Good evening and welcome to the Montpellier Civic Forum and this is another series of civic forums prior to another town meeting day which this year will be March 1st and as always I encourage you to vote not on town meeting day per se but return to ballot before town meeting day or vote on town meeting day but it's really important to weigh in not only on city but on schools, on cemetery commission, on parks commission, on the public safety authority, on the budgets and on the capital budget and tonight I've got a very special one because they have people who don't necessarily have to be here. They're running unopposed. They are our incumbents from district two, my district, Connor. Well thanks very much for having us Richard. It's a great service you do to the community having these discussions and I know both Donna and I self are happy to be here and we want to even if we're unopposed we want to earn those votes. And of course you in your district, this is Donna from district one. I was supposed to do that if you pre-empted me. Donna, thank you Connor. It's great to be here. It's always good to talk about it. Okay, Donna you're the senior member. How long in council? Oh eight years. Eight long years. Four terms, yep. Making the big bucks. Yes, making the big bucks. Connor, how many years on council making the big bucks? I'd be hopefully going into the third term here. So I've got four under the belt. What keeps you guys on other than to beat Jim Sheridan's record for longevity? For me it's the commitment of seeing movement on a lot of projects I had seen stall and stall and that particularly with this council and this mayor, there's a lot of advancement. We have real set goals, we have the desire and the action to use the plans we have to go to the community's vision of being sustainable, of being advance in our social services and our social justice.  Connor, what do you see? Yeah, I've worked in politics most of my career I have to say, but so it's a bit unusual for me to step into the role of an elected official. I've never hated a candidate more than myself. I'll tell you that. I get very anxious on the campaign trail. But other than I've settled in the last four years, like Donna said, you can actually see some tangible progress. It's one thing seeing something on paper, but then you see the trucks come out and see it being built and see progress made. And there's something very addicting to that, I think. But also it's just such a special community we have, you know. And I love the idea that, you know, council, we don't have our own staff per se individually, you know. So if you go by arugula at the grocery store, you're going to get into a chat with somebody about Confluent Park or something else going on. So it's a great dialogue back and forth with the constituents. And it's a community that does have a lot of opinions and I'm very happy to share them. Let's walk through some projects. See, I thought you guys were going to make the announcement on my show that something was going to happen on Savins Pasture. As I told Anne the other day in the session that the mayor did, she's running again, that my son was in second or third grade when we voted on the $800,000 bond in Savins Pasture. And my son is getting out of graduate school this year. What's going on with Savins Pasture? It stalled. And I'm glad you brought that up because when people say they're so surprised about as interested in perching land, years. I mean, your son is how old? 28 now. So at least 20 plus years, we've been trying to buy a large amount of land in the city limits to expand the city options. And people are surprised when something comes on the market and the buyer is interested in selling to the city versus the highest bidder. Of course, we are interested. It's a long term interest we've had. So I feel like we were ready for it. We planned, we considered it. We constantly the community says more housing, more housing, more recreation. I mean, recreation is right there high and people's desire. Yeah, no, I think we had discussions in council, you know, we're a community of 8000. We got a plan to be a community of 10, 11,000 into the future. We have to be forward thinking. Because what we have right now isn't sustainable, less than 100 homes sell in Montpelier a year. The average cost of rent is $1,600 a month. Who can afford that? And the only option is to increase the stock, you know, and do some developing.  It's always in the same spot. And that's just not realistic for a capital city that swells up to like 2400 24,000 used to before COVID. But yeah, but so we need to be forward thinking. And for the I think we're both talking about the Oast Club land here at this point. In my mind, it's a question of define or be defined, you know, we can wait. But if we wait, somebody else is going to get that land and we much less say over it. What did we learn from 20 years of Saban's pastures sitting unsold and undeveloped? What what are the lessons that we walk away with from 20 years of that? Well, that's in terms of zoning in terms of what what is what I guess one of my lessons as I hear people being so surprised that the city would act on a large plot of land for housing and recreation is that people move in and out. You and I have been here all this time, but a lot of people have it. It's a brand new thing to them. And even though we started discussing this, it's early as July, I think I saw people seem to be surprised that it was going to be on the ballot in March. And I think wow. And so I have to realize for other people, Saban's pastor doesn't even exist. They weren't part of that discussion. And I mean, I felt like what we learned that we had a lot of discussions, we had a lot of community input, but push comes to shove the owner controlled. And it wasn't enticing enough for the owner. Did restrictive zoning play a role in that initial restrictive zoning? But it anything can be a barrier if you have hesitation. So I thought because we were willing, I mean, even way before my council experiences, the council was willing to work with the owner. And we did make huge changes that allowed a lot of changes. And we thought they were right in sync with the owner. But the final thing was it didn't work. There were too many players like the land trust nonprofits. It wasn't just us and a private property owner, or a lot of other nonprofit organizations trying to put this patch will quilt together, which is a wonderful one. It works. But it only takes one slippage. And suddenly somebody no longer sees it beneficial.  And you see it in a lot of what we discuss. It's, wouldn't it be great to do this? But where would we put it? It could be, you know, a homeless warming station or something. There's a lack of options, you know, and having 130 acres up there. You know, not only is it a lot of potential to do housing, new neighborhood. The other thing is we need a rec center. And if we're going to be forward thinking, the one on the one on Barry Street doesn't fit the bill. It's, but didn't we do a survey? We allocated 30,000 per survey of that rec center. And what the survey came in, saying that they wanted it within walking distance of downtown, that that was important to people. Because at the time, there was some discussion of putting it up at the rec field on Elm Street. There was some discussion of putting it on some of the land by the high school, which the high school wasn't thrilled about. And people said, no, we would like a central location that we don't have to drive to. If I if memories have not keep in mind that my wife and I are not the spry people that when we first came to Montpelier, but that's a pretty good walk from central Montpelier along that trail up to that location at the Elks Club. How do people get there who don't have cars? Well, one, I would say people on surveys, sometimes mark the box that say ideal and not their behavior, that most people drive either themselves or their kids to the facility on Barry Street. Majority do not walk. And that I feel we can support public transit and make an easy connection, one that's needed anyways. And we can make it regional that helps us afford it. The cost was another one that came across in that survey that eight eight million to 15 million for a rec center was not where people were at in terms of building a facility. That was not that was a much larger number than that. Right. Yeah, no, it was. What is the number that we have in mind right now for a recreation facility? Well, if you're if we're looking to and if it does fail on the ballot, you know, we might look at renovating the current rec center. But that's going to cost when all of a sudden done between seven and eight million dollars, you know, I was going to say to me, you know, if we could, the building is a great location. But there's only so much space we could do on it. As we look at affordable housing, it's an ideal candidate for that. And, you know, walkable would be great. And if there was a patch of land downtown, I would be supportive. But it also is depends on who you're talking about.  You're absolutely right. On that question, how much are we tired? This is a future loaded plan. You know, you're buying the land right now. But to put something on that land goes from our capital budget. And we project and again, capital budget is one of two budgets that we have done. Would you explain capital budget versus operating? Well, operating is your day to day capital is like your mortgage at home. It's a long term investment in a structure in a building and utilities underground that you pay over time. And our existing capital budget is projected out over years in terms of projects that we would like to see. And you can think of it as a queue as one now this one gets done and paid off and another one comes in. Another one slots in. So we have standards of how much capital deadness we can have. And so we keep that in mind. So we have this sort of range that's allowed. And the budgets, the bonds we have now keep us in that range, we get a little high for like two years. And then we're back. So right now, in this capital budget, we're asking for we're asking to purchase a land at the Elks. We're asking for a sum for Confluence Park. Would you explain what Confluence Park will be? And when Confluence Park will be? Oh, the when might be a difficult question. A lot of you know, whenever we talk about projects in Montpelier, the when is always the most difficult. Why do you think we keep running for counsel here? We've got to see it through. Push it through push it through. Confluence Park's been in the works for a while. And you know, I think a lot of people have come to the council and just raised their voices saying, this town wasn't necessarily built facing the river. You look at all the buildings along it and it's all away from the river. But my goodness, we it's such an asset that we have, you know, and you have some of these folks who come in with these great ideas, recreational opportunities. You know, let's look at these dams. And that's something we're actually looking at right now. We're looking at the legislature at a dam analysis to see, okay, we got these three dams in town. Are they actually certain dams in town? We've got the it's the Rat Dam, the Shaw's Dam, and then the one up I like, Bear Naked Growler area there, right? You know, if you talk to the River Conservancy, they would say, you know, those dams actually might be harmful and putting us in jeopardy of flooding. So we need to do an analysis of that. And if we can take those dams out, it opens it up to all sorts of recreational opportunities, including nice park access down there, people would love to like just take their lunch during the day. It's what you keep here and as we need more park access. What part of the riverfront is Confluence Park? Oh, Confluence Park is where North Branch Dog River comes down and hits Wenuski right behind the Shaw's. So another way of putting this, I suppose, is I'm walking by the Shaw's over the new walking bridge. And then I turn right towards the walking path is that junction. If you're walking from Shaw's, you turn left or turn left. You're right on going into the parking lot. But that's Dog River. You're walking over. Right. So basically that area where we have picnic tables right now is envisioned to be Confluence Park. It is. Yes. Yep. And I think there's still some discussion that is how far back it can go, that type of thing. But I called it Dog River. It's North Branch. It is. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just total slippage. North Branch. I didn't catch it. North Branch. And I was thinking, oh, no, no, no, no. Dog River is over the rec field by the wastewater treatment plant. Okay, folks, sorry about that. It's North Branch that comes into Wenuski. So we're talking about where those picnic tables are right now. So this is Confluence concept. It is a concept. And we're working with the River Conservatory. And the city share is $600,000. The nonprofit is coming up with $600,000. I mean, this is a very expensive project. But it's going to be one of those other things that's like a legacy. It's like Hubbard Park. People invested when there was all sorts of open land. And they said, what are you doing this for? The future. And legacy, I mean, we can use Confluence Park as soon as it's done. But it should last. And it should not only that, but it should create more riverside parts. It's really the bike path has evolved into more than I think we ever could have expected it to be. So to keep building along the bike path, and I hate to go back to the Elks Club, but it does meet right there. But having the Confluence Park, when you think you can go almost by the railroad station to U32 by the time it's done, and to have all these assets along the way, it's a beautiful thing. Are we envisioning, now I'm not going into the weeds, I'm going into the water. Are we envisioning the water going higher so that people can kayak or canoe in that river? We have to do the dam analysis first. But hopefully in the next couple of years we can get that done. Kayak can. Yep, we're exploring opportunities at the legislature right now. So that is a major push forward project for the city. Things you can do on the water. I asked Ann this question, so I know the answer and hopefully you guys do. She's very smart I gotta say. She'll say yes. A TIF is called Tax Incremental Financing. And a TIF allows us to finance things such as the infrastructure under the under the road now that helped us to land the distillery over on Barrie Street. Yes. It would have helped us to construct the parking garage had that happened. Yes. Are we envisioning the TIF continuing east all the way over to the Elks Club? Well the TIF has a set territory when we apply. I'm not saying we can't make an amendment of that. Are we thinking an amendment because there has to be infrastructure out there. It doesn't currently I don't believe, right? No it doesn't. But I think we could make an amendment for it. I mean and yeah, Bar Hill is a good example. That whole area of town I think is you know, primed to build up. Right. So yeah, no it's a good thought. Because likewise when I see if indeed that Elk Club land was developed both for housing recreation then I would see save and pasture more likely to find some alternatives that will really happen more quickly because it is that development of another part of town. Again it's very difficult non-pilure it's like nailing jello to the wall. How many houses are we thinking on that 130 acres might be conceivable? Oh you see I think we part of this is the community discussion which would really take place. The answer is before you. Yeah we don't want to answer it too much. I guess for me I really look at dense housing not housing sprawled over the hillside. No I'm talking about the Elk Club. But the Elk Club I see dense housing there and maybe at least some of it. But who knows that's the public discussion. So we don't want to nail it down before we get the land. Once we have the land then we can start the discussion. And if nothing works out we can sell it. And we can take an incremental approach on this. Yes I really like with that with that amount of land you know it's you know when we're asking how much we want to put into it. It could be a pretty modest rec center built with room for expansion at the end. You know there were folks who came in and I'm not saying this is even on the table right now but it's a possibility. The jump and splash folks who want swimming facilities swimming two swimming pools in that proposal. You know it was cost prohibitive at some of the places we were looking. But over time maybe some financiers come to the table. Maybe that's an option. You know I'm not saying it is. But at least we have options then you know. What else is in the capital budget that is a noteworthy project. The wastewater recovery facility. Our energy. Yes that's that phase two so it's not only more efficient but it also deals with right now. Phase one did a tremendous job of taking I'm going to call waste burning it to create energy. And also reducing value. Also reducing truckloads that we had to carry sludge away because we're now taking care of it. But the next phase is also a further level of reducing toxics being given out. But now give us odor which is terrible for that part of town just terrible. If I understand correctly. And of course I do. There's also another building that's planned to be heated by the byproduct of the waste treatment plant. We use that methane to sit and heat those facilities that approximate to it instead of having them heated in a conventional manner. And I understand that they're planning another building. Well yes it's not just what's there now. We are but also ultimately will gain revenue. So it'll be not only taking care of its energy needs but giving us revenue to apply elsewhere. It's really like it's a part of city government that I think we take for granted left and right. But you know important to give credit to the four employees who work there. We just want a huge national award on this you know. It's really innovative thinking here. And the commitment they have you know as we were looking even at COVID it's like what if city employees go out. What we have done if like our four wastewater treatment employees went out there you know. So that's the type of stuff you have to consider. But it really as far as you know our commitment to environmental justice you know the investments in this wastewater treatment plant are you know really already paying dividends I think with what we're getting out of it. What about the water treatment plants on the hill. The drinking water exactly is there anything wastewater drinking water right. Is there anything coming up on that one. Any any required changes. Well not right now we went through some and that's another one both of these plants are so high tech it's awesome. And when the public once in a while gets a chance to come in and tour them do it. It's fascinating. Just fascinating. Yep we have talked about maybe having like city days where members of the public can go into some of these facilities and really see how they work because. Because then you really know when you turn on the water what it took. My eyes were popping out of my head on that you know. And they make it interesting they do. What's the status of the wood chip project. We take that wood chip pellets. Yep the wood chip firing plant. Over next to the transit center. The underground heat. Yes the district heat. Right what's going on with that. Not enough and we would hope to have more partners but I have to just back up this to me is a good time to say. In two thousand and twenty mark two thousand and twenty when we saw very clearly just how quick. In December January and February before the pandemic was declared. How much revenue we were losing we started cutting. And we lost staff we put people in furlough we stop projects. We did the same in two thousand twenty one. And leading into twenty two budget. So this year we're able to start putting things back on the table. That we have the revenue to cover. And we're not being outlandish we're just replacing what we lost. What would an example of that be. Staffing. That we're going to replace people who had left we didn't refill those places even when people came back from furlough. We have a energy. Personnel that really needs to be we need someone who's looking at all of our buildings for maintenance and energy improvements. Is that the new staff position. Yes we do we hope you know like many things it's hopefully a smart investment to the future. Where that position can actually pay for itself. But even if it's not it's taking us to our sustainable goals. We put these goals out there and a city council members every week we talk about them they're on all every single agenda item has a sheet on it that says what gold does this relate to. What cost does it relate to. And I wish people would pay more attention to those that are attached to the agenda. Because they really tell you the thoughtfulness of those projects. The energy audit that's required before you sell your house. There was a lot of resistance to that. That's a non-monetary right. If Cinder and I were to leave this town that would be free to us prior to selling our home. We wouldn't have to pay anything to do that yes. Right. That's correct. There's a tool online you can go on and anybody can find out that right now. It really we talked about how few homes are sold in one pill a year about a hundred. 80 percent of them do that already. So it's a pretty small number of people we're talking about. But I think it like it's an important conversation starter. It's important for people to get in that mindset you know. As they're buying a house to think what they can do. And you know like like Donna said we had strong community commitment to the 2015 net zero goal there. And I think unless we're making steps towards that progress it's not worth the paper it's written on some of these goals. One more in the capital budget before we go into operating. Barry and name. That's in the capital budget. It was one of those projects that got pushed aside when revenue started slipping through the pandemic. Would you explain a couple of things. One this is going to be a traffic light. That's 25 feet away from another traffic light. What was the thinking between that and a circle. A little mini circle. I'd have to go back. I thought at the end of the day the analysis showed that the circle would have been too tight. Although I'd be a big proponent of generally. Yeah I lost that fight. I'm a roundabout person. I was there for the first one on Maine and spring. I mean I think I've been in Europe all sorts of small roundabouts. But the roundabout at Maine and Barry not only was small but it had the railroads. And the railroad was the real final.  