talk is called, from the inside out, who you know to self talk your community. So that's an old English, or middle English, excuse me, somebody challenged me to write my entire talk in middle English. You're welcome, I didn't have time. So, from the inside out, how negative self talks affects your community. Oh, there are some moving pictures.  All right, so, I'm Nona Zaraoui on most of the internet. My staff account on DreamWit is MsCat. I've worked with DreamWit Studios LLC, which is an open source blogging company. We have about 50 active volunteers across various parts of the project. About two thirds of those contributors are women and about 65% never coded before they touched our project. So, my actual job with DreamWit is community and volunteer support. So, I entertain these between the users and the developers, I point out bugs, I handle a lot of the end user documentation and interaction, and basically I'm just a friendly face. My other jobs are, I work with also aid insurance as a salvage and total loss rental coordinator. I also volunteer with the society for creative anachronism and manage about 30 scribes of varying skill levels. And then I also work with Kimbergens Kahn, which is a 6,000 member four-day convention. I'm one of the senior department heads for inter-department communication and liaison staff. All right, so, we're gonna get right into it. So, what is self-talk? This is a great example of self-talk, Barton, you dummy. So, how we talk to and about ourselves is our self-talk. Sometimes it can be internal, sometimes it can be external, and sometimes it's a mix of both, and it affects how you think about you. So, it can have a lot of effects on your community. Negative self-talk can mean you have fewer contributors, you have higher turnover, you have less innovation because people who think poorly of themselves are more afraid to take risks because they don't wanna look bad and people will do a lot of things to avoid feeling like they're incompetent. So, negative self-talk can display itself in many ways. The most common are listed here, but there's a lot of others that we're not gonna talk about today. But once you have a general idea of what to look for, you're gonna be able to see those indicators. Imposter syndrome, who here has heard of imposter syndrome? I love that almost every single hand in this room is up that is amazing. So, we're gonna talk about it anyway. Imposter syndrome is that sinking feeling that at any moment, everyone in the room is going to think that you're faking it. Hi, I have it right now. Just wanna throw that out there. So, it's pervasive. It goes across industries, it goes across locations. It does tend to affect more minority groups or perceived minority groups. It does tend to affect women more than men. There are social reasons for that. Women are told that we should be deferential to other people and hide back behind the shadows and let other people take the responsibility for things. It tends to affect intelligent people more often than it affects other types of people. It means that you have impossibly high standards for yourself because you know all of the things that you don't know. And you discount the things that you do know. So, it reduces the ownership of your successful endeavors. So, if something succeeds, it's chance or that was a lucky break. But if something doesn't work, it overburdens you with ownership with a failure because it's all my fault. I should have known better. I should have done something better. So, that reduces that risk-taking innovation that we were talking about before because being wrong means that you're being a fraud. Burnout and fadeout are other ways that negative self-taught can display.  And that means you've got a lot of brain weasels kind of jangling around and they're taking up time when you could be doing something else. So, those thoughts just won't go away. So, things like, I can't do this or this is too hard or I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough.  So, if you think everyone hates me, it's time to go home, you might put things off and procrastinate and that can be really mentally exhausting. It takes up a lot of time to think that you don't want to do something. Who here is ever procrastinated and put something off? Okay, so everyone kind of knows what bucket I'm in here. So, it makes it really difficult to get back in once you put something off for long enough because you're convinced that you've burned every single bridge, nobody likes you and there's no easy path to get back. So, qualifying statements are another thing you can look for. A qualified statement expresses some level of uncertainty about its own accuracy.  Sorry, it didn't mean to bother you or I don't know, maybe you should try it. It's just an idea that I had. I mean, I don't know, I'm sorry. I'll just go back over here, thanks for listening. So, these type of statements, these qualifying statements are intended to soften the impact of what you're saying and it reduces that ownership of the statement because it increases deference to the opinion of the person that you're talking to. It decreases confidence in not only the statement itself but the other person's confidence in the speaker and so it creates this kind of negative feedback loop that can be really difficult to break out of. So, the basis of negative self-talk is a disconnection between the way you see yourself and the way that you're seen by other people. So, we need to make a better mirror. Create a positive, reflective environment. Doesn't need to be upbeat, if it's too upbeat it kind of seems a little stepford wifey and like little boxes made of tiki-taki and you don't want to go too close to it because everyone's a little bit too perfect but just be positive and encouraging because the external validation will lead to internal validation. So, the things that other people do to you or do for you can affect the way that you feel about yourself and you can see this in a lot of different environments. You can see it at work, you can see it just among your little pod of your coworkers, you can see it at home, you can see it in the greater world, the way that you interact with other people will affect how they think about themselves. So, just keep that in mind when you're talking to somebody on the street. So, we've got some action items here. We have things that we can do to help other people feel better about themselves and you can do this either as an individual or maybe as a manager of a larger group. So, things that other groups do are give kudos or positive feedback, both tangible and intangible. So, maybe like a literal cookie or just like a figurative cookie, either one. So, the archive of our own is a nonprofit organization dedicated to archiving fan works from across the web, provides like an orphan's home type thing for works that may have been abandoned by their creator and also creates a new place for innovation and for increasing the popularity of certain fan works like fan pick and vids and that sort of thing. So, after you've read an awesome thick, there's a button at the bottom of the page. It's just a button, you click it and it sends a note to the creator saying, hey, this person thought your thing was really cool. And that's all you have to do. It's purely qualitative because people thought it was good. You get that message and you're like, okay, cool, somebody liked my thing, that's really great. That's amazing. And then it's also quantitative because if you get a lot of kudos and you can say, wow, not just one person liked it but 3,000 people liked it. And that can make you feel really good about yourself and about the way that you're doing things and helps increase that positive self-talk. At work, we have Tots tokens. So Tyler Otts is my manager at Allstate and he has monopoly money with his face on it. And so the monopoly money gets given out or Tots tokens for meeting baseline metrics. So if you meet your call, whatever, and customer, whatever, or he can give them out just because he thinks you're doing a good job and he sees that you're working really hard.  They're super great. And they don't really have any inherent value but they have value to the person who earned them. So I have on my desk at work, I have a couple little ducks. I have my little sticky hand that I got out of the bin and it makes me feel good because I can see that, yes, I did in fact do something good. I did something right and I am valuable and worthwhile because I have these things. Once you get a certain amount of Tots Tots, but these, you didn't have what I'm saying there. So with DreamWidth, we have DreamWidth points.  