Onward and upward another weekend another Q&A and just so you know, I'm discerning the schedule for these Q&A's. I wasn't sure if I'd have time to get this done today, but sure enough, some time opened up. So here we go. Talking all about road running shoes. But just so you know, I'm thinking about moving the Q&A day from Saturday to another day, just putting it out there. I'm thinking, okay, all about road running shoes. Let's dive in. I'll get you the question of the day toward the end. And I got a lot of shoes around me. Actually, some new shoes as well here in the studio. Number one from Joseph. Let's go. Which ultra shoe would you wear for a road marathon? Thank you, Joseph, for that question. So actually just opening it up. Who out there has raced a marathon in an ultra shoe, which is a zero drop running shoe. I have never raced a marathon in a, in a zero drop shoe. Preferably Joseph, for me, I like a higher drop shoe for marathons at least eight millimeters. And I'm not afraid to go up to 10 millimeters. That's why I wore the 4% in Amsterdam. I really like a little bit of slope in a racing shoe for the road marathons. But if I, oh man, it's tough. So I was doing a little research, research for you, Joseph. The, the vanish are, I believe it's called from ultra would probably be my first choice, even though the midsole does look a little lean, but then also the Torian four. Okay. A shoe that has plenty of midsole cushion, but it's not really designed for racing. But then again for a marathon race and we're back, but then again for a marathon race, I do want a little more midsole protection for my feet, especially. So, oh, sorry, Joseph. I'm just not, I'm not a zero drop guy for road racing, but I know plenty of people that do it. Okay. Moving on. Number two from RJ. Hi, Seth. I've shelved my ASICs Hyper Speed 7s from last year because it covered a lot of miles already. I love the shoe and have been planning to get another one like that. Do you think it's a perfect shoe for a marathon distance? That's from RJ. So RJ, you probably, maybe you saw this on the ASICs website. They're discontinuing the Hyper Speed 7. I've never raced in the Hyper Speed 7. It looked like, just so you know, it looked like a pretty solid choice for a marathon but then again, ASICs is discontinuing that shoe. So you're probably looking for another one, RJ. And just so you know, I will be mentioning a lot more shoes in the next 10 to 15 minutes. That could be an option for you. So RJ, hang tight. We'll come back to that in one second. Sorry. The Hyper Speed 7 is being discontinued. That's too bad. Okay. Moving on. Number three from athlete in training. Would you choose the Hoka Carbon X or the Zoomfly 3 for a marathon race if you can't afford the Nike Next Percent? And this theme came up quite a bit in the Q&A from these questions from last week. Basically, people are realizing, wow, these Next Percents are expensive and some other shoes out there on the market like anything over $180 is a lot of money for a running shoe. So I get it athlete in training and I absolutely I would probably choose the Carbon X over the Zoomfly 3 if I was going between those two to for a marathon race. I just I like the I feel like the Carbon X. Well, first, yeah, I feel like the Carbon X has a little more pop to it. All right, through the gate cycle, through that foot strike. I think the rocker feel the rocker approach that the geometric shape of the midsole in the Carbon X from Hoka. Actually, where is it? Here it is. Here we go. I feel like the geometric shape that they put into the rocker feel of Hoka would be my go to choice. And I think the just the it's just a little a little more stiff, which means a little more pop through that foot strike. So all right, athlete in training, I hope that helps. We'll put this back there just for a second. OK, moving on to Luke. He's been watching the channel for a while. New studio looks great. Thank you, Luke. I agree. We're coming along not done yet. I'm still going to work on some lighting in here. But yes, it is evolving. Let's see. He says he loves the way I'm using the green in here. OK, nice question. Marathon shoes are usually good to take down to half marathon distance and five K flats are good up to 10 K distance. But those distances in the middle are difficult. What is the distance that draws the line between using flats and a marathon shoe? Is it 12 K, 15 K, 10 mile? Thank you, Luke, for that question. Does that make sense? So let's just say this is a racing flat. The Reebok float ride run fast pro. And then I would say the Carbon X is definitely a marathon racing shoe or even further, like the 50 K on the roads. So what is the distance where you draw the line? Oh, man, it's an interesting question, Luke. I'm going to say, hmm, I'm going to say it's right about 10 miles. All right, I would feel almost confident taking the Reebok float ride run fast pro up to 10 miles. It's really borderline. Boy, that's a tough one. But I'm going to go with 10 miles. Thank you, Luke, for the question. And he's right. I think you spot on like those distances and you don't usually race 12 K's and 15 K's very much, at least not here in the United States. So I think the topic, the question is, it hasn't really crossed my mind too much in the past, but I like the way you're thinking, Luke. So all right, 10 miles is my answer. Moving on to Dundas 71, I'm planning to run my first marathon the 5th of April in Rotterdam. Congrats. What do you think about the Nike Turbo 2? Please, where is the Nike Turbo 2? There it is. Okay. We better keep replacing shoes here though. Hold on, I'm going to put that back. Turbo 2, so I would say just be careful, Dundas 71. I would definitely try the shoe out ahead of time because I had major issues with the heel counter from 2019 where I actually was bleeding quite a bit when I wore, I had to tape the back of my Achilles tendon almost every time I wore this shoe last summer. And I actually, I didn't even do, I don't think I even did a full review. Did I do a full review? Because I don't think I even took it to 50 miles because it was digging into my heel so much. So just be careful. I'm not saying it would happen to everyone, why it happened to me. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. Maybe I should have gone a half size up. I don't think so, but I'm hoping that actually, here's the Turbo, here's the Turbo 1, here's the Turbo 2 and I hope they add a little more cushion back to the heel counter from 2018 to 2019 to 2020. So 2020, whatever they come out for the Turbo, I hope they have a little more cushion in the heel counter. Dundas 71, good question. Richard asked, how many miles do you recommend you have in your marathon racing shoes leading into the marathon race? Richard, I love this question, I get it quite a bit. And I always say, I think I always say at least 10 miles, probably no more than 20 miles. So I don't do too much, maybe two runs, probably no more than three runs in my marathon because I like to keep the shoes pretty fresh. I like to keep that midsole nice and fresh, not reduce any of that, basically no compression through that midsole foam. So good question, Richard. 10 to 20 miles is the range that I say. Okay, moving on, Gabriel asks, what's the best marathon racing shoe if you're on a budget, once again, this theme of budget and pinch and pennies and I love it, I love the way you're thinking. So let's see, actually there was another question. Well, this light is giving me a little trouble. I do apologize, everyone. I think it's on its last leg, which means I'm gonna have to ante up and get another one soon. Hopefully it's not too dark in here, I'll stand a little closer. Okay, here we go, there was another one about this, yes. I think, I'll connect this question to E. White. So he asked, hey Seth, Eric here from Central New York, love the channel, best running vlog on YouTube. Thank you, I appreciate it, Eric. My question is for the marathon distance, if there was no Nike next percent or 4% or carbon plate racing shoes, what would be your number one pick for marathon road racing today? So this is gonna connect back to Gabriel. If I was on a budget, I would go with the Adidas Boston or the Adios 4 or 5. The 5 is now out. Here's the Adios 4. Ooh, where is the 5? I think I left it inside, sorry about that. I believe the 4 is around $90 right now. Don't quote me on that, the Adios 4. And then the Boston, I think it's the Boston 4. Oh man, it's around there as well. Sorry, I'm not remembering the prices exactly, but either the Adidas Boston or the Adidas Adios 4. So the 5 is the brand new iteration, which I have, but I have not raced in it yet or even trained in it. So I can't really give you my opinions on that shoe. Good question from Eric and Gabriel, but those would be my two go-to shoes if there was no carbon fiber plates out there on the marketplace at this point. At this point. Ooh, I'll come to that in a second. All right, let's move on. We got a lot of questions here. Good questions rolling in. Okay, let me make sure I don't miss any. From Christopher, road racing shoes, what is better, this is interesting. What is better, light with little cushion or heavier with lots of cushion? I have many and love my Brooks, the Dyad Ravenna and Transcend are my workout shoes. The Astyria are racing, but I have a hard time imagining my feet making a full marathon, keeping in the Brooks lineup flat feet. What is your pick? I am leaning towards the Dyad 4 Chicago. Christopher, I completely agree. Now Christopher, I have, I raced and trained very little in Brooks, but I did a little research and based on what I saw on the Brooks website, it did appear that the Dyad, if I'm saying that right, is the best option for your Chicago marathon. And let's see, what else were you saying? Yes, the Astyria definitely, it's kind of back to that whole thought of how far can you take a racing flat? Like how far? And depending on which iteration, but I say 10 miles is about as much as my legs could take at higher speeds. I'm gonna mention a shoe here that might be another option though, here in a second. So, good question from Christopher. Moving on to Aaron. Are they going to release the Alpha Fly to the public? The Nike Alpha Fly, which is what Kipchoge wore for the INEOS 159 Challenge? Aaron, absolutely. I guarantee they release it because they are gonna make a lot of money.  