So our next presenter is presenting three talks today. This is her first. It's a programmer who works for the Bureau of Meteorology on the next generation weather forecasting system. Please welcome Brianna Lau. Thanks for coming to my talk, or at least remaining motionless in your seat while talks continue around you. I work at the research department of the Bureau of Meteorology which is called Corker. It's a climate and weather something research. And as Chris mentioned, I work on a project which is called the next generation forecast and warning system I think. And a component of that is the automatic generation of text forecasts. So when you open the newspaper and it says cloudy, chance of rain, clearing by the evening, that text is generally generated by the program that I work on which is called the Graphical Forecast Editor. And so this talk is a little bit, might be a little bit strange for this stream and I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail about the programming language which we use, which is Python. But this talk is actually more focused on how you can use really simple features which are available in any of the languages that will be mentioned in this stream to explicitly program language. And by language I mean English language rather than some kind of meta computer language. So a lot of people, if you're working on a program it's more than likely that you'll have to output some information which may well be in text or in language. So you have to display some information to your user. And if you can just display canned information then strings are awesome and you can just have as many strings as you like. That's not even getting into translation of strings or internationalization. But if you need to have a little context sensitivity or you want something that's not quite so canned then you might need to do something that might look a little bit like generation, text generation. So natural language generation or text generation generally refers to when you're using some input which is not language to start with and you're going to produce some language output or some textual output. So you might be summarizing some statistics. You might be summarizing an appointment or an invitation or something like that. But if you work with strings and you kind of go to strings too early and then you find that you need to modify your strings it can be a real pain. So this is about what can you do in the middle layer in terms of encoding some representation of language that is going to give you a bit more flexibility before you finally output your strings. Okay. It says AV system will turn off in 15 minutes but I'm going to ignore that. So the program that I work on is called the Graphical Forecast Editor and this is used by forecasters currently in Victoria and New South Wales and it's being rolled out to TAS in South Australia this year and the other states next year. So this is what they use when they're sitting in their office forecasting. There's a bunch of grids on the side here so they have some names like wind, T which is temperature, max T, minty, sky and then the one that's highlighted down here is pop which is probability of precipitation and then this is the gridded output and I think this has got some wind, wind bulbs overlaid on top of it. So the gray areas kind of saying pops probably below I think that's maybe 10 or 5% so probably not going to get any precipitation there going up to the dark blue purple color where that might be 40% so there's a reasonable chance of precipitation in that area and so these grids come in from numerical weather prediction models and the forecasters kind of play with these grids and tweak them and modify them until they're happy with them and then they press one of these buttons up the top and the text is automatically generated from these grids so they're not handwriting the forecast although they can edit them if they don't like the text. So this is a little bit of a graph of what the forecast process is so the numerical weather prediction models and observations come in and you have these grids which we just saw before and then smart tools are used and these are supposed to represent kind of meteorological or scientific processes that produce this weather grid and what I'm concentrating on is just the text generation for the weather phrase and then from this we have statistics and then the text formatters which is the text generation basically want to simplify the statistics and then produce some words and that becomes the text forecast that we get in the paper or on the website and so we saw with this grid we talk about gridded forecasts and there's some forecasts which are for areas and some which are for points but even though it's a point it's still like three or six k's across and so there's some interesting problems in terms of calculating coverage which when you have this point which is kind of a point but not really and then you want to extrapolate to a larger area as well and so when we talk about weather in this context it's actually kind of a subset of what you might think of as weather which is what's going to be forecast for so the cloud if sunny or cloudy that's not weather windy that's not weather if it's going to be hot that's not weather but all these things so if it's going to rain anything related to rain, thunderstorms fog, frost, these other things that's what we consider weather and so in this weather grid which is created from the like the pop grid probability of precipitation we have about I think there's 15 different types of weather and we have these keys so they've each got these four components which is coverage type, intensity and then these optional attributes so there's optional and multiple attributes so attributes can be things like hail and flash flooding down on the bottom one we have this thunderstorms that often you know there's no attributes but you do have to have the coverage intensity and type so this is some example of keys and how they would be represented in text and we can see that there's a pretty decent correspondence between basically if we wanted to convert the key to the words we'd basically say the coverage words come first then the intensity words and then the type words and then last of all we have the attribute words so as a first pass that seems like a fairly decent model for how we're going to convert these keys into words and just with coverage there's there's a lot of terms there's basically four different levels of coverage which represent you know I think wide is like 55 plus so more than 55% chance of rain and I saw patches like 0 to 30 scattered areas is like 30 to 55 I think that's about right and so depending on the type that we're combining it with and depending on the type of forecast so if it's for a point or an area these are some of the terms on the right that we use to correspond to these in our weather keys so a reason that we don't just say scattered all the time is because if you're forecasting for what's supposed to be a point it doesn't really make sense to say scattered like there's either showers or there's not so we say at times and that's kind of hedging our bets so we have all these keys so maybe we could just list every possible combination and just you know have a massive table and list them all but there's kind of too many so maybe that's not the best idea so we need to do a little bit of generation and so what the old infrastructure did so this graphical forecast editor is something that Australia inherited or borrowed from the US and their forecast texts are much simpler when it comes to forecasting weather so they would just pretty much just say showers or rain and they wouldn't have this at times or easing to light drizzle or they wouldn't have a lot of elements that we use so we have the old system had which we inherited had a lot of these kind of look up tables and this would look a lot nicer in prologue but not many people use prologue so what this is saying is if your key has this coverage term and matches this type and this intensity use this string on the end and then there'd also be this part order list and so this would say if your key has this coverage this type this intensity put everything in this order and so if we look at this bottom one this is kind of the default one so we can see it's got prefix okay let's ignore that coverage intensity type attributes that's basically what we said before when we looked at the four examples and it's also got this TD which is the time descriptor so in the morning and as SN which is as snow and that's we won't worry about that either so if we look at a particular example which is if we had isolated showers for a point forecast so we're using this point the name of the function is point weather coverage so we're looking up for a point what we say is a shower or two and so this is getting the coverage component of that is going to be the or two prefix is actually going to be the A but they're I mean they kind of go together it's like a shower or two it should be one thing but they're actually separated in this infrastructure and so then we see here that we have intensity prefix intensity type coverage and so the fact that the coverage comes after the type in this list is how we get the shower or two happening in the right order as opposed to saying or two showers which would not be grammatical so that's our basic thing our basic thing was coverage intensity type attributes but there's lots of you know exceptions so in the first case if we have thunderstorms with hail and flash flooding we don't want to say like with hail with flash flooding we want to be able to combine the hail and flash flooding so we don't repeat the preposition with this isolated thunderstorms possibly severe this is such a pain this is an adjective possibly severe but because it's kind of wordy we want to push it out to the end and add this comma it's a total nightmare we've got these showers at times and at times is also used as a time descriptor when something happens intermittently so it actually has this double meaning which apparently you know doesn't seem to matter we've got a shower or two we've got dry thunderstorms and dry is actually an attribute but you wouldn't say thunderstorms with dry so we need to recognize that dry is an adjective and it's going to go in this different spot compared to the other attributes which are preposition phrases and we've got this very hazy this isn't even a noun phrase unlike everything else this is an adjective phrase don't know why they decided to do that we've got patchy morning fog where instead of the time phrase being a preposition phrase like in the morning we actually use it as an adjective and so then it's got a slot in with the other adjectives so you have the right order there so like the adjective ordering thing is a little bit subtle but there's definite preferred ways and then there's a whole lot of vague ways as well so morning patchy fog versus patchy morning fog you know which sounds better I think patchy morning fog is slightly better but it's very hard to to say why and this is part of this this is like this adjective ordering thing which speakers of English learn but it's very hard to explicitly say what the rules are and then we have showers fooling us which I'm not really going to talk about because that's a big pain as well and there's also this thing called co-reportability and it's not really a language restriction well it may be we could consider it a language restriction but we could just consider it a constraint that's coming from the kind of meteorological basis to what we're doing so the forecasters really like if you had thunderstorms and showers they want them to be in the same sentence so they want you to say showers and thunderstorms because in their head you know they're associated they're related meteorological things and so it gives them great satisfaction to see them in the same sentence whereas if you had showers full stop thunderstorms it would just rub them all the wrong way and they would change it so we have to put showers and thunderstorms together but if you had showers and fog at the same time they don't consider those meteorologically related so if you wrote showers and fog they would change it to be showers full stop fog so pretty much precipitation and thunderstorms need to go together frost and fog need to go together and everything else pretty much just has its own sentence so this is not a syntactic restriction there's nothing we're not breaking any rules of grammar if we say showers and fog that's totally valid and actually for lay people who don't know meteorology they wouldn't consider there's anything wrong with it either but the forecasters, meteorologists have this extra level of knowledge and for them it's almost ungrammatical and so maybe we consider it a semantic restriction or it's just some other type of restriction that we have on our system so that's looking at single blocks of weather which aren't changing but then we also have this idea of trends where we have some weather and it's changing and becoming some other weather and if we just have heavy rain easing to light drizzle that's quite simple you just list everything, you just list your connector then you list everything again but if you want to be a little bit smarter and have some kind of context sensitive rendering of your sentence you want to avoid repeating things that you've already said and