Live from the Mendeley Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Welcome back to the director's set here at VMworld. We are theCUBE, I'm Peter Burris, and we're joined today by an actually very interesting panel, one that includes a reseller, a channels professor, and a strategist. Peter Bookman, chief strategist, at Sphere 3D, and then we have David Oxer, who is the channels chief, and guest of honor, so to speak, is Denny Phillips, who is the president of iPro. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you, good to be here. So, we're now in day three. Things aren't winding down, big party tonight, lot going on, got another full day tomorrow. What's your sense? What's the, what's the skeletal butt? Couple days now of announcements, people talking about what's happening. David. You know, Peter, first of all, thanks for having us on the show. Lot of excitement, lot of interest, a lot of VDI, a lot of desktop, always a lot of energy around VMware, being an industry veteran and spending five years at VMware, it just gets more and more exciting every year, and the customer excitement, the customer problems that VMware solves are fantastic, and the ecosystem around that has just been incredible. I mean, certainly, you know, Peter and I work very closely together and Denny with the solution that he provides. Without that whole ecosystem of partners, of other suppliers surrounding VMware, the success is phenomenal, and it just gets better and better and more electric every year. It's exciting, it's great to be here again. So, Denny, do you sometimes feel like chum in the water, given that everybody's circling around partners, drive more business? Exactly, I've been obviously here for a selfish reason. I mean, they're looking at the industry, the industry, what's going on here, and what other people are doing. I'm just trying to find out what can I do with my product to bring solutions back to my customers. So I'm looking at the leads, I'm looking at what the people who are walking up are asking for, and the message we see, we've got people coming up going, that's what I want, and I'm going, good. That's what I'm there to promote. So it's been great from my perspective. That's what the... And Peter, as a strategist, obviously you're not only thinking about products and problems, but also the new way that work is being institutionalized with partners, serving more complex problems with broader customer bases. How is this combination of partners, VMware, and problems coming together from a strategic standpoint? I had a great question, and this, once again, VMworld is amazing. Every year I was sharing with friends and coworkers and others that the more you come here, the more it kind of casts a little bit of a measuring stake as to how far we've come, how far VMworld's come, because it seems like every year is transformational. It seems like last year is not a good indicator of this year, and they're all the stories, the cloud, hybrid cloud, the networking stuff, all the things are very instrumental and foundational to what we're trying to do with the cloud. So as an example, it's really exciting to have spent time at the conference sharing along with some of our partners and in educating our partners about new ways to attack the application problems, new ways to attack niche desktop issues like GPU, and as well as the standard, it seems like everybody here has some storage component of some kind, and obviously we have that too, but being able to make it accessible to as many people as possible. We'd like to see cloud-based desktops and applications available for everywhere, and we've really enjoyed this show telling the story about the orphaned ones, the ones left behind, that we are excited about our channel strategy and execution of that to attack. So let's talk about that. I actually had a conversation yesterday with a CIO that I've known for years. She was here for the day, he won her on the show floor, and I asked her, I was surprised to see her, but I asked her what she felt, and she said that she felt very good that the decision that their company had made to go VMware 12 years ago was still relevant. Major, major compliment, and that's about as good as you get from a CIO. However, it's, and you raised the notion of orphans, everybody talks about the new, the new technology, the new direction, the new thing. A lot of customers still have to maintain the old, and some of it not so old, quite frankly, but still delivering a lot of value. Web's Sphere 3D has kind of an interesting approach on this, and that is how to ensure that some of those older applications can still be married to the new directions without, as you said, being orphaned. So Peter, how is this working as a story with some of these customers? Well, I think it's a great question, and I couldn't agree more, right? I have enjoyed watching, that's part of that stake in that the bar moving every year, because I remember, and maybe this is just me in my experience, but it wasn't that long ago, it was only six years ago when V3 systems, which became a part of Sphere 3D, was really innovating around solid state being the means of making virtual desktops available for knowledge workers beyond task workers. So applying that to kind of where Ipro came from, Ipro's been around since 1998, I believe, Danny, is that right? That's correct. Principally and originally kind of catered to manufacturing, but as with a lot of partners, grown, but what we were seeing in 2010 was task workers, like manufacturers were utilizing VDI for delivery. However, when you get to knowledge workers and beyond, it was a problem, and our view is until you get them all, we don't have a desktop cloud, we don't have an application cloud. So I'd love to get Danny's thoughts on what he's seen in dealing with virtual desktops and how attacking the legacy applications, like manufacturing, is part of this transformation. I'm very excited because being left behind as a human is no fun, but also if you're one of the people who has to deal with legacy applications and you can't just use any device you want, that's very hindering, right? Absolutely. Well, and our customer base, we've got over 400 clients out there in the healthcare world and the ERP world, as Peter was saying, and every one of them has problems with software that's legacy systems. No doubt they all have it. They don't want to do it, we don't want to leave them behind. And when I joined the channel with Spear, I was extremely excited about the Glassware products because it really does give them a solution now. It doesn't fix the problem, it's still got a legacy system, but it builds the gap for them to define what their strategy is. So it's an immediate solution provider right there that I can take to my customers and I'm already getting tremendous response from the customer base, and even validated here at the show, I mean people are seeing that tagline and they're going, I've got this problem, can you fix it? As a direct sales team, that's immediate to my ears. I have a solution for them. VDI, absolutely wonderful product to be able to help them as a trusted advisor go out and show them how they need to deploy better technologies, better management of all their desktops. So the combination of those two products are just tremendous opportunity for my customers in turn for me and Spear as well. And like the CI that I talked to, it allows them to say that the decisions they made, in certain cases, two, three years ago, are still relevant today because some companies are helping to bring them forward. And let's be clear, we're not talking about, Windows Vista here. We're talking about relatively new technology. Absolutely, yeah. So for example, guys like Denny, the reason why we like him is that he, Denny and solution providers like Denny have strategic relationships with their customers and have this trusted advisor relationship that can go in and say, let's look at your environment. Two, three, four years ago, I sold you an XP application, operating system or a Windows 7 application. Let's go in and talk about how we modernize your application, how we can help them continue to move the paradigm forward. VMware has great products and they introduce great products and it takes a while for adoption. So solution providers like Denny's, the iPros of the world that are on the relationship with their customer can really monetize that, help them monetize that very quickly and get that partner really, not only the Denny's in the world, confident and able to deliver a solution but package things up that really a business owner needs solves a business problem. In my situation, I could have a migration path for them. They could go up to a new version but it's cost prohibitive. They really don't want to do that to user interface issues, it's a whole new platform. Or maybe a timing piece. Time all those variables. This could help them until they're ready to migrate to that next platform. So we were actually wrote at Wikibon, David Floyer who's one of our, one of our absolutely super analysts, wrote not too long ago a piece about what he called device virtualization, which is a part based on technologies like yours and the idea that you can actually start thinking about how the best of the new interfaces can be bought to some of these older technologies. Talk a little bit about the vision that you have for how, for example, Siri can be incorporated into some of these older legacy applications by utilizing virtualization. That's one of my favorite topics. You know, I've noticed that one of the things conspicuously absent from this show is I didn't hear anybody say you're a VDI anymore. And yet, and yet, you know, the interest is still there. We're clearly seeing that. The movements are still there. So what we've seen anyway is until you can get them all, which is this perfect, beautiful dance of the endpoint and the hosted side. And so the ideal circumstance we're seeing is being able to use a combination of the isolated application delivery of the application or a virtual desktop that can be distributed and brought closer wherever it is, married to a endpoint delivery where I don't necessarily just stream it. I also can utilize things like Siri or printers or whatever else, right? Whatever I want from the new modern device that brings the table, gestures touch, even though my application isn't aware for it. So whether it's manufacturing or anything else, it's fun to