So you're talking about putting a roundabout on Maine and River. On River and Maine. And then have a traffic light over on Barry Street. What's Scotch to Maine? Well no they all would be roundabouts. You start at Spring Street coming all the way down to Memorial and they'd all be roundabouts. And Tom went through the money and I said okay I yield. We are going to go to traffic lights. So if we're going to go to traffic lights now we're going to do the smart traffic lights so that they react to one another. So they're not on the same timer they're in relationship to one another and the traffic at one another. So if there's no one who's trying to turn south or north on Main Street from Barry going out or up then that light will remain dormant. That's my understanding. Yeah it's pretty interesting technology. Yes it is expensive technology but it really makes sense instead of having these jam ups because you have every light timed a certain way. And then the light at State and Maine will adjust accordingly. Yeah all four lights. Right all four lights. Is there any discussion again of the round the mini roundabout by the library because that's another one that that people have talked about. No see the main because it's difficult to get out of school. Maine and Barry Street had its own scoping study so there is still one sitting there for a demo what the group decided through that study was they wanted a roundabout by the library but they wanted to do a demo first and make sure that it worked for people and pedestrians. Because the concern about roundabouts with a lot of traffic is it may not give pedestrians enough protections especially those who are visually impaired. Or children. Children. Well yeah for children actually I find roundabouts safer because it allows you to go one part of the roadway wait and then the other part of the roadway but that would be a demo but that was part I mean the whole Maine and Barry Street had a lot of components so one we've carried forward we're waiting for the other ones for the next round of revenue is the traffic light because the traffic light would then affect everything along the way. The master downtown plan was going through and then all of a sudden the world shut down for several years and also there aren't as many people in offices downtown you know projected forward and the like is that master plan then included both the library as well as Barry and Maine. Is that master plan going to be rethought through? Now you're talking about the downtown.  A lot of different components here because you have the city plan. We have a lot of master plans here. Yeah yeah and certainly I think when whether it's a year out two years out it'll need to be re-looked at. Things change. It's a good point Richard you know like you go downtown and it's getting better I think but it was tumbleweeds for a while so you know again like I said we swell up to like you know twenty some thousand that hasn't been the case right and we're following very closely at the state level to see how many of these state employees really are coming back because I think you know maybe they haven't seen productivity drop in some of these departments a lot of people like working at home and that's a major blow to our downtown businesses it really is. What about the Rialto bridge? The bridge across on State Street there was talk that that would be refurbished in several years is that on schedule? Yes it's actually connected to the work on East State Street because we couldn't do the bridge until we dealt with the underground utilities at the main and East State Street entrance and so one of the bonds is for East State Street and all the underground utilities. Are we concerned that we're playing whack-a-mole on sewers? That as sewers and water pipes bust you see them rush over you know and do spot patch work and our sewer system is ancient in some cases I think on Berry Street they said it was wooden you know what people don't seem to want to own up is as much as we've said the ones that have bursted over the winters have been the younger pipes because they have not lived up to their profile when they were bought at the time. What does younger mean in this context? It means that there are actually some sort of I'm going to say plastic but that's a big word. Is this younger being the last 50 years? Yes, yes, oh yes, oh yes, yes so and you can never and that's climate change folks that's where we're back to net zero it's climate change the constant range of temperature the freezing, thawing is very very hard for pavement. I mean we live in a town shaped like a starfish five hills here where the temperature regularly drops below zero and we've got the rivers converging so just like you're saying it's climate change can impact Montpelier at a disproportionate level I think than the rest of the state of the country even even this winter I mean they're just I mean driving over here there were probably 12 sections that were at least a yard wide maybe a foot thick that was just hollowed out the asphalt just crumbled the rest of the row was fine but there was this it's the weather I know that when John Holler was mayor one of his pledges they came through with was to put together a fund that would be allocated to road repair every year yes it's steady state right didn't we skip that during the pandemic and so we instituted it so that's back in the budget and we're making substantial investments in roads we not only didn't put the money in the steady state but we didn't have the personnel to go out and do the work people don't realize how much our DPW does the work on the street and we didn't have them there to do it it's been tough and as we get some of this ARPA money to re-plan okay stop that's the acronym alert what is ARPA oh okay American Recovery Rescue Rescue and wow that's awful isn't it yeah American Rescue Plan Act and that goes into the operating side or the capital side capital okay yep and what we can do is recoup some of what we've lost at Revenue which the parking meters alone oh it was astronomical what we lost yep let's go into operating and the operating side is what can I I want to go back just a little bit Richard because I really all during that time the past two and a half years when we're cutting things down constantly hearing from people roads roads roads and not accepting why it wasn't happening now we have bonds out there trying to recover that and and these bonds represent really a small part of how much money we're applying to infrastructure I mean I brought pages here just in case you have questions of all the projects roadways that we over a million that we just projects we just stopped so I want people to really realize that the bonds are there because we were responsible we didn't have a deficit the last two and a half years but there was a lot of work that didn't get done Montpellier's a city is not static it has constant needs well let's stay on Bonson if we were to build a 15 million dollar rec center I'm drawing that out of my head that's okay yeah what are we pushing off that's 15 million dollars big that's been in the planning for a decade we're going to defer something because this hasn't been in the planning for a decade it's something new what types of projects would we have to put off in order to put something really significant in their place well we actually had in the the bond projection vision that's the 20 year plan you're talking about we had about six to eight million for the rec center okay so we start by that's one project that we do have budgeted right in that vision and likewise we're looking at revenue we're going to get when we do all the phase two of the water recovery facility so that we see some revenue actually coming in not just capital money going out so it's not necessarily that you drop something but you look at your whole 20 year scope at what's falling off and what you can put on to me the rec center has to be a priority you know you go outside we're living in a place that snow is on the ground six seven months a year sometimes the pandemic has taken a tremendous I think mental health toll on some of our children in this community and just having that outlet to go there you know play pickleball play a game of pickup basketball or something in these like hard winter months especially when you're isolated yeah it's worth its weight in gold I really believe that and the child care people forget that through our rec department we offer city child care and we have many more demands and we have space for and that would be another thing that I feel really really understated and having the bigger correct place let's go to operating because that's that's as we run through this otherwise what we'll do is we'll go line by line and we'll have this show two hours long while you discuss line by line the capital episode you're a capital budget sorry sorry sorry how men the operating assumption on this budget is that it's at a seven percent inflation rate does the city assume that people's wages have risen seven percent in the last year as cost I think you have to divide it what's going to be reflected in your tax bill and that's with the schools coupled with it you're looking at one point but the schools are reducing simply because we're coming off of a different agreement that we had earlier which is cutting our school I'm talking about the city side of the budget the schools came in at 4.5 percent as their increase the city is coming in at 7 percent yes because we're restoring but at the same time as you said we weren't getting the same services last year that we had because personnel was laid off and now we're coming back accounting for last year so we're going to work the staff hard but the thing that I find amazing is every year that I've been on council working to stay under two percent increase two three percent increase and the school budget whoa so everybody was so reacting to the total number I thought they never got the city credit for how low we kept our operating money and this year we're up we're up to make up for the last two and a half years it won't continue that way we now have recovered what does next year's budget look like can we go down again down again to a three four percent increase well yes I think we'll be lower the yeah but it is important to like you said we we flatlined it last year you know yeah to give people a break because we know it was in the bend out of this on the back or the years we reduced but I fundamentally don't think you can cut yourself out of a economic downturn here where we're putting in our investments for the future whether it be the energy coordinator some of these other items and again as we said in the beginning looking into the future where we can increase housing stock and hopefully make this a more affordable city because we're not we're not on that track right now but a couple cuts isn't going to do it I think that's you know people have to get that that in their heads though yeah because I mean I wish I had the