you want to have some contextual rendering so in this middle example we have chance of showers becoming scattered showers so scattered is a greater coverage term than chance so instead of saying we could say becoming scattered but becoming more likely is a comparative term and that's kind of nicer you know closer to what a human is going to do so if we look at the old system in terms of how it modeled a noun phrase so just going back to one block of weather it was something like this, it was just super flat and then you know this was your default and then you had lots of exceptions to override the defaults and equally if we look at what you might do if you were analyzing it in a English class you'd have this really complex thing and so you've got a noun phrase at that level and a noun phrase up at that level and recursive adjective phrases over here so scattered, very dangerous thunderstorms with hail and flash flooding that's not even getting into flash flooding but that's a little bit complex for what we're doing because we're not modeling all of English and we don't want to model all of English because it's overkill and it's going to be too complex so we want to pick something that's in the middle that has enough expressiveness for what we're actually doing but is not is not biting off more than we can chew so we're going to make something a little bit flatter and you know at certain levels we're going to flatten things out so natural language generation often has a model kind of similar to this where your input goal is your statistics your text planning is deciding okay what am I actually going to say because normally you have to leave things out or simplify them or use some comparative forms and then the linguistic realization is actually coming out to your string and so in rewriting this infrastructure the thing that was the most striking thing to me is that the text planning you can do or the simplification that you can do is like entirely dependent on what you are able to realize the kinds of things you are able to say that just drives everything so this presentation of them in separate stages is quite misleading because they're very intertwined so we want to use the rules of English a little bit but not too much and we want to avoid recursion because it's just scary it's not scary but it's hard so we want to keep it simple and flat and so the first thing that we notice about forecast English let's say it's a subset of the entire expressiveness of English is that it's really focused on noun phrases and things that are grammatically forecast English are not grammatically regular English so you can't just say rain you can say it is raining it will rain it rained but in forecast English that's a totally fine thing to say and they in English when you say it is raining you go what is it it's actually like a dummy subject and we only put it there because English forecast English so this is the kind of data structures that we ended up using it's quite simple we're not going to use recursion we have this thing called a conjoined noun phrase which is not a part of speech in English but we're going to use that and it's quite simple there's a list of stuff and then we've got a dictionary mapping from part of speech to some words and we use the part of speech to control where things appear in what order things appear conjoined noun phrases so this is like this is the part of speech ordering for our noun phrase and you can see that we've got this time prep phrase snow height prep phrase and prep phrase which represents the attributes now they're all preposition phrases but we need a way to control where they appear in the sentence the different types of prep phrases and so we use part of speech to control this because normally prep phrases have multiple places they can appear but that kind of makes it too hard or it makes it more complicated whereas if we create these fake parts of speech I mean they're not fake they exist for our purposes in our limited language domain so we use these to control in what order things appear so you'll always have the snow height prep phrases above 1500 meters and the time prep phrase is like in the morning so you'll always have in the morning above 1500 meters you'll never have it the other way around because of this ordering and because my time is running out so one of the things that we need to worry about with the conjoined prep phrases where we might have fog and frost is we don't you don't want to repeat things so if you have patchy frog and patchy frost you want to say patchy fog and frost you don't want to repeat the patchy but depending on the type of forecast and the specification for the particular type you'll actually be using different words so it's not quite enough to just say you know if you said patchy before don't say it now because you might have said patches of fog you don't want to say patches of fog and patchy frost it's still repetitive so you need to account for synonyms even though they might be in different parts of speech and the fog patches is like a particularly nasty one because normally the type is the head of the noun phrase so fog is the head but when you say fog patches then the head of it is actually patches or patch so you need to somehow rip that out again and make fog the head again and as I was saying these prep phrases are really annoying this is kind of this well known ambiguity problem which is if you have two prep phrases it won't be clear which one or it may not be clear which one the second one applies to because you've got your head noun which is going to be showers then you've got a noun in the first prep phrase which is morning in the first example and then with hail is that applying to the morning or is that applying to the showers and in the first example it doesn't matter because morning is not something that comes with hail showers is something that comes with hail so the reader can use the semantics of the meaning of these words to deduce that there's only one logical meaning so this is like the joke you know I shot an elephant in my pyjamas how he got my pyjamas I'll never know and so in my pyjamas can apply to I or the elephant just to totally deconstruct that joke for you so this is the same problem and then showers with hail in the morning it's not clear if the in the morning is limiting the hail or the showers so did the showers go all day and the hail was just in the morning or did the showers and hail were they both just in the morning and so it it matters a little bit but maybe not a huge amount and then we also have a location prep phrase for types of sentences called local effects so if we have a large area but something is just happening in part of the area then we want to use another preposition phrase to say to limit the location of it so rewriting this you know we were motivated to do this by the difficulty with the old system in terms of the logic for controlling the word order being distributed among 12 or more different functions and just being quite afraid to change anything in terms of being unsure what the repercussions of it would be so with this system it's like quite you know localised it's in one place and the the logic of the English or the language is not mixed in with the logic of choosing what you want to say which is the document text planning so like creating this kind of simple infrastructure is pretty simple because you know we weren't trying to model all of English we're just trying to model what we had to but integrating it with other stuff proved to be not quite so simple so I think it's something that is worth considering if you are dealing with a system that has a lot of output and you need to be a little bit context sensitive or you'll find you're doing a lot of string manipulation and it's quite painful maybe you need to consider encoding some English explicitly somewhere in your system thank you everyone thank you Anna so while our presenters are changing over we'll take some questions if you please wait till the microphone shows up somewhere near you before you say anything any questions thanks for the exercise how long have you actually been running this Python I think you said it well how long have you been actually running this now the whole system the whole system started in being used in Victoria in 2006 I think in New South Wales September last year and the US has been using it for years longer than that for Queensland their rollout is not going to happen this year but I think next year or the year after and so one of the good side effects of it is that you will get a lot more you will get a lot more forecasts so for a lot more points and for a lot more days you'll have a lot more towns that have seven day forecasts like that's quite a normal thing in Victoria in New South Wales now whereas up here towns will only have one or two day forecasts because they don't have to write each one manually they're just automatically generated any other questions yep would you say the forecasts so we monitor when they get edited and the rates vary from around 10% for the really short forecast about 50% for the coastal waters forecast which focuses on wind and we don't do the wind phrase very well but there's a lot to be untangled in terms of is the problem the statistics that we got in the first place is it how we simplified them are they just being picky and it's kind of what do you call it it's not really a necessary change or is it like a big mistake so we're monitoring the changes that they make and trying to figure out is it something we can fix and to reduce the editing rates because if they have to edit it it's a big workload for them just wondering with your new system how long have you gone so far with that any grammatical errors whatsoever well it's I think it's hard for it to make grammatical errors actually just because of the way it's built yeah it actually this new system hasn't gone live in the regions yet it's going out late January so if I get a firestorm of complaints in February I'll know that I'll need to do some work but we've had it running on a review server for quite a few weeks now and given it a fair bit of testing and it looks pretty good well to go back to the weather grid the weather keys it's quite spelled out for you you don't have to do that much interpretation in terms of how it should be said so it's pretty straightforward it should be something we can get right and we're getting a lot closer I think right so this has been a talk that's on something that probably not many of the people in the audience would have considered before so thank you very much for making us aware of it thank you Chris ok since we're running a tad late for our next presenter to get his as close as possible


Now, the first ever joint event and strengthening Nigeria-EU cooperation on maritime was held in Lagos at the Nigerian Navy Western Naval Command. The event was organized jointly by the Nigerian Navy, the EU delegation to Nigeria, and the EU member states operating under the EU coordinated maritime presence initiative. The event solidifies the close partnership that has developed between the Nigerian Navy, the European Union and the EU member states operating in the region. In recent years, relations have deepened between the partners through enhanced operational cooperation, joint exercises, trainings, capacity development, as well as increased information sharing and exchange have also helped. Over the European Union, as we seek to ensure safer seas within the Gulf of Guinea, it is not the one person's affair, all of our government approach. A key requirement for the use of this great common is the safety of the sea during transversing periods. Therefore, the Nigerian-European Union collaborative effort on maritime security is very demanding. Working together is the same for now, in the sale to defend the seas by enhanced maritime security and safety needed to promote international trade, protect the environment and guarantee use of the sea for legitimate businesses. Let me start of course by acknowledging today a mutual helpful cooperation with the Nigerian Navy and our common vision based on shared values and experiences, and a preserving security and stability. The Nigerian Navy has shown and shows great foresight in nurturing the vision of multilateral cooperation. You know, maritime engagements that include Navy work together really to improve interoperability and connectivity. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


I just think the Christian McCaffrey trading is one of the best in-season trades of all f**king time. He becomes a f**king first option in the middle of the season, out of nowhere, and everybody buys in. They're like, yep, this dude's different. We agree completely. It feels like Christian McCaffrey has handled himself incredibly professionally, and everybody appreciates him. Christian McCaffrey was literally bred to be a professional athlete. Like his dad, obviously everybody knows, Ed, who played wide receiver, he's probably not even like top five athlete in the family. They got like track stars over there, they got soccer stars in them, Olympians everywhere in his family. He has bloodlines of incredible athleticism, and he showcases it every f**king game for them. And Shanahan's using him in ways that we've never seen before. It seems like the perfect marriage debut. You know how versatile he is, but even if you're just handing the ball, he's a great running back.