watch as an example of an interface that seems like virtual reality has been pretty hot on the show floor. I don't know. I didn't see any classes or anything on that, but it's interesting to conceive of where we're going and being able to use the VDI and the application hosted and the device capabilities as a bridge where I don't leave behind the app, but I do bring the device capabilities with it. I love that day before, please. It was great and we were flattered to be mentioned in it for how this can be, how this should be so that in the movement in the cloud, we don't leave things behind. We get the best of all worlds. All right. One of the things that's going to happen is you mentioned, for example, a virtual reality. One of the things that's going to happen is graphics are going to become increasingly important to these interfaces and what characterizes a modern application. Virtualization historically has been, let's figure out how to run a lot of these graphics or instructions on the CPU in an emulation mode. How are you guys, or how do you guys envision that we're going to get to a point where graphics itself is virtualized as a co-processor or something like that? Well, I'll talk technology and then I think that because that's a great question that involves both technology, but also execution of the channel and what the channel brings. Again, because the way I see it, the way we see that is that it is an application by application and a customer by customer decision. I can't help but notice very much like we buy our PCs and our laptops and our devices, there isn't a one size fits all answer to that question. So I'm infatuated as an example, Microsoft identifies over a hundred thousand line of business applications. I believe recently they spoke about 14 million speaking of left behind applications. But from our approach, being able to technologically say, well, I can use a isolated hosted application delivery, container like situation, or I can use a niche virtual desktop with a drop in appliance that has a specific for that type of workload. We can leverage the GPU in very unique ways, but it still leaves the handoff that says, hey, we need the partner system that actually can take it from there, tie in all kinds of other partners and make very good and important architecture and delivery systems decisions like where to put the appliances and how to deploy them, when to use public cloud, when to use private, when to use hybrid cloud and all of those are possible with all of this. So do you guys have ideas? For my situation, you know, I don't want to sell one size fits all. Spear has done a great job of offering three flavors, a knowledge worker for those just task workers doing their thing. And you can move up to the business graphics box that has the necessary horsepower. And then you go on to the professional graphics for those people who are high intense on graphical users. So instead of selling everybody the same thing, they've got those tiered approaches which gives my customers what they need when they are intensive graphic users. And he can talk about the hardware that supports that Well, what I want to do is on the notion of tiers, there's also a notion of tiers in customers and there's also a notion of tiers and the quality and the skills of the resellers. Technology, what I like to say is for the first 50 years of the industry, we had known process and unknown technology. We knew we were going to do accounting and we understood the process is accounting. And the question is we're going to do on our mainframe, mini computer clients or some other technology that was always in motion. Now we got a pretty good idea of what the target technology is going to look like. Increasingly, it's going to look like a cloud. The details still have to be worked out but the applications themselves are not defined by known process to the same degree. We're working with customers, we're building new engagement, big data, IOT, an enormous amount of data being collected with a lot of analysis, it's going to drive system behavior. They can't be programmed years in advance. Long way of asking the question. Sure. You're the channel chief. How are you starting to look at your channel partners and envisioning up-leveling their skills not just at a technology level but especially at a business level to help them understand these application directions? Yeah, that's a great question, Peter. That's the old balance that you have to have with the channel, right? And if you believe that no channel partners created equal, they're not, right? They have different capabilities and different skills. Some have a bench, some leverage a bench, some don't use a bench at all and it depends upon the products that they sell. So our strategy is to go forward with the iPros of the world that are looking to build and augment the bench that they have, but also those partners that also have strategic relationships and say, you know, I'm not there and I really don't have a bench, but I want to partner with someone that has a bench that could help me do the delivery but they have the intrinsic knowledge of that customer business problem. That's really what we're looking for. We're looking for partners that not just sell the technology but understand what the business problems are, right? And can work with other partners. Without question, this is a partnership. This is a channel. The way a channel works well is by clear swim lanes but also the ability to do partnerships, right? So Denny isn't the, you know, no disrespect to Denny but he's not the be all end all. He's very good at what he does. But if a customer says, hey, I want to do this also, Denny can come to us and we say, you know what? Let's look at the right partner you partner with, right? If Denny's looking to build out his practice, it's up to us, meaning the rest of the channel to help him build that. Mentor him into that. Not just throw him into the walls and say, figure it out but we can take you through a step program. And that's really what I'm working on developing is this whole methodology. And we're there. We'd say we're, you know, in the next couple of months we're probably 90% through where we need to be. Identifying them. All right, Ben. Well, from my perspective as well, the one thing that's helped us really escalate our knowledge base as well is we have the products. We actually, my company, I converted to VDI through their products. We use it every day. We know, we know, we live with that environment. We know what it does. So when I go to my customer base, they know that I'm already there. Same thing when we're on a glassware product, we're containerizing things. Because I want to make sure that my team knows it, lives it and can then, it's easy to then teach and show other people if you've already been there. Denny's got a very unique approach to that. He says, you know, I'm going to buy the technology and employ the technology internally and use it. And also when customers call me, my customers call me wanting to know more about it. Not only can I show them the technology, I can show them how it's working in my environment. So he's kind of eating hard dog food, if you will. But that's really, he's made the investment and I know Peter and I are really very excited about working with the Denny's of the world and those partners that are willing to make that commitment. But I can tell you though, you could have as many certification programs as you want to, my guys will pass them.  And that's what we found over the years, that's the experience we've had. If we're going to sell something, we're going to use it. So one of the things that excites me strategically about all of this, and this is a great question, is Sphere 3D Merge with Overland Storage to have also a storage side of this portfolio, which plays a great role. A lot of the BDI things we've done, we could plug into other storage of course, but it's become very easy and frictionless to deploy our storage along with the rest of these components. But to that end, there was a very long established historical channel there to pull from. So it's great to be able to combine Denny and Habez, Dave was talking about the swim lanes so that I can say, well, here's where I pro plays and is going to be able to grow as great as it is with the 400 customers and what have you that are there that we're leveraging and building together. It's even better to know that we're going to grow together and utilize the rest of this channel to feed and also to escalate even beyond that. So it's, as mentioned, not the be all end all but it's an exciting time, especially in VM, again, VMworld and VMware because it's got a great ecosystem and so many people want this that when we have a drop in appliance based approach and a certification and accreditation that we can offer our partners, we have a great partner pool to pull from, 17,000, 19,000 partners worldwide. We have lots of things going on worldwide. It's very exciting to be able to build those swim lanes, evolve those swim lanes, and learn together with iPro and others about how we can do it better. The other thing that one more point is we have to do is we owe it to our partners to make transacting business easy. It has to be easy. We have to be able to- You owe it to your customers. We do. We have to make it easy. We absolutely do. And the easiest way is to make it easy for your partners. You're right on that. And that's really what we're working on. We have to be able to articulate the value proposition for the partner to communicate to the end users. Oh, it's very difficult to do business if we don't know what the end goal is. Well, look guys, it's been great to have you on theCUBE. It's great to get the perspective. I mean, look, if we're learning nothing from VMware, the technology is important, but increasingly customers want to talk about how are you going to help me get value out of the technology? And that requires great Denny Phillips. It requires great Phillips from my, Denny Phillips from my pro requires great partners. It requires David Auxer from the channel chief at Sphere 3D and Peter Bookman. Strategy, making sure that it all comes together. Thank you very much for being on theCUBE. Thank you. All right, we are ending day three or getting close to the end of day three here at VMware on theCUBE. The director's set. Stay with us. We've got a lot more to come over the course the next 24 hours from VMware or VMworld.