percentage and I was going to actually go look at the chart in the budget our finance operator gives us these charts but we're like 80 almost as high as a school in personnel cost we're about service our cost is about people as it's always been as it's always been so you can't just you know whack them away and still give the services because people want the services the police department how many police are we down to at this point I know we normally like to staff at about 17 we've had a couple come on lately but we've had a couple go off lately so so I think I think you'd have to ask the chief but I I think we're one or two down we were a lot more than one or two down I would say more like two or three yeah we're down to 13, 14 for a while though yeah yeah is that a concern well it is a concern but it's a national concern right it's a tough job it's well it's a tough job and it's always been difficult but it even before the pandemic it was getting hard and after the pandemic and doing it it's been much much harder now you know we're returning back to the capital but should we keep coming I didn't do it you did it then we have body camps yep coming in would you explain that policy and the need for body camps sure I mean I think you know no matter who you look at I was even reading an ACLU study on it the more transparency the better whether you're the officer whether you're the person in any sort of interaction there and we've been able to get it down so it's it's actually on a cell phone rather than this really expensive equipment they would have broken the bank of the past here so with this storage you know I think it was going to break the bank of the storage component of us terrible the technologies come a long way Chief Pete's brought a lot to the table so I think we really are moving into the 21st century hopefully with body cams and you know it's rare it's rare but in a case where it's you know they said versus they said the body camera you know often does a good deal of good I'll tell you I'm glad the conner's here because I've been opposed to the body camera I feel it just puts an attitude out there and the wrong focus I want to see us building relationships and the how does the body cam do that when I've got a cell phone that I could point at the interaction myself well the the body cam is out there I feel because we are hearing from young people who are taking I feel the national mindset and we need to change that and if the body cam will help people see what's really happening both for the police and for any citizen then we can do it through the phones but the previous body cameras were so expensive and the storage so expensive I didn't feel it was worth the investment but this has changed now you have not only the body cam but I understood that the data transparency issue was way expensive to be able to slice and dice that little data that we can generate in the village of 7500 was that the case yes yes well yes but I you know I think all of this moves towards more trends I really want to hand it to Chief Pete you know whether it be restoring coffee with a cop which we just brought back you know to having this community engagement officer which is a new position in the budget I think our department is very responsive to the national picture here you know they are just as disgusted some of these officers you talk to as anybody else with some of these like atrocities that are happening across our country and Chief Pete seems like somebody who would hold his own department to a higher standard but Tony did as well absolutely absolutely Tony goes to former Chief and Brian is continuing that right and and there's something written into the budget for another social worker if I remember correctly or more hours right and in the last budgets a social worker was budgeted in along with Barry you know and the thinking if I can interpret the thinking was that a lot of police issues deal with the skill set that really is beyond the training of police yes mental health absolutely we really need mental health experts and that we're going in that direction and we're investing more in that direction yes and this is always a slippery slope because as we get involved more with mental health and social issues which are needed it's hard to balance between what's the city's responsibility and what's the state's responsibility and we feel the state has really dropped the ball on some of this stuff you know caring for this population we've put eighty eighty some thousand in recently just to make sure people aren't freezing on our streets that they have a hotel voucher when the state isn't there to give them one so it's an investment but is it an investment the city should be making or does the state need to step up I really think they do in terms of our addressing the homelessness the structure next to the art store in Shaw's what was the thinking behind moving something that was away from the public so it's still somewhat close so it was hundred yards away or something on that level up to our commercial downtown it was at a very tight intersection on the bike path there where you would have a lot of kids coming from school and there'll be some interactions there but you know we we don't want to you know this is a population that's often discriminated against and we don't want to push them into the shadows you know it's it is a structure that you know everybody should be able to use and there but but everybody isn't using it it's not being used by families right but anybody has a right to well come on they do they do Connor and I tell you I go up there every every week or so and talk to the population that's there and hear about some of the issues you're homeless not just because of some of the factors that people think about I think it's painted with a broad brush these are folks who are like victims of domestic violence in some cases folks who have really been lost by the system you know with severe substance abuse issues acute mental health issues and of course we're not equipped to handle that as a city but we have to be compassionate and not just push them out you know it's right and the city council didn't move that shelter of its own I would say own motivation we heard from citizens who really wanted to be able to use the bike path and not have that confrontation but by moving it out to a park which we hope then to do more with we're hoping that eventually these individuals who are without a home right now can be integrated and share that shelter do you see tent camping on that facility? but they're not by and large they're not sleeping there but they are spending their daytime but when the weather becomes conducive do you see homeless tenant campmen on that site? tent tent tenting? yeah as they have if we're going to the camp and policy the policy states you know if there's no shelters to go to public land can be used for camping except for park land which is ruled by the park commission and that is city that's where it gets city controls well actually the it's still city property doesn't matter who governs it it's city property so legally the park can be camped on if we can't offer them a shelter somewhere else does the park commission agree with that? no they mean that they have oversight in the charter but the law of the land has oversight of whatever we have in our ordinances and the courts have said they have the right certainly you can go to court we can have our own but let's talk about a positive we're constructing we're constructing beds for those people down on 302 over in the twin cities so in theory we are alleviating the need for sleeping out in the public because we are offering additional space for people who don't have beds to sleep in so we are affirmative in that that's the positive way of looking at it right but we really need the heavy state partnership so that when people first starts sliding into their cars and out of their house they get help as soon as possible because once they become really unhoused and a lot of them uncard they really have such stress of just living day to day it's harder and harder to provide the services that they need and for them to use the services that they need and we do provide money to community organizations through our community fund that addresses not enough I really want to hand it to another way and that's another way then we'll have stepped up stepped up when nobody else wants to and they've been at the homelessness task force they serve on the homelessness task force in some cases and you know we've seen some real positive results and twin city as you said we hope it puts a real dent in the population there because nobody should have to be sleeping and they have enough land there to expand see and hopefully it will and they'll have a hub of services so within that facility it's not just beds and housing but it's also services will be there and we're picking up the social worker working with the police so that we can steer towards that I mean we have an organized plan it's not as if sure we're rushing to put people in the parks sleeping we just don't have the resources that's the problem but well the problem is bigger than the city can handle alone it is it's a regional are we addressing it regionally Hunter is Barry involved with the planning on this actually Barry just just established a homelessness task force along with ourselves so there is some coordination we invested in a countywide study we just gave fifteen thousand dollars I believe to the countywide study looking at the root causes of this and how we can work better with the cities it's because you know it's a lot of folks are going back and forth between Barry Berlin and Montpelier we need to we need to treat it that way well I want to thank you for coming and discussing this for those of you have a further interest Donna is going to read from the capital budget for two hours a dramatic reading a dramatic reading for the capital budget I want to thank you for watching the show and I urge you to vote and that doesn't mean coming out on town meeting day it means either returning that ballot early or coming out on town meeting day and engage yourself make sure that you're civically involved when is city council coming live again can you show up in the chamber I don't know our next meeting is remote it's next week to be determined yeah okay what about the mask policy talk about the future what's going on with the mask policy in the town it's the 11th isn't it when it will be reconsidered 11th of March we reconsider that every 45 days yeah for the governor's order so it's possible that the schools won't have masks and the city will it's possible it's possible at that thank you very much for watching