Hello everyone. Can you hear me okay? It sounds really loud up here. Can you hear me way back there though? Is it good? Okay, how's everyone doing today? Well, that's great to hear. Everyone seems super pumped up to learn about accounting and taxes. Yeah, yeah, woo. I love it. So real quick Just so you know who I am and why I might be a little qualified to talk about accounting. I Own a business. I've owned a few different businesses over the years And then I have a few plugins the main one quiz and survey master and then I'm the lead organizer of word camp Jacksonville, Florida And I have a website and a Twitter. So if you ever want to look me up Disclaimer before I get into anything I am not an accountant everything I'm going to talk about is Experience and tips I've learned over the years from running several businesses as well as consulting with my accountant But I am not an accountant. So I just want to throw that out there and Then you should also consider booking time with an accountant as they may be able to clarify some things as well as find Tips and best practices for your particular business Any questions on the disclaimer before I proceed? Okay, so the very first thing I want to talk about is knowing your business structure Now for a lot of people they wait to the end of the year or at tax season and they don't really have any business structure So they didn't know exactly what they should be worrying about or what they should be keeping which they should be holding on to What could be deductible in their current business. So knowing your structure when you get started is probably very important in both and both a legal aspect as well as taxes So the most common for people in this industry or freelancers or small agencies is usually either a sole proprietorship an LLC or an escort Anything above those and beyond that's probably a little bit outside the scope of most of the people here So those are the three I'm going to talk about today The sole proprietorship and LLC there's a really big difference in the eyes of the law But in taxes, they're the same exact thing when you go to file your taxes the LLC sole proprietorship They're pretty much identical and you can file them almost the exact same way they're both Known as something called a pass-through entity and essentially all the money in Your business account or any money any income you come in you get received It's pretty much treated as all your income Whether if you have a separate business account and you keep the money in there and you only take out a small portion It's still technically all your income because they're all passed through entities Now the difference here with the escort is that it's Slightly different in that you were more of an employee and then the income business is slightly different than your personal income So it helps with a tax break, but it's not super big tax break until you get past the $30,000 mark So usually when I'm helping people get started where they're gonna start it I recommend starting with an LOC and then once you pass 30,000. I suggest going to an escort For tax purposes Obviously consults your lawyer as well to see where you would best stand to start with but for tax purposes Usually start with LOC and then you transition to an escort down the road. Does that make sense? Did I lose anybody? No, okay, so the next thing is all these forms and paperwork and stuff that no one wants to deal with 1099, W9, W2 Those are all random forms. Most people have no idea what those are and most of the time you probably won't deal with them I will have the slides available afterwards for those who are trying to catch pictures. Uh-oh Well, Sean is Fixing that the first form is 1099 Essentially, this is what you'll use for your contractors and then advice diversity if you're being contracted to the 1099 is the the 1099 form so If you make more than six hundred dollars from a client Usually they're gonna ask for something called a W9 and that's where you're gonna fill out You know this cool paperwork just saying who you are blah blah and then Drive it back. No, I okay anyways So then the 1099 form is what says hey, this is how much I've paid this person So essentially the same thing on the opposite side if you have a contractor if you have lots of work Lots and lots and you have hire on a designer or you bring on maybe a developer and you have some work to send to them You would do this the opposite way You would collect a W9 from them and then issue them a 1099 if they have over six hundred dollars throughout that year And then at the end of the year when they're doing taxes They're gonna use their 1099s and you'll use your 1099 1099s to show how much income you've made through that avenue Now there's a few different ways you can keep up with your W9's either as You have contractors you can ask for W9 as soon as you bring them on or once you get to this is $600 mark Personally, I'd rather just get the W9 when I first bring them on so I don't have to worry about tracking them down afterwards Some contractors will disappear on you eventually So if you were to contract out some design work and velper work and then at the end of the year Remember you didn't collect the W9 yet and then try to hunt them down. It might be difficult So usually I collect the W9's right up front. That's that's just personal preference and The W2 it for employees You would issue out W2's and then contractors would be 1099s But essentially those two forms are the same thing there is pretty much saying how much you've paid them or How much someone's paid you if you're an employee or a contractor? Quarterly estimated taxes a lot of people don't do this I know I didn't to start with but you really should Essentially the IRS expects any profitable business to make quarterly taxes So an unprofitable is defined as making over a thousand dollars during the year Most people that'll be a client or two So most people in this industry once you start freelancing or doing agency work You're gonna be profitable enough that you're supposed to do this However Now while they can you can be penalized if you're a small business the penalty is usually very small So that's why I didn't do it the first little bit, but you're supposed to so and you there's a variety of ways You can do that, but usually it's essentially say last year you made 30,000 hypothetically, so then this year you would make four equal payments of 7,500 so just as throughout the year. That's how you would estimate it until you get enough Experience and your belt to kind of estimate how much you're gonna be making this year But most accountants recommend just taking how much you made last year and it's playing up into quarters And then making that every quarter does that make sense? Yeah, I'm at yeah taxes on this 75.  I've helped a lot of freelancers over the years and one thing I've found is that a lot of them Don't really keep track of how much money they're owed or how much money is out there? What kind of income they're expecting and That's not probably a good idea. You probably should know how much money is out there I was helping a freelancer about a month ago who didn't wasn't even sure which invoices they've sent out so you can't make money if you don't send out invoices first of all but Tracking your income is vital so you can one see how much money you're expecting to come in how much money You're making where you're making that money from say you have a variety of different services You offer by keeping track of this income into and you can categorize it you can see which services are profitable Things along those lines, so it's pretty important to track your income and then if you're tracking that you want to keep all You the records accurate So in this case you want to stay on top of your books and It can be time-consuming depending on what you exactly do what services you offer what kind of payments you take But for most people who are just taking maybe a client or two at a time this won't really take that much time So essentially when a log all your expenses and payments as they happen Some people love to wait maybe once a month once a week once a quarter to go in and try to reconcile all the receipts and all They're paid invoices and then once you get to that point you'll be like oh, okay I've just said I've just set aside six hours this coming Sunday, and then you're not going to want to do it So no one wants to do accounting stuff for six hours So if you do it as you go you're more inclined to actually do it Now expenses the log there's a lot and this is not even an inclusive list, but this is most of the big ones for our industry Purchases such as like computer printer accessories office applies your contractors Obviously you want to keep track of how much you're paying your contractors Office your co-working space Advertising business cards Facebook ads Twitter ads All of your legal your lawyer stuff all those things legal fees mileage gas work camps meals Meals for most meals if it's business related and it's under seventy five dollars You don't have to keep the receipt, but you should Because if you were to be audited by the IRS and you don't have your receipts It's kind of hard to prove that it was actually it actually happened and all this fun stuff So I keep all of my receipts that are business related, but technically under seventy five you don't have to It has to be business related with somebody. Yes now From there over seventy five then you have to have a receipt no matter what but for most cases I always keep the receipt just to have it Clothing a lot of people love to write off their suits or they're really dressed dress nice shirts and their dresses Because they're gonna go meet clients in these clothing technically you can't The clothing if you can wear it in another setting. It's not technically Required for your business so this outfit. I cannot write off of my taxes now If it