I think it's 50 millimeters in the heel, 50. So, and Aaron, as you know, there's a little bit of a controversy out there about carbon fiber plate shoes in general, specifically when they're paired with very tall stack heights. And this connects to the previous question about what is better, light with little cushion or heavier with lots of cushion. So, for marathons, we're discovering right now that lots of cushion is good while still keeping the shoe very lightweight. And that's what Nike was able to pull off with the 4% originally, the four, the 4% originally. So, Aaron, yes, it will be released to the public because they're gonna sell a lot of them. Moving on to Javier. For race shoes, I own the Rincon. They just got the Beacon V1, not used yet. In your experience, which one do you think can do better at a marathon distance? So, good question. Here we go. Rock and roll time, butter my bread. The Rincon Javier 100% lightweight pop. Pop. I had to think first is it was a snap or pop. This shoe had some nice pop last summer when I was running in it. Yeah, I loved the Rincon. I'm not running it anymore, but I would definitely race in this shoe for a marathon. In fact, I think it's a decent option for, now that I'm remembering, I think it's a decent option for a more affordable marathon racing shoe. Even though I put it in the training category, more so, I think this is not bad. So Javier, good question. I'm glad you brought it up. I wouldn't wear the Beacon. I think the Beacon, I know people that have raced a marathon in it, but oh man, I would pick the Rincon over the Beacon. I'll leave it there, Javier, because I got a lot to get to. But yeah, good question. I love the Rincon. Good, good, good shoe from 2019. Moving on to, I already answered that one. Here we go. I am 19 years old in college. I am training for the half marathon and further distances. What is a solid racing shoe that you can recommend that is as cheap as possible? Back to that pinch and pennies. I love it. I love how we're thinking here, everyone. So half marathon and further, I said, Patrick, the Soccany Fast Twitch 9. The eight, the eight, the eight is a little firm through that midsole. Not quite enough midsole foam, but the nine has a little more midsole protection and it's cheap. I think it's under $100 right now, the Fast Twitch 9 from Soccany. I think it would do the trick. And definitely for the half marathon, you might be pushing it a little bit for the marathon, but the Soccany Fast Twitch 9, look it up, Patrick. And then, yes, now I haven't run in it yet, the Adidas Adi Zero RC2. Look at it. Oh, I'm excited. Once again, probably more of a half marathon shoe, but I think you could take it up to the marathon, especially if your legs are resilient and they can handle your 19. So I bet you can handle a little more pounding in your legs on the pavement. So there it is. I haven't run in it yet though, but I can just tell by holding in it, this would be solid for the half marathon and marathon distance. And again, I believe it's under $100. Yes, it's under $100. I'm not exactly sure on the price. Moving on, William. Hey, Seth, do you think carbon plate shoes have that much impact on the average runner over a long distance compared to a more traditional racing flat? That's from William. William depends on the distance you're racing, but I do think so. I think that any carbon fiber plate shoe is gonna help basically anyone, as long as you're not running 14 minutes a mile or 15 minutes a mile, like then, yeah, the benefit might, but I think any pace, I think the carbon fiber plate's gonna give you a little extra oomph through the gate cycle. So William, yes, I do. I really do. Moving on, Teeve Cuba. I have the Nike Peg 35s. There they are. Whoa, Nike Peg 35s and I love them. I kinda want something a little more bouncy. What pair of shoes should I get next? Teeve Cuba. The immediate thought was the Clifton 6. I don't own the Clifton 6, but I've held it in a running shoe store and a lot of people say they love it for their easy days. So the Hoka Clifton 6, definitely, definitely, okay, we're running. I gotta remember to keep putting shoes back because I'm making a mess in here. There it is. The Skechers Max Road 400%. You said more bouncy. This is your shoe. This is your shoe. And then a new shoe that I left inside, but the A6 Gel Nimbus Light. The A6 Gel Nimbus Light, it felt kinda bouncy yesterday when I took it out for my first impression run. So those would be my three right now. Clifton 6, Skechers Max Road 4, and A6 Gel Nimbus Light. Good question from the TVCuber. All right, moving on to Garth. Hi Seth, long time follower of yours and love seeing the progress you have made on this YouTube channel. Thank you, Garth. I know you, Garth. I think Garth might be from Australia. If I am remembering, don't quote me on that. I am right now in need of a new marathon shoe and I'm really interested in a couple, the Carbon X or the Nike Zoom Fly 3, which would you recommend? He's 62 kilograms is his weight. I bet he is from Australia if he's putting his weight in kilograms. I actually, what is that in pounds? Anyway, and have a marathon PB of three hours and 55 minutes. Congrats, Garth. All right, Carbon X. Unfortunately, I did not bring it into the studio. Sadly, it's in the house. Okay, I would go back. Whoa, I guess I kind of already answered this. I would go with the Carbon X and you weigh 62 kilograms kilos, I guess I should say. Yes, the Carbon X, I think I already answered this earlier, but let me try and dive a little bit more into it. The other reason I like it for the marathon is it feels compared to the Zoom Fly 3, a little more Garth, a little more stable. It's a wider platform.  I'm not saying you have to overthink your foot strike in that, but for the marathon distance, the less you have to think about the better, especially when you get tired.  So the less mental energy you have to expend, I think the better and I think the Carbon X is just a nice smooth, easy landing through your foot strike. So Garth, that would be my answer once again. Hope that helps. Okay, moving on. This is a road running shoe Q&A, but we did sneak one in for the track from Derek. He's got a daughter doing track soon. You think, do I think the Audi Zero, the Audio's lineup or the Zoom Fly lineup from Nike would be okay for the 1500 and 3K racing. She's hesitant to use spikes because an upper classmate said she didn't care for them. She used the 4% for the same events. So that's really interesting. Oh, actually, this is crazy. I cannot imagine showing up to a high school track meet in 2020 and seeing kids run around the track in some 4% or some next% or even some, who knows? Maybe some Carbon Xs. It's very foreign to me. In high school, I don't have my track spikes from high school anymore. Sadly, keep your track spikes, high schoolers. You'll want to relish them someday. We wore spikes and I'm a big fan of spikes. I think they do make you run faster. First of all, they're very lightweight. Derek, I think spikes are solid, especially if you can stay healthy. And I think you honestly will run a little bit faster, especially for the 1500 meters, okay? I would lean towards spikes for the 15. For the 3K, which is interesting that the high school is doing a 3K, I guess maybe it's a 3200 perhaps. And if your daughter does not want to wear spikes, I get it. So once again, I did a little research for you. So that's Soccany Type A8. Soccany Type A8 on clearance right now from Running Warehouse. If I remember, Derek, I will remember to link to them down below. And then also the Nike Zoom Streak LT4, also on clearance right now from Running Warehouse, link down below. And then last but not least, if you really want to splurge, Derek, these are also on clearance, but they're still, they brand new, 250 bucks. I think they're around 180 or 190 right now. Once again, from Running Warehouse, the Reebok Float Ride Run Fast Pros, the lightest shoe on the market that I know of. 3.1 ounces. I would love, Derek and your daughter, I would do anything to run a mile or two mile. I would even run at 800 meter in this shoe. I 100%, I love this shoe. I only raced in it once in 2019. Got the W in this shoe and I wore it for a 5K on the roads. And so anyway, I love this shoe, love this shoe. Anyway, all three are linked down below. Thank you for listening. That's all the Q and A. All right, question of the day. Here we go for next week, which I'm actually gonna poll the questions from Facebook. So my Facebook page, if you haven't followed it yet, it's down below. So I'm gonna post this question on Facebook for next week's Q and A, all right? So it's gonna be all about question of the day. What questions do you have for me? All about ultra or trail racing? Ultra or trail racing? It's only January, but guess what? March, I can smell March. It's on the horizon, which means trail running is gonna be back on the docket for many of us sooner rather than later. I wanna get the conversation going about trail and ultra running. So Facebook page, if you have the question, it is down below. Thanks for being here, thanks for watching. You guys rock and yes, we're gonna throw it back to on the right last week's Q and A. Of course, what was it about? It was about marathon racing, yes. Marathon racing, that'll be on the right or marathon training, I should say on the right. And then on the left, we'll throw it back to the Q and A playlist video. All right, everyone, you guys rock. Thanks for being here, thanks for watching. See beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.