So they're given to volunteers for doing stuff. So sometimes it's trivial stuff, sometimes it's big stuff and you can use them to buy icons, lots of paid time on the site. Again, they're not physical, but they are still meaningful. Additionally, DreamWidth support has an indicator on your profile that just has the number of support requests you've answered. Older requests have more points and newer ones have fewer points and it's nice to have that lovely round number. Again, that's purely quantitative. It doesn't say I did a good job, it just shows that you did something, which a lot of days, that's really all I need is just to show that I have in fact done something. DreamWidth also does code amnesty, which is to proactively ask people if they're still working on stuff. If you're not, no harm, no foul. We make it very clear. We're gonna say, okay, we have code amnesty time, if you have something that you've been meaning to work on and you just haven't gotten to it yet, that's okay. Just tell us and we're gonna put it back in the bin so somebody else can work on it, no harm, no foul. And it provides that reduced guilt environment which allows other people to free up their mental space. There is no such thing as a guilt-free environment, but you can make it easier for people to say, I'm sorry, I can't work on this right now, I don't have time. So instead of saying, well, why not, you say, okay, we'll love to see you when you come back if you come back. Minimal group paradigm is the minor connections which we make with other people based on arbitrary characteristics such as shirt color. So in this picture here, the blue guy walked in and stopped and was like, yo, stripes! And the red guy started nodding and was like, stripes! And then they sat together just because they were both wearing stripes. You can thank Tumblr for this that showed up on my dash a couple months ago. And so this is the minimal group. So these are those minimal connections that people will make with each other. Oh, I'm from Seattle too. Oh, cool, where in Seattle are you from? Oh, I'm from this one place, I don't actually know Seattle at all, sorry guys. I'm from this one place that has fish in it. Oh my gosh, I've totally been there too. And then you start talking about it. Well, did you go to this one restaurant? Oh yeah, I totally went there. Or no, but I went to this other restaurant and you talk about all these things. You make these like little minor connections and one might be really tenuous, but five or 10 or 15 are really strong. And they help you create this community bond with these other people who you might really have not a whole lot in common with, but you do, because you just haven't thought about it before. And so one thing that you can do is to do icebreaker exercises. I know they're ridiculous. Nobody likes doing them, but guess what? Nobody likes doing them. That's one of your connections.  And this is ridiculous and I can't believe they're making us do this. I know, right? And then you can bond over that, go have some coffee and then you can work together more in the future. Ta-da! So maybe you could have a dislike of icebreakers club. That could be kind of fun. So by creating those minimal groups, what you're doing is creating safe spaces for people, which will allow for success and for failure. And then it also creates more ownership of your group because you feel a responsibility towards those other people. And people might not wanna take care of themselves, but everyone wants to take care of other people. So you can also encourage stretch positions. So promote from within and encourage responsibility. I'm sure everyone's heard that before. My suggestion is to use short term projects. Don't make it this big overarching thing that's going to affect the end result of the company. And if you fail on this, then everything's done. No, have it be something really simple. Tricky maybe to do so that you can feel a sense of accomplishment once you've actually done it, but relatively simple. And then create active mentoring while it's going on. So do one-on-ones or do sit-bys or check in. Say, hey, how are you doing with that? Do you need any help? And then review what they're doing and say, okay, that sounds great. Can I give you some feedback? And they'll say, yes, in which case you tell them, okay, so there's this one thing that you did that's really awesome. Have you thought about maybe trying it this way? Or they'll say, no, and you say, that's great. I'm gonna be right over here. If you need something, come on over, I'll be there. And then just check in. And it's gonna vary by person, but being able to have that active mentoring environment will foster that sense of community and will help people feel a little bit better about their own competencies. So be receptive to that feedback that people are giving you and encourage self-evaluation. So don't make it about, well, I think you're doing a great job. Ask them, do you think you're doing a good job? What do you think you do better? And we're gonna talk about that a little bit more in a minute here. But the most important thing here is to specifically state that it's okay if this doesn't work. That's why it's a minor project. Something they can own, but if it doesn't work, that's okay. So in the immortal words of Captain America, and here's the picture warning, so close your eyes if this is gonna bother you. I used to be really very hard on myself if I thought I wasn't accomplishing something or reaching a certain level. Be with your failures. They're just as educational and just as opening to the process as the success is. Your failures are okay too. Flashy picture warning off. So your failures are okay too. They're okay. So allow for graceful failure. Allow for ungraceful failure. Allow all failure in your community. Encourage it to be quick if you can. Encourage people to experiment, to do rapid cycling and try something. Try it for two weeks, try it for two days. Try it for two hours. And if it doesn't work, and it looks like it's really not gonna work, then that's okay, let's move on to the next thing. We'll try something else. And eventually you will stumble upon something that's going to be functional and is going to work for you. The purpose of these stretch exercises are exploration and development. And really the project itself is secondary. You're working with the person, not with the product. So you as a leader and manager in your organization can fail publicly. You can set an example when something goes horribly wrong or even just a little bit sideways. Just talk about it. Talk about it out loud. Tell people I screwed up and this was spectacularly bad. And that's okay. That's great, actually. You want to do that. So we actually have a whole wiki page called Things Real Dream With Developers Do.  So we make mistakes. We forget how really simple things work. We break things. We break things on the dev hack. We break things in production. We break things in production multiple times. And then we have testimonials from the various project contributors. They're all self-contributed. So these are the things that our contributors have identified as really dumb things that they've done that they're willing to put out there and to tell other people about. So when they make those mistakes, they know that they're not alone. So one of the things that I have on the wiki page is I legit can't answer certain support requests without looking up the doc or referring back to my notes. I've only been doing it for five years. I should know these things and I don't. And that's okay. I still work there. I'm still a valued contributor of the project. And if I have to look at my notes, it doesn't mean that I'm not a good person. It doesn't mean I'm not confident. It just means I need to look at my notes a little more often than I probably should. So by showing that, even the people who are showing you how to do things are making mistakes, you can laugh. You can move on. You can tell people that the sun always sets and it always is gonna rise. And what looks smooth to you might not actually be smooth. If you have a duck floating across the surface of the pond, they're all graceful and smooth.  So it's all gonna be fine. It's okay to be grumpy and just tell us about us in IRC and I promise that we will commiserate. Remember those minimal groups? We're creating more of those connections and strengthening your community and strengthening your individual contributors. Try as hard as you can to reduce qualitative statements. It's never just a patch. It's something you worked hard on. It's something you put effort into and it's something that you did and therefore it is valuable. Every contribution is valuable and important. So when those sorts of situations happen, just validate the contribution. So if somebody says, sorry, I thought this might work. I don't know, sorry. Just say, thank you for pointing that out. I appreciate it and I can definitely see where you're coming from from that. Thank you. Or if someone says, this is really dumb. It's not really that important. You know, look at it when you can. I'm sorry to bother you. It didn't mean to get in your way. Just say, I appreciate you taking some time to do it. I can tell you, put some thought into this. Thank you. Or ask them, is there something else that I can help with? Do you need anything? How do you feel about this? And kind of get them to get that feedback loop starting. So don't invalidate or correct their statement. That's a really, really big one. I cannot emphasize this enough.  