sure. The other one is viewing parties. We've popped into some zooms together and we watch each other watch the session, right? So viewing parties has been one trick. I've seen work well. Other ones I've seen people toast beer at a certain time. The Germans obviously do it first because they're on the time zone, but you start to see these playful things. People can share their kind of position where they are. So it's fun. We're looking forward to seeing that. Okay, final comment, Steven, Constance. What's the bumper sticker this year for KubeCon? Ooh, have we, have we decided yet, Constance? Velvet jackets are required for entry. How will make more sense after you see a special message from us? There's a lot of fashion on stage, on stage, right? All right, we stumped the co-chairs. Well, I want to say thank you very much for coming on and sharing little color commentary on KubeCon or on the program. Some of the things from the virtual event, too. Some of the talks, really appreciate it. And we really appreciate what you do. The community does. It's been a hard year. We're not going to be there in person. We'll continue to ride the wave in to back to the normal. So thanks for doing what you're doing. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thank you. This is theCUBE's virtual coverage of KubeCon, CloudNativeCon, virtual November 17th to the 20th. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching.


Welcome back to the channel. In a previous video, I showed you how to make a Gutenberg block using SCF, and the link is in the description below if you want to pick it up or in the card that has just popped up right now. And in that video, we learned how to make a Gutenberg block effortlessly, of course with some bit of code and so on. Now I'm going to try to make the same block using native WordPress Gutenberg tools. And this is going to be a mini series because I need to explain so many things from this particular angle. So I hope you stick around with me and go with me through the first video and the videos that will come next. If you are interested in learning how to build native Gutenberg blocks, then this is the series for you and the video for you. And if you're interested in this, then let's jump into the code because we are going to do the same block, but with a different treatment. Let's jump into the video and code. You might be asking, what's the requirement of making blocks like the ones we have here coming in from Gutenberg? And the answer is very simple. Most of these blocks have been built with what's called as React JavaScript. So WordPress go to React JavaScript or React.js for short and then it and interrupt it in a container so that you would be able to do a lot of these things using JavaScript. And of course, since WordPress has been using PHP, a lot of the endpoints have been made using the REST API. So you'll find that without the REST API supporting the post types that you have here, you're not going to be able to use Gutenberg or the blocks editor in the pages that you have. Now, of course, with WordPress 5.8, even this editor has been taken to the widget sections so that you can use paragraphs and all the other blocks that come in from the block editor. So the first thing that we need to do here is we're going to need to have a plugin of our own since we're going to be storing content. This cannot go in our functions dot PHP. This must not go into our themes because the way themes were made is to style things to style content. But plugins are a layer where you actually add new content store it so that when you change a theme, your content is not distorted. Rather, you have it still working even though you've changed the theme. So we're going to need a plugin first and foremost. But we are also going to use something from WordPress that's going to give us all the necessary files that we need to run our new block. So let's jump into my editor right now. And I'm going to go into the plugins and I'll open it in the integrated terminal of my editor. But you can use any terminal to do this. So in here we're going to require something called NPM. Now NPM is short for Node Packet Manager.  And then you can use them together to build something that is big or something that has different dependencies. So the way you check whether you have NPM installed is by checking NPM dash V. And when you hit enter, you should be able to get the version of Node that you have here. Now, if you do not have Node installed, I'm going to advise you to go to Nodejs.org. And then you will install the latest version for your particular machine. Right now I'm using Mac OS. So this recommends for me the Mac OS version. But if you're on Windows, it works the same way. Just download this, install it.  So after doing that, we're going to use a new command, which is NPX. And after that, we're going to write at WordPress. And we're basically telling NPM, please go check the WordPress repo, where they're storing all the Node packages and then look for the create block. And this is telling NPM that please go check the WordPress section. Check out for where they've stored all the NPM scripts. And then you're going to look for the create block. And after writing create block, we'll add a space and then we'll add the name of our new block. So I'll say itinerary block and hit enter. Now NPM will do its thing. And you'll see that it's going to install all the scripts that we need inside a folder here called itinerary block inside the plugins section. So let's see all the necessary scripts get loaded in here. And we shall begin to work. You can now see our new folder called itinerary block. It has some files inside it, like the edit.js. It has the CSS files that are needed, other