Our next speaker, his name is Dr. Mike Mu and he is a dentist, more specifically a orthodontist who's been practicing for over 20 years. He's London based and an expert on dietary effects on facial growth. His researching treatments to affect facial growth to avoid orthodontics and other problems. And he's also a third generation dentist. His grandfather was a dentist, his father was a dentist, so we're in good hands. Let's welcome Mike. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you very much for inviting me along and thank you very much for listening to me. I'm going to approach something that kind of seems very obvious when I say it, but I would imagine it's going to be something relatively new to most of you. We have to ask the question, what makes us beautiful? We could ask what gives us a good body? Well, undoubtedly genetics plays an important role. You couldn't grow without your genes. Also, of course, diets are important. We've heard a lot about that and I'm not going to stray too much into diet because that's not the direction I'm coming from. I was specific to the diet. Of course, use, how much you use your body, I'm going to talk more about that and I'm going to talk about posture. No one would doubt that use can change the form and shape of your body. We don't talk as much about posture, but you know that people who posture well have good physical shape. Now, what gives you a good face? It's a general rule most people think is pretty genetic because we look similar to our parents, so the assumption has been there that it's genetic. Now, I'm Mike Mew. I qualified at the Royal London Medical College in Whitechapel, which for those of you who don't know the area, it's literally a couple of miles further east from here. I then went into facial surgery. I did some in South Africa. I also did some in Brighton. I studied my orthodontics in Denmark because it's the best place for orthodontics one of the best in the world and probably certainly the best for adult orthodontics in the world. I learned orthotropics. Well, it's a concept my father came out with, looking at some of the ideas and concepts of my grandfather. I did learn it with the practice and pearly why I work with my father, but you know, I've been listening to this since I could first learn to talk and walk. Now, studying orthodontics would always struck me as strange, because we didn't know the cause of what we were treating. This diagram here, it talks about 60, 60 plus percent of the population having some form of malocclusion, which is crooked teeth. That's slightly arbitrary. You could argue that that's higher. It depends what way you define it. Now, the most interesting thing is we only know the cause of 5%. So we've got a problem, a disease, if you will, that affects the majority of the population. We only know a small percentage of the causes. Those causes tend to be people with diseases, people with syndromes, traumas, infections, the obvious ones. I would argue that that 5% has been fairly consistent through history. It's this big 60%, or it depends how you define it, larger group, that we really don't know. So if most of you have crooked teeth, we don't know the cause of what you have. I can't put a finger on it. Now, we're talking crooked teeth and jaws. That's the definition of malocclusion. Now, how are we treating it? Well, at the moment, we're taking teeth out of this too many teeth, and then we're pushing the rest of the teeth into position. Sometimes we'll widen it to reduce the number of teeth we have to take out. But either ways, it's a surgical mechanical correction. You usually do this if you've accepted an inheritance. So we've kind of come to a decision that is inherited. So the suggestion of causes is a mixed inheritance. The suggestion is that, well, now that we can travel, we get one group of people mixing with another group of people, you have a mismatch with the genes, and that's what's causing the problem. There's another theory that there's a trend to a smaller jaws. Our ancestors had bigger jaws, or rather the ape ancestors we came from had larger jaws, and so it's just an aproprogression. That's the way it goes. Really not much evidence for either of those. Now, what interests me is we've been anatomical humans for the minimum of 160,000 years, maximum something like 220,000 years, and by anatomical humans, we've got all the bits that would go to make us humans. 40,000 years ago, we were effectively what we are now, which is Stone Age Man. Now, most of that group, right the way through to about 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic period, there was less than 5% of these crooked teeth, no crooked jaws, really. Now, by the same definition as different from the previous slide, there's now 95%. That's a huge change, just really from the Neolithic period, and it's really happened in the last 150 years, 200 years. That's when the crunch times happened. We've also got, we are one of 5,400 species of mammal. The human race, just one. Now, of those other 5,400 species, none of them get these problems. None of them get crooked teeth. Maybe a few domesticated cats and dogs and some feral foxes, but then there's not really representative of wild animals or natural animals. Of course, then we've got other issues. We've got some indigenous populations today. You look at them. You see the documentaries. You see these individuals in the tribal groupings, and they've nearly always all got perfectly straight teeth and nice wide arches. And there's interest in watching the rapid lifestyle changes in populations. One of my personal interests is a lot of the Afro-Caribbean population that I treat here in London. You'll see grandparents coming with great facial development, perfectly straight teeth. They've been brought up, particularly in Africa or the Caribbean.  The children were brought up in this country generally on ethnically sourced foods, and they've got pretty straight teeth, fairly nice faces. They'll have a gap between the front teeth, maybe one tooth out of the way, a little bit of crowding at the bottom, but pretty nice development. Their children, they've been brought up on McDonald's and television meals, and they've got the same level of crowding as we have, the general population. So it seems as if it's entering in this population that causes this change. Of course, we've got twin research, and the twin research generally points to the environment. It says it's not a genetic problem that we're dealing with here. And of course, just off the bottom of the page, I hope too many of our slides aren't like that. We've got population studies.  It's not the genes causing us. Interests me greatly, because of course you can affect the environment.