Just in time lunch was outstanding, I want to thank the staff. I also, as we're heading into the home stretch here, I want to take the opportunity to thank all of those folks who made this possible. Again, I'd like to thank CSC for underwriting the event and for providing a couple of folks to help explain and understand it, although they were here for reasons that you all got to see based upon their experience and background. I would also like to thank the CSIS staff who made this possible and ask you to join me in a round of applause for those staff, many of them are still here. In an institution like this, we live and die on the capability of people who bring to the table that which they bring and we are really blessed to have wonderful staff who work for us here. I'm going to turn the microphone over to Austin Yerks to introduce our luncheon speaker. Austin of course is the president of Computer Science Corporation's Defense Division. He's been in that job for a few years here and he's been at CSC for about 15 years I think and he's got a very successful career in defense systems. Of course, as we've heard over the course of the morning, success is a relatively elusive term when it comes to defense systems, but from a career point of view, Austin has been there and done it and so Austin, let me turn the floor over to you. Thank you, sir.  A guy in the back walked up to me and he said, hi, I'm Fred Downey, I recognize that name. There's second lieutenants in Wildflake in Germany 40 years ago, so it was 40 years. He recognized me because I hadn't changed at all, but I couldn't pick him out of a crowd, but I think it has been a wonderful gathering this morning. The panels were great, the speakers were great, excuse me, and it's always interesting to hear from folks like Dr. Gantzler, who has an interesting background because he was once one, a logistics guy. He was also a Pentagon guy, he's also an industry guy, so he can answer a question like the young lady asked there and he can give you three different answers.  No, it's really not too bad when you're walking on the E-ring. For my industry position at the University of Maryland, it's really not such a good idea. It's hard for anybody to follow that act because you don't know who he is on any particular day, but I really did enjoy that. David Fisher from BTA, I thought that was really a very, very good, not only answering the questions but from a presentation standpoint because that's an exceptionally difficult role, new agency, I mean it's only four or five years old, so it's very difficult inside the building to birth an agency, run it successfully and then get your linkage into policy. So it's just interesting to watch how logistics has gone from kind of a quiet, if you will, back room effort from an industry standpoint over the last 20 years to where it is today. And it's a preeminent field. It's not one of the things, when we always talk about tooth and tail, I did really like the idea of the alligator. I never thought of it that way. But you can't get anything done unless you have effective logistics systems. And to have an enterprise system at logistics is wonderful, but you have to have an enterprise system, I think as David Fisher was saying, that has to support the enterprise. And that's all things together. I think that's our next challenge from a professional standpoint is how do we get from a successful implementation of either a logistics program or a financial program or an HR program to a true enterprise over this next five or six years, and that's going to be the tough one. And no better person to tell us how to do that than our luncheon speaker, Tom Davis, because Tom is kind of unique, because he's not a stranger to industry. And he's certainly not a stranger to our industry. He's now a force to be reckoned with, although not yet a competitor, but pretty soon he'll be a competitor at Deloitte. So he has to also kind of march a little bit gingerly here on the fact that he's now back as one of us. I met him for the first time about 20 years ago at a small company called Advanced Technology where he had a bunch of jobs. He's kind of like had a government affairs. And then Advanced Technology got acquired by a firm called M-Heart. Nobody knows M-Heart anymore. It was a financial buyer in the early 80s. And they bought a company called PRC. And then quickly all of a sudden Tom and I started working together at PRC. And he was our general counsel. And I used to slide notes under his door, which was always a two-page note. And the second page says, if you read this page, I'll buy you a bottle of Shabbos Regal. Well, for three years I never got a call. You know, he's had a very distinguished career in Congress. He's chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. He oversaw directed and oversaw legislative changes that directly impact the business that we're in. And one of the things that he probably is not so well known is when he was chairman of the House Government Reform, we had the issue with steroids in baseball. And Tom, being an avid baseball fan, if he ever went to his office, there was probably half political memorabilia, things that looked like elephants, I think they were. I can't remember what they were. But I'm pretty sure they were elephants. And everything else was directed at baseball. He volunteered as the chairman to do all of the field work with regard to finding out just how bad the steroid instances were in the Major League Baseball. So that required him to go to just about every Major League Baseball field game. And it was always coincidental. But it seemed to be around playoff time. It seemed to be around World Series time. But I'm not quite sure. But he applied absolute knowledge of firsthand logistics as he directed that. He also traveled to the Middle East in all seriousness in Afghanistan many, many times. And he clearly understands that the linkage for the American military to take on very difficult missions. When logistical requirements impeded by some acquisition rules, it was Tom who sought and struck a balance between legislative reform and directive and his direct involvement in changing some of those rules and activities, which is very, very good. Tom did not get his education about the importance of effectively connecting sound management technology after his election to Congress. He got it earlier than that. He has been one of us from an industry standpoint for as many years as he has been and served us from a congressional standpoint. He's a great friend, a great personal friend, and a great friend to our industry. Missed on Capitol Hill. Please welcome Tom Davis. Well, Austin, I don't know how to respond to that. That of all my introductions, that's my most recent. And just to note a couple of things in the bio he did not note. One is I did retire from the Congress undefeated and unindicted, something I'm very proud of. I learned to give three different answers a long time ago when I was first running for office. So we're always good at that. When somebody said, I disagree with your position, I'd say, which one? So I was, we learned to do that. And Austin, the reason I never returned on the bottle of Chevy's Regal by religious tradition, I'm a tea holder. That's it. I answered all the memos. I was there. But I was happy to do this when Austin asked me a couple of days ago. I didn't realize I was missing Jeans Day at the late today so I had to wear a tie. But I'm happy to do it for Austin and for this because this is a subject that's close to my heart as someone who worked a long and hard in Congress for procurement reform and trying to make things right, giving contractors and the government the tools they needed to get the job done. So often in contracting, we all, we belabor the point about how inefficient government contracting is. But I just put an addition on my house. Now that I'm back in the private sector, I could afford to put an addition on my house.  