had my company logo, and I could only wear it at word camps or that scenario Then I could possibly write it off as taxes because I could I could say that it's for business And I could usually only wear it when I'm trying to work some sort of business deal Same thing so similar avenues would be like a painter's outfit could only be done Normally most painters don't walk around their painters outfit at the grocery store So those type of clothing could be written off for the majority of everyday clothes. You don't usually get to write off Use software I've met a lot of people that try to manage this in Excel spreadsheets, and I get a headache just looking at how they do it I don't know These services make it super simple So it's usually and some of them like wave accounting has a free plan So I always suggest using a software because it'll help you categorize it'll help you with Invoicing it'll help you with all these fun things instead of trying to deal with it all within Excel and yourself I've used pretty much all of these I like wave accounting because it's free But I really like fresh books because it works really well with our industry I think and then bench isn't a software per se It starts at a hundred and twenty five dollars a month But you get like a dedicated bookkeeper to keep track of everything for you that you consult with So if you really don't like taxes or accounting or anything like that I would suggest maybe looking into bench or similar services Use an online one especially for our industry and just in general you can get one That's maybe on your computer like the quick books computer edition But in today's world that's so much easier with the online you can just give your accountant access Or send them over the details to reports rather than having to either print it out or email it over It's just a lot easier and the online ones in my experience So you want to maintain your records if you keep your receipts all year and then you throw them out at the end of the year And then IRS audits you the following year you're not going to have those receipts anymore So you want to keep those receipts and all of your documentation usually seven years If they decide to audit you you'll need to show documentation So keep copies of invoices receipts statements tax payments Etc anything that goes into your taxes at the end of the year that you would might need to show proof on Sean so So I usually keep a filing cabinet I have one at my desk at that at my home office I pretty much just keep all of my documentation for the business in that filing cabinet at this point now I have two filing cabinets, but it's usually best practice just to keep all your documentation in one place and that way you have it Yeah, as long as you have the documentation a lot of receipts a Lot of receipts will fade over time. So you should make a scan copy especially Some of the grocery store ones that paper that will fade within like three weeks So always make a scan copy regardless. I try to keep the originals, but if they fade over time It's not going to really what he's saying is he believes that you should either do all scanned or none scanned in my experience I've never encountered that you have to go one way or the other But again, that's how I've worked with my accountant. So it might I'm not the most expert to know the exact situation there. I know I don't have everything scanned I only have some of it and my accountant doesn't get on to me I'm no expert, but that's I just know what my accountant. I've worked through That's one off now. The next thing is you want to report every penny. I Know a lot of people that they get a lot of 1099s in there like well the IRS won't notice if I don't report this 1099 of a thousand dollars They might not notice this. I don't want to pay in that much taxes Don't try to get around the IRS the IRS will always find out and it won't end well ever so always report report every penny report all sources of income and Then because IRS will actually compare Your clients tax information so those that collected your W9 and and they're sending out 1099s the IRS gonna check all that and be like wait You know company a paid Joe $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 and it's not lining up over here So the IRS can actually send you something called a notice CP 22,000 which is a notice of under of under reported income and they will send you that if they catch you They will send you that document and it can lead to penalty lawsuit or jail So it's not fun. Don't don't go down that route. Don't try to go around the IRS That's fine any questions on anything. I've gone over so far before I Don't have the answer for that. I I know we I've my accountant helps me with some of this Those forms I'm not that I don't know I have enough knowledge about to be confident to tell you one way or the other I could tell you how mine is I have some my accountant kind of works through and has some dollar amounts that she looks at But I'm not an expert enough that I would want to tell you one way or there that'd be a question for your accountant Any other questions on anything we've gone over so far?  I Know I know taxes are pretty boring. I So these are two great questions for your lawyer and your accountant because there's a lot of variables in this question But I I would start as an LLC because you want to keep your personal and your business separate and have all those great advantages of having it separate and then you switch to escort once you get around 30,000 is what my accountant said when we were reviewing this mainly because the tax breaks aren't usually Really much before that so she said you once you hit 30,000 and over that's when she suggests the most of her clients That's when I switched to an escort and that's when she suggests most people do well. Does that answer your question? You want to repeat your question? So from like a sole proprietorship and why you would want to switch that's more of a legal question but essentially if you get sued and You're separated. You're just you they can go after your personal assets like your house your car all that stuff That you don't want to lose so by working with your lawyer and establishing an identity like an LLC or escort C Corp You'll keep it separate and especially in this industry You would let you probably want to keep those things separated. Is that an answer your question? The the tax advantages it would be the main reason that most of between LLC and escort Most of the legal aspects are the same I'm no legal expert. There are some distinctions, but in my experience from the things I've switched over it hasn't really done anything to the tax advantages were the main reason I switched Yeah, in my experience with my businesses and then what my accountant suggested is usually the 30 40,000 range is when we start looking into those There's a special form that my accountant fills out I don't know the exact number all the time ahead, but it's it's a fairly simple process You have to go through a certain process to do it, but it's there's no set date that you'd have to do it This is more of an accounting talk So I don't I'm not nearly an expert in legal. I'm definitely not an expert in accounting, but I'm much farther away from lawyer But there's a variety of ways you could turn go into an LLC You can go like an online route like legal zoom you can go meet a lawyer in person. There's a lot of varieties I always suggest that this is your first business to go talk to a lawyer That way you're making sure you have all your eyes dotting your T's crossed But that's come that's completely personal preference there. Does that answer your question? I guess that was my last slide so any other questions. I have not found any dissit disadvantage I'm not it. I'm not an expert here, but in my experience. There's not a venus I just didn't know about them when I started to cut my companies. So that's why I started with LLC Not at my level at least not according to my lawyer. Hopefully he's right, but There's some more legal aspects to it. We have some other entities I'm more like an employee and I like these tax-free dividends all those fun complications But it's it's not quite the C Corp level But and every state's different every like how these differences that you wanted to consult with your lawyer And I'm not an expert, but it's not in mind Well, if it's under 600 you don't have to you can still report it. It's it's not Required but it's very strongly suggested and if you can't hunt it down Then mention it to your accountant and then they have these special forms that they can issue and send to your clients But it's as long as you're reporting the income and that would fall back more on them if they're not doing their side Yes, if are you talking about quarterly estimated payments? If this is your very first year and you're just starting you have no clients from last year Then you don't usually have to worry about it this first year because you're not technically a profitable as of last year So this is a new cycle. So you're not you don't have a defined profitable entity Until the end of the year and that's when you would start making estimated court Now if you estimate a lot if you start having a lot of clients right out of the gate Then you can go ahead and start making estimated based on your traction now But if not then you can wait to the end of the year because like I said at our small levels at the penalties Not usually huge, but they usually give you some leeway Especially like if it's your first year then you don't have to worry about it right out of the gate Does that answer your question? any other questions on the exciting topic of accounting and taxes and I will tweet out on my Twitter a slide a link to the slides if anyone's interested in that and Then everyone else have a great day. Thank you