I'm your host Sopran Bhartya and my next guest is once again, Chris Eniscek, CTO of CNC and VP of Developer Relations at the Linux Foundation. Chris, it's great to see you after such a long time. Yeah. No, it's been a while. Good to catch up on things. Yeah. And so much has been happening, is happening at the Linux Foundation and one thing that we are going to talk about today is the newly announced Open 3D Foundation. It's something close to my heart because I am also a very avid gamer. Xbox, Citizax, PS5, Nintendo Switch, whatever VR. I have like all the VR headsets. So I was looking forward to this announcement. So I want to start with what is the basic idea behind this foundation? Sure. So, you know, like all open source foundations, usually in the Linux Foundation, usually it starts with a project or an idea. And so in this case, you know, it was a couple of years ago, we were having discussions with folks from the gaming engine community, right? In particular, a team from AWS called the Lumberyard team. So Lumberyard was a source available triple A class engine that, you know, came originally from the Crytek engine kind of code base that AWS was working with. And so they built a pretty decent community around this. And so we were having discussions with them and, you know, there was just an innate desire to have more open source collaboration in gaming, not only to improve and learn from the lessons they had with building the Lumberyard community, but in general, getting, you know, gaming studio involves bringing gaming engines, 3D engines to other industries such as, you know, automotive, you know, 3D engines are being embedded all over the place.  So there's a whole kind of new world happening here. And as we know from our lessons with, like, Linux and Kubernetes, what better way to kind of, you know, increase innovation in the space that maybe you're not beholden to just a single vendor than doing a fully open source collaborative under a neutral governance structure, you know, approach to kind of build that. So, you know, I think there was a small group of people that saw that vision and kind of wanted to change it. And we had a first project to kind of see the foundation, which was basically the successor to Lumberyard. Internally, that team has been working on completely revamping the code base, moving it from a monolithic architecture to a modular one, making it truly to work on L Cloud. So, like, that was the kind of progenitor project and kind of idea. And if you're involved in, if you know anything about gaming, it's a very weird industry. They tend to be, they tend to have weird feelings around open source. The lawyers, I think, are a little bit behind the time towards attitudes and the engineers in general, I think are just not, the education is not there. And we've seen this in other industries too. So, the fact is that a lot of these engines are used just beyond gaming and some of the automotive 3D rendering is there. And if you look at the world, we are moving towards VR, AR based, you know, Apple should be doing a lot of work there. So, there will be a need for open source, you know, I mean, there is open source 3D rendering, but we need something which is developed by a community. And so, can you talk about that aspect of us again, that, you know, this is while coming from a gaming, but it goes beyond that. Yeah, no, I mean, you mentioned a lot of those examples. Like, you know, I was just having a conversation with someone today that is working on developing, essentially, you can think of a piece of software that runs kind of in a VR environment via 3D engine to help train people on disaster recovery and just, you know, disaster preparedness. I'm like, so it's like being used in healthcare obviously for training in a lot of different ways. So, like, the applicability for like 3D engines to be, you know, all facets are alive is huge. Like, you know, and I've always said, like, we basically, you know, we need the Linux of 3D engines. And, you know, I hope this is a, you know, step towards making that kind of vision a reality.  It was started essentially by AWS, Niantic, Intel, you know, Huawei, you know, we're kind of all of all that, you know, kind of the premier level.  So, like, all these people are coming together from different, you know, kind of walks of industry, right? You have some gaming folks. You got your chipset vendors, obviously, you're interested in sharing these stuff runs extremely well. And then you have gaming studios, like Niantic, that are interested in building games here. Because if you're familiar with the gaming industry, there's really not many, actually, there are no open source AAA class gaming gens out there. There's some like smaller open source engines, but they're generally kind of toy. They're not made to build wide, you know, wide AAA style games, or they're focused on 2D. And most of the other engines out there are commercial and proprietary, right? For every game that you're selling, you're essentially paying a tax for that engine usage, right? And you're also beholden to a vendor where, you know, you may have cool, innovative ideas to improve the engine, but maybe the vendor is not going to accept them, right? Like, it's just not, it's just a terrible relationship. It's just like kind of a whole whole Linux story, right? And Kubernetes, people are able to innovate and compete much faster than commercial offerings there. So it's a brand new foundation. Our first project is O3DE, which is, you know, get super active. There's tons of folks on Discord already saying hi and, you know, small studios popping up saying like, oh, it's so cool to kind of see something fully open source here and welcoming. No, you mentioned a couple of things there. One was that you said, hey, you know, disaster recovery. You talked about healthcare. And the interesting thing is that once again, I just recorded interviews, you know, where Linux Foundation is helping projects with disaster recovery, you know, in Asia and other countries. And then also you have healthcare initiative is there. Your XSoft is there.  Academy Software Foundation. So what I see is there will be once again, a lot of cross-pollination. Can you already see some discussions going on with these system foundations? Yeah, no, it's the beauty of kind of the Linux Foundation in general. We have all these kind of industry verticals that span automotive, energy, film with the Academy Software Foundation.  And like it would be great maybe if we would have, you know, access to that, how can we potentially make, you know, make that work, right? Within kind of the environment, you know, that we're running into.  There's like this crazy 3D model design thing where you're like, I want to change the color. I want to do this. So you're kind of like designing. And that's actually like a lot of times there's a 3D engine running that, running that, right?  So like, yeah, definitely a lot of interest from the Academy Software Foundation side. It's basically a lot of like reusable components, you know, from like color optimizers, you know, to algorithms used to maybe do like explosions in movies. And there is more and more overlap between the film and gaming industries now. In many ways, like, you know, film is using a lot of technology, you know, potentially that is relevant to gaming. People are doing 3D models and all this. So I think you're going to see more overlap between those two kind of, you know, foundations where I think O3DF and O3D are really focused on like a very core stable, you know, engine that is kind of usable, where I see Academy Software Foundation more and like the making the little components, the projects that others could kind of reuse and embed in easier ways kind of, you know, you know, I could see O3DE potentially using some stuff out of Academy Software Foundation to include in their engine or supporting some standard or spec that is developed in the Academy Software Foundation. Linux Foundation has a also very good structure and one of the reasons that a lot of companies, organizations go to Linux Foundation is the governance support. So can you talk about what is going to be the structure of this foundation? Yeah, simple things. So, you know, like all Linux Foundation efforts, we always generally separate the kind of business side of the house from the technical side of the house. So there is a governing board, which is kind of you're full of, you know, basically your member companies who pay money to sustain the foundation, right? So they get kind of a voice on how that, you know, or vote of how that money is spent to support the organization. So mostly boring business stuff. So we have that and then we have a completely separate technical steering committee that is staffed up by the people that work on the engine and potential future projects of O3DF. So that's basically the kind of structure, same type of deal, you know, we always find it useful to separate business from technical governance. Right now it's still in the bootstrap stages where they're all like, we're going to be holding our first governing board meeting for O3DF in, I think it's July 20th. So I think about a couple weeks or so, you know, from now to kind of get started. And then the technical board meetings will follow after that with open elections to kind of fill, I believe there's nine slots for the technical board for O3DF to start. And then we're kind of off to the races. We're going to be doing a first conference for O3D, for the O3D project later this year in October in LA, October 11th and 12th and in Los Angeles, which is awesome because there's a great kind of gaming studio community and obviously LA close to film. So kind of great kind of cross, you know, pollination potential there. And we're also kind of doing some small talks and events at the Gaming Developer Conference or GDC, you know, coming up also.  