Because by invalidating the statement, you're invalidating the person and their opinions and that is so hard to hear. You might not think about it consciously, but your subconscious is, all they're gonna hear is, you are wrong. You are wrong. You did the wrong thing. Even if you're just saying, no, the thing you're saying that is bad is actually good, they're not gonna hear that. They might hear it like up top here, but down and below, it's not gonna necessarily click all the way through. So avoid those while actually statements. Those invalidate and belittle and they devalue the usefulness and they can also be unnecessarily argumentative. So encourage self-care. This is one of my favorite pictures. I have it up on my cube. Stay up late, get up early, keep going into the lack of sleep, causes an emotional breakdown that sends you spiraling into the dark abyss. No, how about we don't do that? Let's try not doing that. That sounds great. If someone needs to take a break from your project, that's okay. Strict breaks are good. We did one of those earlier. Everyone got up and moved around a little bit and that's great. Vacations are also good. If someone needs to step back and just take a minute and take a deep breath, that's okay. That means that they're a lot more likely to come back from their vacation later. So as self-care cat says, self-care isn't selfish, but even if it was, it's okay to be selfish sometimes. And as the cutie little dragon dude says, I don't wanna be too mushy, but I think you're fantastic. Self-care is okay and you're fantastic. So live by those words. Got it? Are there any, everyone understands that? Great. Okay, we're gonna move forward now. So that's all great, but what about internal validation? Clint Barton, ladies and gentlemen. So my mid-year resolution was to stop making qualifying statements. I will immediately restate whatever I said without qualifiers. It means I'm a lot more assertive and I seem a lot more bossy, but Honey Badger really don't care. So, sorry. I'm not actually sorry at all. I have found, I have found myself to be a more effective advocate for other people who might not be in a position where they can take those steps themselves. I have white privilege. I recognize that.  So, I'm important and you're important and we're all important. And while it might be polite to dim your praise and say, no, that wasn't good, guess what? It totally was. So deal with it. Okay, thanks. Politeness can bite it, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not always right and I don't always do a good job, but I am right more often than I think I am and I do a good job more often than I think I do. Or at least more often than I actually do an actively bad job.  So if you make a mistake, just apologize and move forward and try not to do it again. Listen to feedback and only apologize when it's actually warranted. Being more assertive has led to better opportunities for me and I know it will lead to better opportunities for other people as well. So instead of saying, hi, sorry to bother you, but I was thinking about this thing that I guess it might work. I don't know, I'll go now, thanks. Just say, hey boss, let's look at implementing this new process next month. I did some research and other people have had great results. Let me know when you've got some time to talk about the logistics and review the data with me. Thanks. I actually did exactly that. I sent both of those notes to my manager, more or less verbatim and guess which one worked. The second one. So in case you didn't guess that out of the context of the talk. So yeah, clearly it's been working pretty well so far. I have run into a little bit of pushback because I'm really short and people don't expect this amount of aggression from a short chick, but you know what, that's your problem, not mine, honestly. So do you guys remember that feedback loop that we talked about earlier? It works for you just as well as it does for other people. Do things outside of your brain?  That is not a 100% true statement, but it's accurate more often than not. So be a person. If you're sitting down and you've been coding for six hours, do people things rather than computer robot things. So get up and move around a little bit. You don't even have to stand.  Just do one or all of those things real quick or get up and stretch, like actually stretch your body. If you're hungry, go grab something to eat. If you're thirsty, drink some water. Actually, if you're not thirsty, probably drink some water anyway. If you're frustrated with something, put it in the naughty corner. Put it in the naughty corner and let it. Think about what it has done and ponder it and it will think about it. And then you, as you are away while the thing is in the bad corner, ponder it. Think about why it's frustrating and then you can come back to it later. You can't necessarily abandon every single thing that makes you frustrated, but you can help redirect your own thinking so that you can come back to it later in a more productive and positive environment. So to that note, everybody get out your writing utensils. It's an interactive section. We're all excited. Or you can use your computer or you can do it in your head, but I recommend writing it down because I feel like the visual is really helpful. And I'll give you all a couple of seconds to do that. I'll take a stretch break. All right, so the 321 technique is a productive and constructive way to guide yourself thinking. So I want you to think about your most recent project. It can be something like making dinner or making travel plans or it could be something code related. It could be how you figured out how do you get to the conference today. Anything like that. And just write it down real quick. Doesn't need to be full sentences. We're not gonna share this. So, everyone's got their thing. I want you to think of three things that you did. Three things that you liked, that you did well, that you're proud of, that create a positive and happy feeling about that thing that you just did. It has to be three. I'm just gonna take a second and write all those down or think about them in your brain. Three things that pertain to that project that you did. So, I will do mine. So I made travel plans. I managed to get myself from Minneapolis all the way out here. I am really proud that I managed to remember to put in my mileage number into my airline thingies. So I've got my mileage points, which is awesome. I remember to pack everything that I needed and did not forget anything other than business cards, which is awesome and like a huge coup for me. Seriously. And I made arrangements for a place to stay that was with a friend that I hadn't seen in a very long time. So now write down two things that you're not happy about. I waited to pack until the day I was leaving. That was not my best plan ever, but that's what it is. And also I didn't book my flight early enough so I wasn't able to get the exact flights that I wanted. So those are the two negative things that I'm not happy about that I wish I had done differently. And then I want you to write down one thing that you're going to do differently next time. And this is going to be your action item. Next time I'm gonna make a checklist. That's what I'm gonna do. And I'm gonna make a checklist with dates and make sure that I stick to it. All right, so everyone's got their little three, two, one there. I just want you to think about for a second as I'm talking how it makes you feel to have everything written down and have it right in front of you or in your brain, however you chose to do it. So some of the results I've seen from using the three, two, one technique are increased participation, increased quality of work and improved self-awareness because you're creating a better mirror because it is more accurate. It's a lot more introspective than a lot of the feedback that we tend to get. So it's not what do they think of me? It's what do I think of me? How do I feel about the things that I did? And other people's opinions of you are really truly less important than your own opinion.  So once you've done this three, two, one, what do you do with the information? You've identified your sticking points. You have the option to do nothing, especially if you're doing this with a group of people that you're working with. So I often do this with the scribes that I work with one-on-one on a regular basis. When they give me a new piece of work, I'll say, okay, give me your three, two, one. And they'll say, I did this thing really well. I did this thing really well. Give me two things that they're not happy about and one thing that they're gonna do differently next time. I can choose to do nothing with that information. I can say, thank you for doing the three, two, one. That sounds great. I appreciate it. And then kind of leave them up to their own devices.  