Welcome to our session today get ops as a service My name is Andrew block. I'm a distinguished architect from red hats I specialize in a number of different areas everything from cloud native Architectures CSED get ops and security. I'm an open source maintainer on the helm project as well as oris Which is a object OCI as OCI registries as storage and also I'm an author I've written two books in the cloud native space one on Kubernetes secrets and helm My name is Gerald nun. I am the open shift get ops technical marketing manager for red hat I've been with red hats since 2016 before my new role, which I started in January I was a solution architect for for many years. I live not too far from here near Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia with my wife son and three very slightly annoying cats We'll try to stay away from being So today we're going to talk about a number of different areas first of all What is this concept of get ops as a service and then all the considerations that you need to think about When whether you want to choose to run a get ops as a service Whether the bit the buying or the building one of your own some common principles and personas that come with Get ops as a service as well as some common service models considerations for isolating workloads as well as some deployment methods and of course our everyone's favorite standards So get up to the service so everything these days is being offered as a service you go to AWS You go to Azure you go to Google everything's a service database as you name it now get ops can also be run as a service and The question is do you want to or do you not want to and it comes under the question of do you want to buy a Managed service of your own or build one from it yourself and in addition to that you need to think about all the trade-offs when it comes to building versus buying Building gives you that flexibility. You can do whatever you want to your heart's content However, it does require you to have an quite a bit more technical acumen than if you just go ahead and click a button Something just available for you now if you do go down that route of Clicking the button and getting get up to the service or a managed service offering you well Yes, you can spin up resources really relatively easily But unfortunately, you're kind of baked into what that service provides You don't have as much flexibility to customize it And that's really some of the trade-offs you need to think about when determining if you want to go forward to Use a service that's provided for you doing the whole buying option or building it on yourself As being a technical person. I always say I can do it I could do it but not everyone wants to be able to have that opportunity to build everything and maintain it yourself So in the get-offs world there are in many cases two different personas we need to cater to One of them is your platform operations team. They're going to be the one that manages Kubernetes clusters Dole those clusters out to individual application teams and then you have your developers These are the ones that typically are your application users Everyone from I'm a core developer and that's all I do is code and I might play with Kubernetes all the way to Those who are doing testing CICD and everything but not at a cluster level so What are some of these responsibilities between these two users well developers as I mentioned will typically be just responsible for Maintaining applications. They know how to deploy applications. They know what an application is They may be familiar with Kubernetes. They typically work with an individual namespaces one or multiple individual namespaces They do not have a viewpoint of an entire Kubernetes cluster and in most importantly because they only have a set number of Namespaces that they manage they typically have Less permissions at a cluster level. They're not able to see everything They can just see their own little slice of the world versus the platform team They're responsible for everything they can go ahead and see all the different namespaces on the cluster They can see who's out there what resources are available be able to define new custom resource definitions Everything to the heart's contents and know what they need to do is they need to consider the balance between Developing teams and what they need to do from a platform management capability And that's really the two different personas that we typically see when working with a get-offs as a service type paradigm So what are some of the common paradigms that we do see when it comes to get-offs in general number one? If you're just getting into get-offs the first thing you're going to do is deploy the actual application whether it be flux Whether it be Argo whether it be not even Kubernetes whatsoever If you want to actually use get-offs in a different context as we talked about earlier this morning get-offs is not only Kubernetes it's really anything that can reconcile state But in most cases especially for this talk we're gonna talk in the Kubernetes world get ups bring your own get-offs I want to go ahead and install it and maintain it myself developer does it great The other one is it's going to be when you have a platform install and manage get-off solution But then you have your developers who are going to be able to manage the day-to-day life basically just doling out this from a From a application or from a platform standpoint and then giving somewhat of an autonomy to your development teams But once again, you still give them a small set of the world that they can then manage themselves And then finally the last one is where you have the platform owns the platform manages everything It just goes ahead and it has the entire ecosystem that it has to deal with as someone who lives in the platform side It's a lot to take on I'm not gonna lie So these last two boxes here these two paradigms are what we think of as get-offs the service It's not going to be the they bring your own get-off solution It's gonna be the one that you're gonna have some team manage and then provides to others or at least you have to use it for other use cases So some of the challenges regarding this model is how much complexity that you need to provide to both your development teams and Your platform teams now when you have a bring-your-own get-off solution You're giving more onus and more technical acumen that's needed to be made on the developer side of that world They need as I mentioned earlier. They need to go ahead and know how to manage a get-off server Many cases developers know how to just manage applications They don't even they barely even even know what get-offs is you have to teach them you have to go ahead and say okay I can go ahead and maybe deploy on day one, but how do they manage actual platform infrastructures? From a platform perspective, there's the day to care and feeding of your server I mean potentially backup for a store Operationalizing notification monitoring some things that you don't think about in day one But now it becomes a developer problem where all they care about is rating code in most cases Versus a platform side if you go ahead and you Give them all the power to manage everything you're going ahead and putting all the onus on them to be able to then manage everything they have full control but once again, they need to then manage every aspect themselves and It's someone who works with a lot of application teams Applications teams. I'm sorry to say you're needy. You're really needy. I want this I want that especially when you have cluster level resources like CRD's. I need the CRD. Oh, it's my app's not gonna work I promise so really If you want to choose between one of these different service models It depends on where you are within your organization So bringing on get-offs is great when you have maybe a small number of application teams Developers are very 10x. You know, they can do everything. They don't need a lot of care and feeding from an application Maybe you have any small clusters If you want to use more of a platform manage side of the world This is when you start looking at developers who are just getting into Kubernetes They may not pretty familiar with Kubernetes Versus you then need to have more of the platform team manage more of the day-to-day feed of The get-off solution and at all and then finally a platform and selling platform manages when you have really developers who have No Kubernetes expectation experience, but you need to have a high You need to think about security because security as you know and have the talks either Today, but also especially when I was at get up Qcon two weeks ago. I guess is that only two weeks ago. Oh Geez All the talk was security security security. We're gonna talk about security in a moment But that's where it's really important when you think about learning a get-off at scale You understand the security is baked in it's fundamental if you don't think about it You're gonna actually hurt yourself in the long run So I mentioned isolation I'm going oh, I think he's doing a great job of covering my slides. I'm sorry about that No, that's all right stuff happens. You're on a roll. I didn't want to like stop you. It's like getting in front of a moving train I'm not Superman.  Satisfy not only your organization requirements because many different organizations have very different requirements everything from regulatory compliance to just Different principles and practices within your own security teams and then once you look beyond the organizational requirements How good are your individual application teams? They trust each other. Can you trust them? What is the autonomy between them? How much tech a few men do they have? That's something you need to think about when you want to isolate workloads because if you have application teams who have no idea But Kubernetes are you gonna really give them access to to kubectl delete things in different resources? That's just a recipe for very very bad choosing There are multiple multiple isolation models that you can consider I'm gonna have to turn this one over to you for the isolation model. Sure. Why not? Yeah So in terms of isolation there are a variety of things and just to build on what Andrew was saying as well It's not only just about security. It's also about Misconfiguration and human mishaps that happen who here has accidentally deleted a database in production. Just me not the only one You know people are making mistakes It's not unusual for two people to stomp on each other or interact with each other in ways You don't intend in a system and isolation is important along with security to prevent those mishaps So in terms of isolation models from a full isolation perspective Everybody gets their own get-offs instance right as Oprah would say here's a good office instance for you Here's a get-offs instance for you off you go to the races But that can be somewhat expensive So the next model really that we see it's probably the most common one is partial isolation around boundaries These can be team boundaries. These can be situational boundaries I eat different use cases where the differences are going to react and then finally no isolation Everybody's just sharing the same instance and off the go to the races So you look at these different isolation models You can see that there's a relationship between the safety that's being applied with that isolation model as well as the Resource utilization that's being used by resource utilization not just referring to you know memory compute type resources, but also the human resources that are involved in terms of managing it because more isolation means more Instances means more things that people need to manage and maintain So as you increase the amount of isolation that you have you increase the amount of safety that you have both from a security And a mishap