So Chris, can you talk about something that I wanted to talk to you about is that, you know, there is a misconception that if you have members who are paying a fee to be part of a foundation, they influence or control that product. Can you just make it clear that that is not the case? Yeah, no. So, you know, as I've mentioned before, like Linux Foundation breast practice is always a separate the business decisions from the technical decision. So like funding from technical and, you know, the way this basically works is this, if you're a company and you put in money to support an organization, you generally have a seat or have a right to run an election for a seat that has a vote on how that money is spent, right? Kind of like, you know, voting in a local election and having input on how money is potentially spent for a local city, city bond, right? Separately, there is a technical board, which is usually staffed up of people who actually contributed to the project. So it's a duocracy model. So, and those are structured in many different ways. Usually when you bootstrap, there's a mix of some appointed seats to get started. And then eventually things move to kind of an open election, where everything is just based on the people actually contribute and show up code. If you recall how Kubernetes was started, you know, we formed the CNCF. We got the governing board meeting. They just approved the initial budget. The technical board got together and eventually bootstrapped the Kubernetes steering committee, which initially was, I think it was like seven or five people. They laid out all the process and then, you know, got everyone to agree. And then it all moved to kind of open elections every, I think, two years and they kind of staggered the seats. So there's no, there's no like, people sometimes say it's, oh, it's like a pay-to-play model. Like that's not a way of thinking about it. You should think about it as a pay-to-sustain.  And absolutely, companies should have a right to say how that money is spent, like they're a constituent. What they can't do is force features or certain technical things, you know, on their roadmap. The only way to get accomplished that is by showing up, doing the work and perform, you know, performing like, like a duocracy, you know, tight, tight model. So it's a completely separate approach of where we separate out funding from the technical governance. Usually we'll have a technical board member, usually the chair, the technical board sit on the governing board to have a voice also on potentially things and bring up any issues. But, you know, it's different for each foundation, but we consider that a best practice. I truly consider it as a pay-to-sustain model. And to me, it drives me up a wall a little bit some days because like sometimes projects are like, oh, like people aren't paying or like we can't raise funds and all this stuff. Like, you know, part of the problem is people generally don't just want to like donate money to a project without any form of guarantees, right? That's just basically a donation. That's not like anything potentially useful or like a business contract. With foundations like we do in the LF, like there's clear governance, there's there's clear rules in place of how everything works, how votes are counted, how committees are formed and people come together.  So for me, it's all about like pulling people, pulling resources together in a fair way where people have a fair level of vote and sustaining these projects. Like these things, you know, aren't necessarily free, right? They're open source and free to download, but like the back office stuff of like doing events is not cheap. Training, education, not cheap. Scholarships to ensure that communities retain new people, you know, improve diversity. Like this stuff just doesn't happen overnight or require sustained resources. And it's something that I'm very proud of that we do at the Linux Foundation, I think is kind of, you know, shows how that model works. We're not the only one that does that model, but I think we're definitely one of the better organizations out there that kind of has proven it to work in a lot of different industries and projects. Right. Commercialization is critical to sustainability, survival of open source. Without that, it would not survive. And also, as you were saying earlier, that it's not donation because we need selfish people, you know, you are contributing to a project because you are getting something out of it. Otherwise, when you're doing something out of altruism or, you know, that will just go away tomorrow. So this is, this is a very, very selfish model. And that's a good model, sustainable model. Yeah. It's all mutual self-interest at the end of the day, right? Like it could be companies that want to commercialize something. It's going to be individuals that want to learn a new technology and improve their career. Or like, there's everyone has their own self-interest and we kind of provide the guard rails to ensure that there's an option for companies to support these things financially. If they want through a potential structure, you find it very hard for companies to give money potentially if it's just a donation. It's like, so I have no overall say of how this, you know, may go. Probably not going to happen. So it's, you know, it's, to me, it's an overall great model. And, you know, I also think the other fundamental lesson is, I think we're literally drowning in open source software. There is like hundreds of millions of projects. Not every project out there, I think deserves to be sustained, right? It's just like, it could be just a random idea or something like, you know, there are, there are generally a core set of core libraries or core technologies that truly deserve companies pulling resources together, you know, across organizations to kind of sustain these things. I think there's this weird discussion. Sometimes I talked to me, like, I was like, well, he's like, I have this cool thing. It's used by a few companies. I'm like, awesome. Do you have like a product or like, well, not yet. They're just downloading it. I'm trying to pay for consulting, but the key, the key lesson here is like, there's also like 100 other competing projects that are, you know, also free and available.  I'm like, that's not true. It's just like saying like every company needs to be profitable. Stuff fails all the time. Like it's just the way it works. There are startups out there that aren't successful because they couldn't find product market fit. And the same lesson I think applies to open source projects where, you know, maybe the market is telling you something where, you know, maybe you don't have a good project for that needs or maybe it's productization or it's not something that you could easily build the business around. But like, I just think like people have to be cognizant here because like, we don't necessarily complain if a startup, you know, fails, but I think open source maintainers stroke their arms like, oh, it's like the end of the world. Like, well, your project failed, but there's like 30 other alternatives that seem to work. Like, I'm sorry. Like that's just the way the world works. But I'll stop. I'll stop right here. No, no, no. You're absolutely right. Because we have we have this. There's so many times that open source is not a business model. It's a collaborative model. It's a social model. And companies, as you rightly said, and whether it's a commercial project or an open source product, if there are no users, it should it's a market should decide whether the project should live or die. You should not put it on dialysis to keep it alive. Yeah. And people come in and say, oh, like open source has issues like it has issues, but like it's I don't think like sustainability. It's an issue for some things, you know, that fly under the radar that are typical open SSL and other like things that may be too low on the stack that have been ignored. But like we're literally drowning in open source projects. There's just so many out there. I think the true hard part is like identifying what people are are using and care about because there's options for almost everything. And people that that mutual self interest comes to play and people find kind of ways around it, right? You know, a company may take an open source project and make it like, you know, non open source license.  So it's like there's just there's like market like there's like true market dynamics that are happening in open source that that I don't think existed a while ago. Because what happened is open source is truly the default now like it's everywhere. It's in our cars. It's in our fridges. It's like everywhere, right? So it's just there's so much of it. There's so many options where before there was scarcity. And maybe there was only one library, but now there's like there's like tons of different open SSL implementations out there to choose from. They're like people are rewriting the world in rust now. And there's just so many options out there. It's not it's not a scarcity problem. It's more of like a focus and attention of like where should we kind of collaborate and pull resources on truly the things that are important, you know, to us. But yeah, that's my kind of rant. You know, for the day, it's truly it's it's it's a we're drawing an open source software was too much of it in many ways. No, and I think Linux has been a trailblazer because it made people comfortable that you can use in a commercial setup. And of course, you can put a lot of blame on Linux foundation also, because you folks made it easy for companies to get involved easily. And if you look at any foundation projects, there are so many. It's incredible to see that we are now finally saying that there's too much open source because I remember in the big day of my career, we were trying to tell people, hey, you should open source stuff. And to be honest with you, when it is becoming challenging for me also as journalists, that, you know, when you say open source in early days, open source meant just, you know, small now is more to say, I am a sports journalist, but which sports, you know, there's so many sports. So saying that I cover open source is not enough. So you have to then pick some niche within open source. You've completely nailed it. And, you know, like, I think there's different industries that are a little bit more ahead than others. Like obviously the cloud providers, they get it, you know, but, you know, like, for example, financial industry, we started the, or we were essentially collaborating with the Finnaws Foundation, right? And, you know, their whole mission was like teaching banks, financial institutions, how to properly do open source, how to maybe film an open source office, how to contribute, have some standards. Same thing is happening now with like the gaming industry, which has been kind of like open source shy.   