SAS files. We have an editor.config. We have gitigno block.json itinerary block.php package.json and a readme text. Now I'm going to go through what each one of these does as we actually allow NPM to install all the node modules that we need to run this. Now if you don't know what node modules are basically we'll start from the package.json file to explain those. So the readme text is basically just a file talking about what this plugin does. The package.json is a file that actually stores all the dependencies that are going to be needed by this plugin. So you'll see we have the name of the block. We have the version. We have a description. And all these texts are editable. I'm going to just collapse them so that you can read everything. So we can actually change the description here and we shall say this block has entries for our itinerary. And then the next thing we shall do is we're going to see if the author is none the workplace contributors. We're going to say this is take a press. We'll allow that same license. We'll allow the main to be index.js which is okay. We'll see what that means because we have an index.js file right here. When we shall run some of these scripts like build you will see that we'll get a new folder here which is called build. And this build will have an index.js file. Basically this file is saying please start reading this plugin from that particular folder. So we also have the scripts here that are going to be needed. So we have a script here called build that's going to run the wp scripts and build out the block that we want to have after we finish developing it. It's going to build out only the minimal javascript that we need to run that block. We also have the linters. So this will allow us to link our CSS. This will allow us to link our javascript. And basically that means if we've written it poorly we can make it look right. I'll show you how to do that. And then we have a stats which is going to start running the javascript in the background. We also have the packages update which is basically a script that will allow us to update all the packages we have in here that are going to be dependencies and then make them to that latest. Should we be having WordPress changing the packages and giving us new ones and having them in a better way these packages update should be able to push us up to date so that we have good javascript running. Now next we have this itinerary dash block PHP which is basically the usual file that we install or write whenever we have our plugin for starters. So you see we have a plug in them. We have a description. We have the requirement for it to actually work. So this is requiring 5.8. It requires a PHP version of 7. This is the version number of this plugin. We have the author. Now some of these we are going to change so that they are like what we have in our package.json. So I'll copy that. I'm going to change our description for starters. And then I'll change the author as well in here. And then these others will actually look fine and then we're going to start looking at the code that's inside this particular PHP file. So let's go to our back end. I'm going to go back to the plugin section. I'll leave this page. I'll go into the plugins. And you're going to see that we have itinerary block and this plugin is ready for us to activate. The only challenges we are still installing because this takes a little bit of time. So don't worry. Just let it run. It's installing all the node modules that we need inside here. So we're going to take a peek inside this file that's installing and I'll explain what's going on. So you will see we have all these different files that are showing up in here. And they're importing things like React, JavaScript, they're importing things like Redux which is used for state management. And then we have things like that are going to help us to compile all our JavaScript into one particular file or a number of files should we specify. So if you are not well-versed with things like NPM or well-versed with things like React, JavaScript I would advise you to just stop for now and then move to learn those. But if you're interested in just getting to know how this works then you can stick around and maybe finger it along the way. But it is good for you to know how to work with React and JavaScript in general. So we'll continue looking at the other files that we have. We have the gitignore file that's basically a file that tells our git or our environment that is taking note of the changes we are making. Please ignore this. Don't include these files. Then we have the editor.config which allows you to basically have the same coding standard even if you're using different editors. So this is a file that's used by the editors to figure out what's happening like you should have an end of the line you should have an indent style of tab and so on. So the next folder that we have is the src folder which is basically the source folder and inside this folder we have the index.js which includes all the files that we are going to have running in our block and you're going to see that we actually import style.scss which is right here and then we also import the edit file which is right here, the edit.js and then we have the save.js which is also right here. Now you'll notice that you don't have things like JS, you also don't have the same extension here which is perfectly normal in modern JavaScript this is what's happening so we're just importing these files and using them. Now you will ask me how come we're not importing the editor.scss this editor.css is actually being imported in the edit.js you can see it right here. Now each one of these files has its own functions like the editor.css is going to import