And it's a great job. And it came in on time and under budget and everything else. And I was thinking, if I were in the government, how would I have been able to put this addition on the house? I would have had to advertise it, right? We might have gone to a schedule from that way. But I would have had to have competed it. I would have probably had some Buy America provisions in there. Would have probably had some small business or 8A set-asides in the whole thing. Would have been undergoing a lot of different transparencies. And when I was through, I'd probably subject to some bid protests. And my addition still wouldn't be completed. And that's the difficulty in contracting, is we try to do so many things with it and try to fulfill so many different competing public policy goals that we forget. The goal is to forget the best value for the government at the lease price. Something I did when I put my addition on the house, something government doesn't really look at because they're trying to do so many different things. One other thing Austin forgot to mention in my introduction to Austin is that I was chairman of the DC subcommittee. This is the least sought after subcommittee assignment in the Congress. But I took it as a freshman, first freshman to chair a subcommittee in 40 years at that point. But the great thing about that subcommittee, I wrote the Control Board Act, the College Access Act, for any of you who have kids in DC. The Revitalization Act closed the board in prison. But the most important thing about that assignment was it got me on the front page of the Washington Post, my freshman year in Congress. And I'm not kidding, 12 times above the centerfold, which is a big deal for a freshman in an area where you have so many members competing for. The problem with those 12 pictures is eight of them I was standing right next to Marion Berry. So I had four stand-alone that I could send to my mom and make her proud of me. But since Austin and I worked together, this is a much, the government contracting has changed a lot. These were the days where they used to have the RFP and the responses. And you go to a best or final or two and then always to the bid protest. I mean, government contracting has changed markedly in the time that we've been working together about 30 years. I think he said 29, 30 years. Washington has changed a lot too. I don't know if you've noticed, but this is a very, very polarized town right now. I mean, the Republicans and the Democrats aren't speaking to each other. They can't just get around the table and talk about an issue and try to solve it. Everything is sound bites, talking points. The House and the Senate don't get along very well either. I remember when I first went to the House, New Gingrich said, remember, Tom? He said, the Democrats are the competition. The Senate is the enemy. And you saw this with this health care bill and the animosity between the House and the Senate. And then you have the traditional tensions envisioned by our founding fathers, the tensions between the executive and the legislative branch. So it's a polarized town. It's hard to get anything done. And then you have all the rules and regulations you have to comply with and try to compete for a contract and then perform it. There is one thing, though, that brings this town together, however briefly, each year. And that is when the Washington Redskins open their season, you'll find out everybody is there. Republicans, Democrats, they're all sitting there, toasting the town hoping for a good year. It's been a while, but the Redskins bring this town together. And to just illustrate this, I was out a couple of years ago of my last year in Congress. I went out to the opening Redskins game. There were high hopes that year, as you might remember. And for the record, since I was still in Congress, I bought my own ticket for the record. I was standing way up in the nosebleed section, but I noticed that there was an empty seat on the 50 yard line. And it was empty at the start of the first quarter. It was empty at the end of the second quarter. So at halftime, I walked down about four tiers to where that seat was, and it was still empty. It was next to an elderly lady. And I tapped her on the shoulder and said, ma'am, is this seat taken? She said, well, as a matter of fact, it's not. I said, would you mind if I sat here for the second half? I said, I've been sitting up there. I can barely see the field with my binocular. She said, no, please, be my guest. She said, you know, I'm happy to have a company. I said, I can't believe there's an empty seat right here on the 50 yard line close up here. These seats are scalping for hundreds of dollars out front. And she said, well, she said, that was my husband's ticket. And she said, we'd been to 30 straight Redskins openers together. But he died. He said, but I know he would have wanted me to be here today. And I said, ma'am, I am so sorry. But couldn't you have found a friend or a relative or somebody that could have used the other ticket? And she said, no, she said, they're all at the funeral. So it's that kind of loyalty that we're missing, I think, in the town today. I wanted to make just about three points today Austin wanted me to make. First of all, I think we all need to understand the climate on federal spending is rapidly changing. This year, well, this last fiscal year of every dollar the government spent, $0.43 was borrowed. The same is projected for next year. We have a deficit last year, the deficit, ongoing deficit, $7.5 trillion. It is masked right now in terms of our annual spending because interest rates are so low. We're still spending only about 9% of our budget goes for debt, for debt service. It was actually 14% when I came to Congress in 1995. But interest rates are so low, it masks it. I don't think anybody believes interest rates are going to stay where they are. When they naturally climb, this is going to take up and eat up larger and larger parts of the budget. And it becomes a real problem. The other part of that is this deficit is projected to go up and up and up and up for several reasons. Number one, baby boomers are retiring. As the baby boomers retire, we become eligible for Medicare, for Social Security. These are gaping holes in the budget last week for the first time in history. Social Security started paying out more than it takes in. In the past, Social Security has generated surpluses. We have been living off these surpluses, $100, $200, $300, $1 billion a year sometimes in surplus Social Security revenue that we've been taking. And instead of putting in the bank somewhere, we put in IOU, we've been spending that on other programs. That's masked the deficit. That's ended. Now we're having to take dollars out to supplement Social Security and pay off those IOUs that we've been piling up over the last 40 years. Medicare costs will continue to rise, Medicaid. And if you look at this globally, what America is doing is basically we are investing in the past. Our global competitors are investing in the future. We're investing in the past. Over half of the federal budget goes to finance our older generation, retiring baby boomers and the generation ahead of us. Medicare, Social Security, 80% of Medicare dollars on people over 60 years old, a lot of that in nursing homes. That's where the spending, plus interest on the debt. So over half of our budget goes to pay for the past, where we ought to be investing in the future. Education, research and development, infrastructure, the kinds of things that will get us to the next level. We need to go as a country and compete in the 21st century. That's what our competitors are doing. They don't have the legacy costs. We bemoaned the fact that General Motors was spending $3,500 on every car for health insurance for retired employees. And how could they compete with Toyota or Honda? But we're doing the same thing at the federal level. And at the state levels, it's just as pronounced. And this new health bill even more pronounced because it kicks down more health care costs for state matching money for the increased cost of Medicaid. Now, what does this mean to you?  But it also means that in terms of constant federal dollars and annual budgets, there is a day of reckoning coming sooner than later. And it means that in terms of federal spending, we're going to see some fairly substantial reductions in the ways we do business. Entitlements will probably be one of the last things that Congress touches. You talk about partisanship. I came into office going after my opponent because they taxed social security benefits. When Bush came forward with the idea that maybe we ought to have private accounts instead of social security, we got attacked, and I had the ads coming my way. Anybody that touches this issue, the benefits issue, they do have what the Washington Post calls Medicare. Both parties use it, and you go after seniors and talk about you're going to tax their benefits, or you're going to take away benefits and the like. And yet that's where the money is. If you really want to reshape the federal budget, you've got to go after that 50% of the budget. It's actually two-thirds that are in entitlement costs. Instead, what they do is they've gone after the other third of the budget, half of which is defense, half of which is discretionary spending.  And we end up with a deficit for this next year alone of over a trillion dollars projected. And that's before some of the health care costs and increases and everything else come in and start increasing it above what's projected. So the day is coming sooner than later, where it's going to come into federal programs, it's going to come into contracting, it's going to come into everything we do every day, and we're going to see a change in the way the government does business. And defense, and my second point is having painted that rosy picture, is that defense is not immune. Now we're fighting a couple of wars right now. So the warfighters, we want to give them everything we can, a lot of that money, by the way, going to boots on the ground as opposed to some of the larger systems and things we're talking about. But that day is coming to an end very, very quickly. And we have to be understanding what's going to happen and prepare for it. And these failed systems don't help when you run the narrative on Capitol Hill in terms of how we're spending our money and where we're spending our money at this point. But defense is not exempt.  