You should stop reinventing the wheel and actually collaborate with your peers and competitors on that and then deliver value on top. And I think the gaming industry is realizing that, at least for some engines out there, having a fully open option where they could kind of collaborate on some components there for their specific needs is going to help.  Historically, the gaming industry, very Windows, Microsoft type heavy, which is also a very fascinating thing where a lot of those developers are, you know, traditional visual studio folks. It's just been fascinating where, you know, we're going in there and see another industry where you're kind of teaching them about the benefits of open source, how to work in the open, here are different tools. And, you know, I have high confidence that, you know, O3DE will help impact the gaming industry in a positive way where they'll truly be better Linux support for gaming, which has always been an issue. Like I used to complain, like, why doesn't Steam work well on Linux? So all this stuff, I think, will improve. Right. No, you said it so rightly, and I fully agree with you because game developers, they waste so many resources on those basics.  So it should be a commodity, you know, piece so that you can focus on creating great games is the wasting time and resources. I think it's a cultural shift that is happening. And I think the cultural shift is needed. I think this foundation will help the cultural change technology is easy problem to solve. Culture is a much harder problem to solve. Exactly. And my personal feelings, I don't know if this will happen. Maybe there'll be multiple distributions of O3DE, just like there were in Linux land, right? Like Linux obviously is the base layer, but people are completely fine to pay for a distribution or a hosted potential offering. And so maybe in the future, you'll see O3D distros optimized maybe for 2D games or 3D 2D 3D type games or some for cloud-based rendering, maybe some for particular mobile devices or apps. So I think you may have that innovation. I'm not sure if that will happen yet, but given how modular things are and that desire for modularity, maybe they'll happen. And to me, that is success. If you have multiple distributions, multiple self-interest driving this ecosystem and all benefiting from it, I think that's kind of a winning story. But it's literally still early days. It's been a couple years getting this organization started. We're going to do it a little bit earlier, but the pandemic put a little bit of a slowdown on things. But I'm personally very happy to kind of see where things are. And the other kind of notable thing, by the way, this is a project that came from AWS. This is probably one of the, not often do you see AWS kind of leading the charge on truly doing an industry-changing bit of open source. Generally, in my view, I think they're good open source citizens. They've definitely improved over the years. Like every company goes through this kind of transition. We've seen with Microsoft, I think AWS is doing the same thing. But this is truly, to me, is a very cool thing to see this actually come out of AWS from day one. No, yeah. I fully agree with you. And yeah, companies are changing. AWS is also changing. And also Linux Foundation, the way you offer governance, there is a lot of a scope. We have seen that with Kubernetes, there are so many distributions with Linux, so many distributions. And the funny thing with that is that you don't dictate. The industry can decide if they want. All you do is support. So yeah, I'm actually really excited as a gamer. As I said, I'm really excited about this foundation and I'll be monitoring it closely. Chris, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about the new foundation. If somebody wants to get involved with the foundation, what is the best way to approach? Yeah, the first recommendation is I would go to o3d.org and check out the site. There's a link to join the Discord, which is kind of the de facto chat platform that's used by O3D. I would join that Discord and there's a bunch of channels for different interests, whether you're interested in improved Linux support or you're caring about diversity inclusion in the space or you care about the presentation layer, so on. It's all there. I would join the Discord first. If you want to kind of meet people physically in person, we're going to be doing o3d.com later this year in LA. If you could just Google o3d.com, I think it's o3d.com.org and you'll find the website, register and join. It's kind of one of the first, I won't say it's the first, but one of the early kind of open source gaming type events. Obviously, folks at o3d.com, but we do have an intention of growing the event to be more inclusive of just open source and gaming in general. The engine is just one piece, but there's many other areas that we could kind of bring open source. So yeah, o3d.org and then check out o3d.com and hopefully we'll see some of you in LA. Yeah, and finally, there is a Linux foundation even where I can bring my Nintendo Switch and actually play there too. Yeah, you will set up. I mean, what's great is like, I love my cloud native infrastructure friends and like, I love cube cons, like just beautiful, fantastic events, you know, basically largest open source events in the industry, but I'm excited to kind of bring that same level of like openness, inclusivity and energy to the gaming engine industry. I'm excited. Thank you.


What's up everybody, Jason here for Jasper's CaseRays.com. We're doing a 20-21 Mosaic Choice, three box break, pick a teams number one, and we're giving away $500 in break credit guys, but the catch is you have to buy two teams. You buy two teams, you get an entry, buy four teams, you get two entries, six teams, you get three entries, et cetera. If you only buy one team, you're not gonna be entered, but good luck to you. Top two names win $250 back each. So, here's a dice roller, and that'll be for the list later, so we'll alphabetize it for later, see who has two or more teams. But let's start the break first. Now this is coming from a fresh case, but it's a little weird, of course. We're only doing three box break, so there's probably gonna be a couple boxes left over. So what I'm gonna do here, of course, is I'm gonna open up the case, but I think I'm gonna leave the boxes in the case, and we're just gonna grab three boxes out of there. We'll just generate three numbers out of 20. I think it's just easier for us to keep it in there rather than I have to just take them all out. So what we'll do is we'll do that, leave those in there. So from one to 10, 11 to 20, let's generate three numbers. First number is 16. So one through 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So we'll grab this box here. Let's generate another number, 15. So the box right before it. It's 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. And then we'll generate one more number. 17, what the hell? This box right here. 15, 16, 17. All right, well, the rest of these boxes we'll just keep in there and we'll randomly grab for the next breaks that we post. But there you go, guys. And again, that's everybody here in the break. So guys, Mosaic choice. All right, Vince Carger, Bowl Bowl and Theo Maladon for the Thunder. Of course, got traded this season, but still Thunder there, going to Ed. We have Trey Jones. Wow, look at that. Man, this was such a huge card. Black, gold, James Wiseman, five out of eight when it first came out. That would have been a monstrous card. Golden State Warriors, Scott Simpson with that one. Still pretty nice though. We got Trey Jones. Out of 88, Fred Van Vleets. Out of 88, then we got Aaron Natesmith with a Cole Anthony. Very nice. Damn it, DiBio. Calvin Natt, little old school player there. Portland Trailblazers, Portland, that's Scott. We got Thomas Bryan for DC. To 88, Onyaka Kongu to 88. And then a Kyle Koosma to 88. And we have Jemez Ramsey with the Jordan Nora. Remember, this is coming from a fresh case, guys, so there is going to be some pretty big stuff in here. And usually in a case of Mosaic choice, whether it's football, basketball, whatever they make, usually get like a nebula. Since the checkers is pretty deep. Of course, Chase and Peacock's as well. No, that's our pinball machine, Rex. They're playing pinball. Vernon Carey, Killian, Tilly. I think we have a Peacock actually. Joellen B for the 76, who's going to D-Lo. Grayson Allen, let's save the Peacock. Then we got Emanuel Quickly with the Trey Jones. Memphis Grizzlies with that autographed D-Lo as well. All right, here we go, behind Grayson Allen. It is a Wendell Carter Jr. for the Orlando Magic, little Peacock. Orlando Magic, that is going to add. All right, nothing super crazy there, unfortunately. Grayson Allen. All righty, guys, well, there you go. That's just the first three boxes of the case, guys. Definitely a lot of hiding, but that James Weissman was very, very nice. Big autographs also still hiding, I feel like. So, I appreciate it, guys. So, again, like I said, next one is in the store right now. I'll post it up, JaspysCaseBricks.com, let's switch scenes and give away some money. Some money, $250, top two names. So, let's see. Brian got two, he's in. Chris got two, he's in. D-Lo got five, so that's two entries, D-Lo. Ed with two, James with two, that's an entry each. Jesse with one, Mark with two, Nicholas with two, so that's one each. Niko with six, that's three. And then Raymond too, Scott Simpson four, so one and two entries there. And there you go, just one off. So, who had the extra, oh, Jesse was the only one that had one, that's right. So, there you go. All right, guys, here we go. Roll it, 204, six times, good luck. Top two names, 251, two, three, four, five, six. And boom, six times, six times, James and D-Lo. There you go, so you guys can use that on whatever you'd like, D-Lo. You can use that back on Cup Hockey, we only got like two, three teams left. So, appreciate it, guys, jaspyscasefakes.com.