the CSS that you will see in the back end of the block. Then the edit.js is the one going to deal with the JavaScript of the block in the back end and then you will see the save.js which will also work in the back end to save your block and then you will see the style.css which is actually showcasing the block on the front end so you can determine how the back end will look like and also how the front end will look like you can be exact to the pixel so that you have a perfect block at the end of the day now these are the files that come by default from the WordPress script and they are the ones that we are actually going to use to make our block. You will now see that our time here is telling us some things have changed so now the JavaScript is being formatted and then our block is being compiled so we are near the end and we are going to see our first block that we built just by running that particular npx line and you will see that now our code has finished running we have the build script right here and you see the index.js and that's the file we talked about when we were looking at the package.json so this file is going to run first so everything that's going to be read is going to be coming from this particular file and you will see that it's one long string of JavaScript that has been actually compressed and made into JavaScript that's readable by the browser and that is simply because React is not read by our browser React has to be compiled and that's why we have things in our modules like Babel inside our node modules right here to compile all that code so I'm going to actually go choose this command that we've been told to do that is to change the directory go to our itinerary-block file and inside there we're going to run this script called npm start and basically we're telling our one npm run this line called start right here and we're listening in from this spot right here so webpack is going to run and it is going to be watching all these files so that whenever we make a change it's going to show us that a change has been made so for example if I come here and I remove this comment and then hit save we're going to have this compiling of the code again to show that we've made a change so I'll undo this and hit save and you will see that this we compile so that we have the most updated version of our block inside the build.js right here so I'm going to go back to our block I'm going to reload this I'm going to click activate and you'll see it will tell us that this WordPress version that's currently installed does not meet the minimum requirements for the itinerary block and therefore this block needs 5.8 and that is simply because in our itinerary-php we have this as 5.8 so if I change this to 5.7 and hit save I'll come back and reload this page and you will see that we actually have an error showing up here because something is broken that needs fixing but for now I'm actually just going to hit update to go to 5.8 so that I avoid all that unnecessary mambo jumbo I'll undo this click save I'll update my code to 5.8 and now we have a brand new WordPress 5.8 showing up all the different changes that have been made so I'm not going to dive into all the new changes that will go back to plugins and inside this you're going to see my plugin is activated and even if I go back to have my code right here and change this to 5.8 and then come back here and reload you'll see that I don't have any issues my plugin has been actually activated so if you want to restrict your block maybe you've built it for a particular version of WordPress you don't want to test it for lower versions it's going to be a pain to you you can restrict it to a particular version and then it will be running only on that version or higher so we're going to go inside our pages now I'll go to the sample page to edit it and inside here I'm going to look for the itinerary block so I can either use this plus symbol or I can actually go right here and look for the itinerary block type it nari block you'll see it's right here or I can actually just come here and add a slash type itinerary block and you'll see it's added there so I can add it from the different angles of our editor and these are going to be ready for saving so I'll hit update and if I go and preview my page you'll see that we have our first block showing up right here and then you see it saying hello from the editor and here it's saying hello from the saved content now how is it doing that that we have something different on the back end and something on the front end like I shared with you in our video we have all these files and these files are compiled into this build folder where you have the index.js you have the assets.php the css files right here now the index.js of course is going to supply all the javascript and you can see that webpack has converted all according to something readable by the browser you'll see we have a php file here index.asset.php and it is holding all the dependencies that we can get from the block editor from wp blocks from wp element from the internationalization or the translation script we also have the wp poly fields and it gives us also a version number of this particular block we also have the index.css which is basically the css we see inside the editor and then we have this .map file which is basically from the conversion of scss into css if you would like that would be good knowledge for you to pick up and then we look at the index.js which is also a map file just to correspond the changes that are made in the index.js we then have this style .index.css which is the style that we show on the front end of our page so we don't have to touch any of these files we can leave them the way they are all the