But they are coming. A year ago, January, the business board urged the secretary of defense and his top deputies to give strong priority to fiscal prudence. The board recommended that the secretary engage key stakeholders, including the Congress and defense industry, to gain their support for dramatic cost reductions focused on infrastructure, health care, and acquisition. Specifically, the business board called on DoD leadership to reduce overhead and infrastructure costs for installations, management functions, personnel support, central training, the streamline operations, and maintenance costs. That's what they are recommending over time. And I think those programs are about to be able to hit the ground. To someone from the private sector, these recommendations look like a commercial best practice. Putting them into action, though, is a lot harder when you get into the public sector than in the private sector. Political constraints affect flexibility and agility in the public sector much more than in the private sector. Complimenting this, though, are the competing political demands within this administration, where they owe a certain fealty to organized labor, which has helped supply a lot of support for their programs, for their candidates going into a midterm, which has put limitations in terms of what can be outsourced, how it can be outsourced. We've seen this reflected in a number of ways. The end of the old A76 is gone. Competitive sourcing is gone at this point. Really forced out by the public employee unions. We saw the new personnel system, the Pentagon, be knocked out in the last defense bill. Just abolished all together, basically from union opposition. Very split among the rank and file supported by most of management, but killed by organized labor. We see now edicts going out to various departments saying, we want you to bring 3% of your workforce in-house. And I don't know how many of you have seen some of your employees have taken in treaties from the Defense Department and other agencies to now come into government to fulfill those obligations and swelling the government ranks. By the way, completely different from what the Clinton administration did, the last Democratic administration, where they prided themselves on doing more outsourcing and being able to brag there were fewer federal employees than when they took office. So this is the exact office, but driven again by union. So these are the constraints that we are operating with it, and there are others we can get to in the question and answer. And so the questions from us is, what does this mean at the end of the day for all of us that are in the government sector? Rather than making tough calls necessary to target savings and overhead, the task force said DOD had historically used uninformed across the board personnel reductions to increase efficiency, often reducing the tail that the warfighter needs in support. And that's been government's tendency through time is that when we need to lose weight in government, we end up chopping off fingers and toes. Whereas I think we all understand that at point of fact, the fat is layered throughout the bureaucracy. It is layered in just the way we do business. It is people who are filling out forms that probably didn't need to be printed, working on tasks that didn't need to be performed, people working on idle, doing their jobs. But are they jobs at the end of the day that efficiently utilize taxpayers' dollars? And putting some of the new transparencies that are coming online in place, it raises the specter even more. And I'm not opposed to transparencies, I think they're wonderful, but we have a system of government in this country that makes it very hard to steal money for public employees and it makes it very hard to do much of anything else either within those same constraints. And what I'm saying is with things coming down the road and the tightening of the budget, we're gonna start seeing some changes. Let me just talk about some of the large programs that are going on now in terms of where I see it going in my discussions with high administration officials. Government several years ago moved to commercial off the shelf. This was the way we were going to go. We're gonna move to these large COTS programs. And what they found out over time is this is not working. It's not working the way it was intended. Agencies are coming back and they're saying, you know, we don't need all of that stuff. It's wonderful to be able to have SAP or Oracle, but these are F-14 fighter planes. We really need a Piper Cub to be able to get the job done. I use the same with my Blackberry. I've got a Blackberry, I can get ball scores, I can get stocks, I can find out. I don't use it for any of that. I just need this thing for email to make my phone calls. And that's all I utilize it. Now, the theory has been, well, government time is gonna grow into this. We're gonna make it. But in the meantime, we're faced with a lot of programs that just are over budget. They're not on time for a number of reasons that were discussed earlier today. I didn't hear them all, but we all know that. And agencies can't deploy these business transformation systems very well. They're not good at utilizing what is given them. They're very expensive, as I said before. They're rarely on time. Government knows how to use them once they're up. The myth is that somehow, as I said before, agencies are gonna grow into these systems over time. But that has generally not been the rule. There are certain exceptions. President recently had a summit at the White House. They had CEOs from across the country come in on who were active in the IT industry to try to look at what does the private sector, what are the metrics they use for these? And what they found out was very interesting. In one of the seminars that was chaired by Jack Lew, who's the undersecretary at state, noted that the public sector operates completely different metrics than the public sector. The private sector, for example, does their transformations in chewable bites? They do it short-term. They don't do these large, ultra-ultimate projects that take several years to do. Opposite of what government has been doing on these issues. It was a surprise to, I think, a number of members of the administration who had kind of previously bought into the fact that we have to transform government. We have to end all of these stovepies. We need to bring it together where we're talking across platforms and that kind of thing. So the end result is what I think we will be seeing over the next few months and the next few years is a stricter diet on the requirements that go into these areas. No longer looking for the ultimate, ultimate solution and going out there and looking for all of the bells and whistles that the private sector can provide. Modest upgrades versus cuts. Something like the Treasury Department doing all payroll instead of having it done in each different department. That makes a lot of sense when you look at their capability. Very hard to implement, by the way. And the goal, I think, executive branch is to keep Congress out of it. If you can keep Congress in our committee structure, which is more arcane and more jurisdiction-driven than the executive branches are, I think you can be better off. But I think the administration is seeing it and my gut is this is the direction they're going. SAP, Oracle, Momentum are very powerful tools, but the government doesn't know how to use them many of the times once they are set up and there's been a reluctance on the part of some employees to learn new areas. The choice of a larger change management versus government cleanup that they can handle, I think, starts moving the way of government cleanup they can handle. Let's do this thing again. Let's do it incrementally. The F-14s, as I said, versus the pipe cleanup. What do you need to get from here to there? And I think there have been enough failures and enough costs in there and they're going to be, as I said, with starting to get more cost-driven, I think you're gonna see more modest changes in some of these areas. So you'll find it will be easier to upgrade legacy systems just to keep yourself afloat than trying to do these huge business transformations. What they're hearing from civil servants is it's a shame to dismantle our updated legacy in favor of a new system that we really don't want, that we're not sure we can handle that we don't want to be trained for. And I think that's the direction it's gonna go. I don't know what you heard this morning, so I may contradict everything, the previous folks, but from the folks that I talked to at fairly high levels, and as we look ahead and predict, I think you're gonna see more. Doesn't mean the end of the ERP at all, but I think as you look across the board, you probably see less of it and I think you'll see it redirected in some cases to something that's more affordable. Cost is going to