Welcome friends to this discussion on digital ethnography very recently I recorded a video on ethnography so digital ethnography is almost an extension of that. So let's talk about the various characteristics of digital ethnography and how do we go about it and so on and so forth. So we'll see in today's discussion we'll talk about how to prepare for data collections and cultural entry. Because we know that in ethnography it's important for the researcher to participate in that cultural group. So how do we make that entry into a virtual setting or into a digital setting? How do we collect data and how do we create that data?  And finally how do we represent the data analysis? So let's start today's discussion. So there are various ways of talking about digital ethnographies. One of it is virtual ethnography or ethnographies of cyberspace where internet is seen as a separate space and we talk about ethnographies of that particular space. We will also be talking about connective ethnography or online slash offline ethnographies. So how do people move across their life in the online setting and offline settings. Then we have ethnographies of internet in everyday life. And finally we also have a representation of the lived online experience of cultural members. So the researcher participates in that online experience of that particular cultural group and then provides a detailed representation of that online experience. And as we can see that in all these cases the role of the researcher as instrument, the researcher himself or herself is an instrument there. So it's through the researcher's authorial voice or through the researcher's perspective we get to see the life of people in the virtual space. So this is a very challenging for a number of reasons because unlike offline settings where probably the researcher is the only person who has access to that cultural setting. This is one setting where almost everybody has access. So anyone with an internet connection has access to these online social fields. So the position of the ethnographer as the sole and privileged witness is more difficult to uphold. And the authorial voice is also very difficult to uphold because everything is happening or most of the communication is happening in a public space already. So we will talk about ethnographies as immersive environments. So as we go along we will discuss what this actually means. So earlier face-to-face meetings or conversations or letters or phone calls were enough for the ethnographic exercise. But nowadays we have a variety of online platforms. It could mean blogs, it could mean Twitter accounts, it could mean Facebook postings, LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn meetings and many other kind of social media meeting and communication platforms. So they are places or they are sites where the ethnographer can make an entry and can get data and very, very important data from those kind of platforms as well. And as we all know these online interactions are very complex because they happen both privately and publicly. So some of these interactions are in the public space, some of them might be in some encrypted group or only allowed to certain people. And they also take place synchronously and asynchronously. Synchronously in the sense that it could be video meetings or whatever where people are interacting in real time and reacting to each other's comments or communication. Or it could be asynchronous like emails for example where one communicates and the other might communicate at a very different time period. And there might be numerous contributors too. So it might not just be two people communicating, it might be more than two people at any point of time. So that makes ethnographic study in the digital space quite challenging. At the same time this distinction between the online and offline social world is not always ontologically tenable. Because these social worlds they cut across complex networks of face to face and technology mediated communication these days. So it could be face to face communication, it could be followed by a mobile message, it could be followed by a video call or through a tweet or through a Facebook post or those kind of things. So if one is using just a ethnography that is one special type of digital ethnography as we will see. So just the use of only ethnography or just the traditional ethnography would only provide us with an incomplete view. So it's important for us as researchers to have a rounded view of both the offline world as well as the online world. So there are cases where one could do a ethnography without an offline component but that is reserved for phenomenon which are happening strictly in the online world. So it could be self presentation on websites or it could be online word of mouth or those kind of things. So there we might go for what is known as pure ethnography otherwise the offline component is almost as important as the online component at times. There are a lot of advantages we'll see as we go along. One of the advantages is that it is far less intrusive. The researcher may be present there and he might not even be interacting with the other members. So in the traditional ethnography platform the researcher has to be there either as a participant or as a non-participant as we have seen. But here in the online research platform one can gather a vast amount of data without even making their presence visible to the cultural members. So they might not even be visible to the members of the group and that's where that is a concept which is known as lurking. So that is also an appropriate technique in digital ethnography and we go for elicited data and non-elicited data as well. So it could be where the researcher is eliciting data in terms of questions or interviews or direct communication. Or it could be non-elicited data that one can see on the blogs or on websites or on Facebook posts or tweets for example. So in that way it's a lot less intrusive. And there are a number of at least three different kinds of data which are available and there are different ways of recording that data. So there is the archival data which the online world by its very nature archives a lot of data through the search engine mechanism and other mechanisms. We've already spoken about what is the elicited data so one can use the online methods and as we'll see that the online platform has a lot of advantages when it comes to providing interview data for example. And we also have a scope of field node data and that's where the reflexive exercise of the researcher comes into play. And there are various ways of recording this data so it could be just plain copy pasting on some word processing platform. It could be just a screenshot. One could be recording the screens and there are lots and lots of other ways of mining data for example. But for qualitative digital ethnography it's important not to fall into the temptation of gathering all the data that is available because here the objectives are different. Here the way in which the research is carried out is different and the research report is also more about description. So this temptation to mine data it can overshadow one's real-time engagement and we must make sure that this real-time engagement is always a part of this research process. So field nodes as we've seen earlier as well when we spoke of ethnography they are one of the most important parts of the ethnographic research process. So there are certain things that field nodes should do and one of it is that it should document the journey of the ethnographer from an outsider to an inside culture member. So this should be documented by the ethnographer himself or herself. And it should also talk about an internal reflection as one carries on interacting with the group either as a lurker or as a participant observer where you're actually participating in the communication. It's also important to keep your side notes where you talk about your internal reflections. You're in the moment impressions, what were your impressions at that point of time when that communication was taking place and the deep culture bound introspective analysis. So that deep culture bound analysis about that culture group is important for strong sociological ethnography as we say. So these field nodes are a very important part of the data collection process apart from the archival and the elicited data that I just spoke of. So in this part of the presentation I'm going to talk about the characteristics of the virtual world and the advantages of the internet platform as well. Virtual worlds are regarded as object-rich environments so participants can traverse and interact with a lot of various ways. For example it could be audio interaction, it could be video interactions, it could be animations, it could be memes. So it's object-rich in that manner. Virtual worlds are also multi-user in nature so there is participation from lots and lots of people there. These worlds they continue to exist in some form even as we log off. So even when we are logging off from Facebook for example that platform with other participants it continues. So this virtual world continues even when we log off so one can't get away from that enough. And they also allow us to embody ourselves as avatars if we can say or we can create a desired digital identity for ourselves. So these are from Christine Heinz's principles for virtual ethnography and she suggests a number of important requirements for virtual ethnography. Now this is sustained physical presence in the cultural field site along with intensive engagement. So this is very important, the physical presence along with intensive engagement is important there. And also because this interactive media it questions the notion of a field site because this internet is both a site as well as it's a cultural artifact. So this notion of location almost becomes unnecessary in this kind of a mediated interaction. So this has to be kept in mind by the ethnography. So it's not too different from offline ethnography. One major difference is that there are just different kinds of environments and different ways of social co-presence. So in the real world the social co-presence is of a certain kind and in the virtual world this social co-presence is of a different kind. So digital ethnographers have to conduct participant observation also just like in the offline world and also interviews. But they are through the digital technological devices and the researcher must develop the right technological skills and the cultural skills and the social skills to participate in these socio-technical contexts. These are no longer just social but your skill in wafting through this technology is also a very important component of participation in that particular environment. So it moves from a conception of location and boundary to one of flow and connectivity because we know in ethnography it's about one bounded cultural group which we study as participants. But this one is of flow and connectivity so it flows across various platforms and the connections are not limited just to the online world or just to one platform but across the platforms. So these boundaries are explored these cultural, social and even ontological and epistemological boundaries are explored through research. In another video I've spoken about ontology and epistemology so I'm not going into details about this here. So another important component is dislocation in time. So there is dislocation in time because it might happen asynchronously as we say so as one is responding here the other might respond at some other point of time. So that idea of time is no longer fixed also dislocation in space. So how could we be interacting with people in America in Africa in other continents as well. So that is possible for a virtual ethnographer to interact with people across space as well. And needless to say it's necessarily partial because the richness of offline face to face interaction is