perspective, but you also increase the amount of resources that are going to be used right Just curious here if anybody's operated kubernetes cluster anybody done Jenkins on kubernetes and You probably seen how many resources handing out a Jenkins instance to everybody takes right does the same idea our Sustainability friends would not be happy, but that's all running Jenkins at scale. Yeah Exactly So that leads us to a logical topology So from a logical topologies point of view, this is kind of the three different topologies. We typically see The no isolation is everybody's sharing a single get ops instance in a cluster both from the cluster configuration use case and D team use case. So the cluster configuration use case is somewhat special because in order to configure that cluster Typically, I'm going to need either cluster admin or near cluster admin type privileges in order to do that configuration And I'm going to share that same instance with teams that are deploying applications. So for the Minor security guy that's in me the little security guys. I'm not a big security guy the little security guy. I'm a developer That gives me a bit of the PBG these right just the fact that if something goes wrong in terms of how I've configured The RBAC and the permissions in my get ops instance Somebody could do something on that cluster that they shouldn't be doing the partial isolation is really designed to address that Where we separate it out by use case the cluster configuration runs in its own get ops instance with its own set of privileges And the teams get a much their own get ops instance, but with a much reduced level of permissions, right? They can operate in certain namespaces. They can perform Operations and namespace scoped resources, but they can't do really anything the cluster level Now in situations where you need maximum isolations, maybe you're an industry that has high regulatory requirements Maybe you don't trust your teams teams are particularly technically sophisticated You're worrying about different teams stomping on each other and even inadvertently You can break them under completely separate resources and manage things that way as well Okay, so that's the logical topologies But there's also the physical topologies that come into play and how we deploy this we saw a little bit with Dan I think earlier where he had his four topologies for me I like looking at this as two topologies and for me I really go by intent What is your intent when you're defining your topologies your tent centralized I am going to have a centralized get ops instance That's managing a bunch of different clusters Or is my intent distributed where I'm going to have separate individual get ops instances running on each individual cluster and managing it that way So centralized as Dan alluded in his presentation It's great from the point of view you get that single pane of glass I can see what's going on across my whole fleet no problem at all The downside of it is it's also a big fat single point of failure If you lose that cluster or you lose that instance or the networking goes out to it You've lost your manageability across all your different clusters Distributed on the other hand addresses that single point of failure. It solves that problem But you lose that single pane of glass now like I said I Define these by intent, but there are variations, right? There's a lot of different ways to do your Topology model so a common one that we see I like to call it the Intuit model because they were the ones I first saw it first a couple years ago I think that one of the argocon 2020 I think it was where they outlined how they do this and they essentially I look at this as more of a very to centralize you could maybe argue. It's a very much distributed I'm happy to argue it over a beer with you at the pub or something afterwards But for me it's centralized because it's centralizing access based on a different boundary not the cluster boundary But the team boundary right so I'm going to have that single instance of get ops That's running a team can see across the different clusters like say a non product cluster in a product cluster see their Applications get that single pane of glass, but I avoid that single point of failure in the sense that your teammate loses Their instance, it doesn't impact team B or team C now if these are all running on a central hub cluster And I lose the hub cluster are still blown up everything But that's really another way that people tackle that and the other topology We often see is the control plane topology and Dan alluded to this as well in his presentation Essentially you have a hub management type of cluster that's running it has something that's running on it And it is managing your get ops across that fleet This could be a distributed architecture as I've got a picture here where you've got get ops running and all the different hub clusters And this is my preferred architecture for hub But you could also have a hub that's using a centralized kind of model But providing some extra capabilities over the normal centralized model as well The nice thing with the hub is that when you're doing this distributed it avoids that single point of failure Yes, if I lose my hub, I lose some manageability in the sense that I can't make change But those instances that are running on all of those other clusters are running just fine They're managing it keeping things in sync everybody's hunky-dory So with apologies recommendations point of view I am a fan of not using the same get ops instances for cluster configuration as for teams I like keeping those two use cases separate and running them in separate instances for the reasons I gave earlier But having said that choose a topology that works best for you Every organization is different every organization has different requirements. There's not a right answer that fits everybody So pick the thing that's going to work great for your particular use case that you're trying to solve Do not have a separate get ops instance for each and every application Don't go to Jenkins model You're handing them out like candy and just chewing up resources and require more management Align the number instances that you need along your team trust boundaries, right? So if you have different teams that work well together, they're part of the same or broader organization That's an opportunity to kind of aggregate them into a single instance And then finally Dan had this I think earlier in his slide to use get ops to deliver your get ops That's what it's there for right don't manually try to provision all these get ops instances yourself and manage them Have a central get up somewhere Argo of Argos Other tools like Ocm that we saw earlier push those out and manage those for you So when we talk about all these different recommendations and all these different paradigms What do we what does that lead us? How do we actually do this within an enterprise organization? So what I do and what Jared Gerald also looks into is where do you start you start with some industry except in principles? The good one is the the principles that are emphasized by the open get ups Because they're a good North Star to begin with everything from making sure your manifests our version make sure they're declarable Make sure they're constantly you know reconciling all of that that's a great place to start and then on top of that You're gonna have your organizational constraints everything that you need to comply with whether it be or regulatory compliance Whether it be just I need to make sure that every fifth Friday of the year we do x y and z Inject those in and then finally you combine some of the best concepts from the community some ones that are That are out there in terms of how we manage get-outs of scale Combine up with your organizational constraints Those become the established processes that you can implement within your own organization You bring these together and you'll be able to then refine and look how they'll actually work because no one gets it Right nobody's the right a lot of us. We're just guessing. I'll be frank. We're guessing But that that's where you start with you think we did get ups perfectly the first time No, of course not. I I work here work with organizations across the globe and we can tell you that they ask You know us how do we run get-ups and we'd say here's where you start. It's a journey We'll come from the journey together and learn and then I always recommend is after you learn Share it because you're guaranteed. You're not gonna be the only one that runs into the same problems and challenges That's what the open source communities is meant for so as I mentioned There is no Best practice as an architect people ask. Oh, what's what's your best practice? I'm like, I don't know. I'm just a guy Same thing number two kind of ways laws always gonna prevail Your get-outs processes are always gonna be a reflection of your organization That's why we know we brought in number two as really it is to me still part of it Just know that that's why every use case is different because you have to sprinkle in those organizational constraints Then finally kind of harping back to the open get-offs practice Make sure these don't become paper standards make sure you document them make sure their versions make sure they're well Established and declarative so others will know about it. It's like if you have a Jenkins server sitting underneath your desk It's just there. It's not gonna be essentially manages. No one knows about it That's why you have always a call that's um, oh where you you're kind of running your own your own thing There's a name for outcome of later But anyways, make sure you apply you comply to these standards and then be able to actually be successful in your get-offs journey So one The big there we go Sorry, one of the big ones that people get hung up on is repository and directory standards And I'm not here today to kind of lay out to you the one, you know 12 commandment type style of stone here's my here's my standards off you go to the races because again There's no one standard that works for everybody But a lot of organizations when they're starting with get-offs and they're trying to get the offices of service going get really hung up on What is our standards? How are we gonna do it? I think it's really important to look at your organization's operations model, right? So if you're a traditional enterprise and you have a traditional developer team and a traditional ops team and the ops team Does things separate from the develop team and they control certain This is that the developer team never sees never has any access to that's gonna be a very different model in terms Of how you set things up than a fully matrix DevOps team where the devs and ops are working together in a single team deploying the application across all different environments Avoid analysis paralysis is another common one. I see it a lot of our customers where it just goes around on a rabbit hole Or a big circle in terms of trying to figure out what their standard is You know start small and start high level, you know You don't need to lay out your directory repo structures to the end degree or the ninth Level of traversal, you know, here's my high level standard We're gonna go with