That last item is an action item. It gives you a way to move forward from what you just did. If they ask you for feedback, just give the feedback on the negatives. So don't let their pride stand. So allow them to be proud and happy about the things that they're proud and happy about. Don't say, well, you know, you actually didn't do that good of a job with that. Because that is mean and unnecessary and rude. So just gonna throw that out there. So then just apply those external techniques as necessary. This is really an internal tool to help limit negative self-talk or guide positive self-talk for that matter. And you can do this without ever sharing your results with any other person. Don't force other people to share, but be open if they do choose to share. Be willing to have that dialogue and meet people where they are. So three, two, one is really important to me because there's a lot of science that backs it up. I'm not gonna talk about science of course today. But because it is self-guided and it uses the things that your person is thinking, it means that there's no external judgment. It's all internal. And it helps to sandwich that criticism, which limits negativity because the positives outweigh the negatives. You have three things that you're happy about and one thing that you're gonna do better next time. So those are positive things and they're sandwiched around that, those two chunks of negativity. And by couching those difficult to think about things between good things and giving yourself a path to move forward, it does create a more positive thinking environment because it gives you a little bit more structure. The three, two, one has a lot of applications. You can use it with art, you can use it with code, you can use it with your weekly management, with your daily management, anything that you need to think about in your life. So big projects mean big issues. You can get really overwhelmed when you've had a big project and there's a lot of things that went wrong and all you wanna think about are the things that you did wrong and you'll sit on those and you'll spiral and you'll just go down and down and down and you won't think about the good things that you did, all of the good things because the things that you did right aren't necessarily the things that you're gonna remember tomorrow. All you're gonna think about are the things that you did wrong. And fixing problems can be really hard and can lead to procrastination and abandonment, especially if you feel overwhelmed, like there's too much. So the three, two, one is structured to limit that negativity as I talked about a moment ago. So if you wanna talk more about the negative, so more about the things that you did wrong, guess what? You gotta come up with three more positives and one more action item. You have to couch it that way because then you have this positive feeling and everything moves forward in a positive way rather than moving backwards or sitting and spinning. My internal monologue is more of a scrum or mosh pit. I don't ever have any sort of structured stuff in my head. And so those structured rules help me be able to organize my thinking and really sit down and process the things that I'm experiencing. So I do a lot of checklists. I do a lot of calendars. I do a lot of post-it notes because having those action items and understanding of the things that I did wrong last time and having a way to move forward is so, so, so helpful for me. And it produces a more productive thinking environment just in your whole life. So in conclusion, negative self-talk is a thing. It's gonna happen. What matters is what you do with it once you've noticed it. And you have a lot of new tools in your toolbox now and you're gonna find other tools that are gonna work for you that I didn't mention today. And they're gonna work for your team. And just remember that every person and every group is different. And so it's not always gonna be perfect. So just keep swimming and things will eventually work out as long as you keep moving forward in a positive direction. I have faith. You can do the thing. Yeah. So I will take a three questions from the audience if there are any questions. If there's no questions, that's great too. So, so in a lot of ways the question was about how to fail gracefully. I find personally for myself if I noticed that something is not going right, the best way to fail gracefully is to admit it upfront. Be like, okay, I'm really having trouble with this. I'm really struggling with this thing and make it really clear what those things are. I do a lot of three, two ones myself when I am struggling with a project so that I can identify those action items and hopefully turn things around in the middle. But if I can't just be open and transparent with what the issues are and with what you're gonna do to do it better next time if there is a next time. And I feel like that allows for more graceful failure going forward. Yes. Um. So I'm really lucky. I don't have to run into that a whole lot but I know a lot of other people do. I would say in that type of a situation try to bring it back to the numbers. So if there's a way that you can quantitatively show that something isn't working maybe like by production numbers or by some sort of a metric that doesn't necessarily have to do with the person themselves and be like, okay, here's what we got going. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's the problems that I'm identifying here. What are you seeing? What problems are you seeing? And how do you feel like we might be able to get this turned around? We really need to improve these numbers. And the answer might be I'm working as hard as I can and the answer also might be that they really don't think that they're doing a good job. They've just put on this big costume to make themselves feel better because a lot of times when people are really insecure they can be really boisterous and puff up their chest and strut around and they don't actually feel good about themselves at all. So just identify that. I think that the three, two, one would also be a good option there because if they can self identify those negatives and they can say, well, I could be doing better at this. You can say, you know what? That is something that I would really love to help you work on. Let me move forward with that. Does that make sense to everyone? Okay, one more. Yes, okay. So the question was how can I as an external person help somebody else accept their failures and then I'm sorry, what was the second chunk there? Okay, and then the second part of the question is internally how can you come to terms with a failure? Unfortunately, that second part you can't force that on anyone. I do feel like the three, two, one can be really helpful because it does provide that positive motivation because you will find the good things that you did and you can build off of those to move forward next time because there will always be a next time the sun is always gonna rise in the morning. Really helpful because it does provide that I am a really big proponent of Marvel pictures and I send them to people and they're like, Captain America says you can do the thing. Or Iron Man says, well, you didn't blow it up this time. So that type of stuff I find is really positive and you can't force people to be comfortable but what you can do is say, I understand that you had a really bad time and this was really tricky and difficult and I appreciate that you worked really hard to get this fixed and I know it didn't work but I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad and I don't hold this against you, even if you do. All right, so that's it. That's all we got today, folks. I hope everybody has a great day and enjoy sludge.


Hi, I'm Dr. Gwen Sturdevant. Thank you for coming to my talk on vectorizing computations in R. So I used to work in aviation analytics and one way that airports know how efficient they are is the terminal arrival efficiency rating or tear. So one of the parts of the tear is that it estimates the arrival time of flights from the 100-mile circle. So as a plane land, it comes in and at the 100-mile circle, the air traffic controllers give it an estimated wheels-on time and also on runway on which to land. One of the things I wanted to know is does the error in the tear estimate differ depending on if the flight lands in instrument meteorological conditions, meaning it's really poor weather or visual meteorological conditions, meaning that the weather is good. Unfortunately, the distribution of the error fails tests of normality. So I had to use the bootstrap. So I used the bootstrap, the tidyverse way. I make a data frame, take the bootstraps, pull the splits and find the column means and unfortunately, it was running really slowly.  So here's the vectorized code in base R and base R is read from the inside out. So the first thing that I do is sample, then I replicate the sampling N times and then I take the column means of those replicates. Replicate is a really good function to use when you're vectorizing coding in base R. This coding went a lot faster. So what I wanted to know was how much faster? I used the microbenchmarking package in R to figure out how much faster it ran. From the table, you can see that it ran between eight and 10 times faster, which was a real benefit for me. Unfortunately, I won't get to discuss vectorizing this derivative with respect to beta and gamma today, but follow me at NZGuin on Twitter and I'll post more about it there. Thank you.