Welcome to Think Tech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Elise Anderson and I'm Kauai Lucas. For our show this time, we're doing a Think Tech special, Home Alone and Homeless Alone at Christmas. What does being alone mean and what can we do about it? We want to learn more about the isolated, disconnected people alone in our community. Christmas time is different from the rest of the year. Our activities and attitudes about food, family and friends are different. It's a time of excess, if not extravagance. Too much food, too many parties and too much spending. Things go fast after Thanksgiving. We race to year's end. We connect with old friends and family and confirm our place in the community and in the firmament. We face disruptive changes, making peace with the outgoing year and preparing intrepidation for the incoming one. It can be quite stressful, but we learn to suffer that in gaiety. We make it a symphony for the senses. The food, the laughter, the carols, the children and the colorful lights and decorations. Everything gets swept into a crescendo of celebration, ending at New Year. It's the rush, the compulsion of the holidays, but with all that some people suffer in silence. They are the ones who are alone, outside the bright city lights, gift-giving and gatherings. They are not in the mainstream. They are alone through the year and now at Christmas. And at Christmas, being alone is far more poignant and painful than at any other time or season. Let's call them the Christmas Disconnected. They include the elderly, the ill, the empty nesters, the unprepared newcomers, the poor and of course the homeless. They are a large group of lonely people, even in Hawaii where we like to share aloha, especially at Christmas time. There are many people in Hawaii who do not have families here with them, and for one reason or another do not have the extended family we traditionally associate with Christmas. They are alone when the rest of us seem to be together and happy. It's easy for them to be more isolated and depressed at this time of year. Nobody wants to be a Christmas Disconnect. Nobody wants to be alone or lonely, either at Christmas or any other time of the year. How do they fare? What can we do to help them? This Christmas, ThinkTech would like to take a look at the dimensions of this problem and to determine its scope, causes and effects so that we can help the people involved and at the same time help our community deal with it. We talked to a number of people who know about this phenomenon and we learned a lot from them. Let's take a walk down that lane and study this together. First, our ThinkTech producer and host, Raya Salter, talked with Marsha Joyner and Scott Foster, hosts of Navigating the Journey on ThinkTech. Marsha told us about the isolation of military dependents. Scott told us about families who have lost loved ones due to illness. 1967 to be exact.  So I didn't know what a pound nut driver was, so I went out in the snow, snow up to my knees and it's Christmas Eve and everything is closed and I walked and I walked and I walked and I cried and I was, you cannot believe how hard it is in moments like that. And that was the worst year of Vietnam, the absolute worst and all I could think about was that was that moment when I really missed my husband, really missed. It was, and I still do, I mean, I still get through that and telling the story. I still, all that emotion still comes up and there was one song, I'll be home for Christmas, which everybody knows and everybody sings and they don't listen to the words because if you listen to the words, incidentally the song, I'll be home for Christmas, but only in my dreams was played for the first time 18 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it was on all of the radio stations, it was everywhere and when you listen to it, when you really listen, it is so melancholy. When I moved to Honolulu in 1984 from Oklahoma originally, but two years in Los Angeles, I left Los Angeles simply because people were just disappearing and dropping dead, literally, there was no cocktail then around me and it was not a happy place and I just needed to get out of LA and I came here and found that there was no, it was not talked about much here in 1984 and that's when I became a LGBT advocate activist so to speak and I worked to bring it into the consciousness of the public consciousness because it wasn't talked about and because of the reluctance for island people for the most part to talk about LGBT issues, certainly AIDS, it was a real challenge. Now it's of course more open, but yes, many, many families here were affected because Honolulu is an international port city and our rate of incidents was way up there, not like New York or Los Angeles or Houston, but way up there so yes, seeing all those people turn out for world age day was just a pleasant surprise to see. What do you think you can tell a loved one being a grandchild on an uncle at the holiday time about someone who may have been lost in the AIDS to HIV AIDS? I don't have an answer for that. It was such a horrible 20 year period, so many, so many lost, but there's a camaraderie between us that we understand and we just don't go to that grim part of it. Raya also talked with Kristi McPherson of Family Promise, part of Catholic Charities which helps homeless families with children. Well, I think the holidays for some people are a time to be merry and joyful and I think it's really hard for our families to really be joyful all the time when they're still really feeling that pressure to find a place to live for their families. So I think what we try and do at Family Promise is to help bring some joy to their lives. And we do provide a lot for them because they work really hard in trying to work. They work full time, they're employed, and they have that internal pressure to try and get out as soon as possible. So what we do is we try and take some of that pressure off for the holidays because a lot of them say, oh, I don't have any money to buy anything for my kids and I'm so strapped already and we say, you know what, don't worry about that. You've got your kids covered, you know, we have you covered thanks to the generosity of all of our partners, our community members that are just overwhelmingly generous during the holidays. So like right now we have gifts for every child that is in our program as well as families that have graduated from our program in the past year. We like to spread some holiday cheer and bring them some things too because that transition into housing is really a tough time, you know, as excited as they are to get housing. It's that realization that all of a sudden I have to pay rent, you know, and I have to pay for my electric bill and my food and all that stuff. So we try and just take some of that off of them, that pressure, which is nice that we're able to do that thanks to the community. So so many ways to volunteer and to help families sort of guide them into housing, you know, obviously we have to do the hard work, which is getting them the actual housing. But you know, I think what people find is that they want to live out their faith or whatever it is that inspires them to volunteer. And there are so many ways that they can get involved like our volunteers.  So they provide meals, they sleep overnight, you know, it's just, it's really just knowing that I'm helping support these families and they know that we're there to support them and we're there to help guide them and just be there for them when they're really having a challenging time. And I think it just, people feel good about it and they know that it's meaningful work and I think that's what keeps them volunteering year after year. We have some volunteers that have been doing this for over 10 years, which is amazing. Then we talked with Kimo Carvalho of the Institute for Human Services. IHS provides food, shelter and services for the homeless 24 by 7 all year round. But the problems at Christmas are more severe. What happens at Christmas time for the homeless and for that matter for people who are home alone, whatever kind of home they might have? What's your experience at IHS? So, you know, there's really a good story and a bad story. I'll start with the bad and the fact of the matter is during the holidays is actually a really tough time for a lot of our homeless clientele, especially when they're unsheltered on the streets. You know, what is consistent across every homeless individual is that they're all dealing with some kind of grief, trauma and loss. And when they're grieving and they have trauma, oftentimes the holidays triggers a lot of old memories and it gets them into a more depressed state. And oftentimes during the holidays, you see more higher rates of intoxication, higher rates of drug use, a lot more severe depression and oftentimes higher suicide rates. And so, you know, I think, you know, this is a time that we really want to come together as a community to really support them as best we can. But oftentimes we do ask the public just to, you know, be very careful and cautious because we don't, of course, want to upset anyone when they're already angry and intoxicated. And, you know, just to experience that as a public, you know, we want to just make sure everyone's safety is priority. What about the good story? So there is a good side and that is that, you know, the holidays is just a fun time for our clients who are in shelters or who recently got housed this last year. We really do support, you know, a lot of homeless clients who, you know, they really can't afford a lot to give to their kids or to give to their loved ones and friends. And so, you know, the holidays become this time where the community helps us. We've put on a holiday store where homeless people can shop and collect things to, we have a gift wrapping station. They can actually give presents to their friends and loved ones. Groups come. They not only present our clients with beautiful spreads of meals, but also, you know, they put on events for the kids. On Christmas Eve, we actually take a lot of the gifts and we deliver them to families. On Christmas Eve evening, we do have an event with Homemade Hawaii. It's called Home for the Holidays where we provide a shelter for unaccompanied youth and for homeless families. And so it really does become a fun, enjoyable time. In fact, if you go to ihshoi.org, we have what's called a Hanai page.  