matter in the out years. Government doesn't have money. And the fact that the defense community has been immune in the past from a lot of these cuts has got to end. It's about 17, 16, 17% of the budget while we're fighting two wars. As those wars wind down, assuming they do, you're going to find money moving into other areas. And the last thing that Congress is gonna cut, one thing they probably should start with, but the last one they'll be cutting are these entitlement programs where all the money is. That just puts more and more pressure on the discretionary dollars every year. I wish I could give you better news in terms of what's likely to happen. Eventually, I think they'll come in and they're gonna have to attack the entitlements in total. There was a bill before Congress this year that would have appointed a commission appointed by both parties to look at the budget and come back with a plan to balance the budget. And Congress would have to vote it up or down without amendment. It would have passed, except that a number of members who sponsored the bill decided at the end of the day they weren't gonna vote for the bill. Because, well, it could include taxes, but you have a tremendous interest groups out there on the right and the left that are putting pressure on members to adhere to some ideological rigidity as they move through these discussions. And that makes it very, very difficult to go after the tough problems. You have your spending groups and what I call your entitlement groups and your groups basically on the left, your move-ons, your AFL-CIO that are vested in a lot of these programs. And members who dare come forward and say we need to cut and look at some cuts or readjustments in this are going to face retribution of the polls. On the right, you start looking at, I don't even call them tax increases. I learned a long time ago, we call them revenue enhancement measures. But whatever it is, you start talking about this, you get target on the right. There's a Tea Party right in your backyard. In the way congressional district lines are drawn today, where most of these seats are pretty safe and off the table for one party or the other, most members look at their potential re-elections in their primary. Republicans looking over their right shoulder, Democrats looking over their left shoulder. That means when you compromise, like Al Wynor, Wayne Gilchrist, just to get local, you get a primary and you could get taken out by some of these groups. And as I'm looking at these rules that are being written now in these states, John McCain's got a very tough primary because the state central committee ruled only registered Republicans as of a certain date could participate in primaries. Independence are out. In Utah, Senator Bennett, who's pretty conservative record, is getting taken out because he's too liberal. Number one, he's been in Washington, so that's bad by itself. But secondly, he has to go through a convention system to just get on the ballot and there's some question whether he will even make it or not. We've seen what's happened to Charlie Christ. But this is going on in both parties across the country and wide awake members, particularly those that were viewed as having safe seats, are looking over their shoulders. And that means folks, discretionary spending is gonna get, is gonna take the major hit over the next few years before they get to the big issue of entitlements which have to be taken off the table. I'm gonna end a minute and take some questions. I'd like to tell my favorite story, so you've heard it before. As many of you know, I was the head of the county government in Fairfax before I went to Congress. We were always very proud of our technology community in Northern Virginia because we felt we were bigger and better than what was going on in the Silicon Valley. We certainly understood government better. But I went out to Silicon Valley and just to take a look at what they had going on and had lunch with Dr. Bert Richter who was the head of the Stanford University Laboratories. Dr. Richter's a Nobel Prize winner. He administers their lab out there. I found out that the same thing drives their technology that drives our technology and that's government spending. You take the government out of Northern Virginia technology and we all go home. Same out there. The four laboratories at Livermore, Sandia, Berkeley and Standard drive a lot of innovation. Federal spending. As I said, remember before, we're spending a lot on entitlements and on old people. Not spending as much on innovation. That spending's going down. But it drove what was there. And he explained to me how it worked and then he noted that one of his colleagues at Stanford who had won the Nobel Prize found out immediately upon winning the Nobel Prize. He could go around the country making more money giving speeches than he could writing books or teaching. So he went on the lecture tour. Well, he just won the Nobel Prize. This was a hot topic in the scientific community and he could go to an audience and get 5,000, 10,000, maybe 25,000 dollars, maybe 50,000 dollars if it was to CSC or somebody could afford it for one speech. For one speech. And so the money started, he could give two or three speeches in a day. So the money starts pouring in. Well, this guy's been an academician all his life. He's been in the academy. He never really thought about making money. There are only so many liberal causes he can find to give his money away to. So he figures, you know, he said, I'm going to go first class. So he bought one of these new high-tech limousines you read about. I mean, it had everything was digital. It had the global positioning systems, the wet bar in the back of the, everything you needed. He hired a full-time chauffeur to pick him up in the morning, drive him to his beach, wait for him to get out, put him in the car, drive him to the next beach. Everywhere he goes, he'd get out of the, limousine, he'd be greeted to take him to the green room, give his speech, hand out his check and go on to the next town. This went on and on. Finally, one day there between towns, and the chauffeur said, professor, I've just got to say something. This isn't fair. He said, what do you mean? He said, you make more money sometimes in one day than I make in an entire year. And yet every day I'm the one who has to work the longer time. I have to drive you through road traffic, through rain, snow, sleet, icy roads. I've never gotten you there one minute late. He said, but the worst thing is, he said, I've had to listen to every one of your speeches. In fact, he said, I've heard your speech so many times. He says, I can give it better than you can. Well, this kind of upset the professor. This guy said, Nobel laureate. And he says, all right, hotshot. He said, you think it's that easy? He said, I'll tell you what, this next town, they don't have the slightest idea what I look like. Well, they got my curricula vitae. He said, we're about the same age. He said, I'll tell you what, right outside of town, we'll switch. I'll put your uniform on, drive you and you give the speech. And if you pull it off, I'll split the fee with you.  It's going to be embarrassing. And I'm going to give him the money back and we'll make it right. He said, you got it. So they switched uniforms. Sure enough, the Nobel laureate drives into town, opens the door, out comes the chauffeur. He's ushered into the green room. He makes some small talk for a few minutes. And then he goes on his stage. And it is a huge auditorium. I mean, people have paid top dollar to hear this Nobel laureate talk about all of his treatises and how he won the Nobel Prize. Well, he proceeds to give, after a lengthy introduction, he proceeds to give the speech. He gives it perfectly, flawlessly, except for one thing. Since he has memorized the speech, his cadence is a little faster than the professor's. And he finishes up about 10 minutes earlier than usual. Well, he gets a thunderous ovation. The MC comes out, shakes his hand, hands him his check, looks at his watch. He says, ladies and gentlemen, he said, this is entirely unexpected. But I see we have a few minutes for questions from the audience. First question, professor. He said, I noticed in one of your earlier treatises, you discussed the effects of photosynthesis and sun spots and their effects on avic migration in southern New Zealand. He said, in a recent scientific periodical publications, completely debunked this theory. I wonder if you could explain to us some detail of this dichotomy. Man, the chauffeur is looking around, scratching. He said, finally, he looks straight at the question.  He said, that question is so simple. He said, it is so easy. It is so elementary. I'm going to let my chauffeur in the back of the room answer it. So we've got about five minutes. So if anybody has any questions on the future, I just, hey, I hope this was worthwhile for you. But Austin would have been better. But he's, you know, any, any, any, any hot issues on the budget where we see this stuff going. If not, let me just, what's that? Yeah, that's right. Thank you very much.