Alright, I'm about to take a bite into this Chicago dog, but before I do that, I'm here in Chicago testing out the Verizon 5G network with the LG V50 right here. I'm going to walk around, do some testing, check out the device, as well as experience what Verizon has to offer with 5G. But before that, look, I'm hungry, I'm just going to bite in, okay? So 5G and the V50. That was my experience. First of all, before I continue, I want to just let you know and thank LG for flying me out there to check out Verizon 5G's network. Now, when they reached out to me and said, hey, do you want to go to Chicago, see what 5G's like with the V50, I'm like, yeah, sure, sure. And this was a good test for me to see how the V50 handles as well. Now, Chicago is a lovely city. I've got to tell you, it's a beautiful place. I wish I stayed longer. I'm sorry I didn't get to see Tim Schofield. I spent literally a day testing, running around the city, looking at different places. I love the trains everywhere. It's a beautiful place. But, you know, I was there to check out 5G and all these 5G nodes around the city and the nodes themselves are, they're not that big. They hang on like lamppost and, you know, things around the city where you've seen other modules before in the past were like 4G and 4G LTE. So it's easily upgradable. That's the best thing about the millimeter wave additions that they have here. And it's really, really nice in terms of just functionality. You can get 5G everywhere. But I wanted to see how that experience was with the V50. The V50 comes with a Snapdragon 855. It's 5G capable, which means there is no variant. It's not like any other manufacturers. There's no V50 5G. There's just the V50. I like that. I don't have to decide if I want to just wait or not wait. Look, I can get the V50. It has all that. It's got a triple camera setup. We'll talk about that a little bit later. You've got a 4,000mAh battery, which is key because, you know, 5G, of course, is going to take more battery energy from you. But what was my experiences? And I'm going to show you some of the experiences I had. The first one was walking up to a module doing a test and then walking down and seeing how well when I walk away from it. Because millimeter wave is going to be cross sectional within streets and things like that. So let's take a look. All right, so we're down in Chicago looking for 5G modules. And boom, there's one right here. So you guys can see that. I'm going to zoom in a little closer. And yeah, so that's the 5G antenna. Now, the misconception is that, you know what? You have to stay in one place. But before we do that, let's run a test here and then keep walking and see how that goes. So I'm going to pull out my V50 right here. OK. You guys can see that. Boom. Go to speed test. Now excuse me as I flip the camera around. But you know, it's OK. And boom. Here we go. Let's run a speed test on that. All right, it keeps going up, keeps going up, keeps going up. It's not bad. 820. So we're close to the tower right here. Upload speeds are going to be closer to about 15, I'm hoping. It's about 20-something right now. Cool. All right, so let's walk down. Let's do this. It's going to be a little shaky. But we're going to walk away from that. And we're going to just keep walking down. And we'll see how this actually works. So we can do a walk-in speed test. We're going to hit this again. Focus. Boom. Now we're walking away from the tower. So this is also walking away from the tower. And look at the speeds. It's still going. All right, that's 771. That's not bad. It's pretty good. And 19. The fun thing is our tower is now all the way back there. OK, so that experience showed something quite clear. Speeds are fast. First of all, I mean, I was doing between 700 to about 1.2 gigabytes. And I apologized to 1.2 gigabytes. I didn't record it because I kind of just tapped. And I was like, oh, snap. And then I just never got that again. But I was able to get those speeds. I love it to walk away. And that was the key thing. So I could walk around. And the idea with millimeter wave setup is that you just walk around the city using your device. You should be able to jump in and out and use what you want to use fast. And that was pretty cool. So the next area I went to in the city, again, like I said, Chicago, is a beautiful city. I saw this cafe.   I was going to use Shadow. And look, this really just kind of messed up my video here a little bit because it took me an hour plus just to try to set it up. And I was not able to set it up on my mobile device. So that just didn't do me any good. But you can imagine you tethering to your laptop to do that. But I went to this cafe. And I said, look, let me do some tests here. But also, let me see how well this will work if I am not in direct line of sight. If something is blocking it because we've all had millimeter wave does not go through objects. It bounces off. So let's take a look at what kind of speeds and how that actually works. So one of the biggest conceptions about millimeter wave 5G is that it's got to be line of sight. So that's our tower right there. And we've got some leaves. And we're going to be behind this. So theoretically, we shouldn't get a good signal. An average getting about 700 here. I'm going to hit Go. And let's see what we're getting. So it's about 7-something. So even though this is basically being blocked by the flower bed here, I'm getting about 825 for download speeds. Uploads are still based on 4G LTE. So this is what you would expect. But the reason why you still get those speeds is not because it's blocked. It's because it bounces off. So it's bouncing off that wall right here to the phone. So it doesn't have to be directly in line of sight. You can actually have different ways of getting these kinds of speeds. Again, really good speeds. So it's all because of something called beamforming, which allows the beams to redirect and direct back from the antenna to your device. So you don't have to be in line of sight because there's so many things that are going to be blocking it. And it's funny because the rep is like, hey, yeah, this area, there's a tree that's really covering the antenna. And I got one of my highest, that's where actually the highest speed and one of my highest speeds in that area. So beamforming really worked well. And I liked that there were the impediments to what we thought of with millimeter wave actually has been circumvented because of some of these technologies. Now you're saying, okay, Thundee, that's great, right? I get it, but what about some practical use for me? I give you one that we all know.  I'm doing 10 hours and there's no Wi-Fi because I'm taking a flight to Hawaii. I've done that, I know. And I did it with the Locker. But you're like, okay, I want to download something. You go to the Netflix, you hit download, and it's like, ah, ah, ah, ah, and then they're like, okay, but can you see it built and you don't have a movie? Well, with 5G, and imagine that, of course, at the airport or even you're catching a train, you may be taking a subway. I was able to do this in 30 seconds. Again, the ability to walk down and hit download and get that experience, you just have to take a look. Now this is a whole movie. Here's a two-hour movie. I am mother, about to catch a flight soon, so it should take me about 20 seconds, right? Let's see. Ah, okay, it's moving. There we go. So imagine you walk into the gates, about to check in, get into that flight, it's moving. All right, there you go, about 25 seconds. Give or take. Pretty nice. Yeah, it's great. It's great to have that kind of experience for 5G. Being able to download your shows or movies, a whole catalog, and get it down in there within seconds is what matters. Not a five or 10 minute download. I don't have that. I was 30 seconds for that. That was it, done. That's what I like, and that's what gave me a lot of hope here. Now, with testing the 5G network in Chicago, Verizon, with the V50, my battery life was pretty good. I was running tests throughout the whole day, and I would say I basically burned through hard, and it lasted about five to six hours. Now, on the regular use, I was able to get this device to last me pretty much the whole day. Now, one of the things that Verizon, and also what LG also stated is that, look, the way 5G works on the network is that when you're using data, that's when actually it switches over to the 5G chipset. So it's not basically burning and just using all your battery life because it's on 5G. It's only when it actually needs it, and that's how it works to keep things really efficient with this device. Now, you saw speeds where the downloads were really high, the uploads were about maybe 70 or 80, and max. Now, Verizon has said that, look, that's on 4G, uploads will switch to 5G, and they actually just did that recently in Providence. So if you're in Providence, Rhode Island, go check out those speeds. Let me know what you think, and what you're getting with the uploads and downloads. If you have a 5G device, because you can pick up a V50 right now to do that. And I wanna put this call out to all everyone who's in a 5G area right now, go check it out. If you have a 5G device, check it out, or go to a Verizon store, pick up the V50 in the store, check out the speeds, and you can get to there. Because at least, just to give you an idea of what it is, because I lived through the 4G transition, and it was bad. This has really impressed me that within a month, I've seen speeds increase from what people initially announced or what I was getting. I was getting 700 to about one gigabit per second. That's really good. I like that, in terms of download speeds. So once those uploads speeds kick in as well, I think it will be a great experience altogether. Now, the V50 itself is a really good device. It's got a large display, it's got a notch, hopefully LG moves away from that. That's just something I don't like. But this device is very well capable. You've got a triple camera setup that gives you some really good photos. Selfies actually turned out pretty well. It took some really nice photos there. The selfies also, the rear camera, the wide camera is nice. The telephoto is good. The main camera sensor also does a good job. Low light setting photos are also good. So you get a, I would say a balanced approach with this device. Now, 855 processor, your gaming is going to be top-notch. And this thing runs pretty cool. 30, about 36 degrees Celsius. So playing games like PUBG and watching me just do a terrible job. It does a fantastic. The gaming on here is really, really nice. Speaker is also decently loud at 101.6 decibels, with of course the song that we used to test. So you have that there. The display looks really good in sharp environments as well. So you've got a nice display. Plus, it's got a headphone jack with the best DAC possible. Can drive things like my bare dynamic DT 1990 Pro. Those require quite a bit to drive them well. And it does a good job. I love the fact that you can do that on the V15, nor the smartphone jack. There's a lot to this smartphone.  Generally, there's some things yet that definitely could be improved that not just go away. But you also got 5G and you'll have to pick and decide what variant you're looking for. Plus, you can go up to two terabytes of storage microSD card as well. But that was my experience guys. Hopefully you enjoyed it. And hopefully, if you're in the 5G area, let me know what you're getting for speeds if you have a 5G device. I wanna know, I wanna see what that experience is because I wanna track that as well as we move forward because if you're picking up something like the V50, you wanna know that next year, the after, you're already in 5G. Like you're already in 5G but you can handle 4G. And when 5G fully takes over, as they say in 2023 in terms of devices, then you're good. Even if you decide to keep your V50 that long. Because not everybody's gonna upgrade every year. But thank you very much guys. Don't forget to like, share, smash the subscribe button. Also hit the notification icon and like and share this video. Thunder you saying thank you and always enjoy any statements.