And we actually have a Hanai page very similar to an Angel Tree program where, you know, all our clients who really just need the public support to give them something that they can give to a loved one or a friend or actually for themselves. It is a place for the public to engage responsibly. And I think that is how we encourage the public to engage this holiday season. You did receive our Outstanding Community Service Award last week. It's all, it's all appropriate. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kima. Have a good one. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. And we compared notes with Cowie Lucas herself, who told us about the special Blue Christmas Service at Calvary By Lucie Lutheran Church. I understand that your church has a special Blue Christmas Service to bring people in who may be feeling blue. Could you tell us a bit about that? Calvary By the Sea Lutheran Church in Aina Hina. I've been there since I was in second grade, but I had a really big tragedy in my life. In 2005, my daughter died. And it wasn't just because of me by any means, but Pastor Tim started doing a service before Christmas called Blue Christmas for people who wanted to connect with that, with a Christmas, but for whom going to a Fa La La La La, kind of a Christmas service, really is inappropriate. He created this Blue Christmas Service for people who are going through some sort of, you know, some kind of challenge. And it's a beautiful thing. We're not the only one who has it. I know that Central Union also has a Blue Christmas Service. And it's just a really great way of connecting with that hopeful message of Christmas without the usual tinsel side of it. And also, too, you know, there can be triggers if you've always done this kind of Christmas service with your loved one who is not there anymore. Do you still participate in the Blue Mass? I didn't this year. I sometimes do and sometimes don't. As the years have gone on, I sometimes don't want to connect with the acute pain that I felt at that time. And I have a new ritual, which is since I'm in the Church's Halau, I'm always dancing hula with my hula sisters on Christmas Eve. And I just leave it at that. I don't do Christmas decorations or anything like that. But on the 24th, I dance with my hula sisters. I think that's beautiful. And I can't thank you enough for sharing that lovely and deeply personal story. We ended our inquiry with Kaylee Iakina, host of Ehana Kako here on Think Tech. He spoke about the Hawaiian tradition of including strangers at your table and in your home. I think one of the things that's happened is the holiday season has moved away from bringing families together as much as they used to come together. Part of the reason is the economy. Many children have to move away to the mainland. They stay there after college. And it's very prohibitive to travel back to Hawaii. It's also prohibitive to travel between the islands because we don't even have a ferry system. And in addition to that, the cost of living has gone up. So Christmas isn't so easy to celebrate. I do think the economy does have an impact upon how well people celebrate this season. Well, we have rich cultures here in Hawaii. I'm part of the Hawaiian and Chinese culture. And we always open our tables, open our homes during the holiday season to other people. I think what we're recognizing now is that there are greater numbers of people in need, the homeless individuals whom we now see more frequently out on the streets. And so it's a challenge for us because many of us would like to open our homes up. But it's a little uneasy because we don't know who these people are. It's not like the friendly hobo of maybe living down the street. Today we see people in desperation. And so I'm very grateful for opportunities to work with church groups and community groups to feed the hungry on Thanksgiving and Christmas. But that is something that has become a little uncomfortable for everyone here in Hawaii. I think that we have to create new opportunities. Families that may never have thought of going down to a shelter or a soup kitchen, as they're called across the country, may want to incorporate that into their holiday celebrations. And I think that that is something that's evolving and becoming more important in our society today. On balance, it's not a happy story. There, but for the grace of your God, go us all. And that means we should all be thinking about how to help the Christmas disconnected and everyone who is alone and isolated this time of year. Should we be doing more for them? Who among us should step forward? Is the aloha spirit still alive in us? Or have societal changes left all that behind? You choose. The problem is not just case by case or individual by individual. It affects everyone. We want a happy, healthy community at Christmas and all year round. The growing number of people home alone or homeless alone erodes our collective self-esteem and essential aloha. Fixing this is everyone's job. After all, here in Hawaii, we all need to take care of each other, don't we? Now that we have inquired, we have learned. So what has it been like for you? What have you learned in your travels on this subject? I think one of the things that stands out is that we all want to be a part of a healthy, vibrant community. And the health and vibrancy of our community depends on the health of each and every one of us. So it is important to think about ourselves, our families, our extended families, and each other, all of us at the holidays. One of the things we talked about here is that you might want to consider giving a contribution to your favorite charity in the thought that that would help the people who are home alone or homeless. But there's another kind of contribution. It's more of a psychic kind of contribution, a spiritual one, if you will, where you make this contribution every day in every way and everything you do, everybody you talk to. So how do you feel that that contribution should be made? I think you raise a very important point. And I think, especially at the holidays, people do want to discover more about what's the real meaning of the holiday, what's the real meaning of Christmas. I think we understand that it can be very commercial, it can be very busy. And so yes, people do take the time to give to charities, and they should continue to do that. People also take the time to volunteer, and they should continue to do that as well. One of the things I think I definitely learned from this inquiry is, yes, there are those who are very isolated and very vulnerable and in tremendous need. And we need to be thinking about them and reaching out to them in the holidays. But in addition, this really touches everyone. It's everyone's life. It is not just another person that you can point to and say the tragedy is happening elsewhere. The truth is, is that at the holidays, a lot of people who may be feeling blue are keeping that to themselves, are putting on a false smile. And I think getting to what you mean about that psychic contribution is, can you just take some time to reflect and think, who is it who might need a little support on something special? Think of that person who may have lost a child around the holiday times, or someone you know is sad, or someone who may have experienced a difficulty, perhaps lost a parent at the holiday times and has a hard time facing it. And when you think about those folks, go ahead and reach out. Make that phone call. I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about you at the holidays. I know this can be a hard time. Let's Palhalla, let's have a cocktail. Show up, come visit. On New Year's Day, come visit on Christmas Day. What a lovely idea. Make that call. And now let's take a look at our Think Tech calendar of events going forward. There's so much happening in Hawaii. Sometimes things happen under the radar and we don't hear much about them, but Think Tech will take you there. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on OC16 several times every week to stay current on what's happening in government, industry, academia, and communities around the islands and the world. Remember also that Think Tech broadcasts its daily talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you wanna replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to thinktechhawaii.com slash radio. Think Tech has a high tech green screen First Amendment studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you wanna be part of our live audience or participate in our programs and help us raise public awareness, contact us at think at thinktechhawaii.com. Visit thinktechhawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live streaming YouTube links or sign up on our email list to get the daily docket of our upcoming shows and uploads. Give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at thinktechhawaii. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in Hawaii. We wanna stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. And in fact, you can call in and join our talk shows live. While you're watching any of our shows, you can call us at<PHONE_NUMBER> and pose a question or make a comment to participate in the discussion. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we wanna thank our underwriters. Steps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it just like Kaui does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Kaui Lucas. Aloha everyone.