not there. That is why virtual ethnography in many senses is partial. So there are a number of perspectives of the Internet. One of this is that one it can be viewed as a type of a place, a space, a cyberspace where culture is formed and reformed. Internet is also a product of culture so it's a cultural artifact in that particular sense. So online ethnography has to take account as we said earlier of these disrupted boundaries. It's also it can be experienced as a place where one goes to so when we say that let's go on to the Internet. So space has a sense of presence as well. And that space is not just limited to one kind. It could be an online game for example, or it could be through one's discursive activities. So when you take part in certain kinds of interactions, so that creates a space. One's movements through various platforms is also how one we can see Internet as. So these are very important elements of regarding Internet as a place. So another important thing that one has to keep in mind as researchers is the fact that Internet is everywhere. And so more and more of our experiences are mediated by this digital technologies and we virtually carry the Internet with us in our pockets through our mobile phones. So this reflexive understanding of what it is to be a part of the Internet is again a challenge for the researcher. So this reflexive understanding of what it is to be a part of the Internet is a challenge as I said. So another form of ethnography is the ethnography of the contemporary social world in a digital age. So how do we integrate the Internet into our ideas of friendship, into our ideas of who is a celebrity or the ideas of public sphere also for example. Or meaning making or how do we use the Internet as a cultural experience. So this is another form of ethnography as well about the ethnography of the contemporary social world. We can also talk about an ethnography of the networked sociality. So we are not talking about one single platform because when we talk of Internet related ethnography we know that the research environment is dispersed across the web platforms. And that is constantly changing and involves both the physical and the digital localities. So this is very important to realize that we can be taking Internet as a tool or a medium as well. Internet is basically dialogic so online cultures exist because people interact with each other through writing basically over time. So Internet offers unique ways of expressing the self and constructing social reality. And that is why studying the social world on the Internet performs us with all these fascinating perspectives. And one major advantage of social media is that researchers have access to vast amounts of data archived through forums. So there are archives like Way Back Forum and all that and also search engines. So this can provide researchers with lots and lots of information on the cultural members their values and various communication practices. So it allows us as researchers to decide which are the field sites that we should visit and how do we make an entry into these field sites as participants. So this research before entering the field sites is easily possible because there is so much of data already available through the social media platform. So in the next session we are going to talk about specifically how to do this in ethnography. So this ethnography begins with the identification of research topics at first. So what are my research questions so this will help me in pinpointing the relevant online sites. Because before I make an entry to the sites it's important for me to study the sites and their participants to understand what are the social dynamics at play. So that's how I start with I start off with the research topics which helps me identify which are the sites I should be studying and how their participants interact on those sites. So the first core principle of quality ethnography is that of ethnographic siting. So we go site specific. So first of all we concentrate to start with on a small number of postings or a very constrained data set to again a deep cultural sense of what is going on. So that's how we start off with. And it's very important as I've said earlier not to get into the trap of trying to mine as much data as is available because it's important to go deep into what is going on the deep cultural sense of what is going on. And from there on we can broaden in scope or we can deepen in scope as well. But it's important to go site specific right at the beginning. The next step is cultural analysis. So where one can be engaged as a participant in a manner which is appropriate to other community members. So community members of that particular group. So communications are experienced, processed and understood, experienced, processed and understood exactly as the cultural members experience them. So on that particular site we experience process and understand the communication as the members there would experience them. It's important to talk about the concept of the ethnographic timing. So as much as possible these messages and posts are experienced, read or interpreted and analyzed in real time as they become available. So this ethnographic timing is an important concept there. Then we have to make choices about the entry. So how we make an entry into that particular social media group or into that internet platform and how do we collect data from there. So as we said that data can be archival data, it can be field data, it can be elicited data. So that's one choice that we make. Then we make the choice about the field sites, which are the sites that I should engage with. And then finally what are the types of data because as we know that the online world is full of very rich data. So whether we go for the video data or the audio or lots and lots of analytical data which are available. And then finally we'll have to evaluate the quality of the ethnographic research. In my last part of the presentation I'll talk about the quality of ethnographic research. So as we know that to begin with we have access to vast amount of data. For example if we search for the term ethnography itself will come up with millions of hits there. So they are archived through forums and search engines. So it provides us with huge amount of information about cultural members and structures. So from there we have to narrow down and choose the field sites and plan the entry. So which are the social media groups that I can think about. So making a successful cultural entry and you could have one could notice this spelling there. So that's how it's used in ethnographic setting about making an entry into the field site. So this requires understanding the data while we are collecting them. So while we make an entry into that field site as we call them. It's important to have an understanding of the data itself while we are collecting them. And it's also at the same time important being sensitive to the needs and functioning of the social media community. Because if one is not sensitive to the needs and the way that particular community functions then we will have problems as a participant observer. So ethnographic research requires an initial and deepening cultural understanding of the community. So those cultural barriers are not there. And then the process as in tradition ethnography is first of being a participant observer. So participant observation allows the ethnographer to get to know the collective life norms, values and dynamics of a group. And that is followed by an in-depth interview. So that is a gateway to the perceptions and meanings that respondents attach to their own actions. So once we have identified what those actions are we ask those members to explain their actions. So online interviews have their advantages. But one disadvantage is the lack of additional meaning when one interacts face to face through the tone of speech or through body language or through gestures or through facial expressions. So when one is not meeting face to face but if this is a video meeting for example then a lot of those advantages are there. But again this is one thing that the researcher has to contend with. So although there are lots of advantages that we will be talking about so these lack of social cues as we know them is one disadvantage. One major advantage is that one can transcend these geographic and time limitations so one can interact with anybody across the globe at any point of time especially over email. So these are the advantages for the ethnographic. And most importantly, ethnography can leverage the connective power of the internet because a lot of those voices which might not have been available otherwise are available because of the affordances that internet has to provide. So vast variety of virtual voices is possible through ethnography. So these are some of the unique characteristics of ethnography. It provides us with an increased field site accessibility. So one has access to a wide variety of field sites over the internet platform. It's also increased communicative variety so it could be multiple platforms, it could be face to face interactions, it could be emails, it could be through messages, it could be through phone calls and many other forms. So multiple online and mobile platforms are available for the ethnographic researcher. And this connectedness across virtual, across multiple forms and fields. So one could be tweeting at the same time, the same person could be putting up a Facebook post or having a LinkedIn profile or could be there on Instagram and could be interacting on email or through WhatsApp so all these things are there and also the process of auto archiving. Much of it is archived over the internet. The challenges are that of as we've said before or we've identified before is that of data overload. There's so much of data that one has to decide which data not to use. And one major problem especially on the internet platform is that of anonymity. So generally ethnographers have to have what is known as demographic markers. So when we interact with people there are various ways in which we can identify them. But this challenge of anonymity can be really challenging because the online avatar of that person could be very different from what that person is in real life. So this is one challenge that the researcher has to contend with. So after the data is collected one goes through the open coding process and the goal of the open coding is to reach a theoretically relevant understanding of the phenomenon of interest. So it could be from codes to themes to overarching themes and all that. And finally from those themes we make a hermeneutic interpretation to build a more general theory. So once we have a build upon what is known as the grounded theory then new data to test that kind of a theory are collected and analyzed. And apart from these micro perspectives we also go for more macro and holistic approaches in the digital ethnographic process. So in the last two slides I'm going to talk about what are the criteria on which the ethnographic analysis can be judged. So the first is that the analysis has to be internally coherent. It should make sense for the community. It follows the accepted procedures some of which we have discussed today. It recognizes relevant literature and the approaches. It follows from and links to the data. So this analysis follows from the data and is linked to the data. The ideas provide new understanding. So if after the ethnographic research process there are no new understandings then probably that's one criterion that one has to be aware of. A believable sense of culture is presented. So that sense of culture which is believable to most readers and observers. The analysis is open to alternative interpretations. That's also a very important aspect of ethnographic research. The text inspires social action and the analysis accounts for the interaction of online and offline interactions at the same time. Thank you very much.