changes we are going to do are inside this src file and what I'm going to do is just change some css on our style.css here I'm going to change this to red I'll hit save and you're going to see this is compiled so if I come back here and update my backend you're going to see that all these are red and on reload on my front end you'll see that these are also red because I changed the style.css file now if I undo this change you're going to see that when we come to the front end and reload it's still blue as the change were reverted and if I reload this here you're going to see that it is blue so after changing this to green I'm also going to change this to a 5 pixels so that we can see around our block a bigger border I'll come back here I'll reload you're going to see that now we have a green border around our block right here and if I go in the front page you'll not see that border because this particular editor.css only affects the back end it does not affect the front end so you can be able to do things that help you debug on the back end as long as on the front end they're not showing up so this is our first block we've made it it's actually perfect so the one thing that I'm going to do is just explain one more thing and then we shall close off this video and wait for the next video where we start making our own changes and adding our own things inside the block so if we look at this itinerary dash block file we have this particular action called init and this init is saying when we initialize WordPress we should run this function and this function here is going to actually register a block and it's using this method which is called register block type and it's taking in this particular directory where this file is so it's saying register the block that is here and then go to this directory this particular method is going to be looking for a file called block.json and inside this file we get to see a number of settings that we have here of course we shall edit them we shall make some changes we shall add more things to it but by default it comes with the name of the block and this has the name space of the block and the block itself it also has the version of the block it has the title it has the category where the block should go it has an icon that is coming from dash icons it then has a description it says the HTML is not supported so we are not adding in any custom HTML or whatever it's saying no don't support that it has a text domain to allow for internationalization or the translation of the block it's loading the script for the editor which is the index.js coming from the build again and then it has the editor style which is the index.css then it has the style for the front end which is the style dash index right here this is the final file that we need to have our block running and we can make a couple of changes so just like we did with the package.json and our index file I'm going to copy this to save the proper description of our file and that will not break it it will rebuild but it will not break our block so I'm going to reload this and you'll see that when I click on this block it is now giving us the proper description right here this block is for entries for our itinerary let me change it and say make changes make changes for the itinerary here so I'll save this come back reload if I click on this block or any of these you're going to see that the description is showing up here now this little smiley that we have here is coming from this icon here so I'm going to use some dash icons to actually change the look of our block and the way we know which dash icon to use is we can come to dash icons we come to developer.wordpress.org and then we are going to look for the resource folder and we're going to look for dash icons inside there so I'll hit enter and we can choose from any of these icons that we see here to make it work so in order to make our itinerary look smarter than what we already have I'm going to use this gallery I'm going to use this icon for the gallery which looks nice and I'm just going to copy only this images dash out I don't need to get the dash icons dash images and so on I'm just going to say images dash out I'll save this I'll come back to our back end here reload and when I click on this you'll see that our dash icon is now being applied inside here dash icons are actually a font type that is applied inside WordPress they are native to WordPress so you can use them and then you can change your block icon right here now you need to know that there are some changes that if you make on your block to JSON they are going to break your particular block so for example if we change the namespace of our block right here and say we're going to give it a namespace of take a press it's a great thing to do because you don't want to have the same namespace as so many other people because that will clash with your block so you give it your own namespace and then you can give it any other name right here so I'll save this I'll come back to this back end I'll reload this and you're going to see that our blocks actually break and that's one of the things with WordPress blocks if you are developing them be very careful and make sure that the traces you make at the beginning are the right one I'll go back to the code and revert the changes to the namespace I had made and then we'll see our blocks again we'll start making changes to our default block in the next video and at that we'll start adding some things inside our panel here that will allow us to have new settings that are going to show up inside our editor here so if that's something you're interested in seeing then wait and watch out for the next video otherwise enjoy whatever you're developing