Life is about flow, movement, and growth. You know, in traditional Chinese medicine, there's this idea that health is the free flow of Qi in the body. Now think about when you are stagnant in life.  How do you feel internally? You don't feel good. You don't feel inspired, you don't feel happy, you don't feel driven, you don't feel like there's limitless possibilities. And there's a great quote by Earl Nightingale where he says, A rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. For so many of us, we live the same year for 40 years and we call that a life. But very often what leads to both an enlivening of the spirit as well as an achieving of our goals is momentum, movement, and flow. So the key to longevity and the key to happiness and meeting is flow, movement, and growth.


Welcome to BCH Technologies. This video is a part of video one of our Twin Chamber Review series. If you want to see the whole video, please visit the link below. We're going to use four different methods. Let's use the magenta cartridge for the first method. We flip over the cartridge and drip ink onto it. We add ink until the ink overflows or coming out of from the bottom. If you refuel it correctly, you can see if you put it on the table, then you'll pick it up, and there should be no ink coming out, which means the pressure is balanced. The second method is usually done by refuel stores, such as Costco. Let's take a Costco refueled cartridge as an example.  After that, they will put a bandage over it. In this case, a small white sticker. The bandage doesn't need to be airtight, so a piece of scotch tape will do the job. We're now working on the cyan cartridge. We can see the air hole underneath the lighter C. We'll drill the hole between the air hole and the HP symbol. Then we'll fill it up until the ink comes out, and then we put a bandage over it. For the third method, we use a tool called a refuel pedestal. The tool can be found on eBay for about $10 a color. However, the black pedestal can fit all cartridges.  This company who made a pedestal uses a small adapter, which works with their own ink bottles. However, you don't have to buy their ink.  We don't sell a pedestal at the BCH because I think our customer is capable of flipping the cartridge over. However, we cover it here just because the ink is someone who wants to build their own. The inside of a pedestal is very simple. There's a U-shaped tube connecting the ink injection points to the cartridge. Therefore, we put a yellow cartridge on the pedestal and then we fill the syringe with ink. After that, we put an adapter on top of the syringe and we add ink until the ink coming out. Our final method is a cheaper version of a pedestal refuel. BCH sells storage clips for those twin chamber cartridges. You can find them under the accessories and the protective clip. Each clip has a silicone pad on the bottom to prevent ink from leaking. So it will be useful to store cartridges or hold the cartridge during refills. We enlarged the bottom hole with a utility knife. Then we cut off a hole in the silicone pad. Cutting a hole is not easy and some people suggest using a cigarette lighter to heat up a paper clip and burn a hole. After a hole is made, billmark the syringe and make sure the syringe doesn't go too deep into the hole. So it will poke the cartridge. Finally, we just fill the syringe with ink and inject ink into the cartridge.


Hello and welcome to the session in which we will discuss special orders which is either accept or reject those special orders. First, what is a special order? Well, it's basically a one-time order that's considered not part of the company's not normal ongoing business. So simply put out of nowhere you got a customer that's asking you to give them a special price. Why? Well, this customer does not compete with you in your market area. Maybe this customer is operating in South America and you don't sell your product in South America and they're asking for a special price. So it's okay to give them a special price because it's not going to eat up from your own sales from your own market. So what is the rule when you get a special order? Well, you would accept the special order they're looking for a special price if the incremental benefit is greater than the incremental cost. Simply put, as long as you can benefit more that the cost you are going to be incurring for this special order go ahead and accept. And here what we assume is the fixed manufacturing overhead cost is not affected. Simply put, fixed manufacturing overhead is not relevant. So what we are assuming here is we have enough capacity where fixed overhead cost is irrelevant. We don't have to take it into account. The best way to illustrate this is to look at an example. So let's assume Adam makes a single product whose normal selling price is $200. A foreign distributor came asking to purchase 3,000 units at $100. They want to buy it half of the price. Now this foreign distributor does not sell in our area, does not compete with our distribution network. So if we sell it to them it won't affect what we do now. Annual capacity is 10,000 units. Right now we are only producing and selling 5,000. So simply put we have plenty of capacity because if we have a 10,000 unit capacity we're producing 5,000 units. It means we still have another 5,000 unit of capacity and they're asking for 3. So the capacity is there. We don't need to incur any additional fixed cost. So what we do is we're going to look at our contribution income statement and we're going to see what we have. Right now we're selling 5,000 units each at $200. Our total sales is a million. Our direct material is 200,000. Simply put that's going to translate into $40 per unit which is 200,000 divided by 5,000 unit. Our direct labor cost is 50,000. It's going to translate into $10 of direct labor cost 50,000 divided by 5,000 unit. Our manufacturing overhead is 100,000 which is going to translate into $20 and marketing variable cost is $10. So all in all 40 plus 10 is 50 plus 20 plus 10 equal to $80. Now we also have fixed cost manufacturing overhead cost which we assume we are not going to incur for this purpose and marketing cost there is no really no marketing fixed overhead cost because the customer came to us. Should we sell except this $100 price and the answer is I would say we should. Why? Because right now our total total variable cost is 80 and we could also eliminate the marketing cost there is no need for even we can argue there is no need for marketing cost because the customer came to us. So really the additional cost is 70 and the incremental benefit is 100. So yes we would accept this order again assuming they don't sell where we sell our product. They don't compete with our current distribution network. Now this is one way to look at special orders. Another way is to when you are giving those special orders is what is the minimum price to charge when you have this special order. So it's very important to understand how do we solve a problem? How do we come up with that price? What's the minimum price we should charge if the customer don't give us a price? What's the minimum price we should charge? Before we look at this situation what's the minimum price we should charge? I would like to remind you whether you are a student or a CPA candidate most likely that this is who you are if you're watching I would like to remind you to visit barhatlectures.com it's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation and your accounting courses and or invest in yourself invest in your career. My resources are a great supplement great supplement to your education. If you have not connected with me on LinkedIn please do so like this recording share it with other if it's helping you it might help other connect with me on Instagram Facebook Twitter and Reddit. So let's assume we are selling those power banks we are producing them and selling them and Adam ordinarily sell each power bank for $50. The cost for Adam company is as follow $10 of variable production cost $18 per unit fixed production cost one $1 of variable selling cost the customer came and requested a special price a special order for 10 000 of those power banks but they wanted their logo to be imprinted on the on the power bank so it's not only they want the power bank they want their logo to be imprinted no selling cost is required obviously so basically there is no selling cost the customer came to us but we have to purchase an imprinting machine because we need to imprint on the case the name of the company so simply put what's the minimum price that we should charge this customer well what do we have to take into account well we have to take into account the variable production cost if they're asking for 10 000 unit it's gonna it's gonna cost us $10 of variable production cost that's gonna be $100 000 also we have to take into account we have to recover the $50 000 of the machine that we need to buy therefore we have a total cost of 150 000 if the customer is willing to buy 10 000 unit the price should be around anything above $15 will give us incremental revenue so if they if we can sell them for $16 we make a dollar per piece and this is what we buy incremental revenue should be greater than incremental cost what should you now to learn about practice and learn about whether to accept or reject those special orders go to farhatlectures.com work multiple choice through false exercises that's gonna help you do better invest in yourself invest in your career good luck study hard and of course stay safe