Okay, so this presentation would be about estimators of the lost arc You can see the Indiana Jones reference and it's the story of the advanced reconnaissance group My name is Michal Koneczny. I'm the mage from it is monitoring.org. That is my official role now joking my official role is senior software engineer that had and Who are you again? I've never met this man before in my life No, my name is Ethan lonely and I'm the product owner for the community platform engineering team, which I work with Michal and other majors other sorcerers in the And yeah, we're going to take you through how we came about creating this team within a team Founding member sitting right here. So I need to be very accurate So today's presentation like I said is going to take you through the origins of the arc team Where it came from where the concept came from where the acronym acronym comes from because that one What the purpose of the team is for what we use the team for within the wider CP team It has its own heroes and villains as every every good story does and then we have live inaction tales from the quest that this team and backs on and I will tell you through all the battle stories and then we will unveil our chest of treasure that we always find at the end But first I'm going to take you through the origins of the arc team So At the beginning there was only a very small spark This spark grew into a fire and the fire started and people were terrified of this fire They really didn't like it at all But in the you know, they started warming up to it and Realize it might not be that scary and it could be a little bit helpful and the fire is absolutely a euphemism for agile So our team started in this agile transformation journey and we wanted to start Like planning some project work and delivery timelines and you know, we needed we need the requirements And we needed deliverables and we need a success criteria And we were going to get all of this stuff and then I was going to come into the team Oh, there was going to be somebody to take this stuff for me And we were going to pass it to a delivery team Michael and others and we were going to have what people wanted at the end Like that was going to happen like I mean how what what else is needed. I tell you what I want and then I say great I'll give you what you want and then Yeah, you don't get what you want So this was our idea that we were striving for like holy grail and we were going to get there. Why wouldn't we get there? Really really straightforward simple Also, we thought so Problem that we had was while we were getting these requirements and these asks from the questers and You know, they were there that we had our success criteria. We knew what people wanted Just hadn't a notion how to actually deliver it to them. We had lots of or rather We knew several ways to deliver the thing and we couldn't really decide what is the best way forward and Maybe familiar with when you're tasked with something. There is a some indecision as to what technology is best to use and in the in the project like Fedora that is So complex and wide and cool, but like there's a lot going on You know, if you don't choose the right tech stack at the start It's very tricky to know how many other people's projects are impacting if it tends to be something It's not compatible or there's dependency issues or whether you're going to choose something that will lock you in in 369 months down the line when you've just developed something else So our team was wasting an awful lot of time figuring out what the best path forward to be even begin the development was and that was causing you know It's causing a lot of Obsessed would be a nice way to put it within the team They were frustrated with me because I wasn't giving them clear enough requirements I was getting frustrated with them because I wasn't sure what they were asking me for it begin with I told them That's what they wanted. They want a red button. What do you mean? There's different shapes of buttons. Give me one So like Yeah, yeah, pretty much So there was there was a lot going on and yeah, like and nobody knew what we were making it up as we went And we were delivering things, but oh my god. It was not a comfortable process And this was happening for a couple of projects happening for a couple of months, etc So in the end We said it up enough. We have Too much going on. We need we need to cut a break here And I was fortunate enough to like have Pingo as a as a friend and confidence and also a team member who's saying What if he's going on the project even they haven't started yet? I don't know what to do So we were discussing the problems and he did come up with the idea of like, is it the technical prescoping of the problem? Yes, I don't have anyone to like vet this with You know, I can I can vet it against like business requirements and benefits to people But I have nobody to actually vet that this is not going to cause a dependency in the library over here That's upholding All of release engineering. I don't know, you know, I didn't have that context So we decided we were chatting and said why not propose a solution? The solution being we pre-sculpt work technically So we still get the requirements from the the request. We still get the success criteria We still get all that stuff But before we even say yes or no, we pass it to a subset of our team And they investigate whether this will actually even work and if it doesn't work, good luck But if it does work, then they're going to look into like how we do it the As trade-offs like, you know, you're going to grab the golden idol and you're going to have to put something in its place This the trade-off was that I would need people from my team to spend time doing that And that means taking them out of existing project work So the the barter was We dropped projects we had been taking on like I think there was four projects running plus our sustaining team as well So we had five subsets of our team running which is full capacity. Nobody would left over you took a holiday things stopped I'd like to tell you it's completely different now, but it can't be a little bit like that still But we really had zero capacity for Innovation or thinking things through So the trade-off was drop projects drop everything bar one and put more people into our infernal entity And they will be able to then take some time and pre-scope this work and work with me once it comes from the requester to us And we'll work together and we'll better technically give us some options And then it's ready and then the development team can go So that was the solution send out a comms to the managers send out comms to Whoever needed to know and they said yeah, okay, cool. Let's do it. So we did it And here we are talk about it because it worked And we had a lot of fun then with the acronyms. So like there was a good deal that came up Obviously the advanced recon crew is the one that actually can be publicized But like there's there's a few there that was um, that was a hot contender The angry rabbit's committee nearly ran nearly one Um smooth wanted either rating children No, we said let's keep a professional for god's sake Let's just try and be like adults. So we've called it the angry con or the advanced recon We stuck Indiana Jones So anyway, so that's how the hat set started that was our problem. That's what we were facing That's the solution we came up with and it really has been By far the best decision. I think we've ever made in terms of product delivery within the CPU team And I'm gonna fight any one of the degrees And Mikhail will take you now through the rest. Okay Not through the rest, but through few slides Okay So first every good story needs a hero. They emerge from the battle and scared They were heroes that everybody talked about. They were the ones whose enemies tremble when they hear them coming but who they are really and It comes to me that these are the heroes of the it is story The arc is actually made from people from infrared launch team and they are the heroes You can see some of them here Unfortunately, we don't have these trade cards for everybody and the team yet, so what we will Need to thank design team ferro design team to making tools So few people here We usually just try to find the best suite for the investigation for the other organization And it depends on the on the thing we need to risk to investigate And every good story needs a good willing The people were scared when they saw them approaching There were nasty group and didn't bring anything good But they were still imposing figures And who are the villains? Oh the girls Okay, so One of them was having the clear requirements. We usually get some request with some requirements, but those are not technical or they are just something somebody wants So one of the villain is the requirements. We need to actually get to him and defeat him The next time is next one is time And time is always a villain every time and in this case we didn't had clear estimate We were struggling with the starting project and When we thought it will be ready, it was halfway through. So we actually Trying to do this during the arc investigation to estimate time Who how long this will take it's usually a good guess or a good estimate because The people are trying to Work on proof of concept trying to do the work that is we are trying to investigate so it's It's good usually good estimate and we are delivering on times which says a lot And third one is technical options This means that we can see in the arc investigation the options that we can think of And the team is actually trying to explore them just trying to look at them and see what what is viable And we prepare for the quest So first we get the underpants all the underpants we can find Then we do magic and then we have profit. We have a profitable business at the end and this is where we do it No, I'm joking But yeah, we would We would rather hold the underpants quickly If we do that, so we decided to go all the way First we will choose the crusade. This is the arc investigation We actually want to do and we will We will actually explain why this is needed. What is the story behind it? Why we need it Then we choose the right heroes as I said before Their heroes are chosen usually on the arc investigation if this is some old Project we have an event to rewrite it We actually want to have somebody in the arc team who knows the project who actually at least have some knowledge about the project and If it's if it's some specific technology, we want to try we want to ask people to be in the arc team who have some knowledge about the technology So we have somebody who actually knows what he's doing in the arc investigation And then we go to the adventure and they left for a great adventure Looking forward to see what they will found what new beauties they encounter But happy moments they experience, but it will not always be a positive situation so We had a plenty of investigation. I in this case open up Okay This is why I'm wearing the glasses Let me just do it little bigger So these are actually the Arc nodes with this is the output what we do. This is the Output of the adventure these are the nodes the journey of the heroes And here you can see what we actually What initiative we have and what we actually did for the investigation We have plenty of completed that are not implemented yet. We have plenty of Implemented as well And as was said before We don't always have Everything is not always great so we actually encoded few of the Things that we needed Sometime and it was a great that this was actually found out in the arc investigation Not with the project actually working on something so For example, what do people use FMN for when we try to rewrite the federal messaging notification system We're looking at first What is there then where they were plenty of customer rules for plenty of notifications And we wanted to ask community first what they actually use And what could be useful so we don't run In the same case like we have database for with plenty of customer rules That are used by one person So we want to share them We got Some examples we still even now when the FMN new FMN is deployed We still have some request for some Messages that weren't there Next thing is how could we scope badges properly? This was a big one because the badges are here for a long time We don't want to take the maintenance ship of badges your team We want to leave this on community But the badges needs to be written and we want to help with that So in this case, it was how to scope the badges properly and how to actually Make it work. So what we can do how we can design it to be better And the last thing is Is for the Activity count script that is new and There is still ongoing discussion. What should be marked as contribution in fedora because How you can recognize contributor by contribution, but if they are not clearly Defined it's hard I can actually show some of the other of the stories For example the good example not everything that is bad Webhook to fed message when we did the investigation We finished it. We had some design of how the webhook to fed message should work And then we look at the github to fed message and found out that we actually designed it in the webhook. So That is when they just the second investigation was just Writing all this should be implemented like this Next thing that I can talk about Michael before you do can I just point out as well as any project manager in their product owners or whoever in the audience If you don't have somebody looking into that and you pass the development team Get up to fed message and they do