So we have covered the basics of Biomutant. We've also covered individual classes, what they offer and so much more. Today it's a turn of the crafting side to this game, and while people it's pretty crazy, the possibilities here are absolutely endless. Now I've researched this over the past week or so, and I want to try and keep it as basic and simple for you guys to understand as possible. I mean it's very deep, but from the footage we've seen so far, it's quite easy to understand and hopefully today I have you covered and what you need to know. How's it going guys? My name's DPJ and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more Biomutant, be sure to subscribe. So Biomutant has a very complex and unique combat system as you know, a system in which you can progress and learn new moves, combos, abilities and so much more. But combat within this game isn't singled out to Wong Fu, there are also melee weapons and guns you can use too, and these are a part of a massive crafting system within the game, along with armor which can also craft which we'll get into later. So crafting within this game is done via you finding certain materials to craft with. These give you the options to craft weapons and materials are found in various different ways across the world. The materials I believe are metal, wood, plastic, rubber and e-waste. You can also get these materials via dismantling gear you found which you don't want or need anymore, and once materials are gathered and certain parts found you can craft within your menu. I will state as well you can buy certain parts from vendors across the world, this will cost you an in-game currency called green which you can also find across the world. And these materials and what can be found and used to craft it is said there are infinite possibilities and by the end of the video I guarantee you will believe that. Now although the gameplay we have seen so far in terms of the latest footage, which over the last years gameplay where we saw crafting is a lot cleaner now, but because footage is limited we don't get to see a lot of what can be done, but because I've researched absolutely everything, watched every video I could find, read every post on Reddit, I've accumulated a lot of information where obviously we won't see gameplay for each four. So let's get into it and what I found. So weapons that can be crafted are melee weapons, i.e. swords you know, and projectile base weapons, basically guns. So let's talk first about melee weapons. So with the melee weapons you can craft these literally from their base, as long as you have the materials. The possibilities here like I said are absolutely endless. So you start with the base and there are a ton of these to pick from. Bases range from blades, hammers, samurai swords, axes you name it. Some also have certain effects on them like biohazard, electricity and so much more. Others just have real damage. But it's important to know there are actually three types of melee weapons you can use in this game. One handed slash weapons, two handed slash weapons and two handed crush weapons, each having their individual attributes. Now these weapons and the base you start with differ in terms of set attributes like weapon addons, weight class, obviously the lighter the faster the attack speed, armor pierce and also critical chance. So once you have picked the base you want, which like I said can be a sword, an axe, a hammer, whatever you find, you can then select this base weapons handle. And here you can have anything from a bone to a banana to a toothbrush handle. Absolutely crazy guys, hilarious and also awesome at the same time. Now you'll also notice as well with certain melee weapons there are two addons. What this means for instance, say you have a sword or a samurai sword on the end of a banana handle. If the samurai sword has two addons, which would be the base, if that offers two addons, you can then add a screw or a nail or something like this to the end of that sword.  Yeah absolutely crazy people. And this is without adding the effects of incendiary damage, electricity, radiation and you can also level up these weapons, you can upgrade them via certain vendors so there's a lot here guys who really is. Now with the guns it works in very much the same way as it does with melee weapons. Once you have all the weapons and parts available, once you've found them, you can unlock the crafting for these guns via your inventory. So here like I said it's the same basis as melee weapons, you just have various different gun parts, way more than what we see with melee weapons. We have the stock, the grip, the base type, the magazine, the top mod and the muzzle. These can all also like melee weapons be individual items you find across the world of biomeutants. So like I said the possibilities here are absolutely endless and from some of the gameplay I've seen where you have a trumpet on the end of a stick with a magazine attached to it and a sniper scope on the top. I mean it's absolutely crazy guys. So how these work and what these actual different individual parts of the guns add to the weapon are as follows. The stock on a weapon I believe adds range with a chance of armor piercing and a also critical chance. Well this may vary. The base weapon determines the type of weapon it will be i.e shotgun, pistol, rifle etc etc. Magazine will obviously determine the mag size and it also seems reload speed too. The top mod obviously determines levels of range with different scopes etc etc and it seems it can also assist with armor piercing and critical chance too and the muzzle assist with damage and a few other random stats it seems. Now obviously what we have seen within this crafting menu is based on early footage that is floating around the internet. Things will not that change when the full game releases but for the most part I believe the basics will be the same. Now there are also all certain items you can find and you can equip through the weapon to change your way in which it works and affects enemies adding electricity, incendiary, radiation poison, absolutely everything much like we see with the melee weapons and again with the guns like melee weapons it seems you can level them up upgrade them via certain vendors and so much more. The crafting doesn't end there because you can also craft armor too via adding specific items you find throughout the world to individual parts of your armor i.e. shoulder, elbow, hand, kneecaps, waist no doubt allowing them to assist you with defences and so much more. So we do have quite a crafting system within this game people and it's pretty in depth. Now it could have gone way more in depth into it but as long as you know the basics I'm pretty certain you'll understand absolutely everything else when a game drops. Another thing I will add before we end the video the order research and videos I've watched it doesn't seem as though weapons break i.e. if you create a incredible melee weapon which is a banana with an axe attached to the end of that with a nail attached to the end of the axe. If you upgrade this with electricity so it applies electricity to enemies you hit with it it doesn't seem as though the weapon breaks so you can use this for their run out as long as you've crafted the weapon you can use it for as long as you like upgrading it making it more powerful as you play. I mean I could be wrong here but as far as from what I've seen weapons and guns don't break. But if you do have a question about crafting you can hit me up within the comment section or via my discord or twitter both link below. But yeah guys that's it for another video I just wanted to give you guys the basics and crafting within Biomutant and what can be done here with those endless possibilities.  Guys if you enjoyed the video leave a like really helps out if you're new around here want to see more Biomutant on a daily basis. When it drops be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video I upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button. But guys thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next one.


I think that the most important thing is to keep on raising international human rights standards as a measure of how we can pressure on governments like China and Hong Kong. The reason I'm saying this is that they sign and rectify a number of international treaties, and they are actually also members of the United Nations. And then even China is also a member of the UN Human Rights Council, and there's actually zero excuse, there's no excuse for them to say, sorry, I don't follow your standards. But just you sign and rectify them.  So how can they still make any excuse at all? So for like Xinjiang, exactly like for forced labor, the most important questions that we always ask people to ask. Actually, we don't want to argue the substance with you first. Why don't you give and give access to independent human rights experts. You will end up with tools to have access to do the independent investigation. I'm not even arguing your point, but you just allow access. But even that, that would be a big questions on like where the China would allow. And that's applied. This would seem like the situation in Hong Kong, whether you allow Hong Kong to have an impartial debate. I mean like among citizens here and also with people overseas about what's happening in Hong Kong.