that. We're gonna start with that. We're gonna see how it works and then be agile iterate iterate iterate Don't be afraid of change standards You know the norm kind of a plot the the name kind of implies that it's not something that changes these change And it's okay that they change as you learn as you understand your organization's needs and requirements It's very natural to vault your standards in order to better adapt to the organization's Needs and where they're going Achieving consensus with development teams through a platform team You're trying to put in a get-up standards one of the challenges You might have as you've got 10 20 30 different development teams and they may not agree what those standards are right so Seek input from those developer teams They will have a lot of good ideas that will have an impact on those standards and be useful But do not get into an endless loop of discussion with you know The teams in terms of what those standards should be at some point in time A decision has to be made and everybody has to go forward for it with it And that's really where management buy-in is critical to break those long jams and move forwards You really need to have management and on board and in line with you in order to be able to make those decisions and make things happen And then finally it's 2023 I'd be amiss if I didn't include platform engineering in any talk these days It's with over hearings platform engineering Now there is a good alignment between platform engineering and get off as a service in many cases You know they're going to be very complimentary to each other both attempt to standardize and enable developer productivity Because you want to make it easier for developers to build and do good things The get-offs has so many benefits and being able to then provide that in streamline how you deliver applications All the way to her to production now. I'm not gonna be honest in many cases a platform engineering team at one point ran a get-off-the-service Platform because they platform engineering is just yet another extension of what get-offs to the service can provide So especially in large organizations to be able to kind of remember get-offs is just one aspect of delivering applications to production It's just one of the services that you would then hook into platform engineering So being able to have developers be able to easily consume Resources that are provided by a get-off as the service capability is just one yet other component of a golden path that makes easier for them to get to production So we have a number of different resources here. Joe don't walk the resource Hello, yeah, there we go So these are just some resources you may find useful some of these were referenced for these slides acuity Did a great blog on our OCD and how many instances you need if you're using Argo and flux as well has a great Suction in their get repo in terms of doing multi-tenancy directory structures and things that come from that perspective for repositories and directory structures There's a lot of prior art that you can look at and Investigate the Argo CD autopilot comes to mind allows you to bootstrap projects to get them up and running quite easily and quickly It fluxes well documents that recommended repository structures if you're on the flux path because I'm doing the presentation I reserve the right to promote my own standards. So I've got a link in there for those as well Take that for what they're worth the other thing that comes up for us a lot Being us both from red hat. We're using Argo CD every day from our customers is how do I manage our back for my tenants? I eat the developers that are at leverage that there's a great blog that one of our colleagues wrote and how to do our back in Argo CD and shows you how exactly how to configure Your our back for the different tenants to achieve the goals that most platform teams I think are looking for in terms of the the isolation and Accessibility that they're providing to the platform So that brings us to the end. Yeah, any questions? You don't have any now Gerabel and I can certainly address them afterwards.  So do they create a PR against the the central GITOPS repository? What typically happens especially in a lot of organizations I work with is there's going to be an ITSM like a service now That's provides them access it basically just makes a commit to a more centralized the office of service repository Which then makes whatever get up solution you have available to them and then they manage it from then It really goes back to those service models though again, right? There's different levels of service models and really depends on what you want to offer So if you want to offer the service to the point of view where it's like application developers Just say here's my set of manifest or even here's my source code and you take care of it all That's one level of service another level of service is more the where you're alluding to is that here's a GITOPS instance for you To use and you can manage it now whether that management happens through PRs or they directly manage it again It's kind of up to you to figure out from a thing that works for you from a service perspective a lot of Factors that go into that as are my developers sophisticated enough to manage it and platform team wise Do I have resources to do the full-blown GITOPS as a service? Do I have the ability in bandwidth to create that solution versus maybe something? That's a little further to the left right spectrum. Yeah, thank you Anyone else thanks a lot everyone. Thank you


The Science of Team Science, SCITS has generated a substantial body of work detailing characteristics of effective teams. However, this knowledge has not yet been effectively translated into actionable interventions to help translational teams enhance their team functioning and outcomes. To address this gap, we propose an approach to intervention development based on constructs from two implementation science frameworks, the consolidated framework for implementation research and the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance framework to extend the Wisconsin Interventions for Team Science framework. This approach can help SCITS researchers design, build, test, and disseminate interventions that meet the needs of both adopters, the institutional leadership that decides whether to adopt an intervention, and implementers, those actually using the intervention. By systematically considering the impact of design decisions on feasibility and usability, interventions can be designed that can quickly move from prototype to pilot test to pragmatic trials to assess their impact. This article was authored by Betsy Rowland, Felice Resnick, Sarah D. Hall, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


How's it, how's it? Photography channels on YouTube are, for the most part, they're pretty boring. And this is not just specific to photography niche. I've noticed, and maybe you have as well, that over the last six months or so, a lot of the content that I'm seeing on my homepage is basically just the same thing, repackaged in different ways. And especially prevalent in photography because obviously, you know, we know the topics, composition, lenses, aperture, sharpness, those kind of things, they surface again and again and again. And so consequently, the landscape has become quite boring. When I got started with watching photography on YouTube, it was probably around about December 2016. It was certainly over Christmas where I've said, oh, look, there's this guy called Art of Photography, that's Ted Forbes' channel. And he was talking about photography in a way that I appreciated. It was a little bit more in-depth, it was more about the kind of, you know, the why rather than the how. And I found this channel, I just, I loved it. I spent that whole December just kind of watching all of these videos about composition and other photographers, I was like, this is great. Because it was different to like Peter McKinnon, for example. Peter McKinnon, he's just, there's nothing wrong with him. He does his thing, but it is not me. It doesn't, I don't appreciate it. It's totally not aimed at me. So Ted was a great antidote to that. And I subscribed to his channel and you know, for ages, I would get all of his videos. I would see if they would pop up on my home screen and that was fantastic. Because that was when YouTube subscribers mattered. And because you would get an amount of subscribers, I think at the time Ted, I think probably had maybe 400, 500,000 subscribers, he would get a reasonable amount of views, whatever content he made. He was free, as were all the other subscribers, all the other content creators at the time, to explore whatever topics interested him. And he would bring, the audience would be brought along for the ride. And then what happened is over time, the impact of subscribers on views for a channel started to dwindle. And content creators were forced to start fishing for attention. Not only what I think is generally considered to be like a click bait-y kind of way, because actual click bait is when there's a picture of something that's very attractive and actually really has nothing to do with it, but they were forced to, I think, re-gurgitate common ideas. Things that have worked well for them in the past, things that have worked well for other photography channels. And at the time, it wasn't as prevalent, so it didn't feel quite as boring, but now we're in a position where there's a whole bunch of new content creators coming up and looking for inspiration about what to create for videos. Inspiration and looking towards other content creators is not a bad thing. I did that when I started the photographic eye. I went, okay, I'm gonna do what Ted does.  