the work and then you say okay Next we're going to do webhook to fed message and they go the same thing like your credit your credibility shot Like it's just it's a waste of everyone's time. So like Highlighting that as part of this art process was just huge because we were like great That saved a huge amount of time and it wouldn't be possible without somebody doing that free scoping work too from a technical perspective yeah I would say a second Second thing about this or second example at the end The community shift is now implemented It was stuck at the first time for a long time at some law issues mainly on the gdpr stuff and This was something we couldn't do anything about and it was actually something we Did arc investigation for but we didn't look at the law Law requirements and this was actually met When the federal legal team was actually started looking in it. So yeah, not everything could be catched by the arc And the last thing I would like to talk about is That we have always more than one way So the arc team is usually looking I can open one of the investigations so we can see It was a fun revelation to work in software with software engineers to be like. Yeah. Yeah, but there's all the different ways to do it You can see List of the ideas that actually were looking up in the in the case of datanome data grab And all of those were looked up by the arc and said no, this is not Well, it should work Or Yeah, this is a good way to go forward and there are conclusions And recommendations so the team who is actually starting on it something to work on work with And Give it back There we go. Yeah fortune and glory kid. That is what we were doing it for No, and we were we were looking forward to the reward that was waiting at the end because we were going to be Guaranteeing some technical clarity like who doesn't want that and we were going to have guardrails for development teams to pick up the project and work within Not rules, but like Rails that they wouldn't be worried about stepping over But they would have the confidence and they would have the the surety of doing some development within And without going like way over or making ridiculous choices that they didn't understand the ramifications of that far So yeah, fortune and glory But there was there was there's a hell of a lot more to it than that The real fortune and glory that we have actually seen within the team Is and hopefully as well, I would like to think of the core project as well Anything that the cpe team has put out in the last maybe Two plus years since we started using this arc concept is better services We have upgraded the thorough messaging notification system based on arc You know, which is going to see your thorough messaging notifications be a lot less laggy You might get them on the same day that you have that the thing happened, which is an improvement You know, we will have a We've we did some work updating Bodie. We have done nomodatic refer There was there's loads of services that we have updated Based on the outputs from the arc team as this is the best recommendation So we better services back into the community. All right And our development team was getting more clarity on their work Because it it can be painful to to do some of this heavy development stuff So it's it's nice to be nice And if we can be nice to the development team by giving them a little bit more clarity and structure Then they'll be happier to do it and you don't want to piss off development Sorry for swearing but you don't want to piss off their engineers because people deliver the projects So treat people nicely and the projects will be nice And you're going to get less confusion from your development team We're going to get a lot of less time wasted at that up front trying to figure out what path is best Because people have already looked at a couple of different paths. They've already been able to advise you on this is probably your best shot here This is an agnostic enough service. It's not really going to do a lot of damage. We roll back etc So It's easier to just pick up and go And as Michelle mentioned like we have had successful deliveries of all of the projects that we've picked up Anything that we've actioned we have delivered on they've been successful And we've also kept them to a very good timeline, which has made it easier to plan around as well So for people sitting in that project planning management that kind of that kind of sphere It's wonderful to be able to give a very good guesstimate of how long something is going to take How long you're going to not have team capacity for or how long you're going to need capacity for as well And you can plan it better and you can start building out like Short-term meeting term long-term roadmaps, which will get a little bit fuzzier the longer you go But you stand a hell of a lot of the better chance planning properly when you have that clarity already on the work in your backlog Speaking of backlog you get one properly with delivery plans Whether in our case it is initiatives their projects It may be like epics in your backlog, but by having a team within a team like an arc team Doing those investigation spikes pre-scoping the work Forgetting your backlog slowly scoped and it's getting delivery plans Already built in so that by the time your team has capacity to start picking up that work You have ready to go and choose from at the very most you're spending Maybe I think we've spent maybe a week five days Just reviewing the arc documentation and onboarding into the project But that is it we've gone from like three four weeks of Oh crap, who should we be talking to about the service to just take them out going? Hi, that still makes sense and away they go And uh, very importantly we have an opportunity for community feedback in the projects before they even become long Which is extremely valuable obviously for the community platform engineering team And I referenced the fnn project most recently and I'll credit ryan lurch for doing the the bulk of this work and before we started the arc investigation we were compiling the requirements and You know the use cases were so vast and so many to try and hover and ryan just mailed out to the community and said okay What do you use the service for and because people coming back to him with their their use cases He was able to compile kind of like but this all fits in this general buffet and that should be covered by this Rose we don't need all of these custom rows that they've made to virtually get the same thing These are a bit more use case Corner casey. We should probably check if they'll be covered by something else or whether we need to keep the customer But it then it meant that like we weren't spending development time Stripping out all of these rows from a service only to launch the service and have a load of people going What the hell I have I have my think and figure to this and now I don't need more I'm like, I don't know if that actually makes sense. It did because we had already pre checked it So that was extremely valuable to have So yeah, it was great to it was great to have that feedback loop And as you saw the documentation it's open, you know, you can love on you can see you can read through all of the other ones The ones that aren't implemented Please feel free to read them through and submit your other messages and say like You know, actually there's a better way of doing that. We're open to that. That's why they're they're not implemented If they're even if there's a draft Throw in your thoughts and ideas there We want that we want the feedback We are always Open to know new acronyms. Yeah You can open pr for that as well Okay, and we have some numbers because I can read numbers We have 70 and finished arc investigations We have seven projects that were actually delivered with clear requirements and on time And we have eight acronyms suggested for arc And this could still still grow Okay, and this are the some links so we actually had some issue uploading the Uploading the slides, so hopefully we will solve this and Here are some links. So Initiative report. This is where we have the initiatives Arc investigations. This is the document I showed earlier earlier And arc repo is the sources for the documentation And that is all So, thank you So you have a lot of people in your team work from my perspective Do I have a lot of people in your team? How can the same concept be applied to smaller teams where you might have only three people working on like three or four different projects? And you have to vet those projects so you're not wasting stuff too much. I want a small Do you want to take that? Yeah My suggestion would be you need you need buy-in from like your stakeholders and your management team to actually Not separate your team Maybe there is a heat there is maybe one or two people off that three or four that can do that free scoping work If you really are only a three person team I would try and get buy-in from your your manager stakeholders to like We just call it a spring zero to set aside some time to like investigate that properly It depends on the size of the work Some of our investigations have been finished in like a week and a half Some of them can go on that maybe like Five six weeks You don't try and keep them any later than that because otherwise it's a project and that's not the point But um, but you do you do need buy-in for that free scoping and if you're a small team It's probably going to fall to you And you need to be pushing the the wasted time that you're spending or build that into your your actual delivery plan all together Yeah, because we have a lot of campaigns and they're all hyper focused On their specific app and there's not much overlap between them So maybe there needs to be more overlap If they're all delivering up Yeah, maybe you do need to like pull something from each of them and get them into a room and just get them to hack it out Like for a week or two and then come back and say, okay, deliver this deliver that one Liver this me to the end Yeah That's one of the first things we did Yeah The art team is never the same people all the time so if you're I've misunderstood a bunch of men who are just one team But if you're many teams in a kind of a bigger team to just step first You probably do need to look at like forming a standalone team like that Like we were fortunate to be able to have our infrastructure and arrange team that figures support sustaining work But that's where we pull our our investigation team from and they're never the same person There's there's definitely like there's a request to come in of all different skillsets, but You need a variety Different people talking about And just to make it clear we have in in fun ranch team people from centers infrastructure from federal infrastructure And from federal release engineering. So we have people from all over the place and They work And developers. Yeah The mix is For this is Do you set kind of guard rails for the art team if you mentioned you do group concepts And I find it very easy for your group concept to sort of just become the concept. So do you kind of have rules of that where you stop the art team? They they stop short of implementation No, they're usually you know, usually we have only Few weeks so it will take four weeks. We are in some dead end and we shouldn't go this way. So But there there is never only one option Explored so there there is a rule that we don't Just look at one way. We do and the team does investigate At least two if not three ways Some will be automatically ruled out, but they will still be looked at like I think we were looking at Replacing the off-lead library And there was one that was absolutely not going to work for we were still going to look into it to be sure to be sure And another option was but they were both looked at both put forward and then you know, you recommend Yeah Things that have taken like the Around the five week mark has been things like the fnn project where there was time needed to get people to come back to us with answers on like what they use cases are the badges project is also falls into that as well that people need time to like To think about what they use these things for and why it's important to come back with us And we found that important enough to give that extra space because we didn't want to then start looking at our at our options With upon a view or with only half the information We try and get as much information off from before we start out So that we're we're looking at it as in the most holistic fashion possible And we are okay to keep this little bit extra We also have a new way to doing it And that is if we are working on a ticket on a regular ticket that we get just in the federal info range and taking too long we actually just Uh fill our fill in the arc investigation and leave this to our team dedicated team that the world Yeah, so anything that comes in that's too big. That's like this should be a project that needs more people I don't know where we're gonna take this goes into that side of the world And we pick it up and look into it and see yeah, okay, that's big enough We need to And this project I use this in this case in the arc investigation is actually done by somebody who tried to implement the ticket and didn't actually I finished it But at least started Any other questions before we say goodbye Thanks, pingo for creating it To work. Yeah, but anyway, yeah, so that's that's the arc project if you have any follow-up questions or anything you can reach Leo McHale our emails are listed at the bottom Or you can find me at the bar later Oh All right, thank you very much