Let's welcome our next speaker, Fabio Giovani. Hello. I'm Fabio Giovani with Giovanni Battistagallus. In this presentation, we'll share the experience we had in trying to get the code out of public administration in Italy, in a, let's say, legal and a bit of trolling in the public interest way. We are part of the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights. It's such a volunteer-run NGO in Italy taking care of digital rights and transparency. And one of the projects that we do, we work a lot on whistleblowing technology, and specifically on the Global Leaks Open Source Whistleblowing project. So we found out that a lot of Italian public administration, because they had to comply with the National Anti-Corruption Law, came up with their own development of whistleblowing software. And so we say, hmm, what the hell? We would really love to see the code and see how different it is from our already open source software. And so we went through an interesting path using some legal background. Hi, everybody. I'm very happy to be once again here at Foster, and thank you very much for the organization. We tried, as Fabio said, to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again. This is typical when public administration develops software. They just reinvent the wheel. Many public administration have the same needs, but for many times they custom-build software for the very same need. Of course with spending lots, spending lots and lots of money. And this wheel is a very costly one. I just put some statistics also for the public sector. That's about 12, I think it's 12 billion euros. And in Italy, only in Italy, the expenditure for licenses for one year, these licenses, the other is in-house software development. But in Italy for licenses is in 2016 was 146 million euros. And lots of this money, I think, is just reinventing the wheel. That's why it's very important the campaign that started, public money, public code. This is a very important campaign because software which is developed and pay with public money has to be shared freely. That's what we think. But we also thought, hey, but there is something interesting in Italy about this campaign and the underlying principle. So there is something really interesting in Italy. We're both Italians so we can make fun of the typical Italian stereotypes. But there is something else interesting in Italy and something you wouldn't have thought about. It's code of digital administration. It's a recent law, quite recent. It has been issued in 2005. It has been modified over and over again, almost never fully applied. So we say, we're not giving it a try. There's a nice piece of legislation we want to use in order to try and get the legal code. Which is the most interesting part? Article 69, the title is Reuse and Open Standards. Oh, well, quite promising. And what does this article say? It says that the public administration, when they develop software which is owned by them, they have the duty. The duty is not just an opportunity. It's the duty to make the source code available. They have the duty to make the source code available or either release in a public repository or give it in free use to other public administrations or to other legal entities. Well, that's kind of interesting. Not only public administrations but also legal entities. We may think about it. There are some exceptions but public security, national defense, electoral process, okay, when we talk about whistleblowing, we don't deal with those exceptions. And it gets even better because it states that the public administration has to be the right holder to provide in the public tenders and in all the specifications that the public administration is the right holder in order to release it as an open source. So you also are provided with a legal tool to do it. And even better, and I think that Riccardo Iaconelli talked about it later, that there will be also a platform and all the open source software developed and released by the public administration will be shared and distributed via other platforms, not only the public repository. This is kind of interesting. This path has been released just last month. So there should be some guidelines which will be published hopefully soon. We will figure it out. So all this is framed into the three-year plan on ICT for public administration which strongly advocates once again for open source. So the release with free and open source. Unfortunately, it talks also about free and open source software, but the focus is on open source, not only free software. Hang on. Then this is the nice part. Hermes Center is a legal entity. So when it comes to Article 69, maybe we can give it a try. This was Fabio's idea. Every time Fabio starts telling me what if we do that, I have always three options. First, it is blatantly legal. Second, it is mildly legal. Third, it's pure genius, or there is another option which is a combination of the three options. So this time, strange enough, I agreed with him. So I will let him tell how we try this legal hack. So we try to exploit the existing laws. I'm not a lawyer. Giovanni is the lawyer. So whatever I ask to Giovanni, my own Sunday legal, juridical interpretation of law. And first of all, you need to know that in Italy, let's say the previous update of the digital administration code delivered this reuse catalog. That's really a catalog with the brochure and the technical specification of the software that different public agencies decided to put in reuse. There's no code there. There are only the brochure and the contact that you need to get in touch with them in order to get the code. And they say, oh, it doesn't look good. I mean, the laws say something quite different. Let's try to get this code. So at first, I really, really tried to get in touch of the people we know. And we found out that there's a resistance by the provider that developed the software on behalf of the public administration to have the software to be really available in open source. First try, we tried with Naples and probably trying with the, not with the right law, but at least the first attempt on using the newly available freedom of information law. The Naples municipality developed their own in-house whistleblowing software. They even published in the public catalog and say, oh, lovely. Let's see this, an internal whistleblowing system. They also write it's open source release, but there's no code online. There's no open source, only a nice PDF and brochure. And so we tried to use the recently available freedom of information law. And so at first, I sent a FOIA request asking for the source code. And the Naples municipality formally rejected the request saying, no, no, this is not a document that's subject to the freedom of information law. But luckily enough. And they were right. Yeah, and they were right. Oh, they tried. Then there's a sentence from the Rome administrative score that say that the source code implementing an algorithm is an administrative document. So it should be subject to the FOIA law. So we made an appeal to the anti-corruption officer and the transparency officer saying, no, no, look at this court. I mean, you really need to give us the code that you are supposed to give in reuse. And they spent seven pages of very well legally written document to explain, no, no, no, you are not right. We reject, we are not going to give you the code because the software doesn't contain an autonomous algorithm like said by the court, and especially the digital administration court in their own interpretation, or you were saying a previous edition of the digital administration code say that we had to make a memorandum of understanding. So by the way, we will not give you the code. The only chance we had were to go to the regional administrative court but it were costing too much. There's a link with all of the document and then in the slide published. Second try, so we try with Venice. A lot of more fun with Venice, I have to say, because we try to use the recent digital administration code because of the article 69.1, the one we previously said, that the public agency had the duty to publish the code in a public repository under a free license. The nice thing is that the Venice municipality own a software development company that developed the software for themselves and made a whistleblowing software. Funny enough, the CAO of the Venice software company that's called Venice, were also the former CAO of the Italian agency for digitalization. And they announced that they whistleblowing software but were not available in the reuse catalog. Okay, we know that the reuse catalog is going to die. But basically they made a big marketing stunt and they even won awards as a virtuous public agency making such an anti-corruption software that's available to all of the other public administration. They got reviewed by anti-corruption NGOs and say, yeah, that's a very nice example of how anti-corruption technologies should be done. Still, again, where is the code? So, we started our path. On September, I mean, I just tried to write them as a private citizen, as a technology enthusiast and say, hey, what a lovely initiative. You also got all these fantastic prizes. Can you please share with me the code? I got a call. I'm sorry, yeah, we can't give you because you're a private person and you're not entitled to get it. You say, okay. Then, like Giovanni will say, ah, Hermes Center, it's a juridical entity that's by the article 69.1. Can ask this code. So, we made, again, this request after 30 days. No answer.  