The secret between a great photograph and just a good photograph is so often down to timing. This is one of those secret photography skills that hardly anybody ever really tells you about. Much like a baseball player who steps up to the plate, the batter has to choose the exact moment to achieve immortality or to be simply a footnote in history. Henry Cartier-Bresson named this the decisive moment. Do you want to keep taking big swings and missing in your photography or do you want to start knocking it out of the park? How's it? How's it? Some would say that in this day and age of digital manipulation and conceptually staged photography that the idea of a decisive moment is somewhat old-fashioned that it's applicable only to documentary and street photographers. However, I believe the idea is at the core of capturing these little moments, the watching, the waiting, and being aware of what is occurring around you are those elements that any photographer, irrespective of the genre that they work in, should be injecting into their photography to make it a richer and more rewarding experience, both for them and for the viewer. The key to unlocking this ability to see those decisive moments isn't going to be found in your camera or running around taking thousands of frames of everything the passes you buy, but being aware of what's going on on the edges of your photographs. When people talk about the decisive moment, this is usually the photograph that is used. It was taken in 1932 by Henry Cartier-Bresson and it's called, and if you're excused by pronunciations, behind the Gar Saint-Lazare. A man is captured mid-leap above a puddle, forever about to fall short of a safe landing. It's a moment frozen in time which in real life was probably swept away with the ebb and flow of life which constantly passes a spy. How lucky Cartier-Bresson must have been to capture this once in a lifetime moment and why can't we be that lucky and have all of the stars aligned for us as well, not just once, but again and again and again and again. Henry Cartier-Bresson himself said that his photography, that it was all luck, but was it really or did he really lay down the stage on which luck could dance? Look a little bit closer in the photograph. The man is like a dancer. He's almost ballet-like as he springs from the makeshift walkway, but look a little bit closer. Now how many times have you seen this photograph and never actually noticed the posters on the wall? What can you see there echoing that hurrying man? It's no coincidence or stroke of luck that not only is there this poster, but it's in a prominent place in the frame. Indeed the main subject, the man himself, is almost out of the frame. This is very much possibly because this is one of the few images Cartier-Bresson ever cropped and apparently in this case it's because there's some planking apparently being all in the way, but the point remains that those posters are in a prominent position. They draw to our eye just as much as the man himself does. Now can all of this be really the result of somebody simply looking through a gap in the fence and seeing this scene magically occurring? Or is it the outcome of a master photographer recognizing the potential in a scene and he's waiting for that moment when a tiny element emerges which creates this photograph of a pure genius? It's probably safe to assume that this man wasn't leaping and you know just the only person leaping that day. So no doubt Cartier-Bresson had seen a few others do something similar and had recognized the wider image potential. He'd composed the shot and he'd waited. Waited for the water to be still like a mirror for a single figure to just step gingerly across the planks and then to spring like a dancer trying to reach the safety of dry land. So no, I don't really believe that there was magic at play. Obviously there was the ability to see a great image and that the right person came along and jumped in just the right way. But more so it was doubtless someone, Cartier-Bresson, using their ability to observe and to plan to recognize that moment, that decisive moment. A lot of people watching the videos on this channel have thanked the algorithm for bringing him. Now despite what people tend to think, this isn't purely down to luck and happen chance. It's because YouTube wants to show people videos that they think they will enjoy. Now please take a moment to leave a comment on this video even if it's just to say hi from wherever you are in the world because YouTube, the algorithm takes this as a signal to help suggest this video to other people like yourselves whom it thinks would also enjoy it. It's such a quick and simple way of showing your appreciation of this video and other videos and it means that you're helping photographers like yourself to discover useful ways of improving their own photography. Now that you have a better understanding of what timing looks like, how are we going to incorporate that into your own photography? Most people tend to think of the decisive moment in terms simply of sort of street photography but it can be quite happily applied to portraiture, to landscape photography and to macro photography. Indeed, most genres of photography have capacity to give you a decisive moment. When you look at street photography, Henry Cartier-Bresson's photography is carefully composed and it has almost a sort of impersonal feel to it, especially when you compare it to the likes of somebody like Gary Winogrand or Joel Mayovitz. I don't know why am I stripping over that one. Anyway, their photography is about walking and seeking out these moments of convergence rather than a meticulously crafted composition on which elements dance. Of course, all of these approaches are totally valid and at the heart of them is this ability to recognize those moments when they show themselves to you. You can start by not bringing up your camera to your eye all the time. When you think about those landscapes that you're looking at, is the sun constantly disappearing and reappearing behind the clouds. When you're talking to a person before you take a portrait of them, and if you do do portrait, I certainly hope that you take the time to talk to people before you photograph them, are you noticing how their face changes depending on what it is that they're talking about, that fleet and expression that goes just across their face? The flower that you want to photograph, that beautiful lovely macro look, are there bees that dance on the surface from time to time? Watch, wait, anticipate and you're going to start to tap into what Cartier Brisson was a genius at. Be aware of what might change in your frame and that is going to make your photograph come alive. It's not a specific thing, you're not something that you can put your finger on, it's just a shift in the vibe of the image that elevates it. Be open to the idea that unexpected can and will happen and that's what is going to make the photo. The more that you use your eyes and also quite importantly your ears, you can start to feel when something special is going to happen. Set yourself up for it and the words of Henry Cartier Brisson, your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. Try this for yourself, stay in one spot that intrigues you as a photographer, compose your image. Now wait, watch what is happening around you in that scene. Things will start to reveal themselves to you if you just let them do so. Perhaps you'll be like that batter we saw earlier who had practiced for hours in the nets, who was aware of what options that hurtling ball could take and he trusted himself enough to go with his intuition and he timed swinging that bat so that struck the ball true and out of the park. If you've enjoyed this episode, Alex Webb is a fantastic photographer who is not only a master of seeing a decisive moment but also uses layering within his photographs to create a rich and meaningful image. I highly recommend looking at his photography which I've linked for you here on the right. Click there and you'll go straight to the next video. Thank you ever so much for watching.