This channel is not about me. It's about the photography I'm talking about. So I pitched myself as talking about the sort of things that I felt over time Ted hadn't also drifted away from because of that nature of having to gather attention. You know, and obviously I'm making an assumption, but that's kind of where I was. So I started off and I went, oh, do you know how I can, all right, I'm gonna make videos. I did a Richard Avedon, then it was Annie Leavitts, then it was Anton Gourbain, and I think Willie Magelston was like the fourth one. That's when some traction started going because there were people going, oh, there's a bit of a market for this and then the channel took off. But then I noticed that the views kind of, you know, they're a bit sort of hit and miss. One week, I could do a video about something and I would get lots of views that, you know, the algorithm for one of those would promote it. And then you could do a very similar video the week after and it wouldn't get any traction whatsoever because maybe something on the back ended had changed. So it kind of meant that I was stuck between a bit of a weird problem. It's that one hand I had subscribers and people were subscribed to the channel, but if they didn't watch one or two of the videos, especially the other day, because it was quite prevalent and people would actually discuss this with me, that they wouldn't be shown any subsequent videos. So like I'd go for 10 videos and somebody would come back and go, oh, I thought you'd stop making videos because even though they were subscribed to me, there wasn't anything coming through. And you may have experienced this yourself. And so what's happening is that photography channels are feeling this never ending cycle of having to create content that is broadly appealing because we can't make content that is just the sort of things we want to do. If you are subscribed to this channel, you subscribe to it because you want to see content from me. If I'm subscribed to Ted Forbes or to Thomas Heaton or any of these other guys, it's because I want to see their content. I don't want to see on my home screen videos from photographers from whom I've never heard of showing me yet another video about how my photographs aren't sharp. Firstly, I don't really give the tiniest poop about sharpness of photography. It's bourgeoisie, he says. It's not the sort of thing I'm into, but that's kind of why we're in this place right now where it seems that a lot of the content that YouTube is serving me is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. Because people are coming in to the photography niche ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, and I think fairly understandably looking at what's worked in the past. There is a video about composition made by Jamie Windsor. It has done very well. I think it's like two million views, something of that nature. And if you search photography composition, you'll see a whole bunch of videos, there are minor in there as well, where it's basically, in some cases, like a pretty much carbon copy of that video in an effort by that creator to make the same success for one of the better ones. And even Jamie's video is actually sort of a reworking of the original video by which feature Steve McCurry. This is kind of where I feel photography on YouTube is at this kind of weird position, is that we have a bunch of people coming in who have their own perspectives, have their own thought thoughts, which are wonderful, but they don't feel confident enough or they don't feel that YouTube will maybe promote them enough to share those ideas. And so we end up in this place where everything just becomes stale, that we're going over the same topics again and again. And even though everybody brings their own little spins and takes on them, it just feels like there's a couple of standards. There's, you know, I do the kind of the sit down on the couch, we're gonna have a chat, which is sort of a tear force. Sean Tucker does the same thing. We had a chat about this, Sean and I, where he said, you know, he wanted it to feel like it was these kind of conversations that you have with people after dinner. And he does it very well, it's a nice conversational sort of style, you know, some people who are in the landscape sort of things, they'll go out and they'll do lots of things with some drone shots and what have you. And they started off making really well polished films. And in a sense they are films. And you know, some people look at it and go, okay, well, this is what I need to do. But they forget that those people who made those videos originally, they're kind of like, I went to like a trendsetter, but they help push things on at that point. And you can't just do the same thing over and over again. Over time, my approach has kind of wandered around a little bit because I'm trying to find something that felt right for me.  I want people to kind of listen to what I'm discussing and you know, sort of thing. And I was very upright and I was very hello and welcome to and I would talk to you and very properly. And over time I kind of relaxed into the sort of thing. And I sort of found my place. Occasionally though, you know, I felt that I needed to attract a wider audience. And so I go, okay, well, you know, I would take forays into compositional things and aperture and stuff of that nature, never knowing what's actually going to resonate. This is such a deal. I think this is why, you know, there isn't a scope within photography on YouTube really to kind of go super broad because there's no feedback. There's no feedback from it. I can't do, you know, I can't make the same video week in week out and measure each one again because YouTube keeps treating them all differently. We never know, we can't have a safe now because that subscriber base, that core group that's, you know, I think supporters say a lot of the, you know, the original guys on YouTube with photography, it doesn't exist anymore. We feel more and more under pressure to revisit those ideas that are at the sort of the, I suppose the core of each channel. There's a couple of things that sort of stand up. And so how does this get fixed? And I feel probably the first part is something about comments. I was watching a video the other day. I've told you, his name is Brian Dennelli. I'd sorry if I mispronounce, but he was talking about, you know, his own experiences with his channel and he talked about comments and that people who have nothing to say have the most to say or something negative. And that's kind of where we are. That's number one, right? We are in an age right now where YouTube is taking engagement metrics or as viewer satisfaction is what they wanna call it as kind of like, this is what people wanna watch. And that's how they'll promote your videos.  It's weird stuff like that. They're always happy to show, but the people who often do enjoy a video will sit there and they watch a video and they go, wow, I really like that. But that was really, really good. That was really good. But they don't sort of like it. They don't sort of comment or anything like that. And so YouTube doesn't see any metric apart from the fact that they watched all the way through.  My views are not, whatever, whatever, whatever, right? This is not the case. I appreciate what I talk about, the whys of talking, thinking about things, sharing the passion for all this kind of stuff over here. These books lie on my filthy floor in my office here. You know, this kind of stuff. This is the thing that I enjoy sharing about, but it's hard to put into a 50 character title that appeals to a broad group of people.  And that's my most popular or best performing video.  Or, you know, the issues that we get in terms of like second guessing ourselves or, you know, worrying about mistakes, that's harder to quantify. And I appreciate it's also a smaller audience. But I just, it feels like often that the cards are stacked against channels like myself and so it is less of an encouraging environment for other people to come through. All right, when I got started on YouTube, I was like, okay, well, I need to, how do we do all this stuff? So I had to learn all the technical bits and bobs to be two weeks to produce the first video. And then I'm kind of like, okay, how do we get views? How does this whole thing work? And I go and I look and I try to find ideas from people and unfortunately you go and you find ideas from people who say, just copy what everybody else is doing, much like in photography. You want to get better as a photographer? Go and copy all of them. Go and do all those tutorials. Just make the same thing that everybody else is making and you end up with this kind of generic channel.  I think I fell into that trap of creating, I think just generic ideas, things that didn't really resonate, things that weren't me specifically because I was trying to be something else. I was trying to be a Ted Forbes or I was trying to be a Sean Turca.  I did try some B-roll for a while and it wasn't really, it didn't gel with me.  Professional curiosity, I want to see this person and I've never heard of them. So I click on the video and I watch a couple more of their videos and I do the same. And before I know it, my feed is full of these technical kind of how-tos. And often I'm kind of like, okay, well, the person's okay, but you know, once in a while, I come across something and I go, Jill, I really like what they're talking about. I like their take on things. And I will say, really cool video. I like it, yeah. Because it's a bit of a support. It's thinking about when, you know, somebody looks at, when I'm giving some feedback on photographs, how great is it?  That's cool, heading in the right direction. But what we're kind of, I think here we're in a time when people have been afraid to make mistakes both in their photography, but also on YouTube.  And you can see that sigh of frustration in there.  And I'm sure there are many other people who would deeply love to as well, but they might get put off because they see this flood of endless videos about sharpness and technical bits and, you know, I bought a Leica for 30 days or something like that. For me, they just, they feel like a rehash. And maybe that's, they're not my audience. Maybe, you know, the people who watch my videos are not those sort of people. Maybe I just, you know, it's a thing like that. But again, I don't want to feel like it's a woes me. I'm just, I'm probably feeling a bit reflective because it is the end of the year. It's been a very interesting year in terms of the channel has been very up and down.  And so I'm kind of on this border of, I feel that I've kind of found my pace the last sort of months or so since I moved into this office, I felt a little more relaxed about creating videos. I can make them whenever I feel under pressure. It does, for me, it feels a little bit more conversational, a bit more relaxed. I don't know why, but I hope that comes across. And I just, I wanted to maybe just, you know, say to people over time, you know, over the next year that if you do see people who are surfacing on your feed, who create content you find interesting or you have content creators who you find have given you something, it means a whole heap to them. If you just go, like, cool, that's awesome or leave a comment, you know, going that, I really enjoyed that, thank you for sharing or you made me think about things in a different way. My gut feeling is that in 2024, there's going to be a raft of people who come through who are now a little bit more kind of just, I think less polished around the edges that this era of being very professional with a lot of cuts and very smooth cinematic B-roll and you know, all this kind of stuff, I feel that's been a bar set very high and people seem to be pulling back on this just a little bit, not just in photography, but across the board, say on some of the channels that I watch, where I think a little bit more authenticity is starting to maybe show through. I don't know, what do your thoughts are on this? I mean, it's always interesting to see, but I have to say, it's been over the last couple of years because this is around about, it's now the 2024, yeah, almost the third anniversary, well it's just gone past the third anniversary of the channel and it's been awesome, it's been a pleasure to go from sitting in my spare bedroom very upright on a stool that would slowly rotate around to finding a way to hopefully create content that isn't boring on YouTube where I think somebody may disagree and to hear from people like yourselves. So have a wonderful new year on Sunday and I will see you in 2024. If you aren't subscribed to the Saturday selections, see a little plug always from my newsletter, there is a link in the description box below. All right, see you next year.