So, we made a solicit always by registered email that's this funny thing that we have in Italy that is called PEC, that we only have in Italy a registered email with a private circuit and we say to them, you really need to answer us because now we are going to share that you are not compared with the law with the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission of Digital Innovation in Public Agencies because, luckily enough, on Facebook, there are all these MP-free and lay people and also with the digital agency for Italy. Clearly stating that we will make a big media campaign. In the meantime, because we realize that the use of this reuse approach in the catalogue, it's often an excuse to, I mean, advertise that you have the technology without giving it for free. The other public agency needs to approach you and ask you and then you're going to invoice them some consulting in order to install the software because it's not public. Well, so, well, they answered our inquiry and they asked us, can you please sign this contract, like a 10-page contract? Well, we know that the Digital Administration Code say that they just need to public the code in a public repository. Isn't that expected that the license is a contract? So some consideration in it. We just didn't sign the contract and we got in touch with the digital, the AGID, with the agency for Digital Italy right into the Strategic Committee and asking some very specific inquiry. And some comments about the contracts, just remembering that kind of, trying to remember the D'Amelloye. There was a license, also in the contract, but it was not an open license. It was not clear. And actually, the law doesn't state what an open license is. Our Code for Digital Administration defines open data, defines open formats, doesn't tell us what an open license is. So that's the chain issue. Source code is provided, but there is no mention for the for-freedom, so we don't know what we can do with the source code. We can do, we know because it was stated in the contract that there was the right to modification, but we didn't know if we had the right of distribution. So once again, we didn't know how we can, maybe we can use internally or use in other ways, but not distribute again. And the funniest part, there was an NDA. Well, this is really nice because we all understand that if we have the source code, you really need an NDA. So it's pretty peculiar when it comes to open licenses. So, funny enough, in December they also wrote to the FOIA request because we asked each and all of the contract and invoice and technical offer that they maybe have done to someone reusing this code. And yes, it happened that effectively other public agencies approached them in order to reuse the code and they send invoices for like 2,500 euro first year and 1,500 euro sixth year. So basically for the code reuse for which they even got a word of price, they invoiced more than 25,000 euro. And so this is the kind of, I mean, disclosure we have done now. Just I would really love to make a consideration that this is just the beginning because the existing law, regardless of the very good job that the team for digital transformation and all of the MP are doing, doesn't give sanction and there's no authority that have the power to enforce that a public agency is effectively releasing the code outside. So there is a lot of civic hacking that need to happen in order to disclose the public agencies that are not respecting the law because no one is expected to vigilant on them and apply them a sanction. So we have no incentive to effectively do reuse. Yes. So to sum it up, what next? Because we still haven't the code. We still, maybe, I don't know if you send the signed contract but we'll figure it out. So what will we do and what we urge you to do? Keep on asking the code. Just check in the catalogs and ask for the code. And then we may even think about legal enforcement on compliance but this is always a tricky issue also because the law is quite new and the litigation is kind of expensive. And then the guidelines will come out. They talked about them yesterday. Then we will have to monitor the guidelines and see if they are compliant with the free and open source software principle. And one thing you can all do is just spread the word of the Italian law and maybe using it also in other countries because the principle that a publicly funded software has to be released and a free and open license it is a very important principle and so I think it's really worth for every one of us to try and spread the word. And that's it, I think. Do we want to add something? Just that whatever kind of policy advocacy is being done it's important that there is an enforcement. Otherwise whatever country adopts similar policy you end up in a situation like in Italy when there are very good policy, very well written just that nobody applies because there is no enforcement of it. That's it. Tell us when we stop. I don't know if he or she has suggested to them both to go. Otherwise I don't get to go. Quite. How did it happen? Historically the first paragraph of Article 61 was modified in 2016 and was suggested by several activists and several free software enthusiasts and I think they didn't understand what they were not the activists, the people who approved it didn't understand what they were doing. The last part is the modification done or written mostly by the lawyer the digital transformation team. The last part I think is from them. So it's a very good principle I don't know if they really understood what they were going to and if they were going to apply them. No, it's not really the latest update of the digital administration code also mandate that the code must be published on a collaborative platform and in accordance with some technical guidelines that will be released in this month and will be subject to public consultation. So what will be achieved in a couple of months time is that we will have a good legal framework and also technical and operational guidelines to make public code reused in a good way. There is still not enforcement available but at least the digital transformation team is using their strong moral persuasion on the central public agencies and they are achieving good results. Obviously we know that the peripheral public agency I mean, let's say they have an officer that really loves this open approach are unlikely to adopt those. More questions? So in France it seems that there's even a best situation because with the FOIA law there has been a prior experience in getting tax software that's part of our algorithmic implementation and so FOIA law can be used and it's being used to get the code. So in France really I think it's going to have a lot of fun. It just made a point that it is not so simple in many times because of customization and other issues to share the code. I make a comment on it, you're right, but in many other cases it may be simple. In many other cases this software may solve problems for many other public administrations and in any case even when you release it you never know how they are going to use it. So you have to foster also this kind of, I would say serendipity, you don't know if people may find it useful but maybe people would reuse it. So I think that it's worth each and every time.


Yes. Well, good afternoon. Glad to see all of you. Let me first assure our guests that we haven't gathered for a public hanging. We are here to recognize these outspoken and creative Defense Department employees who challenge the way that things were done in the past and who offer us a better, less expensive way of doing them in the future. The 12 men and women here today didn't just complain about a problem. They did something about it. One challenged the price of an aircraft lighting kit and that challenge resulted in a drop in price from 50 to 8 dollars for every kit we buy. Another is an alert auditor who found some suspicious labor charges and kept looking until he gathered enough evidence to convict a dishonest contractor and obtain $450,000 in fines and recoveries. But whether the savings was $200 or two million, each of these fine defense employees standing here is proof of the energy, the competence, and the can-do spirit that we're finding throughout the ranks of the Pentagon today. I think we should also take a minute to recognize their bosses, for if their supervisors had not provided an opportunity for creativity and innovation, then we would not be celebrating these savings and successes. I'm proud of the management reforms that Cap Weinberger has brought to the Pentagon, and I'm encouraged that he has a hotline that any employee, any American, can use to call in a complaint or suggestion. And in fact, the toll-free number is 1-800-424-9098. Now, there are two reasons why this ceremony here in the Rose Garden is so important. Four years ago, the American people gave us a mandate both to root out waste and fraud in the federal government and to rebuild our defenses which had suffered from a decade of neglect. We've been working hard to achieve both these objectives, and I think we can say that our hard work is paying off. We're tackling the tough problems that have plagued defense management for so many years, and today we're safer, more secure than we were four years ago. And this afternoon, we recognize that it's because of the dedication and achievement of the 12 people we honor here today and of the many other dedicated defense employees they represent that America is once again able to fill its leadership role in the world. We have ceremonies to honor the brave servicemen who fight in our wars. Today, we gather to honor the unsung heroes of peace. And so, to each of you, on behalf of the American people, thank you. Keep up the good work. God bless you. Helen, I wouldn't take away from Mr. Mondale the opportunity to ask that question in the debate for anything in the world. Tune in, listen in. What? Ready as I'm ever going to be? Just to tell the truth. Well, other than that. Well, I think in the world of politics, that'd be so unusual that it ought to cause quite a standing ovation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you know me too. You don't know me, do you? That's why we do this. I really have no idea. You got it, Sam. Want me to give out cards?